Bogost’s idea of procedural rhetoric, or argumentation through a series of processes, can be twisted to portray the McDonald’s game we were asked to play for homework as either a black or white box. I argue that the game is more of a white box.
The maker of the McDonald’s game clearly created it with the intention of making a social commentary. He deliberately limited the game to a series of processes that force choices that are morally wrong; the player must chop down untamed jungle in a third world country in order to grow crops, must fatten cows using growth hormones, must bribe environmentalists and other lobbyists etc. in order to keep the company afloat. The game lodges a social criticism by disallowing the player any positive alternative when playing the game - one either picks the moral wrong or bankrupts the company and loses. By forcing the unwilling player to twist his or her perspective to support a corrupt corporation, the game in essence uses reverse psychology to firmly entrench a player’s opposition to the McDonald’s corporation’s business practices. Procedural rhetoric here shows the game to be more along the lines of a white box technology, as the player’s options are clearly defined, allowing him or her control over how the game is played, though through a set series of options.
One may argue that with a defined series of options, the game becomes too limited, therefore stifling the player’s creativity or willingness to play the game. As the player cannot physically alter the code to create more positive alternatives, the game would much resemble the ‘user-unfriendly’ black box. However, Bogost argues that though options are predetermined, the player is allowed a certain amount of creativity to express themselves through the options they choose. For example, the first time I played the game, I intentionally ignored the option to bribe the various lobbying agencies. I also ignored the option to use growth hormones on the cows and rewarded rather than punished the employees whose statuses described them as being ‘bored’ with their jobs. As a result, I forced the McDonald’s company into overwhelming debt and lost the game within minutes. By refusing the only options alloted to me in the game, I was able to some degree “express myself”. I later replayed the game using every malicious tool I could find and boosted McDonald’s profits enormously. The game’s underlying message became obvious. To understand the harms of McDonald’s products, I had to identify the approaches to problems that the game presented (i.e. whether or not to supplement the cows’ diets with growth hormones to speed up the butchering process) and come up with a definite conclusion (or decision), making this game the very definition of a white box according to Bogost (62).
Through a series of decisions in which greed is survival, the McDonald’s game reveals the corruption of the fast food industry. The options are limited and strongly negative in this procedure, making a strong anti-fast food argument. Clearly then, as the choices are clearly defined yet can be controlled by the player, the game can be classified as a white box.
Jasmine: interesting argument... though the McDonald's game is technically a black box, unless you really understand the code that went into the game's design, I think you make a compelling point about its being a white box in the sense that its procedurality is very apparent. The game, as Alex Galloway says in Gaming, "flaunts" its modes of "informatic control."
ReplyDeleteWhile there may be a certain degree of freedom of expression in the McDonald’s game, that freedom of expression exists only in the form of denying yourself certain actions, such as not cutting down that tree or not using that lobbyist. There is no actual freedom to do something the game doesn’t allow for, and thus, in effect, freedom becomes a matter of limiting yourself, putting bounds on yourself. In almost all games, if one plays the game, he cannot, in fact, exceed the rules of the game, unless he actually changes the code – hacks the game. This principle is hidden in the more advanced games, such as “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed” where the user can interact and effectively control virtually any object in the game. However, even in that game, there are limitations, on the player’s power, on the quality of the graphics, and, most notably, on the size of the game world. In playing these games, people are, however, more than willing to forbear from noticing these limitations, and would often just play the game for the sake of playing the game. This is understandable, as the players don’t care that much for what they can’t do, but rather on what they can do, and perfecting these skills. Those that focus on what they can’t do and hack through the code to increase their abilities are generally seen in a bad light, especially if they play MMORPG’s. The hackers, who try to exceed the abilities given by rules are banned, their accounts cancelled, their identities (if any) kept in the “blacklists.” Similarly, those in human societies are placed in jail or executed, and the real hackers, those who cause damage to personal or governmental property, are hunted down, detained, and their internet power is limited. And this is right, for anyone who had been damaged by one, whose reputation was severely hampered by the hacker. Hacking is, in terms of the mental and social damage it causes, just as bad as murder or stealing, and it often is real stealing, as most hackers are primarily concerned with getting at people’s bank accounts. Thus, they should be detained, they should be controlled, they should be stopped. However, if the motivation of a malicious hacker is the same as the motivation of a person playing a game and getting angry at his limited power, are games really good for us? And what do they really teach us? Valuable information and skills, or aggression, anger, and online violence?
ReplyDeleteOleg: Isn't it funny, though, that the same behavior (breaking the rules, expanding one's own abilities at the cost of others), when packaged under a different name or in a different context, gets celebrated as "business innovation" or "thinking outside the box"? Or "high art" (think Marcel Duchamp and the urinal posed as a fountain)?
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