Review of Gamer Theory

McKenzie Wark’s ‘Gamer Theory’ belongs to a class of cultural criticism stemming from the concept of the simulacra, through post-structuralism, the situationists and Baudrillard, a genre that is often too highly rhetorical. The book wants to be a Marxist critique of contemporary culture, but sees a need to think through something like the subject position of the game-player. This in itself is not perhaps a bad approach, the construction of a ‘gamer theory’ seems like one among a number of tasks for critical theory. The problem is the approach which smacks of a cartoon perspective, like so much of this kind of criticism. Wark’s gamer subject is conceived as having lost an understanding of the historical perspective on culture (while seeming to maintain a good grip on abstract philosophical concepts), and yet this position is built up through a series of precisely historical differentiation (from the novel, the film, previous modes of production, genres etc). In a similar, perhaps even archetypal way, we are given over to a world of surfaces of pure signs and yet Wark continues to insist on the reality of the digital that underlies game-space. At times this is a legitimate tool, at others Wark argues that something like the code (or its analogical counterparts) forces things into the mould of the digital. This double move, of denying and continuing to assert something beneath the surface is part of the vulgarization of the more stringent philosophy that justifies it.

While Wark cannot stay within the image of gamer thought it projects, there is also a cartoon vision of the singularity of that mind. Games to Wark exude into public space as if through osmosis until it is saturated while the lines of force of other media are characterized as obsolete, decrepit, non-existent. What then one might ask is the exact function of the numerous quotations Wark makes from contemporary theory? Surely they are not meant to explain arguments, and we are left with prime examples of the continued force of writing. At the same time as games become the model of reality, individual games are viewed as unnable to affect that world a rather callous assertion. Again Wark continually devalues the sign, as if its lack of origin made it meaningless. Not only meaningless but quality-less, this is surely making an already stretched concept do too much. Who really believed in the divine origin of the color blue? To take one example he states that pornography and critical theory are formally indistinguishable. While I won’t deny similarities – I have never been reading Derrida only to realize I was actually watching Ron Jeremy.

Beyond the striking problems, there are a number of conceptual difficulties that can be seen next to occasional moments of truely useful analysis. What really gets me though, and perhaps why this post might seem vitriolic is that the book seems so promising as a source of close readings. What is it about video games that stops people from treating them in all their unique density. Anyways there are a few worthwhile moments.

Problems: the assimilation of the virtual to game-space and the absence of psychoanalytic phantasy, the location of primary difference between the analog and the binary, the adoption of Caillois’ game typology and its values, the rather careless use of the link between topos as topic and topos as space, the confusion in the concept atopia, the lack of ground for the use of space and time (does the historical production of game-space and clock time destroy the other modes? do they continue in a Heideggarian mode? are they parasitic on another time and space as 1st world nations are parasitic upon 3rd world nations?) The under-developed concept of art (particularly with the use of Adorno throughout). The use of boredom, the view that it ever was the province of the young or the idle rich, attendant upon all the simplifications highlighted above.

Useful notions: the use of allegory, allegorithm, algorithm etc, and particularly the continuation of allegory as some kind of return of difference. The reading of America and history in Civ 3. To a degree, the link of genres with historical concepts of space. The hints at the end of atopia about critical theory and heidegger. The reading of Rez and its relationship between triggering, time, and death (though not its generalization to all of ‘game-space’). The somewhat slipshod analysis of Deus Ex that nonetheless provides the first convincing generalization.