[BoRT Feb. 2015] Band of Gamers: Ingress in Atlanta

This post was written for the February 2015 Blogs of the Round Table

For the Lovers of the world, February 14^th was the day to look forward to this month. But for the Players of Ingress, it would have been hard to compete with the 21^st.

Ingress is a free-to-play massively-multiplayer augmented reality smartphone game created by Google. As that ridiculous genre list may tell you, it’s also an incredibly complex game. So I’m going to split this into two sections. The first section will briefly review the mechanics of the game, while the second section will report on a real-world Ingress event from the 21^st.

Playing Ingress

Allow me to bottom-line the game for you:

• There are two teams, green and blue.
• The green team (yay!) are officially called “The Enlightened,” unofficially “Frogs.”
• The blue team (boo!) are officially called “The Resistance,” unofficially “Smurfs.”
• These two teams battle for control of portals and perhaps the fate of the world.

Gameplay in Ingress revolves around “portals,” game-world locations which are linked to real-world locations (churches, museums, public art) via GPS coordinates. In order to interact with a portal, a player must physically travel to its real-world location. It is essentially a gameified version of Google Maps.

Level 8 Portal

Each portal has 8 slots that players can fill with resonators. The level of the resonators determines the strength of the portal – level 8 resonators mean a powerful level 8 portal that drops powerful items, level 1 resonators means a weak level 1 portal that drops weak items. So while a single player could conceivably play the game by themselves, they would miss out on the most powerful game items.

Players also have a limit on how many high-level resonators they can put on an individual portal, based on their level. Even the highest level players can only deploy one level 8 resonator on a portal, so making a level 8 portal requires eight high-level players to gather in a single location.

Friendly portals can be “linked” in straight lines on the map. When three portals are linked to make a triangle, a portion of the map is covered in a green or blue field. Each team's score is determined by how much of the Earth's surface is covered in their fields. Since links cannot cross other links, setting up large, strategically valuable fields requires cooperation from all allied players in a given area.

Boldly They Rode: The Battle of the O. Lamar Allen Sustainable Education Building

On the 21^st, Google hosted two large events called “Anomalies” in Austin, Texas and Florence, Italy. The Austin event had sub-events in Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Columbia while the Florence event had sub-events in the Czech Republic, Egypt, and Spain.

To cover this historic event, I was embedded with the heroes of Team 3C, a group of Enlightened players in downtown Atlanta. I was originally scheduled for Florence, but it turns out that I am not an actual war correspondent and thus do not have an expense account.

The mood was tense in the pre-game meeting, where over a dozen Enlightened players crammed into a single hotel room. The results of Anomalies affect the ongoing in-game story of Ingress, and the Smurfs were coming off of a winning streak in 2014. Team 3C was tasked with taking and holding portals of extreme importance to the future of the human race - if we lost the day, humanity would be devoured by an evil supercomputer and/or aliens.

We discussed strategies, recommended apps for communicating (GroupMe) and improving phone performance (NoRoot Firewall). These apps would be crucial for coordinating Team 3C’s actions within the team and with other Enlightened teams in the area.

One thing that has changed since the earliest days of Ingress is the development of distinct combat roles during Anomalies. The rising stakes of the game and the greater number of players has made specialization a necessity. I was assigned the role of Destroyer, tasked with using Bursters to clear out enemy portals and resonators. Others were assigned as Modders, Deployers, or Linkers.

Team 3C’s first target was the O. Lamar Allen Sustainable Education Building on the Georgia Tech campus. Well, technically it was a plaque on the front of the building, but whatever. We marched across the campus grounds and took strategic positions around the building.

Team 3C arrived first and was able to upgrade the portal to Level 8 without interference. We installed shields and waited in the icy post-dawn air for the enemy to arrive. We traded war stories of Anomalies past and reminisced about our distant homes: Kentucky, Tennessee, and the suburbs of Atlanta.

The O. Lamar Building in real life and in Ingress

Then, a contingent of Smurfs came charging (well, strolling) over a nearby parking lot. The battle had begun. Within minutes, the O. Lamar Building was a hotly contested battlefield – in the game world.

The portal dropped from Level 8 to Level 3, despite our Deployer’s efforts to replace the destroyed resonators. The Destroyers switched roles and joined the effort to defend the portal. My phone’s battery drained at an unsustainable rate. Even a seasoned imaginary war correspondent such as myself wondered: could Team 3C hold?

Team 3C valiantly defending the O. Lamar

Then the surrounding portals went blue and my blood froze: the Smurfs were trying to throw a field over the Lamar. It was time to do and die. With imaginary bombs exploding around us, Team 3C’s valiant Destroyers readied our smartphones and charged the enemy position across the parking lot.

Bursters to the left! Bursters to the right! Bursters to the front! Through a rain of enemy fire, we destroyed the enemy’s portals. The Smurfs reclaimed them. We blew them up again. The Smurfs reclaimed them. And so forth.

Although we were unable to hold the enemy’s portals, we were able to keep them busy, and above all, away from the Lamar. The Deployers redoubled their efforts to replace our destroyed resonators. Team 3C would hold – but at what cost?

And then, a miracle.

Deep in the backwoods of Georgia, three teams of strategically placed Enlightened players placed three links that blanketed half of Georgia in an emerald field.

A cheer went up from Team 3C. The brave soldiers who placed that field missed out on the excitement of the Anomaly, but their sacrifice of time and gas money would not be forgotten – or wasted. We attacked the Smurfs with renewed vigor and drove them back beyond the parking lot.

The battle was over, but the war was not. Team 3C saw three more engagements that day which time will not permit me to tell. But will an ungrateful nation soon forget The Battle of The Wells Fargo Mural, where we braved light precipitation? Or the horrors of the Long March to the Tuscany Time Piece, which was several blocks from the Wells Fargo Mural?

But then, Team 3C did not give their Saturday afternoon for the glory or the honor. We laid down our time and battery lives for something more important, something which will echo in the annals of history: experience points.

At the end of the day we made our final march back to the hotel for the after party, spirits lifted with the heady thrill of victory and whiskey. On the way, we stopped by Google’s offices in Atlanta for a team picture.

And Frogs in Georgia now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Pepin’s day.

Special thanks to the brave women and men of Team 3C and the Atlanta Enlightened

Catchet and Value: A Little Competition

                I spend a lot of time reading white power blogs.

                It’s not because I agree with them, mind you. I intentionally avoid discussing my ethnicity/gender/sexuality on this blog, but let’s just say that I am not the flavor of human that white power advocates like.

                But I nonetheless love these racist blogs, how they build a rational apparatus around a definitively non-rational worldview. They take a patently discredited idea (whites are inherently biologically, morally, and intellectually superior to non-whites) and then build intricate intellectual systems around it.

                In a (very specific) way, white power ideology is the same as any other critical apparatus. The biggest issue that I have with Marxist, Freudian, or even Feminist literary criticism is that they force an external apparatus onto the text, sometimes seeing things that are only there if you subscribe to a certain worldview. They are valuable as part of your critical toolkit, but can also put an obstacle between you and the text.


Sometimes a spaceship is just a spaceship

                This also applies to the critics that I personally favor – Hegel, Jung, and Christ. They all provide me with powerful tools, but I intentionally switch between them and others in order to examine texts from multiple, conflicting angles. By engaging in multiple active dissections of the text, I get a better sense of it than when I dogmatically commit to a single system.

              This is a very simple truth that is very easy to forget: more viewpoints means a better picture. You need special cameras to make a proper 3D movie – adding 3D in Post just doesn’t look as good.

                Whatever issues I have with Feminist criticism as a single monolithic viewpoint, it is extremely valuable as an additional angle (unlike white power criticism, which I use solely for novelty purposes). As much of a Jesus fan as I am, researching the viewpoints of other religions provides a much-needed counterweight to blind dogmatism. By opening up myself to others, I am able to see a bigger picture.

                All of this becomes more powerful when it is not located solely within the self. If having multiple viewpoints within oneself is a valuable tool, opening yourself up to the viewpoints of others is even better. The bigger the conversation gets, the more unique takes we have on a given subject, and the greater the likelihood we will arrive at a complete picture.

                But there is a difference between Value and Cachet.

                I should warn you that I am going to venture into an argument that may at first seem like something from a white power blog. We have all encountered a version of this argument and danced the Reverse Discrimination Tango. As much as games criticism is in dire need of fresh, non-King of Sweden perspectives (White Male CIS Hetero Physically Abled yada yada yada), there is something distasteful about forcing the Kings of Sweden out of the conversation on the basis of their skin (and yada yada yada).

                This is where this argument diverges into two forms. In one argument, conversations are a limited resource and the mere existence of programs, blogs, or critical spaces which give a platform exclusively to non-Kings of Sweden is a bad thing. Every journal must be a pure Darwinian meritocracy, where only the strong shall survive. Any attempt to encourage the formation of new voices is tantamount to intellectual socialism. If the proverbial Black Muslim Handicapped Trans Lesbian cannot cut it in the free market of ideas, then they deserve to fail.

                This is an argument that we can more or less reject out of hand. The free market does not work without regulation – monopolies crowd out competition and put shackles around the Invisible Hand. Those with hiring power tend to hire people they relate to, people who are like themselves. If these are the ideas assigned value by the powerful, only people who share these ideas will be given a platform.

                But there is a legitimate point buried beneath the bullshit. There is a substantive difference between Value and Cachet. Cachet views alternate voices as an arbitrary quota which must be numerically fulfilled without any consciousness of how these voices improve the conversation. There are blogs and magazines that want alternate voices only for Cachet, their ability to point to a writer and say “Hey! We can’t be racist/sexist/intolerant/generally terrible human beings because we have X writer on staff!”

                It’s the “Black Friend” argument, the idea that acknowledging the existence of “The Good Ones” is incompatible with being racist. The “Black Friend” (swap out for “Hispanic Friend,” “Gay Friend,” or “Female Friend” as necessary) is not Valued for their unique contributions as an individual but given Cachet for how they prop up another’s image.

                “I can’t be homophobic, I kiss everyone when I’m drunk!”

                “I can’t be transphobic, I Liked a gender-swapped Mario cosplay on Facebook!”

                “I can’t be misogynist, I looooove them titties!"

                My magazine can’t be pushing regressive male-power fantasies, we hired a girl - who we keep on a tight leash lest she let slip some insight into the female condition (lol, menses joke) that angers our subscribers.

                The Kings of Sweden are right about one thing: Cachet is not the same as Value. As much as I support publications that decide to recruit writers outside of the white male circle jerk (lol, mental image), this has very little meaning if these voices are muzzled. Quotas are indeed not a good thing, but not because they go too far. The point of pursuing diversity is to get something that you are incapable of producing yourself, not to hear your own talking points delivered in a different accent.

                So I understand why the Kings of Sweden rage when a magazine or company hires a sub-standard writer simply because they need to round out their minority roster. I understand the meritocratic ideal of color-blind competition. But I absolutely reject the claim that institutions can function as pure meritocracies, given that humans are humans and humans are demonstrably terrible people.

                Meritocracy is a noble theory but it only works in reality if we ignore the existence of the Good Old Boy System, the network of contacts and favors that renders the idea of truly free competition ludicrous. One of the best ways to combat the Good Old Boy System without imposing arbitrary quotas is the development of alternate networks which provide similar boosts to alternate voices (although in practice, these alternate networks have less funding and leverage than the G.O.B.S.).

