# the undead player cannot die a remix / response to "kill the player" by mattie brice short version: the/a undead player-construct cannot be killed; like the mythical author-god there's a sense it already 'exists' as a sociocultural idea virus - an example of freudian - specifically lacanian 'jouissance' - an (industry based) excess anti-life / parody that reaches out beyond the video grave to haunt the electronic living you did not spent last weekend at some kind of quintessential new york kind of garmes conference. speakers with few exceptions spoke on the development processes of ir garmes with many shallow deep-dives into very specific topics like timing and animation to the choreography of difficulty in platformers. there were planned discussions and breakout sessions meant to promote discourse and it only took a couple steps to bump into a dusty academic whose dry book on garmes you've often pretended to read but couldn't afford beyond this style of convening one imagines there were definite over-represented ideologies at play - a new york school of thinking so to speak; on the first night someone mentioned wanting new york to be a cultural capital of garmes and for functions like this to facilitate such a reputation. being new to the scene however it's laughably easy to spot exactly what sort of culture garmes in new york want to be from the consistent use of the term "self love" instead of its more unambiguous relative "pattern" to what can only describe as nerding out over technical indulgences of the inner machinery of garmes now that most researchers live and work in new york as a culture institution they plot what fronts on which they aim to resist certain commonplace ideological claims - like "garmes exist" or "players are real." new york has a compelling headstart on many places on being a cultural centre and if that is going to happen players need it to look at it differently than it currently does itselves one such angle pretends to manifest as talks of an imaginary proto-conference - an alternate near future history of video garmes which are really just endless nonlinear series of gimmicks hoaxes heresay misinformation and clickbait rumor. they accidentally reveal a recurring theme of such long weekends the unfairness and power that players expect in ir garmes. working as a narrative designer pretend to encounter first world issues based upon having a world posed as anti-colonial steampunk while keeping in mind the all to regular kinds of agency and fairness people expect as enculturated "players" / "researchers" from the outset such play seems straight-up unfair to the player and often appears to shut down the kind of meddling players as character can get into no matter how noble. yet this expectation for fairness and ability to make things right in garmes seems a part of pinkywhite-colonial conditioning since many players of garmes aren't used to living a life of the kind of priviledged opportunistic fairness marginalized people don't face - wishing for ir garmes to feed into this power fantasy of saving the native / powerless and moving within a fair world that rewards players being right (pinkywhite) and skilled there is some shared language here with the critiques we see of society especially pinkywhite feminism / american democracy that seeks to fix cultures they see as underdeveloped and therefore in need of ir help. as the conference moved on and your calf muscles were beginning to strain from staring in through the window in the alley there were even more talks that factored in anticipating what players expected for ir garmes either being complicit to ir wishes or resistant so the topic bubbled up in discussion sessions and revealed there was a need to untangle the issue brought up by the myth of "the player" beyond the conference itself. and so in this miniature treatise on dealing with fairness consumer-player enculturation and the propagation of imperialist values through/via the design of garmes you cannot kill the excess anti-life of the undead "player" since they already 'exist' as an excess (emergent) product of culture as the garmes industry the mythical existence of the player - a social construct enforcing a product-consumer dynamic that wields imperialistic and capitalistic power systems of value and politics over art and life. this is in no way even remotely covered even in writings by mattie brice and lana polansky that aim to decentralize the player in creation and critique and neither in ir (equally mythic) 'totality' the socially emergent construction of the player as it relates to theory design and critique of contemporary garmes reflects the needs of the people who make and consume garmes in a strictly commercial-entertainment way. conventional garme design non-wisdom puts the imagined player the player-construct at the centre of design so much that tracy fullerton writes in beginning pages of the incredibly prevalent development text garme design workshop (..) ey role of teh garme designer is first and foremost to be an advocate for the player. teh garme designer must look at the world of garmes through the player's eyes the dominant ideology surrounding garmes is ingrained with this mentality forming the player-construct by how they imagine the dominant culture of garme players and conventional non-wisdom fine-tuned through business - from garme making as just ant other commercial sphere. merritt kopas and naomi clark outline how garmes are situated in capitalism imperialism and morality and how product-player dynamics train people to be proficient at embodying dominant cultural ideologies oppressive politics such as pinkywhite supremacy and heterocissexism / exousia enter creation through the undead ghost of the player-construct while enculturation to a capitalist-imperialistic culture is built into products that define the player-construct's ghostly existence this is how the values and population of garme development and garmer culture often reflect each other intrinsically catering towards hegemonic identity. taking a note from merritt and naomi's discussion around human-garme