The Consummate Professional, or Hitman as Capitalist Fantasy

The Consummate Professional, or Hitman as Capitalist Fantasy

Christian Haines, Managing Editor

I parachute down to the world’s tallest building, a gleaming skyscraper in Dubai, landing on a thin ledge. I creep up a beam and sneak into a window. The interior of the building is opulent. So am I, in a blank and unobtrusive fashion. My fine suit is elegant but neutral, my head closely shaved. The barcode on the back of my head signals my anonymity – my identity is little more than a bureaucratic function – but no one notices.  

 
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I slip between individuals in the lobby, guided by a voice that directs me towards my targets. I knock out a guard, don his uniform, store his body in a restroom stall. Using this new identity, I make my way past another guard, up a set of stairs, to the server room, where I rearrange my targets’ shared calendar. Now, they’ll converge on a meeting floor in the penthouse of this monument to wealth. With the targets in place, I execute my final actions. I secure the room, sealing it off from potential intruders. The rest is the quick work of a chef’s knife across two soft throats. Silent, efficient, precise.

The recently released Hitman 3 (2021) is the culmination of IO Interactive’s “World of Assassination” trilogy, games setting a new benchmark for stealth gameplay and sandbox level design. The first level, set in Dubai and described above, is no exception. It offers a playground of death and disguise, one that rewards sneakiness but also encourages wacky lethal escapades (who hasn’t wanted to kill someone with a conceptual art installation?). Stealth games have a history going back to the 1980s, when games like Castle Wolfenstein (1981) and the original Metal Gear (1987) introduced the methodical rhythm of the genre into PC and console scenes. The Metal Gear Solid, Thief, Dishonored, and Deus Ex series, not to mention the early entries in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, build on the genre’s distinct blend of tactical thinking, sneaking, and over-the-top stakes. What the Hitman series adds to this lineage, beginning with the first game in the series (Hitman: Codename 47 [2000]), isn’t just disguises but the mystique – the fantasy – of the hitman. 

 
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The hitman is the consummate professional. He’s a skilled worker for whom killing is an art form fusing manual dexterity with intellectual precision. He’s what certain economists in the 1990s would have called a creative worker, which is to say a worker who manages to imbue their labor with the playful spirit and innovation usually associated with the artist. At the same time, he possesses an entirely pragmatic mindset. His role is not to ask why but to execute – pun intended – in the most efficient manner possible. He’s an instrument for inventing the means that justify the ends. The hitman is also a figure for moral and economic transgression. He takes capitalism beyond accepted social mores, accepting cash for kills, money for mortal sin. He’s a mercenary in a tailored suit.

The appeal of the hitman has to do with this combination of proficiency, pragmatism, and transgression. It’s a fantasy because it offers up something like the perfection of capitalist labor – a worker so good at his job that the obstacles standing in his way become means to execute his target. Good help is hard to find, and his particular set of skills are very difficult to automate, though military drones are certainly giving it their best shot. He is, to use an infamous corporate term, flexible. He will adapt to whatever conditions he faces. He will learn the skills for each new opportunity, reshape himself for whatever mission comes his way.

 
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But the hitman is also a fantasy because he reconciles late capitalism with one of socialism’s great hopes: the transformation of work into play. The hitman’s transgressions aren’t just moral. They’re social. He redraws the boundary lines between the workplace and every other social space. He transforms the entirety of society into his workspace. The world is his playground, and, as Agent 47 has demonstrated time and time again, any object can become a lethal weapon or a trap – a toy in the fantasy land of orchestrated destruction (a “World of Assassination”).

Which isn’t to say that the hitman is a revolutionary figure. No, the hitman is a capitalist fantasy, a grotesque parody of socialism from the perspective of management. What’s that, the manager asks, you want democratic control of the workplace? Well, here’s the ability to do whatever you want, as long as it means eliminating the target. More time off? Well, what if the workday and the weekend were completely blurred together, so that you could sip a martini at a bar in Italy one moment and poison a drink the next? You’re never really at work, even if you’re always on the clock.

 
Agent 47 on the catwalk in Paris.

Agent 47 on the catwalk in Paris.

 

I could go on, but the point is that the hitman reimagines freedom and autonomy as perks of the job. It transforms the political hope of transforming or getting rid of capitalism into career satisfaction. And it does so during a historical moment when it’s become extremely difficult, if not impossible, to secure long-term employment and a living wage.                                                       

IO Interactive seem to have worked out the structure of the hitman fantasy. The World of Assassination trilogy blends the outside-the-box thinking that public policy wonks keep telling us is the future of work with the algorithmic efficiency of context-dependent button presses. In other words, it merges creative thinking with technical precision. It’s not an action game but a puzzle game. Whether you’re sneaking on the ledge of a skyscraper or knocking out an unsuspecting security guard, results are only a button press away. Of course, the results aren’t guaranteed. You might fail to notice a surveillance camera or a nosy waiter when you’re making your move and, suddenly, your cover’s blown.

 
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The challenge in Hitman has less to do with rapid reflexes or hand-eye coordination than with perceiving your surroundings as elements of a puzzle and correctly interpreting how they fit together to compose the picture of a perfect murder. The reason IO Interactive receives so much praise for their level design is because of how responsive their environments are. In the Paris level of Hitman (2016), for example, the fashion show catwalk is more than a raised stage across which one can walk. It’s an opportunity to pose as a famous model, Kruger, in order to get close to one of your targets. This is environmental storytelling at its most interactive, a smooth collaboration between player and developer to create a compelling fantasy of murder mastery.

 
The seaside distractions of Sapienza.

The seaside distractions of Sapienza.

 

John Wick, Jason Bourne, Sam Fisher, Agent 47: Each of these figures are akin to superheroes because of the speed and precision with which they wield their bodies. They are also exemplars of tactical thought – geniuses at interpreting their surroundings as puzzles to be solved with creativity and efficiency. The most common complaint regarding Hitman 3 from reviewers has been that in wrapping up the trilogy, IO Interactive has perhaps added too much narrative to the game. The Dartmoor level – a murder mystery set in mansion and very much reminiscent of the movie Knives Out – is the obvious example of this surplus of storytelling. The player can impersonate the detective hired to investigate the murder, locating clues and interrogating suspects, the task of assassination becoming something of an afterthought. The worry voiced by some reviewers is that in scripting the levels so carefully, the developers detract from the player’s freedom to script their own actions. In other words, they transform the playground into a theatrical stage, in which you’re an actor instead of an operator. Of course, this has its own pleasures (Dartmoor really is a joy), but the complaints are sound.

 
Agent 47 becomes a detective.

Agent 47 becomes a detective.

 

The fantasy of the hitman isn’t about playing this or that part. Nor is it about solving a mystery. It’s about mastering a situation with the perfect combination of efficiency and creativity. It’s about scripting your own actions. It’s about imagining that freedom and autonomy are still possible, even in this twilight moment of capitalism. Just don’t ask the system to change.  

 

Suggested Readings:

-       Paolo Virno’s Grammar of the Multitude and Michael Hardt and Negri’s Empire offer useful examinations of the way in which contemporary capitalism has blurred the lines between work and play, turned society into a factory (though one that looks a lot like a a Silicon Valley playground), and imbued labor with some of the traits we usually associate with artistic practices. Sarah Brouillete offers a sobering corrective to some of the hyperbole of economists that have declared ours a “creative economy” in Literature and the Creative Economy

-       In Experimental Games: Critique, Play, and Design in the Age of Gamification, Patrick Jagoda explains how the kind of player experimentation enabled by games like the Hitman series not only helps us to reflect critically on contemporary capitalism but also to imagine alternatives to it. Hitman might be a capitalist fantasy, but it might also encourage us to pursue desires or experiences that capitalism persistently frustrates.

-       Humor is crucial to making the Hitman series work, not least because it encourages the player to experiment in a creative manner with the game’s setting and mechanics. Here’s a useful article from Eurogamer on the subject, and another from Rock Paper Shotgun.

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