// CRACKING THE MAZE
// "Game Plug-ins and Patches as Hacker Art"
// version 1.0 July 16, 1999
#include <curators_note.h> // curators note by Anne-Marie Schleiner
#include <game_patches.h> // the game patches
#include <article_huhtamo.h> // Game Patch - the Son of Scratch? by Erkki Huhtamo
#include <article_trippi.h> // Deep Patch by Laura Trippi
#include <switch.h> // the 'Art & Games' issue of Switch
#include <credits.h> // credits and contact information
// Game Patch - the Son of Scratch?
// by Erkki Huhtamo
//
//
//
// When I first became aware of the game patch phenomenon, not such a long
// time ago, it felt almost preordained - it just had to happen. Not
// because of the will of some transcendental "dungeon master", presiding
// over the gaming arena that is the contemporary world, but rather
// because of the logic of media. In the 90's, electronic games have grown
// Big. From a slightly suspicious intruder and a challenger to mainstream
// media, like the cinema and broadcast television, the game industry has
// developed into a full-blown sector of today's commercial media
// landscape, constantly conquering new territory.
//
// Not only have electronic games gained popularity among new age groups -
// their breakthrough in the old people's home seems only a matter of time
// - they have also become an internalized model for an interactive
// relationship with the media, influencing other forms of computerized
// and computer-mediated communication. Although they will not (at least
// in the foreseeable future) have enough power to render traditional
// one-way media totally obsolete, their very ubiquity is having a
// powerful effect on the cultural imaginaries of the late 20th century.
//
// On the other hand, drawing a sharp distinction between the kind of new
// media relationship represented by computer gaming and the "passive"
// experiences provided by cinema and television would mean overstating
// the issue. After all, electronic gaming may have been invented by
// computer hackers, technical whiz-kids and hippie entrepreneurs, but
// especially in the 90's it has been absorbed by the worlds of big
// business and venture capitalism. Integration, consolidation, expansion
// - these are the magic formulas today's game producers and distributors
// invoke.
//
// Although the game industry tries hard to maintain the impression that
// computer gaming constitutes "a people's technology which encourages and
// enables participation by all who wish to participate" (to quote Gillian
// Skirrow's words from her pioneering study "Hellivision: an analysis of
// video games", 1986), it is becoming more and more evident that such a
// position constitutes a fabrication and, above all, an ideology. Playing
// a computer game may involve the player differently than watching a
// movie or a television program, but seeing it automatically as more
// empowering, liberating - or addictive - could hardly be accepted
// without qualifications.
//
// Perhaps some forms of networked multiuser role-playing games
// notwithstanding, the game-playing experience is irrevocably linked to
// an "apparatus", a pre-fabricated system regulating the relationship(s)
// between the player(s) and the system (including both the game software
// and the hardware) and, above all, defining the limits of the
// interaction. The game playing experience may allow for considerable
// liberties to explore virtual worlds, adopt different personalities,
// make decisions and discover secrets, but in the end these are just
// carefully tested and calculated parameters, the main criteria of which
// are economical.
//
// If a game is too simple, it may not create a sufficiently strong bond
// with the player, risking to fail on the marketplace. If it is extremely
// difficult, it may fail as well, although it probably sells longer as
// the buzz around it spreads and also provides possibilities for the
// secondary marketplace of gaming guides, fan magazines and other kinds
// of paraphernalia. It is essential that the player is made to feel part
// of a network which is both internal (the ties with the world of the
// game) and external (the ties with other players, newsgroups, helplines,
// fan-clubs, secondary texts).
//
// The game patch phenomenon might be easily interpreted as a highly
// heterogeneous body of reactions against the growing uniformity and
// calculation that have come to dominate the industrial game culture in
// recent years. Although most players are and will be satisfied if the
// supply of commercially available software and hardware meet their needs
// for fast diversion, action, romance and fantasy, and even occasional
// intellectual challenges, there are those who seem to be harking back to
// the days when gaming with some justification could be labelled a
// "people's technology". This goes hand in hand with the growing
// awareness of gaming history, as evidenced by the popularity of
// emulators of many forgotten games, future classics, perhaps.
//
// Yet, at best, this is only a partial explanation. The reality is much
// more complex. The game patch phenomenon cannot simply be dispensed with
// as being a nostalgic and, in the end, a Quixotian attempt to revive a
// mythical "golden age" when gaming was spontaneous and social and the
// games were designed and modified by the gamers themselves, rather than
// faceless corporations. Although some game patch artists show signs of
// such a consciousness, incorporating references to cherished early
// classics, such as Space Invaders or Pac-Man, into their creations,
// there are others for whom history hardly matters, at least on a
// conscious level.
//
// Another way of assessing the game patch is too see it as the latest
// manifestation of "tactical media", a new way of "talking back to the
// media", of engaging in a creative/destructive conversation with the
// activities and the products of industrial media culture. Tactical media
// has a long history going back to John Heartfield's political
// photomontages of the 1920's and 30's, to the actions and the
// "detournement" cultivated by the Situationists in the 1960's and the
// 70's, to the various forms of "public art" and "appropriation art" in
// the 1970's and 80's, to Web "hacktivism" in the 90's.
