Showing papers in "Games and Culture in 2012"
TL;DR: In asking is there a “sport” in e-sports, this study questions the legitimacy of a traditional sports ontology and simultaneously tackles the notion of engagement with computer game play as a legitimate sporting endeavor.
Abstract: In the following article, the author explores the notion of playing computer games as sports by sketching out the labors and sensations of Counter-Strike teams playing at pro/am e-sports local area...
152 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, content analysis of a virtual environment, Liberty City, as part of a dynamic textual object, Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV), is presented, with an analysis in the narrative of GTA IV as a very modernist, dystopian version of the American Dream.
Abstract: This article has two goals: one is to establish techniques for content analysis of a virtual environment, Liberty City, as part of a dynamic textual object, Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV). The second is to demonstrate these techniques with an analysis in the narrative of GTA IV as a very modernist, dystopian version of the American Dream. Further, the suitability of the video game as a medium for modernist themes and concerns as exemplified by the work of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and T. S. Eliot will be explored. Liberty City is an interactive city which a player can experience, rather than read about, answering many of the questions modernist writers posed to their frustrating, linear medium.
82 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the utility of Yee's three-factor motivational framework for explaining the positive or negative quality of experiences in the popular online game World of Warcraft (2004-2012).
Abstract: Combining perspectives from the new science of happiness with discussions regarding “problematic” and “addictive” play in multiplayer online games, the authors examine how player motivations pattern both positive and negative gaming experiences. Specifically, using ethnographic interviews and a survey, the authors explore the utility of Yee’s three-factor motivational framework for explaining the positive or negative quality of experiences in the popular online game World of Warcraft (2004-2012). The authors find that playing to Achieve is strongly associated with distressful play, results that support findings from other studies. By contrast, Social and Immersion play lead more typically to positive gaming experiences, conclusions diverging from those frequently reported in the literature. Overall, the authors suggest that paying attention to the positive as well as negative dimensions of inhabiting these online worlds will provide both for more balanced portraits of gamers’ experiences and also potentia...
48 citations
TL;DR: Men are more reluctant to seek help for their problems than women as discussed by the authors, and this difference is attributed to social expectations regarding the male gender role. But help-seeking is moving online: instead of seeking help in person, people seek help online.
Abstract: Men are more reluctant to seek help for their problems than women. This difference is attributed to social expectations regarding the male gender role. Today, help-seeking is moving online: instead...
46 citations
TL;DR: It will be seen that developers find it challenging to balance between functionality and fiction, but see system features as a necessity that must be present for usability purposes.
Abstract: This article discusses the relationship between the user interface (UI) and the game world in computer games, with point of departure in qualitative studies including players and game developers. T...
37 citations
TL;DR: A prospective study on a particularly promising entertainment technology of the future: Interactive storytelling (IS), which Integrating various streams of computing technology, such as advanced visualization, natural speech processing, and autonomous agents, is envisioned to offer new, personalized and thus unique kinds of entertainment to mass audiences of thefuture.
Abstract: Advances in gaming and other entertainment technologies are evolving rapidly and create new conceptual challenges for understanding and explaining the user experiences they can facilitate. The pres...
35 citations
TL;DR: This article explored issues of racial essentialism and ethnicity in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW) and found that the fantasy world of Azeroth mirrors elements of rea...
Abstract: This article explores issues of racial essentialism and ethnicity in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW). The fantasy world of Azeroth mirrors elements of rea...
34 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss knowledge production in game studies by exploring notions of emotion, closeness and desire in new media ethnography, using field notes and experiences from an ethnographer.
Abstract: This article discusses knowledge production in game studies by exploring notions of emotion, closeness and (queer) desire in new media ethnography. It uses field notes and experiences from an ethn ...
34 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the cultural work of elves as the other in video games is analyzed, with Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) as background, with WoW, EverQuest II, The Elder Scrolls series, and the Dragon Age series being studied.
