Last class we discussed the joining of Apple into the Fair Labor Association (FLA). I was curious as to how much Apple, being the “slick” marketing empire that they are, might address this on their website. I was very pleasantly surprised to find an entire section of their website devoted to what they call “Supplier Responsibility.” In this section, they identify some of the problems that they have observed and are attempting to fix within their own corporation. These include some of the problems that Daisey addressed in his podcast, such as work hours, worker age, and living conditions. Needless to say, we as the consumer must take an evaluative approach to these claims. What I mean by that is that we must really wait to judge the severity of their commitment on the results, not the means. Intention, in this facet, is not what counts as much as reaction, change, and actual results. However, I respect the Apple Corporations enactment of this area, and the fact that they are willing to be open about the problems that they see both to the consumers, and in essence to themselves. Now we can only hope that they do something about it.
Category Archives: First Readers
Seeker: E.T. is not the Cause of Atari’s Collapse
http://2600connection.atari.org/et.html
In class, professor Sample showed the Atari version of E.T. and mentioned that others believed it was one of the worst games created, which lead to Atari’s failure. Initially, I did agree that it was a bad game; however, I wanted to know why it was the cause of Atari’s demise. In contrary to my finding, an article stood in defense of the E.T. game. E.T. was based from the movie of which it involved a friendly alien and a boy who was suppose to help the alien get home. The movie is non-violent and Howard Scott Warshaw, the game designer, had to create a game similar to the movie in a period of just five weeks. Unfortunately the only thing E.T. could do was to eat candy and grow flowers. That said, the design and action content of the game was unappealing to many young players. However, E.T. is not the sole cause of Atari’s collapse. Other factors were already at play which began to cripple the company’s success. These factors include Atari not owning a licensing agreement, which allowed other companies to create unsuccessful games that affected Atari’s name. Also these no-name companies were selling their games for one third of the price that attracted many consumers. These were but a few factors that contributed to Atari’s failure and E.T. cannot take all of the blame. Therefore, people need to understand that not a single game flop can bring down an entire company. It has to take several factors in order to do so.
“China Blue”
The material we were presented for today’s class had a different theme than those we have read before. Previously, the emphasis was on the history of the first video games and what “play” is. However, we were shown a theme that is hardly ever focused on in the popular media, but is a part of our, those who reside in the “first world” countries, daily lives. This theme calls attention to where our technology and other cheap goods come from.
When I was in high school, I watched a documentary called “China Blue” on a similar topic: the production of jeans. The lives of several of the young Chinese girls who worked in one factory in an increasingly urban area of China that created one of the namebrand jeans found across the world. These are the stories we rarely ever see in the media except for events such as suicides in the Foxconn factories discussed in Joel Johnson’s article. However the story of what is occurring in China, India, and various other third world countries has happened before. They are classified as countries undergoing their industrial revolutions. The United States during the late 19th century underwent its industrial revolution and many of the stories we hear about factories in China and other countries occurred during this time. The poor work conditions, disregard for the worker’s happiness and health, etc. If the United States and other first world countries underwent their industrial revolutions without any restrictions to be as wealthy and “developed” as they are now, should China and other developing countries be restricted and be denied the opportunity to become a first world country themselves? Or now that we have seen what has happened in the past and what is going on in said countries today, should we try to prevent the mistreatment of workers as “enlightened” consumers? Is that our responsibility and could we deal with the subsequent inflation of prices in all the goods we love to purchase?
There Hands Build, Our Hands Play
Our discussions and videogames have led to some interesting thoughts. The relationship between operator and machine is an important theme in videogame analysis. Rarely, however, do we (the “first world”), think about where our machines come from. The articles/podcast this week tend to focus on one company, Foxconn (and through them, Apple), and one factory, the Foxconn factory of Shenzhen, China, in particular.
A natural debate arises from these readings: should “we” feel guilty about our consumption of cheap electronic goods? The articles represent a specific incident (or set of incidences: namely, the use of cheap labour by Apple) to call attention to the wider issue of whether or not our consumption harms others. Johnson writes “did my iPhone kill 17 people”? The podcast talks about the child workforce present in factory jobs. Sample writes about the game “Phone Story”, in which people see the harmful effects of factory life first-hand.
