A very suprising aspect of this dialogue is that the proponents of 'emotion' or 'aesthetics' have used the most concrete analysis (considering particular rooms, particular elements, the correspondence between particular situations and emotions -- such as Erik's 'intellectual aesthetics') whereas I, as the proponent of 'technicity', have been the most vague -- kind of refusing to consider any particular room.
Why is it that the consideration of the emotional leads to a close technical analysis?
From my position, its always easier to argue against the concrete assertions of others than to establish my own concepts. So, negatively, I want to argue against the possibility and assumptions involved in the 'close reading' of particular rooms, the technical details of room design, emotional evokation, and so on (What I will call 'aesthetics' or 'pragmaticism' (let the room be fun)) And positively, I want to argue, as concretely as possible, for a kind of holistic 'image' that DROD presents.
Negatively -- Against Aesthetics
Most people think that an evocation of 'world history' leads to a kind of nihilism. I.e., here we are on the eve of the apocalypse, knowing that there are 6 billion people in the world and 2 billion years of life -- what can we as individuals do, except enjoy ourselves -- have fun, play video games? (This is the 'Japanese' interpretation of immensity, the quantitatively immense -- and I think their obsession with video games is no accident)
But there is an alternative line of reasoning from world history: that which we consider 'fun' and 'immediate' is in fact the most illusory -- sensation -- and the discipline of sensation, or aesthetics -- is the most illusory:
Any truely close analysis of any 'concrete' emotional moment -- in light of global history -- will reveal this. For example, just to take one of Erik's examples:
calm after the storm (Too much carnage. I am weary.)
What is involved in this feeling of 'calm after the storm'? We already eliminated the possibility of the conventional emotions, like from Hollywood. Erik now raises the possibility of 'intellectual aesthetics'.
(1) Localizability: That which I feel cannot be even localized, much less identified and catalogued. I have just finished pressing a series of keys of the keyboard, which, considering this is like my 40th hour playing this game, is a set of trained reactions to monsters on the screen. Thus, this moment contains some enormous stash of memories and responses from the previous 40 hours ... and in fact, even further back, to when I first began to program myself to respond to patterns on the screen. And perhaps even further back, to when animals first began responding to predators and prey, or the melinnia of programming that my particular race has been subject to.
I see a figure on the screen -- but does this figure represent anything? If this figure has just finished a grueling ordeal -- does it mean that I in fact feel weariness? But what does it mean to feel weariness? Perhaps, in the back of my mind, I also know that I can die and start over. Perhaps what is actually hanging over my head is perhaps not precisely a sense of weariness, but perhaps an unwillingness to start over?
I'm being longwinded on purpose... but the point is that 'emotions' are not localizable, and probably a lot less genuine than people assume. And what people call 'fun' in video games is judgement made afterwards regarding the memory of this game -- and this memory may have very little to do with the emotions felt while playing it. Perhaps really based on some notion of what games should and should not be -- perhaps a merely conventional utterance.
In any case, the consideration of aesthetics in a global history does not lead, in this case, to nihilism, but to the recognition of the role of memory and teh un-localizability of the aesthetic event. From this point on -- can we be pragmatic at all? Can we say that any game element 'causes' anything else?
Positively
The above arguments merely divert the consideration away from aesthetics, as it is traditionally conceived, by raising an insurmountable barrier of complexities and memories, by pointing out the difference between 'weariness' in a game and in other mediums, and so on.
It seems that this line of thinking is extremely unproductive -- and thus, people resort to 'statistics' and 'pragmaticism'. A good game is what 90% agree on. But relying on the masses is always, it seems, a bad idea -- and kind of a despair of arriving at the true nature of things. Since that which a straw poll measures is the preconditioned and conventional responses of people used to shallow thinking -- and it would be quite easy to break down any information gathered in such a way.
But my arguments have been merely negative. What am I saying in a positive sense -- i.e. what are we to do? Some things I've been thinking about
The Image of the World
What can we do, if truth does not spring up, spontaneously, from the world, in the form of aesthtic truth (feelings), if we learn finally to distrust our emotions? Then the emotions still remain, but they no longer point to anything obvious, they become like an unlocalized haze spread out over time.
In this state, our feelings and the most immediate truths are of little use to us. We catch a glimpse of the image of humanity in the world, where each of his actions and feelings are a result of an enormous history, not only of biology, genetics, but also of technology (books, movies, video games, tv, etc.). That which is most immediate, his feelings, his perceptions, are determined by an army of dark (that is, inperceivable) forces.
We abandon, then, these psychological necessities to think the realm of conscious decision. What is determinative in this case is memory and the image. That is, while technology and the world changes in drastic ways all around us, while we may fight in wars, play games, and undergo unimaginable or exotic psychological stimuli, there is no immediacy between our surroundings and our actions. Everything must pass through memory -- we still make decisions based entirely on memory. (Thus, 'reflexivity', hammer on the knee, is not an adequate psychological model) However, memory itself has not remained stagnant, but has changed not only in content but also in form based on the images offered to it by technology. (This is perhaps the moment to think about 'video game culture', and the images of reality provided by media and memory in shaping this culture, e.g. Japan)
Basically, what I'm saying is, instead of Technology causes The World/Social Structure/etc. I am saying Technology causes The Image CAUSES Social Structure, Behavior, and so forth. Thus, the primary task of analysis will be on the image of the world -- we must think this way if we are to make room for human consciousness.
DROD
What is the image of DROD? DROD provides almost a complete vocabulary for thinking this conundrum we are in -- delver, architect, monster, mothingness, etc.. DROD is both a force of technological programming as well as a thinking of these forces, and the two roles are really entirely inseparable. The paradox is that the image is BOTH a force in the world (Technology -->
Image -->
Action) as well as the possibility of analysis -- in thinking about the image of the world, we are also intervening in the dark forces of the world. I'm really interested in the idea of the automated monster. During gameplay, these monsters must be manipulated into traps, one must master these monsters. But DROD is constantly referring to these monsters, their production and manufacture in the vats, etc. There is also the moment when the monster is frozen in the allegories and the images on the screen...
This is already too long, and I need to think about this some more, but I wanted to put something out there.
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-- I take these comments lightheartedly. Personally ... I use this thread to kick-start my thinking for the day, but I'll stop if I sense that people have lost interest.
, so I might've been a bit too dismissive of Erik's intellectual aesthetics. It's undeniable that the story expresses these things: 'the calm after the storm', for example. We can't say that 'the calm after the storm' is a 'feeling' WE HAVE, but we can say that it is SOMETHING expressed, or thought by the story itself.
