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Playing for the Legend in the Age of Empires II Online Community
Get PDFPlayers in competitive games do not always pursue efficient victory. This essay is concerned with alternative goals in competitive videogaming. Here I examine practices of play, spectation, and casting in the Age of Empires II (Ensemble Studios, 1999) community, where playing “for the legend” is a form of heroic play that differs from playing for the win. Building on Celia Pearce’s (2009) ethnographic study of play communities, Will Wright’s (2004) notion of “possibility space,” Roger Caillois’s (1958/2001) theory of forms of play, and Roland Barthes\u27s (1957/1972) semiology of myth, I argue in favour of a design philosophy supporting play for the legend as distinct—if potentially complementary—to both (1) the meritocratic agonism of esports and (2) attempts at capturing social life within game mechanics. Age of Empires II derives value from its function as a technology supporting a friendly community beyond what is encoded in software. The game’s success is not determined only by developer design but rather depends upon the work of a community defining its own ideals about what makes a good game and a heroic player
Cinesthetic Play, or Gaming in the Flesh: Grasping Celeste by Adapting the Cinesthetic Subject Into a Phenomenology of Videogaming
Get PDFThis paper adapts Vivian Sobchack’s (2004) concept of the cinesthetic subject, which addresses the corporeality of the cinematic experience, to the medium of videogaming. I thus develop the concept of cinesthetic play by translating the three components constitutive of Sobchack’s cinesthetic subject: cinema, kinesthesia, and synesthesia. The mediality of cinema is translated with recourse to another of Sobchack’s concepts, the film body, which has previously been translated into the game body (Crick, 2011). I then illustrate synesthetic sense-making of game-worlds and discuss how the notion of kinesthetic empathy figures in videogaming. These three components together mitigate some limitations of previous phenomenological models of gaming, which do not similarly integrate the human sensorium’s different modalities. I conceive of cinesthetic play as hybrid real-and-virtual embodiment, in which players corporeally understand a game through a perception that is informed by commutating senses and their tacit understanding of the movements of and within the game-world. Additionally, throughout the paper I contend that, although scholarship on videogame phenomenology generally focuses on three-dimensionally navigable games, this embodied experience holds for two-dimensional games as well. I illustrate this point with the game Celeste (Matt Makes Games, 2018), which I use to demonstrate the value of the notion of cinesthetic play for an analysis of the embodied playing and sense-making of videogames
Valorant and the Platformization of Free-To-Play Games: Framing the Work of Content Creators as a Cultural Commodity
Get PDFBy studying the early development stages of the free-to-play game Valorant (Riot Games, 2020), this research draws connections between game studies and recent platformization research. Traditionally, game scholars have treated the game industry as focused on selling premium-priced games. An alternative approach presents games as services that attempt to foster a long-term relationship with the player base. This paper zooms in on the latter, by studying the role of livestreaming in the service model of digital games. This sheds light on how service games can become intertwined with participatory modes of production, which benefits the longevity of service games. It points to a situation in which games, users, and platforms together make up one coherent system. The deployment of sociotechnical system scholarship identifies mechanisms that have been put in place to facilitate the interaction between users and platforms. With that in mind, this paper presents a qualitative content analysis of Twitch streams using a transcription method in which content creation is considered vital to the proliferation of the platform ecosystem. This work contributes to a growing body of literature bridging the fields of platform studies and game studies by taking into account the extended cultural practices and paratexts of both livestreaming and videogames
Composing the Hero: Musical Gender Construction of Fantasy RPG Heroes
Get PDFIn recent years, the academic study of video game music has increased as players express greater interest in listening to scores outside of play. While much study is dedicated to how music communicates gendered narrative within cinema, these same semiotics are little explored in the musical scores of games. This article examines music’s role in characterizing gendered narrative tropes of heroism and action within fantasy RPGs. Drawing on ludomusicalogical theories of game music function, gender film music theory, and narratological structuring of heroes and heroines, this article examines how music informs players of gender identity in video game character construction and play. The musical content for the themes of the hero Kratos from God of War (Santa Monica Studio, 2018) and the heroine Aloy from Horizon: Zero Dawn (Guerrilla Games, 2017) are analyzed to determine how game creators and composers communicate, intentionally or otherwise, gendered ideals of heroic narrative through instrumentation, tonality, and rhythm. By comparing these musical themes and their gender connotations to the plot, character construction, and player interaction of both Kratos and Aloy reveals how music adheres or subverts traditional narrative tropes of heroes and heroines
“The New Heroism” in Jennifer Egan’s “Black Box”
