This is Not a Game / 這不是一場遊戲
Director: Angela Su, 徐世琪
Duration: 00:11:15; Aspect Ratio: 1.778:1; Hue: 22.114; Saturation: 0.249; Lightness: 0.160; Volume: 0.087; Cuts per Minute: 6.038
Summary: Angela Su’s fictional artist Rosie Leavers is the last remaining person to upload her consciousness to a video game. Contemplating during a pandemic year which also saw people’s resistance movements in many parts of the world, the work pinpoints the uncanny affinities between gaming and warfare strategies. They have mutually informed the infrastructure of both worlds since time immemorial when diplomatic conflicts played out on the battlefield of the 64 squares of a chess board to flight simulation technologies which were adapted to shape gaming experiences as we know it now. When the conflict is between the state and its people, she speculates that gaming strategies empower civilians in resistance movements to counter imperialism through its own operative logic. But once we upload our consciousness, are we able to return to the sensibilities and political motivation that inspired the revolution to begin with?
徐世琪虛構的藝術家Rosy Leavers是最後一個將自己的意識上傳到電玩的玩家。這件作品反思疫情期間世界各地出現的反抗行為，並且指出遊戲與戰爭攻略之間詭謬的相似性。自遠古以來，這些戰略即被應用於虛擬與現實世界，無論是以西洋棋64格棋盤推演外交張力，或者將格鬥模擬應用在遊戲當中。然而，當衝突體現在政府與人民之間，Rosy Leavers認為遊戲攻略對於人民的反抗具有賦權的作用，幫助人民以相似的運作邏輯與帝國抗衡。然而，當我們上傳自己的意識，我們是否能夠回到當初啟發革命的精神與政治動機呢？
Film "The Chess Players", directed by Satyajit Ray, 1977
Film: "The Chess Players", directed by Satyajit Ray, 1977
Gamification
In recent years, besides commercial marketing activities, “gamification” is also observed in art performances and exhibitions, business management, and policy implementation. In the scope of gamification, users are immersed in aptly virtualized narrative-based scenarios and invited to participate in specific activities. After completing the specific activities or the tasks they were instructed to accomplish, they would receive some tangible rewards, which would motivate the users to further engage in the process. Through the process of a game, corporations and governments, or game hosts, are able to obtain needed data. The users, on the other hand, are offered entertaining experiences. However, the reality is that the users’ everyday lives then become regulated by “the gamified narratives” defined by an external force.
近年來除了商品的行銷活動之外，舉凡藝術展演、企業管理、政Gamification: 策施行，都可見到遊戲化的狀況。在這遊戲化的範疇內，使用者被投入一個適當虛擬化的敘事情境當中，並被邀請參加特定的活動，通過這些活動或完成一些被交代的事項後，就能獲得實際上的獎勵，並進一步以此提高使用者的參與度。隨著遊戲的進行，企業與政府等遊戲的主持方獲得了需要的數據，而使用者則獲得了娛樂性的體驗。但其結果是：使用者的日常生活，被「由外力設定的遊戲化敘事」所規範。
At the very beginning of the film, a disclaimer informs the viewers to be
rational while watching this video and warns the users should not be addicted
to the game or take any violent actions in reality. A disclaimer is a form of
defending oneself from potential responsibilities. However, in some cases, it
can also be the last resort of self-empowering that unites a community. During
the anti-ELAB movement in 2019 Hong Kong, there was a call among the
activists and young participants to write down a declaration of “I won’t suicide”
on social media. This call results from the rising number of dead bodies
(mostly people who had participated in the movement) that were found in the
city. The majority of the dead were defined as an act of suicide by the police.
This film seemingly discourages the viewer from playing video games. The disclaimer makes a reference to what Angela Su calls HS Online, which is an open source excel sheet that starts with a similar disclaimer that we see here, and is meant to seem like a game but is not a game. It is subversively confusing, as it alludes to the people’s movement in Hong Kong, and acquires meaning when its gaming strategies are read from this point of view.
這部影片似乎不鼓勵觀眾玩電動遊戲。免責聲明引用了徐世琪所說的「香城Online」——一個
將類似此免責聲明放在頁面頂端的開源excel表——好讓其看起來像遊戲，但又不是真的遊戲
。這樣子的混淆具有顛覆性，因為它暗指香港人民的社會運動，而從這個角度解讀其遊戲策略
時才有意義。
The clip we see here in the work is from Maya Deren’s film, At Land, even as the film is contextualized by the recent Netflix miniseries Queen’s Gambit which became popular during the lockdowns related to the ongoing pandemic. The clip references the scene in Deren’s film where the protagonist crawls from the beach to a table and towards a man playing chess at the other end of the table, as if it is warfare, while attempting to sabotage the game.
The text in English and Cantonese presents the sense of an impending emergency, perhaps even war, and the urgency that it brings about, be it securing securing canned food and water or hiding in a bunker.
我們在作品中看到的影像片段來自瑪雅．黛倫（Maya Deren）的電影《在陸上》（At
Land）；而在Netflix 的迷你劇《后翼棄兵》於近年來持續不斷的疫情與居家隔離中爆紅後，
該劇的時空背景被當成這部影片的脈絡。在黛倫的這段影片中，主角仿若身處戰爭一般，從海
灘爬向一張桌子，再朝著在桌子另一端下棋的男人爬去，試圖破壞棋局。英文和粵語字幕傳達
出一種緊急事件（或是戰爭），一種迫在眉睫的感覺，也帶出其暗示的緊急狀態：可以是確保
罐頭食品和水的存放，也可以是在掩體中躲藏。
etymology
etymology, fiction, play: 「戲」在甲骨文中，為一人持戈，與虎或是戴虎面具的人戲鬥的模樣。一開始是一種供人觀賞的娛樂活動，甚至有對白、有化妝與鼓樂。在語源學脈絡底下，「戲」一字將現實中的危險情境搬至展演的現場，令其在虛構的空間中發生。而觀賞「戲」的人則又將觀賞的體驗與心得，帶回至各自的日常現實中。
fiction
In the ancient Chinese oracle bone script, the character “戲” (xì: trick; drama; play; show) looks like a person, who is holding a dagger-axe, is engaged in a playfight with a tiger or a person wearing a tiger mask. It originated as an entertaining performance and even consisted of dialogues, make-up, and percussion music. The etymological context of this character takes a real-life dangerous scenario onto a performance stage, where it then unfolds in a fictional space. The spectators then take the viewing experience and any thoughts gained from it back to their respective daily reality.
Play
The word play in both English and Cantonese signifies more than one meaning. ‘Play’ in the context of a game, or theatre or simply in reference to illusion and deception which forms the crux of the film in its interrogation of the liminal space between the virtual and the real. We now move to a documentary on how chess was being played in schools and homes.
英文和粵語中的「戲」一詞有不止一種含義。可以是遊戲或戲劇的「戲」，也可以是戲法或戲
弄的「戲」——後者構成了這電影在探問虛擬和現實之間的界限空間時的關鍵所在。我們接著
看到的是一部在學校和家中下棋的紀錄片。
We see clips from The Chess Player (made in 1926 and released in 1927). Against the backdrop of Polish resistance against Russia, this film features a game of chess between a Polish patriot and a Russian soldier, indicating the proximity between wartime and gaming strategies. Following a David and Goliath narrative, the film presents Poland, a small country fighting a superpower. The film in its reference to the automaton also addresses technicity, and the synchronicity between human and the machine.
