{"id":92,"date":"2020-01-19T12:13:55","date_gmt":"2020-01-19T12:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/?p=92"},"modified":"2020-01-19T12:14:43","modified_gmt":"2020-01-19T12:14:43","slug":"dual-wield-chapter-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/19\/dual-wield-chapter-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Dual Wield: Chapter 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is the first chapter of my completed practice-led PhD thesis, Dual Wield: Adventures at the Interplay of Poetry and Computer Games<\/em>. I recommend skipping the entirety of 1.2 if you wish to stick to the substance of the argument and avoid the dryer aspects of the chapter (my methodology, and where the project fits within existing scholarship).

Tremendous thanks to Patrick Crogan, Britta Martens and Abigail Parry for looking over this chapter and commenting on it in detail at various stages of its life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.1. A World of Made<\/a> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A world of made
is not a world of born — pity poor flesh <\/em>

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical <\/em>

ultraomnipotence.<\/em>
(Cummings, \u2018pity this busy monster, manunkind\u2019 9-13) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July 2016, players discovered a\nsecret code hidden in plain sight in Inside\n<\/em>(Playdead, 2016), a puzzle-platforming computer game released across PC,\nPlaystation and X-Box one month previously. Towards the end of the game, the player\u2019s\navatar passes in front and behind two glass panels bearing a sequence of\nnumbers. When decoded using a Polybius Square, these numbers were revealed as\nreferencing the title of a sonnet by E.E. Cummings, \u2018pity this busy monster,\nmanunkind\u2019 (Cummings, 1944).[1]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read in the light of this\ndiscovery, the poem complements and expands on the philosophical themes of Inside<\/em>. Poem and game talk to one\nanother. Cummings\u2019 arch-scepticism toward techno-fetishism (Yaron, pp.116-117) is\nreflected in the desaturated, near-lifeless vistas that make up the game\u2019s\nworld, replete with killer machines. Both deploy formal ingenuity (the poem\u2019s\ncompound words and idiosyncratic diction, the game\u2019s surreal physics puzzles)\nas funhouse mirrors to the \u201cworld of made\u201d, turning gloom into playground.\nCummings\u2019 exhortation to \u201cpity poor flesh\u201d resonates with a recurring device in\nInside<\/em> whereby the player, via their\navatar, takes partial control of human facsimiles \u2013 flesh without independent\nthought, sullenly slumped when at rest. These facsimiles grow more and more\nfeatureless until, in the final stages of the game, the player becomes the\nguiding will of a great, moving jellyish mass of body parts as it attempts to\nescape the grim facility in which it was born (or made). Both poem and game separate,\nat the level of their semiotic interface (so words in the one case, interactive\ndigital objects in the other), the physical body from mankind\u2019s collective techno-scientific\nknowledge, \u201cpoor flesh\u201d from the \u201cfine specimen of hypermagical \/\nultraomnipotence\u201d represented by scientists in their laboratories. These are\nplaced in opposition to one another, though both are, in their own way, \u201cbusy\nmonsters\u201d. Poem and game end by teasing the player\/reader with the sense that\nfreedom is both possible and impossible: the speaker in the poem interrupts\nhimself to urge a visit to \u201ca hell \/ of a good universe next door\u201d, while the protagonist\nof Inside <\/em>crashes through the outer\nwall of their prison, tumbling down onto a shoreline that is implied (via an\nearlier small-scale model of the scene) to be nothing more than a set, another\nroom in a larger containment facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is one example of what I will be referring to as the interplay<\/em> of poetry and computer games, \u2018interplay\u2019 being both the collaborative act itself and the space where it happens. In this case, the poem is not contained inside the game, was not originally composed for publication in a digital medium, was not even composed with the game in mind. Yet the game recruits the poem, pointing the player toward it, offering not the poem itself but its import as a reward for attentive play and deductive intelligence. The poem attains an additional frame of reference within the realm of its reader\u2019s direct (and probably recent) experience playing the game, while the game gains an additional mode of voice. They are yoked together in a coherent expressive continuum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.2. Aims and Methodology<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This