My concept for this project started out quite simple- an adventure game set during the apocalyptic event central to the MaddAddam trilogy: the Waterless Flood. The survivors we meet during the novels, such as Ren, Toby, Jimmy, and Amanda, survive due to their isolation from the general population. How would an individual who was exposed to the disease, as most would be, fare?
This question lead me straight into my first roadblock- how exactly was the disease spread? We get the gist of its effects from Zeb’s description of his supposed father as “raspberry mousse”, but what happened before that? This question took a bit of creativity to answer, and I went with the typical route of those trying to invent an illness: spontaneous coughing. One problem solved.
From this project’s conception, I had a good idea of who I wanted this character to be. I saw Nadia as a normal college student, a gamer who stumbles upon something bigger than she could imagine. The MaddAddamites were a secretive bunch, and undoubtedly good at hiding their tracks, as we saw through Crake and Zeb’s use of leap-frogging. It seems unlikely that Crake would have been able to round up every member of the shadowy group. I sought to answer the question of what MaddAddam would look like to an outsider, years after the fact. This lead to another problem- what did the MaddAddam homepage look like? I imagined it as a sort of message board, which could very well have been a point of reference for Margaret Atwood when she was writing Oryx and Crake in the early 2000s.
While writing this story, I found myself interested in elements of Atwood’s world that we only saw through the lens of her male characters, namely the adolescent Jimmy and Glenn. What might a young woman think of At Home with Anna K, for instance? This pulled me into the world of lifecasters and the politics surrounding them. I became similarly interested in female gamers and message board lurkers. This left me with a lot of ideas that seemed impossible to synthesize with the light-hearted, if gory, adventure game I was writing. In the end, I didn’t really combine the two. The more curious or sentimental players among us can learn about Nadia’s thoughts on gaming or CamGirls, while those interested in a more straightforward adventure can play the game without touching upon those issues.
I really enjoyed looking at the world of the MaddAddam trilogy from a perspective closer to my own. Doing so revealed revealed some of the gaps that are present in any fictional world, which can never have all of the color and texture of our own. I was less interested in filling those gaps than I was in playing with them and seeing what might fit. My classmates have exposed some of these gaps in fascinating ways, and I’m incredibly excited to play their games!
Overall, I feel so lucky to have been a part of this class. I can’t remember the last time a class has inspired such fruitful work and discussion! I’m so thankful to our wonderful professor and all of my classmates for making this such a special experience. Have a great summer, everyone!
Recommended Reading:
CamGirls/Lifecasters
Jennifer Ringley:
Hart, Hugh. “April 14, 1996: JenniCam Starts Lifecasting.” Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 14 Apr. 2010. Web. 24 May 2016.
A fascinating look into JenniCam, the website of Jennifer Ringley, then a college student. This article gives great insight into lifecasters and CamGirls, as well as their relationship with their fans and the privacy they are allowed.
Burgin, Victor. “Jenni’s Room: Exhibitionism and Solitude.” Critical Inquiry 27.1 (2000): 77-89. Web.
A more scholarly take on JenniCam, and the psychological implications of lifecasting. A bit Freudian for my tastes, but interesting nonetheless.
Ana Voog:
Kale, Sirin. “In 1998 This Webcam Woman Was the Most Famous Person Online.” Dazed. N.p., 27 Jan. 2016. Web. 24 May 2016.
An insightful interview with Voog herself. Voog views her cam as an art piece, one that explores her sexuality and identity. This perception is interesting, especially as the contemporary view of CamGirls zeroes in on how they are sexualized by the viewer rather than their own sexual agency.
A particularly interesting quote: “One of the mediums of the anacam project is time. It’s been going on for nearly two decades, and I’m the only artist out there doing this. It’s so vast. And it’s still a work in progress. Things will become more clear in ten years.”
Saul, Heather. “Ana Voog: What Happened to One of the First Ever Internet Stars.” The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 28 Jan. 2016. Web. 24 May 2016.
An overall look at AnaCam, and what has happened in Voog’s life since. Voog links lifecasting to Instagram, in that both use images to sum up the life of the person who is posting them. The main difference between these platforms is their level of automation- early lifecasts such as AnaCam posted a single image every few minutes of whatever the camera captured, while instagrammers choose what elements of their lives they want to reveal to the public.
Gaming
Bryce, J. & Rutter, J., 2005. “Gendered Gaming in Gendered Space”, in Raessens, J. & Goldstein, J. (eds) Handbook of Computer Game Studies, MIT Press, pp.301-310
This article brings up the question of visibility in gaming, particularly for women, that is relevant to Nadia’s status as a lurker on the MaddAddam message board. At the time this article was written, 43% of U.S. gamers were women. However, these women occupied a far less visible space in gaming than men did, both in the spaces where they play their games (bedrooms vs. public game spaces) and in the games themselves. This article links that to damaging gender roles within video games and the gaming community.
Nonnecke, Blair, Jenny Preece, and Doreen Andrews. “What Lurkers and Posters Think of Each Other.” IEEE Xplore. 37th Hawaii Internation Conference on System Sciences, 2004. Web. 24 May 2016.
An investigation into Lurkers- who they are, why they lurk, and how they are viewed in the communities they observe. Lurkers are those who read a message board or online community without posting or becoming a member. This is especially interesting in the context of the visibility (or lack thereof) of female gamers, as discussed in the article above.
Agger, Michael. “4chan /b/: A New Academic Study of the Influential Message Board.” Slate Magazine. N.p., 28 June 2011. Web. 24 May 2016.
God, I love this article. Agger analyzes the influence 4chan has had on popular culture with the innocence and fear felt only for the few years in the early 2010’s in which it looked quite possible that 4chan could take over the world. 4chan, in those days, bore a few similarities to MaddAddam in its political and social influence.
