Corporate Contagion1 is a playable theory computer game. Playable theory is a notion derived from the Italian guerilla semiotics and culture jamming website Mollenindustria.org2. They have used it to describe two of their games in particular, Leaky World and The Free Culture Game. How these games live up to the notion of playable theory and how any game can will be discussed later, what is essential to note now is that a playable theory game, in theory, is one in which the conceptual and functional ground of a game is based on some scientific or cultural theory. Under this conception games such as Foldit which embody scientific theory on a structural level could qualify as playable theory as could games such as September 12 which take strong stances on important cultural issues.
Playable Theory
In this section of the essay how Corporate Contagion is a playable theory game will be discussed. The goal of Corporate Contagion can be said to be; “find the linchpin in the corporate haystack” because the game is founded upon a social network theory of the small-world phenomena of American corporate elite. This founding theory is taken from the sociologists Gerald F. Davis, Mina Yoo and Wayne E. Baker, who used network theory notions to analyze the interlocks between top ranking American corporate boards in their article “The Small World of the American Corporate Elite, 1982-2001.”3 Looking at the corporate world they defined “American corporate elite as the directors of several hundred of the largest US corporations at a given time... this included 648 corporations with 8623 directorships.” (15)4. What serves to turn a large, sparse, decentralized and locally clustered network into a small-world is the existence of 'linchpins.' ‘Linchpins’ are figures whose personal networks cross local clusters and the existence of a few such characters can make a disparate network into a small-world. It is not uncommon in the corporate world for directors to serve on a number of boards at once and in fact nearly all firms share directors with other large firms(4)5. This phenomenon is called ‘board interlocks’. What this essentially means is that corporate board directors are connected by a small number of steps, a phenomena that can also be found in social media sites such as Facebook. What Davis says is distinct about the corporate world that warrants attention is that “board members meet face to face in small groups of 7-12 on a regular basis (8 or more times per year, in general), and they are jointly liable under the law. They may not all be close friends, but they are almost certainly on a first name basis, and would return each other’s phone calls”6. It is the phenomena of the small-world of the corporate elite which serves as a functional ground to Corporate Contagion and it is the societal implications of this which serves as the conceptual ground.
It is important to situate Corporate Contagion on one side of a divide in how playable theory games can be conceived. It has been noted that playable theory games can be conceived of in two ways; metaphorical and literal7. Along this line of division Leaky World would qualify as metaphorical. It is a playable theory game in so far as it is based on Julian Assange's essay "Conspiracy as Governance." Leaky World qualifies as metaphorical because it is not based off actual information. The ‘leaks’ which occur in the game are imaginative and relative to the game itself, and for this reason the game functions to metaphorically represent the world of leaks. In contrast Corporate Contagion would qualify as literal because the board interlocks which the player explores are actual interlocks (although some may be out of date).
To clarify how Corporate Contagion is a literal playable theory game it would be useful to contrast its game play with Leaky World. As a player of Leaky World one is playing as the global elite attempting to quarantine leaks. The goal of the game then is contrary to the position of the theory on which it is based. This is an important feature to note in the design of a game because it has bearing on how the player perceives the values that are being transmitted. In the case of Leaky World, where the goals of the player are contrary to the goals of the designer and theoretical foundation of the game, the player is compelled to wrestle with the value of ‘leaks’ in such a way that he perceives their inevitability. On the other hand, in a game such as Corporate Contagion or Darfur is Dying where the goals of the player are in accordance with the goals of the designer and theoretical foundation, the player is compelled to perceive the difficulties inherent in the issue at hand. This makes for a pronounced difference in the design of Corporate Contagion and Leaky World. The goal of the latter is to change the managerial practices of the corporate world. How this can be achieved is rooted in the game’s social network theory foundations. According to Davis and company the small-world phenomena is a symptom of networks qua networks and thus resilient to change (24)8. ‘Linchpins’ by serving as in-between points in the network have many ties and “to the extent that decision-makers in firms look to peers to inform their choices, our results suggest that there will inevitably be overlap in peer groups: firms will be looking to the same set of alters to reduce their uncertainty” (24)9. This means that ‘linchpins’ come to be nodes which various other nodes look to in times of uncertainty. For this reason, if a ‘linchpin’ is infected with a managerial meme, whether in businesses interest or social interest, that meme is in a prime position to spread when conditions are right. Thus, as a player of Corporate Contagion one is seeking to infect a linchpin with a social interest meme. As such, the player is on the side of the creator’s ideology as well as the game play being based in some solid fact. For this reason “Corporate Contagion” stands as a well-grounded playable theory game that serves to illuminate how social change can happen in the corporate world and how that change may be difficult.
Corporate Contagion & Philosophy
This section discuses some of the philosophical underpinnings of Corporate Contagion’s presentation design. Beyond the theoretical foundations of Corporate Contagion resting on social theory I also attempted to add a critical dimension to the game that can be said to be more aesthetically political than scientifically accurate. In 1936 Walter Benjamin wrote an essay titled “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in which he argued for a particular conception of the aestheticization of politics in which “fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves” and in which “instead of draining rivers, society directs a human stream into a bed of trenches.”10 What he was articulating was the fact that oppressive societal structures would be maintained not necessarily through political arguments but through allowing people to express themselves and that this expression, or individual’s tastes, would be, if not the justification at least the pool of energies from which oppression would continue. I do not wish to refute this argument, but merely to detourn it. My position is that the proliferation of tastes in capitalist societies, though a mechanism for oppression, may be turned on itself to expose that oppression in an intuitive, aesthetic way. This position is not far from that of Roland Barthes and his conception of semiology as an art. The kind of art that the semiologist is involved in is an active engaged political art that involves critically intervening with different cultural practices and making us aware of how artificial and contrived they are11. The structure of Corporate Contagion is such that it aims to be representative of the cultural practice of corporate management of society. It is its use of images which attempt to critically intervene in the player’s perception of this cultural practice. In his “Inaugural Lecture at the College De France” he wrote that ‘the sign – at least the sign [the semiologist] sees – is always immediate, subject to the kind of evidence that leaps to the eyes, like a trigger of the imagination” (375)12. The use of images in Corporate Contagion aim to trigger this imaginary evidence while at the same time tainting that evidence with a critical, political proclivity.