                More importantly, I refuse to confuse Cachet with Value. It is easy to prove that Cachet is worthless, but Cachet is simply not the same thing as Value. So I completely support the building of alternative spaces which exclude the Kings of Sweden and give alternative voices a shot at breaking into the conversation. Some may worry that this means less of the pie for those who “truly deserve it.” I say it means giving everyone an equal shot to prove that they truly deserve the pie. Even better, it forces the market to expand beyond its safety zone, meaning more pie for everyone.

                Sure, there may be an Inuit Asexual Buddhist Southpaw out there who is an objectively terrible writer. Alternative spaces have to make tough, market-driven decisions too. But alternative spaces also generally understand that Cachet is not Value. How could they not? They have to work on smaller budgets, get less access to the industry, and are even more dependent on their supporters than the G.O.B.S. could ever imagine. You think the market is a brutal place? It’s even more brutal for outsiders.

                Do you oppose hiring people for their Cachet? Fine, I agree. The question is, are you actively seeking out alternate voices for their Value? On a long enough timeline, profits for all industries approach zero – more competitors fighting for the same pie (even if they’re all Kings of Sweden) means less pie for all competitors. Even if game criticism is a profit-driven business, you cannot deny that without innovation, without intentionally reaching out for new ideas and new markets, businesses wither up and die. 

                So fuck Cachet. Show me what you Value. Prove to me that you are willing to risk short term loss in a crowded and dying market for long term gain in new, growing markets. Prove to me that the white male circle jerk is your worst-case scenario. Diversity should never be an artificially imposed policy, but a rational recognition that seeing the whole picture makes you objectively stronger.

                Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go re-read The Turner Diaries.

[DC004] Azuma vs. Okada: Defining Otaku

Previous: [003] Azuma vs. Hegel: Defining History

            For the next section of this series, I will be examining some other contemporary studies of otaku/postmodern culture in comparison to Azuma’s model.

Mr. Okada Toshio

            The first periodization of otaku history was proposed in Okada Toshio's Otakugaku nyūmon ("Introduction to Otakuology"), a 1996 book based on a seminar taught by Okada while adjunct professor at the University of Tokyo. Okada's periodization is surprisingly close to Azuma's, even though it does not take any cues from Hegel or Kojève.

            Otakuology is perhaps closer to Nietzschean philosophy, in that it presents otaku as a “New Type” of humanity (taking the term from Mobile Suit Gundam) more skilled at processing visual information and resisting social pressures than “normal” humans (14). The message is that otaku are an advanced, improved version of humanity

            Okada was born in 1958 in Osaka. He attended the Osaka University of the Arts, but dropped out of school to co-found the legendary animation studio Gainax. He became one of the first public advocates of the otaku culture at a time when the word “otaku” could not be broadcast on NHK (1). He was frequently invited to speak on television shows and adopted the nickname of “Otaking.” He has written over 30 books, the majority of which are about the otaku subculture, and was a critical figure in helping American

entrepreneurs secure the rights to sell anime in the United States (Leonard 38).

            The writings of Okada have not received an English translation, perhaps because they lack the refined critical structure of Azuma. But as the otaku community’s first apologist, his work deserves attention as a crucial link in otaku evolution.

            In Introduction to Otakuology, Okada presents three generations of otaku, with his periodization based around what media they were most interested in and what technology they used to enjoy it. The three generations are:

            First Generation - Born in Showa 30 (1955), Okada describes them as the “Special Effects Generation.”  The SFX Generation was interested in Godzilla, Ultraman, and classic American Sci-Fi such as Lost in Space. 

            Second Generation - Born in Showa 40 (1965), Okada describes them as the “Anime Generation.”  As with Azuma's Era of Fiction, they were interested in anime such as Mobile Suit Gundam and Space Battleship Yamato.

            Third Generation - Born in Showa 50 (1975), Okada does not give them a special generational label. This generation is described as having a wide variety of interests; garage kits, video games, voice actors, Neon Genesis Evangelion, dōjinshi (fan comics), and dating simulators.

            Given that Okada consistently sets ten years between generations, it is interesting that he does not describe otaku born in Showa 60 (1985), perhaps because they would only have been eleven years old at the time.  Okada did, however, revisit the issue of the emerging generations of otaku in his 2008 book Otaku wa sude ni shindeiru (You Otaku Are Already Dead).

            In this book, Okada lays out his grievances against the younger generations of otaku, claiming that they have destroyed what it means to be an otaku (thus, “you otaku are already dead”).  His complaints are varied, but they can perhaps be summed up in two points: moe subculture and the younger generation’s desire for social acceptance.

            It is interesting that moe subculture is such a point of contention for Okada, seeing as how Azuma places Gainax’s Evangelion as the Genesis of moe culture.  Okada says that his anger is based on experiences with moe fans that claim one cannot be an otaku if one does not “get” moe subculture. 

            Okada, the self-proclaimed “Otaking,” takes issue with this. How dare moe fans accuse him of not being an otaku? He was the leading defender of the otaku community decades before moe existed. According to Okada, the older generations of otaku had a Big Tent policy where fans of anime, SFX shows, Science Fiction, and military equipment all got along as one happy family. To say that a person is not an otaku because they are not interested in one aspect of otaku culture conflicts with his utopian vision of the otaku community.

            Okada also sees the younger generations as desiring mainstream approval. This conflicts with Okada's view of otaku as a “New Type” of humanity (essentially the next stage in evolution) superior to the average human.  He contrasts the calendars of “normal people” going on Christmas dates in December and celebrating New Year's in January with the otaku calendar, which centers on the release schedule of new anime and the summer and winter Comic Markets.  Moe fans who desire the approval of mainstream society are counter-evolutionaries.

