Holy thetan!

Xenu, the galactic tyrant first kidnapped certain individuals who were deemed ?excess population´ and loaded these individuals into space planes for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth). These space planes were said to have been copies of Douglas DC-8s, except with rocket engines. He then stacked hundreds of billions of these frozen victims around Earth's volcanoes 75 million years ago before blowing them up with hydrogen bombs and brainwashing them with a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days, telling them lies of what they are and what the universe should be like and telling them that they are 3 different things: 'Jesus, God, and The Devil.' (from Wikipedia)

The fundamental belief of Scientologists worldwide. It's not really relevant to the course at all, but I thought I'd throw that in there, because its funny. How bout this: it reflects the theme of prosethetic memories: because Xenu's super colossal motion picture brainwashed the alien thetans into having certain embedded memories. nice.

Kieron Gillen

One of the best games journalist out there is Kieron Gillen, a British freelancer. Here's an excerpt from one of his articles on fear:

The human mind’s a strange and lovely organ. Among it’s multitude of abilities – such as always finding the wrong person to fall in love with or deciding, yes, another drink is precisely what you need – is its capacity to expand its consciousness into items which it controls directly, making them proxies of the personality proper. This is why rather than saying the correct “His car ran into my car” after crash everyone calls out “He hit me” before swearing profusely and reaching for the winch. Your psychological identity has swelled to include the ton of warped metal around your actual flesh.

The same’s true of games. Once you’ve sat down at the controls, your digital character is under your complete control. Eventually the control system becomes transparent, you becoming unconscious of remembering what button to press. The character has become a digital limb, hardwired to the cerebellum through the medium of fingers, controllers and circuitry. The more complete the inclusion of your in-game self, the greater the identification and loss of self. Which results in… well, let’s Joe Wampole, Art and Game Design at Nocturne and Blair-Witch-1 developers Terminal Reality, explain, “Being an active participant is going to increase the amount of suspense over identifying with the character every time. The player IS the character regardless of what story is written about the polygonal hero. Therefore, it becomes the player’s own life they are trying to preserve, unlike a movie where the viewer is a bystander to the action. So when something scary happens to the character, it is happening to the player”. In short, the best games produce terror in the player by directly attacking them rather than a character you’re to sympathise with. In films, you’re a voyeur. With game’s it’s personal.

So, as you see here, there's alot about the in game character being a digital organ. This reminds me of the idea of the cyborg, in this case, we get to become a polygonal figure. Horror video games, like System Shock 2 which i'm playing now (thanks Alex C), tend to remove the consciousness of a keyboard so that you are completely absorbed in the game itself.

Check out Gillen's blog here: www.kierongillen.com/
There's a great Deus Ex review there.

more videogamewanking

As described in Alex Cybulski's blog, http://aplayerpiano.blogspot.com/, Warren Spector is a God. He actually had next to zero input into Deus Ex 2, which is why it ended up being such a huge disapointment. But apparently Deus Ex 3 is in the works under the helm of Spector, which is very good. For fans of Deus Ex, I'd also recommend Morrowind, Oblivion and Arx Fatalis as three games with similiar control systems, albiet not such a cyberpunk feel.

But to be fair, I could stretch things out to say that all RPGS offer a cyberpunk style of navigational adventure. You pilot through a journey into the unknown and undiscovered, and end up being the subvertive hero of the day. You also are able to customize your abilities to tailor-make your ideal persona, adding as much cowbell as you wish.

Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games are probably the most popular role playing games out there, and are unique due to people's dedication to their character's development. With Ultima Online, Everquest or World of Warcraft, some people are out there living most of their lives in the virtual world than in reality. It all really started with Ultima online and games like Diablo, with a strong emphasis on medieval stuff, but its only a matter of time before cyberpunk related gameplay arives. The Matrix online, which i've never played, is a growing example of one of these. There's also Star Wars Galaxies which is growing bigger with every expansion.

I used to spend a fair bit of my digital life playing Half-life 2 mods online; the whole 'mod' thing is kinda striking because its basically enhancements to the original game, or total conversions of it. We've all heard of Counterstrike, but there's also HL2 mods like Dystopia (cyberpunk theme- run around shooting people with biomod enhancements, use VR consoles to hack systems), as well as the excellent Natural Selection (marines vs aliens, both with bases which are built up as a team).

