Born to Run: A Grounded Theory Study of Cheating in the Online Speedrunning Community

Video games represent a growing genre of media quickly becoming one of the leading forms of entertainment (Jordan, 2014). This popularity has allowed new playstyles to emerge across the video game genre, such as e-Sports and speedrunning. In particular, the speedrunning community has somewhat redefined what it means to “cheat” in a video game by accepting the use certain software and hardware violations that could be seen as “cheating” to the general gaming community. This paper examined the social construction of cheating in this digital community through the use of grounded theory methods

Playing against the grain: Rhetorics of counterplay in console based first-person shooter videogames.

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London.Counterplay is a way of playing digital games that opposes the encoded algorithms that define their appropriate use and interaction. Counterplay is often manifested within the social arena as practices such as the creation of incendiary user generated content, grief-play, cheating, glitching, modding, and hacking. It is deemed damaging to normative play values, to the experience of play, and detrimental to the viability of videogames as mainstream entertainment products. Counterplay is often framed through the rhetoric of transgression as pathogen, as a hostile, infectious, threatening act. Those found conducting it are subject to a range of punishments ranging from expulsion from videogames to criminal conviction. Despite the steps taken to manage counterplay, it occurs frequently within contemporary videogames causing significant disruption to play and necessitating costly remedy. This thesis argues that counterplay should be understood as a practice with its own pleasures and justifying rhetorics that problematise the rhetoric of pathogen and attenuate the threat of penalty. Despite the social and economic significance of counterplay upon contemporary videogames, relatively little is known of the practices conducted by counterplayers, their motivations, or the rhetorics that they deploy to justify and contextualise their actions. Through the use of ethnographic approaches, including interview and participant observation, alongside the identification and application of five popular rhetorics of transgression, this study aims to expose the meanings and complexities of contemporary counterplay. It examines counterplayer testimonies that articulate the practices and rhetorics underpinning the creation of incendiary user generated content, grief play, glitching, modding, and hacking on the Xbox 360 platform in particular. This study represents a contribution to the field of game studies in an area so far underresearched, offering voice to a previously silent demographic, that of counterplayers. In focussing upon their practices, communities and motivations, this study challenges the framing of counterplay as reductively oppositional or hostile. Instead, counterplay is shown to be an act of seduction, a means of articulating identity, status and recognition, as an expression of hacker ideology, and as a re-engagement with the carnivalesque. These meanings, in addition to the rhetoric of pathogen, offer an expanded image of counterplay and the counterplayer that highlights the significance of counterplay within the context of contemporary popular and youth culture.Canterbury Christ Church University’s Staff Development programm

Navigating Ambiguous Negativity: A Case Study of Twitch.tv Live Chats

The popular gaming-oriented platform Twitch.tv, which offers video game fans an online space to interact by sharing and viewing gameplay and participating in live chats, is faced with the problem of online negativity alongside all of gaming culture. The content of live chat interaction has been explored on a larger scale, using rules from computer-mediated communication to classify behaviors such as spam and capital letters as negative. The current study used a nuanced qualitative look at particular user communities and the intersection between their descriptive and injunctive community norms and the use of ambiguous negativity, or interactions whose valence is not unanimously understood because communities have their own sets of meanings and rules that can be misunderstood by outsiders. Based on a study of systematic recordings of chats and streams of the Dark Souls game series, ambiguous negativity is prevalent and includes behaviors like cursing, game jargon, banter, spam and sarcasm. True negativity and hostility are rare, but they exist and manifest as usage of exclusionary language and banter gone too far. Despite its infrequency, clear negativity can shape the way people experience these communities. The role community members are to assume in responding or not responding to negativity is often not clearly defined by community norms

Something is Rotten in the State of Aggression Research: Novel Methodological and Theoretical Approaches to Research on Digital Games and Human Aggression

