The Animal Turn

S8E5: Gaming with Keung Yoon Bae, Osvaldo Cleger, and Michael Rübsamen

• Claudia Hirtenfelder • Season 8 • Episode 6

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Gaming is one of the most consumed forms of media globally making it an omportant space from to explore human-animal relations. In this episode, media scholars Michael Rübsamen, Osvaldo Cleger, and Keung Yoon Bae discuss the interconnections of gaming, representation, and identity and what the significance of this might be for considerations of animals. 

 

Date Recorded: 3 February 2025 


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Michael Rübsamen :

Kind of address this, uh, basically turning it into questions of what is the relationship between humans and nature, and how can we explore and provide all or find alternatives to just slaying or or uh domesticating uh the wild? And and and this is this is also one of one of the things where I think that there is an opportunity to keep on developing the big AAA franchises in order to sort of find the kind of of middle way, because by tradition, in video games in particular, monsters or animals are there to either be slain or run away from. And and to sort of find games, start designing games that allow for something else, would also be able to explore stories or narratives where you can choose or have the kind of agency as a player to find something in between.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Welcome back to the Animal Turn, everyone. This is season eight where we've been speaking about animals and media with a kind of explicit focus or tendency towards thinking about the interconnections between media, race, and species. Let me start off this episode by saying I am not a gamer. I love board games. Absolutely love board games. So maybe I am a gamer, but I love kind of tabletop board games where I get to play and get lost in the that kind of like I'm a person that does puzzles, right? I enjoy that. But I'm not a gamer. I've never kind of gotten into playing digital games on my computer or an Xbox. Although my husband did introduce me to a game called Unraveled that I've very much enjoyed playing. Anyway, I'm already getting sidetracked. I'm not a gamer, but today's episode got me so enthusiastic and excited to learn about gaming and seeing the potentials of gaming for thinking about human-animal relations that maybe one day I will become a gamer. Gaming is one of the most, if not the most, consumed media on the planet. So I'm delighted that we're having an entire session and episode today focused on gaming. And my three guests are so knowledgeable. The amount they know about not only various different games, but the kind of politics and the tensions around these games behind the scenes is incredible. All three of them were very generative and open to thinking about gaming and the kinds of conceptual material space it created, that we just had a really good time talking. I so, so enjoyed speaking to my guests today. So let me tell you a little bit about them. Michael Rupsemann is a media and communication scholar at Lund University. His research interests are primarily in popular culture from fandom to celebrity culture, wrestling, and reaction media. In his quest to further explore attention, interest, and engagement, he has now turned to thinking about games and gaming. And he wrote for the special issue a paper that considers the ways in which the Witcher engages with and thinks about animals. Oswald Kleger is fascinated with how media shapes our understanding of bodies, identity, communication, and history. His work tries to move fluidly between literature, visual arts, and digital media. And he always returns to the codes that govern representations. So that is how different representations emerge or shift or sometimes fracture in media, and in this case, games. His interest in bridging the humanistic traditions from the pre-modern to the contemporary is reflected in his engagement with video games such as Dante's Inferno or Historical Simulations, where his passion for classical literature, cultural legacy, and interactive media converge. Her research examines the relationship between media production and state governance in Korea across different industries and eras, including the 1940s Imperial Japanese regulation of colonial Korean cinema and 1960s authoritarian control over Korean cinema. Her most recent works examine ownership and governance over video games and gaming culture in Korea. So they include a wide range of different interests in gaming and in media. And once again, it's just a fascinating and interesting discussion, and I hope you enjoy listening to it. Just a reminder: if you're a fan of the show, please take a spot of time to leave a review or check out our merch store. Buying some of the merch helps us get finances in to support the show further. And leaving a review means that other people find the show. You can find all the details for this on our website. As always, thank you so much for listening and I hope you enjoy welcome to the Animal Turn Podcast, Michael, Osvaldo, and Becky. It's uh great to have you on the show. A panel discussion is always fun because you get a variety of views. So welcome, welcome, welcome to the show. Uh, we're gonna be talking all about gaming today. And I've got to admit, I know absolutely nothing about gaming. Uh, I do not play, I mean, okay, wait, let me take a break. Video games or like digital games. I I um I know nothing about gaming. So I'm hoping to learn a lot from you today about what a game is, perhaps some aspects about what gaming culture is, and particularly why it's important to think about gaming in relationship to the theme of the season, which is media and power. And with any luck to really also perhaps think a bit about why this might be useful for thinking about some of our relationships or ways of studying animals. But let's see how we go. It's a massive, massive concept, and uh, I think we're gonna unpack a lot today. I've enjoyed having some back and forth emails with all of you. So, welcome to the show, everyone. Uh, why don't we start getting to know a little bit about each of you? Oswalda, how about we start with you? Could you tell us a little bit about um yourself and your research and how you became interested in gaming or studying gaming?

Osvaldo Cleger:

Thank you so much for having us, Claudia. Well, I I am originally from Cuba, and uh uh as I grew up, I probably was not exposed to the digital gaming world the same as uh people who grew up in other contexts. Um but uh uh I was always interested in media that is engaging to audiences in innovative ways. And uh I arrived through gaming actually through other forms of digital media. So once more digital content started to become relevant to humanities, and I learned about interactive uh narratives and digital poetry and all that, I realized that the most impactful thing that was taking place was actually outside the realm of literature, and it had to do with gaming. And uh by doing that, I also realized that gaming included new forms of storytelling that uh fascinated me since the beginning, and one thing led to the other, and suddenly I was playing video games, which as I said I didn't do growing up in Cuba uh as a teenager boy, and um trying to understand uh the ways in which uh game designers and uh people in new media and digital media were trying to tell stories and were representing our world in ways that I I had not thought about as a literature person.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Do you view games as representations of our world or are they something completely different?

Osvaldo Cleger:

Well uh in the way I approach it, uh I I usually because what I studies representation at the end of the day, uh yeah, it's what if it was what I was doing before with literary text and uh film and other uh media. Uh so that's my my approach to gaming is how they remediate or refashion things that exist outside the world of gaming. Uh, in the emails that we were sharing earlier, we mentioned um, for instance, uh tabletop games, you know, and how these games actually can inspire digital games. And uh so um uh the same applies to to literature, the same applies to storytelling, games can remediate that, and in doing so, they also remediate uh identities, the way they have been constructed outside the world of gaming. They remediate the all sorts of cultural traditions. So that that has been my main focus.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

It's interesting that you say that because while I'm not a big gamer, I'm definitely someone who enjoys watching um TV or series, right? And of course, when The Witcher came out, I was completely like, The Witcher is the best because the framing, everything was so different. That opening scene with all of its gore, I was like, it's so it felt so otherworldly to me, not only in terms of um, you know, the fact that you're busy slaying monsters and dragons, but even the ways in which the the film, the filming was done. And then my husband said to me, He's like, Well, it's because it looks like a video game. Exactly. I don't know that. How was I supposed to know that? Um, but he was very, very aware of that. Now, Michael, I know you've done some work with regards to The Witcher. So I'm gonna come over to you then. Perhaps you can tell us a little bit about your background and your interest in gaming.

Michael Rübsamen :

Yeah, um I I come from from the background of of being an avid gamer all my life. Um from from uh I I'm born in the 1980s and from playing on Nintendo Entertainment System, you know, Super Mario and and those fairly simple games, I I've entered into the the realm of tabletop gaming with the Swedish version of Dungeons ⁇ Dragons today called Dragon Bane, a little bit Dungeons ⁇ Dragons, uh Vampire the Masquerade and World of Darkness back in the 90s, Swedish uh game cult, Divinity Lost. And then sort of fell out of the gaming circuit uh a little bit for better part of 10 years. Uh becoming a media scholar, it it sort of always was there at the back of my mind, like media and storytelling and narratives and representation and semiotics is interesting. But but gaming was always in the back of my mind as something similar but still different. So it was always like an itch on finding the proper ways to approach it and and analyze it in a way that sort of do it justice because it is it is all that kind of representation and storytelling and narratives, but still you have to treat it differently. Uh, and and it wasn't until a couple of some years ago that I sort of got an opportunity to actually start working on it uh as a scholar, and uh it is uh it is a fascinating topic to to discuss.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

It's certainly fascinating. And what do you think makes that difference with gaming versus other media? Is it the interactive dimension of it that makes it different?

Michael Rübsamen :

One word agency.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Okay.

