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Minecraft’s Atom
Full text linkGiven that the fundamental element of Minecraft (Mojang Studios, 2011) is appreciably large, what its players discover is a sandbox-style game in which the ubiquitous block, Minecraft’s atom, stands for an unparalleled degree of immediacy. Alongside the seemingly counteractive effort of modding communities to overhaul a videogame with higher-resolution textures and examples drawn from a range of other media, this article reinterprets Minecraft’s functionally retrograde look as symptomatic of nostalgia for a mechanically direct conception of reality and what Henri Lefebvre (1974/1991) theorized as any space’s continuous “production.” Compared with the endless regression of nature—and, consequently, its decreasing comprehensibility—implicit in a materialist worldview, the geo- and biological stratigraphy of a Minecraft environment may be thought ontically homogeneous, insofar as a house and mountain will vary principally in their number of 16 px3 blocks. These issues are motivated toward a consideration of the artificial shortcomings of digital games generally, or their “fictional incompleteness,” and the paradoxes that arise from the suggestion of visual depth. After introducing what I describe as the translation from life, or “itemization,” of those objects, settings, and events that form the content of digital games, a final discussion of the miniature allows me to revisit Minecraft’s appeal at the phenomenological level. In turn, the clean manageability of ludic artifacts is understood as a desire for control in increasingly opaque daily life
If Only I Had Someone to Play With: Sociality in Single Player Board Games
Full text linkSince 2004, the tabletop board game market has seen a surge in solo compatibility. COVID-19 restricted multiplayer board gaming, attracting new players to the world of solo play. Despite that, games research has somewhat overlooked explanations as to why solo board gaming is a growing phenomenon. This paper takes a multidisciplinary approach, considering scoresheets, gaming capital, and chores, to examine whether sociality exists in solo board games. The importance of sociality in solo board games is also brought into question, highlighting benefits and flaws of group presence, including negative effects of social influence. Motivations of solo players are explored through a questionnaire and session report, presenting three themes: social reasons, genre preferences, and playstyle choices. Conclusions drawn provide practical applications for tabletop designers, outlining how they can more effectively approach the design of solo games or solo variants
Review: Who Are You? Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance Platform
Full text linkReview: Who Are You? Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance Platform, by Alex Custodio. 2020. MIT Press. ix + 270 pp
Review: L’esperienza del videogioco. Una ricognizione estetica del videogioco tra senso, arte e cultura
Full text linkReview: L’esperienza del videogioco. Una ricognizione estetica del videogioco tra senso, arte e cultura, by Manuel Maximilian Riolo. 2020. Eurolink University Press. 282 pp
“The Playful Postcolonial: Culturing Videogames in India” Special Issue Editorial
No full text“The Playful Postcolonial: Culturing Videogames in India” Special Issue Editoria
Defining Art Styles in Games and Their Influence on Creative Expression
Full text linkThis article explores and highlights the differences between art styles in video games, and details how the use of them can allow for the expression of creative ideas and communicate messages through games as a medium. This article also investigates existing research and analyses various case studies of games with distinctive art styles. The term “art style” in the context of this article pertains to visual elements such as proportions and shading techniques, as opposed to encompassing sound design or animation. To effectively showcase the influence of art styles on creative expression, I have developed a practical prototype in the form of an art game titled The Maze of Nightmares, which contains features such as the ability to switch between multiple art styles as a creative tool to overcome obstacles. By doing so, the game addresses the topic of significant personal changes and how impactful they can be towards one’s life, especially in the context of overcoming obstacles and solving problems. This way, players and audiences can observe differences between art styles in the context of an experience that reinforces the benefits of change
Lost in a Dream: Queering Time and Space in Yume Nikki
Full text linkThis article investigates the opportunities for queer play in Yume Nikki (KIKIYAMA, 2004) by examining the spatial and temporal dimensions of the game’s “Dream World” alongside its narrative. Using surreal visuals and counterintuitive layouts, Yume Nikki’s game maps evoke queer experiences of space, movement, and wandering. In addition, the game encourages wandering through the absence of temporally ordered events and the game’s general lack of interest in timekeeping. The game’s construction promotes a play style that highlights aspects of queer experiences including disorientation and failure. The player’s aimless roaming through time and space are not a failure to master the game, but another way Yume Nikki celebrates queerness and rejects the values of mainstream success, fun, and play
Becoming Halfling: Racial Permeability as Ludonarrative Architecture in Critical Role
No full textLivestreamed play of tabletop games affords a new medium for analysis of racialization for game studies. For Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition (Multiple authors, 2014) actual plays, audiences can engage with racialized narratives in underappreciated ways. The actual play Critical Role (Critical Role, 2012-present) employs players’ knowledge of the genre of high fantasy to create collaborative, improvisational narratives which delve into themes of racism and bigotry. This dynamic often leads players to draw on real world political narratives and discourses in order to engage audiences’ prior knowledge and examine pertinent themes. This paper analyses one such example in the case of Nott the Brave, a character in Critical Role’s popular second campaign. Nott’s narrative arc, taking place over several hundred hours of gameplay, is a site of racialized play, problematizing simple narratives of representation and identity. This article employs textual analysis and semiotics in examining Nott’s racialization as a Goblin character. I draw heavily on Jenkins’s (2004) notion of gameplay as narrative architecture in considering the limits that racialized play allows the cast of Critical Role. In doing so, I offer insights into how tabletop roleplaying games actual plays might add nuance to debates surrounding narrative and gameplay in roleplaying games, especially as it relates to narratives of White supremacy and domination
Review: Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons
Full text linkReview: Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons, by Jon Peterson. 2021. The MIT Press. xii + 386 pp