Loading - The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association
Not a member yet
208 research outputs found
Sort by
Participatory Arts-based Game Design: Mela, a Serious Game to Address SGBV in Ethiopia
Full text linkThe emerging body of work on participatory game design (PGD) highlights the significance of working with end-users’ voices as the starting point. This is particularly critical in serious games that seek to impact social change in areas such as sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). This article, which is based on fieldwork with 16 college instructors in four agricultural colleges in rural Ethiopia, draws together concepts of participatory visual methods (particularly cellphilming), PGD and a game universe perspective to offer an engaging and interactive approach to the design of serious games. We refer to this as ‘Participatory Arts-based Game Design’ (PAGD), an approach that was used to create Mela, a serious game to address SGBV in Ethiopian agriculture colleges. Exploring Mela game’s participatory and engaging design process, this article offers a framework for serious game development to address critical social change issues that go beyond the game itself. It has the potential to not only place the end-users at the centre but to recognize the critical role of engagement and immersivity in a field oriented towards impact and sustainability
At the Heart of the Mothercrystal: Final Fantasy XIV’s Approach to Localization and Lore as a Virtual Contact Zone
Full text linkVirtual worlds, and MMORPGs in particular, rely on players having a shared knowledge of mechanics, features, lore, and narrative within their virtual worlds. In examining the localization practices of a specific MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV (2013-Present), this paper argues that virtual worlds utilize localization in order to construct a virtual contact zone, an extension of Pratt's conception. In addition, localization allows players from various linguistic backgrounds to have a shared sense of understanding of the world through narrative elements, specifically worldbuilding and story elements usually classified as lore. This understanding extends to not only the space within the virtual world, but any narrative that is tied to the world, such as is the case is many MMORPG
Baba Is You: Doing Things With Words
Full text linkBaba is you is a 2D electronic game in which the player-controlled character pushes word-blocks around in order to build sentences, which make up the rules governing the simulated environment. With Baba is you as the case in point, we bring up parallels between video games and Wolfgang Iser’s reader-response theory, J.L. Austin’s pragmatics, and Gregory Bateson’s levels of learning. By considering self-reference paradoxes, metalanguage, and the map-territory distinction, Baba is you becomes an intuitive philosophic playground by enticing players to question not only language and its uses, but some conceptions about games – and life, as well
“I've been having these weird thoughts lately...”: Conspiratorial hermeneutics and reflexive depictions of fan practices in the Kingdom Hearts franchise
Full text linkThis paper draws on the theory of mastermind narration developed by M.J. Clarke in the context of prestige television dramas with highly complex non-linear narratives and inconsistent characters (Clarke, 2012) to offer a reading of the Kingdom Hearts (Square Enix, 2002-) franchise in light of postmodern practices of textual consumption characteristic of current fandoms, such as those explored by Henry Jenkins (2006) and Matt Hills (2002), but also addressing Japanese theorist Hiroki Azuma’s (2009) work around the notion of the Otaku. I argue that the series’ significant deviation from Disney’s traditional approach to narrative (Wasko 2001) indicates a desire for the corporation to explore radical new forms of textual production and to negotiate emerging fan consumption practices within the safe environment of a controlled and licensed text. Just as cultural theorists like Clarke and Anne Allison (2006) argue that a textual product can often contain traces that reflect its wider conditions of production, I propose that the Kingdom Hearts franchise can be read allegorically as an extended experiment by Disney into new forms of collaborative storytelling
English