Abstract: Elves are a long-standing cultural trope in the West, where they have often represented the other and fears associated with otherness. Elves continue to do the same cultural work today and are a fixture of fantasy settings. Fantasy-based video games portray elves in a variety of ways across a few types of elves (high elves, half-elves, and dark elves), but there are consistencies to their portrayal across such spaces. Given the dearth of work on elves in modern narratives, the cultural work of elves as the other in video games is analyzed here. World of Warcraft (WoW), EverQuest II, The Elder Scrolls series, and the Dragon Age series were studied, with Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) as background. Although WoW is somewhat exceptional in its portrayal of elves, digital elves are mostly portrayed similarly to a historically idealized real-world Western minority.
27 citations
TL;DR: The authors investigates the challenges that video game marketing encounters when selling the pleasures of playing virtual war and investigates how to insulate Call of Duty's virtual war play from interpretations and criticisms that might link the violent play on-screen to the worldly violence unfolding in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Abstract: This essay investigates the challenges that video game marketing encounters when selling the pleasures of playing virtual war. While marketing paratexts are crucial to video games because of the vagaries of their industry, they are especially important for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, as it is the first of the franchise to be set in the 21st century and immerse players in contemporary theaters of war. These marketing paratexts not only generate hype for the game and work to drive sales, but as importantly, they also suggest particular textual readings over others with the goal of insulating Call of Duty’s virtual war play from interpretations and criticisms that might link the violent play on-screen to the worldly violence unfolding in Iraq and Afghanistan.
27 citations
TL;DR: The outcome of play emerges as the agencies of each are co-constituted, and the idea of recursive space is developed, a way of thinking about play as a process of creating space.
Abstract: Space is reconfigured through the participations of both gamers and the game, where game is understood as the programming and hardware of a game technology. Extending our understandings of the cont...
TL;DR: In this article, a series of formal qualities that pertain to all video games are identified, using the Super Mario Galaxy on the Nintendo Wii console using the Deleuzian concepts.
Abstract: Approaching the video game Super Mario Galaxy on the Nintendo Wii console using Deleuzian concepts, the article identifies a series of formal qualities it is argued pertain to all video games. Conc...
TL;DR: Despite the fact that most players of video games are now adults, the medium continues to shy away from the question of sex as mentioned in this paper, and the reasons for this reticence are discussed.
Abstract: Despite the fact that most players of video games are now adults, the medium continues to shy away from the question of sex. This article considers some of the reasons for this reticence, offering close readings of a number of games in which sex’s absence seems especially significant. Attending to these absences can, I argue, throw light on some prevalent misconceptions regarding the nature of video games and the appeal of play. Debates concerning games and sex reveal that commentators, critics, and game developers alike are, by and large, still too ready to judge games using standards developed in relation to other media forms. In doing so they tend both to ignore games’ unique characteristics and to misrepresent their potential as vehicles for creative expression—a potential suggested by the ways in which the medium has already begun to explore how technology is altering our understanding of sex.
TL;DR: The source code to the SCUMM engine is examined in order to show both how its spatialized data structures were used to produce temporal effects similar to those found in more familiar narrative media and how Monkey Island parodies the engine’s mechanisms.
Abstract: Simplistic by today’s standards, the graphical adventure genre has been overlooked in favor of the vast narratives unfolding across more recent three-dimensional virtual worlds and the complex social relationships within online environments. Yet this genre established practices in game construction that allow developers to foreground narrative experiences. Graphical adventure games made with the Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion (SCUMM) engine like Ron Gilbert’s The Secret of Monkey Island were among the earliest to produce a sense of a temporal narrativity across the game’s many spaces that is not inscribed explicitly at the level of code. These games are therefore key to understanding the origins of video games as a narrative medium. This essay examines the source code to the SCUMM engine in order to show both how its spatialized data structures were used to produce temporal effects similar to those found in more familiar narrative media and how Monkey Island parodies the engine’s mechanisms.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the nature of play on a handheld videogame system as an illuminating case of the tension between time-based storage media and space-based transmission media.