Michael Rübsamen :

Because it is not something that you as a player can do passively. You have to contribute, you have to be active, you have to be immersed, you have to be um an active part of it. And the way that you play the game will affect your experience and the emergent narrative, the emergent story. And that is, in my opinion, the the major difference. Now, I am I am as a tabletop gamer exceptionally um um colored by the fact that in tabletop role-playing you have complete control, or at least you have control over your own agency, uh, and and the entire gaming experience is shaped in collaboration with with the other players. That is the main difference in terms of video games, where the game provides affordances structures. But but but in general, I would say uh agency.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

That's interesting. So if I if I understand you correctly, you have some kind of you shape the outcome. It's not fixed, it's not as it's not as uh determined, it's not as predetermined. You it kind of evolves and is emergence in a way that's different. Okay, interesting. Really, really interesting. Becky, how did you uh what's your background and your interest in in gaming?

Keung Yoon Bae:

So um I also rather like Osvaldo, didn't get exposed to gaming um like too much, which is ironic because that's kind of the topic of um part of my research, uh, which is my parents wouldn't let me play games. And games were not necessarily um meant for me in a way, because still there is a bit of a childhood toy aisle segregation problem, I think, with games. Like they are still a little bit more for boys than they are for girls. And uh, but beyond that, my parents just thought, like, you shouldn't be gaming, you should be studying. And then um, so in Korea, we say the what there's a saying about something you learn late in life, kind of taking over your life because you've been waiting your entire life to do it. So that's what happened when um I um sort of entered a relationship with my current husband, which is um he was a gamer and I just sort of he was like, Do you want to play? And I was like, Yes, I I want to play all the games. And um, if you have, I'm gonna play it. Uh, because I've always wanted to get more into games. I wanted more than Super Mario, I wanted more than the tiny Game Boy that I was allowed as a child. So uh since I was like about 22, it's been kind of nonstop. And I and then eventually I turned it into research because of I I felt guilt at how much time I was spending on it. And so if when when people ask me, like, oh, you know, your your project after your dissertation, my dissertation was on film policy um in colonial Korea. Um they were like, this gaming thing is really different from your your dissertation research. What what's what's behind that? And I was like, oh, procrastination. I was procrastinating on my dissertation by flirting and having a you know an affair in a way uh with um gaming. And I specifically I got into playing and watching gaming in a competitive way. Um, so competitive gaming is called esports, and it's a pretty um well-established industry, I think, at this point. It's over um PC gaming in particular, in its current form, has existed for over 20 years. And South Korea's kind of been a mecca of it for a variety of infrastructural reasons. And uh yeah, and as so my current research is very much about resituating and recentering um the physical body and physical space in how we talk about games. I love that. Because uh because, you know, it's so easy to think of it as solitary, as disembodied, everything's on the screen. It has nothing to do with your hands or anything. Um, and it's yeah, it's it was very easy to think of it as sort of all just virtual. But I I tell everyone I I can. Um esports was just as impacted by the COVID pandemic. It's just as reliant on providing physical spaces for these tournaments and competitions to take place. And your physical body and therefore your race, your gender, biological sex, all of these things do come into play. Um, so that's kind of what I've been working on for the past few years.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

So interesting. You know, I I had an opportunity to live in South Korea for three and a half years or something. And again, I grew up not playing any sort of games. That was something my brother did, right? Like he played games. Um and uh of course, then, you know, the the room culture in Korea, whether it's a you know, a norebang, which is a singing room or a gaming room, and going into a gaming room for the first time ever, you realize that it is a distinctly different, you know. My brother would play alone in his room, you know, with he there was a whole culture and community there that I couldn't see. Um, you know, we just thought he was a loner, but actually there was a lot more going on there. But then you go to Korea where everyone is at their own screen, but it's a it seemed to me like a very social thing where there were just loads of friends together playing, and there was ramen and coffee stations, and it was really geared up to facilitate this kind of communal gaming culture, which seemed very different. Um yeah, a really, really interesting and different culture there.

Keung Yoon Bae:

Yeah, and that's really a core. So the Pisci Pong, which Pong is Korean for room. So it their PC cafes are called PC rooms in Korea. Um, and uh obviously I'm talking about South Korea. And um the one thing I would like uh that that's kind of the cornerstone of my research is the radical accessibility that that provides. So um, one of my favorite anecdotes that I like to tell is there's this one guy in the online game League of Legends, which is probably the biggest esport in the world right now. His name is Ethan Hilk. His game um name moniker is Faker, and he's a five-time world champion. He's won the world championship the most times of anyone. Like literally, no one has won it twice. He has won it five times. Um, and he got asked in a 2019 interview about his upbringing and like his background. And the journalist said, I read that your family was on national welfare growing up. I thought I I read that you were not well off. And he said, Yeah, I mean, that's true, but that doesn't have anything to do with and didn't have anything to do with my gaming because I just saved up some bus fare and I went to the PC room to and that's how affordable it is. That's like, and the I just always encourage my students to compare that with the fact that to get a game-capable PC set up in the US, that's bare minimum $1,500 to $2,000. Whereas PC rooms, that's a dollar an hour.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Yeah.

Keung Yoon Bae:

Like, and that's been the case for like many, many years. And that's the kind of like technological accessibility that has allowed South Korea to sort of build up a gaming community and audience. So yeah, like, and again, that's yeah, the physical space aspect of it.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

So interesting. So interesting. Now, Oswalda, I saw your hand shoot up the second Michael said agency and the immersive power. I saw I saw you get excited. So I'm assuming uh you had uh some thoughts on that.

Osvaldo Cleger:

Oh, I just wanted to add uh on what make uh what this team, which is games as media from other media. Uh games are complex because they include almost any other form of communication. You know, they include images, but not steel images, also moving images. They include uh the spoken world, but also written words. You know, you can read text in a game uh on the screen. Uh but I think the most distinguished, uh the most distinctive part is a process, is is is conveying meaning through processes. Uh there is a whole field of study on uh rhetoric um procedural rhetoric. No, procedural rhetoric. A colleague here from Georgia Tech, or an ex-colleague from Georgia Tech, Ian Bogus, made some of the earliest and most impactful contributions to this idea that games, what distinguishes games, is that they use processes uh to convey meaning. And and uh that's something that you will not find in the same way in other forms of media. And and that's uh it's it's important to how we we learn through games. These processes both include probably human conventions, I mean the way we interact, but also they are encoded in the in the game code, and that also adds a layer to the idea of agency. We have agency both to a certain extent. Because it actually we inspired the notion of agency uh in ways that are tricky and not necessarily honest always, because we fail to see the ideology behind the game, because we are just playing with processes and we believe that we have freedom, but at the end, those who created the game they they created the the set of outcomes that are possible without that variety of possibilities, and in in that sense, uh games are also uh you know restrictive, yeah. Not only not only provide you with freedom.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

So would processes also be like would rules be another way of thinking about processes?

Osvaldo Cleger:

Exactly. Okay, all right. Just to illustrate with an example, I have reading on this topic of uh immigration, how immigration can be discussed. You can argue immigration in a paper and you use the word to present your your argument, you can use uh a whole movie, you know, a whole and there are many documentaries and films on the topic of immigration to present a few favorite or against migrants. But if you uh gamify this, you can just like in a game like Tropicos, for instance, uh you you are the the ruler of an island and you have an immigration system that you can decide whether you have open borders, whether you are restrictive, uh whether, and that has that trigger consequences in the game world. And uh, in that way, the the gamer is not being told what to think about immigration. It's not even it's not even being moved by the consequence of decisions as you find in in film, for instance, that tells you the story of poor migrants and the consequence of uh the hardships that they encounter. But through your decisions, trying to control an immigration system in a fictional island, you suddenly receive this learning as a byproduct of playing that. Oh, if I close my borders in this game, there is less production, and that has an impact. If I have open borders now, I have a nationalistic moving rising inside my island that is opposing me because they say that I am selling out to foreigners. And uh so through through those those dynamics, the games encode ideology.

Michael Rübsamen :

Yeah, just to build on it you can you can even backtrack even further that saying that playing a game is basically constructing a different reality. Um best specified by by the children, by the child who says to their parent, Mom, you're not playing for real, because if you do not participate and treat the game as something that is real in some kind of ontological sense, the the game falls apart. So it it in playing itself is the built-in idea that we have to accept that the game is important. Um regardless if we we're talking about 22 people hunting uh a ball for 90 minutes, which is on some kind of level kind of ridiculous, but it is an industry that is pushing and generating millions and millions and millions of euros, dollars. There are copious amounts of money involved in it, only because enough of us treaties treat it as important or valid or or and and and and and every time we say I don't want to play anymore or I this game is silly, I'm gonna walk away, it kind of falls apart.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

That's fascinating. So if I hear the two of you correctly, on the one hand, I mean, games they allow for agency, they allow you to make some decisions, but these decisions have kind of limits, right? Because coders have created a universe, and the actual creating of this universe has some ideologies and ideas instilled in it, right? What is permitted, what is not permitted, whether they intend it or not, it belies some of their thoughts, their ideas about how the world that they've created should or should not function. And then on the other hand, in order for this to function, the players have to accept this reality. They have to go along with the game as it was and accept the rules of playing. And this makes it sound like improv to me. The same thing with improv. If you don't yes and the offer someone is giving you, it falls apart. You have to say yes to what the developer is offering you and build on it in effect, if if I understand correctly.

