The Final Position of Power, and why the law continues to fail at creating justice

What is the ‘final position of power’?


I do not defend anybody for attacking another person unless they are being attacked themselves and a form of defence has been determined to be necessary to fight back with. But when the person who ends up with the final amount of control has been established, that person – the person who has all the control – is the person who determines the outcome. This is the person who decides safety or vulnerability, care or abuse, and in some cases life or death. This is what it means to have the 'final position of power' – to determine the outcome.

If you are the person in that position, the one who is able to maintain control over another person, then you are responsible for the outcomes, you are responsible for that person’s welfare, you are responsible for whether that person can at some point move forward into a safe place on their own or not. If you leave them in a place of vulnerability and risk of death, then you are responsible for having done that because you had the control to place them somewhere safer.

When our laws begin acknowledging these positions of power and begin enforcing sentences relating to not taking responsibility, not taking the appropriate steps to help a human being, not attempting to place the not-in-control-person in the safest place possible when the person in the final position of power has the ability to do so, then justice as it is meant to be dealt will bear the fruits of success. Teachers and parents can educate about responsibility with the law actually backing them up, instead of contradicting the messages of responsibility as it currently does.

In reply to 'Rules of the Game' by Daniel Golding

Note: In 2012 Hyper magazine published an article by Dan Golding titled 'Rules of the Game'. I'm not sure (that is can't remember) what position he was taking in the article but this was my response. Having discovered this in my files yesterday, I thought it was written well enough to be posted here.

I think we can safely say, and agree upon, that video-gaming is not a sport. Sports, in my opinion, require physical activity beyond twiddling your fingers and exercising the synapses in your brain. I believe that a game needs competition, and that competition must be an adversary of some type. This begs the question, is chess a game if you are playing against yourself? Well, I would argue, yes, because you are facing the adversary who just happens to be yourself. Fair game, I guess.

It's easy to view sport orientated videogames such as Wii Sports and Tekken or Street Fighter as games because they inherently take the forms of sport and apply them to the computerised world, thus taking out the 'sport' but retaining the game. So by that definition, game is form, not activity.

Any sports-modelled videogame still requires a competition-based form to involve yourself in the playing of: whether you are playing against your flatmate or the computer, you are still playing against an adversary that you may not win against.

When we enter the world of story-based videogaming, we are not entering a game, as there is no other competition, no one I am competing against; I am simply taking part in an exploration of a story-based entertainment. By picking up a console controller, customising my character and deciding which reply my character will answer with, I am no longer a passive viewer accepting another person's story as it is told to me, but an active part of the story who makes sincere and often involving decisions about how another person's story is going to be told to me – that is interactive entertainment. It is not a game, there are no rules, but there is a specific storyline that must be adhered to to get the full entertainment value out of.

The problem with viewing story-based videogames as a 'game' is knowing that it is a forgone conclusion that you will win, when essentially, all you are doing is concluding the story that you begun by opening your videogame box and inserting the disc – practically no different than picking up a DVD and inserting the disc, or via a different medium, picking up a book and opening the first page.

No matter what setting you play the story-based videogame on – even on the hardest setting – you can win if you put in enough time. The reality of the true game is that another player just might be better than you no matter how much time you put in. In that sense, only the videogame itself is your adversary. Can I really beat Dead Space 2 with only three saves allowed? I certainly can! (The question is, can I be bothered?)

Online is different though. Online we have competition. We have many players playing against each other, racking up high scores and at times competing for prizes. And, although I have never played online, are there not rules that accompany how you play online? Or perhaps, codes of conduct would be a better phrase.

A game of chess, or tennis, dictates how you play simply by the rules that have been created to accommodate the form of the game. Yes, it is possible to cheat, and there in lies the necessity to acquire a judge or adjudicator to impart impartiality.

Videogaming requires no referee, no adjudicator to check if I am cheating or not. That, assuming cheat codes are available, is entirely my choice, and at the end of the day I only answer to myself.

