Loading - The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association
Not a member yet
208 research outputs found
Sort by
“My pockets are full”: The Emotional and Mechanical Function of Goodbyes in Animal Crossing: The Importance of Goodbyes in Animal Crossing through the Affordance of Inventory Space and Collecting
No full textThis article focuses on goodbyes within the Animal Crossing series, describing them as an important but often overlooked mechanic afforded by the player’s inventory space. Beginning with defining the general mechanics within the series, this article highlights the value of inventory space and argues that it affords the central mechanic of collecting to emerge. As inventory space is not infinite, collecting is accompanied by the necessary mechanic of goodbyes. In order to make more room to collect players will be faced with choices of departing from both items and villagers, the game’s NPCs (Non-Playable Characters), emphasizing goodbyes’ mechanical and emotional function within this virtual world. While the goodbyes associated with NPC villagers function as emotionally affective examples of goodbyes, they often overshadow the smaller and more frequent goodbyes that emerge in the moment to moment interactions with inanimate objects. These smaller goodbyes which generate minor affections may go unnoticed but propel the game forward and allow for the collecting gameplay to take shape. Goodbyes exist on a scale of affective and mechanical functionality that showcases their diverse structure. It is the goodbyes that we do not notice that most significantly propel Animal Crossing forward and that are always in conversation with the spatial affordances and collecting mechanics of the game
Tom Nook, Capitalist or Comrade? On Nook Discourse and the Millennial Housing Crisis
Full text linkMany millennial Animal Crossing players will experience the joy of paying off their beautiful three-floor in-game home only to have that joy cut short by the crushing realization that they may never experience homeownership in real life. Who do we then take that anger and disappointment out on? The capitalists with a stranglehold on the housing market? The governments and companies holding our lives hostage for student loan debt? Our landlords who take most of our income each month so we can keep a roof over our heads? Our bosses who are criminally underpaying us for our labour? Or is it a fictional racoon? Arguments about the ethics of Animal Crossing’s non-playable character Tom Nook are inescapable in online discussions about the Animal Crossing series. These discussions generally have two sides: either Tom Nook is a capitalistic villain who exploits the player’s labour for housing, or he is a benevolent landowner who helps the player out in hard times. Vossen first sets the stage by discussing the cultural significance of both the Animal Crossing series, focusing in on Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020), and the millennial housing crisis. She then examines the many tweets, memes, comics, and articles that vilify Tom Nook (and a few that defend him) and asks: are we really mad at Tom, or are we mad at the cruelty and greed of the billionaires, bosses, and landowners in our real lives? Vossen argues that what she calls “Nook discourse” represents the radical social potential of Animal Crossing to facilitate large-scale real-world conversations about housing, economic precarity, class, and labour that could help change hearts and minds about the nature of wealth
Avatar 'n' Andy: The Colourblind Ideology in Video Game Voice Acting
Full text linkDespite recent criticisms that call out blackface in video game voice acting, the term “blackface” was and still is seldomly used to describe the act of casting white voice actors as characters of colour. As a result, the act of blackface in video game voice acting still occurs because of colorblind claims surrounding the digital medium and culture of games. In this paper, I position blackface in video game voice acting within a technological and cultural history of oral blackface and white sonic norms. I focus on three time periods: the Intellivision Intellivoice and the invention of a "universal" voice in video games; early American radio in the 1920s-1930s and the national standardization of voice; and colorblind rhetoric of contemporary game publishers/devs and voice actors
An Abundance of Fruit Trees: A Garbology of the Artifacts in Animal Crossing: New Leaf
Full text linkThe Animal Crossing game series is founded on materialism and consumerism, and its mechanics emphasize the economic principles of production, trade, and consumption. As a social simulator, its gameplay focuses on inventory management, with items and artifacts as rewards for behaviors. Players are urged to customize their town and avatar, by buying and selling clothing, accessories, furniture, and other items. The method of garbology concludes that trash is a valuable resource in revealing the attitudes and motivations of a culture. This article uses garbology to examine the trash left behind by players in ten random towns of Animal Crossing: New Leaf to create a taxonomy of what players valued and disposed of. This study found patterns of production (non-native and “perfect” fruit trees) to maximize monetary gains, and signs of customization through consumption (such as creating a gothic-themed town). The author concludes based on the findings that players of New Leaf are engaged in a culture of economy and thrift, as opposed to conspicuous consumption, per Rathje’s (1984) hypothesis of garbage
Memory, Autofiction, and Identity in Video Games: The Case of Looking Back. An Interview with Kristopher Poulin-Thibault
Full text link
Indie developer Kristopher Poulin-Thibault speaks with Samuel Poirier-Poulin (no relation) about the creation of the video game Looking Back. The interview starts with a brief discussion about the RPG genre and quickly moves toward a broader discussion about autofiction, trauma, time, memory, retro games, and language. Poulin-Thibault reflects on the interconnectedness of these topics and their influence on identity construction
Measuring Fun: A Case Study in Adapting to the Evolving Metrics of Player Experience
Full text linkThe gaming industry and the concept of gamification have altered the way many developers and users approach interactive products. As social gaming demographics expand to what was previously considered “casual” audiences, more users expect an enjoyable experience from their digital applications and games. Developers now request more detailed subjective descriptions of satisfaction and the player experience from user-experience (UX) practitioners. Focusing on how fun a product is for users/players requires subjective, situationally dependent metrics rather than traditional UX efficiency metrics. The UX discipline is still constructing a comprehensive ecology of the player experience and how to measure it. This article contributes to that ecology by detailing a case in which our team conducted a usability test on a new video game peripheral. Our client’s primary concern dealt with how fun experienced gamers found the device. As our test progressed, we encountered a number of fun-related participant behaviors that led us to develop new metrics beyond our initial planned metrics. These new metrics helped us and our client better define and discuss enjoyability. Our case, in conjunction with a detailed definition and review of player experience and UX scholarship, shows the importance of adopting metrics contextually specific to the video-game product and player group when measuring fun is the primary goal
English
Full text linkIn the last three decades Japan has experienced a steady process of social disconnection, the vanishing of interpersonal links, and the decline of the making of new bonds. As an increasingly popular saying, Japan has been labelled as a “muen shakai”, a relationless society. Then, while some neoliberal discourses have praised the disappearance of social relationships lionising individualism and self-responsibility, other voices have advocated for the active participation in the making of new communities. This article argues that,Animal Crossing has engaged this debate, exploring the complexities of the process of socialisation, interpersonal relationships, and the making of communitarian bonds. The article further argues that Animal Crossing: New Leaf proposes a socialisation simulation that presents such process as an uncontrollable, unpredictable, and demanding endeavour. To support this argument, the article examines Animal Crossing: New Leaf’s main mechanics focusing on its affective design, and how it modulates players’ attention through manipulating their agency over the game
Cher Punchy:: Représenter et ressentir l'écriture dans Animal Crossing
No full textThis article explores how the Animal Crossing series represents and invites players to practice writing. Starting with affect theory in video games, I consider how writing allows for an “incurving” of player and villager that can result in the deep emotional ties with computer- controlled characters on display in conversations across Animal Crossing fandom. Next, drawing on a media archaeological and speleological approach, I demonstrate that these expressions of affect and desire are supported by a cluster of libidinal surfaces and actions that define Animal Crossing’s writing interfaces. Finally, I conclude by considering how the confluence of affect, sexuality, and gender in the writing tools and surfaces of games like Animal Crossing could potentially grant game studies access another vantage point from which to study the deep emotional bonds the emerge between players and NPCs/digital actors.Cet article explore comment la série Animal Crossing représente et invite les joueurs à pratiquer l'écriture. Adoptant plusieurs cadres, dont la spéléologie des médias, la théorie de l'affect et les études d'écriture, cet article soutient que la représentation de l'écriture dans le premier jeu de la série Animal Crossing, Animal Forest, résiste à la fois aux histoires technologiques et genrées généralement attribuées à l'écriture et aux jeux vidéo. En ce qui concerne les façons dont les joueurs pratiquent réellement l'écriture, cet article suggère que l'affect joue un rôle clé dans les relations profondes que les joueurs développent avec leurs camarades villageois par le biais de la rédaction de lettres. En fin de compte, cet article appelle à un examen plus approfondi du rôle de l'écriture dans la signification culturelle d'Animal Crossing et à une étude approfondie de ses représentations dans d'autres jeux vidéo
“The Father of Survival Horror”: Shinji Mikami, Procedural Rhetoric, and the Collective/Cultural Memory of the Atomic Bombs
Full text linkVideo game “authors” use procedural rhetoric to make specific arguments within the narratives of their games. As a result, they, either purposefully or incidentally, contribute to the creation and maintenance of collective/cultural memory. This process can be identified within the directorial works of Shinji Mikami that include a set of similar general themes. Though the settings of these games differ, they include several related plot elements. These include: 1) depictions of physical and emotional trauma, 2) the large-scale destruction of cities, and 3) distrust of those in power. This paper argues that Mikami, through processes of procedural rhetoric/ authorship, can be understood as an “author” of video games that fall into the larger tradition of war and atomic bomb memory in Japan. (Also known as hibakusha (bomb-affected persons) literature). As a result, his games can be understood as a part of Japan’s larger collective/cultural memory practices surrounding the atomic bombings of Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and Nagasaki (9 August 1945). In the case of Mikami, the narratives of his games follow what Akiko Hashimoto labels as the “Long Defeat”, in which Japanese collective/cultural memory struggles to cope with the cultural trauma of the Pacific War (1931-1945). To illustrate this argument the paper engages in a close reading of Mikami’s Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, Resident Evil 4, Vanquish and The Evil Within and identifies tropes that are common to Japanese war memory and hibakusha literature
Playing Past and Future: Counterfactual History in Fallout 4
No full textThis article explores representations of history and history for the present in Fallout 4 to illuminate how the gameworld makes clever use of common historical tropes and aesthetics, as well as the genre of the counterfactual in its presentation of a compelling and interactive narrative. Set in the post-apocalyptic landscape of Massachusetts, Fallout 4 employs various sites of historical Massachusetts (Concord, Lexington, Boston) in order to draw the user into the story of the ‘lone survivor,’ the avatar that he or she takes control of. This analysis is interested in the ways that Fallout 4 employs history and the genre of the counterfactual in the production of a compelling narrative that not only invites but impels the player into action to chart a new course for this devastated virtual landscape. The power of counterfactual history lies in its capacity to unravel assumptions about the static nature of historical events, and in its denial of a linear trajectory of history broadly. In the case of Fallout 4, the implementation of a counterfactual story, wherein the nuclear event that shrouded the Cold War period in uncertainty, takes place. It serves as a rejection of the popularly rehearsed narrative of American supremacy triumphing over Communist forces to present the player with a more nuanced interpretation of some of the internal and external tensions that came to define the Cold War period (i.e. cultural malaise, economic instability, the growth of a military-industrial complex). This conflicting presentation of histories both real and imagined provides an opportunity for the player to experience and interact with the game critically as a counterfactual reimagining of the Cold War era. Viewed in this way, the virtual world of Fallout 4 becomes a space where the player can reassess their own understanding of the period, and the nature of historical knowledge production more broadly