Cultural Hegemony Within the World of Mass Effect, part 1

In the universe of Mass Effect, the organization called Cerberus is either a terrorist group or a pro-human organization. In cultural studies, however, it could be considered something else: an instrument designed to combat cultural hegemony.  Now before I get too far, let me take a few moments to explain what I mean by that phrase.  Cultural hegemony is a concept created by Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci.  He developed this concept after the Marxist revolution failed to materialize in Italy.  Gramsci postulated that the oppressed classes did not revolt because they believed it was in their best interests not to do so.  Because of that, these social classes that were in the margins of society, gave the dominant class the power to rule.  “Power by consent” is the catch-phrase here. So these dominant classes, which control media and ideas, also promote the notion that they rule because they are best suited to do so.  Moreover, whenever the marginalized classes decided to take action gain more power, the class in charge will often times provide a concession to appease the oppressed.  Of course that concession can be revoked later.

The extensive mythology of ME states that when humanity discovered the mass effect relays, it entered a galactic civilization centered around the Citadel.  Citadel space is controlled by the Council Races: the Asari, the Turians, and the Salarians.  Each race keeps one representative on the Citadel Council, the ruling body.  The Council controls the Fleet and the Spectres, their agents who operate beyond the confines of law.

In the ME2 preview “The Story so Far” we learn that humanity needed only one generation to rise to prominence within the Citadel.  Thanks to the actions of Commander Shepard and crew in ME1, the council now has a representative, David Anderson. Moreover, Citadel Security Captain Bailey reminds Shepard that the Systems Alliance (humanity) guarded the citadel after the battle with the Reaper Sovereign.  That does not mean, however, that humanity has “made it” in the Mass Effect world. Humans are often looked down upon by other the races, especially the Salarians, and the Turians (Humanity’s opponent in The First Contact War).

We now know that the three primary Citadel races have taken steps to exclude others from positions of power.  Chief among these would be the Volus, the Krogan, and the Quarians. The Volus, small in stature,  belong to the Citadel as associate members, but have never been offered a seat on the Council.  The Citadel races keep the violent Krogan in check with a genetic infection called the genophage that keeps their birth numbers down lest they threaten the whole galaxy.  Finally the nomadic Quarians are the outcasts of galactic society because they unleashed the synthetic Geth on galaxy and lost their home planet in the process.

When compared to these races, humanity fares better. And yet an element of mankind seeks to improve its position by whatever means are needed.  The organization Cerebrus, depending on who you ask, are terrorists, extremists, or pro-human. They freely use genetic manipulation, imprisonment, experimentation, abuse, and assassination to achieve their goals and their activities often times bring condemnation from the Council. In ME1 Shepard fights against them, but in ME2 she works with them as they are the only group working to stop the Reaper threat.

They are also the organization in Mass Effect that works to keep the gains made by humanity in the first game.  With the death of Shepard, humanity’s lofty position begins to slide. Even the ascension of Anderson to the Council begins to lose some luster as he is outnumbered three to one by the other races.  (I base this article on Shepard’s decision to save the Council in ME1.  The other alternative is for Shepard to name Anderson Chairman of a new council.) The Council took extensive steps to cover up the Reaper threat and thus the need for humanity to play a larger role in Citadel politics.  Without Shepard to champion the cause, Citadel space has, for the most part, reverted to business-as-usual.

We could very easily look at Anderson’s position as a hegemonic concession by the Council.  If that is the case and humanity political position is relatively unchanged since the beginning of ME1, then other forces must assert themselves to combat hegemony.

Back in the real world, cultural hegemony became more popular thanks to Artz and Murphy’s book Cultural Hegemony in the United States. In it, the writers note that when marginalized groups come together to form historic blocs, they stand the best change to successfully challenge hegemons. In the case of Mass Effect, one violent organization, even one as powerful and far-reaching as Cerberus, cannot successfully combat the political-industrial Citadel.  It turns out that if we adhere to the concepts of cultural hegemony than Cerebrus would have to be the vanguard that would allow human movement to partner with other races such as the Volus and the Quarians in order to gain political power.  Together, they would have to create such a political threat that the Council would have no choice but to institute changes.

