Growth of conventions shows geeks have always wanted to meet up IRL

A discussion of the rise of fan conventions, and the positive connections these build between fandom, academia and gaming / science fiction and fantasy gaming professional

Playing with Affection. Essays on Game Love

What does love have to do with gaming? As games have grown in complexity, they have increasingly included narratives that seek to engage players with love in a variety of ways. While media attention often focuses on violent emotions and behavior in gaming, love has always been central to the experience. We love to play games, we have titles that we love, and sometimes we love too much or love terrible games for their shortcomings. Love in gaming is rather like love in life—often complicated and frustrating but also exciting and gratifying. This collection of fresh essays explores the meaning and role of love in gaming, describing a number of ways—from coding to cosplay—in which love can be expressed in, for and around games. Investigating how gaming involves love is also key to understanding the growing importance of games and gamers as cultural markers

From Catch the Flag to Shock and Awe: how World of Warcraft Negotiates Battle.

Within the MMORPG World of Warcraft, attitudes towards warfare are expressed in conflicting ways. This is partly a result of the difficult relationship modern Western society has with warfare, and the various political agendas that surround this. Within World of Warcraft, this is expressed specifically in the minigames known as ‘Battlegrounds’, which allow players to fight against each other in teams. The way in which these popular areas have been developed in the game is symptomatic of increasingly accepting attitudes towards warfare

‘What sort of Fish was it?’ How Players Understand their Narrative in Online Games.

Online worlds have become a fundamental element of the virtual landscape. The development of MMORPGs has helped give credence to the idea that online spaces can support valid social communities. Having proved that these communities exist, scholars must now decide whether these communities are different to those in the 'real' world. What makes gaming communities stand out? This paper looks at how players contextualise their behaviour within game narratives. In particular, the ways that players manipulate the divergent narratives of each game, and the paradoxes that these structures create is investigated. MMORPGs are rife with social tension. Players appear to use a series of different social codes when they justify their behaviour, borrowing from different rules sets dictated by circumstances in the game according to their need. To contextualise this, this paper examines how players express and argue their ideas through their understanding of the game world and narrative. Like fan communities , players appropriate the MMORPG text for themselves, reinscribing it according to their own conceptions. However, whereas fans must do this away from their key source, in MMORPGs, players discuss the text as they enact it. Narratives are deliberately dynamic – purporting to give players agency to move at their own pace or to chose the routes and standpoints they take throughout each game. Thus fans actively work upon the text in a much broader context, and their discussions are often visible to large amounts of people within the game. If all players consider themselves as fans, then how does this affect the perception of the text itself

Introduction

This is the introduction to the anthology Game Love:Essays on Play and Affection. The first 10 pages were written by Jessica Enevold and the ensuing chapter presentations by Esther MacCallum-Stewart. The whole book was edited together by Enevold & MacCallum-Stewart based on an idea by Jessica Enevold. The Introduction explains the background of the anthology, including an introduction to the ontological model for analyzing game love in games, first drawn up by Jessica Enevold in 2008. It places the book within a context of computer games research, digital culture and HCI-research, making clear some of the connections and selections between previous research of games and emotions and affect and the human component, the player and other roles, of playing games

Controversies: Historicising the Computer Game

Games which involve historical topics have always been a staple of digital games, but at the same time they have often caused controversy and debate. This paper traces some of the pitfalls inherent to the creation of historical games, as well as trying to reach an understanding of how a history game can be defined. Throughout the paper, we investigate how some aspects of history can be problematic, and how others have been made more difficult by a lack of definition or an expectation that all historical games operate on the same intellectual level. We also examine how controversial games have coped with difficult subjects, and relate this to the development of complexity and scope within gaming

Theater of War: "A Masters Degree in Shooting Stuff

For five years, Meredith Davenport has photographed and interviewed men who play live-action games based on contemporary conflicts, such as a recreation of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden that took place thousands of miles from the conflict zone on a campground in Northern Virginia. Her images speak about the way that trauma and conflict penetrate a culture sheltered from the horrors of war. Bringing together a series of two dozen photographs with essays discussing and analyzing the influence of the media, particularly photographs and video, on the culture at large and how conflict is "discussed" in the visual realm, Theater of War is a unique look at the influence of contemporary conflict, and their omni-presence in the media on popular culture. Written by an experienced photojournalist who has covered a variety of human rights issues worldwide, this book is an essential addition to the library of anyone interested in the confluence of war and media

“A Jill Sandwich”. Gender Representation in Zombie Videogames.

From Resident Evil (Capcom 1996 - present) to The Walking Dead (Telltale Games 2012-4), women are represented in zombie games in ways that appear to refigure them as heroines in their own right, a role that has traditionally been represented as atypical in gaming genres. These women are seen as pioneering – Jill Valentine is often described as one of the first playable female protagonists in videogaming, whilst Clementine and Ellie from The Walking Dead and The Last of Us (Naughty Dog 2013) are respectively, a young child and a teenager undergoing coming of age rites of passage in the wake of a zombie apocalypse. Accompanying them are male protagonists who either compliment these roles, or alternatively provide useful explorations of masculinity in games that move beyond gender stereotyping. This chapter examines how these forumulations have developed in videogames, and suggests ways in which players have repurposed their conceptions of these characters over time

Roleplaying

Even as the field of game studies has flourished, critical historical studies of games have lagged behind other areas of research. Histories have generally been fact-by-fact chronicles; fundamental terms of game design and development, technology, and play have rarely been examined in the context of their historical, etymological, and conceptual underpinnings. This volume attempts to “debug” the flawed historiography of video games. It offers original essays on key concepts in game studies, arranged as in a lexicon—from “Amusement Arcade” to “Embodiment” and “Game Art” to “Simulation” and “World Building.” Written by scholars and practitioners from a variety of disciplines, including game development, curatorship, media archaeology, cultural studies, and technology studies, the essays offer a series of distinctive critical “takes” on historical topics. The majority of essays look at game history from the outside in; some take deep dives into the histories of play and simulation to provide context for the development of electronic and digital games; others take on such technological components of games as code and audio. Not all essays are history or historical etymology—there is an analysis of game design, and a discussion of intellectual property—but they nonetheless raise questions for historians to consider. Taken together, the essays offer a foundation for the emerging study of game history

Review: Ready Player Two: Women Gamers and Designed Identity by Shira Chess

A review of Ready Player Two: Women Gamers and Designed Identity by Shira Ches