Michael Rübsamen :

Probably a perfect analogy, actually.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Well, you're welcome. You're welcome to us. Uh Becky?

Keung Yoon Bae:

Um, I guess just as an addendum to all of this, I feel like there's actually some really productive, and maybe there's writing already on this, and I'm just not read up enough, but I feel like there's um some really productive um analogous qualities between um gaming and theater, in that um, it's I often feel like when I'm playing role-playing games, um first person type games, where yes, I do make choices, and yes, um they they they they can have consequences. I still have to kind of go through motions, so to speak. And I still have to stay lined and get to certain checkpoints. And that all feels quite theatrical. That all feels like um I'm I'm on, I'm I'm on a stage kind of going through the motions that like have been that have been blocked and there there's certain stage directions. Um and I think uh but but I I I I don't know, personally, and I haven't actually seen a ton of comparisons on that level. There's a lot of like great literary analysis on um on um uh game narratives. Um but yeah, I was actually wondering if anyone else, uh if anyone knew any research on that.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Um Yeah, I think that the the comparison between theater, I mean, because theater is a lot more structured. I feel like theater and uh novel are closer to one another, whereas gaming and improv are close to one another. Because improv is also open. Improv is um there are rules to improv. It's it's very much a game, but it's uh it's a generative game. Um actually I did I did improv and soul. Um it was very, very fun. Um that's my like my my fun tidbit from South Korea. Um, okay, so taking a step back, I think you guys have given me some tenets of what constitutes a game. So on the one hand, there needs to be room to make decisions and for for uh the the end point to not be determined, right? So you're you there is agency, but it's limited agency. You have to have players, people who are willing to play. I'm guessing it needs to be fun. Is fun an essence of what makes gaming a game, or or uh is that too simplistic?

Michael Rübsamen :

I actually my my quote might might be useful here because um uh I brought I brought a uh um a quote from from uh old German uh phenomenologist called Eugene Fink, who was uh a student of Husserl Heidegger back in the uh 30s and 40s, who uh primarily in German wrote quite a lot of of the phenomena phenomenology of play in in terms of spiel. And he he basically basically suggests that that the purpose of of of playing is playing itself. It is it is its own reward in a sense. And uh my quote is is put like this playing does not simply occur in our life like the vegetative processes, it is always a sensibly illuminated occurrence, a performance that is experienced. And we live in enjoyment of the act of play, which, mind you, presupposes no reflexive self-consciousness. In many cases of intense abandonment to play, we are far removed from any reflection, and yet all play is maintained in a comprehensive self-association of human life. So basically, what he suggests is that playing is always both situated in the real world, but it also kind of constitutes its own reality, and and it is its own reward. Uh, and that is something that that puts play as an activity, as a process, um it makes this this it's it uh distinct from any other any other aspect of life, basically basically.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

So perhaps instead of saying it's fun, I should have said play is a key element of gaming. Uh and now of course I can't help but uh pick up on the last lines of that quote that said human life, because you know, as the Animal Studies podcast, play has come up a lot on the show as something that animals do. Animals play a lot. So um, do they have games? Um, I think there's certainly a lot of evidence that they do. Uh, dolphins create. Create these rings where they shoot through. And so the animal world, irrespective of humans' engagement with them, have crafted and created games. So there's obviously some sort of evolutionary importance and significance to playing and possibly even gaming, even though I don't want to conflate gaming and play, uh, play here.

Osvaldo Cleger:

Well, I will say first that games are fun until you turn them into your subject of research. As soon as you add the most of the fun.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Unless you play Monopoly with my sister, because uh I think Monopoly is proven to like the non-fun game. Everyone starts at that too.

Osvaldo Cleger:

Well, I actually play playing uh gaming in implies a lot of frustration, uh, precisely because of the difficult the level of difficulty that developers basically decide to add to that. You can be really, really mad and frustrated while playing certain games. So but I think the playful part is the is at the foundation. Again, uh I I shared with you earlier quotation. I don't think I have already in the many windows in my computer to read it textually, but it's um it's basically the opening uh segments of or paragraphs of We Sing a classic study on the homolutens. He uses this um still um male-centered language in his time. You know, he he speaks of men think, men do, and he's trying to refer to all humanity, but but you know, a knowledge that limitation in the way he he speaks, which is epochal. Uh he he describes play as um something at the foundation of uh not only humans but also mammals, uh as something that we share. And uh in that sense, gaming is a structure and cultural derivation of our playful nature. Uh in the sense that play playing is more spontaneous, it's something that we don't need to plan, you know. We we get playful in a second. Uh we play with words in the way we communicate, we play with gestures, we play in many ways, you know, in many contexts. And uh, but once we try to turn that into uh a structure uh experience with rules and and and roles and and outcomes, uh then we are moving into the realm of gaming. And in that sense, I I as I said, I don't know much about research on animals showing showing how this uh takes place. But as you mentioned, I I bet uh while conducting this uh con uh this uh podcast, the subject has been brought up many times because it's essentially part of the human, uh I mean part of the animal experience as we as we witness it at least.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Yeah, uh you'll you'll be interested. I mean, I I find that really uh helpful to think about how play can become gaming, right? So play, you can have kind of spontaneous play, but it becomes a game once there's more structure. And I think again, looking at uh there's been a fair bit of research that's been done on on animals like wolves, for example, where there is some structure to the play. There are rules to the play, or you watch dogs in dog parks, and Alexander Horowitz has done painstaking work uh to try and understand the rules of their play. Uh so for example, she she recorded videos of dogs playing in parks to figure out how they initiated play and what the rules were for the limits of play, and she slowed it down to frame by frame because it's happening at a speed that's faster than we can, than we can process, in effect. And what she found was there are all of these really complex things going on. So everyone knows the play bow, which is an offer to play. Um, but then if a dog who is playing with a fellow dog loses interest, they do all these sorts of interesting um moves like bumping each other's bums to one another or barking. These like attention getters. If I can get this one's attention, I can get them to play with me. But also if someone's getting too rough, so if another dog happens to get a little bit too rough, a yelp can quickly stop everything. And you'll watch both dogs stand and wait until can we play again? Is everyone okay? So there are these mechanisms at play that seem to be facilitating some form of game. Um, and of course, then there are loads of examples of animals in research being trained how to play games, um, which I'd love to talk to you more about. Uh, I just I watched a video just uh before this actually of how zoos are using iPads now with like fish moving and stuff as means of enrichment for for animals because they're so under stimulated in in zoo settings. So they put up these games and now they're realizing that this is a very effective way to understand uh their cognitive abilities, but also to offer them some form of stimulation, which is really interesting. Uh Becky?

Keung Yoon Bae:

Um so and I was also thinking that uh with with animal play, um and granted, I I feel like the only uh direct experience I have with it is playing with my cats, my three cats. Um, but it's it is it feels very much about like there's the the euphoria of movement itself. And weirdly, um, the way I relate to that is again, like yes, gaming is um video gaming is is a fairly stationary activity uh and uh overall, but anyone who sort of had to deal with a tough boss fight in any game will know at the end when you've won and your hands are shaking because you've been gripping the controller so tight and you've been trying to manipulate those controls very precisely. That itself, I think there's a euphoric quality to it. I think um uh the the the physicality and and the that there I so I I think the the the the joy of the movement, however minor seeming, um, is actually a commonality there. Like there's a French professional gamer whose gamer tag is Nico GDH. And I was looking into why, what is that, because I know his name is Nico, but what's a GDH? And um, and it stands for God hand because he was so adept at pressing controls so quickly and so accurately that his account was initially banned for cheating. And he actually had to demonstrate in front of it with a camera on his hands to show the game developer team, no, I actually do press the keys that fast. I am actually that good. And once the band was lifted, then he became Nico GDH. He formally changed his gamer tag to that. So there's a sort of, you know, it's an it's an achievement thing as well, um, which weirdly makes me think of like, um, you know those dog performance competitions where they have to do those obstacle like like it reminds me of that a little bit. The the fine motor skills um and the training and the euphoria of that kind of play. Um, yeah.

