Playing with materiality: an agential-realist reading of SethBling's Super Mario World code-injection

ABSTRACT

This article takes inspiration from Youtuber and software developer ‘SethBling’ and his 2016 ‘code-injection’ (Bling, 2016), in which, using only a standard Super Nintendo Entertainment System controller and in-depth knowledge of the console, he ‘injected’ and executed the code of popular mobile game Flappy Bird (Nguyen, 2013) into a running instance of Super Mario World (Miyamoto, 1990), effectively transforming one game into another through play. Drawing from this I propose a performative understanding of videogames (and software in general) to reinvigorate discussions of software's materiality. Though it is possible to contrast Wendy Chun's (2008a) suggestion that one can view software as ‘vaporous’ against Friedrich Kittler's (1995) assertion that ‘there is no software’, I propose a more holistic approach. Academics and users alike should attempt to see software as living a double-life: as simultaneously solid as it is (metaphorically) gaseous. It then becomes possible to embrace software(s) as performative examples of the entangled ‘phenomena’, suggested by Barad (2007), that produce everyday reality through quantum activity. I explore SethBling's code-injection suggesting that actions clearly reveal software's double existence as both tangible ‘thing’, locatable on magnetic memory, and as a vaporous non-entity. Accepting these propositions together, software can be understood as continuously re-emerging through shared activities. Following Barad, I conclude that this quality is not unique to software, but software – and videogames above all – are a useful tool for understanding a vision of reality that favours activity over materiality as the basis of our existence.

KEYWORDS:

• Karen Barad
• Agential-Realism
• Videogames
• Game Studies
• Media Ecology
• YouTube

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

C. McKeown completed his doctoral research in 2017. He has taught game design, media and game studies in the UK and Canada. He is currently extending his work on videogames and philosophy to consider questions of ethics within an entangled universe.

ORCID

C. McKeown http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5723-157X

Notes

1 A substantial body of work has been produced within game studies journals or by academics associated with game studies on the role of code and construction in games. Of particular importance is the work of Nick Montfort, Ian Bogost and Mia Consalvo who, among others, have played an important role in forming the ‘platform studies’ offshoot from game studies, placing an emphasis on the role and importance of design practices such as coding and software engineering. This branch of game studies is growing in popularity every year, perhaps as increasing numbers of humanities scholars are gaining skills in computer design or perhaps as an impact of the growing interdisciplinarity of the field. While not entirely blind to concerns such as narrative and engagement, platform studies do place an impetus on exploring links between affective qualities and the mechanical properties of a programmed digital text. As such, the work of these scholars was a tremendous inspiration for this article but was excluded from the body of the article in the interests of readability (Montfort, 2006; Montfort & Bogost, 2009; Montfort et al., 2012; Montfort & Consalvo, 2012).