我們看到《棋手》（The Chess Player，1926 年製作，1927 年發行）的片段。在波蘭反俄的
背景下，這部電影透過波蘭愛國者和俄羅斯士兵之間的西洋棋局，暗示戰局和棋局策略的類似
。正如大衛和歌利亞的故事，這部電影將波蘭描繪成一個與超級大國對抗的小國。這部電影中
所提及的機器人也點出了科技性、以及人與機器之間的同步性議題。
History
History: 通過遊戲的文化史與電影史簡易地梳理出虛構與現實之界線，如何漸趨模糊。其中值得討論的一點，就是在都市傳說（urban legend）此一新型的口傳文學當中，「遊戲」往往佔有很高的比例，包含：傳說中的遊戲、遊戲中傳說的攻略、遊戲銷售的軼聞等等。而這些與都市傳說高度相關的遊戲，又驅動著數量驚人的年輕人採取特定的行動。有趣的是，某些遊戲的秘密（包括任務或事件），事實上經常藏著遊戲製作者本人的政治意圖與價值判斷。
How the line between fiction and reality has become increasingly more ambiguous is roughly examined based on the cultural and cinematic history of games. One point worth noting is that urban legends often occupy a large portion in “games” of this new type of oral literature, including legendary games, legendary game strategies, or anecdotes about game marketing and sales, etc. Such games are highly related to urban legends and drive a staggering number of young people to take particular actions. Interestingly, the secretes incorporated in some games (perhaps in the form of missions or events) are often based on the political intention and value judgment of the game makers.
urban legend
E:
Just as our ancestors conjured the divine in the human image and imagination, for God was only retrospectively identified to predate creation, the limits and possibilities of technology have also emerged from the human. The machine was imagined in the form of bodily parts and their function, as the typewriter optimised the labour performed by the fingers in writing. Networks were imagined within the premise of human sociality and Artificial Intelligence is formulated within the limits of our own understanding of consciousness, receptacles where tangible and intangible relationalities between vast amounts of data surface, and their indeterminacies. In essence it is not a foreign, alien entity that has been introduced to our society but one that is absorbed into the dichotomies of existence. Afrah Shafiq’s ongoing web-based archive Our Lady of I can be Anything you want me To accumulates an archive of the diverse ways in which we are able to conceive of divine beneficence and intuition, not unlike the promise of wish fulfillment nurtured by Artificial Intelligence. Do we imagine technicity as complicit with engendering commodification, alienation and annihilation, or does it enable a reality where accountability and co-livability ethically propel the inextricable links between the biosphere and culture?
E:
正如我們的祖先以人類的形象與想像力召喚出神靈（因為上帝只是被回溯性地
認定為早於創世），科技的局限與可能性也是從人類身上顯現出來。人們以身
體部位及功能來想像機器，就如同打字機優化了手指在書寫時的勞動。對網絡
的想像則是以人類的社會性為前提，人工智慧的形成則受限於我們自身對意識
的理解，而意識是容器，裝載著大量資料表面之間有形和無形的關係，以及這
些關係的不確定性。人工智慧本質上並非被引進我們社會的外來陌生實體，而
是被吸收到存在的二分法當中的實體。阿夫拉．夏菲克正在進行中的網路檔案
作品〈我可以是你想要我成為的任何東西〉蒐集了各種讓我們能夠想像神聖恩
典與神聖直覺的方式，與人工智慧培育的願望實現之許諾並無二致。我們是否
將科技性 （technicity）想像為導致商品化、異化與滅絕的共謀，還是科技
性促成了一種現實，在其中，可歸責性（accountability）與共居性（co-
livability）自倫理道德層面推動了生物圈與文化之間密不可分的連結？
This sequence illustrates a 1927 film titled
The Chess Player. This film is
based on a story of the 18th-century chess-playing automaton named The
Turk. The Turk was at that time considered as one of the best chess-player
machines in the world, yet it was later revealed to be a fraud because a man
was hidden in the machine. The desire of building a mechanical compound
that fully imitates human beings’ gestures, movement, and creativity is not a
new story in history, and so does the dark schemes that played out in
humans' operation with technologies; for example, a recent controversy of the
first virtual student Hua Zhibing in China that developed by Tsinghua
University. In addition, it would be also interesting to note that the oriental
imagery in the human-like robots when we associate The Turk’s appearances
and customs to the 21-century social humanoid robot Sophia who registered
as a citizen in Saudi Arabia.
