Writing for Cyberspace- Year End Reflection

I’ll start with the criticism. We did several readings throughout the course of the semester, and the PDFs that were supplied were not really in “great” shape. This is going to sound silly, but I was scared of some of the readings- not because of the content, but because of the crooked and off-the-page text. I managed to read most of them, but there’s no substituted for a well-done PDF that leaves you room to print out and annotate. To help understand the readings better, I think later classes will require nicer looking PDFs.

The PDFs are my biggest criticism, second to the general consensus that our “smart labs” are not very “smart” or equipped to do anything we need them to do. My only real “gripe” about the course. I do, however, have some other suggestions. This semester, we did presentations, posted at Wikipedia, kept our blogs, and wrote two major essays- on which we adapted to webpage form. I think there should be an additional requirement, however: require that students participate in an online community of their choice. I’ve learned quite a bit about the internet and the types of “literacy” just by posting around at forums on my own time.
Now, the positives.

What I liked best about the class is actually that we didn’t spend time getting bogged down in code. Leave that to programmers. Just because we write online doesn’t mean we need to know code- it kind of eliminates the point. What we should be concerned with as writers in “online literacy,” and how writing and writers need to adapt to that.

I also liked that we covered a wide range of material- this course really worked as a survey of online literacy in that way. We looked at e-lit, cell phone novels, second life, Wikipedia, and so on. I felt that, while this course didn’t tell me exactly what I need to do in terms of writing, it at least exposed me to several doors I can choose to enter later and gave me some foundation for further study. That’s more than I had hoped for.

As someone who hopes for a profession ...

...as a round-a-bout the area of "writer", I’m very concerned with how technology will affect writing. I’ve already been told countless times that digital platforms have replaced the print newspaper, and it is really no question that people turn to Wikipedia way before cracking opening the Britannica. Informative writing is something that is becoming less and less “specialized,” and more and more democratic or “collaborative.” The world doesn’t necessarily need people who merely taut an ability to grammatically construct sentences- it needs professionals who can apply their knowledge and skills to a digital world.

Writing has been democratized, or in some way collectivized, as Bruns more or less points out in Produsage. Though Bruns isn’t talking about the writing process, per se, methods like Wikipedia and the news blogging show how it applies. The medium of the internet- the new internet literacies- lend themselves extremely well to notions of democratic-like, non-authoritarian collaboration. Even as I, in my professional career, might side-step the digital question by swerving towards graduate school and a career as a professor, the digital world is changing literature, too. As Hayles points out, there are entire new worlds of “literature” and electronic texts which only lack an effective method of classroom integration. People everywhere have even begun participating in a vibrant cell-phone novel culture, for example, which is especially popular in Japan.

As Baker writes in the Wikipedia article- and as cell phone novels sometimes make painfully obvious- it is no longer necessary for professors or accredited writers to be the ones making up the literary environment of the net. The internet is something that almost anyone can contribute too, regardless of whether they’ve got degrees or not. The people who were initially contributing to Wikipedia weren’t the people who had already poured their intellectual energies into completing dissertations, and the people who are texting away at their cell-phone masterpieces certainly aren’t those who’ve had any commercial success or those who’ve been through university creative writing programs. Guys like me, who are very attached to things like physical books and quiet, gloomy reflective writing, and who tend to do adequately well in meeting- but not exceeding- the expectations of my more-or-less literary “conservative” professors, have got quite a bit of adjusting to do.

The digital medium has even changed the type of writing that people want to read. Hayles Hyper and Deep Attention suggests that learning patterns have changed, and often today’s generation spends its reading or “learning” time online doing a plethora of other things. The types of big paragraphs which I seem to have an affection for isn’t reflective of the type of writing that most people on the internet want to read. Deep, word for word, fully attentive reading is partly a thing of the past.

