Feeling good about myself : real-time hermeneutics and its consequences

Questions concerning the way in which digital games produce meaning and the possibility that their reconfigurability influences the process of interpretation have been debated since the very beginning of contemporary game studies. Based on general agreement between scholars, two areas of inquiry have been distinguished: the story produced by a game, and game mechanics, or rather all the information necessary to operate within them. The so-called "Game vs. Story division" has been analysed from multiple perspectives and theoretical standpoints. Among the scholars adopting the hermeneutical angle, there seems to be a consensus regarding the two distinct interpretative processes that occur while a game is played, although they do not agree about which should be considered the primary one. Scholars arguing for the unique character of digital games tend to focus on the interpretation created while the game is played that relates to aspects of gameplay. They stress the importance of so-called "real-time hermeneutics", as this is unprecedented in other media. In turn, researchers questioning the specificity of games as a medium claim that a proper interpretation should concern itself with the stories produced through playing, rendering such interpretation similar to every other hermeneutical process. Therefore, the process of understanding a game could be explained within the existing hermeneutical framework without any need to introduce media-specific interventions. In this paper, I will investigate the process of understanding video games, following the detailed, step-by-step description of interpretation provided by Paul Ricoeur in his American lectures. In doing so, I will supplement the concept of "real life hermeneutics" by narrowing the gap between interpreting game stories and gameplay situations. While such a perspective will bring me closer to a stance which denies any specificity to video games (at least regarding interpretation), I will also describe the key difference between understanding a video game and a traditional text, and briefly point towards its possible consequences, building upon Charles Taylor’s concept of ethics of authenticity

Geralt of Poland : "The Witcher 3" between epistemic disobedience and imperial nostalgia

This article is a reading of The Witcher 3 in relation to postcolonial approaches to Polish culture. It departs from an analysis of an online debate on racial representation in the game as a possible act of epistemic disobedience, and moves on to a consideration of three narrative aspects of the game itself: its representation of political struggle, the ideological stance of the protagonist, and ethnic inspirations in worldbuilding. By referring those three issues to postcolonial analyses of Polish culture, as well as Walter D. Mignolo’s concept of decolonization through epistemic disobedience, this article aims to demonstrate paradoxical qualities of the game, which tries to simultaneously distance itself from the established, West-oriented ways of knowledge production and gain recognition as an artifact of modern Western pop culture. Moreover, it employs the tradition of Polish Romanticism to establish itself as a bridge between Slavdom and Western culture, and strengthen the colonial idea of Poland being the proper ruler over Slavs

King Solomon’s Mines (cleared) : cartography in digital games and imperial imagination