To a certain extent, humans wish to conquer the more-than-human
intelligence that man constructs such as the chess combat between the
Korean chess player Lee Se-dol and the computer program AlphaGo
(developed by Google DeepMind, a company that focuses on artificial
intelligence).
The Soviet era propaganda film Chess Fever demonstrates how crucial the board game was during the Cold War. Both Lenin and Stalin were huge patrons of the game. Subsequently, Cold War era politics was also played out on the chess board, almost as if it was a proxy war. Actual historical account of a 1972 match between the US and the Soviet Union is juxtaposed with footage from the film. Today, video game tournaments such as Blizaard’s ‘Hearthstone Grandmaster’ borrow the word ‘grandmaster’ from chess, the highest title a chess player can attain.
蘇聯時代的政宣影片《西洋棋熱潮》（Chess Fever）展示了棋盤遊戲在冷戰期間的重要性。
列寧和史達林都是這類比賽的狂熱贊助人。隨後，冷戰時代的政治也在棋盤上上演，彷彿棋局
就是一場代理人間的戰爭。1972 年美國和蘇聯之間的一場比賽歷史記錄與電影中的畫面並列
。現在，像暴雪的「爐石傳說大師」這種電子遊戲巡迴賽也從西洋棋中借用了「大師」這個詞
，而這一詞則是棋手可以獲得的最高頭銜。
We now move to a clip from the 1983 science fiction film WarGames. Also set in the Cold War era, from the territory of chess, we move to artificial intelligence. Technology now advances at such a rapid rate that it has become challenging to keep a tab on the ethics of such development. What was a mere illusion in the case of the Turk became a reality with Deep Blue. We also see clips from Blade Runner (1982) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). In both films, humans are up against the machine. The second clip from WarGames depicts the AI launching a nuclear missile, unable to distinguish between the virtual and the real. Alongside, we also see imagery from Space Invaders (1978), one of the earliest video games to be released, also in the Cold War era.
我們現在看到的是1983 年科幻電影《戰爭遊戲》（War Games）的片段。同樣設定在冷戰時
代，我們從西洋棋轉向人工智慧領域。現在科技進步如此之快，以至於要密切關注此類發展的
倫理問題已變得沒那麼容易。曾經只是個騙局的土耳其行棋傀儡，到「深藍」時卻變成了現實
。我們也看到《銀翼殺手》（1982）和《2001：太空漫遊》（1968）的電影畫面。在這兩部
電影中，人類都在對抗機器。《戰爭遊戲》的第二個片段，則是呈現 AI因為無法分辨虛擬和
真實的區別而發射核彈。此外，我們還看到了《太空侵略者》（Space Invaders，1978 年）
的畫面，這是最早發行的電子遊戲之一，同樣也是在冷戰時期。
Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr. Strangelove was a satirical take on the RAND Corporation (BLAND Corporation in Dr. Strangelove and also This is not a Game). Under the leadership of Herman Kahn, based on a paper he co-authored in 1957 [
https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P1167.html], the rules of war and gaming became more aligned than ever. Strangely enough, Kubrick was also an enthusiast of chess and it recurs in several of his films. Against a clip from another film starring Matthew Broderick, Project X (1987), flight simulation technology for warfare and simulation/gaming technology are revealed to be the same.
Music: Sh-Boom by The Crew Cuts.