//
// In spite of obvious differences in approach, all these movements have
// sought out ways of penetrating the dominant forms of media culture,
// appropriating its tools and its products, modifying its output and
// hurling the mut(il)ated creations back onto the public arena of
// mainstream media. The seams are left visible - instead of beating an
// illusion with another illusion, the aim is to make the cracks in the
// facade visible, to focus attention on the manifold processes looking
// for an outlet behind the ideologies of uniformity.
//
// The tidal wave of "scratch video", particularly in the UK in the early
// 80's, provides a useful case study. Inspired by access to new tools, as
// well as by a strained cultural atmosphere, the early years of the
// Thatcher-Reagan era, young videomakers began to "scratch" the surface
// of broadcast television, trying to reveal those discourses which had
// been hidden behind the media coverage, but were, nevertheless, an
// essential part of the overall picture. Groups like Gorilla Tapes and
// Duvet Brothers grabbed the recently introduced possibility of taping TV
// programs with a VCR, and manipulated them in the editing studio
// (usually a public access video workshop).
//
// The scratch video makers used the "repeat-edit" and other video tricks
// to turn Reagan's and Thatcher's media images into stuttering
// marionettes that acted like aliens or lunatics and said things which
// were the opposite of the official protocol, but close, so one
// suspected, to the thoughts that really crossed their minds. Scratch
// video was simultaneously a reaction to the ubiquitous television
// environment, a tactical attack against its role as the mouthpiece of
// conservative politics, and a new way of personal expression, of
// asserting one presence in the egotistic world of media.
//
// Of course, it all ended up in a failure. The main problem was access.
// Broadcast television ignored scratch video until it had been cleaned
// off its political content and turned into a new "refreshing" stylistic
// formula for music videos, comedy programs and hamburger commercials.
// After this had happened, which did not take long, scratch video makers
// began to receive commissions and their style was adopted (as one style
// among many) by TV professionals. Scratch video was co-opted by the very
// institution it had attempted to undermine. Scratch features also
// survived in video art, but neutralized and "sublimated" by museum and
// gallery walls.
//
// Does this "instructive" example increase our understanding of the game
// patch phenomenon? There are both similarities and differences. Both
// scratch and patch have to do with access to new tools (video recording
// and editing; computer programming) by outsiders (TV spectators; game
// players) with the aim of subverting the existing relationship between
// subjects and media. Where scratch video attacked the false transparency
// of broadcast television, its pretented but not actual openness, the
// imbalance between the spectators and the world of TV, the motives of
// the game patch artists are more subtle and varied; there is no game
// patch movement, only individuals. The situation is less clearly
// polarized. After all, electronic games may be ubiquitous, but they
// never purported to be a broadcast (mass) medium.
//
// A game patch artist may be motivated by ideological concerns, an urge
// to re-assert the role of the player as a (co)creator, or to subvert the
// prevailing gender relations, particularly the depiction of women as
// game characters. Yet the political determination should not be
// overemphasized. Humour and parody are important motives; the game patch
// artists don't seem to believe in the politically correct position of
// suppressing pleasure (neither did the scratch video makers!).
// Demonstrating a sense of mastery by being able to dabble creatively
// with the source code is an important aspect of the game patch
// experience as well, providing a link with the hacker mentality which
// has, in one form or another, been a part and a companion of the history
// of electronic gaming from the outset.
//
// This observation points out another difference between the cultural
// roles of broadcast television and electronic gaming in relation to
// their subjects. Television has been a distant medium from the
// beginning; its familiarity and spontaneity were simulated even during
// its early "live" years. The home audience was always watching something
// from a distance; you could not really have a conversation with your
// favourite TV star. Games have never been distant in the same sense;
// they became known as a form of pastime, essentially as technological
// toys. The contact with games has been tactile, familiar, informal.
// Instead of attacking a frightening monstrous alien, the game patch
// artist is really playing a(nother) game with a partner s/he knows,
// loves and, perhaps, hates.
//
// The position of game patch art is not without its contradictions.
// Unlike scratch video, it has a promising channel of distribution at its
// disposal, the Internet (already used by game companies to distribute
// "patches" to their officially released games). Yet, as any form of
// appropriation art, game patch art will have to deal with issues of
// copyright and intellectual property on its way to wider attention. How
// will it react? Will it develop into a kind of media guerrilla activity,
// operating on the terrain between the legal and the illegal, or will it
// become a "civilized", law-abiding genre, perhaps sponsored by major
// game companies, and contributing to future game development? Will it
// change our notion of art?
//
// It is too early to tell. Yet having said this much, the game patch
// phenomenon still feels almost preordained to me - somehow it just had
// to happen.
//
// © Erkki Huhtamo 1999