Play Time
Interview with Alessandra ©
Gianluca Mercadante
Alessandra ©. Photo Massimo Ferronato.
It is a fact that computers and IT for the masses go hand in hand with the development of tech speak, from the rapid retrieval of information (which, for inveterate library addicts, saves so much time and effort), to the rather complex varieties of game playing. Not even literature can resist this massive language shift, or at least it features an authentic, all-out and all-Italian testimony to it in the second novel from Alessandra ©. Skill turns the video game into narrative structure and cleverly leads the reader, step by step, into becoming more than a simple, casual observer of the Game. Perhaps because Alessandra © herself is no simple, casual observer, more of an experienced and very busy expert in electronic amusements. As well as being an excellent and innovative Italian writer.
A video game is not a parallel reality, it’s more the suspension of reality during the time of the game
GM: With Skill you have attempted an unprecedented experiment not just at the Italian level, but internationally too: turning a video game into the setting for an entire novel. How did you get the idea?
AC. I got a rough idea for Skill in 2001 in Seoul, where Samsung had organized the first WCG, a sort of Olympics for professional gamers. The following year, in London, I went to “The King of Iron Fist Tournament”, the international finals of the Tekken 4 video game tournament. Both competitions put a lot of emphasis on the setting in an attempt to sell their games, not just as an active form of entertainment, but as an event you could watch just like a TV programme, half way between sport and the usual reality show. Thinking about it I found that these glamorizing attempts provided excellent narrative material, especially if you used a certain type of language typical of video games.
GM: The characters in your book, and in general in the game-biz world associated with them, bring certain “niche” sports such as surfing or skateboarding to mind. I was wondering if there were any actual connections with the world of video games, especially net gaming.
AC: At the time I was writing Skill I watched Stacy Peralta’s documentary Dogtown and Z-boys several times. The film documents the birth of modern skateboarding through the voice of the people who started the phenomenon. The more I watched that film, the more similarities with the world of professional game players I saw. The skaters, exactly like pro-gamers, are a closed group, they have their own language, idols and gurus, and their alpha clan wrote the history of the sport. If the skaters had their fanzines and cult mags with ground-breaking graphics, the pro-gamers have their own websites and in both cases they display an extreme distrust of the “uninitiated”.
Moments from e-life
GM: There is a noticeably special association between players and their avatars – to some extent existential even – that reveals character traits and psychological factors quite different from those of the real players. What is the relationship between player and avatar?
AC: Avatar (from the Sanskrit Avatara) literally means “descends from afar”, it indicates the incarnation of a god as human being, a highly evolved Being that no longer requires birth in a mortal body. The graphic representation of the avatar, that you see on the monitor, is known as a skin. The choice of words is emblematic and powerfully highlights the relation between the player and his virtual alter ego. The avatar is the extension of his skin, it’s like a dilation of his real-world Ego, an Ego that, in particular, can die and come back to life.
GM: Is it perhaps plausible that, for the player, video games represent a reality so hypnotic and convincing as to supersede normal life?
AC: A video game is not a parallel reality, it’s more the suspension of reality during the time of the game. When you’re playing you pay a lot more attention to the stimuli transmitted by the game than the surrounding reality. While playing you might not hear the phone ring or you feel thirsty but still don’t stop to go and get a drink. Game time is an accelerated process that is superimposed on reality, but never intersects with it. In Skill the focal point of the novel is the Game time, not the Game’s suspension of reality. The main characters are literally obsessed by it.
GM: In your vision of the future, TV crews and specta-tors congregate around the virtual game tournaments. Looking at current developments in video games, do you think something similar is possible in the future?
AC: When talking about Skill I always say that the fu-ture I envisaged in the novel is possible, but improb-able. With present day technology, no shootemup comes even close to what is described in the book, although players will be able to detect the influence of some of the modern FPSs (First Person Shoot’emups). At the present time it would be very difficult to put a Doom3 or Unreal match onto television, perhaps it will be possible in the future, but it’s difficult to predict today what this kind of video game will be like in fifty years’ time.
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Alessandra ©
Alessandra © (Alessandra Contin). Writer and journalist, expert in society and electronic entertainment. Since 2000 has contributed to daily newspaper “La Stampa” and monthly magazine “Max” and, since 2004, “Rolling Stone”.
In 2000 she published the techno-noir tale “Webmaster” for “Addictions”. In 2003 her short story “Cena a 150” was included in the new Italian horror collection “In fondo al nero” published in the Urania Millemondi series (Mondadori). In October 2003 she published the short essay “Datemi il lanciarazzi di Quake e vi distruggerò la matrice” in the Italian edition of “Enter the Matrix” edited by Karen Haber/Pat Cadigan and published by Sperling e Kupfer. Her novel “Skill” was published in 2004 by Einaudi Stile Libero (194 pages, 9.00 euros), closely followed by short story “Skip Intro”, included in the best-selling anthology “Ragazze che dovresti conoscere”, edited by Simona Vinci (Stile Libero Einaudi Big).
