After A Long Journey, A Warning of Things To Come

    The elements which constitute the world a gamer hero belongs to, even the heroes themselves, are sometimes best described as Doctorow aptly qualifies many descriptions of the food Marcus ingests in Little Brother: "better than it sounds".  For gamers like myself, or even a dedicated code crunching keyboard jockey, we get what the authors are getting at when they describe something.  What might be completely off Jon Doe's radar was picked up by our short wave radios before we even unclipped them from our super sweet yellow utility belts (of course I mean the limited production models with a lead lined pocket for kryptonite, just in case... go ahead and lol, I am) and turned them on.  In the past this has worked as a horrible deficit to the acceptance of the gamer hero, especially in mainstream culture.  However, what one sees now are completely self sufficient social circles of solely gamers and/or righteously computer literate people.  We have come to expect that, for example, the actors that portray us and the heroes based on us and our fantasies do so with a certain degree of accuracy.  None of this button mashing, invisible marionette inspired movements that inevitably end up making somebody look like a fool simultaneously resulting in one less plasma TV in stock.  The point here is that -- now that the gamer hero has survived the wait for our science fiction to become our science (near) future -- we not only look forward to seeing another take on how awesome it would be to save the world due to teh hotness that is us when it comes to uber gaming pwnage, but we want said pwnage to be executed relatively accurately and feasibly.

    Doctorow intelligently, and usually excitedly, utilizes newer gaming methods such as ARGing -- which incidentally is what leads Marcus to the edge of the rabbit hole before the Department of Homeland Defense throws him into it for good -- and role playing staple LARPing in order to enhance his story and further define Marcus as the novel's gamer hero.  This was actually a welcome change of pace from the typical shenanigans most gamer heroes get themselves into, much less plan in order to comedically gain a legitimate upper hand over their adversaries like Marcus' VampHunt LARP distraction.  Doctorow declares early on that Marcus is into gaming that involves "real" physical action by describing how he transitioned into ARGing from LARPing.  Alternate Reality Games are similar to LARPing, however its usually more discrete than a clearing in the middle of a park filled with geekage battling it out with (actually pretty sweet... sometimes) arts and crafts for big kids renditions of armor, clothing, and weaponry.  ARGing also seems to be more goal/mission oriented, drawing similarites to the ARG Spooks from the novel Halting State and the augmented reality version of Pac-Man that was played on the streets of Singapore in 2004 and again some time NYC.

   "Cory Doctorow is a fast and furious storyteller who gets the details of alternate 
     reality gaming right, while offering a startling, new vision of how these games 
     might play out in the high-stakes context of a terrorist attack."

                                                                           - Jane McGonical, Designer, I Love Bees

These links won't help you prepare for a terrorist attack, but the will show you how to have some serious fun:

http://gamesalfresco.com/2008/03/03/top-10-augmented-reality-demos-that-will-revolutionize-video-games/
Augmented Reality Pacman!
Smart Phone Mediated Augmented Reality

