Gameplay Journal Entry#4
Featherfall is a strong example of counter-gaming as it removes the concept of a game entirely by making a machinima. Robin Klengel, Leonhard Mullner, and Michael Stumpf worked together in a collective by the name of Total Refusal based in Austria. They were interviewed by Matteo Bittanti about their video installation of a video essay which presents an unique psychoanalytic examination of the commonalities between dreams and videogames. Featherfall’s subject is the nightmare of falling, which may video game engines visualize through the common glitch where the player’s avatar slips beneath the surface of the map. The player can see the structures and hidden areas of a map soaring away from the player as the plumment into the dark expanding void whereby the player can only escape the nightmare through death.
This piece fulfulls an important idea of the counter-gaming movement which Galloway from his book Countergaming quotes from Peter Wollen that countergaming “disrupt[s] the emotional spell of the narrative and thus force the spectator, by interrupting the narrative flow, to reconcentrate and refocus [the audience’s] attention,” which artist modders aim for in their own different ways (109). We can see how presenting highly-academic video-essay machinima in does meet this was the viewer is confronted with a academic/intellectual psychoanalysis played over a series of clips of avatars falling as the team of Total Refusal eventually tie in their background to their conservation. The subject is not the game or the glitch, but the discussion of how these glitches relate to human psychology. While it is counter-intuitive and really not that fun “it’s not as important for you to play them yourself. These mods were made to exist as stories and videos, and that’s usually how they’re consumed,” (Yang 2012). Therefore Featherfall meets this idea. To be honest with you reader, this idea of counter-gaming is not even entertaining or worth much of your time, but is something interesting. Check out Jacobly Satterwhite’s work instead.
Works Cited
Klengel, Robin, et al. “VRAL.” Edited by Leonhard Müllner, MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL, Milan Machinima Festival, 2021, milanmachinimafestival.org/vral-screening.
Yang, Robert. “A People’s History Of The FPS, Part 3: The Postmod.” Rock Paper Shotgun, Rock Paper Shotgun, 21 Sept. 2012, www.rockpapershotgun.com/a-peoples-history-of-the-fps-part-3-the-postmod.
