A first-person shooter (FPS) on display at one of the world’s most preeminent contemporary art shows isn’t the strangest thing one might expect to see, but it’s still pretty odd. I step closer to the computer, where a woman stands frustrated, clicking the mouse impatiently. I explain to her that the game looks to be on a loop, and is not actually controlled by her. But it’s not clear to me why “Counter-Strike” is in this collection until I read the curatorial card explaining the piece. “‘Velvet-Strike,’ 2002. Online game intervention.”

I look more closely at the screen, at the dim world of concrete and crates, the space the game designers have created. A soldier changes weapons. But instead of firing his gun, he spray-paints a message on the nearest wall. It reads, “Hostages of Military Fantasy.”

The Biennial is well known for featuring works of art, such as graphic novels, that don’t fit into classical categories. But in this case, it’s the message that appears to be the point, and not the quality of the art. In line with the theme of this first post-Sept. 11 Biennial, “Velvet-Strike” is an indictment of the pro-military sentiment of many video games. “Velvet-Strike” infiltrates “Counter-Strike,” changing its dynamic. And with images such as two camouflage-covered soldiers poised for a kiss, it’s an intervention that has outraged many “Counter-Strike” gamers.

“Velvet-Strike” has been irritating gamers for two years now. But its relevance seems only to be increasing, as casualties continue to mount in Iraq, and the gaming industry continues to jump on the military bandwagon. In the first days of the Iraq war, Sony copyrighted the phrase “shock and awe,” for use in a (now abandoned) future video game. “America’s Army,” the game created as a P.R. and recruiting tool for the real U.S. Army, is now the No. 1 online action game, according to CBS News.

Games like “Counter-Strike” create their own highly militarized, highly political world, and their creators pride themselves on the “realism” of the games. Protesters who deplore that reality — and who go inside the game to deploy “Velvet-Strike’s” graffiti — are not welcome. But while many may not agree with their actions, so-called protest mod makers don’t fit in the pro-censorship camp so often reviled by game enthusiasts. “Velvet-Strikers” rely on the game to make their point. They leverage the existing design and popularity of the game to assist them in bringing their anti-militarism agenda into the game itself.

In a posting to the Nettime mailing list in May 2002, one of “Velvet-Strike’s” creators, Anne-Marie Schleiner, wrote: “I’m concerned with what game violence is coupled with: militaristic, heterosexist boys clubs in the real life, outside the game, war time environment of the ‘war on terrorism.’ We are also opposed to military fantasy masquerading as ‘realism.’ I am also disturbed that the binary logic of the shooter is being implemented on a global military scale.”

It’s been a long trip for the team behind “Velvet-Strike,” and one filled with plenty of hate mail. Brody Condon and Joan Leandre were involved with conceptualizing the mod and contributed certain screens, but “Velvet-Strike” started with Schleiner’s idea. It came to her, she says, “when I was giving a shooter game mod workshop in Spain — the same day the U.S. started dropping bombs on Afghanistan.” It was there that she met Joan, and “we talked about doing some kind of anti-military shooter mod.”

Mods are extensions or adaptations of an original game, made possible by game makers who allow access to portions of a game’s code. But even though her project is labeled a “protest mod” by the Whitney, Schleiner admits that “we did not program anything ourselves. We used a built-in function in ‘Counter-Strike’ — available to all ‘Half-Life’-based games — the ability to upload your own sprays or graffiti to servers that everyone can see, and spray them wherever you want in the game space.”

“Originally,” she says, “I had considered doing a regular mod and making a level of ‘Counter-Strike’ to replace the textures with antiwar graffiti, but Brody had the idea just to use the built-in spray function. It allowed us to open it up to anyone who wanted to download sprays from our site, and use them in playing their own games.” It was, she says, “a more viral approach.”

The screens in “Velvet-Strike” are, frankly, pretty basic. Poorly done, even. Many are pixelated and tough to read, and their themes fluctuate between painfully earnest and flat-out goofy. But the payoff is in the idea, in infiltrating a game in order to subvert its subconscious message with a pro-peace agenda.

“Velvet-Strike” has toured Europe, in art galleries and events like the 2004 Rotterdam Film Festival. But “we didn’t make ‘Velvet-Strike’ with any intention to put it on the art market or show it in those kinds of spaces,” says Schleiner. “I don’t think most gamers care much about the art world.”

Reaction to “Velvet-Strike” was more angry and dismissive than the designers had anticipated. Many “Counter-Strike” fans made it personal, deriding Schleiner’s résumé and gaming preferences (erotic mods and an admiration of fantasy games).

When news of “Velvet-Strike” first made the rounds, Schleiner was often lumped in with the anti-gaming-violence crowd. It’s a tricky distinction — to accept blood and guts in games while proposing an anti-military-action agenda. (For the record, she’s not against violent games.)

“I think many of the hate-mail responses came from 14-year-old boys in the Midwest, who pictured their mom coming into their room and telling them to stop playing,” she says.

Part of the reason for the response is the underlying sexism of the gaming world, but Schleiner also poured fuel onto the flames by including things in “Velvet-Strike” such as the “little-girl game” sprays, which throw hopscotch boards and pink teddy bears on the walls of “Counter-Strike’s” otherwise immersive environment. Clearly, she didn’t just want to make a point about anti-militarism. She also wanted to piss off a lot of people.

“Anger is an important tool,” she concedes. “First, people get angry. Then they are forced to take a position and defend why they are angry. Then, if there is dialogue, they may change their minds. This happened to me with at least one of the flamers I wrote back to. The fluffy, teddy bear-type sprays bring to mind connotations of women and children, components that are excluded from the harsh, bare military world of these types of games. And humor has a subversive effect.”

“Velvet-Strike” is part of a larger protest movement, including games like “September 12,” meant to raise awareness in the gaming crowd. In “September 12,” bombing a Muslim house only leads to weeping women and the creation of additional terrorists. Provocative, possibly, but poorly executed. The game is boring to play.

Some agitprop gaming ideas are more inventive, such as the Web site that challenges chess players to invent a mode of play in which the pawns can collectively rise up to defeat the kings and queens. The Web site Water Cooler Games tracks games made “to make a point, share knowledge, [or] change opinions.” But many of these agitprop actions are pointless and pedantic — a deadly combination.

Take the idea of a game “intervention.” “Velvet-Strike’s” Web site lists plenty of ideas for engaging in “performance art action” gameplay. This includes a “martyrdom intervention” for “Counter-Strike,” where players should, “during the battle, tell everyone you are martyrs for peace, then jump off the tallest structure in the level, killing yourselves.” In the middle of a firefight, will anyone notice other players taking a virtual swan dive for peace? And more important: Does anyone care?

The point, for Schleiner and others, is to draw a clearer distinction between entertainment and coerced thought. “I enjoy playing violent games and I enjoy watching action movies,” she says. “But I don’t want to play violent games where I am an American killing Arabs in a contemporary Middle East setting. Then there is no difference between entertainment and propaganda. The U.S. government is well aware of the propagandistic potential of games, which is why they have developed free military games like ‘America’s Army’ and ‘Full Spectrum Warrior.’”

Velvet-Strikers may not fit the hardcore status of some “shoot club” fans, but they still need to be good at “Counter-Strike,” to survive long enough to throw some sprays on the wall. And instead of advocating censorship, they’re just adding an additional perspective. But it’s hard to say whether they are successful — ultimately, their “interventions” may only serve to alienate people who just want a break, to be gloriously detached from the real world and its consequences by diving into a video game.

On sites such as Planet Half-Life, the overwhelming sentiment is for protest-mod planners to stop “ruining the game.” One flamer wrote on “Velvet-Strike’s” Web site, “I don’t know why you feel the need to tie my beloved video game into this, but it’s pretty low. It makes me sad to think that there may not be one thing in this world that someone hasn’t already tied their political bullshit to.”

But political ideology is already firmly in place, care of the U.S. government, in games like “America’s Army.” Is the problem really the introduction of ideology into a game, or just the broaching of ideas that FPS fans don’t want to hear?

The whole question of whether militaristic video games encourage militarism in and of themselves raises the thorny question of just what impact gaming has on behavior. On at least one level, no one believes that these games are real life. Should an “America’s Army” player take a mortal hit on a real battlefield, he or she will not expect to respawn. But there is a debate over the issue of realism, i.e., a true representation of the world, one that contains no warlocks or space lasers. Fans and game makers assert that today’s action games are, in fact, realistic.

In a recent interview, GameSpot called Michael Macedonia “the Army’s military-sim point man.” Macedonia believes new technologies are making possible levels of realism that will have a tremendous impact. “When we didn’t have broadband widely available, we couldn’t create these huge, realistic worlds and have lots of people participate. Now we’re at the stage where we can actually do this and it’s a much more powerful environment than to, say, go do a quest.

“Our interest really is, in the case of ‘America’s Army,’ to give people an experience that’s realistic and almost educational … They purposely wanted it to be fun and exciting, because guess what? A lot of what you do in the Army is fun and exciting.”

In other words, the thing that might be perceived as “real” is the fun, the excitement, the adrenaline rush that an FPS like “America’s Army” provides — and that, in theory, translates into life in the real-world Army. What’s missing, as Schleiner is quick to point out, are things like women and children, truly realistic dead bodies, and moral conundrums. Also missing? The tedium of day-to-day Army life. These games may not have fantastical elements, and they may emulate reality, but it’s only a codified, proscribed and politically expedient version of that reality.

And it’s a version that will not be disappearing soon. Because they’re perfectly of their time, the juggernaut of military-glorifying games will continue. UbiSoft recently announced plans to bring a commercial version of “America’s Army,” currently only available on the PC, to the massive console market.

Not to be outdone, other game manufacturers have big plans to cash in. Kuma\War uses real-time, real-world information for its tactical squad game, including footage from the Iraq war. It’s the next step, further blending the “reality” of militaristic FPS with what is truly real.

No matter what kind of criticism artists like Schleiner manage to voice, militarism will most likely prevail in the gaming world, unless the critics start getting a lot more creative. The plain truth is that commercial games are better and more engaging than their cobbled-together, pro-peace counterparts. It’s just more fun to blast away.

“Although ‘Counter-Strike’ glorifies war,” one player wrote, “it is the time that we live in, and it is also an extremely enjoyable game.”

Still, despite the pervasive sense of joy here, they share something else with many Massachusetts gay-rights advocates: a nagging uneasiness.

The court’s decision, and the decision of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to permit gay marriages, have been historic moments of liberation. But now the backlash is taking form, and some see the possibility that the civil rights victory could have a deep downside. In Massachusetts, the Legislature next week is scheduled to consider two state constitutional amendments that would withdraw marriage rights. Koteen called those amendments “frightening.”

Nationally, President George W. Bush has proposed a federal constitutional amendment that could take same-sex marriage off the table for years, or generations. Some wonder whether gay marriage will be Sen. John Kerry’s Willie Horton issue. One gay Boston resident explains his fears: “I’m afraid that the gay card will be thrown out there, and that in a close election, that could be enough to scare the general population into reelecting Bush, and taking us away from much greater problems that we really should be focusing on.”

To this man and others, the same-sex marriage victory in Massachusetts will not necessarily have been worth the fight if it gives the world four more years of a Bush administration. “I’m more than just a gay man,” he says. “I have education interests, social interests beyond the gay world, international concerns. I have environmental concerns. On the whole spectrum of my being, I want to see him defeated.”

It’s a fear that much of the queer community would rather not address. It’s politically messy. It’s emotionally messy. Even among those who acknowledge the risks of a backlash, few would be willing to say that too much is happening too fast, and that same-sex marriage is a concept that should be delayed. The issue is so sensitive, in fact, that several people interviewed for this story would acknowledge their concerns only anonymously.

“When you’re under siege,” says one Boston woman, “you don’t want to give ammunition to the enemy.”

At this time last year, few could have imagined the current political landscape. The case of Goodridge vs. the Department of Public Health was before Massachusetts’ high court. And a decision granting marriage rights to same-sex couples was far from a sure thing.

“The decision was due out in July,” Koteen says. “Everyone was expecting it in July, so as the months dragged on, there was a lot of anxiety and tension about what does this mean. People involved in it were pretty optimistic — they felt that the arguments went well. But it’s still a shock to the system when it went in our favor … all of a sudden, feeling like first-class citizens.”

In fact, the court’s narrow majority ruled in November that existing law left gay and lesbian couples as second-class citizens. The state’s ban against same-sex marriage violated guarantees of equality and due process in the state constitution, the court ruled, and it imposed “a deep and scarring hardship on a very real segment of the community for no rational reason.” The court ordered the Legislature to review state law in light of the decision; after the Legislature passed a law allowing same-sex couples to join in civil unions, the high court issued its monumental ruling last month: Civil unions didn’t go far enough.

While Massachusetts has a reputation nationally for its progressive outlook, not all of the state is like Northampton, Jamaica Plain, Somerville and Provincetown — the traditionally gay neighborhoods and towns. Even though Massachusetts is the land of an eternally elected Ted Kennedy, it’s also the place where Republican Mitt Romney became governor.

Mark Carmien lives in Northampton, where he owns Pride & Joy, a gay-themed bookstore. He speaks in a soft, reassuring voice. He’s pragmatic about the gay community’s concerns.

For some, “there’s a feeling of wariness,” Carmien says. “It appears that we’ve won this battle. But the fear is that our Mormon, conservative, Republican governor and our highly conservative speaker of the house [Thomas M. Finneran] will cause a constitutional crisis. This is what we’re starting to believe — that one or both of them will issue an executive order that city clerks are not to allow marriage licenses come May 17.

“Even though the Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled on this, even though they have affirmed what they mean is marriage, not civil unions, on May 17 — the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark desegregation ruling — Romney is going to be the George Wallace of the new millennium, standing on the steps of City Hall, saying ‘segregation now, segregation always.’”

With eight months left until the election, the timing of the debate is less than ideal for John Kerry, a longtime ally of the gay and lesbian community and now the presumed Democratic presidential nominee. While those opposed to same-sex marriage are unequivocal in their position, Kerry is in a tight box. He can’t strongly endorse the idea for fear of political repercussions. For the same reason, he can’t strongly oppose the idea.

He voted against President Bill Clinton’s Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, one of few in the Senate to do so, and he has firmly opposed Bush’s proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution. But he has also endorsed the notion that marriage is for a man and a woman only. Last month, he said he would support a Massachusetts amendment that bars same-sex marriage — provided that it allows civil unions that give same-sex couples all the rights of marriage.

Gay groups express frustration at Kerry’s position, but his strong past support of gay causes isn’t likely to win him the hearts of conservatives either. Republicans are doing their best to manipulate the issue, a useful diversion in a time when the front-page stories had been about Bush’s war record, the unemployment rate and the ongoing body count in Iraq.

But as Kerry straddles the issue, criticizing Bush for proposing a constitutional amendment while advocating for an amendment in his own state constitution, he risks coming off like a phony. Swing voters may not care about the gay marriage issue, but they could find Kerry’s political doublespeak distasteful and disingenuous. Recently, Massachusetts Governor Romney publicly criticized Kerry’s “confusing positions on gay marriage.”

This past weekend, the Boston Globe published a scathing editorial indictment of John Kerry’s gay marriage position. “We can understand why Senator John Kerry would like to neutralize gay marriage as an issue in the presidential election,” the editorial read. “Kerry is, of course, free to hold a personal belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. Many people share this view, though public attitudes have come so far so fast that broader acceptance is likely. This is precisely why enshrining a separate, discriminatory status for gays among the state’s guarantees of rights is so odious.”

While the amendment backed by Bush may prove to be an effective issue for galvanizing Bush’s conservative base and peeling moderate support away from Democrats, changing the U.S. Constitution is difficult and few believe it has much chance of passage. And to some extent, that helps allay the concerns among gay-rights supporters in Massachusetts.

“The president doesn’t have a vote on the constitutional amendment,” says Mark Mead, political director of the Log Cabin Republicans, the nation’s biggest organization of gays and lesbians in the GOP. “Am I outraged at George Bush? Yes. Do I think he’s a compassionate conservative? Doesn’t look that way to me. I think the American people will not stand for this eventually. They’re not going to stand for amending the Constitution on a transitory social issue.”

Still, Mead worries. His concern goes beyond presidential politics to the containment of a bigger societal shift against gay rights. “We understand that there’s a potential for backlash here,” he says, “and that it is moving very fast — faster than we ever thought things would move.” The damage may come on the presidential level, he said, but it will definitely be a factor in less prominent elections, both at the state and local level.

It’s difficult, he suggests, to avoid the conclusion that the push for gay marriage was a big dice roll. “The potential for gain is small,” he says, “and the potential for disaster is huge.”

Would anyone involved in the same-sex marriage campaign have postponed it, if that were possible? Most in Massachusetts say no — and a few even find the suggestion offensive. Cindy Turnbull is a lawyer in Springfield, Mass., and she knows one of the seven couples involved with the landmark Goodridge case. Turnbull says that she understands the desire “not to give Bush something helpful.”

But at the same time, she says, “I don’t think anyone would be saying for any other civil rights issue, ‘Gee, isn’t it a shame that this is coming up around presidential elections?’ People would never utter those words, but for some reason, they seem to be OK talking about gay marriage that way.

“If it weren’t for gay marriage,” Turnbull says, “it would be for abortion or some other issue. There’s always an issue that one group wants to bring up and they use to raise funds or to generate voter motivation.”

And so there is in many quarters a sense of resolve, colored by pessimism — a sense that history sometimes takes two steps forward and one step back. Things will in time be better for the gay community, many say. Gay marriage will be an accepted social norm. Gay relationships and families will be respected by most Americans. Eventually.

Like Ellen Koteen, in the Pioneer Valley, many console themselves that in the long run, however long the backlash lasts, it will be temporary. Still, Koteen says, “whenever emotional antitheses are being generated against who you are, it’s scary.”

Vickie Henry, co-chair of the Massachusetts Lesbian and Gay Bar Association, seems ready for the backlash. Before the Goodridge decision, she explained, “we couldn’t get married. Now [if one of the amendments pass] there’s something that expressly says we can’t get married. I’m not sure that’s really a whole lot worse.

“A year ago here in Massachusetts, there was not even a chance of passing civil unions. Now, because we’ve asked for marriage, and we’ve been awarded marriage by the court, it looks like one of the possibilities we could end up with is civil unions. Which would be an advance in Massachusetts over where we have been.”

“It’s certainly interesting,” agrees Matt Coles, director of the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project for the American Civil Liberties Union. “Now you hear so many moderate Democratic and Republican voices saying they’re all for civil unions, but that’s a new song. It’s only being sung, I think, as the possibility of marriage gets more and more real. Domestic partnerships didn’t begin to become a mainstream alternative until there was a really hard push for marriage.”

“The thing that I always say to myself, over and over again, is that happily — at least in this country — we cannot be legislated out of existence,” Henry says. “I don’t think we’re going to be rounded up and put into camps. The worst-case scenario is that we end up right where we started. If our opponents are successful in putting discrimination into the Constitution, it will be more work later to get it overturned. But we will. What choice do we have? We’re fighting for our lives. We’re fighting for our rights.

“We are moving forward,” she says. “I think that we will have civil unions, and I think people will notice when the Commonwealth does not fall into the ocean. We could ultimately end up with more rights than we have right now.”

But what if the worst-case scenario comes to pass? What if discrimination is codified in state laws or in the U.S. Constitution, and the result for the foreseeable future is no gay marriage, and no civil recognition of any kind? What if same-sex marriage proves a decisive campaign issue and Bush is reelected?

“Civil rights movements don’t get to pick and choose their timing,” says Winnie Stachelberg, political director for the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign. “They just get to decide what they make of the issues and the challenges they’ve been presented with.”

Vickie Henry is similarly philosophical. “If there was a backlash,” she asks, “will it have been worth it? It depends on who you ask, but I would say: Absolutely, yes. To have the Massachusetts Supreme Court — the oldest court in the country — come forward and say that we are equal citizens and we need to be and must be treated equally. To have that start, to have that beginning, was absolutely worth it.”