    As I've mentioned in blogs past, the hacker is in some ways more of a derivative of the "original formula" for the gamer hero, yet an irreplaceable link in the chain of the gamer hero's overall identity.  In addition, while reading Little Brother you don't ever really catch yourself thinking things like, "Even if that laser beam could have somehow transferred Flynn into the Paranoids, a computer or a laser can't generate mass from nothing, considering that once he was transferred  on the drive he was electrons," or, "Wow, I didn't know that hackers had a natural reluctance or fear of hitting the shift key."  While the latter quote is more of an accuracy issue I have with almost all movies that incorporate any form of computer geek or hacker.  It's not a big deal, it's more of a ridiculous pet peeve of mine.  The more important issue lies within the previous quote.  The uneven 'geekquation' that presented itself in my head when Flynn reappeared at the end of Tron still bothers me.  I know I should let it go, but even Honey, I Shrunk The Kids has a more believable crazy laser.  Technically all would have had to be able to do was reduce the amount of empty space between atoms based on the fact that if you took out all the empty space a person would be smaller than the head of a pin, but I digress.  What I'm getting at is that most gamer hero oriented movies like Gamer, Last Starfighter, Tron or the Wizard either incorporate a futuristic technology that even if developed would not be implemented as depicted, out of this world premise (sometimes literally), seriously flawed hypothetical technology, or simply let Jimmy get 50k on Double Dragon in the time it takes Fred Savage to ask for a cab and sort of get angry.  This usually happens regardless of the type of gamer hero present, one obvious reason being that theoretical technology is usually cool, and almost always guarantees sweet special effects, even if they're made out of words and thoughts.  
     Doctorow does a fantastic job of employing what I explained to my dad as "implicated generation technology".  What I mean by this is that Doctorow doesn't seem to come up with story first and fill in the gaps with easy fixes like the laser in Tron which served as a fix all vehicle for Flynn's trans-planar traveling.  That's not to say that Little Brother was full of the types of brilliant conceptual solutions that surface almost regularly in the Ghost In The Shell series, either.  Doctorow is well versed in technology related issues, sometimes severely so, which makes the mechanics for progression and development in the story seem almost as if they are maybe not next generation tech, but definitely a possible generation that is implied by the our current technology.  Examples would be the iconic paranoia ware Xbox consoles and home brewed arphid cloners.  The way he introduces them and the fact that they are home brewed arphid cloners means that there are most likely also manufactured models in the future, but that people have learned how to make their own from parts.  The kicker is that the things the cloner is used on.   For example, things like the SmarTrip Metro card I have in my pocket right now and devices that are the equivalent to a Maryland E-ZPass for tolls which is on my dad's car's windshield.  Not only do current technologies exist in his futuristic landscape, but the future existence of the technology that his characters are familiar with is implied by what exists in our world.  The effect is feasibility, and a cast of characters that actually mesh with their environments.  The impact on a hacker type gamer hero in such a place is enormously proactive.  Foremost, it greatly increases the average readers' understanding and therefore acceptance of the hacker type gamer hero.  In addition, it increases overall understanding of whatever it is the hacker is doing and in the case of the hero fueling the social commentary, it narrows the gap between the metaphor and our reality.  Narrowing this gap creates more tangible connections, giving the commentary more substance, thus making the commentary much more clear, relevant, and applicable all at the same time.

        The struggles of gamer hero are mediated by the interfaces they engage, usually in order to interact with some sort of virtual world or simply digital information and content.  This mediation commonly serves as a buffer between the trouble brewing in whatever electronic environment the hero is interacting with and the soon to be consequences for the "real" world depicted in each story.  The severity of each buffer (on a story by story basis) can represent story elements such as the relative imminence of the threat posed by the antagonist(s), the degree of obstacles that a hero must overcome, and especially the status quo of technological capability and structure that "currently" exists.  Considering my Gamer related argument -- presented in my last post that suggested that the gamer hero can act as a vehicle for commentary on society's relationship with modern and potential technologies -- the buffer of each story could represent warnings or cautions and predictions of real world conflicts that are analagous to its fictional implications.  

The two most pertinent possibilites I can deduce are:
   
    1.The amount and variations of freedoms that individuals 
                             have to utilize technology
                                         vs.
        The amount and methods of control that organizations
        and governing bodies exercise through technology to 
        create/enforce/maintain/manipulate a desired "order" 
                         in the physical world
   
    2.A suggested time frame within which societally dynamic
       events and/or actions could take place and retain their
       capacity for potentially affecting possible resolutions of the major
       conflict(s) -- regardless of which "side" wins out -- that
       challenge the worlds of our gamer heroes and heroines
       should these events manifest themselves in our society(ies).


     These two Inherent in any social commentary there is usually some sort of warning or caution with varying degrees of severity.  The overriding message in Little Brother was personified by Marcus and elaborated on through his internal and social struggles.  This message that I took away from reading the novel is this:  We all have certain inalienable rights, most important of all our freedom.  The government is meant to facilitate our well being and the well being of the country.  If they cannot do this without taking away our freedom it is our right and responsibility to "debug" the way we are governed.  Although Marcus is the most well developed hacker type gamer hero I have ever come across, considering to his LARPing and ARGin he combines those characteristics with the frontier of what a standard gamer hero, making him somewhat of a hybrid gamer hero, the most evolved type of gamer hero we have discussed so far.