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Massively Multiplayer Videogames and their Potential as International Zones of Peace
© 2004 Neils Clark

Oftentimes we find things where we least expect them. So then in a time of globalization, hegemony, power struggles, and all of these words so easily misinterpreted, it comes to be that what was once leisure is now a powerful tool of acculturation. Of course in any period of history, a person could have gone abroad to teach the games of their people – yet certain new types of video games are, by their very nature; dialogical, transnational, and intercivilizational. They are the sandbox of the new media age, as such their potential as a zone of peace begs examination. While this possibility is amazing, it is concurrently very troublesome in some ways. Critical media theories have been around for a very long time, and further shed light on the challenges, and rewards, that theorists must be mindful of. This paper should be seen as the third in a series. The first examined the death of culture as a purely communicative failure. The second explored the ways in which media can be preserved, thus preserving culture. Following is an explanation of the state of play, the biblical tales of the information age and but a handful of their possible impacts on our world.

A review of the critical culture theories of the Frankfurt School is requisite to a fruitful examination of our playful foci. Walter Benjamin, writing in 1933, described the transmission of culture through cinema as something that could necessarily only occur in an industrialized society. As any industrialized factory may deliver near identical products to people around the world, even today’s cinema delivers near identical image and sound to people from many cultures. Video games mimic Internet websites to a degree. Both can be delivered to anyone, yet also can be created by anyone with the requisite technical skill. Just as many website channels are dominated by large companies, so prevalent in conventional media, video game producers pose varying degrees of commercial dependency on publishers. The difference between the two is generally that producers are the technically and creatively savvy, the authors, and publishers are as publishers have been; while some care about their material, many are driven by capital. The industrialized mode of cultural production, for the sole purposes “economic profitability and social control” is indeed present.

The concept of a malevolent ‘culture industry’ was not alone the conception of Walter Benjamin. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, also of the Frankfurt School, further criticized the creation of culture as a commodity. “Something has been planned for everyone so that nobody can escape from it.” Industrializing culture, and thereby creating the same product for everyone, can kill the singularly effective power that culture possesses in defending local cultures from the behemoth of globalization. As American and Korean games, in particular, spread as a digital wildfire over the face of the industrialized world, Herbert Marcuse’s critical theories of media as a political domination combine with Adorno, Horkheimer, and Benjamin to question whether video games are mass media, or mass acculturation.

Though video games, in particular massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs), present the forefront of this cultural affray, they strangely present benefits even to a mind with critical eyes. Online role playing games sprung from both a continuation of the real-life role playing of 1960’s paper-and-dice games, but also from the ability, spawned primarily through internet chat to create an independent identity through the internet. Jergen Habermas, in his book Transformation of the Public Sphere, could also be seen raising concerns at the marriage ceremony of culture and money in the church of media. As humans become further isolated by media, they become feudalized. And yet, much of the internet is an eruptive reaction of defeudalization, breaking free as much as possible from the homogeneity of channels found in business-centric media. It is a place where people speak their mind.

Then MMORPGs are culturally both positive and negative at the same time. On the one hand, they are commercial entities that require taxation from their vassals, and are therefore designed to keep players playing. Feudal commercial lords command massive interactive sandboxes, appealing to children with ages ranging between fifteen and fifty. And yet, the games allow for these people to break free of other more commercialized media. Television, radio, and most interstate freeway systems are a mélange of recurring advertisements. Defeudalization in these terms, then, should not be seen as an absolute deconstruction of media hegemony. That cannot be done within the confines of any system, least of all reality. It is, therefore, a scale upon which we examine hegemonic elements, and, in our case, the ability of video games (of all things) to circumvent those elements. Hegemonic domination cannot however be limited to the relationship between companies and their customers.

These games are usually produced within countries flexing large telecommunication muscle; for instance Korea, Canada, and the United States. The cultural foci of the Internet began in America, the US Department of Defense creating ARPAnet as a result of work on packet switching and distributed networks by Leanord Kleinrock, Licklider & Clark, Paul Baran, and others. These strictly democratic concepts have influenced the very way information is directed between all of the individuals online today. This influences the frame through which all Internet communication occurs.

And other countries clearly see the benefits of doing what they can to preserve soft power through video games. The Chinese government “…announced plans to invest 1 to 2 billion yuan (US$120.5 to US$241 million) to help create up to 100 Chinese-developed online games, from 2004 to 2008.” (Carless, 2004) The investment seeks to slow the onslaught of Korean games on Chinese youth by presenting classical Chinese works of literature as online video games. While many countries see the need, and have the capital to invest in this culturally critical aspect of life, many allow their children into this international sandbox, playing the games of other peoples. If a major element of media feudalization has been social control (for instance fascism), then what happens when one nation wants to war the citizens of a country they play with? Games could have serious impacts toward the identity of our world.

As a mode of play where actual physical violence is literally impossible, these games can contribute to peaceful intent. “[Peace] requires a value system that puts the preservation of life forms above all else. It also requires a form of communication that is dialogical in character and transnational and intercivilizational in its epistemological reach.” (Tehranian, 1999) The value system of a video game is subjective – which means that realities are primarily created by the actions of individuals, not the media creators. Yet interaction aside, the designs of most video games espouse combat as a central concept. Despite this minor detail, however, MMORPGs are exceptionally transnational, intercultural, and dialogical. People from any nationality and/or background can join with any other in order to build cities, engage in fake commerce (that can lead to real international commerce) and to fight. In many ways, fighting with and against those from both similar and divergent backgrounds can strengthen a sense of togetherness with others, be they from Syria or Sri Lanka.

And while violence occurs in these games, it does so under the aegis of fun. While some players will take these actions as hints toward the living of their real life, this is a risk inherent in any media form. Violence on television is nothing new. Certain individuals will always favor Freud’s Id above all else, and moral self righteousness, preclusive of such thoughts of peace, is common among fourteen-year-old gamers. While some never mature from this stage, many do - coming to acknowledge the duality of their own person, and thus the individuality of every other human being. Staving off cultural hegemony and ever-encroaching feudalistic commercialism are challenges that video games must meet if they wish to fulfill their capacity as a truly intercivilizational zone of peace.

And of perhaps a further tantamount importance is the fact that these are the legends of our time. Just as our knowledge of recent past comes from books, and only brave tales of heroism remain from times before writing, we may be entering a stage wherein our tales are told in adventures that we can experience. There was a time when cultures died out or were conquered only by the communicative technologies. No matter how brutal the genocide, or how bloody the war, it is not for abundance of death that culture dies, it is for lack of cultural communication. The poem, the hieroglyph, the newspaper, the television, and the video game are all technologies. That Benjamin did not apply his theories to the poems of Homer does not mean that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not a form of culture-squelching media. They survived where none other could. On a base level, they survive so well that even Hollywood cannot resist creating movies based upon their substance. Perhaps then media survivability, a uniquely craveable goal, is enacted not by what is most solidly rooted, or by what feudal lords deign appropriate for their accumulation. Lasting media appears to come through popular acceptance of a communication technology.

While a dubious attempt at focusing primarily on the challenges and rewards associated with massively multiplayer online games, this paper uses critical theory to highlight concerns of media dominance on both international and personal levels. These games have an amazing potential, it will be a great shame indeed if corporate greed and cultural ignorance denigrate that potency. In the bigger picture, if games continue to grow in popularity, then creating culturally sound, and culturally representative video games will not merely affect Earth’s denizens in our generation. It is entirely possible that the games we create now will have a lasting, if not permanent effect on the legends that we pass down to our children, for their gaming enjoyment.

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