Performance and Audience - DotA and Guitar Hero

On the topic of audiences and performance, the two case studies we were presented in class were DotA and Guitar Hero.

The first difference that strikes me is that they seem reverted in how they came to be games that supported a player-performance while also attracting an audience.

DotA, a player made mod for Warcraft III, comes across as a very typical computer game. The player sits in front of the screen and uses the keyboard. It's strategic, it's about resource management and it's competetive. Especially the competitive part of the game is easily applied to tournaments, but as we discussed in class, the audience needs to have some knowledge about DotA, they need to be initiated and most likely DotA players themselves to be able to make sense of the performance.

Picture from a DotA tournament (2008). The audience is able to get close to most of the player-performers, but the focus performances are on the stage where the fight is displayed on the large screens above the teams. Photo by Multiplay @ Lowyat.NET

With so many games of the same ilk, it's interesting that DotA and also Starcraft made it as popular tournament games and I wonder if a widespread popularity is so crucial that without a knowledgable and dedicated community around them, they would have ventured no further than your typical LAN party - no show without an audience.

Note the tagline saying "a computer controlled game"

Guitar Hero looks to me as it has come from the opposite direction. Instead of being a game whose performance was able to attract engaged onlookers, it is rather a performance (real guitar or "air guitar") which has been gamified.

We discussed in class how the challenge of the game was akin to Simon the memory game, although tied to rhythm and accuracy. So what is Guitar Hero about, is it really just a button pushing game, "Simon Advanced"? Or are we looking at a golden mix of music, party atmosphere and the sheer opportunity to steal some limelight, even if the complexity of the game only involves pushing buttons in quick sequence. Guitar Hero is not about showing clever thinking, but rather pure Simon mastery preferably while looking cool.

I think the key ingredient here is music and the opportunity to engage with it, regardless of your prowess with an instrument, while the audience can bob along on the sideline without even needing to know what the game is about.

Guitar Hero artwork displaying a concert setting.

I think there's something interesting in how the performances are staged and shaped around also suiting an audience. The ways these performances are presented will say something about what the organizer expects the audience wants to see.

The picture below shows the DotA players on a stage, but almost hidden behing their monitors. Putting focus on a player will have to involve switching to show his/her screen display on the big on-stage screens (I assume). I would be interested to know if these screens also show the DotA players themselves, or if they just bounce between the various interfaces showing the highlights.

A DotA match on the stage. The two teams have been moved so far back on the stage that the distance to the audience looks quite large? Photo by Multiplay @ Lowyat.NET

The biggest Guitar Hero events I could find, that had videos and photos available, also placed the player-performer facing the audience in what looks to be a more traditional stage setting. Because of the dependency on a screen, I get the impression there's a small monitor (maybe several) for the Guitar Hero Player to refer to without having to turn around, giving them much more freedom of movement than a player forced to sit down/face a certain direction.

The Guitar Hero player-performer is on stage and is even facing his audience. Screencap from the video "Riff-Wars Guitar Hero competition"

Despite the concentration being written all over the faces of these players (from the video linked in the picture caption above), they all move away from gamer-with-controller towards guitar-player through their performances - the mimicry part of it.

Screencap from the video "Riff-Wars Guitar Hero competition"

However, even though the performance of the DotA player has taken precedence over the player in the act of performing, the video we were shown in class, a direct streaming of a DotA/Starcraft player practicing (as I remember it), had two embedded video windows showing his hands moving over the keyboard in one, but also his face in the other, besides the actual progress of the game. Even though I've not been able to find an example of this, I'm not surprised there is still some fascination with the DotA players' facial expressions and how they skillfully operate their keyboards in the same way as the camera will zoom in on the Guitar Hero player tapping at the guitar controller buttons.

Embodied and Material Play - The Cyborg

"Control Life" by Mads Peitersen

The class on Embodied and Material Play focused on aspects of the interaction between users and technology. I found the whole topic to be really complex, difficult to understand and most of the time complete science fiction, at least the discussions we had in class. It turns out some of it isn't even fiction.

