Cyborg Orgy

“And modern war is a cyborg orgy, coded by C3I, command-control-communication-intelligence, an $84 billion item in 1984’s US defence budget. I am making an argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings” (Haraway 150).

I intend to read Modern Warfare 3 as it instantiates a particular posthuman embodiment, as it allows for a particular posthuman becoming. As Haraway writes, “modern war is a cyborg orgy,” but how does one participate in the cyborg orgy of this online first-person shooter?

In an orgy, you’re either fucked or you’re getting fucked – or at least this is one way, perhaps a phallocentric way, to look at it. MW3, if anything, is phallocentric. Players are basically embodied as a disembodied weapon-phallus-eye roaming around in the game-space, or “map.” Modern warfare is maneuverer warfare, and it is my goal to maneuverer my weapon-phallus-eye in such a way as to allow my cyborg to see my opponent before my opponent sees me. This allows me the chance to score lethal damage on my cyborg opponent, earning a kill, with as little risk to me as possible.

Getting the first look doesn’t always ensure you’ll score the kill, but it helps; it gives you time to fire your weapon without being fired at by your opponent, to fuck rather than be fucked. Space, via the exploitation of space through maneuverer, can be used to rob your opponent of reaction time. This can be an active maneuverer, as in flanking. To flank, one moves the weapon-phallus-eye to the side or rear of an opponent. Indeed, taking an opponent from behind is the most tactically dominant position. Flanking requires knowledge of the map, as well as an understanding and anticipation of how the opponent will move through space (in time). A skilled player can wipe out an entire squad with a successful flanking maneuverer.

Alternatively, one can exploit space passively, as in camping. A camper sets up in a spot that allows access to long lines of sight over high-traffic areas of the map. Looking down the sights of his rifle and catching his more mobile opponents unaware, the camper can dispatch multiple enemies with little risk to himself. Like flanking, camping requires knowledge of the map and enemy movement patterns through space (in time). Camping is generally a more conservative strategy; you place yourself at less risk because you move less and therefore have less chance of being caught within an opponent’s line of sight. Alternatively, you’re relying on your opponent to place himself within your line of sight, which often results in less kills.

This is the pleasure of this particular cyborg orgy – a panoptic spatio-visual coitus performed through stringing together multiple kills. I use the phrase panoptic spatio-visual coitus to connote the following image: I want to become a cyborg octopus with multiple visual tentacles ensnaring and fucking my opponents. I want to see my opponent without being seen in order to kill my opponent without being killed. I want to maneuverer myself through space and time in order to make this happen. This is how I derive my cyborg pleasure in MW3. Unfortunately, the cyborg octopus metaphor is limited because I can only take in one stream of visual information at once. I have only one tentacle, one weapon-phallus-eye. However, the game allows me to make this cycloptic weapon-phallus-eye more powerful, to see more, and faster, to fuck more people up more effectively.

String together enough kills, and your panoptic spatio-visual coitus becomes easier to perform. 5 kills earns you access to a missile fired from an unnamed aerial drone. The Predator missile interface, which your character accesses from a laptop computer (a simulacral interface-within-the-interface) affords a bird’s eye view of the battlefield and highlights your opponents in red boxes. You pilot the missile home, and if you’re successful, you fuck people up. Higher level kill streak rewards include an AC-130 gunship, which circles the entire map and allows you to fire devastating weapons on the entire enemy team simultaneously; becoming AC-130 is the preferred role to play in this online cyborg orgy. In Modern Warfare 2, you could drop a nuke on the map and end the round after 25 kill streak; this is the ultimate cyborg money shot.