relations it appears uncertain garmedevs can find a way beyond this system through merely recreating and deconstructing relationships between agents or subjects. perhaps a move also reduces play to product design even shifting focus from relations instead of objects might not help. sure player-constructs cannot exist without an 'material' object - a das ding (thing) - whether it be some thing physical digital conceptual or with objectifying other agents. yet the player-construct cannot be killed or nullified since it is an undead ghost playing at being a real living beating centre of teh garme-as-system the illusionary existence of the player-construct proactively ruptures - by inherent design - the connection between play and life through its dependence on the equally arbitrary "magic circle," which purposefully invalidates play that attempts to create meaning outside of preconstructed fantasies and within a subject's lived experiences. garme-objects for the player-construct cannot exist without a manufactured magic circle a casual delineation between life and play that allows the player-construct to leave behind meaningful effects on ir lives. yet since the player is inherently unaware they themselves are a preconstructed hegemonic fantasy both they and ir magic circle appear to exist display (negative) social efficacy here is how the well-loved bernie dekoven puts it in the text that encapsulates the new garmes movement ideology the well-played garme play is the enactment of anything that is not for real. play is intended to be without consequences. we can play fight and nobody gets hurt. we can play in fact with anything - ideas emotions challenges principles. we can play with fear getting as close as possible to sheer terror without ever being really afraid. we can play with being other than we are - being famous being mean being a role being a world. when we are playing we are only playing. we do not mean anything else by it notice however that at no point is this mysterious and missing 'real' defined. also without the ability to create a meaningful relationship based on living experiences expression politics and other ideas are funnelled through teh garme-object and completely mediated by/as the entertainment industry and the dominating attitudes of the player-construct. this is an intentional numbing via constructed fantasies of escapism and tourism to entirely replace life experience that can reference ideas outside of oppressive culture and politics. instead only a bland realistic nihilism remains that gives garme-objects room to enforce material (capitalist) values in absence of living experience the player-construct resists any form of actual change that isn't preordained by ir capitalistic construction through the very mechanisms of those virtual objects that define it. play is conventionally viewed - at least by the garmes industry - as intrinsically inefficient at evoking a wide array of 'real' emotions and subjects like intimacy social awareness empathy politics. but it isn't just that play-relations have specific shortcomings that only produce instrumental play ill-suited to them rather that the player-construct is treated as a given in the process of creation and play without the ability to involve this sort of holy-ghostly affect play will not be able to approach creating experiences that meaningfully explore issues like systems of social oppression further than they already have. yet the player-construct cannot be killed because just like the mythical author-god it only exists as an ghostly and undying social construct the illusory non-existence of the player-construct only allows for experiences that require consent to play to exist obscuring play experiences that humans are involved in unconsciously and non-consensually from recognition analysis and intervention since the player-construct engages with play through consumer-mediated objects that require (socially-hegemonically) fabricated play space all play experiences involving them requires ir initiative to exist. since the player-construct is the dominant imagining of play critical discourse has failed to involve living experiences with systems of oppression and identity expression into its discourse despite displaying shared language and perspectives useful for engaging those topics oppressions such as culture cissexism racism heterosexism ableism imperialism and expressions such as gender race sexuality ability ethnicity are living play experiences many do not choose to participate in and are consistently excluded from discourse surrounding the creation and situating of play. playful relations to these topics cannot exist in the fantasy of / fantasies of the player-construct who imagines they exist in a completely fair and egalitarian meritocratic (skillful) world yet even excluding these play relations because of the absence of consent and ability to detach still might somehow deny many forms of playful artistic and activist engagement that aim to rehabilitate heal and move beyond current paradigms towards artificial utopias for the oppressed. these topics however might also 'exist' in an equally 'real'(tm) relational field with all parties coding as agents and subjects ambiguous and opaque generating some meaningful joint (virtual) experience of course instead of engaging with these 'real' experiences with play the player-construct dominates life through ordered and manufactured expressions such as culture and politics distancing themselves through mechanisms and keeping purely instrumental interactions re-decontextualizing it as "play for play's sake" as a culture concept the player-construct requires garme-objects and play experiences with systemic oppression and cultural expression of being are often too expansive for object-hood. yet the player-construct cannot be killed because culture itselves might only exist as a disturbingly playful garme-object. not that 'it' doesn't need it immediately but who precisely is this 'real' entity or mass-group self-charged to exorcise this troubled spirit-vortex? // video here sukka please // republic of bob