Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance

304 Pages·2012·2.93 MB·English

by  Kiri Miller

Playing Along
THE OXFORD MUSIC /MEDIA SERIES
Daniel Goldmark, Series Editor
Tuning In: American Narrative Television Music
Ron Rodman
Special Sound: The Creation and Legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
Louis Niebur
Seeing Through Music: Gender and Modernism in Classic Hollywood Film
Scores
Peter Franklin An Eye for Music: Popular Music and the Audiovisual Surreal
John Richardson Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual
Performance
Kiri Miller
PLAYING ALONG
Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance
Kiri Miller
Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s
objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education.
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid
Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala
Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland
Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2012 by Oxford University
Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
www.oup.com
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Miller, Kiri.
Playing along : music, video games, and networked amateurs / Kiri Miller.
p. cm. — (Oxford music/media series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-975345-1 (alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-19975346-8 (alk. paper)
1. Video games. 2. Video games—Social aspects. 3. Interactive videos. 4. Video
game music. 5. Popular music. I. Title.
GV1469.3.M55 2011
794.8—dc23 2011018803
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
“I am hooked on the charm of making the dumb machines sing.”
—Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck, 1997
“The flesh of even the virtual performer remains too solid, and will not melt.”
—Steve Dixon, Digital Performance, 2007
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
About the Companion Website
Introduction: Playing Along
PART ONE: Playing Along with Grand Theft Auto
1. Straight Outta Ganton: Virtual Tourism, Fieldwork, and Performance
2. Jacking the Dial: Radio, Race, and Place in San Andreas
PART TWO: Playing Along with Guitar Hero and Rock Band
3. How Musical Is Guitar Hero?
4. Just Add Performance: Staging Schizophonia
PART THREE: Playing Along with Communities of Practice
5. Music Lessons 2.0
6. Amateur-to-Amateur
Endgame
Notes
Reference
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Like an episode of digital gameplay, this book is a collaborative performance. I
can’t hope to name all the individuals who have contributed their time, ideas,
and support, but I can make a start at thanking those who have played leading
roles. The reference list at the back of this volume should be considered a
continuation of these credits.
First, my thanks to the players, practitioners, designers, entrepreneurs, and
teachers at the heart of this book: Freddie Wong, Rob Kay, Shaun Scovil, Mike
Dadmun, Brian Shandra, David Taub, Nate Brown, Nate Torres, John Dean,
Grimmly, and all the volunteers who completed surveys, participated in
gameplay/interview sessions, graciously replied to my follow-up emails, and
commented on draft chapters. You made this book happen.
My Oxford University Press editor, Norm Hirschy, has been unfailingly
generous and uncommonly discerning, and he has demonstrated sustained
enthusiasm for this project over several years—pure manna to an author
slogging through drafts. Thanks are also due to series editor Daniel Goldmark,
production editor Erica Woods Tucker, copyeditor Elliot Simon, and the Oxford
University Press editorial, production, and promotions staff for all their work on
this project.
My two extraordinary undergraduate research assistants, Kate Reutershan and
Emily Xie, made direct and substantive contributions to this book. I was very
fortunate to have their help, which was made possible through the support of
Brown’s UTRA program and Radcliffe’s Research Partnership Program.
Many mentors and colleagues in academia (including several dedicated
journal editors) helped me refine my arguments and offered crucial
encouragement along the way. They include Harry Berger, Katherine Bergeron,
Bettina Brandl-Risi, Gabriele Brandstetter, Mark Butler, Tim Cooley, Kai van
Eikels, Jessica Enevold, Dana Gooley, Tomie Hahn, Judith Hamera, David
Josephson, Henry Klumpenhouwer, Leta Miller, Marc Perlman, Regula Qureshi,
Butch Rovan, Simone Pereira de Sá, Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Jason Stanyek,
Michael Steinberg, Jonathan Sterne, Rose Subotnik, Jeff Titon, Kay Warren,
Todd Winkler, and several anonymous peer reviewers.
Thanks to all of my departmental colleagues at Brown—particularly Jim
Baker and Shep Shapiro during their terms as department chair—for offering the
personal and administrative support that made it possible for me to bring this
project to completion. The peerless staff of the Brown Music Department helped
me keep my head above water in my first years on the tenure track. My thanks to
Jen Vieira, Kathleen Nelson, Mary Rego, and Ashley Lundh. In the Orwig Music
Library, Ned Quist, Sheila Hogg, and Nancy Jakubowski offered fantastic
research support, sending me a steady stream of scholarly and popular references
that I could never have tracked down on my own. I am also indebted to the
students in Musical Youth Cultures, Music and Technoculture, and Ethnography
of Popular Music for helping me think through the core issues in this book over
the years—and particularly to Colin Fitzpatrick and Liam McGranahan, whose
thesis and dissertation projects on technoculture topics taught me a great deal.
Rameen and Sarah Peyrow, Dan Boyne, and Jill Manning, my ashtanga teachers,
offered me a complementary education in sensational knowledge that informed
every page of this book.
Many friends have sustained me and offered invaluable insights over the
course of this project. They include (roughly in order of appearance): Jesse
Kurlancheek, Molly Kovel, Lilith Wood, Megan Jennings, DJ Hatfield, Te-Yi
Lee, Carolyn Deacy, Aaron Girard, Christina Linklater, Myke Cuthbert, Mary
Greitzer, Victoria Widican, Natalie Kirschstein, Petra Gelbart, Anneka Lenssen,
Sindhu Revuluri, Jon Bernhardt, Kevin McCoy, Sheryl Kaskowitz, Ben Shaykin,
Cindy Boucher, Niyati Dhokai, Jessica Keyes, Heather Hutchinson, Vanessa
Ryan, Paja Faudree, Sandy Zipp, Peter Torelli, Joshua Tucker, Jessa
Leinaweaver, Betsey Biggs, and Katherine Mitchell.
I finished this book during a dreamlike year at the Radcliffe Institute for
Advanced Study. My thanks to Judith Vichniac, Sharon Lim-Hing, Melissa
Synott, Marlon Cummings, and all my brilliant colleagues in Byerly for making
this such a productive and inspiring research leave. I am also very grateful for
the material support I received from a Killam Memorial Postdoctoral Fellowship
at the University of Alberta in 2005–07, a Strothman Faculty Research Award at
Brown in 2009–10, and a fellowship from the American Council of Learned
Societies in 2010–11.
Thanks as always to the many branches of my family (virtual and actual). My
partner, James Baumgartner, has been the perfect muse for this book. A gamer,
DJ, cellist, radio producer, bike blogger, and master parodist, he has influenced
my work more than he knows.
This book is dedicated to the next generation of players, including Ash,