Michael Rübsamen :

Question big because I I I only know about the Swedish professional esports player, that several of them, uh, in particular uh a professional gamer called Madelisk, who's a StarCraft uh champion, who is also a CrossFit champion. Uh basically recognizing that uh the physicality is is immense. So she felt that she was required to be in top physical shape. And I do believe that Swedish that the Swedish uh team ninjas in Piamas uh is also having a very strict physical regimen so that they are able to um work like that.

Keung Yoon Bae:

Um yeah, I mean the thing is, I think all of this is coming in the aftermath of realizing that the training regimen for a lot of esports players has been really unhealthy because they game for hours on end and that's their training. It's literally like 12, 14 hours a day on some days, many days, I'm sure. Um, yeah, so everyone has perpetual like hunched back, everyone has perpetual like wrist problems. Um, so that's a more recent development, I want to say. The idea that no, maybe, maybe you should get up from your desk and and and stretch. Maybe you should you should go go work out your core bit. Maybe, maybe some yoga would be good for you. Um, and maybe no more ramen, you know. Um I know, I know. Um, but yeah, yeah, I I I do think the the past, gosh, actually, like maybe within the past decade, we've seen some shifts in that direction, which is uh definitely a good thing.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

I really appreciate your kind of observation about movement though, because I do think we equate gaming with lack of movements, but it all depends. And like now again, thinking about Foucault, I can't help because he has this really famous quote where he talks about discipline, and discipline is actually about having kind of key movements in space, actually, really having disciplined movements. So gaming is a very kind of disciplined kind of movement of um, you know, you look at a sniper who's very skilled at sniping in real world, like there's uh physical strength involved in that, but there's a lot of fine motor skills that are also kind of involved in having that happen. Um, and of course, it's the physical body that's needing to move, but there's movement in the game as well. And I think this takes us back to that idea of agency and storytelling. There's movement in terms of how stories are developing, but I mean, you guys know better than me. I think it's probably fairly rare for things to stand still in a game, right? Like surely bodies are always moving, even in the virtual realm. Movement is a key aspect of gaming.

Osvaldo Cleger:

There are all sort of games in that sense, and there there is a uh I remember my first console was a Wii by Nintendo that included a balance board in which you stand, and uh it would read your body and how you're balancing on the body, and you could do aerobics on that, you could do yoga. Uh, and uh there was also um a bar, it was one of the first uh waves of this type of uh gaming, trying to gamify sports, a bar on top of the TV that would read your body in space, and a controller that you uh were uh moving with your hand. I forgot the the names for this. I I I I I don't remember basically how this technology was was um referred to. And uh I play a lot of tennis. I remember being in uh an ping pong. Being in a winter in Pennsylvania, a Caribbean for me, a winter in Pennsylvania was something extremely insulting, and I didn't want to leave the home. Uh and uh I would spend days during the weekend just playing ping pong in front of the TV, and it felt very engaged in terms of uh the physicality of it. Uh it the tracking of your hits of the ball in space and the ability to score and feel that you were actually playing was was was pretty good. Uh it it didn't, I don't think it that really led to further development of this form of gaming. As some thought. Uh in uh augmented reality gaming with uh headsets, there have been a little bit more of this, but I haven't played those games. I know one that is a guitar airplay, it's like a rock band, you know, that type of rock band play where you you play, pretend that you're you're playing during a concert, but it's with uh a headset like the the the Oculus or and uh you are inside your the headset in the stage playing uh uh and you don't even use a controller. Uh your hands are tracked in the air while you solo and play the music.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

So well, this is where I think there's a lot of potential with gaming and thinking about animals, right? So um, I mean I'm not a big fan of zoos. I will say that right now, right? Like I think zoos are not a great place to get to know animals because animals are kept in very captive environments and it's not in quote unquote uh a natural environment, right? Like you're any any observation or kind of appreciation of animals in that space is done in a very controlled space, slash also labs, right? Any trying to understand of animals in a lab space, the the scientific understanding there is dubious at best because you're always whittling it down to a very specific type of thing. So you've got things like behavioral ecology that go out to try and understand animals in their environments, et cetera, et cetera. But I really think, and uh that like VR and virtual reality offers this really incredible way, one, to think about things like history, you know, as well as Oswald, I know you look at history, like being immersed in, you know, the French Revolution. I feel like children would be like, wow, I really remember what went on in the French Revolution. Um, or being immersed in uh, you know, uh a pride of lions as they're going for a hunt or a herd of cows, I think it would allow for a different kind of appreciation of those animal realities. But perhaps I'm off. Like maybe games do this already. Games already have animal worlds. And do people empathize with animals in these spaces? Or uh I don't know. What's what's your feeling? Have you, as people who have not thought about animals, have you ever really played a game and thought, huh? Wow, animals. Like, I don't want to shoot that animal, or are they just like objects in these games and there's not much in the way of thought?

Keung Yoon Bae:

Uh so I will say I don't think there's always there's a ton of um games out there that put a a real thoughtful amount of you know of effort into representing animals and fostering a relationship between the player and the end game animals. However, um, I guess the example, as you as you were describing um sort of the potential, what popped into my mind was a game that it came up some years ago, but it's still like legendary. It's Red Dead Redemption 2. And um and the name is not promising, I know. Um, but it's a cowboy game. You play amazing. Yeah, amazing game. And um, that's there's an entire narrative in there about um the US government and uh treatment of um Native Americans and their environs, their livelihoods, their relationship with local wildlife. And yes, the game does have an incentive to hunt, and you get lots of different kinds of rifles with which you can hunt, and there's all these different achievements, but also there is such a beauty. They have animated that game so beautifully that it is 100% possible to just walk around, pick herbs, pick wild carrots, and observe a moose and just observe the wildlife that used to exist in the quote unquote wild west. Um and uh I and that that that's you know, that there's the agency, right? If you want to be a hunter, hunter, you can. But that's one of those games that I think legitimately allows you to just get lost in uh in the beauty of it. Um and uh so I I I I I I would like to see more of it, but I will also say those are the games that are really uh resource intensive to animate, to engineer. Um and and and that's a kind of a another part of this um entire conversation, maybe. Yeah.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

The materiality of gaming, certainly. Uh Michael?

Michael Rübsamen :

Uh two things. Uh first of all, the the sp the the the the term or the concept immersion has popped up uh every once in a while, and this is this is really important in terms of of gaming or both play and gaming. Um, the ability to sort of get lost in the experience in itself, and Red Dead Redemption is is uh Red Red Redemption 2 is a very beautiful example of the of the game designers really working really hard to allow the player to just explore the environment, and it's it is a beautiful game. While also, in my opinion, it is kind of interesting because it it actually uh sets up a subquest on uh trying to find uh a group of uh hunters who basically kill for the joy of it, which puts this beautiful mirror up towards the player who sometimes do that kind of of playstyle, basically just walking around uh in in in tabletop uh RPG, there is the the term of the murderous hobo, somebody who just randomly walks around killing everything on site because essentially you can, because there is no consequence. But but what RDR2 does in this with this particular subquest is they're actually scalding the that kind of playstyle, which which is is is beautiful. Basically, and I and I if I remember correctly, there is this moral mechanic which punishes you, punishes you for as a player if you go on these essential killing streaks uh in in terms of of uh hunting buffalo, for example, or deer or something like that. Basically collecting um too much loot that you don't really need. Uh just just mindless killing.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

That's really this reminds me of what Oswalder was saying, that kind of the there are objectives and ideologies built into the kind of creating and crafting of the game. And even as you were speaking there, the kind of immersion, again, this is not a gaming reference, but a TV reference, is it immediately makes me think of Westworld, right? Because spoilers, spoilers, anyone hasn't watched Westworld spoilers, cause your thing now. But Westworld, um, you know, you you watch it, you think everything is real, and of course the big reveal comes that this is an immersive gaming experience. And this is really like it raises all of these ethical questions of, you know, if if the characters can feel all of the violence that happens in there, or should we be, you know, thinking about, you know, does how you play a game influence your morality outside of the game? Uh, you know, so if you're very violent, and again, as someone outside of the gaming community, people hear of games, there's lots of violence, and this is bad for society because it leads to loads of violence. And I know that this has been debunked by gaming communities that have shown that that isn't as equal, uh um as easily transferable, right? It's not like if you're in grand theft auto and you're shooting all the time that you become someone who shoots, right? It's not that easily deduced. But what about this connection between gaming and violence? Have you guys got thoughts on that?

