Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture
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Prolonging the Magic: The political economy of the 7th generation console game
No full textThis paper draws on critical political economic theory to discuss the implications of the dominant mode of production and circulation of “Triple-A” or blockbuster console games. It is argued that the seventh generation Triple-A game is a highly standardized cultural commodity giving way to two distinctive "formatting strategies", which taken together, draw attention to the console game’s hybrid nature; being a physical, disc-based artefact that is digitally extended via DLC (downloadable content). This hybridity invites questions as to the commodity form\u27s techno-economic particularities vis-à-vis publishing strategies of non-software based cultural commodities, such as movies and TV series. The popular Call of Duty series of first person shooters serves as case study to demonstrate how game publisher Activision Blizzard not only formalized and institutionalized the annualization of the serialization strategy, the publisher also upped the ante in terms of post-launch content, theorized as "branched serialization". The Call of Duty series demonstrates that the rules of play for Triple-A games are as much governed by a game\u27s internal ludic properties as they are structured and alternated by a distinctive and very explicit market logic. In this sense, the Triple-A game never seems truly finished; it is marketed by game publishers and positioned by critics as an unfinished commodity
Finishing the Fight, One Step at a Time: Seriality in Bungie’s Halo
No full textThe computer game series Halo has become one of the largest and most profitable transmedia franchises in the world, with lifetime sales of more than $3 billion in 2013 (Halo Waypoint). The narratives within the Halo universe unfold across several computer games, comic books, novels, short films (including advertising) and ARGs. On top of these corporate products that form the core ‘canon,’ fan communities have built intricately connected, additional narratives (e.g. Rooster Teeth’s Red vs. Blue) based on the story and/or the technology provided by the Halo games. This paper seeks to explore the different modes of seriality that Halo engages with. It thus traces Halo’s narrative across what Denson and Jahn-Sudmann have called “intra-ludic, inter-ludic and para-ludic” boundaries (2013). Obviously Denson and Jahn-Sudmann’s approach lends itself to the analysis of the complex fiction of Halo as a whole, but also of its constituent parts and their interrelations.
As with a lot of modern transmedia franchises, Halo’s narrative universe is at the same time splintered and unified, each installment standing on its own, but also being connected to a larger, fictional history. Consequently, it represents the culmination of what Marsha Kinder first described as “transmedia intertextuality” (1993) and what Henry Jenkins has developed further in several volumes and articles (e.g. 2003, 2011).
Beginning with the big picture of Halo as a transmedia universe, this paper will analyze the relationships between the different layers of seriality that make up Halo as a singular, yet disjointed, narrative. While para-ludic and inter-ludic elements of Halo’s seriality as a narrative universe are relatively obvious and clearly delineated, intra-ludic seriality within the Halo computer games is less visible and more subtle. Thus, in an effort to give a more detailed explanation of the role intra-ludic seriality plays in Halo as a whole, a large part of this paper will consist of a close reading of Halo 3’s first chapter. A central concept for this analysis will be the notion of “serial one-upmanship” or “outbidding” (cf. Jahn-Sudmann and Kelleter 2012), which is at the core of Halo 3’s intra-ludic seriality. While Halo 3 is divided into clearly marked chapters, this paper will argue that its intra-ludic seriality extends further and is shaped by elements of the gameplay itself. In order to offer a detailed analysis of these elements, Aki Järvinen’s terminology for elements of games will be employed (2007)
Introduction: Ludic Seriality, Digital Seriality
No full textSpecial issue on Digital Seriality.Please click on the links below for HTML or PDF versions of the introduction
“Did you shoot the girl in the street?” – On the Digital Seriality of The Walking Dead
No full textWith the Walking Dead game series, I tackle a very extensive and rich material in this paper and show how digital seriality accounts for very specific practices of production, reception, as well as game-play. The first section focuses on the inter-ludic seriality of the game’s release and structuring as reminiscent of TV series (seasons, episodes, “previously on”) as well as the comic book-aesthetic and transmedia storytelling as para-ludic seriality. The game series employs different strategies of transmedia storytelling to position the game within the crossmedia franchise of The Walking Dead. Besides inviting comparison of the different protagonists or “cameos” by established characters, the game series also explores themes like parenting/childhood or the handling of injury in a media specific manner. Gender and race play a particular role concerning the theme of parenting. The first section of the paper touches on intra-ludic seriality and the importance of relating game experiences to a collective of other gamers to provide a self-aware pleasure in variation as well as the game’s mechanics. In the game’s playing statistics as well as in “meta-moments”, practices of individuality and collectivity are enabled through the game’s operational aesthetic as well as gamers’ serial appreciation of variation as a narrative outcome of the choices made
