Players Unleashed! Modding The Sims and the Culture of Gaming

Siirretty Doriast

Queering the Zombie

This article starts with the observation that all monsters are created by humans and thus they serve specific cultural and sociopolitical purposes. The study is set to finding out, first, how the traditional figure of the zombie works as a monster in popular culture, and second, how digital games open up new possibilities for it to exist and to act. Even if the zombie has symbolic power that makes it an ideal antagonist in games, assigning individual agency to it is very unlikely. From this follows that playing (as) the zombie in games is actively discouraged. The analysis presented here differs from earlier research on the zombie as a posthuman figure in that it seeks to understand the functions and the usability of the monster specifically as a digital game character through analyzing examples such as Stubbs the zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse (Wideload Games, 2005). In the end, this article is aimed at investigating the zombie as a queer figure that transgresses several boundaries in games, and ultimately offers us the possibility of transcending the human condition.©2019 Taylor & Francis. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The Playful Undead and Video Games: Critical Analyses of Zombies and Gameplay on July 23, 2019, available online: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315179490fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Players Unleashed ! Modding The Sims and the Culture of Gaming

The author of this hugely informative study explores the question of what happens when players practise and negotiate computer code, various ideologies, and the game itself by modding (modifying a game) in the context of The Sims, the bestselling computer game of all time.Sihvonen examines the technical and material specificities of The Sims mods, as well as their cultural context. Viewed as a manifestation of participatory culture, modding makes PC games ultimately malleable: players reconfigure the game by creating new content, altering the code and changing the behaviours of the game engine. Using a semiotic framework, Sihvonen suggests a signification process that includes representation, interpretation, investigation and experimentation with the game system and rules. From its historical roots in the shoot’em up games, the author bares the fascinating evolution and dynamics of modding, where gender stereotypes, the thrills of hacking and living the Sims’ American Dream intersect with the aesthetic and operational dimensions of modding

On the Importance of Queer Romances - Role-play as Exploration and Performance of Sexuality

This article investigates various kinds of analog and digital role-playing games (RPG) from the perspective of queer romance. We are interested in finding out how ‘queer’ appears in the composition of role-playing games through analysing players’ explorations and performances, as well as the options for romance in these games. We will look into a variety of role-playing games as research material in this study, from non-digital play – such as traditional tabletop role-playing games to live action role-play, or larp – to single-player digital RPGs. We ask how queerness affects the options for romance, whether localised in an event or in the composition of a single character, and what kind of exploration it serves. Is queerness to be found in the romance mechanic, or crunch, of RPGs, or is it part of the fluff: the setting and character descriptions? This article’s orientation is theoretical, and the main reference material here comes from RPG studies as well as queer game studies.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Power Play : Regulatory Frameworks of Esports in Asia and Europe

© 2020 Authors & Digital Games Research Association DiGRA. Personal and educational classroom use of this paper is allowed, commercial use requires specific permission from the author.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

"My Games are … Unconventional" : Intersections of game and BDSM studies

This article examines connections between games and BDSM (consensual bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism), theoretically speaking (in their respective research areas) as well as in practice. A common grounding behind these connections is the consideration of play as a foundational component in games and game studies as well as in BDSM practices and the studies of BDSM as a cultural phenomenon. We identify five sets of relevant connections. First, there are direct comparisons between the two types of play. Second, several live-action role-playing games have been made about BDSM, or for BDSM. Third, many other games have borrowed ideas from BDSM, as well, as have some BDSM activities, in turn, from games and play. Fourth, queer game studies frequently discuss subversive and transgressive play practices, which provide a fruitful context for analyzing play elements in BDSM, and BDSM-inspired elements in games. And fifth, both games and BDSM are frequently discussed in the research contexts related to performance, theater, and rituals, which forms a potential bridge between these activities. Through this five-strand exploratory analysis, we show how deeply interconnected these two realms are, even if the connection is only rarely mentioned, and to this date, not fully recognized as a valid research topic.© The Author(s) 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Voices from the uncanny valley: How robots and artificial intelligences talk back to us

Voice is a powerful tool of agency – for humans and non-humansalike. In this article, we go through the long history of talking headsand statues to publicly displayed robots and fortune-tellers, as well asconsumer-oriented products such as the late 19th century talking dollsof Thomas Edison. We also analyse the attempts at making speakingmachines commercially successful on various occasions. In the end,we investigate how speech producing devices such as the actual digitalassistants that operate our current technological systems fit into thishistorical context. Our focus is on the gender aspects of the artificial,posthuman voice. On the basis of our study, we conclude that thefemale voice and other feminine characteristics as well as the figuresof exoticized and racialized ‘Others’ have been applied to draw attentionaway from the uncanniness and other negative effects of theseartificial humans and the machinic speech they produce. Technicalproblems associated with the commercialization of technologicallyproduced speech have been considerable, but cultural issues haveplayed an equally important role.</p