Research Notes: Control and Technologies of Government (Patreon)

So after my control video came out my dear friend Sarah Zedig felt inspired to purchase and play the excellent game, and after a little while playing it she messaged me to say

immediately there are so many things that are off-putting and comical and weird and just tonally perfect about this setting and the plot being built up, it's all very much My Shit, but the fact that your primary means of interacting with that stuff is Gun really puts a barrier between me and it

And I agree, to be clear, especially when she went on to say 

which is more a problem i have with games as a whole right now, AAA games specifically I guess

But it really ties into one of the most important things about the game that I didn't have time to say in the essay. So today I just want to run through what I think about the use of the Objects of Power in the game, and if it goes well and people like it maybe I’ll come back again and talk about Control even more, which I’m obviously just bursting to do anyway. Maybe I’ll do a real deep dive on the metaphor of the Fridge Guy.

The Objects of Power in Control each represent different Technologies of Governance that relate to systems of control in the real world. This is, given you understand all the political jargon I want to throw around, one of the parts of the game that is incredibly unsubtle about what it's trying to say. It's one of the parts where I'm banging my head against my desk when I watch other game critics just limit their videos to talking about how neat Brutalism looks in the game. 

So what are Technologies of Governance? The first thing to understand is that this term doesn't refer to technology as most people understand it - like computers or the printing press or… scissors. 

These technologies are also invented, iterated upon, and replaced by newer technologies, but these are more abstract. These are philosophies, concepts and power structures, not mechanical devices or consumer electronics. A Technology of Governance is an idea put into practice by the superstructure to realise certain goals or aspirations. Sometimes this is done through policy directly - for example, public-private partnerships are a technology favoured by neoliberal governments to strengthen the power of an unspeakable elder god they sacrifice old people to which they call “the free market”. Sometimes this is done indirectly through culture and media - the shaming of people on welfare and benefits is also a technology of governance used to distract from economic and social issues and direct ire towards the most vulnerable in society instead.

(for more on technologies in the abstract political philosophy sense, check out the works of french existentialist Michel Foucault, or if you have access, this article on how he used the term: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07341512.2013.780351)

So in Control, the Objects of Power can be understood as metaphors for technologies of governance that relate to policing. The first and most foundational Object of Power is the Service Weapon. By picking up the gun, Jesse becomes the director of the FBC, pretty simply put: the monopoly on violence elevates this person above civilian status.

It’s pretty easy to understand the gun as a metaphor for the fact that the most fundamental technology that elevates police above civilians is the state monopoly on violence - it’s never okay for you and six friends to rugby tackle a cop, it’s always okay for seven cops to rugby tackle you.

The next Object of Power Jesse bonds to is The Hotline, a magic phone that looks just like the matching phones that Batman and the Gotham City Mayor have. This Object of Power also stands out in the game as one that doesn’t give Jesse any new powers that are represented by game mechanics. It doesn’t physically empower her, it just gives her access to the shared resources and knowledge of the bureau, and puts her on a direct line to the person who can help her: Batman.
It’s not for nothing that the eventual denouement of the game will reveal that Trench had been corrupted by The Hiss slowly over many years, making Jesse’s direct line to him an insular connection to someone who has power but will share corruption along with that power.

Objects of Power as a metaphor for technologies of government - or as Foucault originally said, technologies of power, even - is so similar it feels pretty on the nose, and as the game moves forward it brings in more Objects of Power that are literally what most people would also call “technology” - a floppy disk, a TV, a slide projector. The floppy disk isn’t just any floppy disk by the way, it has launch codes for nuclear missiles on it.

The TV, according to The Board’s description, teaches you to “fly like a superhero”, highlighting the aspirational nature of media and culture and in particular, corporate media. The focus on media objects as Objects of Power keeps the ideas of media-based technologies of governance fresh in your mind. Especially with the TV being kept in the panopticon - the prison that is a metaphor for how we police our own behaviour when we feel surveilled - it’s about spectacle, and surveillance, and internalising technologies of governance so that we simply do the job of controlling ourselves for the people who want to control us. It’s about the various ways that the superstructure manufactures our consent.

Then there’s the safe which gives Jesse a forcefield. It’s pretty minor, but who is allowed to protect their assets, their valuables and themselves and who isn’t is a pretty relevant idea in discussing control. On the other hand, it’s also a safe, which keeps things safe, and then it gives you a shield.

And then there’s the carousel horse. Now obviously I might have missed some glaringly obvious metaphor here, but as far as I can tell, the horse is just a horse, and it is in the game so you can get the dash mechanic, and… that’s all. Because ultimately it is also a video game, and not every element can perfectly fit the themes and subtext all the time, which brings us kind of neatly back around to my dear friend Sarah Zedig:

what i will say though, is there's a thing in my corner of the homestuck fandom called the zich corollary that was developed in reference to a really controversial part of the comic that is brilliant but physically hard to read by design, which is "i get what they were going for, but i still had to read it"

And yeah, I ultimately have to agree - even if this is somewhere that the player character interacting with the world primarily with Gun actually works, and not just works but has a fantastic relevance and meaning, for once, it’s still also just another example of a big mainstream game that takes being a shooter as a default, and that’s still a bit boring.