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Showing papers in "Games and Culture in 2007"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that games are domains of contrived contingency, capable of generating emergent practices and interpretations, and are intimately connected with everyday life to a degree heretofore poorly understood.
Abstract: Games have intruded into popular, academic, and policy-maker awareness to an unprecedented level, and this creates new opportunities for advancing our understanding of the relationship of games to society. The author offers a new approach to games that stresses them as characterized by process. Games, the author argues, are domains of contrived contingency, capable of generating emergent practices and interpretations, and are intimately connected with everyday life to a degree heretofore poorly understood. This approach is both consistent with a range of existing social theory and avoids many of the limitations that have characterized much games scholarship to date, in particular its tendency toward unsustainable formalism and exceptionalism. Rather than seeing gaming as a subset of play, and therefore as an activity that is inherently separable, safe, and pleasurable, the author offers a pragmatic rethinking of games as social artifacts in their own right that are always in the process of becoming. This ...

343 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a survey of the most commercially successful PC games in the firstperson shooter category from 2002 until 2004 was conducted, and the authors focused on the role that fan-programmers (generally known as "modders" played in the success of PC digital game industry.
Abstract: This article is concerned with the role that fan-programmers (generally known as “modders”) play in the success of the PC digital game industry. The fan culture for digital games is deeply embedded in shared practices and experiences among fan communities, and their active consumption contributes economically and culturally to broader society. Using a survey of the most commercially successful PC games in the first-person shooter category from 2002 until 2004, this article answers a series of questions concerning fan-programmer produced content: (a) What is the value of the fan produced game add-ons in terms of labor costs? (b) What motivates fans to make add-ons for their favorite games? and (c) How does the fan-programmer phenomenon in PC gaming fit into broader trends in the high-tech economy?

206 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The viability of the open-ended game classification model described in “A Multi Dimensional Typology of Games” is discussed with emphasis on how a structural theory of games can contribute to game design and the development of formal and semiformal game design methods, such as Game Design Patterns.
Abstract: This article discusses the viability of the open-ended game classification model described in “A Multi Dimensional Typology of Games.” The perspectives of such a model is discussed with emphasis on how a structural theory of games can contribute to game design and the development of formal and semiformal game design methods, such as Game Design Patterns.

158 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This reconceptualization seeks to replace the unidirectional plunge of player into game space implied by the term immersion with one of simultaneous assimilation of the digital environment and presence to others within it.
Abstract: This article proposes a conceptual model for understanding game involvement and immersion on a variety of experiential dimensions corresponding to six broad categories of game features. The article...

118 citations


Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: As games, particularly virtual worlds, become increasingly popular and as they begin to approximate large scale social systems in size and nature, they have also become spaces where play and learni...
Abstract: As games, particularly virtual worlds, become increasingly popular and as they begin to approximate large scale social systems in size and nature, they have also become spaces where play and learni...

84 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper investigated the relationship between norms and the rich visual environment of the multiplayer game The Sims Online (TSO) and found that people exhibit normative behavior i.e., they behave according to norms and behave appropriately in the game.
Abstract: This article investigates the relationships between norms and the rich visual environment of the multiplayer game The Sims Online (TSO). Literature suggests that people exhibit normative behavior i...

70 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore issues of gender and video games through case studies of two adult women gamers and argue for the need to take into account the complexity of people's identities, not just gender alone but its interplay with and enactment in combination with personal histories and cultural factors that play out differently in individuals' lives.
Abstract: This article explores issues of gender and video gaming, typically perceived as a masculine practice, through case studies of two adult women gamers. Drawing on a conception of identities in practice, the analyses show that dominant assumptions about women’s preferences and orientations toward video gaming do not reflect the diverse ways that women might make meaning of, respond to, and take pleasure in such games. To better understand women’s and men’s orientations toward gaming, the article argues for the need to take into account the complexity of people’s identities, not just gender alone but its interplay with and enactment in combination with personal histories and cultural factors that play out differently in individuals’ lives. This understanding, in turn, leads to insights into how video games may serve as spaces for the enactment of new forms of gendered identities.

69 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the performativity of video games insists on a consideration of its material and discursive dimensions that not only refuses to metonymically reduce the gamer's body to a pair of eyes but also complicates popular dualistic understandings of the player-game relationship.
Abstract: Against the hegemony of ocularcentrism currently pervading video game theory, the author situates the practice of video gaming for further inquiry by performance studies to account for it as a wholly embodied phenomenon. Personal narratives of players engaging in performances of the game Dance Dance Revolution indicate the necessity of accounting for both the intersubjective and interobjective elements of video game play. The performativity of video gaming insists on a consideration of its material and discursive dimensions that not only refuses to metonymically reduce the gamer's body to a pair of eyes but also complicates popular dualistic understandings of the player—game relationship.

67 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
Bart Simon1
TL;DR: This paper explored the relationship between computer gamers and their machines in an effort to characterize cultural attitudes toward the materiality of information technology, and found that dominant cultural attitudes towards technology were negative.
Abstract: This article explores the relationship between computer gamers and their machines in an effort to characterize cultural attitudes toward the materiality of information technology. Whereas dominant ...

56 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the bias of the medium in presenting history has been investigated and the authors argue that the digital game medium currently tends to result in stereotypically masculine, mechanical, and spatially oriented interactive presentations of history.
Abstract: Many popular digital games have historical themes or settings. Taking its cue from recent research emphasizing the educational value of computer and video games, this article investigates the bias of the medium in presenting history. Although sharing an appreciation for the cultural value of history simulations and games, the author argues that the digital game medium currently tends to result in stereotypically masculine, mechanical, and spatially oriented interactive presentations of history. This article does not take a technological determinist stance nor a simplistic view of interpretation. Nevertheless, the author believes that the weight and momentum of the historical development of the digital game medium, its technological structure, and its institutional character have encouraged certain patterns in digital games that should be critically examined.

55 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors develop an interpretation of the relationship between the real and the virtual that is better equipped to understand the movement between consumer daydreams and those practices actualized in the material and now also in digital virtual reality.
Abstract: In this article, the authors consider emerging consumer practices in digital virtual spaces. Building on constructions of consumer behavior as both a sense-making activity and a resource for the construction of daydreams, as well as anthropological readings of performance, the authors speculate that many performances during digital play are products of consumer fantasy. The authors develop an interpretation of the relationship between the real and the virtual that is better equipped to understand the movement between consumer daydreams and those practices actualized in the material and now also in digital virtual reality. The authors argue that digital virtual performances present opportunities for liminoid transformations through inversions, speculations, and playfulness acted out in aesthetic dramas. To illustrate, the authors consider specific examples of the theatrical productions available to consumers in digital spaces, highlighting the consumer imagination that feeds them, the performances they produce, and the potential for transformation in consumer-players.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: From photoblogs to cell phone cameras, digital technology is rapidly and fundamentally changing the cultural practice of photographic representation, with increased frequency a more literal transposition of the photograph is making its way into the game.
Abstract: From photoblogs to cell phone cameras, digital technology is rapidly and fundamentally changing the cultural practice of photographic representation. At the same time, the remediation of photography, in both technical and cultural modes, is occurring in the digital game. Although conventions surrounding “the camera” have commonly played a role in some game genres, with increased frequency a more literal transposition of the photograph is making its way into the game: from x-treme stunt photography to the shift of the role of photographer from narrative context to play dynamic. How and why is the practice of photography now being performed virtually in the digital game? What does this redundancy teach us about both the cultural role of photography and the evolving medium of the digital game?