Get PDFThis article analyses the concept of “the new heroism” in Jennifer Egan’s 2012 Twitter fiction “Black Box.” The article compares the Twitter fiction reader to the video game player and applies some notions from video games in navigating the digital environment of Twitter. Moving on to the fictional description of heroism within the text, the article considers the process of digitisation described as it affects the human body and individual identity, creating “digital heroes.” Ideas of gender and sexual trauma transform the female body into a political weapon through digitisation. Final comments connect the text’s depiction of death and the afterlife to the preliminary discussion of video games, enabling the protagonist to exist forever as a digital file—or “saved game.” Conclusions draw out connections between the digital collective of the heroism in Egan’s text and the collaborative nature of electronic literature
A Cross-Game Look at Transgender Representation in Video Games
Get PDFDespite a history of tracking, analyzing, and discussing transgender representation in media, research on video games is often left out. In this project, I analyzed 63 games released from 1988–2019, and documented on the LGBTQ Game Archive as having transgender characters. A content survey revealed four overarching trends in how video games represent transgender characters (i.e., dysphoria/physical transition, mentally ill killers, trans shock/reveal, and ambiguity). I also demonstrated how transgender representation in video games manifests in similar ways to film and television. Three out of four trends in transgender representation have been repeatedly studied in media studies, but the fourth and largest trend, gender ambiguity, remains understudied. Research on transgender representation in video games mostly focuses on explicit representation. However, the findings show that despite the lack of explicit representations, transness is largely included in media in the form of gender ambiguity without explicitly being there
Posthumanism in Outer Wilds
Get PDFThis article performs a posthumanist reading of Outer Wilds (Mobius Digital, 2019) focusing on how the game represents posthuman subjectivity. Outer Wilds uses two alien species to represent two conceptions of subjectivity: a transhumanism focused on technological augmentation of the human, and a posthumanism focused on decentring the human subject from philosophy and culture. This article argues that Outer Wilds leads the player through several Braidottian processes of posthuman “becoming.” Outer Wilds represents becoming-machine in the two species’ different approaches to technology, becoming-earth in embracing a geo-centred perspective on ecosystems beyond the subject, and becoming-imperceptible in the two species’ different approaches to death and the idea of the self. Through these becomings, Outer Wilds represents what it means to be a posthuman ethical subject in a world on the verge of collapse and emphasises the importance of acting in the face of an ongoing environmental disaster
Humans as Data: A Critique of Watch_Dogs 2’s Dystopian Criticism
Get PDFThe fear of humans abusing technology to control others and the sociopolitical order has been at the heart of many dystopian stories. This fear is also at the heart of Watch_Dogs 2, where the centralized city-wide management system made by the Blume Corporation, called ctOS, has become the basis for all things online. Over the course of the story, the player becomes part of the hacktivist group DedSec, who uncover and disclose the manipulative usage of the internet by Blume and other tech corporations.
The oppressive system of surveillance, automated data collection, and (social) media manipulation is presented in detail during the main and side missions of the game. These missions criticize current topics of interest regarding internet and data security by referencing specific events and addressing important, underlying issues. The game also includes gameplay aspects where players are able to experience and perform the power of the system first-hand.
However, textual analyses of the narrative and the ludic elements reveal contradictions and incoherencies between gameplay design and the narrative’s intended criticism caused by the interplay of narrative storytelling and gameplay elements. The result is a split of atmosphere between story and gameplay, creating the impression that Watch_Dogs 2 has two contradicting personalities, which ultimately subvert its own dystopian criticism
The Reliquaries of Hyrule: A Semiotic and Iconographic Analysis of Sacred Architecture Within Ocarina of Time
Get PDFThis study is a semiotic and iconographic analysis of the sacred architecture in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo, 1998). Through an analysis of the visual elements of the game, the researcher found evidence of visual metaphors that coded three temples as sacred spaces. This coding of the temples is accomplished through the symbolism of progression that matches the design of shrines and cathedrals, drawing on iconography and other symbolism associated with Shinto, Buddhist, and Christian sacred architecture. Such indications of sacred spaces highlight the ways in which these virtual environments are designed to symbolize the progression of the player from secular to sacred, much like the player’s progression from zero to hero. By using the architecture and symbolism of the three aforementioned belief systems, Ocarina of Time signifies these temples as reliquaries—that is, sacred places that house reverential items as part of the apotheosis of the player
Review: A Play of Bodies: How We Perceive Videogames
Get PDFReview: A Play of Bodies: How We Perceive Videogames, by Brendan Keogh. MIT Press. 2018. ISBN: 978026203763