            Okada's work is interesting not just because his periodization is so similar to Azuma's, but because it so clearly encapsulates changes in the otaku community.  Born in 1958, Okada is very much an exemplar of the First Generation, with very strong sense of the Grand Narrative.  For him, being an otaku is not simply about being a fan of anime or video games, it is about being a member of a group with a very specific worldview.

            Much like the Red Army or Aum Shinrikyo, he has an “us vs. them” mentality with society-rejecting otaku on one side and everyone else on the other.  The influx of moe fans who do not share these social values has overwhelmed the “true” otaku, making it impossible to have a legitimate otaku subculture.

            While Okada’s philosophy does not line up with Azuma, his periodization of different generations of otaku is almost identical. Azuma focuses on historical turning points and Okada simply gives 10-year spans, but both reach the same conclusions on the tastes and consumption patterns of otaku generations.

            Having declared the death of otaku, Okada went on to write books on dieting and career success.  It was a bizarre end to the reign of the Otaking, who had helped create anime giant Gainax, wrote Otaku no Video, and helped usher in an era of international mainstream success for the otaku industry.  In many ways a victim of his own success, Okada's tireless efforts to redefine otaku as something other than sexual deviants paved the way for critics such as Eiji Ōtsuka and Azuma Hiroki.

Don't Stop Believin'

Next: [005] Azuma vs. Allison: Global Flows

[BoRT Jan. 2015] Vincent Libre: A Catherine Drinking Game

"The original is unfaithful to the translation" / "O original não é fiel à tradução"
- Jorge Luis Borges

My friend “Rick" (name changed to protect the guilty) and I are both fans of the 2011 Atlus game Catherine. Well, I say that we are both fans of Catherine, but I played it in Japanese and he played it in English. That’s one the biggest questions in the field of translation, whether a translated text is ever truly the same as the original. To rephrase, is a translation the same work in a new language or a new work unto itself?

This is a big long question with a big long history, so I’m not even going to attempt to answer it. Besides, it’s a question that comes from the translation of textual works, where the reader only has written words to guide their impressions.

When the original text is a video game, the player does not have to rely solely on written text for information and meaning. Meaning also comes from the graphic assets, the music, a voice actor’s tone of voice, or even, dare we suggest, from gameplay. After all, Mario jumps the same in every language. So perhaps a translated video game can be closer to the original than a translated book.

Catherine and Kyasarin 「キャサリン」 have the same music, graphical elements, gameplay mechanics, characters, moral choice system, and the same overall plot, but one is the original and one is a translation. The text is the same, but the context is different. Rick and I have played the same ludⁱⁱ, but have we played the same video game?

So here’s the game-within-a-game: 1). Rick will play Kyasarin in, using his less-than-fluent Japanese. 2). We both must take a drink whenever he needs a translation. 3). We will limit ourselves to Rum, Whiskey, Beer, and Sake – the drinks served at Stray Sheep, the in-game bar.

Rick gets a Great Escape
(note the balling Odie glass)

The Subject:

“Rick,” a single white male about the same age as Vincent who shares his love for Rum and Cokes (nee Cuba Libres). A serendipitous coincidence indeed.

Rick spent some years working in Japan and has a decent grasp of the spoken language. However, he refuses to learn how to read kanji, the non-phonetic semi-pictorial characters that are the bane of many a would-be Japanese student.

Part of Kyasarin’s gameplay involves choosing responses from lists of dialogue choices. Rick will be able to get the general gist of what the characters are saying when they speak, but has no idea what most of his responses mean since they are written instead of spoken. This will make things doubly dangerous for us.

While his previous exposure to the game may contaminate the game-within-a-game, his new responses to a decontextualized situation will help me determine the extent to which Catherine is the same game in translation. As they say, In Vino Veritas.

Voice Acting:

As expected, Rick had little trouble with Kyasarin’s gameplay. The block-shoving and climbing were the same in the original and the English translation. What did change was his relation to the other characters: how he felt about their personalities and motivations and how he responded to them.

After watching Katherine’s first appearance, Rick commented that she was “less annoying in this version” (incidentally, the voice of the Japanese Katherine is Korono Mitsuishi, the voice of Sailor Moon). When he played the English version, he immediately disliked her voice actor and this

influenced his decisions throughout the game. But he continued to warm to her Japanese version throughout the game – in another scene she puts two lumps of sugar in Vincent’s tea, a gesture that was charming in a Japanese context, but controlling and domineering in an English context.

Rick also started to turn against Vincent. He claimed that Vincent's anti-marriage stance makes sense in English, but sounds whiny in Japanese. This does not seem to have anything to do with Vincent’s Japanese voice actor – the argument just sounds more convincing in English.

This difference in impressions extended to minor characters as well. Rick felt more drawn to Paul (the tie-wearing sheep) in Japanese. Paul’s Japanese voice actor uses very masculine terms (ore and omae / I and you, but rude) and has a more confident, commanding tone. In Rick’s words, he is “more worthy of attention” and so Rick pays careful attention to his dialogue.

Conversely, Justin (the reporter) sounds “more timid and less interesting” than his English counterpart. He feels less drawn to help the reporter or even to interact with him at all. Unlike Paul, who uses dominating, masculine language and becomes an object of attention, Justin’s weak language becomes background noise.

Many of the characters strike Rick the same in Japanese as in English; Toby, Erica, Johnny, and even Catherine evoke the same responses in both languages. Although Rick no longer finds Katherine annoying, he is still more drawn to the energetic, carefree Catherine.

Most interesting for me was Rick’s response to Orlando, Vincent’s closest friend: sheer confusion. Maybe it’s his long, rambling sentences, maybe it’s his use of colloquial words like motteki (period of attractiveness), but Rick can hardly understand a word out of the guy’s mouth. Every time Orlando appears on screen we instinctively reach for our glasses.

Texting:

"What do the squiggly marks mean?"

In Catherine, Vincent receives text messages from various characters. The player can choose from various responses, cycling through lists of preprogrammed phrases. We knew from the start that these sections would be brutal, but Rick gamely tried to figure them out.

His responses to the texts either move him closer to “Law” (as represented by Katherine) or “Chaos” (as represented by Catherine). He was invested in the experience and wanted to give an “honest” response that would reflect his actual intentions.

Even from the first text, Rick and Vincent both grunted with frustration as the selections were entered and deleted. There was always just something slightly off about the available responses, something which fails to express what Rick “really wants to say.” Eventually, he asked for my help in confirming what the responses meant. Drinking ensued, but having the meaning of the responses clarified only increased Rick’s frustration. “Learn to text, Vincent,” he griped, finishing off a Cuba Libre.

Finally, Rick settled on a text message and hits send. His response moves him closer to Law, even though he prefers Catherine. He explained that composing a text in Japanese (even with a translator) was more difficult than in English. “These responses could mean too many things in Japanese. In English, they have more concrete meanings.”

Once again, these pre-set phrases have the same mechanical weight in the translation. Each possible selection moves the player’s alignment towards Law or Chaos by the same amount in both languages. But changing the linguistic context completely changed how Rick felt about what his responses meant. Just as remembering two lumps of sugar seemed controlling in English and endearing in Japanese, the cultural context surrounding the text messages changed how Rick felt about them, thus ensuring I would finish the whiskey much sooner than expected.

Conversations and Morality:

Conversation choices and confessional answers also function like the text messages: certain responses move you closer to Law (and Katherine) and others move you towards Chaos (and

Catherine).

Chose carefully.

This was perhaps the most frustrating game mechanic for Rick. When he encouraged his fellow climbers, it moved him closer towards Law and away from Catherine. Rick was visibly frustrated whenever this happened. “I just said that I don’t think murder is a good idea! Why does that mean I want frumpy Katherine?”

On the next level, Rick came into conflict with another sheep trying to climb the same wall. Rick yelled at the sheep and smacked it mercilessly out of the way. Apparently, his desire to help others did not extend to those who get in the way.

Still, Rick responded to the game’s moral questions honestly even when it moved him further away from his goal. He did seem to take special pleasure when his response to a question in Japanese was the same as his response in the English version. “It's nice to know that regardless of language, my morality remains the same.”

Unlike the text messaging system, with its many different possible combinations of phrases, the conversation choices are binary. The choices tend to avoid “murder orphans/give orphans candy” Manichean dichotomy, but it is still fairly easy to tell which one is Law and which one is Chaos. Even with his limited Japanese reading abilities, Rick was able to successfully navigate most of the choices by himself, thus sparing our livers untold amounts of abuse.

Results:

Mixing rum, whiskey, beer, and sake is not a great idea.

Rick was initially of the position that Catherine and Kyasarin were different games – that the original and translation were two distinct works. This was borne out in his feelings about the various characters. Although this was partially because he found some of the Japanese actors more or less appealing than their English counterparts (Paul and Justin), it was also partially because of the differences in Japanese cultural context and English cultural context (the two lumps of sugar).

But there was one thing that did not change between the two versions: Rick’s ultimate response to the moral/personal issues raised by the game. Even though he felt Japanese Katherine was more convincing and Japanese Vincent was a whiner, he still ultimately preferred Catherine. Moreover, he still opted to sabotage this goal by attempting to help his fellow climbers. Even while his impressions changed, his “morality remains the same.”

What conclusions can we take away from this? I dunno. The perennial question of translation remains unanswered, but here are my points of interest:

1). The mechanical elements of gameplay are not effected by translation (although they may be changed by localization).

2), Rick's differing reactions to the two versions of the game had less to do with the quality of the translation (the English version is fairly accurate) and more with the linguistic context in which the story takes place.

3). In addition, Rick's perceptions of the characters were also greatly influenced by the performances of the voice actors, something which the translators presumably had no control over. 

4). Even if translation changes a video game, the player can still chose how they respond to it. Rick chose to roleplay as himself in both versions of Catherine, even while consciously taking into account how the same basic phrase had different connotations in each language.

[DC003] Azuma Vs. Hegel: Defining History

Previous: [DC002] What is DatabaseConsumption (and Where Does it Come From)?

            Azuma Hiroki's Database Consumption Model is based in large part on Hegel's three-stage model of historical development, but there are some serious discrepancies between Hegel’s view of history and Azuma’s. While some of these discrepancies are caused by Azuma’s reliance on Alexandre Kojève’s description of Hegel (snobbism, animalism), the most glaring issue for me is Azuma’s definition of Modernity.

            Hegel's historical model describes the Pre-Enlightenment, Modern, and Post-Modern stages, but Azuma looks only at the decline of Modernity and the gradual rise of Postmodernity. This is fine in itself, but many of the characteristics of Azuma’s Modern period bear a stronger resemblance to Hegel’s Pre-Enlightenment period. 

            For Hegel, the Modern is a period of Alienation, in which all Grand Narratives (although Hegel does not use the exact term “Grand Narrative”) are considered arbitrary and subjective. So the basis of Azuma’s Modern period, Grand Narratives, are by definition part of Hegel’s Pre-modern period.

            Azuma’s primary examples of Age of Reason Grand Narratives are Communism and Pre-War Japanese Society. He claims that these Grand Narratives attempt to explain all phenomena according to a single perspective, a single ‘grand unified theory of everything.’ Consumers in Azuma's supposedly Modern “Era of Reason” are members of a sittlichkeit community, which recognizes social laws as part of the underlying architecture of the universe - a Grand Narrative.  Human individuals recognize each other by these laws, and do not suffer alienation.