This dissertation offers a comprehensive critique of the current state of research on violent game playing and aggressive outcomes. It discusses twenty-five years of research on violence in digital games and aggression, including empirical evidence, theoretical perspectives, and the heated debates in both the public and academia. The main focus here is on methodological issues limiting the conclusiveness of the research, particularly experiments conducted in psychological laboratories. By suggesting methodological advancements in the study of game violence effects, the thesis wants to offer new perspectives on digital games and aggression to move forward the field and the ideological debates that surround it. The thesis comprises a total of 5 peer-reviewed journal articles (of which 3 are published, one is accepted and in press, and one is under review) that include data from one original study and a secondary analyses of 3 further studies. The first part of the thesis consists of a detailed review of the current scientific literature on violent game effects with a focus on the theories that have been developed to explain the relationship between the use of digital games and aggression. Important theoretical shortcomings and fallacies of social-cognitive perspectives on how aggression is acquired through violent media contents are identified and discussed. The second part is a methodological critique of laboratory experiments in research on the effect of violent games. First, common problems and pitfalls in the manipulation of violence as an independent variable and improper control of relevant confounding factors are discussed. The modification of game content (“modding”) is suggested as a novel method to meet the requirements of rigorous internal validity and sufficient external validity in psychological laboratory experiments. The advantages of this method are illustrated by the results of an experiment in which it was used. This is followed by an examination of one of the most popular laboratory measures of aggressive behavior (the Competitive Reaction Time Task), providing evidence from three studies that the unstandardized use in the scholarly literature poses a threat to its interpretability and generalizability. The dissertation concludes with an analysis of the scientific discourse on the game violence-aggression link, and the ways in which it is shaped by ideological convictions that affect both the theoretical assumptions and the methodological procedures. This duality of ideologies present in theory and methods constitutes a threat to violent game effects research, as it causes the field to stagnate. It is argued that this stagnancy can only be resolved through methodological rigor that will, ultimately, advance inadequate theories of media effects

Of Dice and Men: An Ethnography of Contemporary Gaming Subculture

Tabletop roleplaying is a dynamic and flourishing hobby that has become increasingly accessible to a wide variety of participants. The games themselves, as well as the gaming subculture, offer players a number of personal and Social benefits that continue to enrich their lives long after they leave the table. Using Goffman\u27s theories of Dramaturgy and Frame Analysis, this paper seeks to examine the positive impact of gaming in three key areas. The first is an analysis of the subculture which includes the evolution of the games, the growth and diversification of the roleplaying community, and the current shift in stereotypes about gaming. The second section discusses the ways in which microcultural worlds are created, with an emphasis on the systematic alignment of group frames, different types of emotional and Social crossover that occurs, and the conveyance of status. The final segment describes the processes that create engrossment and identification in the games. It focuses on the balance of the three frameworks used in fantasy creation, types of physical aids used to bridge fantasy and reality, relationships that exist between players and their characters, and the negotiation of role conflict that arises from maintaining multiple roles simultaneously. The benefits players gain from roleplaying are diverse. It provides Socialization and recreational enjoyment, improves role negotiation and impression management, allows players to experience elements that are beyond their reality, creates a safe environment to test new elements of identity, promotes creative problem solving, and builds critical thinking

Modes of Esports Engagement in Overwatch

This Open Access book provides a comprehensive review of the rapidly developing esport phenomenon by examining one of its contemporary flagship titles, Overwatch (Blizzard Entertainment 2016), through three central themes and from a rich variety of research methods and perspectives. As a game with more than 40 million individual players, an annual international World Cup, and a franchised professional league with teams from Canada, China, Europe, South Korea, and the US, Overwatch provides a multifaceted perspective to the cultural, social, and economic topics associated with the development of esports, which has begun to attract attention from both commercial and academic audiences. The book starts with an introduction chapter to Overwatch and esports engagement in general, co-authored by the editors. This is followed by 15 unique chapters from scholars within the field of game cultures and esports, representing ten different nationalities. The contributions construct thematic sections that divide the book into three parts: Players, Diverse Audiences? and Fan & Fiction Work. As such, the parts provide a wide-ranging overview of esport engagement, thus disclosing the phenomenon’s cross-cultural, transmedial, and interconnected relations that have not been probed earlier in a single anthology

