HOW REVIEW | 彼得·尼尔森：第一人称射击游戏作为艺术媒介

2019年8月24日，昊美术馆（上海）邀请创作《自动保存：城门棱堡》的艺术家彼得·尼尔森开设了艺术家工作坊。在此次互动中，艺术家彼得·尼尔森探讨了制作“自动保存：城门棱堡”的技术过程及其历史语境，以及通过第一人称射击电脑游戏对历史遗址的重塑过程，形成对游戏表现局限性与游戏如何理解遗址现场的双向评论。

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工作坊讲座部分内容回顾

彼得·尼尔森：今天我要谈谈作品《城门棱堡：自动保存》的制作过程。对于我来说，艺术作品通常是在试图回答问题，因此，创作作品的“好点子”也不过意味着产生一个好问题。只有在制作这件作品的过程中，你才开始寻找答案，可能也才意识到问题本身需要被改写。如果这是一件好的艺术作品，通常是因为最终的答案会揭示出一些不被预知的真相。因此，考虑到这一点，我将向大家解释我们为什么要创作这件作品，我们在制作时都遇到了什么问题，以及相应的解决方案，这些都是构成最终这件作品的各个部分。

艺术家工坊“彼得·尼尔森：第一人称射击游戏作为艺术媒介展览”现场，2019 图片©昊美术馆

《城门棱堡：自动保存》是一款可供玩家在Steam平台创意工坊上下载的反恐精英的地图。Andrew Luk，Alexis Mailles和我使用Hammer编辑器（一款和《反恐精英：全球攻势》捆绑的为源引擎服务的关卡编辑器）构建而成。这件作品是对香港九龙山区一系列军事隧道、碉堡的重建。这些历经不同程度腐蚀的碉堡现今仍可通过远足步道进入。

我们获得了香港大学提供的相关调查数据，在此基础上又进行了实地考察和研究。这些隧道和掩体的设计，曾经发生在那里的历史冲突，以及现在遗存下来的结构大大影响了我们在作品中的景观设计。围绕冲突而发生的历史事件相当复杂，无法被简单总结，因此讲座中我仅会提及几个要点：

自动保存:城⻔棱堡，2018
陆浩明、彼得·尼尔森和阿莱克斯·马伊思

定制声音和装置修改电脑游戏

致谢艺术家

醉酒湾防线建于20世纪30年代。在第一次和第二次世界大战之间，欧洲列强中曾掀起一股建筑防御工事的趋势，醉酒湾防线便是其中一部分。隧道蜿蜒起伏，令人无法预测其走向，这使得在空间内跑动、用来福枪射击变得异常艰难。1941年12月，日本军团入侵香港。他们在两天内到达了城门棱堡的防线，并在几个小时内攻陷了防御性建筑群。然而，驻扎该地的香港士兵数量不充足，那也就意味着日本士兵可以在这个建筑表面爬过，而不被守在地下的士兵发现。同时，沟通线路也遭毁坏，战场中的士兵几乎进入了一种迷失方向的状态。他们在混乱而黑暗的隧道中互相追逐，步枪射击受到了极大的限制。这种设计却意外地造成了极低的伤亡率，尽管仍然有两名印度工程师在碉堡内不幸地被杀害。

纪念碑式的城门棱堡的废墟看上去是一件事，而实际上又是另一回事。它们是技术冗余的纪念碑，也是对殖民地境遇漠不关心的纪念碑、以及一场由于碉堡设计缺陷而使年轻士兵侥幸逃脱伤亡的纪念碑。

直到今天，那些历史矛盾还仍根植于那个现场。当我们游走于其间，想要了解更多的时候，却发现它现在已经成了一个气枪游乐场。尽管当地有关部门发布了限制此类游戏的批文，但还是有人会在这些隧道中玩真人气枪游戏，而且游戏规则几乎和反恐精英一样（也就是我们这件作品中用到的游戏媒介）。