And yet, I don’t think fully attentive reading will ever completely be a thing of the past. As a writer and a language learner, I can say with 100% certainty that I cannot study vocabulary or practice writing Chinese characters while instant messaging my friends. Furthermore, though the article we read on remediation article has a point, and history moves toward being more media-integrated, I don’t think that old mediums will disappear completely. I am still strong in the believer that the classic “novel”- and I’m talking solely about the physical novel here- will never disappear. Statistics have shown that people are just as interested in reading books as ever, and there’s always an audience for people who want something “vintage.” Since most people who read adamantly (and I’m going out on a limb here) probably have discovered that they, at least, like physical books better than most other media at least some of the time, I’m confident that there will always been room for writers who want to right typical novels.

But that leaves me with two choices here- I could be the type of writer (or graduate student) that resigns to studying the status quo and finds a nice niche position there, or I could be the type that takes chances on experiments- some of which will most definitely lead nowhere.

This reflection has been plenty convoluted, and maybe a little bit confused. But it represents where I’m at right now. Writing for Cyberspace has not helped me decide where I’d like to vent my creative energies, but it has exposed me to a world of possibilities that I knew very little about. In a way, this complicates my dilemma. Before, I couldn’t figure out what kind of writer I wanted to be. Now, I can’t figure what medium I want to write on. Maybe this new exposure has been just what I needed- but I’m falling into cliché.

(Reflective Essay- Prompt 2)

paper w/ intro

Introduction- What is Literature?
Attempts to define literature have been just as varied and conflicting as they are numerous. In 18th century England, where literature meant little more than “the entire body of valued writing”, the now-considered “classic novel” was held with serious uncertainty (Eagleton, 15). Then, according to TS Eliot, Literature- especially poetry- became something that should not only rejected the likes of John Milton and the later romantic poets, but wasn’t meant to engage the minds of readers at all (35).

Then came the Structarlists. Suddenly, Literature was not so much about communicating an argument, or telling moral story, or presenting an ambiguity as it was about existing- suspended above all else- as an independent structure of words, sentences, symbols, themes, and so on (85).

Electronic Literature, especially popular roleplaying games such as Final Fantasy, can obviously not hold literary value under the previous methods of literary criticism. While the plotlines of many games may very well have some didactic or moral significance, while others may present the reader with ambiguities, and while more so, such as the God of War or the Final Fantasy series (which this study borrows so heavily from) may include a plethora of symbols and poetic devices, previous forms of criticism simply cannot account for the complete difference in medium.

If there is any hope for videogame literature, or electronic literature at all, it is not through an apologetic settling of differences between video games and other more conventional forms of literary criticism. It can only occur through accepting the modernist and postmodernist view that text is something to be played with – regardless of underlying structure.

Like all text, games are not created equally. Though all games include a common element of playfulness, that is only the point of departure. Some games, like Folk stories, follow a typical structure or “sphere of action”, for example “the hero, the helper, the villain, the person (or object) sought for”, and so on (Eagleton 91). Other games interweave several plots, and create complex Narratives that require the reader to navigate Labyrinths that are both textual and non textual. Some games have no textual element at all, and include only an element of interactivity.


The Monsters and the Critics

In the fifth part of her essay Electronic Literature, Where is It?, Dene Grigar rightly asserts that the solution “to making the public more aware of elit lies in rethinking our notion of literacy”(Grigar). The problem with Grigar’s assertion is not the challenge raised to readers, authors, and educators to reevaluate traditional conceptions of what is and what is not literature, but the dismal reluctance of her ( and most others in the field of those who study elit) to consider a certain extremely popular variety of hypertext fiction which contain Aarseth’s necessary qualifiers description, narrative, and ergodics(Aarseth, 63). That is, the modern role playing game (RPG) and other narrative oriented games, mainly those of the Final Fantasy[1] and Metal Gear Solid variety.

The point of this essay is not to show how popular games redefine the role of the classic novel, because, frankly, they can’t. The point is also not to cut certain video games in front of some of electronic literature’s most celebrated works, like Michael Joyce’s Afternoon(1990). Rather, it is to win a place for video games in a discussion from which they’ve been unfairly and counter-productively marginalized. As Aarseth writes in his Cybertext book, video games have the potential to be “something rich and wonderful (107)”, not quite the same as a novel, but also not exempt from any literary discourse. First, however, it seems useful to examine some of the reasons why literary criticism applied to video games seems so off the mark to those who actually play games.

