This week in Critical Experiences, we read On Games by Hito Steyerl. The work explores the ways in which the modern world is a blurring of ‘games’ and reality. Drone pilots in the USA who grew up playing Call of Duty find themselves sitting in an air-conditioned room, remotely killing people through drones that are physically thousands of miles away. And despite the screen, can still suffer from PTSD at a comparable rate to their ‘traditional’ counterparts flying machines of war. Politicians treat congressional hearings as opportunities to get a viral clip on Facebook, performing for a spectral, digital audience in the hopes that the views and likes will translate to campaign donations and political clout. Nowadays both pleasure and business is run through an optimization algorithm, our jobs, music, and credit score are managed by all-important algorithms whose number goal is to self-perpetuate themselves. How can we break free? Should we?

Some of the first things that were run on Neumann’s new machine were simulations for hydrogen bombs. He then proceeded to model Cold War mutual assured destruction (mad) scenarios.

This brought to mind the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident, in which a single Soviet engineer ignored protocol and prevented a full-out nuclear war. Not everything can boil down to game theory, and sometimes people just don’t want to be responsible for killing a billion people.

In 2011, the New York Times reported that people who had to fill out captchas had unwittingly been enlisted in ‘a project to transform an old book, magazine, newspaper or pamphlet into an accurate, searchable and easily sortable computer text file’. Google were using captcha to check text scanned for Google Books:

In 2012, Google shifted the captcha technology to correct street numbers in Google Street View.

The way the book talks about this is kind of doom-and-gloom, but to be honest, I love captcha. It was made to solve a real problem on the internet (bots), and the solution could have easily been a waste of time, a 3 second puzzle that could waste a collective 500 years of human life every day (if each internet user filled out a captcha every day). Instead, we used this time to digitize incredible wealths of knowledge and map out the streets of the entire world. In turn, this data improved text recognition and road recognition by such a degree that we are fast approaching a future where identifying text, or traffic signs from a picture is a task that a human will never need to perform again in perpetuity.

The United States had 55 Remote Encoding Centers for processing handwritten mail in 1997. Now, thanks in large part to Captcha, we have 1. The contention, however, arises because of those who profit based on this labor. While yes, the technologies developed from them are unquestionably powerful and worthwhile, the rewards are not equally reaped by all who shared it’s creation. The CEOs of Google, Amazon, etc continue making billions, the engineers and designers who actually created the Captcha system get a comfortable upper-middle class salary, and the people inputting the Captchas get nothing except new OCR software that is sold back to them.

But what’s the alternative? Captcha’s are menial and useless? Every correct captcha results in .0001 cents being paid to the user? Captchas are run by the government and the results are open sourced? I have no good answers here.

It is the game score of your past, and predicted future, social and economic behaviour—or, more precisely, the game score of someone who looks like you.

A lot of my bias comes from the fact that I am ‘winning’ at many of these games. The fact that I could walk into any bank in the United States and get a small loan approved because I have a good credit score seems incredible. The idea of surveillance online or in person would likely make me safer because of my gender and the color of my skin. But I can’t let my bias get in the way of understanding that better systems are possible. I want to succeed in games that aren’t rigged in my favor and one whose win condition is not zero-sum.

Project Work

This reading was especially relevant for me because I’m considering making a game for project 2. I decided my project will be on Texas Representative Brandon Gill. I hate this guy. A real far-right POS from Texas who cosplays as a good-ol cowboy but in reality is an ivy-league educated rich kid who will do anything for a crumb of attention from the president. And the money that comes with being a corrupt politician who stands for nothing.

His rise in politics caught my eyes with his petition to deport Ilhan Omar and over half a million dollars in illegal bitcoin trading. A few months ago I started doing some research into his family background and rise to power, and found some very interesting initial results. I decided for project 2 I wanted to make it all about him, and showcase his blatant corruption and hypocrisy.

I met with ITP researcher Margaret Smith (who is also from the Dallas area) to get some more resources for my deep dive. She pointed me towards FEC election data, and some local newspapers I could use to search through for my project. Overall though, I feel solid with my research direction and that I already have enough to go on to start thinking about the form. My deadlines are as follows.

  • November 11 - Project 02 topic finalized (via Email)
  • November 18 - Preliminary prototype/sketch due
  • November 25 - Iterated prototype due
  • December 16 - Project 02 due and Project 02 presentations in class
  • December 18 - All documentation due for Project 02 due,

Since I’m thinking of doing a game, I want to ensure I have enough time to play-test and refine the game before final presentations. My research and production plan is as follows:

November 11-18

  • Gather research on Brandon Gill’s family
    • Any signs from his parents or during his education that he would turn into such a weird little freak?
  • Gather examples of corruption and abuse of power
  • Gather examples of ridiculous public statements and insane legislation proposed
  • Decide on the type of game I want to work on

November 18 - November 25

  • Work on the narrative of the game - I want the takeaways to be clear to the player
  • Ideate on the look and feel of the game - put together a mood board
  • Initial Figma prototype?

November 25 - Dec 2

  • Get a basic website up and running for the game and core mechanics
  • Play test and note feedback

Dec 2-16

  • Continue to iterate and playtest!
  • Will be very busy with my other class, grad school applications, and work so I’ll keep goals light here