Realism and Subjectivity in First-Person Shooter Video Games

By

Peter Bell
Communication, Culture and Technology Program Georgetown University

Video games are increasingly becoming a subject of study as a production of the West's increasingly visual culture. Games cross paths with cinema and television in technique and content, and video games have spawned their own niche fields of study in fields of education, gender studies, childhood development, military training, entertainment and, notoriously, violence. My intent here is to outline a general understanding of how realism and subjectivity operate in the genre of the first-person shooter (FPS) games, games which employ a first-person perspective towards a representation of three-dimensional space. To be more precise, I will argue that the impression of realism and interactivity in video games is not due to the advancement of technologies towards a paragon of interactive reality but from the technological differentiation of games in production, a differentiation that is naturalized as realistic and interactive. Certainly FPS video games involve fantastic creatures and strange surroundings. These games play host to several if not all of the arenas of study already mentioned. My treatment of realism, however, is concerned primarily with its role as a technique in the creation of subjectivity. The acquisition of subjectivity in the game world, or telepresence, is an interactive process often linked to realistic effects such as firstperson perspective, visual detail and immersion.1 I have chosen DOOM (1993) Quake II (1997) to compare and reference. DOOM and Quake II are representative of the genre and well known, but by themselves cannot

See "The Experience of Telepresence in Violent Video Games" a conference paper presented by Ron Tamborini at the 86th Annual National Communication Association (2000). 1

account for all the nuances between FPS.2 It should also be said that they are not the most recent examples of the FPS. However, as they are benchmarks in the genre's development, I believe an analysis of these texts can better expose broader currents of subjectivity and realism in the FPS video game.

Production and Realism One can hardly begin to think critically about video games without encountering 20th century critical thought's many probes into visuality. Such thinkers as Walter Benjamin and Susan Sontag provoked us to look beyond a text's finished form and to acknowledge its production. The influences of earlier visual media such as film and criticisms thereof provide a logical starting point for an analysis of video games. Notes Mark J.P. Wolf: It is perhaps due to the desire to measure up to the standards of visual realism set by film and television that the video game evolved as it has; today there are far fewer of the abstract game designs that were once so common in the days of Qix (1981) and Tempest (1980). (12) Importantly, Wolf writes that standards of visual realism were set by film and television (12). The standards of visual realism find their most articulated and studied form in classic Hollywood cinema. As Colin MacCabe argues in Theory and Film: Principles of Realism and Pleasure, I argue that film does not reveal the real in a moment of transparency, but rather that film is constituted by a set of discourses whichproduce a certain reality (62). It is the hiding of the production process and its

Doom, one of the most popular games of all time and the one that did the most to launch the FPS genre is still popular today. Quake II, also developed by id Software, represents another milemarker in the genre. The graphics engine developed for the game has been licensed out for use in other games. 2

conditions that creates the impression of realism. When one admits to the relationship between the text and its production, films can be understood as not employing a transparent route to things as they really are but, to borrow from John Berger, involve a way of seeing (8). Though video games are more obviously constructed realities than films or photographs, they are, as Steven Poole notes in Trigger Happy, to be treated as reality during game play (85). While playing a video game, one rarely considers the production aspects of the text. But just as the intrusion of a boom microphone into a scene alerts the filmgoer of production apparatus, if the computer freezes in the middle of a game, a player becomes similarly aware. In both cases the presented image has been tainted with evidence of production. As a practice, realism involves hiding production apparatuses and often means representing the on-screen action from a supposedly objective or detached point of view. Implicit in this goal of representing visual realism is the notion that lived reality is scarce. Susan Sontag writes in On Photography, To claim that photography must be realistic is not incompatible with opening up an even wider gap between image and reality, in which the mysteriously acquired knowledge (and the enhancement of reality) supplied by photographs presumes a prior alienation from or devaluation of reality. (121) For a study of realistic or interactive media such as DOOM or Quake II, this loss of lived experience that Sontag speaks of also implies that there is no baseline of reality to which we can compare visual representations such as photography or video games. We can draw upon semiotics and the work of Jacques Lacan to question reality as a stable, knowable baseline to which technological advances are often compared. In doing so, we

see that the reality outside the film or video game is also a constructed realitynot necessarily a yardstick for technological progress. Semiotics, or the study of signs was inaugurated by Ferdinand de Saussure, who theorized that all signs are composed of two parts: a signifier and a signified. A semiological analysis of what Wolf terms standards of realism set by television and film (12) might be described by Saussure's model as Signifier Standards, codes of realism interactivity Signified Reality