            Now, this sittlichkeit worldview does not apply perfectly to more recent Grand Narratives, such as Stalinism.  Azuma himself points this out on his section on cynicism by citing Slavoj Žižek:

            “To exemplify this connection (the relationship between Hegelian philosophy and Lacanian philosophy) let us refer to Stalinism - more specifically, to its obsessive insistence that whatever the cost we must maintain the appearance: we know that behind the scenes there are wild factional struggles going on; nevertheless we must keep at any price the appearance of Party unity; nobody really believes in the ruling ideology, every individual preserves a cynical distance from it and everybody knows that nobody believes in it; but still, the appearance is to be maintained at any price that people are enthusiastically building socialism, supporting the party, and so on...” (quoted in Azuma 70).

            This excerpt, written in 1989, shows the hybrid nature of Communism towards the end of the Soviet Union.  It is a (Hegelian) Modern, alienated worldview masquerading as a (Hegelian) sittlichkeit Grand Narrative. The ideology of the Party claims to be a unified theory of everything, and yet the Party itself does not believe its ideology.

            This complicates Azuma's usage of the 1970 Red Army incident as a guidepost to the end of pure Modernism in Japan.  Were the members of the Red Army alienated or un-alienated?  Did they truly believe in Communism as an all-encompassing worldview or were they alienated and cynical?  If they truly believed in it as an all-encompassing worldview, then they would be better categorized according to Hegel's Pre-Enlightenment Era.  If they were alienated and cynical, then they would be better categorized according to Hegel's Modern Era and their Stalinism as a fictional hybrid Grand Narrative.

            That’s just one example, but no matter which “Modern” Grand Narrative we look at, we are in essence left with two options:

            1). Azuma’s Age of Reason is indeed Modern in the Hegelian sense, but its Grand Narratives were not truly sittlichkeit worldviews. They were held cynically as Stalinism was for Žižek. World War II certainly had a destabilizing effect on Japanese society, although the Reconstruction seems to have replaced Nationalism with Mass Middle Class corporate ideology. While the Mass Middle Class was eventually wiped out with the collapse of the Bubble economy, it still provided Japan with a few decades of social normativity.

            2). Azuma’s Age of Reason is not Modern in the Hegelian sense because alienation has not yet occurred. For whatever reason, the spread of Western sciences grounded in the Enlightenment did not cause the same trend toward alienation. Once again, the Mass Middle Class ideology did provide Japanese society with a level of mass normativity up until the 1990s.

            I suppose we might also envision a third path. Hegel describes the scene in Antigone as the “bubbling” of Modernity in Sophocles’ mind. By posing the question of what happens when two eternal laws conflict (in this case, the law of the polis and the law of the family), Sophocles calls the concept of the eternal law into question. Modern cynicism is bubbling up, presaging the alienation which is to come.

            It is possible that Azuma’s Age of Reason is subject to a similar form of “bubbling.” Alienation does not hit all segments of society simultaneously. It takes time for Enlightenment ideals to filter down to the masses. We might posit that a gradual Democratization of Alienation occurred in Japan as improved education and communication technology gradually uprooted old worldviews and broke down sittlichkeit communities.[i] The upper classes were Modern and Alienated, while the lower classes were Pre-Modern and Un-Alienated.

            Now, this may seem like needless nit-picking – and it kind of is. Azuma is not writing for Hegelian specialists, so the use of the term “Modern” more in accordance with its popular usage of “Industrial” could be justified. Japan was indisputably Industrial in the Age of Reason, and Industrialism is a sort of all-encompassing worldview of its own.

            But it troubles me when an author who explicitly claims to be using Hegel ignores the role of sittlichkeit in the historical process. The whole point of Hegel’s Pre-Enlightenment period is that Alienation has not yet occurred. The whole point of Hegel’s Modern period is that Alienation has occurred because of the Enlightenment. And the whole point of the Post-Modern period is that Science has been rationally reconciled to sittlichkeit. This is literally the whole point of Hegel’s historical process; its engine and its ends.

            Why is the Moral Valet wrong? Why is the mechanism of forgiveness so important? Why can concepts drop in and out of the Bacchanalian Revel without rendering the whole dance pointless? How can we resolve the tension between the Hero’s handlug and tat – between our intended actions and their actual results? Hegel’s End of History is a society in which Faith and Reason are reconciled, where humans can create truly legitimate, mutually recognized meaning without the old master/slave dynamic. History does not simply end, it is fulfilled. It is overcome and improved.

            Maybe Azuma gets all of this and simply didn’t feel it fit the scope and theme of his topic. Or maybe I’m misreading Hegel. But Azuma’s Kojevian reading of what is at stake in the Post-Modern period leads to the conclusion that post-modern consumers are animalized ciphers with no inner life beyond 'the feels.' The whole point of the Database Consumption model should be that consumers and producers are building a non-alienated network of human meaning, not the fear that they are mere “cicadas in concert.”

            I do think it is a bit hasty to call otaku “unalienated” or fully Post-Modern in the Hegelian sense. The database of moe elements provides an un-alienated network of mutual recognition for otaku, but otaku still feel alienation towards society as a whole. The Grand Non-Narrative provided by moe elements is sub-cultural, not universal. It may provide a glimpse at what a Post-Modern system of meaning-making looks like, but it is not fully Post-Modern yet.

            The Database Model is an important step towards Hegelian Postmodernism, but it is still just a bubbling situated in an overall era of Modern Alienation. It shows that it is possible to move beyond alienated narratives, not that we have arrived at a new sittlichkeit normativity. The feeling of moe, the power of emotional affect in otaku culture indicates to me that these narratives are consumed without alienation, without emotional distance.

            This is ultimately an argument between two Hegels: Kojève’s Hegel and my Hegel, with Azuma’s Kojève-Hegel lying somewhere in the middle. Kojève’s Hegel posits an End of History that is also an end to meaningful human activity. We will all be animals in concert or snobs clinging to meaningless norms from history. My Hegel posits a Fruition of History, a historical process that ends because its purpose has been achieved.

