Joe's+MSA


 * Media Specific Analysis**
 * Baldwin, Sandy. "New Word Order: Basra". Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2.**

Joe Nelis


 * Overview**

"New Word Order: Basra" (NWO) is one visual, interactive poem in a series of Baldwin's titled "Black Mesa Poems". The title of this collection is a reference to the Black Mesa government research facility from the //Half-Life// video game series, developed by Valve. These games have been lauded as exemplary in terms of gameplay and narrative, but also in terms of fostering creativity in the gaming community. //Half-Life// has been one of the most frequently modded, or modified, games, leading to one of the most popular multiplayer online game experiences (before the advent of //World of Warcraft// and X-Box Live), //Counter-Strike//. According to Baldwin's critical analysis of NWO, he purposely chose to frame his work in the //Half-Life// engine because of the popular association and because of the intertextual connections he saw. he created his own //Half-Life// mod, in which the player/reader encounters a physical manifestation of Billy Collins's poem "Introduction to Poetry".


 * Textual Features**


 * Exact text of Collins's "Introduction to Poetry", disjointed to segments throughout the physical environment.
 * "New Word Order" title display to signify beginning; plain text that fades away.
 * Poem text can be broken/destroyed


 * Media Features**


 * First-person perspective
 * Modded space adheres to normal game mechanics
 * Environment rendered in 3-D based on in-game graphics
 * No music or narration, but persistent ambient noise and echo effects
 * Limited reader/player choice in mode of textual destruction.


 * Reader Experience**

The reader/player experiences this work in a single room. The walls are covered in some sort of pattern that resembles a circuit board. The ceiling is made up of metal bars, letting some light into the room. Scattered throughout the room are the fragments that make up Collins's poem. The pieces are solid, and can support the character's weight. The poetic text is displayed backward on the opposite side of the panels. The only other items in the room are a live wire that sparks and hisses constantly and three weapons: a crowbar, a rifle, and hand grenades.

The text can be obliterated one letter at a time with the crowbar, giving the reader/player an opportunity to edit the poem down into something new; however, text cannot be moved or created, leaving this option somewhat limited. The rifle can take out larger chunks of words or even small phrases. The grenades can clear larger amounts of text, creating a momentary burst of charred splinters. Despite the fixed amount of text there is to destroy, there is no discernible ending to this mod. After the text has been wiped out, you can still explore the room. The only way to get out of the room is to drop a grenade at your feet, which will kill your character.


 * Analysis**

What initially struck me was the way the game environment Baldwin created worked in conversation with the poem. The dreary, violent enclosure seems to mirror the violence that takes place at the end of Collins's poem, when his students beat a poem with a hose to coerce meaning out of it. The barred ceiling, dirt floor, and stray live wire suggest that this is the sort of space in which people are tortured and held against their will, like the brutalized poem. However, reading Baldwin's essay on the piece shines a new light on this intertextual experience. Baldwin asserts that video games are not immersive because they are finite; their "inherent dimensionality and cohesion guarantee that they can be passed over" (1). he claims any textual experience in these spaces boils down to reading, which he positions as a "hallucination of immersion", which is too limited an experience to immerse us because "we are always already immersed in viscerality and sentience" (2). The space in which we are left at the end of the scenario, devoid of Collins's words, represents a break between the digital and the physical, between immersion and embodiment. Like Collins, who was left wondering at his students' refusal to take in poetry without a concrete meaning, the reader/player is left to contemplate the gaming experience. Is it as abstract as a poem? Or is it confining and linear, leaving only one way out?

However, I don't think I buy this argument. Baldwin's conditions of immersion feel like a trump argument-- how can we be immersed with anything when we already live a visceral existence? Baldwin briefly acknowledges the widespread popularity of //Half-Life// and its modding community, but never touches on it again. While players must pay money for //Half-Life// or //Half-Life 2//, the toolkits to mod these games are offered by Valve for free, encouraging players to engage with the codes and elements of the game on a deeper level--to immerse themselves.


 * For Discussion**

1) Are video games immersive media? Why or why not?

2) What role does //Half-Life's// status as a big (for its time) for-profit gaming production play in this discussion? How does digital decay factor into works like this that can exist on multiple platforms and be so openly modified?

3) Baldwin calls out Murray's conception of immersion, citing it as "problematic" and claiming that it offers no "origin or teleology" for immersion (2). Having read Murray, do you agree? Why or why not? How can we get to said origin or teleology? Is it just "viscerality and sentience"?