Postmodernism

Postmodernism began as a philosophical movement amid the aftermath of World War 2 in Europe and stems from a general cynicism with thirties-era modernism. In short, postmodernism is largely about questioning modernist notions of narrative, plot and characterization. Many postmodern authors wanted their readers to be more aware of how storytelling works and interact and question it so that they become active rather than passive audiences.

Examples of Postmodernism in Video Games

The world we live in today can be considered postmodern; we can see this reflected in the works that exhibit aspects of postmodernism. Video games, unlike other forms of Media, are still young and only started around the 60’s - 70’s. In a way, video games developed alongside the postmodernist movement.

Examples of postmodernist elements in video games include:

Subjectivity

Subjectivity is about how each person sees something and thus decides how to act towards it. Whenever someone reads a book or watches a film, that person will have a subjective view about the work and the themes within it. In the media of video games, especially Role-Playing Games (RPGs), people (the player) can express their views in-game. These moments offer take the form of scripted choices, though these types of choices can vary depending on what type of “mortality system” a game has.

One type of mortality system is the “karma meter”, such as the one featured in the Infamous series, where it is the game’s developer who decides what choices are “good”, “evil” or “neutral”. However, this can lead to player feeling restricted, since whether a choice is good, evil or neutral is entirely up to personal interpretation. An example of a scenario when a karma system falls apart; the player confronts a corrupt King who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people, the player is given the option of either killing or sparing the King, who is unarmed and unable to defend himself. If the person playing the game believes that killing the King is what he deserves but is given evil points added to their karma meter, then the player can feel better annoyed.

A different and more fluid type of mortality system is “companion approval”, mostly prominently featured in the Dragon Age series. Instead of a system when there is a universally “good” choice, each action is received differently by different characters in the game. In the case of applying this system “The Corrupt King” scenario: if player, who is joined by three non-player characters called Arthur, Emily and Drake, decides to kill the corrupt King, Arthur will disapprove the choice, Emily will approve while Drake will be indifferent. The results come off as more nature than the karma meter method.

Shallowness

In postmodern philosophy, there is only ever a single authentic moment which is when that moment happened, any recounts of that moment would merely be representations of that moment except the original moment itself. For example, René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images is a painting of a pipe with the words "Ceci n'est pas une pipe." (which is French for "This is not a pipe.") underneath it.

“This is not a pipe”, it’s a photonic projection of a digital recording of a scan of a photograph of a painted representation of Magritte's perception of a pipe.

When broken down, video games are complex illusions made from coding which acts as a foundation to add assets like models, textures, audio and many more elements that are needed to create a game.

            However, just because video games and all other works, be they fictional or factual, aren't truly “authentic” and are merely representations of moments, for example; halfway through a game, a character called Bart dies in scripted cutscene but Bart doesn't really die, it was just a virtual character model that was animated in such a way as to mimic dying. Even so the person playing the game can have an emotional reaction to the death scene, this applies to all forms of representations, what we see may not be real but our feelings towards it are real.

Intertextuality

Intertextuality is about mixing different texts and genres together, this can result in “a story within a story” an example of this kind of work would be Cloud Atlas. In this case, all the stories are connected through themes, with each story exploring those themes in different ways.

When genres are mixed together, it often results in a work that does not fit into any established genre. The work can have aspects from defined genres like horror and still not be a work of horror. An example of a video game that defies genre would be Katamari Damacy, which involves rolling a large, sticky ball over the environment and growing in size as larger and larger objects attach themselves to the ball.

Non-linear Narrative

The way in which experience narrative in video games not only depends on how the developer structures the narrative in the way they want to present it to the player, but what kind of gameplay the game has, for example; open-world games, such as Fallout 3, allow the player to abandon the main story in favour of exploring the world. Other games let the player decide what order to do certain story missions; this is what is known as non-linear gameplay.

An interesting example of a game that has a non-linear narrative but linear gameplay, is Beyond: Two Souls. The game narrative jumps to different points in the protagonist’s life, however the gameplay is quite linear, players are often restricted to limited area when give control of the character and almost impossible to die or fail to progress. The game offer the player the ability to make choices, however, due the game’s non-linear narrative player will already know when the protagonist will inevitable end up regardless of their choices.

Knowingness

Knowingness is when a creator purposefully draws attention aspects of the work. Knowingness can take many different forms; two examples of these would be Parody and Deconstruction.

