36 research outputs found
"Gaming and the arts of storytelling" introduction
The title of this Special Issue of Arts makes use of some ambiguous terms: ‘gaming’ rather than ‘videogames’; the plural ‘arts’ rather than the singular ‘art’. [...
Chronotypology:a comparative method for analyzing game time
This article presents a methodology called âchronotypologyâ which aims to facilitate literary studies approaches to video games by conceptualizing game temporality. The method develops a comparative approach to how video games structure temporal experience, yielding an efficient set of termsââdiachrony,â âsynchrony,â and âunstable signifierââthrough which to analyze gamingâs âheterochroniaâ or temporal complexity. This method also yields an approach to the contentious topic of video game narrative which may particularly recommend it to literary scholars with an interest in the form. Along with some examples from conventional games, a close reading of the âreality-inspiredâ game Bury Me, My Love will serve to demonstrate the use of a chronotypological approach
ToDIGRA diversity workshop special issue:introduction
The inaugural DiGRA DiversityWorkshop, âGaming the Systemâ, was held at The University of Melbourne on 2nd July 2017; we thank and acknowledge the Wurundjeri people as Traditional Custodians of this land. The Workshop was an initiative of the Diversity Working Group that first met in 2015. The event drew together five formal papers (four of which have proceeded to peer review and appear in this special issue) followed by a general discussion. The aim of the Workshop was to critically interrogate what it would mean for Game Studies to be diverse, and to invite presentations that could expand our ideas about diversity. This included questioning whether âdiversityâ is an unalloyed good, the nature of the non-diverse ânormâ from which it putatively offers a departure, and the function of diversity as a discourse operative within the contemporary academy
Where are all the climate change games? Locating digital games' response to climate change
The burgeoning genre of climate fiction, or âcli-fiâ, in literature and the arts has begun to attract both scholarly and popular attention. It hasbeen described as âpotentially [having] crucial contributions to make toward full understanding of the multiple, accelerating environmental challenges facing the world today.â (Buell, 2014) Implicitly, these works confront the current orthodoxy about where exactly the issue of climate change sits in domains of knowledge. As Jordan (2014) notes: âclimate change as ânatureâ not culture is still largely perceived as a problem for the sciences alongside planning, policy, and geography.â In this paper we ask where is, or alternatively what does or could climate fiction within the field of digital games look like? Even a passing familiarity with the cultural output of the mainstream game industry reveals the startling omission of the subjectâwith scant few games telling stories that engage with climate change and the unfolding ecological crisis. (Abraham, 2015) Finding a relative dearth of explicit engagement, this paper offers an alternative engagement with climate change in games by focussing on the underlying ideas, conceptions and narratives of human-environment relationships that have been a part of games since their earliest incarnations. We argue that it is possible to read games for particular conceptualisations of human relationships to nature, and offer a description of four highly prevalent âmodesâ of human-environment engagement. We describe and analyse these relationships for their participation in or challenge to the same issues and problems that undergird the current ecological crisis, such as enlightenment narratives of human mastery and dominion over the earth
Environmental designs:a typology towards an expanded field
In this paper we offer a provisional typology of the primary categories of environmental or ecological relationships depicted, represented or simulated in games. We explore four main approaches to environments in games: environment as backdrop, as resource, as antagonist, and as text. These four provisional types are not clearly delineated, or equally common amongst all games and game genres, nor are they mutually exclusive within particular games. We argue that consideration of ecological notions in gaming reveals their frequent subordination to higher level game design decisions, and that analysis through this typology can reveal the shifting relationships between technologies of simulation and videogame strategies of representation â as well as orient game design towards the possibility for more expansive thinking about environmental relations (and hence, the most significant political issues of our time) as seen in the work of scholars such as Timothy Morton
Generations and Game Localization
An interview with Alexander O. Smith, Steve Anderson and Matthew Alt
âGame over, man. Game overâ:looking at the Alien in film and videogames
In this article we discuss videogame adaptations of the Alien series of films, in particular Alien: Colonial Marines (2013) and Alien: Isolation (2014). In comparing critical responses and developer commentary across these texts, we read the very different affective, aesthetic and socio-political readings of the titular alien character in each case. The significant differences in what it means to âlookâ at this figure can be analyzed in terms of wider storytelling techniques that stratify remediation between film and games. Differing accounts of how storytelling techniques create intensely âimmersiveâ experiences such as horror and identificationâas well as how these experiences are valuedâbecome legible across this set of critical contexts. The concept of the âlookâ is developed as a comparative series that enables the analysis of the affective dynamics of film and game texts in terms of gender-normative âtechnicityâ, moving from the âmother monsterâ of the original film to the âshort controlled burstâ of the colonial marines and finally to the âpsychopathic serendipityâ of Alien: Isolation
Heritage destruction and videogames:ethical challenges of the representation of cultural heritage
Representations of historical or cultural sites in videogames have always been contested by videogames scholarship, arguing that historical games often court controversy. This paper examines the history of the National and University Library in Sarajevo, particularly the destruction of the site and how it has been represented with different meanings across various media. The second part of the paper will analyze the representation of the library (post-reconstruction) in the videogame, Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2âs Act 2 (called âGhost of Sarajevoâ), in order to raise issues about the ethical challenges of the representation of a heritage site that has not only been destroyed and reconstructed, but that it is part of a national heritage.The analysis shows that there are important pressures derived from the ways in which videogames represent heritage which has gone through a process of destruction, and how videogames adapt a historical event following formal videogame conventions. The paper concludes by pointing out the benefits of studying cases such as the National and University Library in Sarajevo, as well as new avenues of research regarding the representation of contested cultural sites in videogames
Parental mediation, YouTubeâs networked public, and the baby-iPad encounter:mobilizing digital dexterity
This study collected a sample of YouTube videos in which parents recorded their young children utilizing mobile touchscreen devices. Focusing on the more frequently viewed and highly-discussed videos, the paper analyzes the ways in which babiesâ âdigital dexterityâ is coded and understood in terms of contested notions of ânaturalnessâ, and how the display of these capabilities is produced for a networked public. This reading of the âbaby-iPad encounterâ helps expand existing scholarly concepts such as parental mediation and technology domestication. Recruiting several theoretical frameworks, the paper seeks to go beyond concerns of mobile devices and immobile children by analyzing childrenâs digital dexterity not just as a kind of mobility, but also as a set of reciprocal mobilizations that work across domestic, virtual and publically networked spaces