I (Could) Love Bees Too

As an avid non-gamer, it was important for me to immerse myself in what Jones refers to as the paratext of Bioshock. I visited official websites, unofficial wikis and watched gameplay videos (and some of their hilarious parodies). All of which reminded me that other people are gamers in a way that I am not. Gamers are way better at this stuff than me.

Jones sketches a variety of distinct and possibly opposing, but not contradictory, versions of game play. At some level of opposition he describes both an immersed game play and a meta-game play that might be better referred to as a constructionist, world making game play.

I experienced first hand playing Bioshock the total immersion in the immediacy of game play, reacting to requirements in what was for me a totally unfamiliar world and in a totally unfamiliar way (evidence my extreme confusion attempt to look and walk simultaneously). Nevertheless, my experience of the immediate was often at the abandonment of narrative and backstory. I would play tapes and be distracted from their stories while being attacked by security bots. Bioshock, however, anticipates this phenomenon and has already embedded it in the game by placing "vital" plot information as physical items to collect and attend to in the game. Similarly, the integrated cut scenes often allow you to ignore them by simply turning to look out the glass enclosure into the sea just outside. All of this works to produce the effect Jones speaks of. The game is unique for each player and allows them to know and care as little or as much about the narrative and the "world" as they desire.

On the other extreme, the world-builders, Jones's discussion of collective intelligence. It was to these people I turned with their wikis and parodic retellings of end scenes with action figures. This produced for me a lot of the "meaning" of the bioshock world. They produce the collective reading of the world and also some new writing. And while I feel more at home on this side, this level of attachment must be bred on some other more fundamental engagement with the game.

The kernel of all of this, it seems, is the game itself. Whether you play for immediacy in the loop of haptic feedback or telescope out to the creation of bridges between the world and the game world, gaming is at the heart. What Jones might miss (or not turn enough attention to) in his attention massive media objects with their capitalist cores, is the type of play by the creators themselves. He begins this discussion with Katamari and by thinking about fan-based game mod's and fanfic. What would this co-creation look like if it didn't have a recognizable center? A position that can always declare something canonical or not? What if the fans didn't have to look for a nod of approval? While clearly some fans go on creating without concern of the initial creator's limits, an object without an identifiable center would presumably produce a much more dynamic interaction between the levels of immediacy and world-building. Maybe if it wasn't a marketing company that was founding all of these amazingly creative acts, I could want to play too.