《自动保存:城⻔棱堡》制作过程，图片致谢艺术家

关于电脑游戏如何重现历史主题，以及电脑游戏软件是如何重现真实场所，已经有了很多研究。我们可以在游戏行业、艺术和学术界看到这一点。

《自动保存：城门棱堡》想要提出的问题，并非探索是否存在再现一个真实场所或真实历史事件的可能性，而是如何让它成为可能。电脑游戏软件如何改变真实环境使其得以再现？在这个过程中，什么是电脑游戏软件能做或不能做的？进一步地，对于电脑游戏来说“现实”又意味着什么？因为《自动保存：城门棱堡》不仅仅是一款游戏，它更是一件艺术作品，我们发现增高重建的精确度就意味着降低游戏的可玩性；通过这种方式，我们加深入地了解了“反恐精英”这个游戏，同时，也更了解这个历史遗址本身。

图片来自彼得·尼尔森的演讲稿

作品《自动保存：城门棱堡》的背后也蕴含一些问题：

当人们对历史遗迹进行数字化重建时，通常会在使用电脑游戏技术的同时拿掉枪支。在美术馆内的虚拟空间中漫步，任何玩家都会突然感到沮丧，因为这个所谓的游戏世界和真正的游戏相去甚远。对玩家来说，这就是在玩一个不具有游戏性的游戏。那么如果我们不移除这部分“游戏性”呢？

《自动保存:城⻔棱堡》制作过程，图片致谢艺术家

如果那么多三维软件均来自第一人称射击游戏软件，我们在尝试用游戏作为艺术媒介的时候会发生什么？这如同其他的艺术尝试，当我们讨论电脑游戏时，讨论的元问题（meta-question）其实是“现实主义”到底意味着什么？是游戏的规则？是游戏允许玩家做的具体事项？还是这个软件本身及其规则设计者建构的虚拟世界？

图片来自彼得·尼尔森的演讲稿

正如我在一开始所讲到的，一件艺术品实际上是你试图回答最初提出的问题时发现的所有问题的总和。

我们发现的第一个问题是，反恐精英看似是对军事暴力的模拟，但它的游戏地图实际上更像是抽象的篮球场。这些地图很小，而且有几分对称以便对每个团队相对公平。历史遗址则完全相反。在以下这张幻灯片上，图片左上角小小的灰色区域是典型的反恐精英地图，绿色方块区域则是相应历史遗址的地图。

图片来自彼得·尼尔森的演讲稿

反恐精英地图与历史遗址的地图在尺寸上显现的差异告诉我们两件事：首先，我们必须非常谨慎地构建地图，以免游戏软件崩溃；其次，玩家需独自一人花费大量的时间在地图上奔走，寻找对手。这两点虽然从游戏设计角度来看都是缺陷，但从艺术的角度看则十分有趣。

实地景观显然比经典的反恐精英地图大得多，所以，我们必须非常小心，避免因“错乱建筑”（messing buliding）而引发故障，尤其在接近数值的边界条件时。

《自动保存:城⻔棱堡》制作过程，图片致谢艺术家

这就引发了一些技术难题，比如，我们必须严格按照游戏关卡编辑器的网格空间制作；而我们重建某些具有奇怪几何形状的地下隧道的能力也会大大受限。我们的地图不得不接受一些“舍入错误”，我们被迫改变隧道形状，使得它们在游戏软件中得以被构建。下一张图片左边的网格图是隧道重建中被迫接受的最大的偏差，灰线描绘的是真实隧道的准确形状，彩线描绘的则是我们游戏内重建的几何形状。墨线显示的是我们必须完全重绘某些曲线以便它们“适合”游戏。

图片来自彼得·尼尔森的演讲稿

当然，玩家并不会注意到这些误差。然而，当我们探索电脑游戏作为艺术媒介的“准确度”时，我们才发现这个限制令人着迷。我们的隧道只在软件允许的范围内“真实”，并且在某种程度上，这个规则适用于世界上任何计算机游戏模拟。