project takes the form of a\ncombination of conventional theoretical analysis and practice-based research,\nanalysing the existing state of poem-game interplay and hybridity and testing\nways that it might be advanced through attempts to create working prototypes. In\nRobin Nelson\u2019s formulation for practice-led research, there ought to be \u201ca resonance\nbetween complementary writing and the praxis itself\u201d (2013, p.11), a multi-mode\nenquiry where the practice is \u201cat the heart of the methodology of the project\u201d\n(p.26), flanked by a documentation of process and the written component. In\nthis case, I begin with an introductory chapter that outlines the immediate\ncultural and critical context for the enquiry, followed by a second chapter\nthat explores, through a review of the literature, the theoretical underpinning\nto the project: an experiential and conceptual overlap between poetry and\ncomputer games, based on the core underlying concept of play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This then forms the appropriate starting point for an initial series of practical experiments into hybrid poetry games, which are published and playable online, where they are accompanied by individual exegeses and documentation of process. Their purpose is to experiment with the forms poem-game interplay might take, and to point toward specific issues, tensions and limitations that arise in producing these forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That practical work feeds into a third chapter which analyses\nthe tensions and limitations in detail. Put simply: is it possible to create\nsomething that can be read as a poem and played as a game at the same time? Are\nthe differences between these media types too great, the modes of engagement\nthey invite too distinct? In answering these questions, I devise three\ncontinuums that serve to help visualise the tensions between poetry and\ncomputer games, so that I and other practitioners can consider how to either minimise,\nmediate or exploit them in future experimental forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the chapter following on from this, I develop a taxonomy\nof four major types of poem-game interplay, including but not limited to hybrid\nartefacts, and analyse a number of existing examples using the continuums\ndevised in the preceding chapter. This taxonomy then informs a further series\nof practical experiments, where I attempt to expand the categories individually\nand then document my overall conclusions from carrying out these experiments. The\npractical component of the project, in conjunction with theory, allows me to develop\ninsights into poem-game hybridity from two opposing perspectives \u2013 as a practitioner\nand as a reader and player. Each is valuable in informing the other. The\ntaxonomy, for example, is useful for shaping and categorising the practical\noutput, while the early experiments assist me in formulating Chapter 3\u2019s continuums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project is intended as a contribution to both games studies \u2013 a recently developed area of academic study that has emerged in response to the increasing ubiquity of computer games \u2013 and literary criticism, and pursues a dialogue between these two disciplines. In this respect, it builds on the work of Astrid Ensslin in Literary Gaming <\/em>(2014). Ensslin observes that we are entering a second wave of games scholarship, moving away from debates and discussions about the nature and boundaries of the discipline and increasingly turning to detailed analysis of specific areas. Situating her work within this second wave, Ensslin considers ludic-literary hybrids \u2013 artefacts that exist on a scale that runs from \u201cludic digital literature\u201d to \u201cliterary computer games\u201d (p.44) \u2013 and develops an analytical framework that combines elements of literary analysis and ludology. For Ensslin, literary<\/em> here means \u201cverbal art in the broadest sense\u201d, but also works that have \u201can aesthetic concern with structural and thematic elements of their own form, genre, or medium\u201d (p.2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The approach to poem-game interplay I adopt in this project is rather different to Ensslin\u2019s. It is narrower in the sense that I am not interested in literary fiction or drama, or any literary form where narrativity is the dominant. It is wider in the sense that Ensslin emphasises the self-reflexivity of verbal art, which she regards as necessarily engendering \u201csubversive play\u201d or \u201cplaying with rather than by the rules\u201d (p.19), while also confining herself to digital-born artefacts that foreground spoken or written language. I will instead be discussing poem-game interplay as an area