Aarseth’s statement is not without its problems. It, as well as his earlier claim that “despite the lavish and quite expensive graphics of [video games], player’s creative options are just as limited as they were in 1976 (103)”, omits that by the book’s publication date in 1997, some video games had already reached literary milestones of which Aarseth and even his later co-theorists are obviously unaware. When it comes to games, literary theorists writing about electronic literature are quick to reference classic titles such as Adventure(1976) and Myst(1993). Those games, while important for their historical significance, are hardly representative of the genre’s most impressive feats and do not even come close to representing the creative peak that some game creators have reached.

As well as picking the wrong games, theorists who assert games are literature do it wrongly. Often, they attempt to demonstrate how simple platform video games like Super Mario Brothers are literary by evoking postmodernist literary theories such as it is the job of the reader to fill in the blanks left by the author and thus, in creating his own story, become the co-author. That very well may be true, and there is a place in the discourse for those types of games. However, It seems that while trying to find traces of literature in video games, literary theorists overlook (and are mostly likely altogether ignorant of) the games that really count. A brief conversation with a local Gamestop or EB Games employee would reveal to many theorists that there are many successful console and PC titles that can receive realistic, and quite “literary” critiques.

Rather than dwelling on early and severely lacking prototypes, or more recent “pulp” games like Tomb Raider II (1997), Tekken (1995) and Mortal Kombat(1992) as Mark Wolf does in his book The Medium of the Video Game(100-106), theorists should be focusing on more ambitious and aesthetically satisfying titles such as Final Fantasy Tactics (1997) and Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid (1998). While an extensive knowledge of the classics and recent chart toppers is important and deeply appreciated, those seeking some kind of literary critique-able work must look elsewhere.


Metal Gear Solid

Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid, of the “Tactical Espionage Action” genre, features groundbreaking gameplay[2] that is regularly interrupted by story driven sections which take the form of cinematic sequences and script-like radio conversations of varying length. In fact, one reviewer of a popular gaming website, Gamespot, wrote that “[the game] stands more like a work of art than as an actual game (Gertson).”

The plot, though much too long and complex to go into here, is set in a post Cold War world where a retired soldier, aliased Solid Snake, has been assigned to infiltrate a military-industrial complex inhabited by a private military terrorist force who are capable of launching a nuclear missile. Though here the game’s basic plot would set the foundation for a decent spy or action movie, even without the subsequent hours of story driven cinema and text scenes, Kojima does not stop there. The major theme of the story, arguably the question of whether man is more than the product of his nature or nurture, is made manifest at several points of rising action, including Snake and Meryl’s[3] love, which exist and blooms despite dire circumstances and Meryl’s admittance that the government has eliminated her capacity for sexual desire[3]. The theme is also manifest in Snake’s eventual overcoming of his bother, Liquid. While Snake and Liquid are clones of a dead super-soldier[4], Liquid believes that he is the one who has received the parent’s inferior recessive genes. After Liquid has been overcome, it is revealed that Snake is, in fact, the brother with the undesirable genes. This (quite literal) portrayal of man refusing to be defined by his genetic code, and overcoming his nature, lends itself to the overall theme of the story the men are more than the sum of their parts.

Aside from representing very real concerns about the human condition, the game also raises several political concerns. What happens when not only opposing nations but terrorists factions have the power to launch nuclear warheads? What are the consequences of readily available nuclear weapons to the status of the United States as a hegemonic power?



Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy is an extremely popular and world-renown series that, though worlds apart from the gameplay of Metal Gear Solid, is of equal literary importance. Like Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy games include very coherent and sophisticated narratives. Also, as was the case with Metal Gear Solid, the narratives that present themselves between gameplay sections of Final Fantasy games often take up a significant portion of the game’s actual gameplay time. Though every Final Fantasy game is different, the various installments include several common themes and other reoccurring elements[5]. Like Metal Gear Solid, the internal struggles of the characters in Final Fantasy are often brought to the center stage as the main fantasy plot withdraws into the background (Craig). Common themes include, but are not limited to, love rivalry, corruptible power (a’la “The One Ring”), amnesiac heroes, post humanism, suicide, reluctance to accept technology, and Gaia theory (Vestal). The games also reference a slew of mythological entities, such as Odin and Gilgamesh, as gameplay elements and characters.

