What is Postmodernism? Postmodernism in video games.

1. What is Postmodernism?
Postmodernism in Video Games
‘Call of Duty’
By George Beckley

2. What is Postmodernism?
• The term derives from modernism. Modernism is a
philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and
changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching
transformations in Western society in the late 19th and early
20th centuries.
• So postmodernism can be defined as current culture but with
the mixing of old ideas.
• However many people believe that there are no new ideas
anymore and that everything is now postmodern, as we have
taken old ideas and made them modern as a society.

3. What makes a Media Text
Postmodern?
• Blurring of boundaries between fiction and
reality.
• Clearly influenced by something else.
• Pastiche
• Parody
• Bricolage
• Intersexual reference
• Homage
• Simulacra and simulation

4. Theorists
• Strinati- Postmodernism is not a new concept
it has always been here.
• Lyotard- Loss of the grand narrative.
• Baudrillard- Hyper reality, blurred boundaries,
nothing is new anymore.

5. Call of Duty Franchise
• Started on the PC and became incredibly
popular with the first game released as ‘Call
Of Duty’ in 2003
• In March 2013 40million active player
worldwide
• 15 games in the Call of Duty franchise. 1 new
game released annually.
• Modern Warfare 3 recorded £281 revenue in
the first week of sales.

6. Hyper reality in CoD
• First person shooter behind the weapon. As if you
are looking through the characters eyes.
• Real weapons used in aesthetics, sound and
movement (recoil) very life like. This is also an
imersion element as if you are in the game. This
can be linked to the theorist Baudrillard as he
said ‘the distinction between reality and
representation has collapsed. We now live in a
reality defined by images and representations.’
• There is a loss of fiction

7. Specific examples
• Basing the story line from the cold war in the game
Black ops (2010)
• Real gun names and ways of usage MP5, submachine
gun, same recoil patterns etc.
• One level ‘Operation 40’ Black Ops. Operation 40 was a
real event which happened in the Cold war. It was an
unsuccessful military invasion of Cuba. But in the game
the player is successful in the invasion. The game is
trying to incorporate real life events in the fictional
world. But the representation in the game has been
changed but also seems very real.

8. The Narrative
• Rejection of the grand narrative, Lyotard.
• The ‘Black Ops’ series has several different
stories. Campaign with the character Alex Mason
in the 1960s, Black Ops2 with his son as the main
character in 2025 David Mason. The storyline
then develops into more fictional wars of 2065.
There is an online multiplayer mode where the
story literally doesn’t end and a Nazi zombie
mode which is a completely different story to the
campaign.