R1B Ramblings

Kevin Chiang

[lekardinal-blog]

The posted video “Day in the Life of a Russian CS:GO Player” represents the general view of Russian players on CS:GO.  Utilizing many Russian stereotypes and live gameplay, the video depicts a rather negative view on Russian players.

The video is very similar to World of Warcraft’s “Ni Hao” video that Nakamura references in her work “Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game.”  In both videos, the creator relies on numerous stereotypes; in “Ni Hao,” they imply that Chinese people eat dogs and cats in their eggrolls, and in CS:GO video, the creator suggests that the average Russian only drinks vodka, even as a substitute for their meals.

Counter Strike: Global Offensive is a very tactical and team-oriented game, despite its very simple first person shooter genre.  There are seven “active duty” maps for teams of five to play on, and each map has unique strategies and angles that players utilize to either plant the bomb on one of two bombsites as a terrorist, or shoot down the invading terrorists as a counter-terrorist.  Thus, the success of a team relies on good communication and teamwork between the players.

As a result, if players do not speak English, most English-speaking players will complain about having to play with another Russian, as seen in the video.  In addition, Russian players are criticized for their simple “Rush B” strategies.  In this sense, American players generally see their Russian counterparts who are simple players who do not play the game as “intelligently” and “strategically” as them, and are unable to work as a team.  This is evident in the posted video, as when the Russian player first joins the game and identifies himself as a Russian with his Russian speech, they immediately lament the fact they were matched with a Russian player and immediately kick him from the game.  This coincides with arguments that Nakamura makes in her article, where she suggests that players hate the Chinese gold farmers for not playing the game as “law-abiding” or “properly social” as American gamers believe they do.

I find it rather interesting that most players today find the video to be a comedic parody of Russian CS:GO players.  When I asked some random CS:GO players about this video, most of them brush off the racist undertones of the video and simply say, “It’s just a joke bro.”  Whether or not the video is simply is an exaggeration of the average Russian CS:GO player or something more menacing, such as the “Ni Hao” video, Nakamura’s claim that condemning someone for how they behave, rather than what they are, is a technique for avoiding racism, seems very relevant with this video.  

There may be a few differences between the Chinese gold farmer and the Russian CS:GO player, however. Whereas the Chinese gold farmer was largely seen as a problem to the culture of WoW, many players seem to accept the occasional Russian CS:GO player as typical Counter Strike, and some even welcome it, as Russian players are vastly regarded as superior mechanically gifted players.  Even then, it seemed that Nakamura’s argument was at least somewhat applicable to this video on Russian CS:GO players.

[lekardinal-blog]

The picture above is the front page of Reddit.  Reddit is a sort of social network, where users submit content to relevant communities, or subreddit, and other users can vote on the submission based on whether or not they think it is relevant and comment the submission’s thread.

Reddit is very relatable to Alexander Galloway’s “Form.”  The entire premise of Reddit seems to support the idea that the Internet is a free, decentralized, and democratic place, as users submit content, users can “upvote” and “downvote” content, and users can comment and provide feedback or discussion stemming from the content.  Users are also allowed to customize which communities they follow, and pin their favorite groups to the header; there is a lot of user customization on the site. Reddit has even been used as an open platform for its community to stay up to date on worldwide events; for example, there was a live update feed where users posted updates to the coup in Turkey.

However, as Galloway points out in his work, beneath all the “freedom” and “democracy” of the site is a very structured system.  First off, rather than have the website be one huge destination for all the content posted to the site, Reddit has subreddits that each have their own unique central topic.  Some subreddits include “Funny,” where funny posts go, “League of Legends,” where posts related to the game go, and “Explain Like I’m Five,” where users submit topics for users to explain in simple terms.  

Beyond this, each subreddit has a team of moderators, selected users who have the power to delete posts that do not follow the subreddit’s rules, as well as ban users from interacting with the community if they are deemed to be too disruptive to the goals of the subreddit.  The content that reaches the front page of the website is also determined by a very structured algorithm.  In addition to this, the company that runs Reddit still controls the entire website, including all user data and content.  Thus, Reddit is not as free and decentralized as one might initially think.

Reddit also follows many of the rules that Galloway posits as critical to maintaining continuity. Reddit ensures that all links lead somewhere, and have many servers to prevent long stretches of down time. Furthermore, the simple design of the site (generally all text) allows the site to be loaded quickly; the user interface can also scale well to different screen sizes, including mobile devices.  Most importantly, Reddit prides itself on being a forum for discussion and anonymity, as top posts are often crowded with hundreds to thousands of comments, and users are generally only identifiable by their usernames unless they post some personal information.  Even then, Reddit has a site-wide rule that prevents users from posting private and personal information, so users are usually anonymous to all other users of the site.  Even beyond that, users can create “throwaway” accounts to post very specific stories of themselves so their friends and family cannot identify them by their username.

Most people use Reddit as a social network of sorts, not thinking about all the structure that keeps the site organized and running, and thinking a bit about the specifics really altered the way I understood the website.

[lekardinal-blog]

The two pictures accompanying this post show the Windows XP/7 and the Windows 8.1/10 Blue Screen of Death, the screen that comes up when a user’s computer encounters an error and needs to restart.  

The Windows XP/7 screen (dark blue) seems potentially scarier, with a command line style that is intimidating to the average user.  As a result, the information on the screen, while generally easy to understand and helpful in diagnosing the problem, may serve to instead scare the user into thinking the computer is broken, especially if they have not seen a command line interface before.  Beyond this, the dark blue background is jarring, which only terrorizes the average user even further.

On the other hand, the Windows 8.1/10 blue screen of death (light blue) is much more subdued.  At first glance, the user most likely focuses on the frowny face, which still represents a problem with the computer, but in a much more user-friendly way.  In addition, the new blue screen of death moves away from a command line-like interface, and utilizes a much more readable font and less information in general. This is replaced by a very clear error message, a website link to understand more about the error, and even a QR code for users with a smartphone nearby to quickly link to a relevant website detailing the problems.  These design changes serve to soothe the fears of the average user, while still giving enough relevant information to allow more advanced users to diagnose and fix the problem.

These changes seem very relevant to recent texts, and they are a very common real world example detailing the evolution of a graphical user interface.  This screen’s evolution links to Friedberg’s “The Multiple.”  While the evolution of the blue screen of death does not exactly follow the evolution from a command line interface to a graphical user interface, the new blue screen still borrows many aspects of a graphical user interface that Friedberg details.  For example, the new screen has some images (the frowny face and the QR code) that serves as a layer between the user and the computer itself.  Instead of seeing detailed information about the fatal error and relatively detailed steps to potentially fix the problem, the user only sees that there is a problem and references to potential fixes.  In this sense, the new screen hides a lot of the inner-workings of a computer from the user, expecting the average Windows user to not know (and not care) about the specific details.

I noticed these design changes after I got my new computer, but I did not really think anything of it until I read Friedberg and understood that these changes were intentional and carefully calculated.  It seemed like a good representation of our evolving lifestyle: slowly moving towards a more simplified and automated world where a lot of the work is done under the hood without us having to know anything about it.  Thus, while the Blue Screen of Death is usually seen in a very negative light, I figured its evolution was a pretty cool object to pick apart.