#4 (Environments and Story Arcs)

McLuhan has a few main ideas about environments: how they were, during the time of print technology, and how they are now, during our age of electric technology. "Environments are not passive wrappings, but are, rather, active processes which are invisible," he states (McLuhan 68).

 McLuhan also believes that "anti-environments, or countersituations made by artists, provide means of direct attention and enable us to see and understand more clearly" (McLuhan 68).

So what is an anti-environment? Simply something "that raises the unconscious environment to conscious attention" (Alice Rae).

In Jonathon Degann's Game Theory 101 the most important component of a successful game is Story Arc. That is, a beginning, middle and end which turns the game into an "adventure in which the players and the pieces are characters." I don't think this is hard advice to follow; in fact, I think most people enjoy a good story, which typically has a story arc.

If McLuhan is correct, then video games themselves are environments. Many of them are antienvironments, like the Stanley Parable, a game that directs the user's attention to itself as a video game. So what could our environments in video games, combined with the story arcs (or lack thereof, in few cases) tell us about our society right now? Increasingly, games like the Stanley Parable mock the established, invisible environmental rules established for first person games. We can see an increase in antienvironment games, which play with environment including such accepted, basic rules such as Story Arc.

Perhaps we have started to understand the rules we have created for our video games, for our virtual realities. Perhaps we are moving into new territory, developing games which question the environments we have created, allowing us to "see more clearly" our real-world, offline environments.

It may be a stretch, but I wonder if by manipulating the environments in video games, we are beginning to become aware of the invisible, "active processes" in our world now. Maybe manipulating our virtual environments will show us how we can change the environments in our society today.

Post #3 (McLuhan meets Skyrim)

Skyrim.

I freakin' love this game. Whoever invented this magical realm of dragons and medieval war really knew which type of alternate reality I'd like to live.

McLuhan argues that "[t]he instantaneous world of electric informational media involves all of us, all at once. No detachment or frame is possible" (52).

The way I play Skyrim, on my PC, I can both agree and disagree with him.

I am connected with the Steam/Skyrim community when I play the downloadable content available on Steam. Players can make content, and it gets rated and uploaded by other players. Overall, I believe that such a connection with other users greatly improves the quality of my gaming experience. In this way, McLuhan is correct in that I cannot completely disconnect from the Skyrim community.

However, without such content, I feel like I am completely detached from the real world as well as the electric world when I play Skyrim. I'm in my own world. I don't know how McLuhan could argue that when I am playing I am somehow connected with people, that "everyone" is involved.

In my opinion, playing Skyrim is almost exactly like a book. Because it's a first-person game, the perspective is fixed. McLuhan says with the book came "[t]he private, fixed point of view became possible and literacy conferred the power of detachment, non-involvement." Skyrim only offers a private point of view, and not even a fictional one, so perhaps McLuhan was only referring to non-first-person technologies.