Loose Ends

Of course, not every game released on a console or a PC is worth literary consideration. Most importantly, the slew of modern games elit theorists have been tragically drawn to are not. As Aarseth points out, the notion that video games are like pop fiction, to be played once and then never again, is inherently incorrect (133). Video games need not be made subject to only postmodernist criticism or pulp status to be clearly defined, but can open up a wider realm of literary discussion. The problems recent theorist have had with video games, in fact, has very little to do with the medium and very much to do with the simple fact that theorists have been playing the wrong games[6].

Oddly enough, groundbreaking text based classics like Adventure, previously thought to be the product of a short lived genre which inevitable evolved with technology, have come into new popularity with hand held systems that have less graphical capability than consoles and PCs. DS games like Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney(2005) and Lux Pain(2009) offer complex, sometimes adult oriented, and almost wholly text oriented stories in the same fashion as popular e-novels. Other popular games, like Playstation 2’s Persona 4, have remained text based and were purposely released on last generation consoles. The significance is two-fold. First, it seems to provide an answer to the question of whether text will inevitably be replaced by voice and cinema. The answer is no. Just like some readers would rather buy a print book than read one online, some gamers will continue to want to play games that a simpler in nature than the next-gen’s current line-up for various reasons. Secondly, it provides a solution to the archiving problems experienced by many e-authors. According to Hayles, electronic literature can be “lost” if it isn’t archived. Programs become outdated, and today’s programs cannot always read yesterday’s data.

Today’s major consoles don’t have that problem. Games, though originated from a digital space, exist in meat-space too. People fill bookshelves up with old games for various systems, and console companies know that sometimes people like to revisit their old games. The Nintendo DS can play the gameboy games of previous generation. The XBOX 360 can play the games of the original XBOX. The Playstation 3 can play games from both the Playstation 2 and original Playstation, as well as download hard to find games from the Playstation online store[7]. It seems that while literary theorists were arguing over what electronic literature actually was, how it should be approached, whether it was dead or not, and how it should be archived, a perfectly legitimate form has existed (and will continue to exist) all along.

Footnotes

1.Though the Final Fantasy is hardly the best example of literary hypertext fiction, especially compared to highly thematic titles such as Persona 3 and Valkyre Profile, it is the most well known and the best selling (at least in the United States) and therefore is more accessible as an example than the games I’d like to represent in this essay.

2.Groundbreaking, for its time.

3.The failure of Meryl to become a slave to her nurture is also made manifest by one of the game’s two endings, when Meryl is shown hanging onto Snake with her legs wrapped around his waist. The “camera” focuses on both character’s torsos.

4.The dead “super-soldier” is villain in Kojima’s earlier, and much more primitive games, Metal Gear (1987) and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990). Snake being a “clone” of big boss is obviously a reference to previous Metal Gear Canon. Though
I do not go into that question in this paper, “literary” games often reference their own Canon.

5.I’m resigned to speaking of Final Fantasy in general terms, and based on the research of others. While picking just one to make an example through my observations(as I did with Metal Gear) would be unfair to the rest of the series, covering all of the games twelve and episodes, as well as various spin-offs, movies, sequels, etc, would be an encyclopedic task.

6.They cannot, however, take exclusive blame. As a friend of mine pointed out over an AIM chat, 99% of all media is crap.

7.This means, essentially, that Playstation 3 owners have 15 years worth of videogame progress to play. The Wii, which has a limited selection of downloadable classics on its online store, allows an even broader timeframe for selection.

Works Cited

Griger, Dean. Electronic Literature: Where is It? http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/technocapitalism/invigorating. December 2008. Retrieved April 2009.
Aarseth, Espen J. Cybertexts. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Wolf, J.P. Mark. The Medium of the Videogame. USA: University of Texas Press, 2001.
Gertsman, Jeff. Metal Gear Solid Review. Gamespot: http://www.gamespot.com/ps/adventure/metalgearsolid/review.html. Posted Sept. 1998. Retrieved April 2009.

