Gameplay Journal Entry #4:
Analysis of FEATHERFALL by Total Refusal
Total Refusal, made up of Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, and Michael Stumpf, focuses on analyzing and reinventing games by ignoring their intended gameplay, says Matteo Bittani. “Total Refusal allocates these resources to new activities and narratives, in order to create “public” spaces imbued with critical, even subversive potential.” (Bittani.) In this way they criticize mainstream gaming through their modding techniques.
FEATHERFALL, by Austrian collective Total Refusal, exploits the glitch of clipping through video game maps in order to simulate a dream-like feeling of falling. This is a common bug players can experience in most video games given the right, or wrong, circumstances. In situations like this, players will sink through the game’s boundaries and towards a void of the skybox and potential death plane. Total Refusal describes this as reminiscent of a dream where the dreamer is falling or flying.
The essence of this glitch is to escape from the game, thus subverting the the formal structure of the original game. “-the very essence of what makes a game a game is withheld, deferred either for all time, or just for a moment. “I love to put the things I love in extreme peril,” (Galloway.) To escape the normal plane of the video game character’s existence while also putting said character in danger would normally seem like the opposite intention of the player yet it is sole goal of this mode. The feeling of clipping through a map is comforting despite rendering the player and character helpless. The only escape is a restart, hitting the death plane if the developers remembered to include it, or falling indefinitely until the game runs out of memory and crashes itself. The player in this situation is left but to simply sink and watch as the underside of the map grows further away from the player. It’s the same feeling as sinking to the bottom of a pool and looking up at the world from below. It’s a quiet and calm experience even with the potential danger. Everything relating to the video game, besides the character is stripped away in this space. No objectives, no goals.
Bittanti, Matteo. “EVENT: VRAL #18_TOTAL REFUSAL (JANUARY 29 — FEBRUARY 11 2021).” GAMESCENES, Matteo Bittanti, 28 Jan. 2021, www.gamescenes.org/2021/01/event-vral-18_total-refusal-january-29-february-11-2021.html.
Galloway, Alexander. “Counter-Gaming | Alexander R. Galloway.” Culture and Communication, 23 Dec. 2014, cultureandcommunication.org/galloway/counter-gaming#:%7E:text=RTS%20games%20focus%20on%20a,essentially%20coterminous%20in%20today’s%20world.