Colorization of the Corporate World
This section will discuss how Corporate Contagion incorporates aesthetic elements to express a particular interpretation of the corporate world. The corporate world has come to exhibit an expansive influence in both our personal lives and in our collective endeavors. The sheer permeation of corporate products in our daily lives from the sodas we drink, to the products we purchase for our infants and even the mobile-devices which carry our personal lives in them evidences this. As does the influence which industries such as ‘Lockheed Martin’ have in politics as far as their profits are dependent upon war and industries such as Newscorp, who we endow with the responsibility to inform us about global affairs. The influence which the corporate world wields is not only in the amount of things upon which we depend on it for but also how it holds sway in nearly all areas of human life. The distinction made here may appear miniscule but is in fact large because it is the distinction between our material practices and the directing force behind those practices. It is one thing that we materially depend upon the corporate world for our daily lives and it is another how this corporate world functions.
Before this distinction can be drawn out further it is necessary to look at the corporate world from an objective stance. A recurrent theme of Davis' and company's article is how the small-world phenomena of the corporate world is a symptom of networks qua networks. With this in mind we can then conceive of the corporate world as ethical in a Hegelian sense, meaning that its existence as a social object is actual. In his “Philosophy of Right” Hegel makes the claim that “if reflection, feeling, or whatever form the subjective consciousness may assume regards the present as vain and looks beyond it in a spirit of superior knowledge, it finds itself in a vain position; and since it has actuality only in the present, it is itself mere vanity” (20)13. What this means in regards to out subject is that if we take the position that the small-world phenomena of corporate world is vain, in the sense of being something to despise and without real significance, and it is the case that such a phenomena is a symptom of networks qua networks and networks are inescapable then we are vain in the sense that we are ineffectual. Thus, from this vantage point we can see how the distinction made above is important because it draws our attention to the ethical existence of the corporate world as well as displays that the corporate world has a distinct direction, this direction being dictated by the elite of the corporate world.
That this is an ethical fact is useless to argue further, but whether or not it is moral, is open to question, and it is this question which my aesthetic critical aspect hopes to address. It was my hope with this game to express how various corporate spheres of American society are interconnected, and perhaps further how each sphere is not an island. This is important because our mundane daily activities take place within one of these spheres and hence have an effect on and are affected by the other spheres which often extend globally. To flesh this idea of interconnectivity out I chose to use the game environment as a platform to display images that were supposed to be critically representative of a given sphere of influence.
Games & Culture
Mollenindustria.org notes how video-gaming is moving from the margins of culture to surpass cinema in cultural productive output. This area of human life is of course not excluded from corporate influence either. Their claim is that this rise of video-games comes with the continuation of corporate values of big profit. To this their response is that “the ideology of a game resides in its rules, in its invisible mechanics, and not only in its narrative parts.” It is this idea that the values at play, a notion from Mary Flanagan14, in a game can be expressed in a number of ways that inspired me to use diverse critical images to represent diverse industries in the corporate world network. By having a mall backdrop for a certain company which is liable to change to a corporate board backdrop, a fighter jet back drop, oil spill backdrop or media backdrop I felt the idea of corporate interconnectivity could be expressed in an aesthetically shocking way. The shock is to be found in traveling from a mall scene to bombs dropping. This did not affect the rules of the game but only the narrative (starting at a mall and ending with a globe). To be certain, changing the rules of a game to express an alternative ideology is a difficult task with perhaps fertile consequences but incorporating values into the narrative of a game is no easily dismissible act. It gives unity to the game by giving it a beginning middle and end. By starting in a mall the player is confronted with a scene that he or she encounters in real life at least a number of times a year. A disparate domain shifts from the corporate board, which is the locus of descions that effect stories in the media, one's employment, investments etc. A fighter jet dropping bombs is representative of the little seen fact that this is what some industries produce, instruments of destruction. An all surrounding media room and the results of some of our energy production practices, oil spills. It is in the search through this corporate haystack that they player may discover on his or her own how deeply interconnected and influential the corporate world is. From this personal discovery, the player then may reflect upon whether he agrees with how we get our energy or deal with foreign relations. This approach of using backdrops to illuminate critical aspects of given companies adds a critical artistic political dimension to the game.
4 http://webuser.bus.umich.edu/gfdavis/Papers/The%20Small%20World.pdf
5 http://webuser.bus.umich.edu/gfdavis/Papers/The%20Small%20World.pdf
8 http://webuser.bus.umich.edu/gfdavis/Papers/The%20Small%20World.pdf
9 http://webuser.bus.umich.edu/gfdavis/Papers/The%20Small%20World.pdf
12 The Continental Philosophy Reader
13 Elements of the Philosophy of Right
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