http://www.opensorcery.net/velvet-strike/

Call for Digital Spray Paint:

Velvet-Strike is a collection of spray paints to use as graffiti on
the walls, ceiling, and floor of the popular network shooter
terrorism game "Counter-Strike". Velvet-Strike was conceptualized
during the beginning of Bush's "War on Terrorism." We invite others
to submit their own "spray-paints" relating to this theme.


The Velvet-Strike Team:

Anne-Marie Schleiner opensorcery@opensorcery.net
Joan Leandre retroyou@retroyou.org
Brody brody@tmpspace.com


Velvet-Strike: War Times and Reality Games
(War Times From a Gamer Perspective)

When I first heard about the attacks on September 11, just a fraction
before I felt a wave of sadness, a nauseating thought passed through
my mind. What terrible timing-with this president in office, perhaps
even more so than previous ones, he could use this event as
justification for dangerous actions on a global scale and at home. A
few weeks later, I left for Spain to give a workshop on modifying
computer games. When I arrived the next morning at the workshop I
learned that the U.S. had declared war on Afghanistan. The workshop
organizers had installed a new demo of "Return to Castle
Wolfenstein", a remake of an old Nazi castle shooter game, on all the
PC's. The sounds of the weapon-fire echoed off the concrete walls of
the workshop warehouse space–what I once approached with playful
macho geek irony was transformed into uncanny echoes of real life
violence. At that moment, that room was the last place I wanted to
be. Joan Leandre, (one of the other artists presenting at the
workshop), and I discussed creating some kind of anti-war game
modification.

Not long after the Sept 11 attacks, American gamers created a number
of game modifications for games like Quake, Unreal and the Sims in
which they inserted Osama Bin Laden skins and characters to shoot at
and annihilate. Since the Sims is not a violent game, one Osama skins
distributor suggested feeding the Sims Osama poison potato chips. If
you cant shoot him, then force him to overeat American junk food, to
binge, death by over-consumption, death by capitalism. (The Sims is
essentially a game whose rule sets are based on capitalist
algorithms, although according to the Sims designers these rules are
balanced other factors.)

The most disturbing Osama mod I saw was on display in October 2001 at
a commercial game industry exhibit in Barcelona called Arte Futura.
To give the exhibition organizers the benefit of the doubt, they were
probably unfamiliar with urban American ethnic cartography. In this
mod, Osama is represented as an Arab corner grocery story owner, as
is common in many tough inner city neighborhoods in North America.
The goal of the mod is to enter the corner liquor grocery store and
kill the Arab owner. (At the time I saw this I has just gotten an
email from my sister in Seattle describing how she and other college
students were taking turns guarding mosques from vandalists.)

Harmless release of tension or co-conspirator in the industrial war
complex? Playful competition or dangerous ethnic and gender politics
of the other? The first computer game, created at MIT by Slug Russell
and other "hackers", was called "Spacewar", an outer space shooter
influenced by cold war science fiction. Since Spacewar, computer
games evolved and bifurcated into multiple genres, some related to
war and fighting simulation, (and using technology occasionally
directly funded by the US military), and others less so. (RPG, Real
Time Strategy, Shooter, God Game, Action/Adventure, etc). In the
1990's, within the shooter genre, characters evolved from white guy
American soldiers into oversize funny male monsters of all shapes and
stripes and pumped female fighting machines. It seemed to be about a
kind monster fantasy workshop, humorous macho role-play, taking
things to their frag queen extremes. Within online Quake and game
hacker culture, gender restrictions and other boundaries opened up.

Then beginning with Half-life and continuing with shooter games whose
alleged appeal is "realism", a kind of regression took place. In
terms of game play games like Half-life are universally seen as
advancements. Yet in Half-life you are only given one white guy
everyman American geek guy to identify with. And all of the NPC
researchers and scientists in the game are male. Half-life remaps the
original computer game target market back onto itself, excluding all
others and reifying gamer culture as a male domain. (Not that I
didn't play Half-life but I would have enjoyed it more if I could
have played a female character.)