Abstract: The Nintendo DS has been, given its huge popularity, relatively understudied. This article is a small step toward correcting that and, in doing so, contributes to game studies in general. Using Goffman’s and Benjamin’s theories of play and Innis’s analysis of media, this article explores the nature of play on a handheld videogame system as an illuminating case of the tension between time-based storage media and space-based transmission media. Storage, transmission, space, and time are intertwined and made complicit in the ways in which the Nintendo DS is used and played. By engaging with non-diegetic aspects of the video game experience, such as saving and pausing, we can begin to address the materiality of handheld video gaming systems as objects with which we play with and rework time and space. In turn, mobile play itself is highly contingent and spatial–temporal practices take on special significance in this light.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that videogames are structured by conscious fantasy, and they trace two fantasies (tether and accretions) that combine into the genre of role-playing games, providing a rough timeli...
Abstract: I argue that videogames are structured by conscious fantasy. This project traces two fantasies (tether and accretions) that combine into the genre of the role-playing game, providing a rough timeli...
TL;DR: The protagonist of Mirror's Edge as discussed by the authors is an empowered female character that is not hypersexualized, and the decision to employ a first-person perspective (thereby subverting any gaze offered...
Abstract: Faith, the protagonist of Mirror’s Edge, marks an empowered female character that is not hypersexualized, and the decision to employ a first-person perspective (thereby subverting any gaze offered ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the aesthetic construction of nostalgia in the cover art of Advanced Adventures, a series of tabletop fantasy role-playing modules published by Expeditious Retreat Press.
Abstract: This essay examines the aesthetic construction of nostalgia in the cover art of the Advanced Adventures, a series of tabletop fantasy role-playing modules published by Expeditious Retreat Press bet...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors perform a close reading of this work and highlight the importance of the ludic contract between the player and the game and distinguish two different contracts employed by the work, antagonistic and exploratory.
Abstract: Interactive storytelling has been a topic of much debate for the past two decades Many have foreseen exciting new works; while others have cast doubt on the whole endeavor In terms of actual titles, most games express a familiar story of a hero triumphing against the odds in order to save the day However, a number of recent titles have attempted to innovate The Path is one such game Rather than a tale of heroism, The Path is a tragedy of shattered innocence, powerfully told through play The authors perform a close reading of this work and highlight the importance of the ludic contract between the player and the game The authors distinguish two different contracts employed by the work, antagonistic and exploratory, which make different appeals and offer different rewards The Path manipulates these contracts to lead the player into being both the architect of the tragedy and its helpless victim
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate boys' play in a tween-centric virtual world called Whyville.net, which had 1.5 million registered players at the time of study, and develop participation profiles and case studies of three boy players who ranged in engagement from casual to core players.
Abstract: Few studies have examined gender and game play from the perspective of boys' participation. In this article we investigate boys' play in a tween-centric virtual world called Whyville.net, which had 1.5 million registered players at the time of study. Drawing primarily upon logfile data, we developed participation profiles and case studies of three boy players who ranged in engagement from casual to core players. In the case studies of boy players and their everyday activities in Whyville, we found that initial routines were remarkably similar but over time more nuanced differences emerged in players' identity and boundary play. Furthermore, Whyville provided the boys with relatively low consequence opportunities to experiment with different masculine identities. In comparing our findings with other work, we found that while virtual worlds offer space for the expression of boys' culture, they are qualitatively distinct from other gaming environments and thus need to be studied on their own terms.
TL;DR: The authors examines ethical controversies in the Chinese massively multiplayer online game Zhengtu, a popular "freemium" game in which the players who spend the most real-world money become the most powerful.
Abstract: A common way theorists look at virtual worlds is to see them as spaces separated from the real world; other theorists challenge this position by arguing that life online often crosses the threshold between the real and the virtual. Here, the author argues that the problem of the division between the real and the virtual has its roots in a philosophical distinction between the transcendent and the immanent. This article examines ethical controversies in the Chinese massively multiplayer online game Zhengtu, a popular “freemium” game in which the players who spend the most real-world money become the most powerful. Drawing on player’s ethical judgments and classical Chinese philosophy, the author sees how Chinese gamers do not see the game world as an opportunity to create an alternative self, but instead are encouraged to use the game to improve their holistic selves, a project which is inevitably connected to Beijing’s neoliberal goals.