Page 216 - Cyberculture and New Media
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Tony Richards                     207
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                                     Like many games ‘Black and White’  starts with a cutscene which
                             helps  to  situate  the  player  in  relation  to  the  gamespace  they  are  about  to
                             embark on. Here they are given their ‘character’ and welcomed into the world
                             of the game’s ‘parameters’. Once this universal-constative cutscene is over
                             and  the  particular-performative  game-element  embarked  upon,  the  player
                             finds  they  are  actually  occupying  at  least  two  positions,  to  a  large  extent
                             fracturing  any  perspectivisation  in  that  traditionally  unified  sense.  Firstly
                             there  is  the  God-mimicking  ‘above’  position  (literally  ‘a  hand’)  where  all
                             areas of the game can be mobilised and manipulated, as in any decent top-
                             down civilisation game. This leaves however a certain sense of de-focalised
                             third-personage,  placed  as  we  are  within  the  “third-person”  position  of
                             distance or identificatory absence: ‘outside’ the occupied space of the ground
                             level.  Godlike.  A  second  position  is  offered  in  answer  to  this  hovering
                             absent-outside whereby a second ‘stand-in’ character, now within the space,
                             can be influenced, coaxed as of a proxy (a ‘Beast’ character chosen from a
                             line-up of cow, lion or monkey; each with their own initial attributes). Here is
                             where this game gets its impetus or identity, in this fractured sewing-between
                             third and first. We are a God who chooses to intervene but we also intervene
                             on a character which also intervenes on further characters (the population of a
                             village it will interact with). A double-intervening. A double placement and
                             interest: expanding as the game unfolds.
                                     One  interaction  is  constant,  ready-to-hand  and  ours;  obeying  our
                             controls, one-to-one, as in some I-extension. This extended-I is omnipotent,
                             immanent  and  always  seemingly  ours.  The  second  stand-in  however  is
                             relatively  autonomous  and  capable  of  change,  without  any  exacting
                             guarantee.  Through  a  sort  of  Pavlovian  conditioning,  the  as  yet  ill-formed
                             Beast’s activities in this island-world are circumscribed, to an extent, given
                             its  relative  autonomy,  by  reward  and  punishment  (a  stroke  or  a  punch  for
                             example as it eats up villager or saves one from drowning). Thus the God-
                             hand (for that is the tool with which we reward, punish and coax) upon the
                             beast forms a sort of clumsy steering wheel that in attempting to drive the
                             beast becomes a sort of conscious extension of it, in a Heideggerian sense.
                             Our boundary with the beast is thus more fluid and removed than our ready-
                             to-hand  (of  God)  character  which  would  seem  also  to  be  the  first-person
                             avatar of ourselves in-play (replacing the gun of the first-person shooter with
                             the hand of our God-self). The beast-character acted upon by our extending-I
                             hand  then  forms  a  secondary  tool  more  present-to-hand,  a  tool-towards-a-
                             narrative-branching that  we  are constantly and consistently aware of. This
                             character  itself  is  however  never  consistent  or  determined.  A  problem
                             already.  For  these  two  différant  loci  of  operation  (the  hand  and  the  beast;
                             operator and operand) within themselves and within their difference provide
                             also a variable and bleeding boundary dynamic between positions of first and
                             the third person (God: for we are the position of the narratological third as in
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