Programming Violence: Language and the Making of Interactive Media

Abstract

While not all games feature extreme forms of violence, many of the most successful releases involve particularly brutal and bloody forms of game-play, alarming parents, politicians and theorists alike. Contributing to a rich body of inquiry, this essay investigates the role of computer languages — code — in the creation of gaming content, its structures and narratives. Arguably, computer languages encapsulate interactive media products similarly to how a screenplay encapsulates a movie plot: language, structure and content are inseparably intertwined. When a programmer writes the interactivity for a computer game, he or she not only defines a game’s functionality but also its narrative structure and, to a degree, the content of a game. Technology’s artificial languages — code — differ from so-called natural languages and it is precisely because of this difference that gaming narrative diverges from traditional narrative forms. The trendsetting games Spacewar (1962) and Doom (1993) offer examples of how code informs narrative.