A parody is a work created to imitate and usually make fun of an original work, its subject or even author by means of satiric or ironic imitation. An example of a parody game would be Duty Calls which mocks elements in First-Person Shooter games primarily the Call of Duty series:

A deconstruction takes apart a work so as to better understand its meaning and relevance to us in Real Life. This often means pursuing aspects of work’s inherent contradictions and the difference between how they appears in this one work and how they compare to other relevant works or ideas both in fiction and Real Life. An example of deconstructive game would be Undertale, the game is a Deconstruction of RPGs, both on a superficial level from satirical flavour text to the in-depth plot.

Minimalism

Minimalism is having things as bare-bones as possible, applying this to a game would having few control options and a simplistic art style. An example of a minimalist game would Journey which only has four controls (move character, move camera, interact and pause), there is almost no spoken (the only spoken works are said in a song during the credits but none of it is in English) or written dialogue (the only words that appear are at the title screen, the start and the end of the game). The game’s story is expressed through imagery and music.

Copyright in a Postmodern World

NOTE: Copyright laws vary from country to country.

Copyright is a legal right that grants the creator of an original work the exclusive rights for its use and distribution. The purpose of copyright is to protect creators who use their works to make a living selling their work, especially if they’re an independent artist.

            Even if a work is copyrighted, elements from that work can still used by other people if they are given permission from the original creator or if their being used under fair use i.e. educational research, criticism or parody. An example of a fair use parody would be Weird AI Yankovic’s song The Saga Begins which is a parody song based on Star Wars.

Another form of copyright is the Creative Common License which person copy and alter a work as long as the original creator is credited. A video explaining how Creative Commons works can be found here.

Problems with Copyright

However copyright is not without problems, when someone asked for permission regarding copyrighted material, creators (often big companies) will ask for payment before giving permission. Some creators may withhold their permission as they may not want their work featured in someone else’s, this can sometimes become a form of censorship in certain cases.

            An important example of the flaws with copyright, in 2013 YouTube launched an automatic content IP system that resulted in thousands, mainly video game related, being flag for copyright infringement ever though there where video that abided by fair use:

False Copyright Claims

As mentioned above, copyright can be used as a form of censorship; for example, creators can make copyright claims on YouTube videos that they believe violates fair use of their work, sometimes these claims are justified but on other occasions they are often used to hide criticism of their work:

However, in 2015, YouTube started its “Fair Use Protection” program to helped users who have received undeserved copyright claims:

Post-9/11 Culture

After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, which lead to the “War on Terror” and increased instability in the Middle East, western society became more paranoid about terrorism and, in some cases, more xenophobic of Muslins. This attitude worsened after the 7/7 in 2005.

The fear of terrorism can be in Post-9/11 media, especially in mainstream American news channel who appeal to people’s fear to garner support. This is more noticeable when compared to British news programmes:

However, most western news outlets often overexpose certain shocking events such as mass shootings or a manhunt to the point of making it seem like a movie:

On non-news platforms, terrorism is a major theme for many modern works ranging from TV shows like Homeland to video games like Call of Duty. The plot of Homeland is a CIA officer investigating a US soldier who may have deflective to al-Qaeda, the touches on the topic of terrorists hiding among the populist.

In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which is the first in the series to be set in a “modern conflict” though specific details are left purposefully vague. Halfway through the game, the player, in the role of an America Soldier, witnesses a nuclear detonation and is caught in the blast radius. The player doesn't immediately die but is instead give time to see the destruction caused by the blast before dying.

Destruction Obsession

There is a current trend among big budget movies that there has to be scenes of destruction. Much of these destruction scenes often take place in cities or other urban environments, the reasons for the destruction depend on the genre of movie; in a disaster movie, it’s caused by an act of nature such as earthquake or tornado. In a superhero, it’s usually the result of a fight between the hero and the villain. For whatever reason, the results are similar: destruction that frequently includes explosions, property damage, wrecked cars and in some cases civilian casualties. All of which would add up to a high financial cost and an immeasurable human cost.

Why is it then that these destruction scenes are used as a form entertainment? Most people are aware of how bad this kind of destruction would be in real life. The main reason may be whenever we witness such destruction, or any sort of danger, our body’s natural instinct is to release adrenaline into our system as part of an evolutionally survival tactic. Perhaps it’s this rush that makes scenes of destruction and danger entertaining for people.

However, scenes of destruction, especially in cities, can often invoke 9/11 imagery which can create cognitive dissonance (having thoughts or beliefs that oppose each other) in the audience who would adrenaline rush from the destruction but are also reminded of the horrors of 9/11. An example of this would be in Man of Steel when the city of Metropolis is being destructed, we see buildings collapsing and creating dust clouds and we see panicked people running with the camera shaking:

This creates further cognitive dissonance when the film is about Superman is supposed to be an idealise symbol of hope but in the film, he gets into fights that cause even more destruction and possible deaths: