Dark Souls (Baird)

An Introduction to Dark Souls
Dark Souls is an RPG for the PS3 and XBOX360 known for its high degree of difficulty and its promotional tagline "PREPARE TO DIE." Like other popular video games, Dark Souls has spawned many online communities, but this game in particular has online communities with a heavy emphasis on interpretation, due to the game's minimalistic story, and strategy, due to it's high degree of difficulty straight from the start. These knowledge communities offer everything from character builds to boss/enemy strategy guides. The extent to which these knowledge communities help the player makes me extend the question from class: "Is Google Making Us Stupid" to the realm of video games. Are walkthroughs making players less able to independently overcome obstacles in gaming or has ready access to such support just made them less willing? There are also numerous individuals who share screenshots of the game that they believe to have artistic value. Can they possibly be wrong? After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is it not? This game utilizes the wired world in a unique and new way to make a new kind of pseudo in-game knowledge community.

Themes and Readings from Class
"Is Google Making Us Stupid" asserted that our culture's constant use of google to look up facts is giving us unprecedented access to information, but it might actually be making us less intelligent. But Why? Because the individual is less incentivized to actually learn the information looked up for him/herself, knowing that it will always be a click away should it be forgotten. A question/assertion on the same train of thought can be made in regards to videogames and the walkthoughs that inevitably appear on online knowledge communities: Are online walkthroughs making players lazy? To makes a sweeping statement, yes. In the past, players who were stuck in a video game had three options for how to proceed in said game: persistence, ask their friends, or shell out money for a physical game guide. Most times, players would just have to be persistent because their friends may not have the same game or may not be as far along as them, and the cost of a physical game guide is a significant deterrent to the majortity of players. In the present age, however, players have been provided one more option by the wired world: online walkthroughs, and many players resort to this solution as soon as anything blocks their progression forward in a game. Frequently, after seeing the solution, the player thinks to him/herself, "How did I not see that—it's so obvious!" Therefore, the player would have inevitably found the solution to his/her predicament had he/she just been persistent. Does this make the player lazy for not figuring it out themselves or smart for saving themselves time looking for what is frequently right in front of them? I assert that it is laziness. This problem is readily apparent in Dark Souls where players can go online to get advice on everything from how to create their character to how to fight enemies/bosses. While this is not exactly the same premise as "Is Google Making Us Stupid," both involve having someone or something else do the thinking for you, and therefore, I say the comparison is valid. When players begin avoiding walkthroughs and start beating games all on their own again, they will find the experience far more rewarding, especially with highly difficult games such as Dark Souls, knowing that they did it all on their own.

New Possibilities
Dark Souls utilizes many now standard online video game features such as co-op play, and potentially downloadable content (DLC) in the near future, but Dark Souls takes aspects of knowledge communities and makes them part of the game as well. DLC, while a sore subject with many gamers who oftentimes get up in arms over the subject, provides a source of remediation for the game developer. Previously, when a developer published a game for a game console, that was the final product, but in the current age, developers are able to hear feedback from the players by reading forums then create new content for the players based on their feedback. The controversy here is that many players assert that developers intentionally put out incomplete games in order to promote paid DLC shortly afterwards, but that is a subject best saved for another time. In the case of Dark Souls, many PC games liked what they saw of the game on the consoles, and desired to play it on their PC. As a result, the developers are now working on a PC version which includes some new content. It is currently unknown if this new content will be available for the PS3 and XBOX360 versions of the game, and whether or not the DLC, should it be released, would be free. Regardless of one's opinion on the subject, it is undeniable that the wired world has opened up many new possibilities in the realm of the remediation of video games. An interesting feature of Dark Souls is that it integrates a knowledge community of sorts into the game through the mechanic of blood stains. If a player is connected to the internet while playing, he/she can "touch" a blood stain in order to view the last seconds of another player's life who recently dies in that area. This provides the player with warnings about dangers to come. This is an interesting sort of knowledge community because one doesn't have to do anything other than connect to the internet to contribute, and being an expert is not at all a requirement. In fact, unlike a traditional knowledge community, experts are probably the least beneficial to the community because they are the least likely to die in the game, and therefore leave less help for others.

Interpretive Disputes and Authorial Intentions
As in any other text, the audience is bound to not agree upon a single interpretation of what the deeper meaning of the story is, but in Dark Souls, these interpretive disputes are extended even further due to the game's minimalistic plot. As Wikipedia explains, "[In Dark Souls] events and their significance are often implicit and left to player interpretation rather than fully shown or explained." So then, it is clear than interpretive disputes are inevitable both in terms of the storyline and what the storyline that any given player creates for him/herself means. The opening cinematic is one of the few times in the game where definite direction to the story is given by defining the world in which the game takes place, but who is the narrator? Even here, an interpretative dispute could easily arise. Without knowing who is speaking, can the player trust the narrator's description of events? It is often said that history is written by the victors, so could the narrator be the Witch of Izalith recounting events to sound in her favor? Being only a hypothetical dispute and not an ongoing one, this will be left as merely a question to ask ones self if ever playing this game—the majority of the writing should be focus on actual discussions. This is a game where the story of the game its self isn't always apparent to the player, and even those who "understand" the story don't always agree as shown by Newdoria's post on the referenced thread of the Prepare to Die forums in which he/she writes, "Oh My God Why are people getting the story wrong." It seems that nearly everyone posting on the thread has their own interpretation of the story, and with that being said, Tsmp's method probably seems best for finding out what the authors of the game intended. He/She writes, "If you sit down and actually read each and every item and talk to the NPCs you'll figure out what's going on." This is probably the correct approach, but it would require a high degree of meticulousness to put the whole story together, and even then, the players will probably still come to different interpretations. Perhaps this is the exact result that the authors were hoping for... in creating a story which has many ambiguous aspects, the player is free to project him/herself into the game, much like a Rorschach test, thus creating a story which is unique to them. Until players, even if only in sub-groups of the player population, come to a consensus on the story its self, arguments about the game's deeper meaning must be postponed.

Knowledge Communities
The knowledge communities surrounding Dark Souls are quite extensive and as discussed above, the ingame knowledge community contains many unique aspects, and the online community contains extensive information which could potentially make the player lazy, and cause Dark Souls to be a less rewarding experience. The Dark souls knowledge community is made up of two main parts. The traditional web based community, and the in game, self made knowledge community based around bloodstains and messages left by other players.

Web Based Knowledge Community
Dark Souls' web based knowledge community is similar to one that would be found for other videogames. The seemingly most valuable collections of knowledge about the game are strategy guides, especially those for bosses, and character build guides. Chararacter creation/leveling in Dark Souls is highly complex allowing players to make a character which is well suited to his/her individual playstyle, but with this complexity and freedom in character stats runs the risk of disaster. Disaster known in gamer culture as "gimping" a character, which will make this already difficult game even harder. For this exact reason, many players who desire to beat Dark Souls on their first attempt, or in some cases beat the game at all, may opt to follow a character build to prevent creating a gimped character, either initially or through leveling. Strategy Guides, especially for bosses are popular due to the brutal nature of the game's enemies. Some attacks, for example, can kill a player with a single hit. Attempting a boss fight countless times to learn all of the enemies attacks/quirks just isn't something that appeals to all people, who will probably resort to a strategy guide before they reach several dozen attempts. Granted, such individuals probably aren't best suited to a game whose tagline is "Prepare to Die," but I, as I frequently do, digress. The web based knowledge community for Dark Souls is an invaulable resource for anyone who desires to beat Dark Souls without dying a seemingly infinite number of times.

Ingame Knowledge Community
Dark Souls' ingame knowledge community, as discussed in the introduction, is a very unique one in that it is largely passively created by the players. The ingame knowledge community is made up of two parts, bloodstains and soapstone messages. Bloodstains, as discused in the introduction, are left by a player when he/she dies, and other players who come through the area have the option of touching the bloodstain to view the last seconds of the deceased's life. In this sense, a knowledge community is being made whenever someone dies because it provides guidance to other players who want to know what dangers may lie ahead, and for players who do not wish to see what lies ahead, and opt out of touching the bloodstain, still receive a warning that danger lies ahead. The more active method of contributing to the ingame knowledge community is through leaving messages with a soapstone. Here, the player chooses a combination of preset phrases to vaguely communicate with other players, who pass through the same area shortly afterwards. Taking the advice of messages left by other players, however, comes with a risk. Since there is no incentive for players to leave good advice or to not leave bad advice, the messages you read while playing the game can be anything from very helpful to setting you up for disaster—it's almost like a game of virtual Russian roulette. The ingame knowledge community in Dark Souls is a unique one to say the least, and just like a traditional web based knowledge community, different players will utilize it in different ways and to different degrees.

Dark Souls as Art
A video game, by my own definition, is made up of four basic components: story, player interactivity, music/sounds, and visuals. The latter two of these are common art forms, and are both carried out with concerted efforts to make them art in Dark Souls. If beauty is in the eye if the beholder, then something can arguably be considered art if even one person finds it beautiful.

The Music of Dark Souls
The music in Dark Souls, so far as I have heard, is all pleasant to listen to, not requiring one to "grow accustomed" to the music or endure anything that is acoustically offensive. The video to the right is a great example of a beautiful song from the game. Oftentimes, the game is silent except for the ambient noises of the world, but even this, according to some, is still art. Both soundscapes and silence are listened to by many. Additionally, if Wikipedia recognition and work on well known titles is a measure of the artistic accomplishment of a composer, Motoi Sakuraba, the composer of the Dark Souls soundtrack, has his own Wikipedia page, and has worked on several well known titles such as Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

The Visuals of Dark Souls
Although Dark Souls takes place in a deadly and horrid world, there is still much beauty/artistic value to be found for the right audience. There are individuals who make a habit of posting their screenshots of Dark Souls to forums for others to appreciate/provide feedback on, and many of these look rather impressive, even if sometimes gruesome. Many of the sights in the game, a quite a sight to behold on their own, not to mention the fact that the player gets to interact with the world. In this way, the player gets to interact with a world that, like the one we live in, is a work of art that was created as such. So often, people look past the artistic value of the worlds which they experience, whether real or imaginary unless it is presented to them within the context of art. If people expand their definitions of art, and begin constantly looking for the beauty and artistic value in all things they experience, they will find that even in a Dark and foreboding world, there is much beauty to be found.