that includes texts that are not digital-born but which refer to, address or otherwise involve themselves with computer games, as well as computer games that adopt the strategies of poetry without necessarily foregrounding the spoken or written word. I will not be taking it as self-evident that verbal art is self-reflexive or subversive, or that it deconstructs its own rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ensslin conceives of a specific category of poetry games<\/em> in the eighth chapter of her book, \u201cThe Paradox of Poetic Gaming\u201d, where she contends that the differences between poems and games ensure that there is a \u201creceptive and interactive clash\u201d (p.142) when the two are brought together. She considers this a deliberate design decision by the developers of hybrid poetry games, intended to critique gameplay habits of players, as well as the conventions of mainstream gaming culture. I will go into this in more detail in Chapter 3, but my contention throughout this project will be that poem-game hybridity extends beyond this act of cultural critiquing, and that the paradox as Ensslin envisages it is, in fact, negotiable. To the extent there is a receptive and interactive clash, it can be either mitigated or pointed toward different artistic ends, as I will aim to demonstrate through both the practical component and analysis of existing examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ensslin\u2019s study of poetry games\nis somewhat isolated in the existing scholarship; while games studies is\nregarded in the academy as being closely allied with film and media studies, it\nenjoys little crossover with English departments, and where literary theorists\nhave embraced computer games more generally, they have tended to fixate on\nnarrativity to the exclusion or side-lining of poetry. Writing on digital and\nnew media poetics, meanwhile, has revolved largely around the platform of the\ninternet browser and artefacts that are interactive without aspiring to\ngame-like qualities. In the field of literary criticism itself, there are\nmyriad overlapping theoretical approaches which may be drawn on, from freshly\ndusted-off historicism to \u201csurface reading\u201d (Best and Marcus, 2009), but for\nthe purposes of this project, the most appropriate point of departure is\nMarjorie Perloff\u2019s Radical Artifice:\nWriting Poetry in the Age of Media <\/em>(1991). Perloff begins with the premise\nthat contemporary poetry is unavoidably in conversation with digital media, and\nthat studying it without regard to that context is limiting. The nature of the\nrelationship between what she calls \u201cthe most remote of the various literary\ngenres\u201d (p.xiv) and media discourse in the information age is enormously\ncomplex, giving rise to poetries that reject mimetic naturality (of speech and\nthought) in favour of radical artifice \u2013 that is, embracing their very made-ness\nand materiality. These poetries absorb and remix the form and language of\nadvertising, television, film, the internet and more besides, in advanced acts\nof defamiliarisation, emphasising the text as image, procedure, assemblage and\nobject, something to be toyed with, tested and explored rather than merely\nread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perloff\u2019s concluding example is\nJohn Cage\u2019s \u201cunreadable book\u201d, I-VI<\/em>,\nwhich she describes as soliciting a kind of reader engagement that \u201cinvolves making<\/em> rather than taking<\/em>\u201d (p.216), a phrase that is inadvertently echoed by games\nscholar Brendan Keogh when he says that computer games \u201ccall for the player to actively make belief<\/em>\u201d (2018, p.83). The\nreader of I-VI<\/em> is tasked with being\nalive to their own agency in picking a path through the text, in making meaning\nfrom it, in a manner similar to the way the player of a computer game makes the\neffort to navigate and complete the game world. \u201cThat path,\u201d says Perloff, \u201cmay\nbe aural (tracing the phonemic repetitions and variations) or visual (tracing\nmesostic capitals versus the \u2018wing\u2019 word groups) or dialectic (reading the A\ntext [mesostic] against B [commentary] and both against C [source]) or semantic\n(inspecting the recurrent \u2018news\u2019 items and relating them to the abstract\nspeculations that surround them), or, for that matter, literary\u201d (p.216).