23 research outputs found

    A Response to White

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    If someone were to have asked me in the spring of 2008 if I thought that I was providing an honest and reliable interpretation of my communication analysis model, I would have said yes. Several months removed from the speech community, my answer remains the same. This letter is my response to Dr. Leah White‘s criticisms of my interpretation of I Lose, Therefore I Think: A Search for Contemplation Amid Wars of Push-Button Glare by Shuen-shing Lee—the article that served as my communication analysis model (Conner, 2008). I hope that this letter provides a more in-depth justification of my interpretation. However, I recognize that I may have incorrectly, albeit innocently, interpreted the article. If the community ultimately decides that such a misinterpretation occurred, I contend that the misinterpretation can be attributed to flaws within the event and the speech community

    Distortion in the Description of Scholarly Research Methods in Competitive Forensics

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    Specifically, in this article I am concerned with our expectations regarding how students select and apply methods to their chosen topics. I argue that due to artificial expectations dictated by the unwritten rules of the event, students are not able to engage in accurate application of their selected scholarly articles. I will develop this argument by examining four communication analysis speeches presented in final rounds at the AFA-NIET to determine how accurately these students explain and represent their selected scholarship. I conclude the essay by offering suggestions for how we can encourage students to incorporate rhetorical theory into speeches in a more educationally sound way

    Blogtivist: An Exploration of an Online Activist Game Inspired by the Arab Spring Revolution.

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    This paper is an exploration of the communicative potential of video games in facilitating the understanding of the experiences of online activists during the Arab Spring protests. By pushing the boundaries of the gaming medium, activist games can embody real situations that dissidents encounter bringing a more realistic experience to the player, which in turn can communicate the dangers of blogging in the Middle East. Based on real events, Blogtivist is an online game that turns the player into an activist blogger who contributes in helping topple the dictatorship in power through his online activities. The game simulates activist actions and their possible repercussions while underlining the fact that political change has been achieved through organization and communication .The focus is on the experience that the player gets out of the gameplay as it aspires to raise awareness on the conditions of online dissidents in the region

    End of story? Quest, narrative and enactment in computer games

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    In a recently published article (1) Espen Aarseth claims that all those computer games that have been described as ‘narrative games’ could better be described as ‘quest games’. Unless a valid counter-example can be found, he suggests that the long and heated debate between ludologists and narratologists about wether or not games are narratives has been settled in favour of the ludologists. My claim is that the computer game "Max Payne" (2) is the counter-example Aarseth is asking for. One central question in all theories of games must be: What is it that makes a game pleasurable? It seems clear that the huge popularity of "Max Payne" can not be contributed to graphics and gameplay alone – after all, the game has been widely criticized for minimizing player freedom through a strict, linear design. The pleasure of playing Max Payne can simply not be fully understood without regard to the innovative storytelling aspects of the game. As in a classic Hollywood movie the game starts with the end, the winning situation, and throughout the rest of the game the player is guided by a voice-over narrating in retrospect the events as the player experiences them (3). The rules of the game are all but clear; staying alive seems to be the one objective of the gameplay. So if any game is narrative, "Max Payne" is, but is it a quest game? If so, it is a very different kind of quest than the ones that Ragnhild Tronstad is talking about, and one must distinguish between the player’s quest and the avatar/main character’s quest. In puzzle-solving quests the central problems of the quest are identical for the player and the main character. However, while the central character in "Max Payne" is on a complex film noir quest of unraveling conspiracy and dealing with his own guilt, most of the player’s quest can be described with an algorithm consisting of the three instructions ‘walk’, ‘aim’ and ‘shoot’. I do not wish to discard the fundamental ontological divide between games and narratives that Aarseth and other ludologists have argued convincingly for. However I wish to focus on the way in which story and game can be integrated in each other in hybrid forms that are indeed new media, with equal emphasis on both words. I suggest that a different concept should be used to describe the pleasure of using such media; the concept of enacting. Disregarding the story aspect of these games may contribute just as much to the perception of computer games as an inferior art form as disregarding the ludus aspect; for even if these games tell stories, they do it in ways that are significantly different from traditional storytelling. Interestingly, "Max Payne" uses game design techniques with similarities to those proposed by Gonzalo Frasca for the purpose of developing "serious" games (4). Thus "Max Payne" is able to create something – wether you call it a "gamestory" (5) or a "story cleverly disguised as a game" (6) – that needs to be studied from more than one perspective to be fully understood. References: 1) Aarseth, Espen, "Quest Games as Post-Narrative Discourse", in Marie-Laure Ryan (ed.): "Narrative Across Media", University of Nebraska Press, 2004. Aarseths central claim builds on Tronstad, Ragnhild: "Semiotic and Non-Semiotic MUD Performance" http://www.cosignconference.org/cosign2001/papers/Tronstad.pdf. 2) "Max Payne", PC version, Remedy Entertainment Ltd, 2001 3) Contrary to the claim that flashbacks are not compatible with computer games – see Juul, Jesper: "Time to Play", in First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, eds. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, MIT Press 2003 http://www.jesperjuul.dk/text/timetoplay/ 4) See Frasca, Gonzalo: "Videogames of the Oppressed: Videogames as a Means for Critical Debate and Debate", Masters Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001. Available online at http://www.ludology.org 5) Zimmerman, Eric. "Narrative, Interactivity, Play, and Games", in First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Harrigan, Pat, MIT Press, 2004 6) See Aarseth, id

    “You Are Dead. Continue?”: Conflicts and Complements in Game Rules and Fiction

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    Videogames may be the only narrative medium in which the death of the protagonist is entirely routine. This is not an inherent bias of the form, but a potentially problematic convention left over from a time when it only made sense to look at games from a rules-based perspective. Now, as game designers become more ambitious with the sorts of stories they can tell, the “die-and-retry” approach presents an impediment to fictional coherence and enjoyment of story. This article proposes that players are more interested in enjoying games for their narrative elements than some developers and theorists recognize, and considers how a number of contemporary games have been designed to reduce conflicting elements and increase complementary elements between game rules and game fiction

    Discourse Engines for Art Mods

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    This paper presents a genealogy of "art mod" (artistic videogame modification) definitions and frameworks. Such frameworks serve, either intentionally or unintentionally, to establish modding within a tradition of analysis and critique: whether participatory design, alternative media, folk art, and/or fine art. By situating the definition and history of art mods within a particular discourse, researchers construct the ground from which to make arguments towards organizing the reception and critique of these works. Such arguments include whether mods in general (and art mods in particular) are inherently political or banal (even boring), whether these works speak back at all to games themselves (and whether they should), whether these works are powerful and disruptive; or compromised (by virtue of their parasitic position), and as a result marginal. A genealogy of art mod frameworks highlights the boundary politics of the critique of art mods, and the problem of presenting transparent interpretive lenses in an interdisciplinary field such as game studies

    Discourse Engines for Art Mods

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    This paper presents a genealogy of "art mod" (artistic videogame modification) definitions and frameworks. Such frameworks serve, either intentionally or unintentionally, to establish modding within a tradition of analysis and critique: whether participatory design, alternative media, folk art, and/or fine art. By situating the definition and history of art mods within a particular discourse, researchers construct the ground from which to make arguments towards organizing the reception and critique of these works. Such arguments include whether mods in general (and art mods in particular) are inherently political or banal (even boring), whether these works speak back at all to games themselves (and whether they should), whether these works are powerful and disruptive; or compromised (by virtue of their parasitic position), and as a result marginal. A genealogy of art mod frameworks highlights the boundary politics of the critique of art mods, and the problem of presenting transparent interpretive lenses in an interdisciplinary field such as game studies

    Moving Beyond Fun : Evaluating Serious Experience in Digital Games

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    Games are normally considered to be 'fun', though recently there is growing interest in how gameplay can promote empathy and encourage reflection through 'serious experience'. However, when looking beyond enjoyment, it is not clear how to actually evaluate serious experience. We present an evaluation of four games that were submitted to a student game design competition; the competition challenged teams to design a game that inspired curiosity around human error and blame culture within the context of healthcare. The entries were judged by a panel of six experts and subjected to a round of play testing by twelve participants. Methods included gameplay observation, questionnaires, post-play interviews and follow-up email questions. We discuss the utility of these methods, with particular emphasis on how they enabled a consideration of the immediate and longer term impact of serious experience on players

    Gameplay como crítica: um olhar sobre o jogo V de Vinagre e sua mensagem de protesto

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    Este trabalho analisa a utilização de jogos eletrônicos como formas de crítica, sobretudo a partir da observação do gameplay como forma de apresentar elementos críticos. Como objeto de estudo, será observada a forma como o jogo V de Vinagre, outrora disponível no Facebook, criticava instituições e situações vivenciadas no Brasil em 2013Para tanto, será utilizado o framework de análise de purposeful games proposto por Alvarado e Migutsch (2012). Este olhar permite avaliar como o propósito transparece através de diversos elementos de design e mecânica. Por fim, são avaliadas as críticas à imprensa e a organização dos manifestantes via redes sociais como formas de contribuição para distribuição da mensagem do jogo

    Complete Volume (46)

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    Complete digitized volume (volume 46) of Speaker & Gavel
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