Isaac asks on his blog forest temple: "Although one may be more “body-natural” than the other, is there one that is more “mind-natural” than the other one?" So I'm going to use this third case I found.

Meet Professor Kevin Warwick, the world's first cyborg.

Warwick is a cybernetics professor at Reading University (UK). The chip he's holding in the image to the right is a small transmitter which he had operated into his arm. It identifies him to the building and his computer, it opens doors and switches on lights. It sounds pretty simple and harmless, but it would be similar to having the yellow CPR card implanted into you.

He later went a step further and had a tiny little thing operated into his central nervous system, which enables him to connect with a computer using basically his brain signals. Further he speaks about extending the human senses to also experience ultra-sonic using these small inserted devices and having him and his wife's nervous systems communicating.

The video below shows Warwick speaking about the experiments and what he envisions for the future. He sure doesn't sound like your stereotypical English professor (I dare say!) but I believe he is the voice turning science fiction into science.

So what is Warwick doing? Is he at the machine? In the machine? Is he the machine?

It sounds like he thinks of the body itself as a machine, able to be modified, upgraded and configured to become more than it biologically was made to be. The two share an electrical language and the computer is just a tool - patching is the new word for school (...that rhymed).

Dovey & Kennedy talks about the cyborgian relationship between the player and game, they are interdependent, irreducible and inseparate. SixthSense and Kinect with their "old-fashioned" insistence of flapping arms enforces a physical mirroring of an avatar, but what happens to embodiment when the controller is gone, the physical mimicry is gone and the player controls the avatar by thought alone? Is this the closest we can get to downplaying the situated body and enhancing the embodied player or are we losing out by trying to erase the body from this interaction?

Where does Warwick place himself in relation to the machine? Is he displaying complete mastery by utilizing it and bending the strength of the computer to his will? There is no longer any period of time where you have to tolerate the clumsiness of learning to handle a new controller. Is he an equal to a computer, as his body is basically a computer too? Or is he subjugated, plugging into the master, thankful for being granted access to the building where he works?

Admittedly, Warwick seems to be spending a lot of time in front of a computer when engaged in his experiments, it doesn't quite look as shiny and transparent (yet) as the SixthSense "future vision" video below.

Warwick also speaks about moving away from being human ("a subspecies") and becoming a cyborg. He frames it as a movement that can be excluding to those not initiated, something we are already seeing with our present technology.

Finally, while thinking of Bart Simon and case modding aesthetics, Warwick seems to be moving towards the indistinguishable cyborg, the machine is hidden as it's operated into the body covered by the skin. However, will case modding in Warwicks version of the future perhaps move on to the body itself, a type of body art or fashion statement?

The science fiction characters did it!

The cool people are already totally doing it pretending to do it.

My Play Space

Blame the poor quality of the photo on my mobile phone!

My play space looks a lot different to the average setup. I'm not sitting at the desk, nor am I sitting in an office chair. Instead I'm comfortably sunk into my squeaky old Ikea sofa, equipped with a blanket and fluffy pillow.

The picture also shows a cup featuring either tea or coffee and one of the small unidentifiable items on the armrest plate is a digital candy wrist watch I was given recently while at the DiGRA conference.
It reads 3:45.

My laptop is positioned on top of a small decorative table of sorts my mom gave me. It's actually perfect for the purpose it serves. It has the right height, it's set on wheels and can be rolled away from the sofa easily. It may look primitive, but it works surprisingly well.

Whenever I bring my laptop to school it's not uncommon for someone to be impressed, it's big and may give the impression I have an even more shiny and super powered machine at home. Little do they know that this is my machine, my only computer, except for an old HP laptop from 2003 in the cubboard. I have never owned a stationary, only laptops. I know this fact is likely to overthrow my hard earned image as a "fringe-gamer".

I'm also aware that this doesn't look like a play space at all, it looks like a TV/relaxation space, and indeed the TV is at a comfortable viewing angle from the sofa. My play space is multi-purpose!