Материал: disser_arhipov

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that space could be envisioned as geographic space fairly easily – the playground, the boxing ring, the hopscotch outline».421

M. Consalvo emphasizes that «[o]f course Huizinga (1950) could also have been referring to mental spaces in addition to geographic spaces. Turner’s (1969) conception of liminal spaces, 422 the interstitial boundaries between the sacred and the profane, are also spaces ‘‘set apart’’ from the everyday – they are changes in mind or attitude which occur while we inhabit the same geographic places. Likewise, with events such as carnival, we are in the same location (a town) yet attitudes and behaviors, as well as ornamentation, change, for a particular time period».423

The author stresses that modern games are surrounded by a large number of paratexts. For example, before we start to play a complex game, we study the information necessary for the game (say, about the professions of game characters or optimal strategies), and it is difficult to separate it from the game process itself, which was previously assumed to be isolated. Moreover, the conditional gaming space itself, which protects e.g. E. Castronova as a means of reconciliation with the reality in which there is pain and death, is not static, it cannot be fully controlled even by the game company – players within a multiplayer game can change the general parameters of the object.

«So, is the concept of the magic circle useful? – asks the author, – Arguably, it upholds structuralist definitions or conceptualizations of games. It emphasizes form at the cost of function, without attention to the context of actual gameplay. With contemporary games, and multiplayer games and MMOs in particular, context is key».424

The key example of M. Consalvo herself – unfair play – is considered as a clear example of practice, which is not taken into account in the structuralist understanding of

421Ibid.

422“Liminal”, i.e. – in this context – related to certain limit.

423Ibid.

424Ibid. P. 411.

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the game, but is a serious part of the overall context, which makes us think that the actual strict game mechanics, conceived by the creator of the game, the conditional “game world” is not limited to. Instead of a rigid structuralist definition in which any additional practices are ignored or classified as secondary, M. Consalvo suggests that the games should be seen as a contextual dynamic activity in which meaning is reconstructed in the process of practice.425 One of the key examples of the author is a well-known lawsuit against the developer of a program that modifies the game client World of Warcraft in order to obtain game benefits that do not comply with the rules laid down by the developers.426 According to the author, this is not a pure example of spielbrechers’ activity, but another phenomenon that corresponds to the dynamics of the game world in the broad sense of the word. It is difficult to separate the game from the non-game practices – it is all part of a single integrated process. The author departs from the structuralist topology of the game and offers a deconstruction of the concept of a separate game space. As an alternative, M. Consalvo proposes to turn to the concept of “frames” and “keys” based on the works of E. Hoffmann427 and G.A. Fine.428 Using the “keys” (a way of interpreting and differentiating aspects of social reality), we can dynamically switch between different “frames” of social reality, some of which are “obligatory” (what we call “serious” in the context of our research), some are “voluntary” (actually, games or – sic! – virtual reality). For example, a person can play on a mobile phone, but when they see a call from the boss, immediately postpone the game and answer it, and then return to the game. But the reverse is also possible: by playing, you can intentionally switch together with other participants of the

425By the way, we do not see a direct contradiction between J. Huizinga’s views and his ideas about the “magic circle”, which, in the original text, in fact, are set out in a rather general and brief form, allowing the version that it is only a situational metaphor.

426MDY INDUSTRIES, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, 629 F.3d 928 (9th Cir. 2010) [Electronic resource] //

CourtListener. – [Site]. – URL: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/181055/mdy-industries-llc-v-blizzard-entertainment/ (accessed: 24.02.2019).

427See: Goffman E. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. – Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1974. – 586 p.

428See: Fine G.A. Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. – Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. – 298 p.

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game, using different “keys”, between the real world and the virtual world; consider, for example, a joke about real events in the game world.

Summing up the approach proposed by M. Consalvo, we can draw the following conclusions for the main objective of this study – the search for the semantic limits of law in the conditions of the medial turn. First, the topological concept of the game, formed before the medial and, specifically, the digital turns, is no longer relevant. Both modern games in themselves, as technological artefacts, and virtual reality as a whole (and in the broad sense of the word, including the entire field of unserious and artistic), cannot be explained topologically. Second, methodologically promising is the development of approaches to determining at what point in time serious elements that allow us to speak about the possibility of using real law in light of the objectives of our work are included in an unserious practice. It should be noted, however, that the concept of “frames” and “keys” describes well what is happening and, perhaps, solves scientific tasks of interdisciplinary game studies, but is clearly not specific enough to form the principle of legal interpretation we are looking for.

Legal critique of the topological interpretation of the magic circle is also indirectly confirmed by the obvious fact that nowadays the entire complex of norms of “real world law” is actually applied to the relations on the Internet that were previously considered by the “cyberseparatists” (in the terminology of J. Fairfield) to belong to a separate principally new jurisdiction.

As for the “object” interpretation of the third legal approach to the magic circle, the situation is very interesting for the purposes, focus and prospects of this study. Let us be direct: although the hint of such an interpretation was contained in the work of J. Stenros, who was rethinking his previous experience, it has not yet been developed within the framework of either game or legal research. Perhaps here we are talking about the fact that J. Stenros did not mean it – in the framework of the present study, a hypothesis of a

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“object approach” was first formed, and then something similar to it was found in the works of the said researcher. One way or another, it seems to us that it is the most promising one. The reason is that the first two approaches are not universal for legal science and practice. The criteria based only on the autonomous legal communication of subjects cannot claim to be of general importance. It is necessary to search for an approach that will respond to contemporary notions of social reality as an objective-subjective (intersubjective) phenomenon, and in this sense, we see the greatest methodological potential in the interdisciplinary analysis of possible legally significant qualities of the object of social relations that arise and develop in the conditions of the medial turn. The interdisciplinary concept of the magic circle, its criticism and subsequent rethinking in law did not solve our problem, but pointed to a landmark. It is necessary to move in the direction in which modern sociological research is developing.

§ 6. The concept of generalized symbolic media in theoretical sociology

Ex abrupto, the concept of generalized symbolic media, which is being developed in sociology, is of fundamental importance for the development of the methodology of this study. Largely, its modern interpretation in the direction that is important for this work began with T. Parsons, one of the creators of modern theoretical sociology, whose views have influenced the development of many areas of social and humanitarian knowledge. The concept of generalized symbolic media, which complements his approach to social subsystems, makes it possible to justify the criterion of the “seriousness” (or “unseriousness”) of the object of a relationship, as will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3 of this study. This is only confirmed by subsequent discussions about this phenomenon in sociology, which we will also discuss later.

Social constructionism as such, in a methodological direction outlined by P. Berger and T. Luckmann, allows us to formulate a hypothesis that when interpreting the law we

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reach the “point of absurdity” in the event that the meaning of the legal text is not related to one or another social institution. Potential objections can be presented at once. First, with regard to the many examples considered in this paper, it would be acceptable to argue that there is a social institution (or social institutions), but an appropriate interpretation of the law would still be absurd. For example, a circle of critics and admirers is naturally formed around the works of talented authors, and if it is a classical author who has significantly influenced the national or world culture – even research directions (for example, Pushkin studies) may be formed. It is obvious that in this case we are talking about those social institutions as a whole that are somehow related to the subject of discussion. Second, if we look at the concept of the magic circle and specifically at the problem of the relationship between the virtual and the real, it is difficult to argue with the same sociological approach that the separation of the virtual from the “real” is a delusion. The virtual is also being reconstructed in the process of communication and as such can hardly be rigidly separated from the same “real”.

At the same time, it seems that an “institutional explanation” of the semantic limits of the law is quite possible.429 Let us try to justify the possibility of applying the concept of social system by T. Parsons to determine the qualitative criterion of absurdity, outlining the following thesis.

According to the American sociologist, the social system consists of four subsystems: political, economic, legal and cultural. Each of these social systems has its own “symbolic medium”, which can be considered as a kind of convertible currency. Thus,

429 It should be noted at once that the mere absence of a social institution, which is the subject of the legal text (in the example of the blocking of the Eve Online players’ forum by Roskomnadzor according to the decision of the Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) – the absence of a drug subculture among players) does not mean that such an interpretation would be absurd. Thus, there may be a lack of a social institution, but there may be an indirect intersection of the subject matter of the legal text with another socially significant institution of social life (such as drug use in real life). Since one of the objectives of restricting the dissemination of information under this criterion is to combat the propaganda of imaginary attractiveness of the practices in question, there is no second necessary criterion of absurdity, which means that interpretation may be “on the verge”, but not unambiguously absurd, and therefore it may become a subject of meaningful discussion about the “weighing” of constitutional values – freedom of creation and freedom of dissemination of information, on the one hand, and health – on the other.