Decades later, Jacques Lacan argued that signifiers only refer to other signifiers, even as they attempt to refer to signifieds. The problem Lacan presents is that any representation of reality therefore incomplete: From which we can say that it is in the chain of the signifier that the meaning insists but that none of its elements consists in the signification of which it is as the moment capable. We are forced, then, to accept the notion of an incessant sliding of the signified under the signifier (743). Meaning is created by differences among the signifiers or elements in the chain. None of the signifiers are capable of creating the meaning present in the chain by itself. In other words, a representation of reality always refers to another representation of reality. This incessant sliding of the signified" (743) has significant implications for representations of reality in both film and video games. Mary Klages summarizes,

the process of becoming an adult, a self is the process of trying to fix, to stabilize, to stop the chain of signifiers so that stable meaningincluding the meaning of I becomes possible. Though of course Lacan says that this possibility is only an illusion, an image created by a misperception of the relation between body and self. (2) Lacans mirror stage, loss or separation from mother and the Real occurs, and the infant misrecognizes its reflection and physical self as a unified whole, or I. The purpose of such an activity is, as Klages points out, to stop the sliding of the signifier. This is the realm of the imaginary, a realm of images, whether conscious or unconscious (4). For this reason, self-recognition in video games and film has a similarity to the mirror stage because, as will be discussed below, films and video games often invite spectators to identify with an onscreen character or perspective in an act of voluntary misrecognition. Conflating this visual identification is Lacan's symbolic order or language. The Real is not accessible to those in the symbolic order (i.e. those who speak language and produce discourse), according to Lacan, because it is in part structured by the loss of the fullness (Real) originally present in the infant and mother relationship before I or me yet existed. Without delving any deeper into Lacan's work, we might say that neither visual representation nor symbolic representation (language) can be completely full and Real, though they try and often claim to be. This will become especially important as we address both visual perspective and written narrative in DOOM and Quake II. In the Sausurrean model, reality is a stable signified. Under Lacan's theory, the signified reality becomes a signifier as well, making an objective, one-to-one comparison of realism to reality impossible. As realism and realistic techniques such as

the use of the first-person perspective attempt to signify reality, realism itself becomes reality, a description of what can never be fully described. I'd now like to look at film historian Jean-Louis Comolli's argument that realism is a function of product differentiation and not the advancement of technology into a stable reality. In Machines of the Visible, Comolli writes, Thus the historical variation of cinematic techniquesseem to me to depend not on a rational-linear order of technological perfectibility nor an autonomous instance of scientific progress, but much rather on the offsettings, adjustments, arrangements carried out by a social configuration in order to represent itself, that is, at once to grasp itself identify itself, and itself produce itself in its representation. (109) This social configuration that produced cinema was capitalism, and so the logic of that system shapes how cinema is produced and consumed: It is not exactly within the logic of technology, nor within that of the economics of the film industryto adopt (or impose) a new product which in an initial moment poses more problems that the old and hence incurs the expense of adaptation without somewhere finding something to its advantage and profit. (Comolli, 115-116) Like films, video games such as DOOM and Quake II are mass marketed and compete with other video games for consumers. Applying Comolli's argument to video games frames the development of the signs of realism and interactivity not as a progressive movement towards a grounded, objective reality but as a movement away from other constructed realities, from other games. Taken as signifiers, realistic games achieve their realism, their meaning, only from comparison to each other as they seek to differentiate themselves. This means that the practices of realism in DOOM and Quake II (i.e. perspective) are not the accurate mimicry of reality (unknowable, according to Lacan)

but that realism emerges from contrasts between signifiers, between games. As Comolli suggested for the introduction of sound to cinema, these techniques of realism differentiate games by attempting to fill in the gap, the lack that structures any system of representation (116). This practice of differentiation also extends to the music of video games, and looking behind the music supplies concrete examples of the theory above. Steven Poole writes, in the far-off days of the Commodore 64 and Amiga, videogame music was far more distinct as a stylistic genre than it is now (69). How can we account for this in terms of the realism that DOOM and Quake II profess? All songs are obvious constructions. What is inherently unrealistic or pass about the melodies of early video games play? The answer cannot be simply that game developers and the public now know by some virtue what people 10 years ago were oblivious to: that video game music of that era was unrealistic. They were natural insofar as most video games had them. Even today, many games continue to incorporate music. If we say, It depends on the game we have actually hit the nail on the head. Using Comolli as a lens, we might say that music was incorporated to differentiate video games.3 There is no hard and fast rule about score and video games. Some games have a lot, some only a bit; some use no sound, some use pop music, others use elaborate scores. Thus, it not a question of realism, but of difference. Presently, the production team behind DOOM III (working for the same company that created DOOM and Quake II) is touting the skills of musician Trent Reznor as one of its sound designers. According to the development team, Reznor is there to make the