Should consumers take the blame for these atrocities? Best Buy does not seem evil for selling iPads, nor do many people walk around, wallowing in guilt, while playing angry birds on their iPhone. Should the companies exposing cheap labour be held accountable? Surely Apple and other companies must have knowledge of the conditions of their workforce.
I would suggest a different thought though: what involvement should the government have in the lives of workers? In particular, for the case of China, if the government can make “blacklists” (as described in the podcast), then shouldn’t that same government protect its workers from foreign manipulation? Should China exclude (either “exile” or heavily tax) companies that expose and harm its workers, as described in the readings and podcast?
Auto-pilot players
Looking back on my reactions while playing Phone Story, I noted two significant things: 1) videogames can be a form of news media and 2) I feel like I just participated in the Milgram experiment but to a lesser extent. The Milgram experiment was conducted in 1961 in response to Nazi workers “following orders” during the Holocaust. It tested the extent to which one will comply with authoritative orders and defy their morals.
While playing Phone Story, I still heard the narrative in the background but almost became immune to it. I’d like to say that I kept hitting “try again” so that I could save more people, but in actuality, the game turned into a competition between the computer and me, similar to Tetris. Now don’t get me wrong, I was definitely disturbed by the story that the game told; nevertheless, it turned the story of 17 suicides into a game. This brings up the question of whether or not it is appropriate to produce games that portray specific, traumatic instances throughout history (i.e. Foxconn or 9/11). Or is there a point in time when the majority of people become immune to the trauma, like with the narrative, which is when videogames are acceptable?
Therefore, videogames can convey news, but I do believe they make the news a reality because it is still in a “game world”. My reaction to the game was simply to beat it (following orders of authority) even though people were being killed and I was hearing all of the horrors that the game was based on (testing my morality).
A new, limited dimension to analyzing games
The purpose of the assigned reading, which points out the 17 suicides of Foxconn workers in the last 5 years, is to illustrate yet another dimension of gaming. As Sample acknowledges in his article, a complete study of videogames doesn’t only include gameplay, soundtrack, and storyline, but also considers hardware and history.
While the articles by Johnson and Sample show us the dark side of producing technology, I’d like to point out that technology helps us. Even Foxconn, which is nearly demonized in Daisey’s speech, can be viewed in a positive light. The company employs, houses, and feeds nearly one million people—a fact that seems overshadowed by the suicides. Furthermore, the inputs needed to make a smartphone aren’t limited to what’s talked about in Phone Story. The people who design smartphones, write the software for smartphones, and market smartphones certainly have happier stories than the workers at Foxconn. And finally, Johnson, Sample, Daisey, and Phone Story don’t mention the enormous benefit that consumers of smartphones experience.
I am all for searching for narratives in the production of videogames and videogame platforms. I think that we can gain indispensable insight when we consider who makes what we play, where it came from, and when it was made. However, let us remain impartial while examining videogames. Let’s not make claims that when I play Temple Run on my iPhone, I am responsible for the enslavement of children on the other side of the world. I hope that class on Tuesday won’t merely be a discussion of subpar working conditions in China, because that’s outside the domain of videogame studies.
Mike Daisey and the Problem of Global Concern
It is quite easy to conjure up pity and concern while listening to Mike Daisey talk about the labor conditions at Foxconn and other factories in the Chinese “Special Economic Zone” of Shenzhen. You listen to the stories, the hardships. You picture the faces of the men, women, and children who are forced into subpar labor conditions by the cruel corporate officers as they send line after line of technological thingamajigs into production. You think of the seventeen or so people who jumped off of those factory buildings because they just couldn’t take it anymore.
Then you go on your iPhone and check Facebook.
Clearly, the conditions in Foxconn are not good. Clearly, it is not wrong to feel sorry for the workers and to wish for an improved situation. You can blame Foxconn. You can blame Apple. You can even blame the ‘materialism’ of the West in the abstract. But don’t forget the gadget sitting in your own pocket as you read this. It is far too easy to give “the suits” a lot of flak about their mistreatment of the labor force as a means of deflecting any personal blame.
I don’t think Daisey’s desire to see certain reforms in the labor conditions of Shenzhen factories is unreasonable. In an increasingly globalized society, we absolutely need individuals like Daisey to push for small changes that, when done in conjunction with one another, improve the state of humanity. The problem, however, is bigger than a single “Special Economic Zone” halfway across the planet. When we live and actively participate in a society that possesses little more than a superficial conscience, we reap the harvest of our values. One walk through “Phone Story” makes that all too clear.