Osvaldo Cleger:

It's interesting, Claudia, that you brought up uh Westworld. I believe there is a connection between Deb Redentro and Westworld. And actually, I I while watching the DV show, I always wonder if the the scriptwriters uh had played the game. Um so um I think well, first uh in terms of animals in games uh and uh how they are represented, there are uh uh there are conventions and pretty hackney conventions for that. Uh animals, there is usually many games like open worlds, like the one we have been talking about, open worlds like Red Redemption 1 or 2, there is crafting systems where players get to craft tools to advance in the game, and usually the resources that you you need for that are natural resources. So you need to hunt animals to that end. So there is that part, and in most open world games, you find a version of that. There is also the pure pleasure, steady pleasure of contemplating nature, as Becky was mentioning. I am a big uh Assassin's Creed player because of the historical regret of the Forever Revolution, as you mentioned early in Unity. Uh Havana, I'm from Havana, and I play Havana and the Caribbean Islands in um Black Flag, and it was amazing. I really enjoyed that. Talking about uh having a fun experience while playing a game. And they introduced at some points petting systems, something as simple as that. You see an animal and you have a button, you press, and you can pet that animal. And it's a cat, a kitty, something like that. That's it. Um and they introduced that because players found reward in such a simple uh uh act, no actually. And there are other ways in which uh you you can interact also with animals. Um uh in Black Flag, you are in the Caribbean waters and suddenly you are warned that a whale is going to come out of the water and jump. So that you prepare your camera just to watch that scenery. It's like a scenic moment, you know, touristic a scenic moment. At the same token, if you want them to stop there, you're cheap. To hunt the whale, you can do that. And whale hunting is one of the things that environmentalists have been the most supposed to for a long time for good reasons. So the game had a lot of backlash immediately by those folks who don't play necessarily the game but learn through third hand that what the game is presenting to players, to gamers, and they tend to, this these activists usually tend to establish that causality between playing something and enacting it in real life, which, as you mentioned, is more complex than that. Games have ethics built in, but those ethics don't necessarily mirror real life ethics. They can actually play with the idea that you do in games exactly what you are not allowed in real life. As you mentioned with Gram The Foto, it's all about uh stealing cars, driving poorly, provoking accidents, shooting people, running from the cops. It's everything. You know, it's it's a free card to for the time that you're playing game that. So games have their own ethics, ethics system. They can encourage values, and I believe that. I believe that games, and that's why I care about representation. Most games are produced by white male developers. I think that's a big problem, at least in the Western world. Most gains are produced by white gain developers. We are playing the fantasies of white males, and that's why you find that Latinos are so poorly represented, that female, that women are so poorly represented, tokenized, hypersexualized, and all have all that have to do with the fantasies of a certain group of people that play the game. And I think games can ethically offer better portrayals of people in society, uh, so that you know there is a fictional world that better presents different cultures. And that extends to animal, in my view. So it's striking a right, a good balance between the freedom that games give you, the free card to do things that you cannot do in the real world, and enjoying doing that as a playful moment. Uh, but at the same time, the responsibility that if you are offering a portrayal of the real world that has implications, you know, in how we perceive our society. I think that's something the industry should try to strive to accomplish that good balance.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Gosh, you said so many important things there. Um, I mean, what really stood out for me was one, the idea that there are natural resources. And I'm just curious how often animals are these natural resources in these games, because that's often reflective, right? It's reflective, as you said, of our own values with regards to how animals sit in our structures. But really powerful what you were saying there with regards to the ethical quandaries. I think that games, um, one, they could prompt reflection on. So just because you're doing something violent doesn't mean that it becomes that. It might even actually be an opportunity for subversion, for thinking about what these actions mean uh in broader society. Uh, but also the, again, the industry dynamics of who makes the games, who makes the rules, and and how you said they. I mean, again, not to say that all white men have the same fantasy, right? It's not like depending on where you come from or how but they're to to take your point, where are games being developed? So, so Becky, loads of gaming coming from South Korea, right? Loads of people that are South Korean gamers, etc., a big K-pop music scene, big um film scene in Korea. Is there also a big gaming developing scene? Are we seeing something about South Koreans' fantasies emerging?

Keung Yoon Bae:

Yes, I mean, um, and to Oswaldo's point, um, just as uh gaming, game development is sort of predominantly um occupied by, it seems, a lot of like I think there's more diversity now, for sure, than there was. But um it's still sort of probably more majority white male. And similarly in South Korea, like I'm sure people have read about like the anti-feminist uh backlash, still ongoing. Um, and sort of one of the first signs that really rang alarm bells for me of that backlash was like around 2017, 2018, when I started seeing uh male gamers who wanted to ensure that male Korean gamers who wanted to ensure that uh the games being developed in Korea were for them. And um in to that end, they would sort of try and route out or try to pressure gaming companies to push out female developers, female designers, which is so, so, so troubling. Um sorry, and trying to correct you.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

These are these are people that are resistant against maybe Western development, but they also don't want women involved in it.

Keung Yoon Bae:

Or is this just not Western development. They're resist they don't want the games being made in Korea, um, the games being made by Korean companies, which are the companies they can pressure, the one the ones that they can kind of harass on in social media or whatever. Um they didn't want those games to cater to anyone except them, the male audience.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Okay. And what like any reasoning? What's the what's the what's the justification or reasoning for that?

Keung Yoon Bae:

I mean, it's it it's very much sort of everything that we see right now. It's sort of that knee-jerk anti-woke, sort of quote unquote woke, whatever they decide is woke, uh, sort of anti-representation, anti-diversity, um, anti-feminist kind of impulses. And I don't want to like generalize about the kind of people who were involved in that those kind of pressures. I'm assuming plenty of young men were um involved, but uh really it's about the fact that um it's about the fact that there's a perceived threat. There's a perceived sense that they are the that power is slipping through their fingers in and whatever, in whatever you what you know, uh the the the exact details of which, you know, is is whatever is in their heads, really, in my opinion, whether that's social power, political power, um, representation, and I think gaming was a way that that frustration or feeling of being threatened was channeled. But I also wanted to add to everything else Waldo said, which I really agree with, also big Assassin's Creed fan. I I want to say that in addition to these ways in which games can provoke thought and ref make us reflect, I think one of the most important things is how cleverly it can incentivize us towards certain behavior. The main example I like to talk about uh with this is a game called Disco Elysium, where you play as it sounds unhinged when I say it out loud, um, where you play as this kind of uh shambles, life in shambles police detective who has been tasked with investigating a murder that happened in the backyard of a hotel. But he also went on like a three-day alcoholic bender and he has like some significant memory loss. And the game starts when you wake up and you have to basically figure out like you're just kind of stumbling through the world, figure out your who you are, what your name is. And the entire as the the game takes place over about three days in the game time. And you realize as you're playing the game that your choices and thoughts are kind of really sharply affected by this person who has become your investigation partner. It's another police officer called Kim Kitseragi, who just kind of shows up and says, Oh vicière, we must uh we have to go on with the investigation. He's kind of French. The guitar game is kind of French, and um and you've you sort of form a relationship with him and you're through your Conversations with him, you just kind of end up relying on him a lot. And he's initially very skeptical of you. And he thinks you're, you know, a bag of like rags, basically. You're you're falling apart at the seams, but also he's developing a respect for you. And you realize you don't want to disappoint him. That that becomes like, and this is a commonality I found with all my friends who played this game. Disappointing Kim is absolutely the worst thing you could do in this game. One of my friends literally quit the game and restarted it because she accidentally picked a dialogue option that she didn't realize was going to do this, but you accidentally call Kim a racist slur because he's of kind of Asian origin. And it upsets him so much that he leaves you for like a little bit. And it upset my friend so much, she quit the game and restarted it from the last save point because she was, she was so horrified. And that relationship with Kim guides you to essentially be a better person. Essentially be a good uh person weaving your way through this unfamiliar world. And at the end of the game, um, that also kind of push back on Kim and his sort of fairly standard beliefs. And at the end, the reason I think this game is actually a really interesting topic, specifically for our conversation, is the most important, one of the most important conversations in the game is at the end where you run into a um a cryptid, a mythical kind of creature that a lot of people assume doesn't exist, but a few people do believe exists. And it's that is one of the most transcendental conversations you can have in that game. And it and Kim is next to you completely flabbergasted because he was pretty positive this thing didn't exist. Um, anyway, that was a lot of words about how important the incentivization structure of gaming is, in my opinion.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

I think I think this really speaks to the idea of how ethics can play out, right? And and like uh Michael, you mentioned earlier the uh forget what word you use, but for that like murderous renegade who just wants to kill, kill, kill murderous hobo. Um and and how there are different rewards and punishments built into these systems to kind of expand a different moral universe. Now, Michael, I know this is something you've written about with regards to the Witcher, kind of who's included in the moral circle or not, and how gaming can afford you opportunities to think morally about different characters or different figures. Um, I hope I've characterized that uh properly. Maybe you've got some thoughts here.

