DIGITAL GAMES

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.

 

Mike Molesworth

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ENCOUNTERS WITH CONSUMPTION DURING COMPUTER-MEDIATED PLAY: THE DEVELOPMENT OF DIGITAL GAMES AS MARKETING COMMUNICATION MEDIA

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Molesworth Mike

Volume: 2 ISBN / ISNN: ISSN 2342-9666

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This paper explores the use of digital games for marketing communications using two theoretical perspectives. Firstly, the external contexts in which video game play takes place and secondly, internal game processes that are likely to be of interest to marketers and game developers. Findings from exploratory focus groups support the use of brand placement in games. Players feel that it can increase realism and help support the costs of game development. However the repetitive nature of games may cause rapid message wear-out and players’ frustrations with aspects of play may lead to negative evaluations of brands. Individuals may also use video games to explore the meaning and benefits of consumption and this raises the question of the degree to which game content supports or opposes existing consumer cultures. An agenda for further research is presented.

 

Steffen P. Walz

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DELIGHTFUL IDENTIFICATION & PERSUASION: TOWARDS AN ANALYTICAL AND APPLIED RHETORIC OF DIGITAL GAMES
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This article discusses first steps towards a specific rhetoric of digital games where general rhetoric makes up the scientific discipline of strategic communication and symbolic action by means of identification and psychagogy. Therefore, this work contributes to the fundamental and general question why and how players become consubstantialised and persuaded with game designs, and stick to gameplay these games. Accordingly, a first conceptual model is introduced and discussed. It features three interrelating dimensions which engage a symbolic, a structural, and a systemic coupling between player and game design during gameplay within an experiential eigenworld of reciprocal control, mastery, and empowerment.

Patrick Crogan

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WARGAMING AND COMPUTER GAMES: FUN WITH THE FUTURE
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 Patrick Crogan
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This essay explores aspects of the history of wargaming in order to develop fresh perspectives on the analysis of contemporary computer games. Wargaming is considered in relation to the ludological approach to games studies with a view to developing an understanding of the marginality of narrative content in games that ludology takes as its point of departure. Wargaming is interpreted as a forerunner of contemporary modelling and simulation practices. It is associated with the modern project of programming the future by the rational means of mathematically-based measurement and projection. The influence of wargaming on contemporary computer gaming is discussed and the appeal of computer games is explored in terms of a modulation of this modern project.

Darryl Charles

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Charles Darryl
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Computer power in recent years has been advancing very rapidly and as increasingly more Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts turn their attention to game design, there is a clear opportunity to think more radically about digital game AI design. We suggest that not only is it timely for significant AI innovation but that it is essential to appreciably enhance key interactive aspects of digital game design, create opportunities for novel gameplay scenarios, and to progress the medium as an art form. Issues arising from the enhanced utilization of AI in digital games are discussed and the implications for gameplay explored; such as affecting player emotion, moral dilemmas, player created stories, dynamic and adaptive game worlds, and character believability.

Aphra Kerr

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WOMEN JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN – A STUDY OF ADULT FEMALE PLAYERS OF DIGITAL GAMES
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Kerr Aphra
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In the past twenty-five years, the production of digital games has become a global media industry stretching from Japan, to the UK, France and the US. Despite this growth playing digital games, particularly computer games, is still seen by many as a boy’s pastime and part of boy’s bedroom culture. While these perceptions may serve to exclude, this paper set out to explore the experiences of women who game despite these perceptions. This paper addresses the topic of gender and games from two perspectives: the producer’s and the consumer’s. The first part of the paper explores how Sony represented the PS2 in advertisements in Ireland and how adult female game players interpreted these representations. The second part goes on to chart the gaming biographies of these women and how this leisure activity is incorporated into their adult everyday life. It also discuses their views about the gendered nature of game culture, public game spaces and game content; and how these influence their enjoyment of game playing and their views of themselves as women. These research findings are based on semi-structured interviews with two marketing professionals and ten female game players aged 18 and over. The paper concludes that the construction of both gender and digital games are highly contested and even when access is difficult, and representations in the media, in console design and in games are strongly masculine these interviewees were able to contest and appropriate the technology for their own means. Indeed ‘social networks’ were important in relation to their recruitment into, and sustained playing of, digital games. At the same time, the paper found that these interviewees were largely ‘invisible’ to the wider gaming community and producers, an issue raised by Bryce and Rutter (2002:244) in an earlier paper, which has important implications for the development of the games industry.

Diane Carr, Andrew Burn, Gareth Schott & David Buckingham

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Andrew Burn, Gareth Schott  & David Buckingham
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In this article the participants report on a two year research project titled Textuality and Videogames; Interactivity, Narrative Space and Role Play that ran from September 2001, until late 2003 at the Institute of Education, University of London. After presenting an overview of the project, including the methodologies we have adopted, and the questions we have sought to address, we outline two sample case studies, one that relates to player agency, the other that considers role-play, social semiotics and sign making in an MMORPG.