Kriel
Charles Kriel
lists@kriel.tv
ABSTRACT:
Antigone, Creon and the Non-Existence of Woman: What we can learn about the failure of The Sims Online from reading Jacques Lacan
Electronic Arts titles The Sims and SimCity are two of the most successful titles in gaming, the former privileged in its success with young women. Despite this The Sims Online has failed to achieve more than a fraction of the subscription base EA initially projected. By examining The Sims and SimCity through the metaphorical lens of the myth of Antigone and Creon, and further, by viewing The Sims Online through Lacan's controversial yet ultimately feminist notion that "Woman does not exist," I will demonstrate how EA failed to maintain it's most sought-after user base by failing to understand why young women really play The Sims.
Dr. Charles Kriel, MA, PhD
Media Artist/Theorist
Charles has been creating film/video and media works since relocating from Atlanta ten years ago; first to Prague, then Venice and London. Born a third-generation circus performer, Charles is PhD media art from Central Saint Martins, and has received awards/grants/commissions from Ars Electronica, ICA, MOMA-Oxford, London Institute, Royal Festival Hall, British Council, Dance on Screen, and London Arts. As a media artist, he has exhibited in the gallery of Tomato Design, at the 1999 Venice Biennale, and throughout the Middle East, Europe, Russia, the US and Australasia. As a composer, he has composed by commission an opera and several song cycles, and his work is released by …RF (Austria) and Electroshock (Moscow), and has received the Prix Ars Electronic Award of Distinction. As a filmmaker, writer and photographer, he is regularly commissioned by BBC Radio 1 and BBC 1Xtra and has also been commissioned by MTV, ITV and Channel 4.
A media theorist synthesising the works of McLuhan, Lacan and Freud as they apply to digital media in his recent work Noise and the Uncanny, he has delivered papers and talks at University of Westminster, Institute of Education, London Institute, Oxford Brookes, and a number of conferences.
Charles (VJ Kriel) is also a VJ, and has been called "the world's leading VJ" by the NME, and is resident VJ for BBC Radio 1, BBC 1Xtra and Pete Tong's Essential Selection. He has been cited by The Times as "club culture's first superstar VJ," and regularly performs in Ibiza, Ayia Napa, and across Europe and SE Asia. Since Spring 2000, he has performed for nearly 1.5 million clubbers internationally.
He is currently designing The Real, a persistent world deeply informed by Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, with media-producer Gary Carter (ex-Endemol).
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