No full textThe Kingdom Hearts franchise (2002-2020) is truly a product of convergence culture: in its aesthetics and narrative world, it unites games, films, animations, fairy tales, comics and cartoons. The games’ premise to merge intellectual properties from Disney and Square Enix into one coherent universe strikes as an ambitious effort with contrasting themes, motifs, characters, and worlds sharing a single stage on top of a new cast of characters and an original storyline. An analysis of any franchise is often associated with complex licensing structures, its economic impact, and the great financial endeavour to create multimedia franchises. With a franchise such as Kingdom Hearts however, its franchise relationships to other media can be made apparent through a media-centred analysis, allowing us to understand its franchise character from within. One method to make this approach possible for instance is to look at how the franchise delivers on its cross-collaboration premise by creating game worlds inspired by Disney. Some of these worlds are seemingly exact copies of their original and others deliver a new experience altogether. It is exactly this ambivalence that truly stands out in the franchise, juggling between old and new
Charting the Kingdoms Between: Building Transmedia Universes and Transnational Audiences in the Kingdom Hearts Franchise
Full text linkAn Introduction to the Kingdom Hearts video game franchise as a prime example of the new generation of synergistic, multinational and transcorporate transmedia
Controllers and the Magic Kingdom: Corporate Partnership, Synergy and the Limits of Cross-Promotion in Disney and Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts III (2019)
Full text linkWho controls the Kingdom Hearts franchise? This article examines this question using a mixed industrial and promotional approach to seek moments of revelation about the creation and status of the Kingdom Hearts franchise for both of its conglomerate co-creators, Disney and Square Enix. Disney’s conglomerated industrial practice has long been assessed for adherence to the concept of synergy. By examining where and how synergy was adopted as an industrial logic within the creation of the Kingdom Hearts franchise, and Kingdom Hearts III in particular, I argue that it is in moments of tension, that we can find the most instructive evidence for who controls the games we play. Following work by Janet Wasko (2001) and Barbara Klinger (1999) in particular, I first look across the shared discursive history of the franchise and then at the promotion of Kingdom Hearts III for instances where synergy breaks down or becomes contested. These, I contend, demonstrate the limits of the logical of synergy in cross-cultural, transindustrial production cultures
The Kingdom’s Shōnen Heart: Transcultural Character Design and the JRPG
Full text linkTaken by themselves, neither Disney nor Square Enix appears particularly successful at transcultural expression, although both are certainly marketing juggernauts in transmedia franchise operations (Smoodin, 1994; Consalvo, 2013). Disney may be understood in terms of American postwar cultural imperialism, while Square Enix is deeply rooted in conventions of Japanese storytelling. But together, somehow the two achieve a synergy in Kingdom Hearts (2002), coalescing in the figure of Sora, its youthful protagonist. This article performs a close reading of Sora’s visual character design, a transcultural melding of Walt Disney’s own Mickey Mouse and the shōnen figure of earlier Nomura Tetsuya creations. While gameplay dynamics point to a new action-adventure style for Square Enix, the shōnen characteristics of Sora’s appearance combine with his sense of loss and yearning to position the game in the JRPG genre.
Transculturality of the non-player characters (NPCs) in Kingdom Hearts is then considered. These character designs remain static, anchored to their original reference texts. Where the Disney characters fit their settings in an uncomplicated way, providing escapism and nostalgia for the player, Square characters seem to be chosen for their complexity. The use of then-recent Final Fantasy X characters Tidus and Wakka in Destiny Islands is contrasted against the use of darker, brooding characters from older Final Fantasy titles encountered later in the game. Just as loss and yearning define Sora’s shōnen character, the sense of loss manifested by Cloud, Aerith and Leon connect the player to the real-world context of the global late 1990s, speaking to Japanese anxiety following the Hanshin earthquake and Aum Shinrikyo attacks of 1995, and to the despair of ‘Generation X’ following Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994 (Funabashi and Kushner, 2015; Brabazon, 2005). Meanwhile, the deep economic recession of Japan’s ‘lost decade’ (1991-2001) connected perfectly to the post-9/11 unease in America at the time of the game’s release. Overall, I argue that the game’s success stems from its transcultural emphasis on loss and yearning, which fit not only the JRPG genre but also the sense of anxiety pervading both Japan and America at the time
Kingdom(s) Come: Character Remediations and Polyperspectivity of the Final Fantasy franchise in Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II