game scarier and more immersive. But just as important that Reznor is creating the sound for DOOM III is the implicit consumer knowledge that Reznor is not creating the sound for other games. That it is unclear whether or not musical score is realistic, or rather that both scored and unscored games can be realistic, suggests that there is no paragon of reality to reach towards in sound developmentmerely the desire for difference. Now that we've addressed production and realism, we need to say what kind of subjects DOOM and Quake II create and how this is done. Doing so will explore how the use of product differentiation is naturalized as realistic.

Subjectivity As film theory can be helpful in thinking about realism in video games, it can also be useful when considering subjectivity. In The Subject of Semiotics, Kaja Silverman gives an explanation of how producer and spectator in cinema provide a parallel to Emile Benveniste's concepts of the speaking subject and the subject of speech, which are both present at once when one utters the pronoun I. Silverman recounts the division between the level of enunciation (speaking subject) and the level of fiction (subject of speech) offered by earlier film theorists: The level of enunciation is in effect that of productionof camera movement, editing, composition, sound-recording, sound-mix, script, etc. The level of fiction designates the narrative within which the spectator of the finished film is encouraged to find him or herself, and the characters with whom he or she is encouraged to identify. (46-47)

3 The Minibosses' web site (www.minibosses.com) indicates that the band is not simply poking fun at the songs, but in their playfulness, respect the complexity and skill of the compositions. That such skill was originally recruited to write the scores suggests that the songs had a differentiating function among games.

The moviegoer does not produce the filmshe does not speak or invent the dialogue. But, the moviegoer is encouraged to identify with the characters. This is done through suture, which Silverman explains is the name given to the procedures by means of which cinematic texts confer subjectivity upon their viewers (195). It is by suture that Within this semiotic model the viewer does not have a stable and continuous subjectivity, but one which is activated intermittently, within discourse. The cinematic text constitutes the viewer's subjectivity for him or her. (48) We can chart this distinction as: Benveniste's I Speaking subject Subject of speech Film Production Characters, viewpoints etc, text that viewers identify with. FPS______ Production First-person perspective, me

In Video Kids: Making Sense of Nintendo, Eugene Provenzo elaborates on this situation: Most video gamesparticularly those found on systems such as Nintendo provide little or no opportunity for children to control the action themselves (93). In DOOM and Quake II, one might conceive of a similar slotted subjectivity. There is a role to be filled, and, by entering the role provided, the player enters into the game. If realistic film acts as a window to the world, realistic video games do the same, but they also add a key feature: it is a window that can be chosen and manipulated by the player. It is this appearance of choice that constitutes realistic interactivity. When playing the game by the rules, a player may speak with his or her actions but only according to

the laws of the game's production.4 Like the role of the cinematic spectator Silverman describes, the player of a FPS identifies intermittently but not fully with the role supplied because the gamer does not have a hand in the game's production. In other words, the speaking subject of the cinematic text is always situated at the site of production, while the spoken subject of that same text is most exemplarily found instead at the site of consumption (Silverman, 198). But how do the techniques of realism in DOOM and Quake II deny themselves as discourses or otherwise come to be seen as natural, and how do these games offer the appearance of choice during gameplay? To borrow from Louis Althusser's work, in these games, this slotted subject believes he or she is freely making these choices. To make production's discourse seem natural, technological differences (such as being able to look in 360 degrees) serve production as a means of differentiation. Products are naturalized as realistic and interactive through interpellation. Key to Althusserian subject formation is that those interpellated feel unique or individual: the individual is interpellated as a (free) subject in order that he shall submit freely to the commandment of the Subject, i.e. in order that he shall (freely) accept his subjection, i.e. in order that he shall make the gestures and actions of his subjection all by himself (123). Althusser does not believe that a clique of elites has propagated a scheme of interpellation but, similar to Lacan, that all representations given to individuals which govern their conditions of existence are imaginary (111-112). This process of naturalization is similar to the process of suture. Comprehension of the game's rules and
4

A helpful conceptualization of this situation can be found in "the Matrix" (1999). The ironically named "agents" of the Matrix are unable to go beyond their programming to combat Neo, who, by the power of his

