Artist Response No 11

First Person Shooters

In the late 20th century, the entertainment industry began to converge in video and computer games. As the artists Anne-Marie Schleiner, Joan Leandre, and Brody Condon state in the excerpt describing their work, the industry's focus especially lay on video games that simulate war and war-like situations. Through the present technologies in the field of video game programming, online battles can be often experienced as the real world through the mediating interfaces of game-like targeting and navigation systems. At the same time, increasingly realistic games known as "first person shooters" featured immersive, three-dimensional worlds in which players engaged in violent conflicts, depicted with near-photographic realism.

After September 11, 2001, the artists Anne-Marie Schleiner, Joan Leandre, and Brody Condon were all fascinated by and critical of an internationally popular first-person shooter called Counter-Strike, in which players choose to undertake either terrorist or counter-terrorist operations in an urban environment. However, the artists claimed to have seen the game as an overly simplistic ""convergence of network shooter games and contemporary Middle Eastern politics in a game.

When playing Counter-Strike multiple players connect via the Internet to occupy the same virtual environment, fighting with or against one another in teams and communicating through text messages and voice channels. In addition, players can upload images to insert in the game space as "spray paints," or graffiti tags, to commemorate a kill or mark territory. Velvet-Strike is an artistic intervention that enables participants to insert what the artists call "counter-military graffiti" into the virtual space of Counter-Strike.

In addition, the site features screen-capture movies showing sprayers in action and examples of hate mail from Counter-Strike players angered by the artists' provocative actions, which some fans of the original game interpreted as denouncing video game violence.
Schleiner, Leandre, and Condon, however, have made it clear that Velvet-Strike is not critical of violence in video games, per se. Instead, as the three artists point out, the work forces us to wonder what exactly is at stake in the fictive virtual worlds in which both soldiers and civilians immerse themselves, at a time when real-life warfare increasingly resembles games and games increasingly resemble real life.
I have always been wondering what it exactly is that makes us so curious about those video games. Maybe these games are becoming even more popular in the future, as Schleiner, Leandre, and Condon indicate, because the games become reality and the reality becomes the games. It might also be due to the believe that one has the chance to have such a dangerous experience without actually being in risk to die.
However, I appreciate the artist's approach to such a disputable issue. Nevertheless, I doubt that users are actually prompted to wonder what exactly "is at stake in the fictive virtual worlds".