(POST BLOG) The Sims and Digital Visual Capital

This week's discussion has led me to not only explore many forms of digital imagery but also to consider the framework in which these visuals are formed. My first time exploring the Internet and realizing what it had to offer started in 2003 when I was first introduced to The Sims-one of top selling games of all time. The Sims is a life-model computer game that was designed by Will Wright and was developed by Maxis. This game is situated within a suburban town near SimCity (city-building model game created by Will Wright) in which the actual players that occupy this digital space are referred to as SIMS.


When I first started playing the game I began to realize that there weren't many options that I could use as far as identifying myself as a "SIM" within the game. In order to start the game, you are prompted to use a default SIM or create your own SIM that only has the option of living a life that consisted of being a baby, a child, and an adult. Thinking back to when I first started the original version The Sims (which now has 3 different versions), the only options for living was a suburban town, the skin colors were either light, tan, or their version of dark, and the sizes did not vary much either. After many advancements in this area, expansion packs were made for this video game that could be purchased by The SIM consumer in order to create a more realistic identity that the player could actually identify with. Also, the expansion packages are meant to provide you with excess money and luxuries so that you could possibly "win" the game by reaching the highest position within your career (journalism, doctor, athelete, etc.) as well as more institutions (schools, private businesses, modeling agencies and more) and other spaces in which different people (regardless of nationality) could identify with.
Below are some visuals of the video game cover for the 2nd and third versions of The Sims.
I couldn't find the original one to show you online but it did not have any faces that represented minorities on the cover. However, the latest versions of the videogame contain few minorities on the cover still although an effort was made within the creation of people of color in the game itself.


In the Nakamura's reading, Nakamura uses Parks's definition of visual capital which describes visual capitalism as "a system of social differentiation based on users'/viewers' relative access to technologies of global media"(pg. 15). From the understanding of digital capitalism, Nakamura brings in the discussion of racial formation theory (created by Omi and Winant) which focuses on race as a construct rather than an empirical truth or fact (as stated during class on Tuesday), and is a result of social conflict or competing social interest. Nakamura also mentions how there has been a shift in conceptualizing new media from a Utopian (universal) standpoint on the impact of these digital spaces to a discussion of difference (18). With this understanding of race as a social construct, we can see how control and power is distributed and assumed by means of digital images such as that of THE SIMS. This also limits the activities of minority groups to play with in the game and continues to enforce exclusion while appearing to support inclusion. An example of this could be how The Sims slowly added various representations of minority groups within their video games. Nakamura's argument supports this idea that racism does exists in spite of the continuous efforts to make the Internet (as a space for interactivity) a colorblind and nondiscriminatory space which is evident in the video games.

It is also quite clear that The Sims supports heterosexual family structures as well as attributing to white society by putting emphasis on these types of structures that are internalized and viewed by minorities as default selections. When I made a Sim for myself, there was a process of appropriation in which I, too, sought to work against the discrimination that was set in place by means of digital visual capital as Nakamura suggests on page 16. As always, I would have to unset the default of this white, male image to someone that was African-American and different in other physical features as well only to create a person of minority within this seemingly "universalized" digital space. Below is a typical picture used for advertising The Sims.

Also, while searching on youtube I found this video posted by a youtube user of how EA (eletronic arts) created and controlled this generation of the SIMS 3 game in an indirect way to add to the discussion of covert racism.


Based on what we've discussed in class about racial formation theory and digital spaces, do you think that the inclusion of minorities (to a certain extent especially when considering the transformation of the game to include or exclude signifers of difference) in The SIM games work towards increasing visual capital or towards encouraging the "neoliberal discourse of color blindness and nondiscrimination???(pg. 7)
Similar to Nakamura's argument, do you agree that the Internet is a privileged and extremely rich site for the creation and distribution of hegemonic and counterhegemonic visual images of racialized bodies? (pg. 13)
What are some of your experiences within these visual spaces that correlate to your understanding of the racial formation theory?
What do you think are the leading factors to why the Internet has become an accessible media source with respect to culture, ethnicity and nationality?

*There are a lot of SIM videos on youtube that you should check out as well.

Gold Farming on the Internet

It is not difficult to see that the Internet has created a global economy that allows for enhanced international and intercultural communication. In Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet, Lisa Nakamura emphasizes that the Internet is “a form with an increasingly visual bent, a development trajectory measured in months rather than years, a diversifying population of users and producers, a serious and thoroughgoing intervention into American culture and media practices, and a correspondingly crying need for flexible, rigorous, and multimediated forms of analysis. The challenges that the Internet presents to critics and theorists of imaging practices in our contemporary period are serious and myriad: the hybrid form to end all hybrid forms, the Web in particular brings together graphics and textuality, both streaming and still images, synchronous and asynchronous communication, new forms of commerce, amateur and professional production, and community building” (5).