Kolan, Patrick. "The Evolution of Final Fantasy". IGN. http://au.ps2.ign.com/articles/756/756635p1.html. Retrieved on April 2008.

Vestal, Andrew. "The Main Final Fantasies". The History of Final Fantasy. GameSpot. http://www.gamespot.com/features/vgs/universal/finalfantasy_hs/sec1.html. Retrieved on April 2009.

Hayles, Katherine N. Electronic Literature: What is It? http://eliterature.org/pad/elp.html#sec0. Retrieved April 2009.

Year End Assesment (Free Blog)

This year presented itself as an introduction to blogging, posting at Wiki, electronic literature, and flash mobs for me. It introduced me to hypertext theory and a plethora of other ideas related to cyberspace. It also forced me to break away from the typical type of literary research I do and "flex my academic muscles", sort of, doing a type or research I don't usually do. Finally, I'll be learning how to use Front Page so I can publish my work on the net.

I'll continue exploring some of these areas, while others are less interesting to me. I'll start with my favorite- electronic literature. When we first started learning about the medium, my preconceptions of electronic literature were pretty bleak. But as I research more, and discovered some of the media I really like fall under the category of e-lit, I realized that it's really cool. I'm going to keep thinking about video games as electronic literature, and I'm going to try and stay aware of the other types of noteworthy electronic literature.

I also realized that I really like posting at Wikipedia. Though I'm not "addicted" to it, I've noticed my usage patterns changing. Instead of just reading Wiki articles, I find myself casually logging in to change aspects I find objectionable.

Finally, though blogging is not something that I normally do, I think I will continue using this blog after the course is over. Now that I have a focus, I can continue to write about what I find interesting- literary games.

Of course, I'm not going to keep pursuing everything we learned about this year. I'm not one for spontaneous fun, so flash mobs are out.

All in all, this year has been fun. I feel like I've really learned a lot in Prof. Chandler's 3080 Writing for Cyberspace Class. But from now on, almost all of my posts will be about transforming my essay into a web page of sorts. Though I wasn't sure what Writing FOR Cyberspace was at first, I think I'll continue doing it.

Patterns of Attending

Most of the time I'm hyper attending. I do homework while I listen to music. I study my Chinese flashcards while playing video games. When I write papers, I sporadically maximize some unrelated fiction project tabbed at the bottom, or visit a message board, or AIM one of my buddies. It's something a grew up with. I don't view it as a method of learning as much I do a bad habit.

While video games, light music, food, etc sometimes help me get my creative juices flowing, they hardly keep me in the right mental state to make real progress. Sure, opening up Sid Meier's Civilization 4 helps me crack open my Chinese workbook on the vacant area of my desk beneath my monitor. But it certainly doesn't help me do problems. Likewise, igniting semantic arguments over the internet on AIM or on a forum only wastes precious mind-space that I should be dedicating to the paper. Neither is drinking a good idea, but I've got to admit that it happens sometimes.

To be specific, I'd say I spend about 2-4 hours a day completely online, instant messaging, posting at forums, checking my e-mail, playing games, etc, 90% of which some kind of music is playing in the background. In addition to spending that amount of time online, I listen to music before I fall asleep and while I'm waking up (which accounts for about 1 1/2 hours in total of laying in bed just listening to whatever is on). Normally, I spend anywhere from 2-6 hours reading books, mostly school related. While offering up to the porcelain deity and sitting in the tub (this rarely if ever happens, but who doesn't like a nice bubblebath?), I've been reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods for a couple of months now, usually 2 pages at a time, adding up to about a grand total of maybe 20 minutes a day. Shockingly, I don't have time to play video games anymore but I'd say I average about 7 hours worth or serious gaming a week.

I don't do math homework anymore, but so thankfully I no longer have to associate music I love with the vile act. I try the best I can (with some success) to leave all music and sounds off when I'm reading, especially things for class and important novels which I want to actually understand. Since most of my studying is reading intensive, I try to keep music and aim out of it, but when I'm writing a paper I inevitable slip in and out of the internet.