The aim of this paper is to analyse interactions between the gamescape, avatar and map in digital open-world, mass-market, single-player games (The Elder Scrolls Series, The Witcher 3, Assassin’s Creed series and similar). Starting with Sybille Lammes observation about the hybrid nature of game cartography, documenting both the protagonist’s personal journey and pre-determined points of interest (Lammes, 2010), I revisit the issue with two toolsets. The first of these toolsets is derived from Mary Louis Pratt’s Imperial Eyes in which she studies the imperial period in Africa cartography (Pratt, 1992). The player and the protagonist’s relation to the gamescape is quite similar to nineteenth-century explorers: the player ventures into the ‘Great Unknown’ and creates a personal account of the journey. Simultaneously, she fills the blanks on the map using an exclusively pre-determined set of markers. This motif, quite universal in analysed genres, seems to be closely related to imperial imaginary. The act of discovery, clearly announced to the player, is purely spectacular: the protagonist has to see the place with her own eyes to validate its existence. Moreover, this kind of power is bestowed on the protagonist alone and the presence of another being (or even civilization) does not disrupt the process of discovery. But despite the power to discover, the protagonist and player has little freedom to do so: only places corresponding with pre-determined categories can be permanently placed on the map. Those categories clearly divide elements of the gamescape into noteworthy and insignificant elements: the noteworthy are useful, as even landmarks are placed on the map only when they serve some purpose in the game. The second toolset comes from an analysis of the maps in Victorian popular prose itself, inspired by Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines (Haggard, 1907). Clearly inspired by explorers’ journals, such texts simultaneously represent the power the ‘white man’ holds over the world and lure the protagonists into danger. During the perilous trip, virtues of the Victorian hero are confirmed and his ingenuity established: after all, he is the only one capable of reaching the treasure. The map itself further adds a rational component to the quest: it separates superstition from geographic fact and aligns folklore with science, for instance, when tribal names for landmarks are replaced with ‘proper’ ones by the hero. This motif is ever-present in the case games, which usually put question-marks in unexplored areas on the map, marking the heroic opportunity. During the journey toward such spots, the protagonist makes involuntary discoveries, neatly combining two vocations of the Victorian adventurer: serving as an agent of the imperial cartographic effort and a fortune-seeker, able to forge his own fate in far-away land. The pervasiveness of this model is not without consequence. It contributes towards a general tendency within single-player digital games to employ imperial imaginations in developing fictional worlds as something to be wondered, explored, violently conquered and exploited. Describing this phenomenon, employing an ‘imperial-studies’ perspective to digital games can supplement the already substantial post-colonial analyses of gamescape in strategy games, as already undertaken by Magnet (2006), Lammes (2010), Mukherjee (2015; 2016) and others

Video games heteroglossia and player situation : initial diagnosi

The aim of this paper is to create initial frame for possible translation of Bakhtinian key concept of heteroglossia into video game analysis. Although devised to describe specifi cs of the novel and tightly-knitted to its material, social and historical aspects, can be also seen as possible framework for description of other non-homogenic texts, such as cinema or, in this case, digital game. The opportunity to employ the concept of heteroglossia is rooted in game studies tradition, very eager to single out various layers, or parts of the game itself. Such perspective not only opens venue for concluding two-decade long quarrel over the importance of various game components for understanding the phenomenon - it can be also instrumental in describing the social background and ideology of gamers, understand as particular culture, and depicting the position and role of the player during the very act of the gameplay. It can be also seen as an introduction to the understanding cultural signifi cance and role of the video game

Cardboard Genocide : board game design as a tool in Holocaust Education

The paper is a report from a board game design workshop organized by a team of memory scholars, game scholars and Holocaust educators from Jagiellonian University in Kraków for a group of middle school students (age 15-16) from Radecznica, a small village in eastern Poland. The aim of the workshop was to raise awareness and facilitate reflection on local Holocaust histories through board game design. To that end, a two-day design event was organized and conducted, to help the students develop personal bonds with the local Holocaust history. Due to the workshop’s success, we believe the board game design proved to be an effective tool in the Holocaust education. The workshop results are discussed with regard to the Holocaust absence from game culture and considered in the context of the ongoing struggle to detaboo the involvement of ethnic Poles in the destruction of Jewish communities in Poland during the Second World War

Różnojęzyczność gier wideo a sytuacja gracza. Rozpoznanie wstępne

Video Games Heteroglossia and Player Situation: Initial DiagnosisThe aim of this paper is to create initial frame for possible translation of Bakhtinian key concept of heteroglossia into video game analysis. Although devised to describe specifics of the novel and tightly-knitted to its material, social and historical aspects, can be also seen as possible framework for description of other non-homogenic texts, such as cinema or, in this case, digital game. The opportunity to employ the concept of heteroglossia is rooted in game studies tradition, very eager to single out various layers, or parts of the game itself. Such perspective not only opens venue for concluding two-decade long quarrel over the importance of various game components for understanding the phenomenon – it can be also instrumental in describing the social background and ideology of gamers, understand as particular culture, and depicting the position and role of the player during the very act of the gameplay. It can be also seen as an introduction to the understanding cultural significance and role of the video game