Since Bertie the Brain (1950), an electronic version of noughts and crosses commonly regarded as one of the first ever video games, these interactive electronic realities have offered us windows into other worlds. From the frequently-pirated PC-based games of the Eighties and Nineties, to internet-era socially-driven titles such as The Sims series (2000–), Second Life (2003–) and Minecraft (2011–), gamers have always been able to actively engage with, and more often than not succeed in, other incarnations of existence. It is therefore not happenstance that the mass popularity of video games (which arguably began in 1972 with Pong, a table tennis simulation) coincided with the West's turn to social atomisation. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's successful election campaigns in 1979 and 1980 respectively were built around appealing to the singular needs and aspirations of the individual, both key factors in initiating free trade and globalisation. Today, the cultivation of the individual's desires and the idea of the possibility of self-mobility is at the centre of business and ultimately capitalism itself. As a result, modern society manoeuvres to position each of us at the centre of our own existence, a practice gaming has arguably long been a precursor to. In his Critique of Pure Reason, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant suggested our order and structuring of the world is a direct result of us actively trying to sort and synthesise the data our senses absorb constantly. So, what then happens to our cognitive intuitions when the worlds we are experiencing are actively designed for us instead?
From psychographic segmentation (a marketing practice of dividing consumers into sub-groups of psychological characteristics) and tailored advertising, to retail experiences created just to indicate cursory participation in an Instagram story, positioning the individual at the core of their own synthesised experience is now one of the key mechanics to thriving in a world where digital and physical realities have merged. Gamification, the application of game design principles applied in non-gaming contexts, is a key business strategy that corporations use to ensure brand loyalties through feedback-based engagement. When looked at in this context, gaming makes for a nuanced understanding of the present and the future.
One consequence of positioning the individual as paramount while society digitises itself is an increased separation from emotional and moral instinct. At 1.30 pm on 29 August this year, 24-year-old lone gunman David Katz killed two people and injured 10 others in Jacksonville, Florida, before fatally shooting himself. His victims were attending a Madden NFL 19 (2018) tournament, an American football video game franchise named after former coach and commentator, John Madden. Katz, a participant in the competition, had allegedly become disgruntled after losing a game, so left the venue, returned shortly after with two handguns and opened fire. The shooting was partially captured on Twitch, the live-streaming service that allows gamers and fans all over the world to tune into competitive gaming events. It would be unfair and simplistic to draw an immediate connection between video game violence and the shooting given the complicated gun ownership discourse in America, but it is difficult not to think about the increasing prevalence of a synthesised understanding of the world having tragic impacts on real lives. I don't consider myself a gamer, but even the time I spend online moving through videos, games and high definition representations of reality, can lead me to superimpose impromptu scenes of digital violence. I'll imagine the high street I am walking down to be suddenly flooded by a tsunami, or a stroll down Karl-Marx-Allee to be accompanied by Second World War Allied tanks.
These synthesised experiences are real-world echoes of electronic realities. On social media, communication is often informed by partisan and incomplete versions of history, confusing fact with fiction in the fog of disinformation. Any statement made online becomes an instant declaration with little room for retraction or a simple change of mind — as humans are capable of doing. Information and images can be easily recontextualised and shared with an intent entirely counter to their origin. Images gain their own momentum and the damage of deception can be instantly done upon dissemination, as can be witnessed on the 45th President of the United States' Twitter account. Once published, it doesn't matter whether a statement is true or not — it has entered into discussion and gained currency. As a consequence, new binary battle lines are being drawn, leading to deeply entrenched ideological divisions, the ones and zeros that form the fabric of our digital world in code sharply reflecting real world oppositional forces. Each side is good and evil in equal measure depending on which absolute position we have taken. Te passive-aggressive warfare of Brexit makes for a fine example of this, as the instigators of Brexit appear to rely on a strategy of disorientation. Warfare is a strong word to use to talk about this laboured exit from the European Union, but it might be worth now considering the aggregation, manipulation and consequent weaponisation of the individual as exactly that, a new kind of warfare. As with the political power moves we're witnessing across the globe, the British public now find themselves clustered into partisan groups of pawns on the chess table, but the hysteria of this collective impotence is a useful distraction from what any real geopolitical intent might be.