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Integrative Complexity, Horror, and Gender: A Linguistic Case Study of Until Dawn
Get PDFThe present study examines the relationship between integrative complexity and gender in the horror video game Until Dawn (Supermassive Games, 2015). By comparing a random sample of dialogue from the playable female and male characters, this study explores structural nuances and linguistic differences in how the characters are written, valued, and emphasized in the game’s narrative. The results show that the female characters consistently scored significantly lower than the male characters in terms of integrative complexity. These findings may be explained by the male characters being main sources of conflict within the game and having greater degrees of agency. They also provide further support to the idea that female characters are often devalued and deemphasized—made secondary to their male counterparts—in horror narratives
Stasis and Stillness: Moments of Inaction in Games
Get PDFThis paper represents an initiatory investigation into moments of inaction in games. Two types of inaction are defined and discussed: stasis, which is inaction brought on by or through a game’s mechanics, and stillness, which is brought on by or through a game’s aesthetics. This paper uses gameplay examples from Until Dawn, Mario Party 2, Animal Crossing: New Leaf, and World of Warcraft to demonstrate that moments of stasis and stillness can either be designed features of a game that produce a variety of affective experiences, or playful subversions that are injected into a game by the player. Identifying whether moments of stasis and stillness are designed or injected enables these two modes of inaction to be compared and positioned as part of a broader project that interrogates whether play can be a form of critique
Ludic Cyborgism: Game Studies, Cyborgization, and the Legacy of Military Simulation in Videogames
Get PDFThis article develops and critiques the concept of ludic cyborgism: the notion that playing videogames allows players a free, non-committal, yet strongly embodied pedagogical engagement with cyborg-being. The article argues that videogame play is a form of cyborgization—the act of becoming a metaphorical cyborg through participation in cybernetic feedback loops. Game Studies has so far neglected to deal with the historical and political implications of this cybernetic engagement, having chosen instead to focus on the supposedly educational and emancipatory aspects of the phenomenon. The history of videogames as simulations is intimately entangled with the development of training simulations in the military-entertainment complex of the late twentieth century United States (Crogan, 2011; Lenoir, 2000), and so what players are principally being taught through videogame play is how to operate military technologies like weapons targeting systems without critiquing the violent nature of those technologies. Moreover, the “cyborg-utopian” reading by game scholars of Donna Haraway’s (1985/1991) “Cyborg Manifesto,” which underlies most of the theoretical framework of ludic cyborgism, facilitates an uncritical understanding of cybernetic videogame play as an ideologically neutral phenomenon. If we wish to bring emancipatory movements into videogames, we should see the simulatory nature of videogames as an inherently conservative force with strong ties to military violence, imperialism, and economic injustice, meaning that these frameworks would require significant transformation in order to become neutral or progressive in any sense
Tekken’s Mokujin and the Disjunctive Synthesis of Gender Performativity
Get PDFGiven the ever-growing array of available choices of genders in games, this paper investigates how novel gender types emerge and how the performative transition from one gender to another occurs. A fighting video game character, Tekken’s Mokujin, is employed as a metaphor to explain such processes because of the character’s ability to imitate every other character’s fighting style according to an algorithm which randomly switches Mokujin’s fighting performance in the beginning of every game round. The Mokujin-gender metaphor is then strengthened by philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s notion of disjunctive synthesis, as an attempt to provide a more robust theoretical explanatory framework for the processes of novel gender generation and selection of gender performativity. Therefore, the contribution of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, the specific area of gender performativity is enriched through the study of a video game character acting as a metaphor. On the other, while traditional game studies often intersects with gender studies, mostly in negative cases of the perpetuation of gender stereotypes, this paper shows that the opposite is also possible: Gender studies can benefit from the study of fictitious video game characters that enact, embody, and enable different possibilities
Illuminating the Spectre: Challenging the Assumed Power of the Controller-Holder
Get PDFAs video game streaming increases in popularity, the number of viewers spectating these streams has also increased. However, even while streaming seeks to develop more methods to include viewer participation, spectators are often viewed as passive or in the “backseat.” In this paper I focus on findings from the development and play of a software overlay that allows spectators to control what parts of the screen are visible to them. I argue that the labor of spectating not only generates valuable knowledge, but can be encouraged and highlighted without turning spectators into players
The Relationship Between Power Distance, Trust, and Performance in Video Game Development Teams
Get PDFThis study investigated the effect of power distance and intra-team trust on performance in video game development teams. Drawing on a data set of 11 student teams developing mobile video games, we found a significant positive relationship between intra-team trust and team performance over time. The growth in the significance of this relationship over time paralleled Tuckman and Jensen’s (2010) four stages of group development (forming, storming, norming, and performing). No relationship was identified between team power distance and team performance. These findings contribute to forming a general understanding of how power distance and team trust affect the performance of video game development teams
Friendly Fire Off: Does Cooperative Gaming in a Competitive Setting Lead to Prosocial Behaviour?
Get PDFThe increasing popularity of online videogames has raised questions concerning their potential to influence online and offline social behaviour. Previous research on social behaviour in relation to playing videogames has often focused on either cooperation (playing in pairs against the game) or competition (playing alone against other players); however, videogames, particularly multiplayer online games, often include both. This study investigates prosocial behaviour in videogames with both cooperative and competitive elements—team-based player versus player (PvP) games—and aims to examine whether the amount of time spent playing these games is related to in-game prosocial behaviour. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 727 respondents and results were analysed using conditional process modelling. No significant direct or indirect relationship between the amount of time spent playing team-based PvP games and in-game prosocial behaviour was found. However, an exploratory linear regression analysis revealed a significant, positive relationship between in-game and offline prosocial behaviour. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed
