e perspective he is still playing the game, albeit a
different one. His playing field has grown from the CD on which the
game was shipped to the entire universe of computers where these
secret codes and abilities can be discussed and shared. He is no
longer playing the game, but a meta-game. The inner game world is
still fun, but it is distanced by the gamer's new perspective, much in
the way we are distanced from the play-within-a-play in one of
Shakespeare's comedies or dramas. And the meta-theatrical convention
gives us new perspective on the greater story as well. Gaming, as a
metaphor but also as a lived experience, invites a renaissance
perspective on the world in which we live. Perhaps gamers and their
game culture have been as responsible as anyone for the rise in
expressly self-similar forms of television like Beavis and Butt-head,
The Simpsons and Southpark. The joy of such programs is not the relief
of reaching the climax of the linear narrative, but rather the
momentary thrill of making connections. The satisfaction is in
recognising which bits of media are being satirised at any given
moment. It is an entirely new perspective on television, where
programs exist more in the form of Talmudic commentary: perspectives
on perspectives on perspectives. We watch screens within screens,
constantly reminded, almost as in a Brecht play, of the artifice of
storytelling. It is as if we are looking at a series of proscenium
arches, and are being invited as an audience to consider whether we
are within a proscenium arch ourselves.

The great Renaissance was a simple leap in perspective. Instead of
seeing everything in one dimension, we came to realise there was more
than one dimension on which things were occurring. Even the
Elizabethan world picture, with its concentric rings of authority -
God, king, man, animals - reflects this new found way of contending
with the simultaneity of action of many dimensions at once. A gamer
stepping out onto the internet to find a cheat code certainly reaches
this first renaissance's level of awareness and skill.

But what of the gamer who then learns to program new games for
himself? He, we might argue, has stepped out of yet another frame into
our current renaissance. He has deconstructed the content of the game,
demystified the technology of its interface and now feels ready to
open the codes and turn the game into a do-it-yourself activity. He
has moved from a position of a receiv