Is there a solution? As I type away on my Apple MacBook Pro, I know I sure haven’t found one. Not yet, at least. We can keep pointing fingers and chasing labor laws here and there for as long as we would like, and many people will be just fine. But that route will never touch the heart of the matter – or, should I say, the hearts of the matter. The hearts of people dictate the progress of our race and the treatment of our fellows. There will be no end to the exploitation of human beings while we treasure our things more than our neighbors.
Seeker: The Video Game Revolution
After reading Stephen Kline’s “Origins of an Industry” and discussing it in class, I became more curious about the history of video games. While perusing the Internet, I stumbled across a very interesting site by PBS. This site, entitled “The Video Game Revolution,” contains five major sections. Although all five are relevant, the one that caught my attention was the first one, which deals with the history of video games and how they have become “an integral part of our culture.” Within this section is an interactive timeline of the history of video games. Also within this section is a display of the “memorable triumphs and spectacular failures” throughout the history of video games, according to seven notable gamers. It is certainly something that is worth checking out.
Science Fiction and Video Games
When reading through Kline’s chapter on the origins of the video game industry, one of the biggest claims that stuck out to me was about the necessity of literature and culture to shape the realm of the industry as we now know it. “Here we confront a little-understood aspect of the circuitry of technological innovation, especially within the digital disciplines: the role of cultural contexts and subcultural practices in the dynamics of innovation and design” (Kline 88). I could not agree more with his assessment, not only for the origins of the video game industry but continuing on even to today. Kline mentions Asimov’s 1950’s science fiction writing as well as Orwell’s 1984 and their depictions of futuristic societies, but I’d say go back even further to E.M. Forster’s short story, The Machine Stops. Published in 1909, Forster, writes about humanity enclosed off in rooms controlled almost entirely by a central, all-seeing machine. He predicts the use of social video messaging and conferences with almost frightening accuracy. Yet furthermore, when I first read that short story, I could not help but think of the many gamers who practically lock themselves down in their basement and play their video games for countless amount of hours at a time, or as Kline mentions, going back to the origins of RPG’s with Dungeons and Dragons (89) (of which the movie depiction shows when things that can get out of control in its own sense). In another example we see William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984), a novel portraying (ironically) hackers who “jack into” a virtual reality in cyberspace (it was Gibson who coined the term “Matrix” as it is now used). That novel had a huge impact not only on the newly formed cyberpunk genre in literature, but on the video game industry of whom is constantly looking to expand to the latest and greatest ideas in technology. Needless to say, video games are and always will be wrapped around the culture and literature, particularly of the science fiction genre, that we read and encounter on a daily basis.
Back to Narratives: From the Beginning
Contrary to the perspectives of Aarseth and Eskelinen, Kline shows (whether purposefully or no) that video games have always carried narratives in some form. The Spacewar game/simulation was drawn from ideas surrounding the space race and the then new fear of nuclear war with Soviet Russia. The later game Space Invaders was drawn from a similar idea of fighting in space–though this time focused on an extra-terrestrial invasion of our civilization. Game designer Chris Crawford commented on the need to develop the theory of computer games with ideas like “rewards”, “proving oneself”, and “sculpting the ‘play value'” into games. But these ideas do not fundamentally alter why you make and play video games, they simply help you make video games better. The real reason we play games has to do with something far deeper and far more subtle — namely the narrative associated with them.
Video games, through their narratives, are an expression of our lives and experiences and we experience aspects of life through them. They express our fears and vision for the future as in Spacewar, but also our fantasies as in the many games that grant super-human abilities to the player. In a similar manner to cockfights being symbolic for larger issues in the culture, video games are a picture of our lives in the world. As Crawford saw, the need to design games with player interactions reflective of reality are “the central art of the game designer”. It is interesting to note that given the user-oriented feedback loops in game development and increases in computer technology, the overall direction of successful video games has been towards a story-telling style, and not a simply high-tech tetris or pac-man (though, of course, those games are not necessarily devoid of narrative). This trend illustrates the reason we as a society are really interested in video games: their ability to express our lives in ways we couldn’t before.