图片来自彼得·尼尔森的演讲稿

我们遇到的另一个问题是光线。虽然这一点听起来微不足道，但事实上它让我们直面一个问题：电脑游戏到底有多“抽象”和“不真实”。

城门隧道即使在白天也很暗， 通风口是自然光的唯一来源。1941年12月8日的历史事件发生在夜间，当时除了士兵的手电筒，绝大多数隧道没有任何人造光源。但反恐精英中却不存在手电筒这个选项。电脑游戏玩家永远不会真正感受到在黑暗隧道中穿梭的感觉，如果电脑游戏没有虚拟灯光，玩家将只能坐在他们的桌子上盯着黑屏。

展览“严肃游戏”展出的《自动保存：城门碉堡》，2019 图片©昊美术馆

为了解决这个问题，我们采取了游戏设计中一个传统的解决方案：我们在每个通风孔中放置一个假灯，然后将较弱的灯放在实地中最黑暗的区域。这个解决方案可以确保玩家到达通风口前仍然面对黑暗，从而造成通风口是主要光源的错觉。

这显然是一个彻底的假象，以一种戏剧性的解决方案来创造一种没有现实基础的体验，但是为了让游戏“感觉正确”，这恰恰又是必须的。至此，我们真正开始意识到游戏到底要多“不切实际”才能创造出一种“现实的”幻觉。

正如我们对光线的处理是为了坐在计算机前的玩家精心设计的一样，我们也考虑了很多处理历史语境敏感性的方式。毕竟，这是一个暴力历史的遗迹现场，把这个现场植入电脑游戏会使这些历史事件看起来像一场“游戏”，或者“微不足道”。坐在电脑前玩游戏的玩家与1941年战场上命悬一线、感到恐惧的年轻人没有任何相似之处。在另一位艺术家的建议下，我们决定让声音和记忆弥漫在隧道中。

展览“严肃游戏”展出的《自动保存：城门碉堡》，2019 图片©昊美术馆

通过声音设计，我们寻求的是一种诗意的现实主义。通过破坏反恐精英的传统声音体验，来自1941年的声音在隧道中弥漫，营造出了过往历史事件的氛围。当玩家经过某些特定的地点时，会激发不同的声音，这些声音巧妙地以1941年事件的发生先后顺序依次被编码。隧道本身与其代表的地缘政治不稳定的特定历史时期，凝聚成很多年前那个夜晚的混乱，这种混乱感也成了这一系列具象声音组合的逻辑。

我们并没有让玩家静静地坐在电脑前，而是在他们探索城门棱堡的过程中感受一系列声音：日本爵士乐、日本占领香港期间的幸存者采访、英国电台采访、文学作品中的引述……这些声音素材都试图取代仅有计算机生成的寂静的脚步声，从而建造一条通向1941年的记忆隧道。

图片来自彼得·尼尔森的演讲稿

最后要讨论的则是游戏可玩性的问题。反恐精英的游戏机制对我们来说是一个限制因素。为了坚持使用游戏作为媒介的目标，我们试图尽可能少地改变机制。所以，我们只做了两处改动：一是改变每场比赛的时间限制。反恐精英玩家们都知道每轮比赛只持续几分钟。我们明确知道创建的游戏地图太大，以至于玩家需要很长时间才能找到彼此，因此我们将时间限制改为半小时。

第二个改变则是减少玩家数量。一场娱乐模式的反恐精英通常双方各有五名玩家，但我们将每个团队减少至一个玩家来代表冲突的双方。两个玩家都从地图的相反方向开始，一个在北，一个在南。他们可能需要花20分钟试图找到彼此，或者迷失在隧道的声音中。当找到彼此时，他们可以选择射击迫使游戏结束，或者是一起探索这件艺术作品直到计时结束。通过将玩家数量减少至两个的同时，我们向玩家提供这个有趣的隐藏选择。这就是我们在完成这项工作时“提出问题-寻找解决方案”的经历。

“严肃游戏”展览现场

“严肃游戏”展览现场，2019 图片©昊美术馆

文字整理编辑：郑心怡、邓蕾

On Aug 24, How Art Museum delightedly invited one of the artists of AUTOSAVE: REDOUBT for an artist workshop. In his presentation, Peter Nelson discussed the technical process of making AUTOSAVE: REDOUBT and its historical context, and how the mediation of the historic site through the first-person shooter computer game formed a two-way commentary on the limits of representation for the game, and on how the game could comment on the site.

The artist talk of 

this workshop

Today I’m going to talk about the process behind the artwork Autosave: Redoubt. For me, an artwork is often an attempt to answer a question, a good idea for an artwork is little more than a good question, it is in the process of making the artwork that you start to find answers for that question, perhaps realize how the question needed rephrasing, and if the artwork is good, it is usually because the answers you find reveal some new truth that you didn’t know when you started. So with that in mind, I will explain to you why we made this artwork, the problems we encountered when making it, and the solutions and answers that make up the artwork you see in front of your now. 

Autosave: Redoubt exists as a playable map for Counter-Strike hosted on the Steam workshop. Andrew Luk, Alexis Mailles and I built it using the Hammer editor (the level building software for the Source engine that is bundled with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive). It is a reconstruction of a series of tunnels, bunkers and pillboxes that currently exist in various stages of decay within the mountains of Kowloon, Hong Kong and are accessible via hiking trails.

We were given access to survey data from a Hong Kong University study into the site, which we supplemented with site visits and our own research. The design of these tunnels and bunkers, the historical conflict that occurred there, and how these structures exist today were the dominant influencing factors in how we designed our landscape representation in Autosave: Redoubt.

Whilst these historical events surrounding the conflict are too complex to summarise here, I’ll introduce a few key points:

The Gin Drinkers Line was built in the 1930s as part of a broader trend in architectural fortifications constructed by European powers between the first and second world wars. The unpredictable undulation of its tunnels, the constantly zigzagging back and forth and climbing up and down, was intended to make running and shooting with rifles as difficult as possible.

In December 1941, Japanese Regiments were ordered to invade Hong Kong. They reached the defensive line of the Shing Mun Redoubt within two days, and within a matter of hours, the defensive complex was captured. The inadequate number of soldiers stationed at the site meant that Japanese soldiers could creep above ground and over the structure, unnoticed by the soldiers underground. Communication lines were broken, and a general sense of disorientation defined the conflict. Soldiers chased each other through the confusing dark tunnels, too confined to shoot their rifles. These circumstances resulted in an incredibly low number of casualties, however two Indian engineers were tragically killed inside the Redoubt.

The monumental ruins of the Shing Mun Redoubt look like one thing, but they are in fact another. They are monuments to technological redundancy, monuments to colonial indifference, and monuments to a temporary incidence whereby these shortcomings saved the lives of many young soldiers.

These historical contradictions are embedded in the site itself to this very day. As we hiked around the site and learned more about it, we also learned that it is now a playground for airsoft players, and despite the efforts of local authorities, real life gamers run around these tunnels playing airsoft, whose rules are almost identical to Counter-Strike (the game we decided to use as our medium of representation).

A lot of work has been done on how computer games can represent historical subject matter, and also how computer game software can be used to represent real places, we can see this in the game industry, in the arts and in academia.

What we wanted to do in AUTOSAVE: REDOUBT was not ask IF it is possible to represent a real place and real historical events, but HOW it is possible. How does the computer game software have to change the physical environment in order to represent it? What are the things it can and cannot do, and therefore what does it mean for a computer game to be ‘realistic’? And because Autosave: Redoubt is an artwork rather than a game, we also discovered the points at which designing an accurate reconstruction meant making a worse, or less ‘playable’ game, and in this way, we felt that we learned more both about the game ‘Counter-Strike’ and about the historical site itself. 