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conventions (its technological differences from other games) is akin to being interpellated, and interpellation naturalizes those rules and conventions as realistic and freely chosen by the player. Christine Ward Gailey writes, The interactive quality of video games gives the player the impression of limitless choice. What the player does affects the outcome. But the perception of choice is largely illusory, since the frameworkis predetermined (84). To play Quake II or DOOM and accept that the screen view is your field of vision, to say this is me, is by itself evidence of interpellation by at least one of the game's dominant codes, namely acceptance of the perspective that gives a visual representation of I. As Silverman writes, The cinematic organization depends upon the subject's willingnessallowing a particular point of view to define what it sees. The operation of suture is successful at the moment that the viewing subject says, 'Yes, that's me,' or 'That's what I see'(205). We can chart the Althusserian model in regard to Quake II and DOOM: Althusser's Model Interpellation Individual hailed FPS The game codes, standards of realism production) Player, (consumption)

Though we might reason that to resist suture, or to ignore interpellation, one speaks through action, such a choice paradoxically reveals that the player knew that it was really he or she that was being hailed. Such recognition is for Althusser the literal turning point at which individuals become subjects.

human imagination, is not bounded by the architecture of the computer generated environment. Gamers, then, are akin to agents. 11

Realism and Subjectivity Making the subjected (one who is ruled over) feel like a subject (center of initiative) is naturalized as realism because to acknowledge that interactivity is a production-side phenomenon would remove any notion that the individual is choosing it, which is essential to Althusser's theory and the claims of interactivity. To preserve the semblance of autonomy, production must be obscured. Colin MacCabe writes, Hollywood cinema is largely concerned to make these two [the speaking subject and the subject of speech] coincide so that we can ignore what is at risk. But this coincidence can never be perfect because it is exactly in the divorce between the two that the film's existence is possible. (6869) One might see the purpose of the realistic first-person perspective as the shot that most aptly hides production, and, by taking this perspective, the player is given a realistic sense of autonomy and consequently thinks of himself as a speaker or a center of initiative. Upon scrutiny, one can observe that game interactivity and realism are functions of production, an aspect of the text in which players of DOOM, Quake II, or most video games have no part. 5 DOOM and Quake II cast players as spoken subjects, who do not themselves speak but are given the impression that they do. Interactive game play is not a dialogue

One of the reasons for the staying power of a game nearly 10 years old is not only an array of sequels and similar games, but id Softwares release of the DOOM source code. This allows fans to create additional levels for DOOM. Savvy gamers can build their own DOOM levels, which are offered on the Internet for fellow users to try out. Similarly, the popular game CounterStrike started as a modification for the retail game Half-Life. CounterStrike became popular enough to be sold as a game unto itself. The popularity of mods suggests that while rules and goal s are desirable in games, there is also a desire to write the script or speak the production. As such, modding seems to bear some resemblance to fan fiction, which video games seem to encourage. 12

between player and game but a script to be read and followed by the player. The performative/interactive aspects of games are often emphasized because as Aki Jarvinen writes, Games offer instant action, instant pleasure. The doses of pleasure are delivered according to a game mechanism. This is created by the designer, who allows/constructs things to happen in the game environment, but also by the player who achieves pleasure by successfully executing the action that the game requires in order for the game to continue. (72) While technological advances (i.e. tracking perspective, sound effects) emphasise [sic] action, spectacle, special effects (attractions) and spatiality instead of narration, (Jarvinen, 72) these advances and resulting spectacles are scripted as is the back-story in which these spectacles appear. For instance, in DOOM, players must simply survive. This is done by shooting your way to the exit door in each level. The levels, or boards, are sequential, though each one must often be explored extensively to find the scattered keys that unlock the path to the exit. There is time for dallying, and certainly time for killing monsters and experiencing other spectacles, but this get to the exit goal structures the game. In Quake II, a similar theme persists, but the individual levels are linked together into larger mission constellations. Individual levels within these constellations may be revisited to achieve multiple objectives, though larger mission groupings are separate. As games become more technologically differentiated and advanced and seem more interactive, earlier games such as DOOM seem less so and consequently less realistic. As Comolli suggests, the introduction of sound to film was realistic because sound was lacking in earlier films:

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As soon as they are produced, sound and speech are plebiscited as the truth which was lacking in the silent film.The decisive supplement, the ballast of reality (Bazin) constituted by sound and speech intervenes straightaway, therefore, as perfectionment and redefinition of the impression of reality. (116) It is only through a comparative difference that one is more realistic. For example, in Quake II, enemies jump out of the way of gunfire, whereas, in DOOM, enemies are more or less armed, stationary targets. Quake II also uses a more advanced graphics engine than DOOM does. While DOOM superimposes two-dimensional characters (called sprites) against a background, Quake II's graphic engine depicts figures in three dimensions through the use of polygon modeling. One cannot say that Quake II is realistic other than by comparison to another representation of reality. This is true for comparisons to earlier and later games but is also true in any comparison to real life because human beings, according to Lacan and Althusser, cannot conceive of reality without creating a representation of it. Any description of lived experience, a description of what is realistic, is crippled by the fact that no system of representation can stuff the whole world and also itself into a presentation of complete fullness. A further example of how reality and interactivity are dictated by production and then smoothed over can be found in an examination of Quake II's back story or narrative. While these narratives are notoriously weak in the FPS genre, the back-story provides the games foundation, or rather the container in which real-time game play and choice occurs. 6 Colin MacCabe locates the division of the subject of speech and the

In an interview last May with Wired, id Software designer John Carmack said, "I think games are at their best when they are true to the sense of their activity.games are not storiesthe better of the story you tell in many senses, the worse of a game it becomes." Carmack, who has designed each game in the DOOM and Quake series, cites the uncooperative nature of the gamer as his reason for going light on plot. This 14

speaking subject as the split between discourse (which is produced by a speaking subject) and narrative, which must deny the time of its own tellingit must refuse its status as discourse, in favour of its self-presentation as simple identity, complete knowledge (69). This statement clearly recalls Lacan: entry into the symbolic order is evidence of lack, a separation from the simple identity and fullness of the infant. This gives one reason to question the authority of narrative, and a look at the narrative of Quake II reveals its origin as a discourse in production that must present itself as such complete knowledge: Shortly after landing on an alien surface, you learn that hundreds of your men have been reduced to just a few. Now you must fight your way through heavily fortified military installations, lower the city's defenses and shut down the enemy's war machine. Only then will the fate of humanity be known. This is the full extent of Quake II's backstory; this paragraph effectively cordons off the game world. It creates a beginning, an end, and a required course of action. In other words, it creates a full reality that players are invited to be involved in a personal wayhence the word you. As Provenzo notes, video games represent microworlds complete unto themselves. The images they present are easy to fall in love with, often narcissistic in nature, allowing the player the potential to function within a self-selected and artificial microworld (38). It should not be forgotten that video games are mass marketed and, for the most part, no more individualized for viewers than a primetime situation comedy. The apparent individualization and interactive pleasure that Provenzo notes can be seen

suggests that while some form of narrative is necessary, or perhaps inevitable, game designers are quite cognizant of the prescripted "choice" tied to it. In the same interview, Trent Reznor named what he thought made DOOM important: "When the original DOOM came out, not only was it technologically beyond anything elsethere were chances taken, there were rules broken." This again frames game design and production as fueled by a desire for difference. 15

through an Althusserian lens as an example of interpellation. This type of relationship to the game is also suggested by Poole in Trigger Happy: because one needs to understand the rules of the semiotic system present and act as if those rules, and not the rules of the real world, applied to oneself. The requirement is to project the active consciousness into the semiotic realm. (185) Poole's player participation is not in production but in acceptance of the game's codes. The player's choice constitutes his interactivity. Poole goes on to draw what sounds like a thoroughly Althusserian conclusion: The videogame player is absorbed into the system (185). Poole's player can accept or identify with a role and perform various onscreen actions but cannot create that role. This then, is the traditional solution thus far in video game history: the drama is provided by the prescripted story, the virtual exploration is interactive, and never the twain shall meet (101-102). Because interactivity supposes a center of initiatives, which according to Althusser is illusion, it might be said better that the narrative of the game is one set hailings (cinematic cut scenes, for example, or end of level score reports, or the backstory) and that rules for performance comprise another set.7 Poole's separation of narrative story from the players performative relationship to the environment exposes the naturalized rules of the performance which makes them seem realistic and chosen when they are, as Jarvinen notes, scripted and necessary for game play (72). This is why, in Poole's observation, interactivity seems possible between the narrative cuts and why the narrative itself seems as oppressive as gravity does in lived experience.

