Wits University’s Game Design lecturer Tim Flusk uses games to level the playing field for marginalised groups. “I use media to burn the system down so that we can sing ‘Kumbaya’ around the flames,” he tells XIO MIKO:
XIO MIKO: Congratulations on the recent win at the Independent Games Festival in San Francisco. What was it like working on the game with Bahiyya Khan?
TIM FLUSK: It was a useful experience that helped me realise the value of being game developers through support. The slightly silly adage that I developed through the experience is that “game development is actually just emotional labour”. So, I have an even greater love for my QA managers, producers and team leads, now. The experience also revealed to me the importance of skill distribution which eventually lead to my current attempt at education and community development.
XIO MIKO: Your work at Wits touches on marginalisation in gaming. Could you tell me about that?
TIM FLUSK: The history of conflict in this country – and the world – embeds itself into our present lives quite inconspicuously. There are some aspects of the marginalisation that have been spoken about to death – such as access, bias and privilege – but there are some ways that these systemic problems run far deeper than people realise.
Working in Digital Arts, there is one pertinent problem we are facing, which is mapping and detangling the barrier to technology. We’ve moved towards this by providing our students in the department with laptops – but it is becoming clearer that it is not quite so simple. The digital divide across economic-race class lines are quite a challenge to overcome. Video games, computers and similar technologies are expensive. (I, already quite privileged, hardly played any video games until I began making them.) As such, many of our students have little access to the discussions around games.
We are trying to provide further resources and interrogate our pedagogy to facilitate the diversity in our students.
I certainly believe there is a way to teach the apparently difficult stuff of programming, system design, maths – I just think it has been stuck in a space of colonial snobbishness and nobody has figured out how to teach it, simply how to exclude people from it.
In a sense, to use some convenient buzzwords, I – and the Department of Digital Arts at Wits – am attempting to decolonise what game development and similar digital media is.
XIO MIKO: You’ve noted that violence, domination and suppression play a big part in game narratives. Why does this need to be subverted?
TIM FLUSK: There is rather a specific kind of violence that is upheld by domination and suppression. From a certain perspective, violence is certainly traumatic, but there is space for it to be a tool used for nefarious or admirable causes. To the point though, the need for subversion is that there is a dangerous rhetoric and hegemony that comes through in the way many games allow for violence in their games. As I touched on in my previous answer, the past affects the present, and often you will see the inheritance of certain attitudes and behaviours persist through time and society.
Specifically, much of video game violence is “lower-case-C” colonial. There is a focus on gaining territory from others, murdering people and dominating people’s agency. All media reflects (and emphasises) society’s values and principles. If games are about systems, then we can only assume that these games provide insight into a society’s systemic processes. They reveal how we hold on to ideals of imperialism, colonialism and exploitation of people and the planet itself. I think video games are maybe able to contribute to us not being such chemical scum – if only a little. I’m not necessarily admonishing the enjoyment people receive from these games, but I do believe there is a disturbing celebration of colonialism and imperialism in these games. Games about creation, redistribution, taking care of people or self-defence (at any scale) are maybe spaces we can subvert such ideas.
XIO MIKO: Are there any games with narratives you would promote?
TIM FLUSK: The not very useful answer is all of them. The problem is not quite media itself, it’s closer to the inability for people to critique media. So, if we all consume all the video games, we might get better media and ludo literacy.
The much more useful answer. There is Neo-colonialism by Subaltern Games – which is a wonderfully very on-the-nose name – as well. Some other answers are Tacoma and Firewatch and Genderwrecked.
XIO MIKO: Do you think that narrative game mechanics have a significant effect on the ethics of the player?
TIM FLUSK: There is an interesting literature on ethics in game development. The answer is yes. BUT! I believe the ethics lies in developer’s hands. A trite idea in game development is that the only choice the player has is not to play. Once a player has chosen to play your game, the developer functionally controls the player’s actions through the limitation of action – despite the interactive nature of the medium.
XIO MIKO: You’ve mentioned that the medium is distinctly different to film and books. Could you elaborate more on that?
TIM FLUSK: The direct answer is that the medium being interactive and responsive makes it far more exciting. The more nuanced answer is game being interactive does something quite insidious. If the fundamental component of film might be the shot; and the fundamental component of the book might be word, the equivalent in games would be the action. We can disagree or agree with what we see in film or read in a novel. But how do we deal with disagreeing with our very own actions. This has good and bad consequences. Games are very powerful tools for garnering empathy, understanding and perspective. It’s probably why optimistic devs believe we can change the world with them.
What: Playtopia MGA 2019
Where and when: Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town from 5 to 7 December 2019
Tickets: Quicket
WS
