Performance Hydrogen City is the new site-specific performance by Digital Object Alliance invites visitors to experience the materiality of a speculative world of the future through the possible embodiment of videogame logics. The performance took place at Hyundai Motorstudio Moscow as part of the joint program by Garage Digital and the online platform Rhizome for the international exhibition World on a Wire.
The strange regime that everyone has been living under has accentuated the communicative aspect of video games, as online games became a tool that helped reassemble the crumbling community (No Man’s Sky players have found a way of getting together in a world of many scattered planets; Red Dead Redemption 2 is being used for conference calls).
We have accepted the fact that in terms of revenues gaming has overtaken the film industry, but we are still getting used to seeing games as a body woven into the political context (Pokémon Go has updated its mechanics to encourage users to stay at home). Games compensate for what has become inaccessible under the new conditions.
Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.
This was the core idea of Buckminster Fuller’s project The World Game, an educational simulation of efficient world logistics.
Like The World Game, today’s games have the therapeutic function of an emotional refuge and also act as research and learning models. At times, of course, we expect too much from them, trying to use them as tools for the understanding of a crisis (after a surge in popularity, the developers of Plague Inc. remind players that it is only a game). However, in some cases they really can become such tools, as with Foldit, a game that instrumentalizes community collaboration to produce real scientific results (The rundown on coronavirus). This is when the role of games in contemporary culture manifests itself with the utmost clarity. One of my favorite books, Metagaming by Stephanie Boluk and Patrick Lemieux, raws on a number of examples to discuss the metamedia nature of gaming culture.
While we were busy familiarizing ourselves with new communication tools and alternative ways of staying in touch, coronavirus has prompted NYU Game Center teacher Robert Young to stream a class about streaming on Twitch.
Some of us have been working from home while hugging our pets. Others have videos, streams or series on in the background to mitigate the feeling of loneliness. Digital presence has become a synonym for companionship. In 2018, T.L. Taylor published Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming, a detailed investigation into the rapidly developing culture of streaming.