史丹利．庫柏力克的電影《奇愛博士》（Dr. Strangelove）是對蘭德公司的諷刺作品（《奇愛
博士》與《這不是一場遊戲》中的 BLAND 公司）。在赫爾曼．康恩於 1957 年與他人合著並
主導的一篇論文 [<a href="<a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P1167.html">">https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P1167.html"></a>;
https://www.rand.
org/pubs/papers/P1167.html </a>]中，戰爭和遊戲的規則變得比以往任何時候都更加相似。
奇妙的是，庫柏力克也是西洋棋愛好者，而這個主題在他的幾部電影中常不斷出現。與馬修．
鮑德瑞克主演的另一部電影《X計劃》(Project X ，1987年) 的畫面交錯，這裡揭示了用於戰
爭的飛行模擬技術和遊戲的模擬技術實際上是一樣的。<br> <br> 音樂：The Crew Cuts的Sh-
Boom。
In the people’s movement, accounts from a ‘dream-state’ is a coded way of indicating one’s activities within its mechanisms. A contrapuntal reading of this sequence brings up the impossibility of distinguishing dream states from wakefulness while immersed in lucid dreaming. There are opposing theories that define the boundaries between the virtual and the real. One position holds that when we die in a video game, we are shook out of our state of immersiveness. The other states that reality and virtuality are indistinguishable, as we see in David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999). Though less accessible than the Matrix which received more mainstream success, both films were released the same year and propose a simulation plugged into the spine like an umbilical cord to live in a simulation. Resistance movements can be just as consuming, drowning the gamer in its immediacy and its urgency, making it almost impossible to plug out even if one chooses to.
在人民的社會運動中，關於「夢境」的說法是在特定機制內，以一種加密的方式暗示某人的活
動狀態。對這個片段進行對位閱讀，便顯見清醒夢境裡，無法區分夢境和清醒狀態的可能性。
有些反對理論則認為虛擬和現實之間仍有明顯界限。其中一種觀點認為，當我們在電子遊戲中
死去時，我們會從身臨其境的狀態中脫離出來。另一種說法是現實和虛擬是無法區分的，正如
我們在大衛．柯能堡的《X接觸來自異世界》(1999) 中看到的那樣。儘管不像《駭客任務》那
樣受大眾歡迎也較乏人問津，但這兩部電影都是同年發行的，也都提出了一種像臍帶一樣插入
脊柱，以與模擬狀態連結與生活的方式。抵抗運動與這種虛擬遊戲可能同樣耗費精力，而所有
參與者皆深陷於即時性和緊迫性中，並幾乎不可能讓參與者選擇登出或結束該遊戲。
Hong Kong 97 is a video game that was released on floppy disks in 1995, which was designed by a Japanese game journalist, Kowloon Kurosawa to be the worst video game ever. In recent years it was rediscovered and gained a cult fan following. The game involves Bruce Lee fighting Beijing after 1997, the year that Hong Kong was handed over to China and is populated with static images ranging from Maoist propaganda to the Coca-Cola logo. Deng Xiaoping is a special power in the game as his head drops down to kill Bruce Lee at the end of the gameplay. Facts merge in This Is Not A Game to create fiction. The flashback from the future catches up with our present day, or a few years before present day when HS Online was released as a shared resource.
《香港97》是一款1995 年的電腦磁碟電動遊戲，由日本遊戲記者九龍黑澤（Kowloon
Kurosawa）設計，也被稱為有史以來最糟糕的電玩遊戲。它在近年又重新掀起了一陣旋風，
並收獲一票新的狂熱粉絲。這款遊戲裡可以看到李小龍在 1997 年後——香港被移交給中國的
那年——與北京進行對抗，並充斥著包含毛澤東的政治宣傳與可口可樂標誌等的靜態圖像。而
鄧小平是遊戲中的特殊力量，會在遊戲結束時以飛頭降殺死李小龍。《這不是一場遊戲》透過
結合史實創造虛構情節。來自未來的倒敘趕上了我們的此時，或者說，趕上了「香城Online」
作為共享資源發布的前幾年。
Based on the shared resource that is a simulacra of the world of video gaming applied to a context of resistance movements, and the video game Riot: Civil Unrest which is frequently recommended as a complex strategy game that focuses on tactics for navigating civil unrest by simulating situations from real life protests from different parts the world, Angela Su creates a fictitious game called BiTMP. Illustrated by recorded gameplay of Riot: Civil Unrest, BitMP comes to life in this work. Rosy, while thinking back to her childhood and COVID, doesn't know if there really is a protest or if it is imagined by people from the premise of this game. Credited to the founder of Bitcoin, BiTMP was built based on ideas from HS Online and by hacking into the database of BLAND (RAND) Corporation. We also see a clip from Cronenberg’s eXistenZ that shows a bioportal.