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Removing the specificity to\nCage\u2019s text, this is a critical perspective on poetry that describes it in\nnonlinear terms and emphasises the existence of poetic units beyond the\nliterary: visual, spatial, aural and so on. Perloff\u2019s subject is avant-garde\ntechniques developed in the late 20th<\/sup> century, but these have only\nproliferated in the years since Radical\nArtifice <\/em>was published, even crossing into mainstream poetry. My own\nbackground as a practitioner in poetry and poetry publishing has seen me\ncollaborate with a variety of British poets whose work ranges from traditional\nlyrics to experiments in concrete and calligraphic poetries, digital\ninteractive poetry, film poetry, hypertext poetry, code poetry, collage and\nprocedural poetry. Any or all of these may overlap with the kind of poetry that\ninterplays with computer games, so I will adopt a wide-angle viewpoint, one\nthat approaches the poem as a restlessly pliable and playable<\/em> contrivance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.3. Rationale for the Project<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The possibilities of poem-game interplay\nare intimately connected to the question of poetry\u2019s expansion into digital\nspace. In his essay \u2018Poetry and Hypertext: The Sense of a Limit\u2019, Fernando Cabo\nAseguinolaza quotes the Nobel-winning poet Octavio Paz, writing in 1991 on the\nsignificance of screen technology to the medium:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two great poetic traditions, written and oral, converge on television screens \u2026 The page becomes an animated surface, which breathes, moves and changes from one colour to another. At the same time, the human voice \u2013 or rather, voices \u2013 can be enjoined in combination with the lyrics. Finally, visual and sonic elements, instead of being mere adornments, may be transformed into organic parts of the body of the poem. (1991, p.597)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Aseguinolaza extrapolates to the\ncomputer screen:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is not easy to find a description that suits better the enticement of the electronic medium for a poet. A screen that breathes, moves, and changes restlessly in contrast with the steadiness of the printed page. The screen as page, but a page of a completely different kind. We may wonder what Octavio Paz could have said in case he had noticed the possibilities of modern computers to enhance the animated power of the screen and to lend new dimensions and a sense of autonomy to the written word. (2000, para 11 of 26)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Similarly,\nLoss Peque\u00f1o Glazier has composed a manifesto for digital poetry in the shape\nof his 2002 book Digital Poetics: The\nMaking of E-Poetries<\/em>, in which he argues that \u201can electronic poetics\nalters the \u2018eye\u2019 (\u2018I\u2019) and also extends the physicality of reading. With the\nkeyboard, literal manipulation is engaged with fingers determining different\nreferentialities of the text \u2013 a sight more active than repetitious\npage-turning\u201d (2002, p.37).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is curious, then, that in the intervening years there has not been more advancement by poets and poetry into the territory of computer games, arguably the medium most synonymous with the digital age. What games offer poetry is not just the technology of screen, keyboard, controller, but a significant experiential augmentation. As Keogh argues in A Play of Bodies<\/em>, his recent phenomenological reading of computer games, players \u201cbecome incorporated into an assemblage that is the player-and-videogame<\/em>\u201d (2018, p.22). Games bridge the actual and the virtual via multisensory feedback, pulling us bodily into their worlds while imprinting themselves on ours. This could function as an intensifier of the powers of suggestion already evident in poetry in a variety of forms. Poems are, after all, also envisaged as possessing a world. Frank O. Copley, writing on Catullus, for example, says that \u201ca poem is itself. It presents its own world to its readers and demands that they accept it as true for the purposes of the poem\u201d (1958, p.9). We can conceive of the physicality of reading being extended by the reader\u2019s cybernetic incorporation into the world of the poem, a world that they can touch and interact with via computer control interfaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, computer games present an opportunity to expand\nthe linguistic armoury \u2013 and thus the expressive range \u2013 available to poets. Multiple\n20th<\/sup> and 21st<\/sup> century movements have been based around\nbroadening the accepted range of suitable poetic material, from the Scottish Informationists\u2019\nconcern with digesting and transmitting \u201cunderprivileged\u201d data (Price, 1994,\npara 1 of 18) to Flarf poetry\u2019s assimilation and amalgamation of internet\ndetritus. Computer game culture, itself underprivileged in arts discourse,\nrepresents another frontier of emergent assimilable dialect. Computer games are\nextremely diverse in form and content, rich in visual, audial, textual and\nsymbolic matter. They also generate a great deal of paratextual material, in\nthe form of lore, strategy guides, player dialogue, user modifications, hacks\nand rewrites, companion fiction, fan fiction and fan art. As with Perloff\u2019s\naccount of poetry\u2019s ability to absorb and remix the language of televisual\nmedia, all this material has potential to be reformatted and deployed within\npoetry, not just verbally but ideogrammically, imagistically or calligrammically.