Games as P2P Utopia

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The following are excerpted from an essay by Alexander Galloway for CTheory, titled Warcraft and Utopia.

URL = http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=507


Introduction

This essay from Alexander Galloway, whose book Protocol (subtitled: How Control Exists After Decentralization) is a very important contribution to peer to peer theory, examines games as utopian ventures. Galloway distinguishes two kinds of utopias, one that yearns for things to come (‘life after capitalism’), vs. one that yearns for life as its once was. World of Warcraft is examined as a case study of the latter, but also exhibits elements of a third form: utopia in the present. However, this article, which correctly states that networks and play are now core features of contemporary capitalism, declares them unusable as alternatives. I disagree: it is not because early capitalism was part of the late feudal structure, that it was not in the end also its downfall. Networks and play are not by themselves threats to the existing order. But intelligently used, that is, differently conceived and used, they can be tools and enablers.



Citations

On Games as Utopia

Galloway:

“Thus far, I have discussed two permutations of utopia, both of which gesture toward some sort of absence of capitalism. The first permutation is a post-capitalist utopia in the form of progressive political desires, while the second is a pre-capitalist utopia in the form of romanticism, classicism, or minimalism. Nevertheless, there is certainly a third option: the present as utopia.

“The theme of "imagining life after capitalism" is once again the topic of academic attention, renewed mostly through fresh interest in certain messianic or predictive claims about the transformation of the mode of production. Now, however, computers and the information economy play a central role in the debate. The theme of utopia, in the work of Fredric Jameson for example, is closely tied to this question, utopia being a site in which possible non-capitalist scenarios are worked out, worked through, or otherwise proven not to work at all. Here, I will examine some of the problems and challenges for the task of imagining life after capitalism, then I will discuss two interesting areas -- networks and play -- that have historically represented threats to or departures from capitalism. Finally, I will describe how networks and play have in recent decades become entirely synonymous with the present mode of production and exchange.

“Schiller's "play-drive," the central philosophical term in his letters and around which his entire spiritual development of man revolves, is also the recipient of newfound attention in recent years. This attention may be fueled by the increasing prominence of the medium of the video game, which has renewed interest in theories of play and games. Let me now preview the question of play, and unpack a little of what I believe to be one of the most compelling, if not utopias, then certainly allegories of the present moment. This is the case of the online multiplayer game World of Warcraft launched in 2004. (The game recently surpassed five million players worldwide.) An argument can be made that all video games are, at a certain level, utopian projects, simply because all video games create worlds in which certain laws are simulated and certain other laws are no longer simulated. The freedom to selectively simulate, then, operates in a video game as the most important scaffolding for utopia. Further, multiplayer games instantiate (both materially and interpersonally) a utopian space in ways not seen in previous media, for the diegetic world itself is larger than the imaginative plane of any given player (who indeed may even be offline while others remain online). Groups, guilds, raids, and other in-game collaborations both ad hoc and otherwise, what philosophers of action call "shared cooperative activity," are often required for game-play. These social groups gesture toward a distinctly utopian possibility for social interaction, a shift analogous to Marx's theory of primitive accumulation and the institution of more collaborative labor practices, which themselves were the conditions of possibility for collective action. Like factories before them, multiplayer games require and support a whole variety of group-based play scenarios (I will address whether they are also labor scenarios below). This echoes Johan Huizinga's claim -- his 1938 book Homo Ludens is foundational for any critique of play -- that play necessarily promotes the formation of social groups. World of Warcraft evokes a pre-modern hodgepodge of technologies and narrative scenarios (given time, one might cognitively map the historical fantasy of the game's narrative -- trace when exactly the blunderbuss was invented, or the introduction of certain kinds of armor, for example, all the while knowing that such a pursuit could never be "fixed" or arrived at with any degree of precision), overtly participating in the "utopia for the before," imagining life before capitalism.