根據一份將電玩遊戲與反抗運動背景結合的共享資源，以及《騷動：內亂》（Riot: Civil
Unrest）——透過模擬世界上各地曾實際發生的抗議事件，教導人們在內亂中的生存策略——
的策略性電玩遊戲，徐世琪創造了一個名為 BiTMP 的虛構遊戲。以《騷動：內亂》所錄製的
遊戲畫面做為圖像，BitMP 在這部作品中宛如真的遊戲。 Rosy在回想她的童年和 COVID疫情
時，也疑惑於世界上是否真有抗議發生，或者只是人們在這個遊戲的暗示下想像出來的
。BiTMP 的創建起源於香城Online 的概念，並透過駭進 BLAND (RAND) 公司的數據庫而誕
生；而這一切都被歸功於比特幣的創始人。我們也看到來自柯能堡的《X接觸來自異世界》中
，一個關於物種搜尋數據庫的片段。
The text embedded in this sequence speculates on the presentation of war
and computer games. And it is accompanied by the bitmap images that show
the scenes of protesters gathering together in a massive demonstration,
police enforcing violence on the protesters, and petrol bombs getting fired on
the street. In Paul Virilio’s
War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception, the
philosopher elaborates on the overlapped development of military forces and
cinema-making in the early twentieth century. The traces of technological
dependence between military technologies and the film industry can still be
found today when director Ang Lee reinvented a new type of camera to shoot ‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ at 120 frames per second in 3D. Therefore,
from the sequences of Angela Su’s film, we might say that there are also
nuanced relationships between social revolt and video games to look into
when she describes the technologies of wargame simulation that trains
revolutionists for tactical advantages.
We return to Rosy’s dream state upon the clouds. This segment of the work also refers to the tendency within people’s movements to put certain causes on the back burner to unite towards a larger social and political goal, which often creates even more problems. Then there are those who leave contexts filled with strife. Yet, is it fair to criticise them for leaving, and living in the clouds when they are also creating communities of people who all left similarly and remain plugged into a simulation of the original context, when creating a game like BiTMP is just another layer of simulation? We are all imprisoned and stuck in a loop. Perhaps the only solution is to remove the chess board altogether, as proposed by this clip from 8 × 8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements (1957), a film directed by Hans Richter, with contributing work by Marcel Duchamp and Jean Cocteau.
我們回到了Rosy在雲端的夢境狀態。作品的這部分也指涉了人們在社會運動的過程中，為了
能團結起來實現更大的社會和政治目標，經常會將某些初衷擱置一旁的傾向，而這往往會產生
更多的問題。除此之外，還有那些製造衝突的人。然而，批評他們從城市中離開以及選擇生活
在雲端是公平的嗎？因為這些以相似的方式離開、並選擇沉浸在夢境般模擬環境中的人們，同
時也創建了其他社群；而創建像 BiTMP 這樣的遊戲，只不過是另一層的模擬罷了。我們都被
囚禁著，也陷入囚禁的循環中。也許，正如《棋盤奏鳴曲》(1957) ——由漢斯．里希特
(Hans Richter) 執導，馬塞爾．杜尚和讓．科克托共同製作——中所提議的那樣，唯一的解決
方案是完全移除這個棋盤。
Post Pandemic Era
Post-Pandemic Era: 疫情後的社會可能會呈現更加嚴重而劇烈的遊戲化傾向。
The post-pandemic society may show a more severe and intense gamification tendency.
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