            I’m not going to argue that my Hegel is the “real” Hegel. But I do think that Azuma’s Kojève-Hegel is an amnesiac: a Hegel that has forgotten the bulk of The Phenomenology of Spirit, a Hegel with new definitions of Pre-Modern, Modern, and Post-Modern.

            In Part Two, we will look at how Azuma’s model stacks up against contemporary critics of otaku culture and contemporary Japan.

Next:[DC004] Azuma Vs. Okada: Defining Otaku

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[i] Of course, that would conflict with Japan’s high literacy rate and mandatory education laws in the pre-WWII period. Someone better qualified than me should weigh in on this.

[DC002] What is Database Consumption (and Where Did It Come From)?

Previous:  [DC001] Who is Azuma Hiroki (and Why Should I Care?)

            Azuma uses the term “Database Consumption” to refer to his model of how consumers relate to the narratives found in media. He describes it as the third phase in a three-phase transition from Modern Rationalism to Post-Modern Animalism. So before we start talking about Database Consumption, let’s look at how Azuma got there.

            The Database Consumption Model is based in large part on Hegel's three-stage model of historical development. While Hegel's model describes the Pre-Enlightenment, Modern, and Post-Modern stages, Azuma looks only at the decline of Modernity and the gradual rise of Postmodernity, with the 1970s as the focal point of a hybrid modern/postmodern consumption (Azuma 72). 

            Although Azuma’s puts the “beginning of the end” of Modernity at around 1914, he pays particular attention to three periods or “Eras” which most clearly illustrate the demise of the Modern Grand Narrative and the rise of Postmodern consumption. The three Eras have a considerable amount of overlap and the year divisions should be considered as embodying a general trend, not complete breaks.

            The first era is the Era of Reason, lasting from 1945-1970.  Technically, this era can be considered as extending back to the start of the twentieth century, but Azuma’s focus is on this era's decline, not its beginning.  Azuma places its decline at the end of World War II and its end with the 1970 Red Army airplane high jacking incident.  In this periodization, the Red Army incident is seen as symbolic of the discrediting of historical Grand Narratives such as Communism in general.

            In the Era of Reason, Modern Grand Narrative consumption is an interaction between the consumer and “smaller narratives” (individual books, television shows, and so on) which reflect the worldviews of a Grand Narrative.  In this model, consumers find meaning in the interaction of these smaller narratives with the grand narratives of society.

Meaning-Making in the Era of Reason (Azuma)

            Examples of these Grand Narratives would include Communism, traditional religions, or pre-war Japanese society. The common feature is that they attempt to explain all phenomena according to a single perspective, a sort of “grand unified theory of everything.” Individual works are reflections of this Grand Narrative, its characters resembling real humans living under these social conditions. Consumers find meaning in these narratives in the interplay between the individual work and the larger pictures of reality they reflect.

            Azuma positions the decline of the Grand Narrative at the end of World War II because of the destructive effect the war had on Japanese society. The war undermined the foundations of Japanese social normativity and opened the door to pluralistic interpretations of humanity’s place in the world. There was no longer a single Grand Narrative, but rather many competing Grand Narratives such as Communism and Capitalism.

            Because these pluralistic Grand Narratives no longer had the same normative force as a single common Grand Narrative, society began to fracture. Moreover, the Tokyo Red Army airplane high jacking incident in 1970 showed that the pluralistic Grand Narratives were losing normative force even for those that held them. The center could no longer hold and “real” Grand Narratives became a thing of the past.

            The second era is the Era of Fiction, lasting from 1970 to 1989.  This era is marked by the emergence of what Azuma calls “Fictional Grand Narratives.” While “real” Grand Narratives had been largely discredited in Japan, consumers who had grown up in a world defined by Grand Narratives still felt a need for them. While Grand Narratives could no longer be considered “real,” fictional Grand Narratives could fill their absence.  Azuma gives two years for the end of this era; worldwide, he points to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, but for Japan the year 1995 is given due to the Aum Shinrikyo terrorist attacks.

            In this intermediary stage, the social Grand Narrative is lost, but consumers have a lingering desire for the comfortable familiarity of these lost Grand Narratives. They were accustomed to narratives that fit a certain mold, where the pieces added up to a larger picture, where there was a driving ideological force behind the action. Fictional Grand Narratives were necessary for consumers to find meaning and enjoyment in smaller narratives, even though the fictional Grand Narrative is tacitly understood to be confined to the realm of fiction and not as applicable to society as a whole.

Substitute Meaning in the Era of Fiction (My own butchered version)

            Azuma's examples of this hybrid Grand Narrative include Mobile Suit Gundam (1979), which has a fictional historical timeline detonated by the initials “U.C.” (Universal Century).   All of the episodes of Gundam, including those of its derivative works and sequels (at least, until the 1990s), take place in this shared universe.  It roughly corresponds with our own historical timeline, with the year UC 001 taking place around AD 2053.

            These fictional Grand Narratives are pluralistic in the sense that consumers do not perceive conflict between the fictional timeline of Mobile Suit Gundam and Super Dimensional Fortress Macross. They are viewed as two discreet Grand Narratives describing two different “worlds” which can exist comfortably side by side. Unlike Communism and Capitalism, there is no inherent conflict between Gundamism and Macrossianity.

            But the need for a fictional Grand Narrative goes well beyond a consistent timeline.  While the Gundam universe makes use of fanciful Science Fiction technology such as the “Minovsky Particle,” a selling point of the series is its technological consistency.  While the Minovsky Particle may not exist in the real world, it always functions according to fictional “rules” - a fictional law of physics.  The Mobile Suits (giant robots) of Gundam were also subjected to technical scrutiny.  Magazines and manuals of each Mobile Suit's blueprints and exact technical specifications became immensely popular, and added another layer of “realism” to the show.