When playing a traditional game in competition with another, you cannot afford to stand around and do nothing, otherwise your adversary will take advantage of your slack and begin scoring points against you. Many videogames I have played, I have allowed my character to stand around doing nothing, or hide in a corner to generate more health.

I believe that developers need to ask themselves whether they are building a 'game', or an 'interactive entertainment'.

If developers really want their products to be viewed as games, they need to stop making every mission and quest so easy to complete by providing instructions, cues, markers and arrows that make the story and puzzles nothing more than a walkthrough.

On the other hand, if developers are only making interactive entertainments, then it is the attitude of gamers themselves that need to change. The reason Prince of Persia (2008) flopped was not because of the game, which was a beautifully rendered semi-cell shaded enjoyable romp through an imaginary fairytale land, but because of the voices that decried its 'easiness' and the resulting criticisms towards the gameplay (and rather thin plot). For once, I had an interactive entertainment that obeyed its own internal logic – if the story requires my character to win-out in the end, then it makes complete and utter sense that he doesn't die during the story. PoP (2008) I believe, is the first true example of an interactive entertainment through the videogame form without relying on the actual 'game' element whereby it is necessary for you to try not to die or be 'beaten' by the computer.

• 2012, Whangamata

What they didn't see...

Everyone was posting this youtube video about a message that gen-y needed to hear, about how their heads were stuck in their screens, about how they were missing the real world, how they were oblivious to the people next to them, how they were lost in their devices, how they couldn't truly experience the world alone with no one there to share it with: "Smart phones, dumb people" one of them posted with the video.

Meanwhile, I was glued to my laptop screen trying to help a friend deal with her alcoholic partner; on my phone encouraging another friend to stay strong in the face of being belittled by her partner; discussing with a friend in Australia about the civil upheaval in Ukraine; discussing the new Mastodon track with someone from Sweden when there was absolutely no one next to me or around me who I could discuss that with; joking with an online friend in America about me not liking anything (including the new Mastodon track); telling my best friend who I haven't seen in over a year that I was really proud of him for doing such a great job raising his son, and at another time letting him know that I couldn't wait to hear the lyrics that he was writing for my latest piece of music; getting to know someone in Canada, Scotland, Norway, England, South Africa - getting to know the world that I lived in and it's people, places I may never visit, people I may never meet. Why would I want to lift my head up from all that if all I have to face is the same old relationships that don't relate to me - never have, never will? Why would I want to lift my head up to see more examples of bad role models?

I know that there are people that that message needs to be heard by, that it has relevance to, and that maybe because I'm not Generation Y, I shouldn't be affected by it. But I am just as human, just as ensconced in this new media as anyone, and like anyone, I desire people I can relate to, joke with, have conversations with that are meaningful, supportive and helpful. Why should Generation Y lift their heads up if the world around them isn't the world they connect with; if the war and bitter exploitation of idealism portrayed by mass media isn't something they can relate to; if politics and the vote is just another way for governments to take control (why vote at all if governments are all the same?); if peace can be achieved through learning about each other and the humanity that lies beyond races, colour and belief systems at just the click of a button or the swipe of a screen; if involving yourself in a multiplayer online videogame is your way of connecting with many different people from around the world and having lots of fun while doing it; if true love can be found with text exchanges on a digital background? Is Generation X losing touch with the society that they themselves have created?

Yes you are right: "Smart phones, dumb people"

Healing, Injury and Death in Video Games

There is/was an interesting discussion at AWTR¹ about the healing mechanic in games and their ability to break verisimilitude in games “in a way that magic, dragons and sword-fighting don’t.” Personally, I find just dying breaks verisimilitude in games. Every death reminds me that I am just playing a game after all, and not living through an immersive experience along with the character I am controlling.