The question behind our artwork was something like this:

When people make digital reconstructions of historical sites, they usually use computer game technology, but with the gun removed. Walking around these virtual spaces in museums, any gamer will feel the frustration of their game world suddenly feeling “non-game like”. It is like playing a game with the game removed. So what would happen if we left the game in place?

If so much of our 3D software comes from first person shooter computer game software, what would happen if we tried to use the game itself as the artistic medium?Like many other artistic endeavors, the meta-question here is what does “REALISM” actually mean when we are talking about a computer game? Is it the rules of the game, what it allows players to do, or is it the software, and what world it allows game designers to make?

As I said in the beginning of the talk, an artwork is usually a summary of all the problems you discover when trying to answer your initial question.

The first problem we found was that although Counter-Strike looks like a simulation of military violence, its game maps are actually more like abstract basketball courts. They are small, and somewhat symmetrical in order to be fair to each team. Our historical site was the complete opposite. On this slide, the small grey space in the top corner is a typical Counter-Strike map, and the green square is a map of our historical site.

This size difference told us two things. First, we had to be very careful in how we built our map in order not to crash the game software, and second, players would spend a lot of time running through the map alone trying to find each other. Both of these problems might be bad for game design, but artistically, we found them highly interesting.

Because our landscape area was so much larger than a typical CS:GO map, we had to be very careful to avoid bugs and errors that might arise from ‘messy building’, especially when the boundary conditions of scale are being approached.

This gets a bit technical, but it means that we had to adhere strictly to the grid-space of the game level editor, which meant that our ability to recreate some of the very strange geometry of these underground tunnels was limited, and our map had to accept a number of ‘rounding errors’, where we had to change the shape of the tunnels so that they could be built within the game software. The gridded image on the left is a screenshot I took of one of the worst errors we had to accept, the grey lines represent the accurate shape of the tunnels, and the coloured lines represent our game geometry. The ink lines show the particular sections where we had to completely redraw certain curves in order for them to ‘fit’ into the game.

These are things that players would certainly not notice, however as we were wondering how ‘accurate’ our computer game was as an artistic medium, we found this limitation fascinating. Our tunnels were only as realistic as the software would allow them to be, and to some degree, this will be true of any computer game simulation of the world.

Another problem we encountered was lighting. And this one sounds trivial, but to us it really isn’t, it pushes to the idea of just how ‘abstract’ and ‘unreal’ computer games have to be.

The tunnels of Shing Mun are very dark, even during the daytime. The only source of natural light are the air vents. The historical events on the 8th of December 1941 happened at night-time and the vast majority of the tunnels contained no source of artificial light, other than the flashlights of the soldiers. There is no longer a flashlight option in Counter-Strike. A computer game player will never really feel the sense of being in a dark tunnel, if a computer game has no virtual lights, the player will simply be sitting at their desk staring at a black screen.

To solve this problem, we turned to an old solution in game design, where we put a fake light in each air vent, and then put weaker lights in what should be the darkest areas. This makes sure that there is still darkness before each vent, creating the illusion that the vents are still the primary light source.

This is obviously a complete fiction, it is a theatrical solution for creating an experience of something that has no basis in reality, but is required in order to make the game ‘feel right’. At this point we really start to appreciate how ‘unrealistic’ games have to be in order to create the illusion of being ‘realistic’.

Just as the lighting was developed to create a representation for a player sitting at a computer, we thought a lot about how to approach the sensitivity of historical context. After all, this is a site of historical violence, and to put it into a computer game could make these events seem ‘game-like’ and perhaps trivial. Sitting at a desk playing on a computer has no similarity to being a young man in 1941, scared for your life. At the suggestion of another artist, we decided to fill the tunnel with voices and memories.

Through sound design, we sought a form of poetic realism that might express the atmosphere of these historical events by disrupting the conventional sonic experience of CS, and filling the tunnels with the sounds of 1941. As the player passes certain points, different sounds fill the tunnels, coded subtly to represent the order of events in 1941. The sense of confusion on that night, both in the tunnels themselves, as well as the general geopolitical instability that defined this moment in history, became the representational logic of the sound composition.

Rather than sitting at a computer in silence, we provided the player with Japanese jazz, interviews with survivors of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, British radio interviews, and a quotes from literary sources, all designed to replace the silence of computer generated footsteps with a sort of memory-space from 1941.

And the finally the problem of gameplay. The game mechanics of Counter-Strike were a limiting factor for us. To stay true to our goal of using a game as a medium, we decided to alter the mechanics as little as possible. We made only two changes. The first was to change the time limit of each game. Counter-Strike players would know that each round of play only lasts a few short minutes. We already knew that the size of our game map was so large that players would take a long time to find one another, so we changed the time limit to half an hour.

The second change was to reduce the number of players. A casual game of Counter-Strike usually has five players on each side, but we reduced this to one player for each team, in this case, symbolically representing the two sides of this conflict. Each player begins on the opposite side of our map, one in the north, one in the south. They might spend 20 minutes simply trying to find one another, in the meantime getting lost in the sounds of the tunnels. When they find one another, they have the choice to shoot and force the game to finish, or simply explore the artwork together until the timer runs out. By reducing the player number to two, we thought it was interesting to provide this hidden choice to the players.

So this was the question and answer process we went through in making this work. I hope this talk was interesting for you to listen to, and if you have any questions, I would be more than happy to answer. Thank you for your kind attention.

About the Guest

PETER AC NELSON is an art historian, game scholar and visual artist working at the intersection of computer game and landscape studies. He is engaged in a prolonged consideration of the history of landscape images, how they are remediated by technological shifts, and how these shifts absorb and reflect changes in our relationships with the physical environment. He has exhibited his artworks widely, including projects with HanArt TZ Gallery (Hong Kong), The National Palace Museum (Taiwan), The Sichuan Fine Art Academy Museum (Chongqing) and the K11 Art Foundation (Hong Kong), and is also a regular contributor to the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, DiGRA and Chinese DiGRA, of which he is a current board member. 

昊美术馆（上海） 

HOW ART MUSEUM (SHANGHAI)

昊美术馆（上海），图片©昊美术馆

昊美术馆（上海）是具备当代艺术收藏、陈列、研究和教育功能的全新文化机构，坐落于上海浦东，共有三层展览和活动空间，总面积约7000平方米，于2017年9月正式对外开放。昊美术馆首创“夜间美术馆”的运营模式，常规对外开放时间为周二至周五下午1点至夜间10点，周末及节假日开放时间为上午10点至夜间10点。此举能让更多观众在工作之余前来美术馆观展，昊美术馆也举办“国际策展人驻留项目”、“户外电影节”、“雕塑公园”等国际交流项目和户外活动，以此建立全新的艺术综合体和浦东新地标。

昊美术馆（温州） 

HOW ART MUSEUM (WENZHOU)

昊美术馆（温州），图片©昊美术馆

昊美术馆（温州）延续昊美术馆（上海）的“夜间美术馆”运营模式，是浙江省首家"夜间美术馆"，常规对外开放时间为下午1点到夜间10点，周末及节假日开放时间将向前延长为上午10点至夜间10点。昊美术馆（温州）将持续为公众呈现丰富的公共教育及户外艺术项目，引领融合艺术、设计、科技的全新生活方式。

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昊美术馆（上海）  

HOW ART MUSEUM (SHANGHAI)

昊美术馆（温州）  

HOW ART MUSEUM (WENZHOU)

昊美术馆（温州） 特别项目空间 

HOW ART MUSEUM(WENZHOU) Special Project Space