Of course Cerebrus is pro-human to the point where other races are understandably leery. Most of Shepard’s non-human crew in ME2 express hesitation in working with Cerberus.  It is only their loyalty to their commander that allows them to join the fight against the Reaper’s agents, the Collectors. One can understand their position after one play through the game. Mass Effect 2 allows players to see the darker side of Cerberus through Jack’s loyalty mission as well as the failed experiment Overlord.  Given the history, it seems unlikely that other races would seek to partner with Cerberus and its mysterious leader, the Illusive Man.  Right now, no other organization that we know of has taken steps to increase humanity’s footprint in the Citadel.  Perhaps Mass Effect 3 will provide that information.

Part two later this week.

The Incomplete Language of Gaming

Much of the basis for my thinking about the language of gaming from this article by Matthew Sakey.  There is, in particular, one portion of that text I want to focus on.  He writes:

As [Steven] Poole noted, much of film’s critical language can be transplanted without alteration into the world of gaming. Concepts of narrative style, perspective, shot construction, and mechanics should be able to switch parties without too much confusion. But just as film couldn’t use theatre’s language as its own, the inherently more complicated medium that is gaming will need to find its own language for a significant portion – say, more than fifty percent – of its own academic vocabulary. The process will be an evolutionary one.

Sakey does a good job at filling in the history of film theory and how its history matches and diverges from the history of game theory.  I want to look at a different aspect of game theory however.

Perhaps we could best do that by examining two games: Half Life 2 and Mass Effect 2.  HL2, and its sequels episodes 1 and 2, allows the gamer to fill the shoes of scientist turned freedom fighter Gordon Freeman.  HL2 has been hailed as one of the best shooters in recent years.  I played it.  I loved it.  I finished it.  However HL2 is linear in nature. The player moves from one point to the next, overcoming enemy soldiers, aliens, and aircraft all the while.  To developer Valve’s credit, HL2 features some memorable characters, not the least of which is Freeeman’s companion Alyx Vance.

The NPC Vance, based on actress Jamil Mullen’s face, is voice phenomenally by Merle Dandridge. Vance comes across as quite believable and the player finds himself/herself concerned when she is injured.  HL2 contains several other quality NPCs and one could say that the beauty of this game is that as you move though blasting enemies, you also find that you have become immersed in the world of Half Life thanks to the memorable characters you meet.

Many games are structured just like that.  You move from place to place in order to find someone or blow up something or some other goal.  Sometimes there are large set-piece battles and other times there are cut scenes where you receive your next assignment.  Find problem.  Solve problem.  Find new problem.  Now if all games were like that, then it would certainly make more sense to use the language of film to describe video games, at least for content, since the beginning, the middle, and end are always the same.  However games have that one feature that will forever separate them from film: interactivity.

To use the term “interactive” is to use a word that is dynamic in nature.  The meaning differs from game to game.  In HL2 is means changing the environment slightly by moving objects, opening doors, or killing enemies.  As long as you overcome and progress, you will eventually reach the end.  That end never changes.  If the programmers decided that an NPC is going to die, you cannot change that.

As we have seen, Mass Effect 2 is different in that by the end of the game you have decided, by your actions, which NPCs live at the end of the game. You can even lose Commander Shepard and will not be able to import him/her into Mass Effect 3 if you make enough bad choices.  Likewise the ending will change somewhat in response to your actions. Yes, the bad guys will still lose, but there are several choices you must make that will play a significant role in ME3. Also, characters that die are sill dead for the final game in the trilogy.  It is this different that truly separates games from film. The language must accurately express how the player can now alter his/her experience every time he/she plays.  If you look at gaming in that light, then yes, the language of gaming is, as Sakey expresses, incomplete.

