Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture
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Real Boys Carry Girly Epics: Normalising Gender Bending in Online Games
No full textPlayers in online games frequently choose the opposite gender when they select an avatar. Previously, this has been attributed to a player\u27s unconscious sexual anxieties and the need to experiment through the anonymous location of the avatar. However, this paper argues that the development of choice in games, where players have frequently selected the female form for ludic reasons, means that this choice has become normalised through a historical process. The avatar is frequently considered as a tool, with gender regarded as a freely admitted aesthetic pleasure. The player does not see this as a site of tension, or seeks to absolve this tension publicly as an act of appropriation typical to Jenkins¹ textual poachers. Overall, the act of gender switching is not considered deviant within gaming; more, it is embraced as a common practise with historical precedents to support it
The Impact of Nintendo\u27s "For Men" Advertising Campaign on a Potential Female Market
No full textIn order to emphasize the maturation of their hand-held console and increase its appeal to an adult market, Nintendo\u27s UK advertising campaign for the Game Boy Advance SP drew explicitly upon Œlad\u27 culture and a tongue-in-cheek appropriation of cologne advertising. In this campaign, the lead and most prominent promotional advert for the device used an image of the Game Boy with the tagline "For Men". This paper outlines why Nintendo\u27s decision to present the Game Boy as a male accessory prompted exploration into its potential impact on the female market. Much of the emerging research field examining female participation in game cultures had at that point tended to focus its attention on exploring the experiences of different female groups with a variety of software titles and its associated communities. In contrast, this paper addresses participants\u27 perceptions of the gaming industry and its relevance to them as a (potential) consumer by taking a hardware device as its focus. This was achieved by conducting a series of focus groups, with a range of both experienced and inexperienced female game players, during which participants were asked to engage with the hand-held device and experience both its single and networked game-play capabilities with the game Legend of Zelda. The findings address participants\u27 awareness and views on the extent to which gaming is coded male and its ramifications for their participation in game cultures
“You Are Dead. Continue?”: Conflicts and Complements in Game Rules and Fiction
No full textVideogames may be the only narrative medium in which the death of the protagonist is entirely routine. This is not an inherent bias of the form, but a potentially problematic convention left over from a time when it only made sense to look at games from a rules-based perspective. Now, as game designers become more ambitious with the sorts of stories they can tell, the “die-and-retry” approach presents an impediment to fictional coherence and enjoyment of story. This article proposes that players are more interested in enjoying games for their narrative elements than some developers and theorists recognize, and considers how a number of contemporary games have been designed to reduce conflicting elements and increase complementary elements between game rules and game fiction
Using Literary Theory to Read Games: Power, Ideology, and Repression in Atlus’ Growlanser: Heritage of War
No full textThis article argues that although many people state that literary theorists are attempting to take over the field of game studies, there has yet to be a real attempt to apply literary theory to a close reading of specific games. The article then proceeds to apply Althusser\u27s and Foucault\u27s ideas of power and state aparatuses to Growlanser: Heritage of War in an attempt to demonstrate that to find out the messages that games are proposing literary theory could be applied
‘Translating Narrative into Code’ – Thoughts on a Technology-Centric Model of Digital Games as Programmable Media
No full textThe current surge of game studies literature demands a scrutinizing look at the solidifying positions within the German and international discourse and the opportunities of finding a common vocabulary and adequate set of analytical tools.
In order to arrive at an integrative model of analysis, the intricate interplay of narrative and game mechanics (narratology vs. ludology) is considered from a comparative perspective and thus demystified. Consequently, a new model based on programming theory (object-oriented narrative) is proposed which takes into account elements of psychology, narratological concepts derived from film- and literature studies and cultural studies approaches leading to a ‘close reading’ of games.
The article is based on the assumption that computer- and videogames recode the act of ‘reading’ games as texts into a mode of ‘text-processing’ and thereby fundamentally modify the parameters of our cultural appropriation and media literacy.
The model proposed herein shall then be tentatively applied to the complex re-staging and re-examination of ‘the real’ in a wide range games from Wonderland to Enter the Matrix
Real Player Manifesto
No full textThe Ludic Society manifesto briefly introduces several ideas around the named international association of game researchers and practitioners. The Neo-?pataphysical conceptions allows new formats for the investigation of digital games as cultural phenomenon and artistic practice. The ludic field covers topics of Real Play and uselessness in techno Toy objects. In the nascent discipline Ludics an investigator of games applies poetic practices of games and play as method of research. The research field of Ludics introduces the notion of “Real Players”, who are gaming inside the best game engine we know, the “Reality Engine”. The ludic researcher emerges as penseuse maudite, as wicked severe thinker, a bon mot which Deleuze originally had attributed to Nietzsche (1965). This discourse-theoretical framing drives towards Nietzsche\u27s vibrant dictum of a ”gay science,” in playful formats as aphorisms and poetry (transferred out of the sphere of computer games into real life), in setups which I call Real Playing, which is distinct from Real Gaming, which normally addresses the phenomenon of incorporating computer games in real life. The Real Play highlights a certain social life and, as a mediated art, employs a game with a Real Gamer constraint, a bondage as its own rules of play. The willing acceptance of this constraint is not a limitation, but an intentionally chosen poetic rule of play in Ludics or in German´Ludistik´ (Jahrmann, 2005)
On the Liberation of Space in Computer Games
No full textThis article describes the evolution of space in computer games from self-contained spaces to more processual concepts. While in the early age of computer games the design of space primarily caused specific interpretations and acts (invasion or defence of space – as a matter of opinion), the latter concepts become more and more indefinite: Former hard-fought dungeons and space stations resolve into landscapes open for relational perspectives. Insofar as the design of space loses its impact on the perceptions and actions of the players, acts of social communication and not warfare reduce uncertainty. The thesis is that this process gives rise to the formation of communities and the unpredictable configuration of space
Electroplankton revisited: A Meta-Review
No full textWhen it was released, Electroplankton was avant-garde. Today it looks more like a tame specimen of the wave of non-games, music-games and art games that washes over the gaming market. This review reflects on changes of the landscape of gaming ocurring with and after the release of Electroplankton tracing them in the way the game was received by game critics