In the case of the FPS these rules for exploration have their roots in Western culture's privileging of sight. 16

The work of Marsha Kinder and others suggest that video games may involve a larger player role than indicated by the Althusserian model and that interactivity may be a function of consumption as well as a function of production. While my concern is mainly how DOOM and Quake II naturalize production techniques as realistic and interactive through the dominant goals and means of play, one might also describe a player that negotiates or replaces the given goals and means of a game as interactive. This is a different kind of interactivity, in which a player intentionally brings to play alternative rules or goals not prescribed by the game. In Playing With Power, Marsha Kinder suggests that The dual spectator/player positioncontradicts this Althusserian notion of a totally passive subject (12). Kinder's study synthesizes psychoanalysis and cognitive theory to study the role of popular media, including video games, on the subject of development of children. In part, Kinder's study is concerned with to what extent a subject can negate dominant cultural values presented by the game. Similarly, Mizuko Ito has drawn upon the work of Althusser and deCerteau to study how children can create their own goals within game play and in that process take up subject positions different from the dominant one. This is also an example of nonprescribed interactivity. Though Ito does not address any FPS, the study does suggest that alternate subjectivities may be able to squeeze themselves out from under the dominant discourse of the games. In these cases, the ability to play the game against itself is probably related to how successfully the game can be played while pursuing alternate means to the dominant goals. Because games carry a reinforcement component, changing the means or the goals

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(whether during gameplay or programming) must be rewarding if the game is to be played more than once.8 For example, Quake II is virtually unplayable without firing a weapon, but, theoretically, winning without shooting could constitute some type of negotiated subjectivity. Or the gamer might choose a different definition of what winning means and use dominant means to achieve that alternate goal. It should be said that the choice to not fire a weapon, for instance, should be seen as the product of interpellation by an alternative discourse. It is not so much that interpellation is overcome in an act of independence, but that an alternate interpellation is being responded to instead. This does not overturn Althusser's model of subjectivity, but suggests some room for negotiation and thus follows in the footsteps of others who have found Althusser's theory compelling but overbearing. For both sound and visuals, claims of realism are based in production of difference and the naturalization of these differences. Steven Poole writes, The purpose of a videogameis never to simulate real life, but to offer the gift of play (63). As realistic as first-person shooters may seem, Poole's point is hard to dismiss, given the lack of consequences in game play. But it is in the service of this gift that realism is invoked, and it is the production of play between the games that drives claims of interactive realism.

See chapter two of Mind at Play by Goeffrey R. Loftus and Elizabeth F. Loftus for a study of reinforcement and video game design.

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Works Cited Althusser, Louis. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Ed. Frederic Jameson. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001. 84-126. Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1972. Comolli, Jean-Louis. Machines of the Visible. Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation. Ed. Timothy Druckrey New York: Aperture Books, 1996.109-117. DOOM III's John Carmack and Trent Reznor discuss the game's new audio-visual features. Audio interview. Wired, 2002. 28 May 2002. http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,52661,00.html (2 Dec. 2002). Gailey, Christine Ward. Mediated Messages: Gender, Class and Cosmos in Home Video Games. Journal of Popular Culture 27.1 (1993): 81-97. Ito, Mizuko. Kids and Simulation Games: Subject Formation Through Human Machine Interaction. Paper for the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social studies of Science Oct. 1997. http://www.itofisher.com/PEOPLE/mito/Ito.4S97.pdf (Dec 2002). Jarvinen, Aki. Quake Goes the Environment: Game Aesthetics and Archaeologies. Digital Creativity 12.2 (2001): pp. 67-76. Kinder, Marsha. Playing with power in movies, television, and video games : from Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1991. Klages, Mary. Jacques Lacan. 8 Oct. 2001. http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/lacan.html (2 Dec. 2002). Lacan, Jacques. The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud. Critical Theory Since 1965. Ed. Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle. Tallahassee: Florida State University Press. 738-756. Loftus, Elizabeth F. and Geoffrey R. Loftus. Mind At Play: The Psychology of Video Games. New York: Basic Books, 1983. MacCabe, Colin. Theory and Film: Principles of Realism and Pleasure. Tracking the Signifier: Theoretical Essays. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985. Poole, Steven. Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2000.
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Provenzo, Eugene. Video Kids: Making Sense of Nintendo. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991. Silverman, Kaja. The Subject of Semiotics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Picador USA, 1973. Tamborini, Ron. The Experience of Telepresence in Violent Videogames. Paper presented at the 86th annual convention of the National Communication Association, Seattle, WA Nov. 8-12 2000. http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~sherryj/videogames/VG&T.pdf (3 Dec. 2002). Wolf, Mark J.P. Inventing Space: Toward a Taxonomy of On- and Off-Screen Space in Video Games. Film Quarterly 51.1 (1997): 11-23.

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