            Other authors have commented on this aspect of 1970s-1980s otaku culture.  In Otakugaku Nyūmon[i] (1996), Okada Toshio gives the example of the extreme measures taken by legendary animator Itano Ichiro to ensure the ultra-realism of spaceship battles.  Wanting to animate the firing of missiles as realistically as possible, Itano strapped fireworks to his moped and fired them while driving at high speed (35).  Wanting to get a better sense of how humanoid robots would fire missiles at each other, he rounded up a group of friends, strapped fireworks to their arms, and then ran around a field with them, firing these “missiles” at each other (36).  The concern for realism was an all-encompassing goal, which drove animators to develop new and innovative techniques.

            The third and current era is the Era of Animalization, beginning in 1989, or 1995 in Japan.  This third and supposedly final era is characterized by the breakdown of fictional Grand Narratives (in addition to the previous social/historical Grand Narratives) and the rise of Database Consumption.  This era is given the term “animalization” in accordance with the terminology of Kojève (a prominent Hegelian philosopher). 

            For Kojève, the post-modern period is the end of history. With the end of the historic struggle between slaves and masters, humanity reverts back to an “animal-like” state.  In this world, there is no longer any need for what Azuma would term social/historical Grand Narratives.

            Though there will still be history in the sense that years will pass, new buildings will be built, and new music created, with the end of the historical process there will be no essential difference between this human activity and birds building nests and cicadas singing in concert.  The reason 1995 is put forth as the most significant year for Japan is the terrorist attacks by Aum Shinrikyo and the end of television anime Neon Genesis Evangelion.

            This comparison between a major terrorist attack and the end of a television show may seem like a strange contrast at first, but it is important to remember that Azuma is specifically developing a periodization of the otaku subculture. Naturally, events that are of minor importance to society as a whole can be of great importance to a subculture.  Far from trivializing tragic events such as the Aum Shinrikyo terrorist attacks, this should be understood as an example of the interactions between a culture and a subculture, just as Azuma is examining otaku subculture in order to understand Japanese culture as a whole.

A young man undergoing "Eva Shock" (I Care Because You Do, Nishijima Daisuke)

            But while Azuma points to the Aum Shinrikyo attacks and the end of Evangelion as his main guideposts to the beginning of the Era of Animalization, it is worth remembering that there was another important event in 1990s Japan that marks the end of a Grand Narrative: the end of the Bubble Economy. The loss of the mass middle class and the guarantee of lifetime employment also exercised an important role in breaking down Grand Narratives in Japan. Japanese society no longer provided a clear path for humans “from cradle to grave.” The ideal of a homogenized middle class society was lost and no clear ideology arose to replace it.

            In the final stage of Azuma's periodization, Grand Narratives (including the fictional Grand Narratives) are no longer necessary or desirable to consumers.  Smaller narratives no longer must be based on a Grand Narrative in order to create meaning; instead, they draw from a “Database” of affective moe elements.  Enjoyment for consumers comes from the creation of emotional attachments to these familiar affective elements, not from the now-discarded sense of realism, authorship, authenticity, or originality.

Database Consumption in the Era of Animalization (Azuma)

            Smaller narratives are no longer considered original, stand-alone works which reflect a Grand Narrative, but a simulacra composed of elements pulled from the Database - the grand non-narrative.  Consumption still takes place on the level of the smaller narrative, but also from direct enjoyment of the moe elements themselves, divorced from any narrative at all.

            What constitutes a moe element?  On the most visible level, moe elements are elements of character design - physical attributes such as eye color, clothing, height, age, and so on.  Azuma gives the example of Dejiko, a character designed as a mascot by secondary-goods company Broccoli to appeal to as many moe elements as possible (43).  Dejiko’s physical moe elements include such things as cat ears, green hair, “hair like antenna” and big feet.  These elements have all been pulled from the database of character designs popular in the late 1990s among otaku.

Dejiko as a simulacra of Database Elements (Azuma)

            Moe elements, however, are not limited to physical characteristics.  They can be personality traits, such as the “cool, reserved, robot-like” personality type made popular by Evangelion's Rei Ayanami.  They can also be narrative clichés, such as the “destined lover,” or the “young girl with a terminal illness” popular in visual novels.  As with the physical traits, enjoyment of these non-visual moe elements is not based on realism or originality but rather on their emotional resonance with consumers.  In fact the most frequently cited source of enjoyment for consumers of visual novels is not artistic merit or creativity, but rather the ability to make the consumer cry.  What consumers seek “is not the narrative dynamism of old,” or the illusion of Grand Narratives and realism, “but a formula, without a worldview or a message, that effectively manipulates emotion” (Azuma 79).

            In the old fictional Grand Narrative consumption pattern a single media property such as Gundam was assumed to take place in a single fictional universe. With the advent of Database Consumption, this was no longer the case. It no longer mattered if the fictional details of a character’s life were consistent from the manga to the anime to the video game adaption. Because the moe elements were the only thing that mattered, the same character (or rather, aggregate of elements) could be put into any number of fictional universes without evoking a feeling of dissonance.

            This new consumption pattern fed back into established series such as Gundam. Whereas before the 1990s all Gundam media took place in a single universe, the 1990s saw the development of “Alternate Universes” which no longer followed the Universal Century timeline. Gundam retained the same basic conceits (giant robots, pilots, the nature of war), the constituent elements could now be rearranged freely. Some characters from the original Gundam have counterparts in almost every Alternate Universe (Char comes to mind) that have similar moe elements (the color red, the mask, the status of rival to the protagonist), but completely conflicting personal histories.

        

Next: [DC003] Azuma vs. Hegel: Defining History

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[i] “Introduction to Otakuology”