The trend towards what male gamers call "realism" solidified in 2000
with the Half-life mod "Counter-Strike". Counter-Strike is a
multi-player game where you choose to play on either the side of a
band of terrorists or on the side of counter-terrorist commandos,
(all male). The tactics of the terrorists and the counter-terrorists
are essentially indistinguishable from each other. (Perhaps this
similarity between terrorist and counter-terrorist is telling about
the current situation in Israel and other places where the "war on
terrorism" has been forged for a while or is only just beginning.)

People who love Counter-Strike have told me that the appeal is the
"realism"-its not about "silly" muscly monsters bouncing around space
ports like in the Quake Series -in Counter-Strike you play
realistically proportioned soldiers and commandos killing each other
in stark bombed out bunkers. When you are killed in Counter-Strike
your character really "dies" instead of immediately regenerating.
(Although you get to play again in a few minutes as soon as the next
round begins.) So "realism" is not about faster game engines,
graphics processing and "photorealism". It is about reproducing
characters and gameplay environments that are considered closer to
"reality" and farther from fantasy.

But now, in the wake of Sept 11, are these games too "real"? Or is
the real converging with the simulation? Who defines what is real?
According to an email rumor, President Bush recently approved of a
deal between an American television network and the US military to
create a series of wartime docudramas of US soldiers fighting the
"war on terrorism" abroad. The news section of the TV network was
apparently miffed at the arrangement because they had been unable to
gain access to reporting on the war in Afghanistan. (Recall in
Orwell's 1984 the merging of state controlled war time news and
docu-fiction.) The trend in brutal reality TV, beginning with popular
shows like Cops, and continuing with a slue of reality game shows
like "Survival" is another field of convergence.

You are for or against us, you are with us, "the one", or you are
with the enemy is the underlying logic of the West, as I understood a
talk by Marina Grzinic at an international cyberfeminist conference
in Germany in December 2001. (Pre-axis of evil.) Although computer
games replicate this binary competitive logic maybe there is
something ultimately subversive in the knowledge that it is only a
game, that at any moment you may switch sides with the "other", you
may play the terrorist side in Counter-Strike. But reality games
pretend to erase this awareness. And if you are going to converge
network shooter games and contemporary middle eastern politics into a
game, (Counter-Strike), then you leave out a number of complexities
such as economics, religions, families, food, children, women,
refugee camps, flesh bodies and blood, smell etc.

Maybe the problem is that convergence with "reality" is happening
with the wrong game genre. Instead of replicating the binary logic of
the shooter genre, of Cowboys and Indians, of the football game, if
the US government borrowed tactics from real time strategy gamers or
RPGers, we might be looking at a different global response. (But then
again given who our leadership is now, its unlikely he is capable of
the intellectual planning required of a strategy gamer.) "Winning" or
advancement in massively multi-player Role Playing Games like
Everquest is enhanced by strategically building social bonds amongst
players. And strategy games like Warcraft and Command and Conquer,
while directly enacting tactics of imperialist colonialist
expansionism, at least take into account other factors in addition to
military might.

After playing Counter-Strike for a couple weeks I must confess it
incorporates social maneuvers beyond shoot and kill, (and I must also
confess to enjoying many aspects of the game–I have actually always
enjoyed shooters.) Team play and communication between members on
your side are complex, including live voice radio, and a number of
coded chat "smileys" and automated radio commands that take some time
to learn. Formulating strategies is also necessary for survival, as
in other network shooters. As a Counter-Strike newbie I was sometimes
even able to solicit help from my enemies, indicating a clear
awareness of the game as fictional play space. Some of the combat
environments are quite beautiful. But I still am critical that this
domain, the network of thousands of international Counter-Strike
servers spanning Taiwan to Germany, has been reified as an
exclusively male "realistic" combat zone. (You can hear live audio
voices of male players on many servers.) I am also disturbed that the
binary logic of the shooter is being implemented on a global military
scale.

Personally I would like to see computer games move towards fantasy,
away from military fantasy which pretends to "realistic". I like
fantastic environments where there is more room for imaginative
habitats and characters. Japanese games for children and adults are
engaged in this undertaking, filled with curious animal Pokemon
creatures, Robo-cats, transformers, Anime people, monsters, demons
and fairies, of all genders. I identify more with these characters
than with counter-terrorist or terrorist soldiers and they are what I
want to be my reality. Reality is up for grabs. The real needs to be
remade by us.

http://www.opensorcery.net/velvet-strike/