[취재후 Talk] Longing for a new gaming society… The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s ‘Game Society’

Review of ‘Game Society’ at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art

If games reflect society, are the limits of society the limits of games? Or can games exist beyond society’s imagination?

The ‘Game Society’ exhibition, which is being held at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, explores the process of synchronizing society and games, and invites visitors to consider various contexts around games. It draws attention to the selectivity and violence of games (title: ‘Damn, I live because of her’), or draws the possibility of a non-violent game (‘Flower’). By creating an environment where women and people with disabilities can easily enjoy games, it also harms a world designed around male users without disabilities. However, the greatest benefit of the exhibition is that it enables even the viewers who have lived independently of games to look back at how their own experiences and consciousness affect, and are influenced by, grammar contemporary games.

What I paid attention to in this exhibition was the characteristics of games as a responsive medium rather than the content of individual games. Regardless of the composition or the message of the work, it was interesting to see that users become ‘absolute actors’ in most games. When a user performs an operation, the situation in the game changes immediately, which brings catharsis to the gamer and at the same time creates a certain fantasy. In other words, it’s an illusion that you can design and control the environment around you. In the game, the world is driven only by human actions, and all elements except the player serve as background and equipment. When it comes to the absolutization of the human subject, the rules of the game are thoroughly based on the modern worldview. The idea of ​​a game (‘Minecraft’) where an empty virtual space changes from time to time according to the player’s manipulation is terrifying in that context, and visitors are stunned when the exhibition’ n explain that there is no limit to this. (The modern desire that there is nothing humans cannot explore, and the player as a person who makes that desire come true!)

In the real world, we manage to get through situations, encountering a number of stakeholders that hinder our actions. Sometimes they persuade and negotiate, and more than that, they clash and clash. It is not difficult to realize one’s own position as a being in the world because one has to endure countless frictions until the action is accomplished. But in most games, this step is slickly skipped. Battles in the game world are reduced to a few possible causes, which do not (and do not) fully reflect the spree of reality.

At the same time, the player’s behavior in the game is also very limited. A paper written by Devanghi Vibrica on the design techniques of the attention economy provides valid insight here as well, and accordingly actors can never beat ‘sophisticated algorithms’ in the debate of agency versus structure. Since the option to go outside the algorithm does not exist in the first place, the actor’s thoughts cannot go outside it either. “If we remember that hundreds of engineers and designers on these platforms anticipate and plan all our movements, it makes more sense to move the discussion towards structures that make ethical persuasion.” (quoted from ‘How to Do Nothing’ by Jenny Odell)

Can’t we take a hint from Vibrica’s point and completely redesign the game structure? What if you designed a game that literally upends the way we perceive and experience the world? For example, what if it’s a game that raises the abilities of non-human beings to the same level as humans, or where objects that only existed in the background act as the key to influence the narrative?

As I left the exhibition hall, I could have similar expectations. If games faithfully interact with reality, we may find clues to recreate our reality in games. If there is art in games, she probably has, which is why museums have brought games into the art world. Obviously we should talk more about games. This exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art is notable as it is a venue for such discussions.