The future that “The Matrix” illuminated has endless appeal for the technically inclined. It is dystopic science fiction — a favorite subgenre of books, movies and video games for techies. It promised that a PVC-clad, lesbian-chic hacker hottie, like Trinity, might approach them in a crowded bar sometime soon. And as a final incentive, it told them they’d be able to learn drunken boxing just by thinking about it really hard, rather than actually working out.

But the main appeal of the “matrix” is that it’s programmed and therefore able to be hacked. With enough knowledge, we can bend our environment to our will! Four years ago, at the height of technology economy, when geeks ruled the earth, the idea held sway. But the real world proved to be much less manipulable than any “hacker proof” database.

None of this will diminish the appeal of the sequels to “The Matrix” — but the experience of seeing “Reloaded” will be caught up in a new corporate reality.

In Seattle, those of a certain mindset will line up around 10 p.m. opening night for the midnight showing. We’ll do so in front of Cinerama, a rehabilitated state-of-the-art digital theater bankrolled by Paul Allen and his Microsoft millions. In the years since the first “Matrix” was released, we’ve reenacted this ritual for “Star Wars: Episode I” (a mistake not repeated for Episode II), both “Harry Potter” movies and, of course, both “Lord of the Rings” movies.

In the line, among the geek elite, no one gets mocked for trotting out their Elrond cape or Slytherin scarf. We’ll see a fair number of black trench coats on “Reloaded’s” opening night.

But the Cinerama isn’t just a geek staple anymore — it’s become the venue for tech companies in Seattle. The line is littered with people wearing corporate swag, their fleece vests embroidered with company logos.

Tech company executives (the few that have survived the past few years) send their executive assistants — almost always female, blonde, and accompanied by their smoking buddies — to pick up 200 tickets for the team. They buy up all the shows and hand out tickets as if to compensate for the lack of cost-of-living raises for the past three years.

The managers, too, think they’re Neo — or at least that they’re part of the fellowship, like Switch or Tank. What they don’t understand is that –plotting their promotions in their corner offices while cutting back office supplies — they’re actually Agent Smith.

In 1999, we would have scoffed at the idea that our companies might be run by dastardly frontmen for a mysterious and all-encompassing ruler. We bought into the theory that the workplace hierarchy was flat — even our bosses seemed chagrined to be in authority roles.

The stock market was roaring. We worked for companies that gave us flexible hours and a sense of empowerment we never thought possible in the corporate world. We were going to make history, change paradigms, and funk up the cube farms in some kind of Sandinista-worthy coup.

Instead, it’s 2003 and we’ve taken the blue pill. For a few years, we had a glimpse of a reasonable workplace. Now we’ve gone back into the gray-green, soulless world of Metacortex, Thomas Anderson’s software company. Neo doesn’t work here anymore.

Can you even remember what 1999 felt like? Before W and the Florida elections? When “The Matrix” could call Morpheus a terrorist — and no one would think of New York? Even back before Columbine, before this movie could be blamed for inciting suburban rage? Since then, much has changed for the worse, and “The Matrix” looks a little overused. Everyone from Mountain Dew to Missy Elliott employs “bullet time” to promote their products.

We’ve gone down the rabbit hole, and not in the way many of us expected.

The change, and our feelings about it, have very little to do with the evaporated wealth our stock options embodied. Most of us never expected to be able to pay off our student loans, much less retire at 30. Instead, these tech jobs showed us a world with a touch more self-determination than we ever expected to have while working for The Man.

We had it good for a while. Then the bubble popped, and so did our optimism.

Soon, we’ll see if “The Matrix” has changed with us, the geek audience who treats the first movie like a sacred fable. In these new movies, I want each superhero to find a supermodel of his own (thus giving the programmer boys continued reason to hope).

I hope they escape the fluorescent boredom and dismal direction of “The Matrix’s” world — and I hope, in the real world, we do, too.

In real life, fans of “The Matrix” may be more Mouse than Morpheus. The past few years may have only brought us the occasional sidewalk Segway and a million Libertarian-flavored weblogs. We are returning to the mundane work world we thought we’d outsmarted. But we’ll still check Monster.com every morning for a new lead. We’re looking for the red pill: to wake from our dismal apartments (like Neo’s own), with half-read books filling the corners of the room, and begin work on something truly worth doing.