“Tap, tap, flap, flap.” Ludic Seriality, Digitality, and the Finger
No full textThis article tries to answer the question, “What is ‘digital’ about digital media?” Building on the concept of ludic seriality as proposed by Shane Denson and Andreas Jahn-Sudmann and taking as an example the popular mobile Game Flappy Bird, it discusses the serial character of gameplay, in particular the intra-ludic serialization of in-game and operator actions. The article argues that the principle of digitality relates to the fingers of the human hand and the corresponding cultural techniques, from the ancient art of finger-counting which brought forth the abstract number concept to our current every day use of buttons and keys to operate digital devices
Seriality\u27s Ludic Promise: Film Serials and the Pre-History of Digital Gaming
No full textThis essay explores the American Sound Serial film as part of a continuum to which digital gaming may also belong. By drawing on concepts derived from the study of video games, this study broadens our understanding of youth-oriented films produced in Hollywood from the 1930s to the mid 1950s. In turn, this provides a new vantage on continuities between old and new serial forms, and sheds light on digital gaming’s pre-history
Gandalf on the Death Star: Levels of Seriality between Bricks, Bits, and Blockbusters
No full textOver the past 65 years millions of fingers have constructed their own worlds of wonder with LEGO bricks, and thousands of fingers have controlled LEGO figures through franchise-designed gameworlds of wonder with LEGO bits. Typically these tangible user-created story designs and kinaesthetic activities remain absent from the field of media studies in general and research on digital seriality in particular. However, when it comes to contemporary blockbuster franchises such as the Skylanders, World of Warcraft, LEGO, Lord of the Rings or Star Wars universe, the conceptualization of digital seriality as solely relating to transmedia or even trans-transmedia storytelling are no longer sufficient. So, rather than trying to fit a somewhat square peg into a somewhat round hole the article develops an analytical comprehension of and conceptual framework for digital seriality through (i) taking a more play(er)centric and interactional approach field that a more in line with the concept of “new serialities,” (ii) uncovering and establishing the transformative and transgressive nature of play(er)centric digital seriality that emerge from actual “serialities-in-use,” and (iii) developing frameworks and conceptual models for serialities-in-use that are able to embrace these emerging play(er)centric aspects of digital seriality. Our aim is not to oppose or question established contemporary understandings of digital seriality but to expand some of the parameters and categories. Thus, we explore not only “the aesthetic forms and cultural practices of serialization as they are articulated in and around interactive digital media” (Denson & Jahn-Sudmann 2013, p. 10-11) but also the kinaesthetic experiences and practices at the heart of playful serialities. Furthemore, answering Denson and Jahn-Sudmann’s call for a multi-pronged approach, therefore, we likewise hope to initiate a dialogue between (at least) two distinct fields of research: media/game studies and design/toy studies. Both echoing and expanding the efforts of Denson and Jahn-Sudmann, our focus here is on three sets of interrelations with respect to (digital) serialities:interrelations between transmission, transformation, and transgression on the one hand and world-building, world-sharing, and world-designing on the other;interrelations between technologies, social practices, and spaces on the one hand and franchise-centric, play-centric, and player-centric spaces of serialities-in-use on the other;interrelations between intra-texts, inter-texts, and para-texts on the one hand and what we call intra-actional, inter-actional, and para-actional levels on the other, including how they come together in the intra-ludic, inter-ludic, and para-ludic serialities described by Denson and Jahn-Sudmann. The material immateriality and immaterial materiality that lies at the core of LEGO’s seriality - in its oscillation between digital bits and tangible bricks - accentuates how the experience of digital seriality is often the simultaneity of perceiving immersive and expansive worlds and of expressing yourself (kin)aestheticlly through technological engrossment in this continuing serial activity. Overall, the article posits digital seriality, as it e.g. emerges through experiencing LEGO Star Wars and LEGO The Lord of the Rings games and franchises, as something concurrently material (bricks & engaged technologies) and immaterial (bits & perceived worlds)
Digital Seriality as Structure and Process
No full textThe article analyzes and theorizes oftentimes overlooked phenomena of digital seriality in web-based media. Digital seriality can be located on two different levels: on the structural level of web interfaces, digital seriality concerns the web as a structure of interconnected websites, as well as the organizational forms through which the operational images of web interfaces establish, manage, and regulate these connections. On the processual level of viral autopoiesis, digital seriality denotes the forms through which images evolve and transform through sharing and spreading. This is for instance characteristic for memes as gesture-images in constant transformational becoming. While the article does not aim at describing the entirety of networks in terms of seriality, serial operations and procedures have to be understood as playing a distinct and significant role in the digital realm.