So how do academic researchers begin to create this language?  The first thing we have to do recognize where gaming does and does not intersect with other media.  One of my first papers as a doctoral student was to apply cultivation theory to video games.  This theory, first made popular by George Gerbner, was one of the first we learned in communication theory; I used it because most of video game theory has its roots in other media, especially television and film. (If I were to write it today, I might very well ask if playing video games helps to combat the mean world syndrome instead..oh well.)  The quote I pulled from Sakey reminds us that some conventions of gaming and film are the same and that’s okay.  But we think of video games as little interactive movies, we do both media a disservice.

The second thing we must do is play more games.  Or at least make sure our studies involve participants playing more games.  How many studies have you read where participants only played for a few minutes? This may work if the researcher seeks information of aggression levels after a session.  However if we want to know how players feel after completing tough objectives or how difficult it was to make a moral choice or even how they feel about the outcome of a game after playing for 20+ hours then we must be willing to play or watch other plays for extended periods and use our instruments accordingly. I believe these extended sessions will help us see how player input changes not only the outcome of the game and the virtual environment, but also the player himself/herself.  And that will allow us to add to the language of gaming.

The Human Condition

I’ve come across a lot of research that states how games must evolve in order to grow into true entertainment media (read: art).  In writing my dissertation, I cam across a series of videos about game design.  This one speaks about storytelling in games. Note: All the videos in this series are informative, funny, and all are right on point with their messages.

I wrote last time that games are on the cusp of becoming art.  And I do realize that “art” is subjective to say the least.  Well in order to be considered art, a game must effectively address the human condition.  We need to care about the characters and what happens to them.  This applies not only the main character, or the person I play in the game, but also to the non-playable characters (NPCs).  A good example of this concept can be found (almost) in Mass Effect 2.

As many gamers know, in ME 2, you can either import your character from ME1 or you can create your own hero. Your character, Commander Shepard, can be male or female.  You can also select one of three back stories for your hero. As you play through the game, you choose if your character will align with paragon (good) or renegade (evil) actions.  There are benefits to leaning one way and not straddling the middle.  I find I have become quite attached to Karen Shepard thanks to multiple trips through the two games.

In addition, in ME2 you have to recruit a team for a suicide mission.  However each person you add to your team has issues and so you soon find that need to criss-cross the galaxy on “loyalty missions” so that each teammate will not be distracted when final mission starts.

These missions reveal a lot about each character, and depending on what choices you make, can also lead to that character’s death at the end of the game.  Of course one of the purposes of these missions is to get you to care about each character. For example, your first officer, Miranda Lawson, must rescue her younger sister from her estranged father’s agents.  During the mission, we learn a lot about Miranda’s motivation for kidnapping/rescuing her sister years ago and the relationship she has with her father.  However a single loyalty mission is not quite enough to make me really care about her death, if that should happen.

Rather what needs to happen, and what developer BioWare is usually good at, it getting different NPCs to interact with each other during the mission.  The world of Mass Effect is so large that players spend a great deal of time moving from place to place, sometimes in combat, sometimes in exploration. For each mission, you take two team mates along for companionship and to aid in combat.  There are brief periods where your team mates will speak on different subjects.  These however are great places to have extended conversations about things both great and small. The problem with this is that with the different combinations of teammates available, hundreds of lines of dialogue would have to be recorded for the multiple pairings if the writers wanted players to get to know these people better.  That is a difficult, though not impossible task.  BioWare has shown it is willing to go to extra lengths to inserts as many lines of dialogue as possible.  Game developers need to realize that it is in those stolen moments that real characterization emerges.  While ME 2 makes a good effort, more is needed.  Unlike movies, where the viewer can experience everything, the branching nature of the role-playing genre means that players will never encounter some places and scenes.  That’s okay.  There has to be enough there so that I feel like I can’t wait to get to the game to see what happens to Karen, Miranda, and the others.  Once developers can combine that human condition with high production, good voice talent, a superb script and memorable game play, then we researchers and critics will be in a better position to say, yes, this game is art.