Michael Rübsamen :

With all honesty, you can play as a murderous hobo, even within the Witcher, because because it is an open sandbox. It and it allows you as a player to play a certain style during a play session, and that is one of the beauties about gaming. But but but for many different reasons, I I think that The Witcher is an interesting topic or uh an interesting game, or rather an interesting franchise. In particular now, just a couple of weeks ago, uh, because Wik Witcher is in a way, it is a linear sandbox, but it's also a highly structurized, um, almost linear. Um if I was if I was a tabletop gamer, I would say railroaded game because it it it provides you some kind of choice, but it's essentially you're going down one path, and then at key points, choices you make will take you down different tracks or conjunctions.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

So this is very different to the Red Redemption 2 that you're speaking about, where I can just like wander around and be like, ooh, flowers, and I can make up my own mind about it.

Michael Rübsamen :

It is a sandbox, but the main narrative that sort of structures or creates momentum is is basically basically a railroad.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Okay, I'm with you.

Michael Rübsamen :

Um and and and and a PlayStation can can sort of switch in between just free roaming, where you go and explore, kill some animals, pick some herbs, do some business, buy buy stuff, sell stuff, find find stuff, or engage with with the store, with the narrative quests. Um but but um now just a couple of weeks ago, um the developer Project CD Red was uh released a trailer for the fourth installment of the next uh of the next Witch Again, which will feature a female protagonist. Siri will be um the the the player protagonist, and it caused, shall we say, a little bit of ruckus uh among the gaming community, who of course uh were couldn't really accept that now we have to play as a female protagonist.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

You have to, so you can't choose Gerald or so she's the main, you have to be retired.

Keung Yoon Bae:

Who's been playing The Witcher or read any of the Witcher stories? Like anyone who's actually a Witcher player, in my opinion, knows that that is the logical, logical next step because I literally retired Geralt in Witcher 3 to a vineyard with his lady love. Like he is done with being a witcher. That was literally the formal canonical ending to that game. And also sorry, sorry. But um, and um, so that's like like my soapbox. Um, like I I strongly feel that a lot of the criticism is coming from knee-jerk reaction, um, reactionary kind of people who haven't actually even played or appreciated the narrative. Um, and also kind of overlooks one of the most important parts of Witcher 3's gaming mechanic, which is there's a parenting sim in there. It's about how good a father figure you are to Siri, in that how much do you allow space for her choices, how much do you allow her to speak out and like voice her opinions? Um, because it is very possible in that game to just talk over her and to make her decisions for her. And kind of basically, as the story goes on, it is possible to make her smaller and smaller and less certain. And that affects her and the ending of the game. But if you are a good parent, father figure, you're not actually her father, but if you're a good father figure to her, she eventually grows into a person who can take on the mantle.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

And the mantle is big and powerful, buddy. Or is it a crowd? Remember, you're speaking to someone who's watched the show but has no idea. So I I am not a gamer. I I just know, again, I don't want to give too many spoilers, but I just know serious, powerful, very powerful, and very powerful. And uh frustrating to be talking to someone who's like, yeah, I don't know. What do you mean by mental?

Keung Yoon Bae:

No, no, no, no, that that's it's it's important always for me to keep in mind. And basically, for her to choose her own path in life, and basically, if you get the good ending of the game, um, you she becomes a witcher at the end of the third game. Because and she chooses her own trajectory. Fascinating.

Osvaldo Cleger:

This is happening a whole lot right now with the anti-war culture in the aiming community. It's the same with the last release of uh Assassin Creed uh Shadow set in Japan. They decided to include this time a black samurai, which is very actually based actually on a on a character from uh uh it's been remediated from previous uh storytelling around this character. Um but since it's not the traditionally traditional Japanese samurai, and the other character you can play is a female ninja. I haven't played the game, it's it's just I I'm not sure it even came out already because uh Ubisoft usually does a full release for this, and they decided to postpone it till February to this month because of all the backlash that the game was was getting. And it got very ugly online. You could see people posting memes, anti-black memes, basically comparing the main protagonists to all the racist, only tropes that we know about. I will not go into details about that, and a lot of discussion about this uh phenomenon. Um the strongest voices were coming from this anti-woo community trying to even even sabotage the release of the game. Um, and linking this to the a potential uh bankruptcy by Ubisoft and the end of the company.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

So, I mean, so it's it's clear based on I mean several of your guys' comments here today that gaming isn't that inclusive in terms of who's getting to make a decision with regards to who is represented, or at least people have very strong opinions. But on the other hand, this I guess I'm just trying to marry in my mind, and of course, this isn't a uh uh a black and white um or or this or that kind of uh comparison. But on the one hand, you've got, and I think Oswaldo, you mentioned this in our email communication. So you've got representations in games where now we're talking about the representation of women, the representation of black people, potentially even the representation of animals, and how very politicized and opinionated this this can become. Uh, and then we've also got, on the other hand, the kind of gaming experience. So you can even have people who aren't gamers having really strong opinions about who's represented in these games and not. So that's happening in terms of the representation, which is important. It's important to have other figures represented, right? So like the feminist movement did a great deal to show how having I've never had as many goosebumps as I had watching the opening scene to Wonder Woman. Like seeing a bunch of women just like slash shit up and be, I was like, yes. And only then did I realize how growing up I didn't have, you know, women who were just badasses. Like they were just badass. And and I guess gaming offers a really great space to kind of create these representative moments where people can see difference uh in a really important way. But that said, it's it's not it's not to say that everyone would necessarily pick their own representation. So that me as a woman, I would choose to play a woman necessarily, because as you said earlier, the gaming world is a world in which I can fantasize something else or be something else. So yeah, it's it's it's kind of tricky to think across these two realms.

Osvaldo Cleger:

If I can say something actually about the paper for the, because I believe this podcast is part of, as you have mentioned, of uh the event that we're organizing here at Tech, right? I will be presenting on a video game specifically on the Haitian Revolution. And part of my research for that was looking at how uh players of any race, but in particular, of course, I I found the most interesting in Afro-American players and black players, how they uh showed their walkthrough the game and commented on it on real time. So they were screencasting their gameplay, they were recording their gameplay and showing it, and you could clearly see how important it was for these Afro-American players and black players to be embodying a black Trinitarian ex-slave who is now an assassin, but he's in in Haiti fighting in favor of the Maru movement to free slaves. And when they engaged in a fight and they defeated the overseer and they free managed to free the slaves, the emotion was like nothing else in any other combat interaction that may have had. It was charged with meaning because they it was not just playing, you know, and and having fun. And they would comment on that very, very, very explicitly. I could see other white players, and it was more the gameplay experience, you know. Some of them would show that they care about freeing as many slaves as possible, but they were in the plantations and trying to kill all the overseers and free slaves, but it was particular, particularly visceral when those players identify with the situation because they were part of the Afro-American community. So, because of what we have said about gaming, that is the agency that can provide the ability to simulate real-life scenarios to uh to allow you to relieve things that are meaningful to you or experience things that people have told you but you have never experienced in the way that a game immersed that immersion can provide, all that adds uh a whole important dimension in terms of how games are builds, that people actually that that that what is being presented in games um gives a voice to as many communities as possible.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

And of course, I mean we've we've I mean this is this is really it's about giving a voice and perhaps also trying to, as you were speaking about, empathize. And I know that what I'm saying now is gonna be really, really tricky, but sometimes also being able to take on a character that's not you. So a white person taking taking on a non-white character, which in some circles would be seen as kind of really problematic. Um, but I think I actually think it's a really powerful move to try and think through, as you mentioned earlier, the kind of immigrant migration um game, uh, or the having the island and trying to manage immigration, you start to realize the complexity of it in taking on a different role or a different function. You can maybe uh appreciate the on the one hand, you've got folks who can really um appreciate that they're represented and that their histories and lineages are taken seriously and that it's yeah. But on the other hand, you've got people that might also be able to appreciate that it's not just a game, actually. It's it's much more complicated than that. Um, this has been a fascinating conversation, and I think we would talk forever and ever. I'd like to bring us back to animals just for a moment, if I may. Uh, and then Becky, I think you haven't said your quote yet. So uh Michael and Osvaldo have both mentioned their quotes. I'll give you an opportunity to say yours. With everything we've said about gaming uh and gaming culture and kind of the tension between representation and playing, and this includes things like violence, but also identity, um, the the types of experiences that gaming can afford. Is it worthwhile to even have a conversation about the relationship between games and animals? I mean, we've we haven't really focused much on animals over the course of today's episode. So what what is the gaming and games are one of the most sold media in the world, most experienced. So what is what are the potentials here for for thinking about human-animal relationships?