With the Internet, an important form of technology that has improved vastly is gaming, mainly in that it has allowed for Massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPG’s. Through some of the most popular online games, such as World of Warcraft, players from all over the world conglomerate into this digital space to compete, have fun, and even make money. While this has been a good thing for the most part, it has also presented debatable ways of making profit and tensions between different cultures.

Gold farming is a term that describes making money in a virtual world of an online game and selling it for actual profit in the real world on websites like eBay. The game World of Warcraft has had a particular problem with this. It has been found that 80-85% of the gold farmers playing this game are living in China. Many of them work for actual gold farming organizations, working in buildings that are called sweatshops. The pay that most of the gold farmers receive is not great, but they are also provided with food and sometimes shelter by the organizations. To this segment of the Chinese population, gold farming is a legitimate way of making money.

However, elsewhere across the world, gold farmers are looked down upon. They are seen as people who ruin the game experience, making money in a cheap despicable way. The administrators of World of Warcraft started to recognize some of these gold farmers and banned their accounts, though the farmers usually return to the game with a new account. Do you think that gold farming is a legitimate way of making money for many of the disenfranchised people trying to make a living in cities like Beijing? Do you think that this practice is proof to the importance of Internet as an economic means over all other means?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dkkf5NEIo0

This video is called “Ni Hao (A Gold Farmers Story)” and is a parody of a popular Akon song. Americans attempting to bring down the name of gold farmers created it. Watching the video, you will notice the cultural tensions that exist between American and Chinese players, as lyrics of the song seem to point out that these Chinese people are unwanted in the game world. It even begins to blend Chinese stereotypes and Chinese-American stereotypes into one unspecific insult. Do you think that the message of this song is simply a cry for fair gameplay by American players or that it represents an international and racist tension between players on this MMORPG? Is it a sweeping representation of the Chinese people or an insult directed at a very specific segment of the country’s people? Also, do you think that this is proof that the Internet can lead to intercultural problems even if the race or nationality of the individual is hidden?

Pre-Blog: Limitedbook to Mediabook

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d7X9xEozgM



Facebook launched the Internet in February 2004. It was invented by Harvard students, who later drop-out of school to pursue Facebook full-time. In the beginning, Facebook users were only student from Harvard. Then, Facebook engage into other universities such as Yale and other prestigious colleges. The Founder of Facebook and his partner saw the growth of their website, opened it up to other schools, universities, and businesses. Lisa Nakamura in Digitizing Race, discussed this transformation as a “commodity-delivery system for vastly expanded media companies (Nakamura 3).” It allowed society to express their thoughts about class, education, identity, race etc. In the U.S, people were color-blinded or wanted to be color-blinded by other people around them. Facebook is a social network that engages in a conversation about freedom to your identity. However, it was a controversial topic about engaging everyone to the Facebook website. It was restricted to college students only. Now that Facebook became popular, they allowed high school students and others network. Facebook users feel like their privacy have been open to everyone around to see such as photos, video, wall post, information etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpLNlSKugHw&feature=related



As I watched the youtube clip about facebook, I wondered, if Facebook really a freedom of speech. Recently, jobs and university have done background checks of a person through Facebook users’ profile. Is this the beginning of the emerging hegemony of neoliberalism? Is Facebook a way to commodify people in the media? Do you think that the Founder of Facebook wanted to gain capital or a social life? How is facebook digitizing the image of identity? How is the internet portraying people identity?

(post-blog) Catherine Opie: Gender Fluidity and Visibility

Catherine Opie, "Self-Portrait," 1993.

Catherine Opie is an American Photographer interested in documentary photography. Throughout her successful career, Opie has explore the politics of identity within the LGTB community. Surrounded by her lesbian community in San Francisco during the 1990's she developed a series of close-up photographic portraits of her friends, which she titled "Being and Having". Here I include interesting pictures of her work.

Catherine Opie, "Frankie", 1995

Catherine Opie, “Chicken” , 1991

Catherine Opie, "Dyke", 1993

What are some of the questions that Opie's work raises about hegemony?

What do you think of her work, as offering visibility for marginal communities? How notions of gender fluidity challenge the social norms in regard of gender roles? I'm curious, what are your impressions of her work.

*in case you can't watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9lsY78C0_Q