From NES-4021 to moSMB3.wmv: Speedrunning the Serial Interface
No full textAlthough play is irreducible, games repeat. Beyond the serial repetition that characterizes industrial forms of mechanical reproduction like newspapers, comics, novels, and films, in the case of videogames the microtemporal speed of serial interfaces and massive scale of serial distribution operate both below and above the horizon of conscious experience. As such, the serial operations of videogames structure, enclose, and ultimately alienate the technical processes of play from the conscious knowledge of the player. In their essay, “Digital Seriality: On the Serial Aesthetics and Practice of Digital Games,” Shane Denson and Andreas Jahn-Sudmann characterize the diachronic sequencing of serial interfaces and synchronic consumption of videogames as “digital seriality.” This essay explores digital seriality through the history and practice of tool-assisted speedrunning, a form of metagaming that stages a ludic intervention at the level of serial interfacing and subsequently disrupts the collective serialization of videogames as a mass medium. From the operations of the NES-4021, a parallel-to-serial shift register that governs controller input in Nintendo Entertainment System, to the history of moSMB.wmv, an early speedrunning video by Morimoto that went viral in 2003, tool-assisted speedruns transform twitch-based platform games into turn-based puzzles and single player experiences into massively multiplayer online games by playing the serial interface
The Eternal Recurrence of All Bits: How Historicizing Video Game Series Transform Factual History into Affective Historicity
No full textVideo games that feature historical content – what I term ‘historicizing’ video games – often come in series. Civilization (I – V), Age of Empires (I – IV), Anno (5 pts.), Monkey Island (5 pts.), Total War (7 pts.), Assassin’s Creed (I – IV), to name but a few, are heavily serialized in that they all, save for their respective first incarnations, point continuously to the other titles in their series’, be it on a structural level or with regard to content. That they do so has many reasons that are totally unconnected with everything they represent, economic ones foremost, but also the need to meet genre- and audience-imposed expectations as well as technical limitations. This aside, given that players who liked one in a bundle are likely to play the rest also, the mere factuality of the series carries implications for the content worth mentioning. First, semiotically such a set of game titles is aptly described in Deleuze/Guattari-terms as an instance of the paranoid-despotic regime of signs, where signs signify nothing but other signs, bound up in an endless virtual cycle. And second, philosophically this may be taken as a prime instance of the Nietzschean ‘eternal recurrence of all things’. Both readings converge in the implication that as these games’ series seemingly stage ‘history’, they unlink history and temporality, installing a chron-alogical framing. Thus, they effectively replave in themselves any factual history as the concept is traditionally understood in Western discourse since the middle of the 19th century with affective historicity. In this, they may reflect (as other media featuring historical content as literature, film, TV, radio, comics, re-enactment, ‘living history’, LARP etc.) popular demands not satisfied by academia, or foreshadow a conceptual transition as part of the digital revolution. Time will tell – if this will still be possible, then.