The Little Deaths of Gamers

Hardcore game streamer delivers ›petite morts‹ to his fans

»The Little Deaths of Gamers« is a 20 minute long »livestream« chronicling a hardcore game streamer and the results a hack has on his masochistic brand. Normally, he plays a game with a device which generates realistic pain for players when they get shot by their online, anonymous opponents. Without worthy enemies, he has christened himself »Not1Death,« as the only player of this game who has never died. However, a hack changes pain into pleasure, and death into orgasm. Now that the hack deals ›the little death‹ when a player dies, how will he deal with his adoring (though conservative) fanbase, users who will pay to die to him, and his arch-nemesis on his way home from his day job to deliver sweet death unto our hero? The video is a queer adaptation of the Shakespeare play »Coriolanus,« with Not1Death being Coriolanus, his fans in the chat as the people of Rome and their senators, and his rival »X_SniperWorld_X« as Aufidius. His opponents, anonymous individuals who make him question his motivations, break him down to the point of his eventual surrender to his desires for his gaming rival X_SniperWorld_X. His dominant, hierarchically driven lifestyle is turned into a submissive, unfulfilling one when death suddenly becomes pleasure and success becomes failure. People would rather die to him, and he is all too happy to deliver it. The video seeks to be a two channel installation which would have the livestream on one screen, and the chat on another. The game, the video, and a website with the two channel video will all be released online after the exhibition in May — the exhibition space will be the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University.