\nThis is, in short, an abundant new playground for poets, which this project\naims to begin mapping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But of what interest is poetry to the creators and players\nof computer games? As it stands, games already engage to some degree in the\nabsorption and \u201cremediation\u201d (Boulter and Grusin, 2000) of poetry, employing it\nlargely as filigree and incidental detail within vast virtual worlds. This\nreflects a wider cultural perspective on poetry as occasional oddity, or, at\nbest, marker buoy for textual depth. The claim I will substantiate in this\nproject is that a more fundamental engagement is both necessary and inevitable.\nChapter 2 will explore the underlying conceptual overlap in detail, but by way\nof an introductory overview, computer games and poetry share the dominant\norganising principle of segmentivity<\/em>, a term coined by the poet Rachel\nBlau DuPlessis in 1999 (and later expanded on by literary theorist Brian McHale)\nto describe an alternative to narrativity as a basis for textual organisation\nand meaning. Where segmentivity is the dominant of a text, meaning is generated\nby the paratactic arrangement of units \u2013 we see them working together side by\nside, rather than (or as well as) reading them start to end in linear fashion.\nWe find significance in patterns and parallels, in coincidence and contrivance,\nin rhyme and repetition, rather than (or as well as) in chains of logic and causation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Computer games already rely on repetition as a device for\ntraining players to successfully master their systems, as well as extending the\nplaytime offered. They rely, possibly to an even greater extent, on players\u2019\nfacility with reading patterns and rhythms as the basis for many of the\nchallenges they set. But it is rare that a game implies there is any meaning to\nits patterning and repetition beyond enabling player embodiment and progression.\nQuite the opposite: usually, narrative is superimposed over the gameplay\nexperience, and the player is asked to ignore or forget the repetitiousness of\ntheir actions and the segmentation of the game environment in order to make\nsense of the game as a narrative work. In a typical action game, for instance, it\nis possible for the player to watch their avatar die and relive the same\nmoments dozens of times, rewinding time until they make exactly the right\ndecisions, only for the story to proceed as if the avatar possessed no such\nability.[2]<\/a> Jesper Juul characterises\nthis tension as a dichotomy between real rules<\/em> and fictional worlds<\/em>,\nrendering games \u201chalf-real\u201d[3]<\/a> (Juul, 2005).  Parataxis \u2013 side-by-side placement \u2013\nadequately describes the way a computer game arranges its components in order to\nfacilitate gameplay, but the tendency of games is to chafe against this\narrangement as part of the effort to build meaningful context around that gameplay.\nViktor Shklovsky, in 1917, defined art as a defamiliarising technique, to\n\u201cimpart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are\nknown\u201d (1917, para 11 of 40), a counterforce to habitualisation, which\nShklovsky memorably describes as devouring all wonder. In presenting themselves\nas stories, mainstream computer games work in the opposite direction: they are\nnaturally unnatural, necessarily contrived, but labour to habituate the player\nto their alienness, to be perceived as life-like. By adopting the signification\nstrategies of poetry, computer games have the opportunity to embrace their own\nstrangeness rather than seeking to neutralise it. Poetic devices such as the\nrefrain, anaphora, epistrophe and homeoteleuton, for example, are forms of\nrepetition that can be enacted through the recycled surface textures, objects\nand player actions within the world of the game, just as they are with words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To put it simply: the computer game has historically evinced\na predominant interest in becoming an advanced kind of story. It has yet to convincingly\nexplore the possibility of becoming an advanced kind of poem, and one basis for\nthis project is that such exploration is a route to expanding the versatility\nand impact of the computer game as an artform. Additionally, the