Deus Ex 2

So i've reinstalled this game, and there's some interesting features in it.
Firstly, there's a cyborg called NG Resonance, who is a virtual stimulation of a popstar. Bars around the city have these little hologram machines, where you can talk to a digital personality of the popstar. Amusingly, the personality proves to have her own agenda, in increasing her world wide knowledge as well as working alongside authorities in spying on people who speak to her. Even more funny is the fact that the real life NG popstar is just a dumb blond, who's intelligent is far surpassed by her cyborg simulation. What else to mention... you play a cyborg with biomod enhancements ala Johnny Mnemonic, with the ability to customize your abilities; see in the dark, enhanced strength, hacking, yodelling, robot dancing, etc etc. oh there's also a species of beings the Omar, who are somehow neurally connected to one another and are very similiar to the Borg. Their bodies are slowly becoming completely robotic, and their aim is to be able to achieve the unachievable, go where others cannot; kind of promethean over-reacher theme there.

video game extravanga

here's a better blog than mine: http://aplayerpiano.blogspot.com/
I don't know how to link it, so i'll just post it, what the hell.
There's an blog about deus ex, so I think I'll share my sentiments about the game.
Not only is it the best cyberpunk games out there, its pretty much one of the best games ever made, next to half life and gta.



Lets talk about Deus Ex 2, to be original. It's a pretty pap (british for crap) game, and doesn't do justice to the franchise, but its worth mentioning. Again, you modify yourself as a cyborg, and basically become a superior type of being. Like in the Frankenstein narrative, you eventually face off with your makers, although this is done better in deus ex 1. I think I'll reinstall deus ex 2 then talk about it later.
While im on the topic of video games, lets talk about Thief 3, which is another one of the best games ever made. Heres another game with cyborg implementation, albiet it is interestingly set in medieval times. You have a robotic eye, and with it the ability for enhanced sight. definitely not a game to be missed, and an interesting swing on cyberpunk action. plus there is a level where u visit a haunted children's nursery/insane asylum, and it is the scariest thing you will ever see on a screen.


In another game, called Soldier of Fortune, you play a real-life war vet called John Mullins, who has a cybernetically enhanced moustache. I'm not kidding you. Actually I am. But he does have a moustache, and kicks ass with it.

Advertising in Blade Runner

A rough count of the ads could be around 30 in the whole movie:
Coca Cola, Tyrell, Beauty products, etc.

The most prominent ad throughout, I beleive, is the Chinese woman ad; throughout the film, foreign products are seen advertised in this futuristic America. This suggests that the USA has become a victim of junk culture and and imperialised advertising. The use of ads suggest that race or nationality no longer matter; people are all equal because of their relation to products. People are therefore consumer beings. This seems like a tarnished sense of equality.

The massive size of the adverts reflect this also. The increasing size of billboards show how consumerism is literally consuming the environment, and it's citizens. The floating advert blimp stalks the sky like in eclipse; metaphorically eclisping the people's world.

Pretty cool stuff.

The Island is another new Frankenstein tale of note. Sean Bean plays the Frankenstein role, creating a colony of human clones who are literally outcast from society. The clones are born with the intellect of 15 year olds and are not programmed with knowledge of sex; therefore they have no will to reproduce. They function as organ hosts for rich people in need of operations; Sean Bean wishes to playthe role of God in seeking everlasting life. Ewan Mcgregor, a clone, becomes a menace to his creator and therefore must be hunted down. However at the end, the tables turn and the creature ends up hunting down the creator.
There are alot of themes in the Island that are similiar to Frankenstein. Sean Bean excercises a desire for control, like Frankenstein. His creations are subject to strict rules under his watchful eye.

creatures's kids

The idea of Frankenstein's creature having children strikes me as a really cool idea. Though the creature is a human invention, the children could be considered much more 'natural' beings. They would be stronger than normal humans, but really would look no different. Seeing as their birth would be from a natural (albiet recycled) womb, they would have fresh, normal bodies, not sewn together from dead parts like the creature. if raised by normal humans, they would be able to blend in with the rest of humanity.

Different cyber-culture narratives show similarities to this idea. The main characters in the Matrix are all products of their own creations. The computer system creates human 'farms' where they are all created. Yet we consider Neo and Trinity, when in the flesh, to be just as human as you or I.