The discussion focuses intensely on RPGs because the author is “less interested in [FPS-type games] in general” but I would like to look at two games outside of RPGs as ways of exploring the idea of realistic healing, or injury, mechanics.

The first is Dead Space. One of the aspects of losing health in Dead Space is that Isaac Clarke’s body slows down and at it’s lowest starts staggering with heavy breaths. It’s a great mechanic that adds intensity to the game when you are also low on ammo and you know that the last batch of necromorphs were a struggle to dispatch and if you don’t find health soon, those next lot of necromorphs down that dingy looking corridor are going to be the ones dispatching you. It’s intense and at least semi-realistic. That is, until Isaac finds health and all of a sudden he’s back to his old boot-stomping, leg and arm decapitating self again. It’s amazing what Med-Packs can do in the future!² Could Med-Packs actually work that quickly in the future? Well, I guess it’s possible. With a little adrenalin mixed into the concoction, I’m sure a standard Med-Pack could get you back into tip-top condition almost immediately.

I would like to propose a way of getting around that in a more contemporary scenario without the mechanic causing frustration for the player. Imagine being injured; you struggle, you limp, but you can still shoot – that’s important of course, and no programmer would be daft enough to take that away from the player. But what about after finding your health pack? Do you just spring back into action like you have just been injected directly with heroin? Perhaps. If the health pack had heroin in it … So let’s assume that it doesn’t. Maybe it takes time to heal properly. Not an overly long period of time, but just enough for the player to still be cautious about what they do with themselves, where they tread, how often they recklessly poke their heads out from behind cover, knowing full well that they need to nurse that wound like their life depended on it. Because after all, that’s exactly what an in-game injury should simulate.

There is also the scenario of being able to mix different concoctions. Say a Med-Pack is slow working but heals you fully when the healing is complete, and an adrenalin pack gives you that much needed stamina boost. Mixing those two together would literally cause you to spring back into action allowing the healing pack to still do it’s work in the background³.

I like the idea of healing having a real-time consequence, especially in games like Dead Space, where your injury causes tension in high-strung scenarios. It seems to have a lot less consequence in Fantasy-based RPGs when magic is flying all over the place and healing happens as quickly as inflicting damage. In fact I want a game where being injured is a huge factor, and where injuring an NPC is just as consequential for them – they stagger, they limp, you get an easier target, but at the risk of being hit by the stray bullets that the NPC is now recklessly firing at you to try to keep themselves covered. Although I may not be a huge stealth game fanatic, Dark Souls definitely tested my patience (I passed!), while Deus Ex: Human Revolution gave me the enjoyment of choosing stealth if I desired it. Maybe it’s a case of programming, where the logistics of dividing pixel bodies up into parts that are affected accordingly might end up taking up all your programming resources. However, if Fallout 3 could do a minor simulation of it in an open-world, I don’t see why a linear shooter couldn’t do it to an even greater extent.

“The healing mechanic is perhaps small fry in relation to the overall issue of integrating storytelling and gameplay. […] But when I look at such actions from a distance, they do affect the degree to which I'm immersed in the story, and looking ways to increase immersion is never a bad thing.”(sic)

I would argue that the healing mechanic is only ‘small fry’ because no one has found a way to integrate it with a story that continues to move forward. This is where every environmental object has weight and is able to be used as cover, something to lean up against, something to rest and inject yourself with a health pack, or drink water and allow for the time to heal; a chance also to check directions, clues and inventory items. Like in Dark Souls and Dead Space where inventory checking does not pause the game, it would seem logical not to be doing this out in the open but in a secluded or safe area – the bonfires as an example in Dark Souls. Waiting for your leg to heal might be a good time to check some details with that sidekick of yours that hangs around also. I just like the idea of an injury that takes real-time to heal, creating a cautionary play-style for the player. It’s something that could do wonders for the stealth game, or the tactical horror game.