I watch TV or read while I eat. Sometimes I use the computer, too. At home and most of the time at school, I eat with friends and family. Music is always on when I'm doing chores. As well as TV. Or both.

On a scale of attention worthiness, doings papers and homework is deep attention. At least a 1, 1 being extremely deep.
Reading heavy stuff, like Hales essay and Ulysses for my Joyce class, is definitely a 1.
Light reading is a 5. I can do mostly anything else while doing it.
So are chores. 5.
Going to classes is like a 2. Sometimes it feels like my participation really matters. Sometimes it doesn't.

My score averages 2.something. I suppose that means moderately hyper attentive.

When doing school work, it's pretty obvious that I like to be completely in the game.
But when I'm not focusing on something I think is important, I pretty much let everything go. But, mostly, I don't think that I'm paying hyper attention when I'm doing it. I feel like I'm not paying attention at all.

Video Games: The Footprints of the Sand of Electronic Literature

Where is It?, Dene Grigar rightly asserts that the solution “to making the public more aware of elit lies in rethinking our notion of literacy”(Grigar). The problem with Grigar’s assertion is not the challenge raised to readers, authors, and educators to reevaluate traditional conceptions of what is and what is not literature, but the dismal reluctance of her ( and most others in the field of those who study elit) to consider a certain extremely popular variety of hypertext fiction which contain Aarseth’s necessary qualifiers description, narrative, and ergodics(Aarseth, 63). That is, the modern role playing game (RPG) and other narrative oriented games, mainly those of the Final Fantasy[1] and Metal Gear Solid variety.

The point of this essay is not to show how popular games redefine the role of the classic novel, because, frankly, they can’t. The point is also not to cut certain video games in front of some of electronic literature’s most celebrated works, like Michael Joyce’s Afternoon(1990). Rather, it is to win a place for video games in a discussion from which they’ve been unfairly and counter-productively marginalized. As Aarseth writes in his Cybertext book, video games have the potential to be “something rich and wonderful (107)”, not quite the same as a novel, but also not exempt from any literary discourse. First, however, it seems useful to examine some of the reasons why literary criticism applied to video games seems so off the mark to those who actually play games.

Aarseth’s statement is not without its problems. It, as well as his earlier claim that “despite the lavish and quite expensive graphics of [video games], player’s creative options are just as limited as they were in 1976 (103)”, omits that by the book’s publication date in 1997, some video games had already reached literary milestones of which Aarseth and even his later co-theorists are obviously unaware. When it comes to games, literary theorists writing about electronic literature are quick to reference classic titles such as Adventure(1976) and Myst(1993). Those games, while important for their historical significance, are hardly representative of the genre’s most impressive feats and do not even come close to representing the creative peak that some game creators have reached.

As well as picking the wrong games, theorists who assert games are literature do it wrongly. Often, they attempt to demonstrate how simple platform video games like Super Mario Brothers are literary by evoking postmodernist literary theories such as it is the job of the reader to fill in the blanks left by the author and thus, in creating his own story, become the co-author. It seems that while trying to find traces of literature in video games, literary theorists overlook (and are mostly likely altogether ignorant of) the games that really count. A brief conversation with a local Gamestop or EB Games employee would reveal to many theorists that there are many successful console and PC titles that can receive realistic, and quite modernist, literary critiques.

Rather than dwelling on early and severely lacking prototypes, or more recent “pulp” games like Tomb Raider II (1997), Tekken (1995) and Mortal Kombat(1992) as Mark Wolf does in his book The Medium of the Video Game(100-106), theorists should be focusing on more ambitious and artistically satisfying titles such as Final Fantasy Tactics (1997) and Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid (1998). While an extensive knowledge of the classics and recent chart toppers is important and deeply appreciated, those seeking some kind of literary critique-able work must look elsewhere.


Metal Gear Solid

Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid, of the “Tactical Espionage Action” genre, features groundbreaking gameplay[2] that is regularly interrupted by story driven sections which take the form of cinematic sequences and script-like radio conversations of varying length. In fact, one reviewer of a popular gaming website, Gamespot, wrote that “[the game] stands more like a work of art than as an actual game (Gertson).”