Michael Rübsamen :

I mean, I mean, in a w in a way, I think to start to ask critical questions about the role that animals play in a lot of games. Not all games, but in a lot of games, in the sense that they often play the role as the monster. The thing that needs to either be domesticated, something wild, or as or something that's simply is there to be killed, uh, which is also one of the one of the aspects that's very prevalent in in The Witcher, which is the there is almost a civilization critique or or a critique of modernity there, that human actions need to push out the fantastical elements, uh, which means that in order for uh uh society to progress, the uh fantastical elements has to be eliminated, uh, either domesticated or slain. And quite a few quests within the Witcher franchise kind of address this, basically turning it into questions of what is the relationship between humans and nature, and how can we explore and provide all or find alternatives to just slaying or or uh domesticating uh the wild. And and and this is this is also one of one of the things where I think that there is an opportunity to keep on developing the big AAA franchises in order to sort of find the kind of of middle way, because by tradition, in video games in particular, monsters or animals are there to either be slain or run away from. And and to sort of find games, start designing games that allow for something else, would also be able to explore stories or narratives where you can choose or have the kind of agency as a player to find something in between.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

And I'm I'm guessing there are games that exist when you can be an animal, when you can take on an animal avatar of sorts. Uh so my question then would be you know, how humanoid are these animals, or to what extent would the avatar actually, you know, if you're taking on a turtle, is actually thinking about turtle physiology and needs and desires. I would assume like developers rarely do a lot of research in the kind of making of this. So I would hope that there's a fair deal of learning that could happen with regards to uh animals. Someone told me about a game called Dave the Diver that um does the guy goes and he does, and uh Hera was on the animal highlights. And he kind of he drew this incredible parallel where Dave stops to help a sea turtle who's swallowed a plastic bag and he's like, we've got to do something about pollution, and there's this whole lesson about pollution as Dave like, because it's killing all the sea animals, as Dave is swimming away with like a pocket full of fish, um, to go and feed him his uh dead fish to have in the sushi restaurant, which I was just grossed up by that already. Like the fish have been dead for a while. Anyway, that's another story. So I imagine that there are also avatar opportunities. So there's changing the narrative, perhaps seeing how animals can become more a genteel in in stories, but also perhaps how avatars can be used to help us think more.

Osvaldo Cleger:

I will mention a couple of ideas that come to my head. One, uh there is a there are games, but there is also the game mechanic aspect that can be used with educational purposes. And uh there is environmental peace, and you can definitely use games to to try to promote environmental awareness and and a more um educated population in that regard, the seams, the the franchise, the seams. I I bet you guys, if you have not played, at least you're aware, God view perspective on things uh controlling a world and you and your the citizens, basically, the seams of your of your city has a version that is based on environmental issues, in which the decisions you make can increase the pollution in the city or not, can make the city uh healthier, and the citizens uh in in that city. So you can use gaming elements to educate, basically, in this sense. Uh locative game, games uh based on location, particularly argumental reality games, uh MOA games where people go to nature and they interact with some sort of digital uh artifact like in Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go has been criticized because the intention was precisely to make people walk, to make people, uh to reward people for exercising, at least being more mobile, um to uh bring people to natural areas actually where they interact with these fictional Pokemon characters. But at the same time, when you see what you can do with the Pokemons, you can capture them, train them, uh you uh put them in fights, you know, use them for fighting. So it's not the ideal in that sense, the the type of models that are embedded in the Pokemon game. But the intention is a legitimate intention in terms of um trying to combine the real world with the fictional narrative created by the game. Uh the sample provided by Pokemon can be used for other purposes. You can even use the camera, the capacity of identifying things in nature to be a leaves collector, you know, to identify the trees and the vegetation in an area, using the camera to help you do that, to learn about the these uh ecosystems. In the past, I have created applications with the students based on that principle. Uh, let's try to create an app in which each of us learn about a bird in a certain ecosystem. We did this in the Galapagos Island once, and um uh uh to curate the the aviary life in the Galapagos to visitors, and you will learn about these speeches, we'll take pictures, we'll create entries, and we will compile everything in an app so that future visitors can interact with nature and learn about it through this digital artifact. And there is always an interactive gaming element into it, or you can add it. So, in that sense, I see a lot of potential for educational um purposes in in game design.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Yeah, I mean it also sounds to me though that there almost needs to be a little bit of a philosophical intervention though, yeah, when it comes to thinking about animals and their roles in gaming, because even like you said at the start, the ways in which animals seem to make an appearance is they're domesticated, they're trained, they're killed. And so, what kind of more the representation that seems to be missing here, and I'm not saying that these should not be, again, taking into account the idea of being able to play with different things, but it seems that the idea of uh befriending or working with or dismantling the training activity doesn't seem to feature, that that's just it's just a given that animals would be used in this way. And uh the extent to which mainstream gaming includes an option to, I mean, because petting, you mentioned petting earlier, this is also a very diminutive type of relationship. But the extent to which you could be a vegan gamer, right, is very limited. You if you want to play the game, you're gonna have to use animals at some point in the in the so it feels like there needs to be some sort of philosophical um intervention there. But I hear you in terms of learning about biology, um, this might be really useful, but that could also lead to a different kind of consumptive element, right? Where we're just we're gaming to take things from animals instead of really thinking about our relationships with animals. Um you're never gonna win. It's it's tricky, tricky, tricky, but it definitely sounds like there's some work to be done.

Keung Yoon Bae:

So I actually precisely wanted to highlight a couple instances I can think of that have, in my opinion, um, that certain philosophical terms that I think are really needed. The first is a game called Death Stranding, where first of all, it's um pretty different from a lot of different other video games because in that game, killing something, killing other people is actually a really dangerous thing to do. And actually, you can't do it. Like dead bodies are actually really, really dangerous. Um and death itself, like just the concept of death is quite dangerous. And also being outside is dangerous. Everything is super dangerous.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

And um, it's a night-inducing game.

Keung Yoon Bae:

Yeah, no, it's really, really an anxious game. Um, and and rain can harm you. Um but stay inside and away from death and the problem is you play as a courier, you play as a messenger person who's making deliveries, and it's like the worst, uh, it's like the most stressful game. But that you have to completely reorient your approach to obstacles, enemies, and things like that with that mechanic in play. And your entire job is to build pathways and bridges um between different zones and areas to make travel a little bit more accessible, a little bit more possible, and try and, you know, um defeat your enemies without death, without killing them. Um, so that's I think a really important turn. But the other death stranding and another game called Borderlands 2 are games where um that aren't in love with themselves. And this is a real problem I've found with um especially futuristic cyberpunkky games, is games really want you to look at the world they've created. They're like, look at how pretty, like go up on the high spot and do all like Assassin's Creed as a whole mechanic where you have to get up on the high spot and you can see the city they've created. Um, freaking um Legend of Zelda, like Tears of the Kingdom and you know, Breath of the Wild, you have to get up on the tower and you and you have to survey, and it's so pretty. And it's it has literal built-in moments where it forces you to appreciate how nice it all is. Um, and on the one hand, you know, um good, then very well done. Uh, but on the other hand, it's what you say, which is there's a sort of colonial quality to it in that it's sort of you're supposed to take from it. You're supposed to take and um and and you know, harvest and hunt and you know, just kind of um invade the beautiful space. And I think uh Borderlands 2 and Death Stranding have created locales and environments that, first of all, they're not, they're really intricately, excellently graphically designed games, but they're not they're clearly not designed for you to just stop and go, whoa, look at this view. It they're very brutal landscapes. They're very uh Borderlands specifically is a genre called diesel punk, which is this post-apocalyptic world that that's overrun by like people who drive like smoky jeeps everywhere, basically. Um, and it's like every everything looks like a dumpster. Everything looks like a dumpster. It's very ugly. And you get and then you get to a city called Opportunity that's clearly sort of the cyberpunk ideal. Only you realize, wow, this is not beautiful at all. It's sterile and ugly. It is unbearably dry. And it I think games that force you to confront environments in a more in a not seductive way. Um and that that's a really important philosophical turn, in my opinion, because it it's there's an important decentering that happened where it's not all for you. It's not you're you're not the main character necessarily of the world. So yeah, those are two, I think, important turns that I would like to see more of.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

I really love that. Thank you so much. Uh Michael?

