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Garry’s Mod: The Computer Game Becomes Photoshop

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Computer Games As Landscape Art

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Abstract

If we finished a computer game and the software kept running, we would get the multiplayer sandbox Garry’s Mod. This landscape is populated by objects from hundreds of other games, but there is no goal or set of rules. Like a billionaire playing life on God Mode, the world appears to have been flattened and all objects start to feel the same, a landscape somewhat between a museum and a playground, a postmodern rubble of decontextualised Lego pieces. If YouTube transformed video art into a mainstream practice, Garry’s Mod transformed modding into a mainstream style of play, revealing the memefied swamp of Web 2.0, an unorthodox architectural studio and an encrypted landscape for private communication.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A custom weapon uploaded to the Steam workshop by player Heavy-D (“designed by Dr Seuss in WWI to shoot down Nazi starships) (Heavy-D 2013).

  2. 2.

    Pedobear (short for paedophile) is a cartoon bear that developed between the Japanese 2channel image board, and 4chan. It is an Internet shorthand used to make fun of paedophiles, or to imply that someone has sexual interest in children. Pedobear is commonly depicted chasing young anime girls. A Nextbot is an innovative game mechanic whereby players are relentlessly chased by a two-dimensional image navigating a three-dimensional environment.

  3. 3.

    Another factor to add to this contextual list might be climate change. The idea that contemporary media is collectively and indirectly indexing the underlying anxiety of climate change is an argument that has been made extensively by Julia Leyda (2016) and Bogna Konior (2020). I do not make this link in my analysis simply because the games did not point me in that direction, however for readers interested in how contemporary media is affected by the science and discourse of climate change, I recommend these two sources.

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  1. Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, Ngau Tau Kok, Hong Kong

    Peter Nelson

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Nelson, P. (2023). Garry’s Mod: The Computer Game Becomes Photoshop. In: Computer Games As Landscape Art. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37634-4_7

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