experiential\naugmentation that computer games offer poetry runs the other way as well. Words\nby themselves retain a unique, near-limitless expressive power, and may be used\nmuch more concertedly to give shape and meaning to those bodily sensations\nexperienced by the player as they interface and coalesce with the game-world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I advance this research project at a point when poets and\ngame developers alike are starting to experiment with the possibilities\ndescribed above, when it is not unknown for an independently produced computer\ngame to proudly pronounce itself \u201cpoetic\u201d (Morgondag, 2015), for a poem\npublished in a leading British journal to take its central metaphor from Super Mario Brothers <\/em>(Ravinthiran, 2018),\nor for a young artist to identify as both poet and game developer (Douglas, 2015).\nThe tools required to make and publish computer games are more widely and\ncheaply available than at any time before, while the visibility and centrality\nof contemporary poetry has been immeasurably enhanced by the proliferation of\nsocial media and easy-to-maintain web hosting platforms. Enough examples of\npoem-game interplay and hybridity now exist for the associated challenges to be\ninterrogated and a tentative taxonomy to be developed. This project is intended\nto fill that gap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.4. Issues and Wider Context<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There are a number of surface-level similarities\nbetween poetry and computer games that, on initial inspection, are useful in\nanalysing and developing poem-game interplay. Both are conspicuously segmented\nin ways that are aesthetically foregrounded. Poems divide into stanzas, lines,\nphrases, words and metrical feet, games into stages, maps, zones, rooms,\nbiomes, difficulty levels, menus and submenus. Both habitually deal in the\nfantastic \u2013 their worlds are dreamlike or highly imaginative. Both are\nassociated with challenge; that is, there is a popular idea that to be able to\nplay computer games proficiently or to be able to understand poems takes\npractice and patience in a way understanding stories or watching films does\nnot. As such, both attract debate as to the role of accessibility, with\ndefenders of difficulty rejecting what they regard as condescending to their respective\naudiences, while reformers point to their niche status, their struggle to be\ntaken seriously by both mainstream news media and the wider public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps most pertinently, both are known to absorb, incorporate and amalgamate other forms and genres. Poetry does this most noticeably with types of speech and writing \u2013 we can think of Robert Browning\u2019s development of the dramatic monologue poem, for example, the long tradition of the epistolary poem or the more recently invented prose poem. Dick Higgins\u2019 Pattern Poetry: Guide to an Unknown Literature<\/em> (1987) reviews examples of puzzle and pictorial poems across a variety of languages and cultures over several centuries, while Perloff documents avant-garde poems that imitate or inhabit the form of signboards, maps, inventories and sculpture. The popularisation of the computer has resulted in a period of continuous experimentation with advanced methods of assimilation and rearrangement, beginning in 1959 with Th\u00e9o Lutz\u2019s Stochastische Texte<\/em>, a poetic text generator that reordered lines from Kafka. In 1971, while Galaxy Game<\/em>, the world\u2019s first commercial arcade machine was installed at Stanford University (Pitts, 1997), Alan Sondheim created 4320<\/em>, a film-poem made using a hypercube projection program, and in 1976, the year of Breakout <\/em>(Atari, 1976) and the founding of Apple, Angel Carmona published Poemas V2: Poesia compuesta por una computadora<\/em>, the world\u2019s first book of computer-generated poetry, printed so as to replicate the appearance of an IBM computer readout. Code poetry incorporates the aesthetics and some of the functionality of computer code, while the procedural poetry produced by Twitter bots may be constructed algorithmically from fragments of social media or include images pulled from online databases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other side of the\nequation, computer games habitually simulate, synthesise or approximate almost\nevery other kind of media, from film and music to card games and handwritten\nletters. They are an integral part of the trend that media scholar Henry\nJenkins has dubbed \u201cconvergence culture\u201d (Jenkins, 2006), where media\nfranchises extend across and between old and new media, developing audiences\nthat migrate across genres and technologies in order to immerse themselves as\nfully as possible in fictional