Michael Rübsamen :

Um I was about to to to point out that uh, first of all, we have we have spoken quite a lot about about primarily sandbox games, which features these mechanics. And and of course, in particular if we look at old video games, uh uh animalistic avatars or anthropos anthropomorphic uh animals is a staple of most platform games. Sonic the Hedgehog, for example, Nina Turtles, uh Star Fox, um the list goes on and on. Animals have always been a very important part of how avatars are are part of the gaming culture. But but I um I really like the the your point, Becky, regarding that games are very narcissistic in a sense that and and and this is like a a paradoxical feature, because in a way, in in order to facilitate that kind of immersion, you have you you want to invite the player to sort of take center stage, be someone grand, own your environment, beat the obstacles, but at the same time, you you sort of establish this kind of colonialistic uh narratives. And and one and one major feature here is of course, uh what kind of consequences do your actions lead to? And in particular, violence and death is is an interesting mechanic here because usually it doesn't really matter if you kill a lot of animals, other people, stormtroopers, because they respawn. Death is sort of disconnected from real consequence, or even if you as a player dies, you reboot the game. And this and this is one of the features where where I think that video games and tabletop gaming is is kind of interesting because when when you lose a character when you've played Dungeons and Dragons, it is a really large taboo if you as a player says, No, I don't accept that my character is dead, I'm gonna keep playing them. Because death means something, it is a consequence. If the character within in a Dungeons and Dragons game dies, it is removed. You don't ever play that again. And that is that is that is one of the key features that video games sort of offer that kind of death without consequence. And I think that's that's an important um aspect to remember when when talking about morality in terms of games.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

I think those are both really important. One in terms of thinking how you play the game. So, you know, what you were saying there, Becky, about those two games is uh What mechanisms, and this goes back to what we were saying earlier, what mechanisms enable you to play the game? And if playing the game is really contingent on you using resources, using animals, abusing others, you know, it's not to say that this means directly means it's what you want to do in real life, but it can kind of shape a certain ethic of what we think of how we move or maybe give hints at the logics we think our society operates on, right? And I think the games you mentioned earlier say, well, hang on, wait. What if going outside is not good? And what if death is something to be avoided? How how do we then manage life? How do we come up with alternative solutions or to to problems? And I think that that's really attractive. And same thing with what you're saying there, Michael, with regards to death mattering, is I think both of these point to the fact that there needs to be it can't just be vapid. And gaming is supposed to be vapid to one extent. Gaming is not the serious thing. Gaming's supposed to be, I mean, it is serious based on all the industry and the money and all of the but it's supposed to be it's serious business, but it's also supposed to be fun and something people want to engage in. So if you're having too much in the way of morals and stuff, people are gonna say, well, you know, I don't want to play this. I don't want to play some like moralistic. So you have to think, I think, about um how to facilitate new thoughts and new ideas without being bombastic, which is a really interesting challenge, uh, I think for uh, let's say animal advocates or or anyone who's interested in thinking about matters related to uh that social justice movement, but any social justice movement, right? Whether you're interested in feminist movements, whether you're interested in um, you know, BIOPOC movements, class movements, migration. I think gamers have to come up with really interesting ways to get people to think these thoughts, um, which is really quite it's a challenge. That's not easy. All right. Um, Becky, do you have a uh a quote for us and then we'll we'll wrap it up?

Keung Yoon Bae:

I had to default to a quote from actually film, um, because that's sort of my my training. Um, but it's a quote from Eng Lee, and I don't think he actually said it in a written interview, but I heard him say it at an event. Um he's he said, it is only through pretense that we approach truth. And he said it about his film Lust Caution, which is about um a female spy who pretends to be in love with someone and then falls in love with someone. But I think there's a lot there, it's very rich when we associate it with gaming because um as much as I dislike the um the the way that uh politicians and mass media like to connect um real life violence with video game violence, I think they're very, very different things. And I think that's a far too facile connection people make. I do, you know, wonder about what do we become numb to as we become accustomed to things as just that's how games are. That's what games do. Um and it's always with the games that sort of like put a twist on things and ask, does this is this actually how it has to be? Um, that then we are able to find new avenues of pretense. Um and um and I think that's for me what gaming's about a lot of the time. It's um the it's it's uh the most immersive kind of um pretense um that uh it that can be an escape, but also like at the end of the escape, you also find something um about life that's maybe unavoidable.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Oh well, that's beautiful. I can't think of a better way to end this episode. Really lovely, lovely. Um and I think it captures so much of what we've spoken about today, that it's it's political and it's challenging, but it's also beautiful and it's an outlet. Um, and we have to find nuanced ways to have these conversations. So thank you so much. Uh, before we leave, perhaps each of you could just give me a quick one-minute synopsis about I think you've kind of said it in the intro, but what you're currently working on, and if people want to get in touch with you, how they can do so.

Michael Rübsamen :

People can reach me through email, michael.ribsaman.lu.se at will be in the show notes at Lund University through the webpage. I am currently working on a project where we watch how cosmic horror tabletop gaming uh in the game Call of Cthulhu can be used as placemaking and tourist branding of the city of Lund. Lund, the city of forbidden knowledge.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Oh, is this a game that exists?

Michael Rübsamen :

Yep.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Wow, okay.

Michael Rübsamen :

It's a tabletop role-playing game.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

That's very cool. Well, I'm interested already. Oswaldo.

Osvaldo Cleger:

Well, same. I'm better rich uh by email. Uh as I said at the beginning, I come from very traditional training literary studies, and I have on the contract with Pal Grafe a book on what I call the invention of the litig body, and it's a study of poetry, and basically the invention of whiteness, and more specifically, blondness in archetypes of female beauty in Hispanic literature. And I covered this from the early modern period to the present. So it's been refreshing because I have been doing a lot of new media for a few years now, and that sometimes involved um uh conducting a study on media that is not that uh uh sophisticated or complex, particularly when you come from a humanistic background. But now that's what I've been doing the last these last couple of years. I'm having fun reading you know points by Baroque poets and uh romantic writers. Uh so it's it's what I'm doing correctly.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Are there poetry video games out there?

Osvaldo Cleger:

Uh there are there are a few, but not as as many. Lyricism is something that has not captured fully the imagination of game developers. So unfortunately, that continues to be more the runs of uh songwriting. I believe poetry is not only non-dead, but it's thriving in the world of songwriting. And uh uh but in video games I I see potential that has not been exploited, in my opinion.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Super interesting. Thanks so much, Osvaldo. And finally, Becky.

Keung Yoon Bae:

Um, yes, so people can reach me by email. And my the manuscript I'm currently currently working on is on esports based on field work in South Korea. I'm looking to tell the story of how esports has changed in the past 10 years because the age of StarCraft has long passed. Um so sorry to those StarCraft fans out there. Um, and um uh and uh we're in an age where the fight over intellectual property has kind of legally speaking ended. So, how do Koreans grapple with um playing and competing in games that they cannot own? Um, and sort of so they're they're all there's a lot of the physical bodies that are playing the game and competing and um creating this esports industry are Korean. But um, in terms of ownership of the culture and the um all the revenue streams, sort of what what how much space can they carve out for themselves? That's kind of the story I've been tracing.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Wow. Um I mean, your knowledge on gaming is really outstanding, and and I'd love to actually just learn more and read more about uh the work you're doing with regards to South Korea. And um and yeah, I've I'm I'm yes, there's just so much. All of you have been so interesting. I've I've learned a great deal. Uh, thank you for letting me ask you questions from the sideline of someone who doesn't game. Um, I've very, very much enjoyed talking to all of you today.

Osvaldo Cleger:

Same, thank you so much, Claudia. Thank you, Michael, Becky.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Thank you so much to Oswaldo, Michael, and Becky for being just wonderful guests today, making it such an enjoyable discussion. Thank you also to Jeremy John for the logo and Gordon Clark for the bad music. Thank you so much to the sponsors of this season, including Animals of Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics, Apple, the Pollination Project, as well as the School of Modern Language, the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, and the School of Literature, Media and Communication at Georgia Tech University. This episode was hosted, edited, and produced by myself. This is The Animal Turn, with me, Claudia Hirtenfelder.

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Claudia Hirtenfelder

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Keung Yoon Bae

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Michael Rübsamen

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Osvaldo Cleger

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