Full text linkOver twenty years since its original release, Final Fantasy VII (Square 1987) fans continue to debate the video game’s world and characters as they are mixed and remixed into new licensed products. This article explores the fan metanarrative that circulates the story, ludology, and industry discourses that bind Final Fantasy VII. It will demonstrate how fan practices operate within community spaces to locate, present, and police both knowledge and meanings about a fictional world that itself is continually being reshaped by the transmedia production milieu. This article explores the ongoing fan debates circulating characters Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith from Final Fantasy VII, and their respective remixing into the Kingdom Hearts franchise. Through a discourse analysis (Gee, 2007) of online Western fan bases, published above-the-line production interviews (Mayer et al. 2009), and self-reflexive experiences (Hills 2002), I seek to demonstrate the complexity of fan practices and how they attempt to locate (and generate) narrative coherency. I will argue that fans do not simply enjoy games for their variance in gameplay and story but seek a better understanding of a growing fictional world that is complex and is subject to sanctioned rewrites. Drawing on Eiji Ōtsuka’s theories on world and variation (2010), this article will demonstrate how fans can function as textual barristers in their attempts to untangle the media mix (Steinberg, 2012) of Final Fantasy VII through its ongoing reiterations, adaptations, and world-sharing with Kingdom Hearts
Regarder la peur dans les yeux: La série Outlast dans le renouveau de l’horreur vidéoludique
Full text linkThe aim of this paper is to study the production of the Montreal studio Red Barrels so as to grasp its value and how it is exemplary of the recent renewal in horror video games through an articulation of sight and space producing an enticing trap. With Outlast in 2013 and a year later with its extension Outlast: Whistleblower, this independent studio revived some of the great themes of the horror genre: one can recognize in their derelict psychiatric hospital Noël Carroll’s « drama of corridors », Mikhaïl Bakhtine’s castle chronotope and fear as an emotional drive for the player’s progression, as theorized by Bernard Perron. Yet, these games also took part in the First-person avoider trend that bloomed in the 2010s by removing all combat mechanics and leaving the main character with nothing more than a camera allowing him to temporarily see in the dark; the main goal being to remain unseen while seeing. In these games that reconnect with the idea of a transgressive gaze of which Medusa is the antique archetype, the point is less to overcome monsters than one’s own fears. In 2017, with Outlast 2, Red Barrels then aimed at exploring the architectural possibilities of this model by forsaking medical facilities for an isolated village and what Mario Gerosa called an “open air claustrophobia” and using physics defying spatial structures that symbolically convey the stakes of a gaze that allows knowledge and of deceitful senses. Through the analysis of these three games, the aim is thus to offer an overview of the aesthetics stakes they tackle and of the current momentum in independent video game production they represent.Ce texte se propose d’étudier la production de jeux vidéo du studio montréalais Red Barrels afin d’en saisir la richesse et l’exemplarité au sein du récent renouveau de l’horreur vidéoludique qui s’est opéré à travers une articulation du regard et de la spatialisation suscitant une dynamique de piège séduisant. Avec Outlast, en 2013, puis son extension Outlast: Whistleblower, sortie un an plus tard, le studio indépendant réactualisait certaines des grandes thématiques du genre horrifique : dans leur hôpital psychiatrique délabré, on retrouvait notamment le « drame de couloirs » de Noël Carroll, le chronotope du château de Mikhaïl Bakhtine et, telle que l’a théorisée Bernard Perron, la peur comme moteur émotionnel de l’avancée du joueur. Cependant, en retirant toute mécanique de combat et en équipant le personnage principal d’une caméra permettant de voir temporairement dans le noir, ces jeux se sont inscrits dans la mouvance du first-person avoider (jeu de fuite en vue subjective) qui se développait depuis 2010, où l’enjeu ludique tient principalement à l’idée de voir sans être vu. Dans des jeux vidéo qui renouent avec un principe de transgression du regard dont la Méduse antique constitue l’archétype, il ne s’agit pas tant de triompher des monstres que de ses peurs. En 2017, avec Outlast 2, Red Barrels s’est ensuite attaché à explorer les possibilités architecturales offertes par ce modèle en délaissant les intérieurs médicaux pour un village isolé propice à ce que Mario Gerosa a qualifié de « claustrophobie à ciel ouvert », mais aussi en usant de structures spatiales défiant la physique renvoient symboliquement à l’enjeu du regard comme pourvoyeur de connaissances et du trouble de sens devenant suspects. Il s’agira donc, au fil de l’analyse de ces trois œuvres, de proposer un aperçu des enjeux esthétiques qu’elles suscitent et qui témoignent du dynamisme des productions vidéoludiques indépendantes actuelles