realities. Computer game developers, encouraged\nby rapid technological progress and the explosive growth of their industry,\nhave increasingly aspired to reproduce the effects of narrative media as part\nof the suite of experiences that games offer, promising their users something\nclose to the starring role in action films and mystery novels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beneath the surface similarities,\nhowever, there are significant phenomenological and cultural differences\nbetween poetry and computer games. In the popular imagination, they lie at\nopposite ends of a scale that runs from the aloof to the frivolous, from high\nart to low. Poetry is regarded as serious, cerebral, cryptic and hermitic,\ncomputer games as flashy, trivial and senseless amusements. Poetry is\ntechnologically simple and semantically complex; computer games are\nsemantically simple and technologically complex. One of the barriers to\nemergent hybridity and interplay is the accompanying perception of any such\ncross-pollination as detrimental in both directions: poetry being trivialised\nby association, and computer games being made duller, less playful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are practical problems\nrelated to this distinction. Keogh describes certain types of game as\ninculcating and requiring \u201cembodied literacy\u201d (p.14); that is, familiarity with\nthe controls and the routines that need to be enacted by the player. As a\nresult, non-gamers may find games difficult to read visually, let alone play.\nPoetry, meanwhile, requires its own form of specialised literacy, and the\nnumber of people who are fluent in understanding and inhabiting both computer games\nand poems is likely to be extremely small.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is true to an even greater\nextent of the practices of making games and poetry. The technological tools may\nbe available, but poets and game developers alike spend years honing their\nexpertise, with game development requiring (more often than not) the\ncoordination of teams of people working on different aspects of the game. The\npressures on practitioners to succeed within the parameters of their chosen\nmedium is already intense, the competition fierce, and as Don Paterson warns in\n\u2018The Dark Art of Poetry\u2019, the process of making poetry alone is \u201cmessy, insane\u201d\n(2004, para 3 of 13) and liable to drive the poet mad \u2013 or, as T.S. Eliot puts\nit:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026 each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.<\/em>[4]<\/a> (Eliot, \u2018East Coker\u2019 V. 7-10)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The title of this project, \u2018Dual\nWield\u2019, in part reflects the difficulties presented by this wider cultural\ncontext. It is taken from the name of a special ability in role-playing\ncomputer games, which typically allow a player avatar or ally character to arm\nthemselves with a weapon in each hand at the cost of both weapons\u2019 strength. In\nthe Japanese role-playing game Bravely\nDefault <\/em>(Square Enix Holdings, 2012), for example, fitting a weapon into\nboth the \u2018l.hand\u2019 and the \u2018r.hand\u2019 slot will result in the attack power of each\nweapon being reduced by 50%. Only a character with the \u2018dual wield\u2019 ability can\nbring the attacking power of both weapons to bear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I employ this here as a metaphor:\nexperiments in poem-game interplay and hybridity carry the risk of reducing the\neffectiveness of both, of creating artefacts that are abrasively difficult to\nread or play and which have diminished appeal to both readers of poetry and\nplayers of computer games. In the context of this project, I am restricted by a\nlack of experience in game development and a lack of personnel, and as such I\nwill not be able to comprehensively address the problems I raise here. The\npractical and theoretical components alike are, however, aimed at exploring,\nitemising and examining the resulting incongruities with a view to developing ways\nof mitigating and overcoming them, and therefore \u2018dual-wielding\u2019 poetry and\ncomputer games effectively in future compositions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the functions this serves\nis to challenge the view of computer games as empty of expressive purpose or\nmeaning. As Mary Flanagan puts it in Critical\nPlay: Radical Game Design<\/em>, her survey of (and manifesto toward) expressive\nand critical game design:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a cultural medium, games carry embedded beliefs within their systems of representation and their structures, whether game designers intend these ideologies or not \u2026 Many scholars, game makers, and consumers observe that computer games can embody antagonistic and antisocial themes including theft, violence and gore, cruelty, problematic representations of the body in terms of gender and race, and even viciously competitive approaches to winning as a primary game goal. (2009, p.223) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I enjoin with Flanagan in aiming to map\nout ways in which the expressive power of computer games can be turned toward\nmore socially responsible themes, as well as ways in which existing elements of\ncomputer games can be recontextualised through their incorporation in poetry, by,\nfor example, moving literal depictions of violence into the realm of the mythic\nand metaphoric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In working to overcome some of the practical obstacles to poem-game hybridity, the project also agitates against the more general perception of a divide between serious and trivial media types. The separation of these different types into one of high or low art is, in any case, a formulation that undergoes constant revision, such that the hierarchies of genre that prevailed in previous eras look antiquated today. In \u2018Genre and the Literary Canon\u2019, Alistair Fowler records that throughout the late sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the epic poem was regarded as \u201cthe chief effort of human sense\u201d (John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, in his \u2018An Essay Upon Poetry\u2019, quoted in Fowler, 1979, p.100) while love poems, sonnets and epigrams were seen as altogether more frivolous, with Dryden criticising Tasso for being \u201ctoo lyrical\u201d and including \u201cconceptions, points of epigram and witticisms; all of which are not only below the dignity of Heroic verse, but contrary to its nature\u201d (1760, p.167). Just as these genres of poetry have been reorganised, separated and conflated over the ages, coalescing into the image of poetry that prevails in the present day, so is it conceivable that at some point in the future, digital-ludic poetry and poetic computer games will be regarded under the same broad category, and thereby resist negative preconceptions based on the supposed shallowness of games or antiquity of poetry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ensslin\u2019s rationalisation for ludic-literary hybrid artefacts and the accompanying scholarly analysis is that both are \u201curgently needed to grant creative writing a more contemporary, media-savvy outlook, as well as to expand and advance the artistic and critical significance of games\u201d (p.1). I would add that these artefacts represent an opportunity to introduce both poetry and computer games to audiences not otherwise inclined to engage with them. Players of games will find that poetry may be engaged with as another kind of imaginative play, while readers of poetry will find that there is meaning and depth to be found in digital toys. The interplay of poetry and computer games is a space that, if properly established, promotes dialogue between two different groups of people. An important step toward that point is arming practitioners with tools, analysis and example texts that begin to map out the multiple forms that poem-game interplay and hybridity can take.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> For a visual guide to how the code was cracked, see http:\/\/imgur.com\/a\/USImD [accessed 20th<\/sup> August 2019]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a>\nThe most infamous case of this in gaming culture is the death of Aerith\nGainsborough in Square\u2019s Final Fantasy\nVII<\/em>, released in 1997. Throughout this game and others like it, members of\nthe player\u2019s party may be revived from near-death by the use of a commonly\navailable item called Phoenix Down. When the story calls for Aerith to suffer a\nfatal injury, none of the other characters even consider the chance that she may\nbe revived. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a>\nAll phrases present in the title of Juul\u2019s Half-Real:\nVideo Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds<\/em> (MIT Press, 2005). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a>\nI owe this observation to an article by John Hartley Williams published online\nat http:\/\/www.pennilesspress.co.uk\/poetry\/john_hartley_williams.htm, [accessed\n20 August 2019].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the first chapter of my completed practice-led PhD thesis, Dual Wield: Adventures at the Interplay of Poetry and Computer Games. I recommend skipping the entirety of 1.2 if you wish to stick to the substance of the argument and avoid the dryer aspects of the chapter (my methodology, and where the project fits […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions\/100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}