Modes of Esports Engagement in Overwatch

This Open Access book provides a comprehensive review of the rapidly developing esport phenomenon by examining one of its contemporary flagship titles, Overwatch (Blizzard Entertainment 2016), through three central themes and from a rich variety of research methods and perspectives. As a game with more than 40 million individual players, an annual international World Cup, and a franchised professional league with teams from Canada, China, Europe, South Korea, and the US, Overwatch provides a multifaceted perspective to the cultural, social, and economic topics associated with the development of esports, which has begun to attract attention from both commercial and academic audiences. The book starts with an introduction chapter to Overwatch and esports engagement in general, co-authored by the editors. This is followed by 15 unique chapters from scholars within the field of game cultures and esports, representing ten different nationalities. The contributions construct thematic sections that divide the book into three parts: Players, Diverse Audiences? and Fan & Fiction Work. As such, the parts provide a wide-ranging overview of esport engagement, thus disclosing the phenomenon’s cross-cultural, transmedial, and interconnected relations that have not been probed earlier in a single anthology

The potential of America's Army, the video game as civilian-military public sphere

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, February 2004.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-143).The US Army developed multiplayer online First Person Shooter video game, America's Army, was examined as the first instance of an entirely state-produced and directed enterprise leveraging video game popular culture. Specifically, this study is concerned with the potential of the America's Army gamespace as a US civilian-military public sphere of the Information Age, as assessed through Habermasian theories of democratic communication. Interview fieldwork was carried out in several America's Army game communities including those of real-life military personnel, Christian Evangelicals, and hackers. The political activities of these exceptional game communities are considered for the ways they escape and transcend current critical theories of Internet-based public spheres.by Zhan Li.S.M

Playing Badly: The Heroic Cheat and the Ethics of Play

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2018. Major: English. Advisor: Jani Scandura. 1 computer file (PDF); iii, 241 pages.This dissertation explains the work of hegemonic play in understanding what games are and what they do. This explanation is used to formalize a new theoretical and practical model for games criticism that can also be applied in literary, media, and social criticism. The present moment has been dubbed a “ludic age” as our algorithmically-informed world increasingly resembles game systems, a similarity exacerbated by an ongoing and intentional surge in deploying game concepts across every corner of organizable experience. Despite these signals to the value of reading games within ordinary experience, there persists a deeply held belief that the essential nature of games lies in their radical difference to non-game or “real” life. In Playing Badly, I challenge the game/nongame dichotomy on its logical and philosophical grounds and with regards to its practical utility, arguing that classical game ontology offers neither a compelling description of games nor the means to use that description robustly in critical work. By rethinking game ontology, my argument reveals games’ crucial role in producing and maintaining the fiction of stability on which everyday forms of life depend. Reading texts, whether social, digital, or traditional, from this ludic perspective offers a framework for critiquing the ethical stakes at play within each system. Games, however generous one is with that category, exercise power by formalizing values in their rules. Ultimately, my project creates space for resistance by using the concept of cheating to reveal opportunities for play within the systems of value represented in our texts and by extension the systems in which we live our lives. To contextualize my intervention, I explain the strengths and weaknesses of current views on game ontology within game studies and offer an alternative argument in favor of a game-specific ontology generated through the interaction of a game’s socio-historical context, formal components (rule interactions and representational choices), and the term hegemonic play, which refers to a way of playing a game that reinforces its dominant hierarchy of values. I contend this approach better accounts for the dynamism inherent in games, which change depending on where, when, and by whom they are played. It is the concept of cheating that organizes these forces and offers an infinitely clearer picture of the borders of the protean texts we call games. I present an array of readings of traditional, social, and digital texts that demonstrate how cheating makes the values at play within game structures legible and how this view of games can be brought to bear on other texts where game structures predominate, which is to say any text at all