Global Toxic

by | Nov 8, 2016 | Artwork #3: Intervene

In order to receive the knife skin, a player must complete all 7 challenges in order. I am the only judge on whether a challenger passes or fails a task. A task may be repeated only once. Forfeiting after accepting a challenge will result in dire consequences. As the Oracle, I am granted full immunity. Do you accept?

The Objectives:
1. Get a knife kill.
2. Have a spray art competition.
3. Have a chat with a comrade about the US election.
4. Get 2 kills with an AWP in one round.
5. Get first blood with a glock/usp
6. Spend all your money, then throw all of it on the ground. Survive the round with just your knife, while constantly moving around the map.
7. Successfully plant and blow up the bomb, without you having fired a shot/Ninja Defuse without you killing anybody.

Artist Statement:

After seeing many examples of Interventions, I wanted to work within a digital space. The perfect environment for this, to me, was Counter Strike Global Offensive. Since the community is infamous for being inexplicably toxic, I wanted to be able to subvert their focus from the usual goal of defending/attacking bomb sites. While playing Counter Strike, there are many small objectives and strategies employed, usually subconsciously, in order to win the round : knowing the other teams economy, will they force buy, what site to stack, where each player is positioned on the map, who was killed, where, how to attack, etc. So I decided to create a series of objectives/challenges, where the end goal was a knife. This way it followed the CSGO design of reaching a certain number of rounds to win. My setup was similar in that in order to progress each challenge/task must be completed in order to move on to the next, while the objective of the task differed from main CSGO priority. My inspiration for creating this intervention, came from watching The Jejune Institute video in class. The Jejune Institute led many people on mini adventures, exploring places they lived and worked at, by creating little quests for the players. This in turn opened up a new perspective or outlook on how they began to see life, and the joy they felt. I saw how it played with people’s emotions, lifting people spirits up at some points; but later on when they found out that the main boss was actually supposed to be bad, many became conflicted and angry. The whole point of the intervention was to try and recreate a new from of socializing. My purpose for creating quests and implementing it within Counter Strike Global Offensive was that it could channel that toxicity into a more narrowed focus. By giving the players initiative to take on the tasks, they seem to overlook the loss of traditional objectives in CSGO.

 

Documentation: