Posthuman Media Project

Over the weekend, I dusted off my Xbox 360 and purchased Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. After renewing my Xbox Live subscription, I jumped into the multiplayer game for several hours in order to collect footage for my Posthuman Media Project.

Yes, the new Call of Duty allows you to upload footage from in-game to YouTube. This is very useful to me, as I’m not familiar with, nor do I have access to, video game footage capture software and hardware, which can be quite expensive. Call of Duty “records” information from each game you play and saves it for later viewing in a Theater Mode.

I put the word “records” in quotation marks because the game doesn’t literally record footage, but instead tracks information that allows for a recreation of the round you played within the game engine itself. You have access to a recording of your own first-person perspective as it appeared to you during the round. You can also use a free-floating camera to explore what other players were doing during the match, or watch them from a third-person perspective; you cannot, it appears, view the game from other player’s first-person perspectives. Theater Mode features a very simple interface for taking screen shots and editing clips from the raw recording. You can record segments from a longer match and put them together to create your own custom video. However, you’re limited by only being able to put together segments from one round; you cannot splice together action from multiple maps.

Also, any fancy John Woo-style cinematic techniques/effects have to be accomplished manually in the third-person camera mode, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to make smooth transitions between different segments. Limitations aside, it’s great that the game comes with this ability – it’s perfect for putting together short clips to share with your friends on Xbox Live, which is really its primary purpose. It might even allow for possibilities that would be difficult with a game like World of Warcraft, for example; I’m not sure if WoW allows you to record a raid and replay it using the game engine. I get the impression that most Machinima videos have to be recorded digitally using third-party equipment (software or hardware).

For my Posthuman Media Project, I knew I wanted to do something with first-person shooters. What thesis I intend to present regarding MW3’s multiplayer and Theater Mode, exactly, is less certain. Here’s a first swing:

When I enter MW3’s virtual space, I become a cyborg. I become part of a cybernetic feedback loop; my body responds to the game, and the game responds to me. When I play multiplayer, my body responds to the game, the game responds to me, and I also respond and interact with other human/machine assemblages in a very fluid, dynamic way.

It’s really amazing, when you think about it, how precisely the game-machine can link players so far apart. Sure, there’s always lag, and it’s annoying as hell. However, a multiplayer first-person shooter relies on split-second timing – the quick and the dead are separated by fractions of a second. Mostly, the game provides the feeling that you’re genuinely in control of your own destiny in this regard; it’s less about who has a faster connection and more about how quickly you can aim and fire your weapon.