For Huizinga, play is entirely central to both human action and the creation of culture: however, he is also unwavering in his claim that play is totally outside the base unfolding of production. Huizinga writes that play is external to any kind of material gain (if material gain exists, one no longer is dealing with "play" but instead its double, sport). For Derrida, who in most regards could not be more different from Huizinga, play is one of the few philosophical concepts that emerges mostly unscathed. This is rare in the work of Derrida, particularly when the philosophical concept is not a Derridean neologism. Surprisingly, for Derrida play remains an absolutely utopian and positive concept.

But today it would be entirely naïve to believe that play retains its anti-capitalist or anti-work status.

Recently, many writers have written on how play and creativity have moved from the periphery or the outside of capitalism (if it was ever there to begin with) to the very center of productive activities. For example, see Alan Liu's recent book The Laws of Cool, which examines the commodification of immaterial labor, or Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's work on immaterial labor (the "labor of Dionysus," as their first full length collaboration is titled, concisely evokes the relationship between labor and play). In other words, the trend today should be not toward the further development of a labor theory of value, but the formulation of a play theory of value. As someone once told me: in contemporary life the tool used for labor, the computer, is exactly the same tool that is used for leisure. I'm not sure this has ever been the case before. (http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=507)


On World of Warcraft specifically

“the game is a utopia for a world without signifiers; it is characterized by a minimalist desire. Ignoring the interface overlay for one moment, one notices that the game's diegetic world (the imaginary narrative space within which game-play transpires) has very few linguistic or symbolic signifiers; this is in sharp contrast to our offline world of brand logos, advertisements, linguistic signs, and so on. To be sure, the game is not free from signification. There exist guild insignias, visual placards for various vender's buildings, and indeed the entire three-dimensional model of the game is, at root, a form of digital signification. Yet inside the diegetic narrative, World of Warcraft projects a space of pure formal representation, cleansed of unnecessary symbolic or linguistic ornamentation. Brands and logos are gone, as are words and images. (http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=507)


On Networks

“The previous section concerns communicating the threat to capitalism, and how various kinds of threats are put into discourse, or indeed are prohibited from being put into discourse. Let me return to the question of networks and play, mentioned above in the context of World of Warcraft. Historically, networks and play have represented either a departure from or a direct threat to capitalism. Nevertheless, are networks not foundational to market circulation and hence the very fabric of capitalistic exchange? Yes, certainly. Yet, at the same time, threats to capital are also often understood and articulated as networks. This is particularly true of the specific graph form known as the distributed network, which is characterized by horizontality, a rhizomatic structure, and bi-directional links (called "edges" in graph theory). Hakim Bey's notion of the nomadic fits in here, as does Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome; also relevant are the "grass-roots" movements (to use a synonym term for the rhizome) or the new social movements of the 1960s and '70s (in addition to the so-called anti-globalization movements). These are all specifically defined as networks. But, at the same time, Al-Qaeda, and any number of terrorist groups, are also often defined as networks. On closer examination of this protagonist/antagonist scenario, it becomes clear that the opposition to the network is never a network; it is always a center, a power center, whether it is the World Trade Center, or America itself as a kind of hub or authority point for a global empire. In short, the historical tendency is that networks exist in opposition to centers and that networks are the unknown unknown of capitalism. In recent decades, this has all changed. In recent decades the powers-that-be have become conscious of the above. Today's revolution in military affairs confirms this, as does the retreat from Keynesian economics of the 1970s and the evolution into a post-Fordist economic model after that decade's energy crisis. The powers-that-be have developed a new awareness and are adopting flexible, network structures at very core levels. They are adopting flexible network structures not as an apology or concession, not as a sacrifice, but as essential techniques for the very processes of sovereignty, control, and organization. In other words, distributed networks have ceased being a threat to control and have become the model for control. What was once the problem is now the solution. Today, this is one of the core challenges for imagining a life after capitalism: one can no longer rely on networks as a site for imaginative desire. (http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=507)