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Kevin Schut

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TECHNOLOGY TELLS A TALE: DIGITAL GAMES AND NARRATIVE

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Schut Kevin
Volume: 2 ISBN / ISNN: ISSN 2342-9666
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Abstract:
In this paper, I discuss the debate over digital games and narrative in light of medium theory (also known as media ecology). The communicative environment created by a society’s media can favor certain kinds of cultural change. After analyzing the stories (or lack of them) in three very different games, I argue with ludologists that games are not narratives. I believe, however, that the digital medium has encouraged the transformation of what our culture thinks of as a story.

 

Florence Chee, Richard Smith

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IS ELECTRONIC COMMUNITY AN ADDICTIVE SUBSTANCE?

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Volume: 2 ISBN / ISNN: ISSN 2342-9666
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In this study, we examine how online games, like the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) EverQuest, are represented and controlled through media rhetoric. We look at international attempts to regulate their use through policy, and unearth some of the ways in which media reports have constructed public opinion of online games. We then contrast those reports with an ethnographic study of the EverQuest environment. The analysis of game experience and informant testimony shows that regulation and control of games is ultimately not a correct course of action in order to heal social dysfunction, of which excessive participation in electronic communities is only a symptom.

 

Miguel Sicart

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FAMILY VALUES: IDEOLOGY, COMPUTER GAMES & SIMS

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Sicart Miguel
Volume: 2 ISBN / ISNN: ISSN 2342-9666
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This article discusses some ideological issues related with the simulation of social systems in The Sims, proposing an interpretation of The Sims as an ideological game. This paper will focus on describing The Sims as a social simulator of a postcapitalist society: what The Sims proposes as an ideological game is a simulation of a specific set of values linked with a capitalist culture. Therefore, it can be considered not as a social simulator, but as a simulator of an ideology of modern capitalist societies. The last goal of this article is, then, to propose an analysis of the relation between rules, gameplay and ideology in certain computer game simulations.

 

Melanie Swalwell

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“THIS ISN’T A COMPUTER GAME YOU KNOW!”: REVISITING THE COMPUTER GAMES/TELEVISED WAR ANALOGY

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Volume: 2 ISBN / ISNN: ISSN 2342-9666
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During the Gulf War of 1991, the television coverage was frequently observed to be ‘just like a video game’. This analogy primarily derived from the specific, ‘bombs-eye’ perspective of camera-equipped weapons, approaching their targets. The troubling nature of this coverage was said to derive from the viewer’s sense of direct involvement: the argument was that viewers were able to marvel at the ‘high tech’ nature of the weapons, at a remove from the bloody reality on the ground. These criticisms of a vicarious aesthetic (dis)engagement were taken to also characterise the playing of computer games. At a time when we have once again been confronted by TV coverage of war in the Gulf, this paper revisits the TV war/computer games nexus, informed by research on players’ engagements with games. It argues that comparisons between televised war and games have little to offer to those concerned with theorising games, at least in their current form. Research with players of games is, however, able to provide insights useful for theorising the fraughtness of watching televised war. Considered in this way, the analogy can be revealing. Drawing on previous research on players’ aesthetic engagements with games, as well as a range of other sources, this paper re-considers televisual war spectatorship, in terms of the figures of proximity/distance; here and there; negotiations between different materialities and realities; and virtuality. It proposes these figures as bases around which a more productive dialogue on computer games and televisual war might be conducted.

 

Iain Simons, James Newman

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ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US: VIDEOGAME CULTURE AND TEXTUAL PRODUCTION ONLINE

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Volume: 2 ISBN / ISNN: ISSN 2342-9666

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This paper examines the practices and activities of videogame fans online. In scrutinising a variety of player-produced texts including walkthroughs, fanart, theorising and FAQs, the authors seek not only to highlight the creativity and vibrancy of the participatory culture of videogame fandom but also to examine the ways in which discussion and the production of such texts are used by players to generate and communicate their identity within the community of otaku and modify the terms of engagement with the game. In this way, the authors seek to interrogate player-produced texts as examples of the involvement and activity of players in the construction of videogames’ meaning and as a means of problematising discussions of the pleasures of gameplay.

