A disturbing project

Today was project day - the second year students present the projects that they have worked on all semester long in groups. Many worked very, very late nights the past two weeks or so. Usually, the group that got a good night's sleep the night before the presentation ends up with the best grade because they were done and happy.

The first group so disturbed me that I really had trouble focusing on the others.

Many program games - that seems to be the current fashion, and there is an emerging science of programming games, so that's okay. I love to see their faces during the semester when they realize that modeling real-world things in games will involve lots of physics (evil grin).

This first game was to be about intercultural communication, and the group was a bit fluttery and disorganized, I took it to be the all-nighter they pulled yesterday. They chaotically introduced the game, and then introduced the first mini-game. As the backstory leading up to this, the character ends up in a pact with the devil. Okay, let's play with taboos, how juvenile.

The mini-game was a "smack-Saddam" game like there are millions out there. You get to the next level by smacking 20 Saddam heads as they come out of some holes. What fun.

There is some storyline to wade through - very long, very involved, very full of clichés. I can't really understand why they are in Australia - the opponent is speaking in an Australian accent. I grab the printed storyboard, okay, it is about Texas. I read, and find stupid scenes with people from different religions throwing epithets at each other. I ask one of the programmers why they chose this. There's no reflection, they just thought it was cool. I'm not sure what all this has to do with intercultural communication, but anyway, back to the game.

The character is now in prison somehow, and with some cute tricks it can break out of prison. Now in the yard I see that the prison is actually Guantanamo. I am very concerned about a ha-ha game about Guantanamo, especially one that is portraying cowering figures in orange jumpsuits. Of course, the bad guys capture the man character and drag him down a hallway - and drag him to a chair, strap him in and begin torturing him.

I explode. I absolutely refuse to continue to look at this stuff, and leave the room, slamming the door after me. I disappear into the bathroom to think.

What on earth has possessed them? Okay, I realize they all play games I consider tasteless and horrible, but this takes a step beyond that. The torture game, anyone? I later see that there are lots of these games available on the web - so really, everyone is doing it, apparently.

What on earth has the world come to when young people find the topic of torture something to play with? Just a big joke? Don't they realize what torture does to people?

If there had been at least a scrap of thought that had gone into their choice of material, we could at least have discussed it. But there was nothing to discuss - it was just cool, or so they thought.

I came out, took a seat outside the examining room, and waited for the committee to come out to go on to the next group, writing madly on a piece of paper I had to keep myself from storming back into the room. When we went on it took much effort to pull myself together and not take my anger out on the other groups.

In the evaluation we weighed the issue - the graphics were consistent, there was a lot of work put in, even if there were deficits all over the place. The choice of topic material was very poor and the presentation chaotic, the game had a lot of crazy corners. We decided on a B-, and the project leader had to break it to the group.

They broke out in tears. They were expecting an A for all their work, it is now my fault that they got a "bad" grade. I am speechless - this is not a bad grade, but it reflects some poor choices they made. I'm afraid that they have utterly and completely not understood why anyone would have a problem with their game.

Have we raised a generation of insensitive monsters, completely out of touch with the real world? Scary, and very, very disturbing.

Welt am Draht, the 13th Floor and Second Life

Saw a triple-header last night with some friends - both parts of Welt am Draht, a 1973 made-for-TV science fiction film by the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder based on the novel Simulacron Three by Daniel F. Galouye and the remake in 1999 of the same novel produced by Roland Emmerich and directed by Josef Rusnak, called The Thirteenth Floor.

Since I was just reading a review of the state of things in Second Life in the c't, (Goldesel Second Life?, 07/07, p. 94ff) and had just re-installed Second Life in order to check things out, I was struck by the parallels. Galouye tells the story of what Linden Labs would like Second Life to be - a parallel universe in which we can manipulate "units" who do not know that they are units in a higher level.

I don't think we will ever get to that position - or are we currently ourselves units in some higher level, unaware that we are not making our decisions ourselves, but are being directed from above? But the questions raised by Galouye and illustrated by Fassbinder and Rusnak are valid - what is reality? Why are we researching into virtual realities? A quote from Welt am Draht: There will always be questions, so there will always be research.

The Fassbinder version is extremely long, slow, painful - but the music lets us know exactly when something strange happens. The camera work, playing with mirrors, is superb. And the memories of the interior decorations, the clothes, and the horrible hairstyles men wore during the 70s makes this a wonderful film.

The Thirteenth Floor goes into a lot more detail on déjà vu and was so disconcerting for me because I always knew exactly what was coming next. I don't remember ever seeing this movie - maybe I saw it on an airplane to the States? I cannot recall, but it is so vividly etched in my mind, perhaps I was acting in it on a higher level and it got streamed down into my reality?

Second Life, btw, is still as boring as the first times I went in. Jerky graphics. Unresponsive system. Ads everywhere. Stupid idiots soliciting you. And without money, nothing fun to do. Luckily, there are plenty of other games around.