Down on page 3 of the fifteen (!) pages of comments, CultureGeekGirl says:

“I feel that the idea of death and respawning in a video game is more immersion-breaking to me than any other mechanic possibly could be. The death mechanic is deeply engrained in the way games have worked from the very start, so you have to have that to some extent, but dying always kind of jolts me out of any reality I may have invested myself in - even in really game-y games”

But no mention was made of that much maligned game Prince of Persia (2008) where death was skipped altogether and whenever you screwed up you were saved by the comforting hand of Elika. While many saw this as making the game too easy by not dying therefore not learning a lesson, few realised that it was the gameplay that didn’t make the game challenging enough, i.e. ‘teach the player anything’. Dark Souls has one of the most integrated versions of respawning to story and setting that I know of,⁴ but despite the ‘YOU DIED’ in red fading into my screen, I never actually felt like I died in Dark Souls. Sure, my humanity was stolen from me, but respawning is respawning; it’s still not dying and the game loading to a previous checkpoint as though nothing happened. Instead, it’s like being killed figuratively but still being able to keep all your memories and inventory of collectibles and losing only your souls (‘money’) and humanity (‘human spirit’), and then restarting from a previous checkpoint.

With Prince of Persia (2008) I had finally found a game that made internal sense in relation to the story that it was telling. If the character is going to win, because that’s the role of the hero in the story, then he literally can’t die. In Prince of Persia (2008) the Prince doesn’t die, he is saved each time by the hand of Elika. “Where is the fear of dying to create the challenge for the player?” asks the detractors. Admittedly, in this game, there was little challenge. But that had nothing to do with the ‘no-death’ mechanic I would argue. That had everything to do with the environmental challenges, the boss battles and the general fighting mechanics themselves being too one-button easy to traverse.

What the ‘no-death’ mechanic did was not only eliminate the loading screen, but also keep the player’s story immersion intact. Very rarely did I ever feel like I wasn’t a part of the game.⁵ Also, just as a minor note, PoP (2008) had an injury mechanic, though very basic and pretty ignorable. If the Prince was hit while in battle, he would clutch at one arm.

“The death mechanic is deeply engrained in the way games have worked from the very start.” We know, as discussed in a number of other online critiques, that win states are a simple part of gaming that drives player accomplishments, and dying seems to be tied up in the failure state. But that certainly doesn’t mean it has to be. It’s just there because so many games are combat based and death seems the logical failure of playing these games - “you’re supposed to stay alive, idiot!!” But why can’t it be “You’re supposed to traverse that area without the walls collapsing around you and setting you back at the start and needing to find a new way, idiot!!” Sounds like too much thinking would be involved. But I do like the idea of being injured setting you back as a failure because now you have to work harder to achieve the goal that you could have achieved easier if you weren’t injured. See, now that’s an injury that makes sense and would become a challenge to overcome: “Don’t get shot! No, you’re not going to die, but you are going to have to work a whole lot bloody harder at this section now that your injury is slowing you down, idiot!”

Artrant 2: From the mouth of the unlearned

“In Péguy’s time, the time of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, the visual arts had a kind of social importance they can no longer claim today, and they seem to be in a state of utter convulsion. Did cultural turmoil predict social tumult? Many people thought so then; today we are not so sure, but that is because we live at the end of modernism, whereas they were alive at the beginning.” (p. 9)

The Shock of the New: Art and the century of change (Robert Hughes)

Space art (space environments, its ships and its people) is a form of projected realism that harks back to classicism – a time when form and the portrayal of classic themes (more often than not, representing reality) were paramount.

When art, or culture, is done and dusted with realism within the natural or man-made environment, it absolutely has to project forward and beyond in order to cover new ground of some sort, if only to avoid regurgitating the past. Abstract art and surrealism was the result of this need during the early 1900s, but now art is done and dusted with those forays as well and is asking itself “where do we go from here?”

What I see, especially on deviantART and the artwork of video games, is art projecting into the fantasy realms, not in the abstract, but through realism. Abstract art and surrealism were born from the known reality as a way of twisting it and trying to uncover the unknown; but there is little known in outerspace to begin with so most space art is a manifestation of the known – you could almost refer to it as practicalism, as many tried to understand space as environments that humans can fit themselves into and survive within, therefore realistic of our current environments. I see the work of Jim Burns as a great conveyor of this sense of realism in space, and much space art has followed on from his work. Ian Miller and John Harris are good examples of the abstract needing to express the unknown - Ian Miller’s work is where fantasy fornicates with reality; the work of John Harris is a dream state that provides little trinkets of knowledge about a far greater unknown.

What’s weird is that what I see is most space art moving away from any sense of surrealism like in the 1960s and 1970s (exaggerated spaceships of Chris Foss), beyond the abstract impressionism of Harris, and back to projected realistic environments in an attempt to grasp some kind of concrete acceptance of the unknown.

“Many people think the modernist laboratory is now vacant. It has become less an arena for significant experiment and more like a period room in a museum, a historical space that we can enter, look at, but no longer be a part of. In art, we are at the end of the modernist era…” (Hughes)

 It’s actually funny that someone can (potentially, if they haven’t already) have an art exhibition called ‘the history of space’ because of their chronicled paintings of a projected space age.

The future is a museum.

-         26/06/13, Gisborne

Beauty has Depth, Haydn doesn't.

"I am listening to the second movement of Haydn's London Symphony for the tenth or so time preparing for a paper, and for the first time it has struck me how incredibly beautiful the piece is." - Alex DuBose

I seriously question how beautiful a piece of music is if it takes 10 listens to recognise it as that – even with the distraction of study, to not be somehow enthralled by a sound on first listen. There are definitely songs I haven't 'discovered' until later on down the listening-track when the more immediate songs have worn out their welcome. In fact, Welcome to Sky Valley by Kyuss is an album of such songs; heck, even the Graffin songs from Bad Religion's Stranger than Fiction. But I remember waking up from a nap once in the middle of the second movement from Górecki's 3rd Symphony after having left the radio on, and I was held motionless by the beauty of the work. 'Andante Festivo' by Sibelius is another such example that upon hearing on first listening I was mesmerised.

Now, I'm not saying a piece of music can't hold it's secrets secret until such a time when my willing ears are willing to listen and appreciate, but there is a magical beauty about being stunned into silence on first listening, something that no other music can match, and that does raise that piece of music to a loftier height. And I will stand by this even when other ears tell me that the Graffin songs on Stranger than Fiction were the songs that held them in awe long before the Gurewitz songs. It is not that the music works need to be the same for each individual, only that the various works appear to strike a demanding presence upon first listen.

So is the second movement from Haydn's London Symphony as beautiful as other works that I have raised to loftier heights? I want to argue 'no'. Most definitely not. What if another listener had been stunned into silence upon first listen by this work? I would argue that they have not valued the examples of greater works such as the second movement (what is it with second movements?) of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21, as a common (and somewhat cliché) example. It is not just that this is my opinion, but the fact that Haydn never reaches the emotional depths, nor the fecundity of compositional imagination that Mozart extends his abilities to. In Haydn, stateliness seems to always compromise the emotional grace, therefore diluting true depth, and true beauty to last the ages. The need to explore every aspect of his craft always seems lost on Haydn. Even if it was his craft that inspired Mozart to greater depths, it is that craft that gives us the example of lesser beauty in which we strive to raise ourselves above – that, in my opinion, is what Mozart did.

So, no, I don't see how the second movement to Haydn's London Symphony could even be viewed as 'beautiful', especially after a tenth listen of that mediocre composition.

My view is that a work of beauty captures the heart immediately, that the senses are antagonised in a way they have not been experienced before, or in a way that only harks back to a similar experience, but reshapes and recasts that experience in a completely new mould.