A. Fleming Seay, William J. Jerome, Kevin Sang Lee, Robert Kraut

J, K, S, W , , , , , , , ,

PROJECT MASSIVE 1.0: ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT, SOCIABILITY AND EXTRAVERSION IN MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE GAMES

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Volume: 2 ISBN / ISNN: ISSN 2342-9666

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Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMPs) continue to be a popular and lucrative sector of the gaming market. Project Massive was created to survey MMP players about their play experience, social experience, and communication tool usage both inside and outside of their gaming environments. 1852 MMP players have completed the online Project Massive survey, reporting on their play patterns, commitment to their player organizations, and personality traits like sociability and extraversion. The primary focus of Project Massive has been on the player groups that form in MMPs. Most MMPs support and attempt to foster group formation of some kind or another among their players. These formal player groups, often called guilds, can be as persistent as the digital worlds in which they exist. We have found that players who are highly committed to their guilds spend significantly more time in-game than do moderately committed guild members and solo (non-guild) players. Enhancing a player’s commitment to their guild can translate into extending their commitment to the game world. In turn, this may result in longer subscriptions and increased revenue for the game’s creators. This research is important because there has not been substantial research into the traits and practices of the more successful player organizations that are able to sustain committed bodies of members. Project Massive has investigated how these groups develop, organize, communicate, and operate across a number of independent game worlds. Here we report on our findings and describe our future longitudinal work as we track players and their organizations across the evolving landscape of the MMP product space.

 

Chuen-Tsai Sun, Holin Lin, Cheng-Hong Ho

H, L, S , , ,

GAME TIPS AS GIFTS: SOCIAL INTERACTIONS AND RATIONAL CALCULATIONS IN COMPUTER GAMING

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Volume: 2 ISBN / ISNN: ISSN 2342-9666

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The authors look at online tip exchanges as parts of gift economies created by the players and designers of console and online role-playing games in Taiwan. A group of experienced players and tip contributors agreed to be interviewed about the mechanisms and processes of providing free strategy guides on the Internet. Their comments reveal needs for social approval and networking in addition to their perceptions of rational exchange in the interest of completing games. The authors speculate on the social norms behind tip cultures, and their influences on game play and management.

Espen Aarseth, Marie Smedstad Solveig, Lise Sunnanå

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A MULTIDIMENSIONAL TYPOLOGY OF GAMES

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Volume: 2 ISBN / ISNN: ISSN 2342-9666

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This paper builds on a general typology of textual communication (Aarseth 1997) and tries to establish a model for classifying the genre of “games in virtual environments” — that is, games that take place in some kind of simulated world, as opposed to purely abstract games like poker or blackjack. The aim of the model is to identify the main differences between games in a rigorous, analytical way, in order to come up with genres that are more specific and less ad hoc than those used by the industry and the popular gaming press. The model consists of a number of basic “dimensions”, such as Space, Perspective, Time, Teleology, etc, each of which has several variate values, (e.g. Teleology: finite (Half-Life) or infinite (EverQuest. Ideally, the multivariate model can be used to predict games that do not yet exist, but could be invented by combining the existing elements in new ways.

Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman

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This is not a game: play in cultural environments
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Games have a particular set of relationships to the contexts in which they are played. Although games have clearly delineated boundaries in time and space that set them apart from the “real world”, some games are designed to blur that boundary. This essay, comprised of several selections from the authors’ book Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, investigates the complex ways in which games interact with their cultural environment. Focusing on these questions from a game design viewpoint, the essay begins by identifying key concepts related to these questions and ends with detailed design analyses of three games that play with the cultural environments in which the games take place.

Holin Lin & Chuen-Tsai Sun & Hong-Hong Tinn

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Virtual online gaming clan organizations are used to analyze social grouping and cooperation within competitive gaming communities. Participants from two popular massive multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) in Taiwan were interviewed to collect data on the social dynamics of gamer networks in virtual worlds. Our essential argument is that joining online clans involves costs and risks, yet the “law-of-the-jungle” nature of the gaming world and the interdependent role structure of most game designs encourage the formation of gaming groups. Players commonly establish clans consisting of individuals from their off-line networks in order to reduce the risk of cooperating with strangers. A typical portrait of careless and vulnerable teenage gamers is found unsound.
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