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors analyzes the quick-response binary combat game genre and suggests that so-called "finger-twitch" games are both complex and significant for cultural studie... and concludes that finger-twitch games can be used in many games.
Abstract: This article analyzes the quick-response binary combat game genre, suggesting that so-called "finger-twitch" games, often maligned by academics, are both complex and significant for cultural studie...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a brief history of cyber marriage on the Chinese Internet and how in-game marriage, with its game codes and marriage regulations, turns out to be the most visualized, institutionalized, and heteronormative form of cyber Marriage, by exploring the game players' gender performativity, especially the gender swapping of male gamers.
Abstract: This article documents the brief history of cyber marriage on the Chinese Internet and shows how in-game marriage, with its game codes and marriage regulations, turns out to be the most visualized, institutionalized, and heteronormative form of cyber marriage, by exploring the game players’ gender performativity, especially the gender swapping of male gamers. This study sheds light on Chinese youth subculture under the influence of new media and the consumer digital network in postsocialist China.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use World War II digital games as examples of hyperrealities, using some of Baudrillard's thoughts on hyperreality and simulacra, on our relation to history and on what he considers to be a fundamental longing for reality that has been lost to us in (post)modern Western society.
Abstract: To describe the virtual worlds of digital games as hyperreal and simulacra has become almost a cliche. The perfect copy without an original, complete and even flowing over with signs adding to its real appearance but simultaneously disguising a basic loss of referentials—many of the games can be looked on as substitutes for the real world (if there is such a thing). In this article, I use World War II digital games as examples of hyperrealities, using some of Baudrillard's thoughts on hyperreality and simulacra, on our relation to history and on what he considers to be a fundamental longing for reality that has been lost to us in (post)modern Western society.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A revisit of the New Games movement is suggested, against a backdrop of dramatic social and economic change fueled by a looming energy crisis, civil rights, feminism, and unhealthy widespread drug abuse, as a means of constructing shared contexts for meaningful play in virtual and real-world spaces.
Abstract: This article suggests a revisit of the New Games movement, formed by Stewart Brand and others in the early 1970s in the United States as a response to the Vietnam War, against a backdrop of dramati...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The main question of as discussed by the authors is whether or not the popular notion of SIMCITY as an endless and borderless playground can be justified by the simulation game's simulation game simulation.
Abstract: This article deals with the popular simulation game SIMCITY by Will Wright. The main question of this article is whether or not the popular notion of SIMCITY as an endless and borderless playground...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The cheat code identifies and accentuates the development, application, and interconnection of theories of play, waste, technology, and multiple reality in aspects of 20th-century French avant-garde and social scientific thought and practice as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: This article plays a game with Jean Baudrillard's thought and the intellectual traditions on which it draws. Or rather, it plays Baudrillard's game but with a cheat code. The game or program here is the hyperreality of the contemporary world—Baudrillard's integral or virtual reality characterized by the dominance of things—of objects over subjects. The cheat code identifies and accentuates the development, application, and interconnection of theories of play, waste, technology, and multiple realities in aspects of 20th-century French avant-garde and social scientific thought and practice. It suggests ways in which everyday technoculture, not least videogame culture, can be addressed as at once playful and simulacral.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper explored Baudrillard's interest in play and games through the concepts of seduction, the fatal strategy, illusion, and what he called the "principle of separation".
Abstract: There are two voices in the work of Jean Baudrillard, the early voice, which lasted less than 10 years, and the mature voice, which lasted about 30. The first voice is younger and more conventionally leftist. It was fully embedded in the intellectual debates of the late 1960s. A committed Marxist, the younger Baudrillard wrote on labor and needs, use-value and production. But after this period as a young man, Baudrillard transitioned into a very different thinker in the middle to late 1970s. He developed a whole new theoretical vocabulary that was completely in tune with that decade's historical transformation into digitization, postindustrial economies, immaterial labor, mediation, and simulation. His theories of play and games are at the very heart of this transformation. Through a close reading of several texts, this essay explores Baudrillard's interest in play and games through the concepts of seduction, the fatal strategy, illusion, and what he called the “principle of separation.”

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Baudrillard's "game" was writing and in it, he had interesting things to say about games and explored his thought concerning our passion for games and the experimental role gamers perform in our culture.
Abstract: Baudrillard's “game” was writing and in it, he had interesting things to say about games. This article explores his thought concerning our passion for games and the experimental role gamers perform in our culture. It concludes that Baudrillard was ambivalent about gaming despite the fact that he saw it as a central aspect of the obsession of our age—the lack of distinction between the real and the virtual.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Baudrillard, the most famous theorist of simulation, exists on the margins of the emerging field of computer game studies where he most often appears as a perfunctory reference to "postmodern" theory that the emerging discourse supercedes in its passage to specificity as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Baudrillard, the “most famous theorist of simulation,” exists on the margins of the emerging field of computer game studies where he most often appears as a perfunctory reference to “postmodern” theory that the emerging discourse supercedes in its passage to specificity. By turns strange and symptomatic, the relegation of his thought to marginality where it could have been considered as central enables the unfolding of orthodox positions in game studies of both instrumental and conventionally critical hue. This article remembers the profound challenge to conceptual work in the era of computer simulation that Baudrillard posed in his writings, a challenge perhaps too quickly forgotten in the model-building race of games studies' early years.

Journal ArticleDOI
Jon Saklofske1
TL;DR: The authors compare how William Blake's "The Fly" and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas differently enable and disable the authority and agency of storytellers and readers, and demonstrate how excessive mediation can liberate or limit an audience.
Abstract: Authorial responsibility has been increasingly decentralized by the collective manipulation of media parameters. Whereas this encourages a sense of freedom for those exposed to such narratives, participation in narrative realization and a lack of interpretative dislocation can actually impair a reader. To demonstrate how excessive mediation can liberate or limit an audience, this article will compare how William Blake's “The Fly” and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas differently enable and disable the authority and agency of storytellers and readers.