The plot, though much too long and complex to go into here, is set in a post Cold War world where a retired soldier, aliased Solid Snake, has been assigned to infiltrate a military-industrial complex inhabited by a private military terrorist force who are capable of launching a nuclear missile. Though here the game’s basic plot would set the foundation for a decent spy or action movie, even without the subsequent hours of story driven cinema and text scenes, Kojima does not stop there. The major theme of the story, arguably the question of whether man is more than the product of his nature or nurture, is made manifest at several points of rising action, including Snake and Meryl’s[3] love, which exist and blooms despite dire circumstances and Meryl’s admittance that the government has eliminated her capacity for sexual desire[3]. The theme is also manifest in Snake’s eventual overcoming of his bother, Liquid. While Snake and Liquid are clones of a dead super-soldier[4], Liquid believes that he is the one who has received the parent’s inferior recessive genes. After Liquid has been overcome, it is revealed that Snake is, in fact, the brother with the undesirable genes. This (quite literal) portrayal of man refusing to be defined by his genetic code, and overcoming his nature, lends itself to the overall theme of the story the men are more than the sum of their parts.

Aside from representing very real concerns about the human condition, the game also raises several political concerns. What happens when not only opposing nations but terrorists factions have the power to launch nuclear warheads? What are the consequences of readily available nuclear weapons to the status of the United States as a hegemonic power?



Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy is an extremely popular and world-renown series that, though worlds apart from the gameplay of Metal Gear Solid, is of equal literary importance. Like Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy games include very coherent and sophisticated narratives. Also, as was the case with Metal Gear Solid, the narratives that present themselves between gameplay sections of Final Fantasy games often take up a significant portion of the game’s actual gameplay time. Though every Final Fantasy game is different, the various installments include several common themes and other reoccurring elements[5]. Like Metal Gear Solid, the internal struggles of the characters in Final Fantasy are often brought to the center stage as the main fantasy plot withdraws into the background (Craig). Common themes include, but are not limited to, love rivalry, corruptible power (a’la “The One Ring”), amnesiac heroes, post humanism, suicide, reluctance to accept technology, and Gaia theory (Vestal). The games also reference a slew of mythological entities, such as Odin and Gilgamesh, as gameplay elements and characters.

Loose Ends

Of course, not every game released on a console or a PC is worth literary consideration. Most importantly, the slew of modern games elit theorists have been tragically drawn to are not. As Aarseth points out, the notion that video games are like pop fiction, to be played once and then never again, is inherently incorrect (133). Video games need not be made subject to postmodernist criticism or pulp status to be clearly defined. The problems recent theorist have had with video games, in fact, has very little to do with the medium and very much to do with the simple fact that theorists have been playing the wrong games[6].

Paradise Regained

Oddly enough, groundbreaking text based classics like Adventure, previously thought to be the product of a short lived genre which inevitable evolved with technology, have come into new popularity with hand held systems that have less graphical capability than consoles and PCs. DS games like Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney(2005) and Lux Pain(2009) offer complex, sometimes adult oriented, and almost wholly text oriented stories in the same fashion as popular e-novels. Other popular games, like Playstation 2’s Persona 4, have remained text based and were purposely released on last generation consoles. The significance is two-fold. First, it seems to provide an answer to the question of whether text will inevitably be replaced by voice and cinema. The answer is no. Just like some readers would rather buy a print book than read one online, some gamers will continue to want to play games that a simpler in nature than the next-gen’s current line-up for various reasons. Secondly, it provides a solution to the archiving problems experienced by many e-authors. According to Hayles, electronic literature can be “lost” if it isn’t archived. Programs become outdated, and today’s programs cannot always read yesterday’s data.

Today’s major consoles don’t have that problem. Games, though originated from a digital space, exist in meat-space too. People fill bookshelves up with old games for various systems, and console companies know that sometimes people like to revisit their old games. The Nintendo DS can play the gameboy games of previous generation. The XBOX 360 can play the games of the original XBOX. The Playstation 3 can play games from both the Playstation 2 and original Playstation, as well as download hard to find games from the Playstation online store[7]. It seems that while literary theorists were arguing over what electronic literature actually was, how it should be approached, whether it was dead or not, and how it should be archived, a perfectly legitimate form has existed (and will continue to exist) all along.

Footnotes

1.Though the Final Fantasy is hardly the best example of literary hypertext fiction, especially compared to highly thematic titles such as Persona 3 and Valkyre Profile, it is the most well known and the best selling (at least in the United States) and therefore is more accessible as an example than the games I’d like to represent in this essay.

2.Groundbreaking, for its time.

3.The failure of Meryl to become a slave to her nurture is also made manifest by one of the game’s two endings, when Meryl is shown hanging onto Snake with her legs wrapped around his waist. The “camera” focuses on both character’s torsos.

4.The dead “super-soldier” is villain in Kojima’s earlier, and much more primitive games, Metal Gear (1987) and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990). Snake being a “clone” of big boss is obviously a reference to previous Metal Gear Canon. Though
I do not go into that question in this paper, “literary” games often reference their own Canon.

5.I’m resigned to speaking of Final Fantasy in general terms, and based on the research of others. While picking just one to make an example through my observations(as I did with Metal Gear) would be unfair to the rest of the series, covering all of the games twelve and episodes, as well as various spin-offs, movies, sequels, etc, would be an encyclopedic task.

6.They cannot, however, take exclusive blame. As a friend of mine pointed out over an AIM chat, 99% of all media is crap.

7.This means, essentially, that Playstation 3 owners have 15 years worth of videogame progress to play. The Wii, which has a limited selection of downloadable classics on its online store, allows an even broader timeframe for selection.

Works Cited

Griger, Dean. Electronic Literature: Where is It? http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/technocapitalism/invigorating. December 2008. Retrieved April 2009.
Aarseth, Espen J. Cybertexts. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Wolf, J.P. Mark. The Medium of the Videogame. USA: University of Texas Press, 2001.
Gertsman, Jeff. Metal Gear Solid Review. Gamespot: http://www.gamespot.com/ps/adventure/metalgearsolid/review.html. Posted Sept. 1998. Retrieved April 2009.

Kolan, Patrick. "The Evolution of Final Fantasy". IGN. http://au.ps2.ign.com/articles/756/756635p1.html. Retrieved on April 2008.

Vestal, Andrew. "The Main Final Fantasies". The History of Final Fantasy. GameSpot. http://www.gamespot.com/features/vgs/universal/finalfantasy_hs/sec1.html. Retrieved on April 2009.

Hayles, Katherine N. Electronic Literature: What is It? http://eliterature.org/pad/elp.html#sec0. Retrieved April 2009.

Big Messy Outline for Hypertext Essay

Here's the big messy hypertext essay draft:

The following research will analyze the of videogames in the realm of cybertext, and examine some of the different categories that videogames fall under. It will also look at some of the reasons why academia has repeatedly rejected the place of videogames in the realm of electronic literature.

Videogames are undeniably a form of cybertext and are ergodic in nature. Within the videogame, you have the computer language beneath the surface, the actual signal that language signifies to the user, and whatever literary themes the game may or may not portray. Videogames are ergodic- demanding interaction between users and the text to any number of degrees. Some games are pure adventure- requiring only that the user interact with the symbols created by the computer language. These games are your typical platformers, like Super Mario Brothers and the original "Adventure Story". Other games, like Final Fantasy, create entire worlds to be explored and contain stories with themes and literary symbols. Other games, like Pheonix Write and Lux Pain on the Nintendo DS, are literal e-novels which feature almost no "gameplay" only interaction with the text.

Aarseth argues in her novel Cybertext: Perspectives on Electronic Literature that the literati have overlooked videogames and other forms of cybertext as potential literature for several reasons. For one, the vocabulary- the literary theory- of the previous print based realm simply isn't enough to describe the new medium. An enhanced theory which builds off of the poststructuralist rejection of classic dichotomies is necessary.