3,165 research outputs found
The kid-in-the-fridge: sacrificial children and vengeful masculinity in contemporary videogames
No full textA recent content analysis of child characters in contemporary videogames found that over a third of the digital kids recorded in the dataset were murder victims - their lives cut short by drownings, shootings, stabbings, hangings, intentional traffic collisions, cannibalism, murderous religious rituals, and giant spider attacks (Reay 2020). This article builds on critical analysis of the sacrificial child in other media (e.g., Tan 2013; Sanchéz-Eppler 2005; Houen 2002; Mizruchi 1998; Nussbaum 1997) to explore the rhetorical and ludic function of this trope in videogames. Using the Assassin’s Creed series as a case study, I examine how the dead child serves to justify – and even glorify - the hero’s ruthless, aggressive domination of others through physical violence. I compare the child sacrifice to the ‘woman-in-the-refrigerator’ trope (Simone 1999) to explore the ways in which the ‘fridged kid’ perpetuates misogyny and sexism, irrespective of its gender. In these games, maturity - defined in terms of mastery and agency - is equated with masculinity, while the cultural conditions of childhood - vulnerability, innocence, and dependence - continue to be coded as feminine. Through close readings of Phoibe’s death scene in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and Shadya’s death scene in Assassin’s Creed: Origins, this article suggests that the digital child is sacrificed in order to purge the adult hero of his hesitancy, his self-doubt, and his cowardice. The dead child impels action without compunction by creating a schematic moral superstructure that overrides all other ethical concerns: it liberates the adult hero from both apathy and empathy. This article concludes that the dead child in games is a powerful tool for resolving ludonarrative dissonance, for promoting player-avatar identification, and for eliciting strong affective responses; however, in replacing nuance and ambiguity with certainty and purpose, the dead child legitimises an extreme form of vengeful, militarised, hypermasculine violence in the guise of reasonable, responsible, protective paternalism
Hands Up!: Close reading of the book and interview with Breanna J. McDaniel
No full textThis article interweaves a close reading of the text with an author interview in order to explore the ways in which Hands Up! expresses urgent social justice concepts in a way that is inclusive, defiant, and, above all, hopeful
Videogames as an unheroic medium: the child hero's journey
No full textIn this article, I examine two contemporary videogames that engage critically and imaginatively with conventional definitions of heroism. In Röki (Polygon Treehouse) and Knights and Bikes (Foam Sword Games), the child-avatars loosen the connection between maturity and self-reliance by framing interdependence as both an inevitable and a desirable condition of human society. Furthermore, by emphasizing children's supposed malleability, these games insist on the relationality of identities: they suggest that one's identity depends on the interactions one has with individuals and institutions. I suggest that by centering cooperation, these games destabilize myths of independence and autonomy that surround the lone hero of hyper-individualism and thereby challenge assumptions about the kinds of heroism videogames can portray.</p
Cute, cuddly and completely crushable: Plushies as avatars in video games
No full textThis article examines video game avatars that are designed to resemble toys. It names this trope the ‘Blithe Child’ to capture the carefree, careless and childlike interactions this avatar invites. This article argues that the connection between the Blithe Child and traditional toys functions to express and explain non-violent game mechanics, to shape sentimental player‐avatar relationships, to create cosy, snug playspaces and to encourage pro-social, creative and self-expressive playstyles. However, the Blithe Child inherits some of the more sinister dynamics latent in human‐toy relationships, namely the desire to humiliate and mutilate the cute object and anxieties about what it means to be ‘real’ ‐ to be an independent, agential subject rather than a passive, manipulated, othered object. Drawing on theories derived from cuteness studies and toy studies, this article uses a close reading approach to critique the age-based hierarchies that underpin this trope
Appraising the Poetic Power of Children's Video Games
No full textTo date, most studies of video games by children's literature scholars have been ‘child-oriented’ rather than ‘text-oriented’, focusing on the needs and capabilities of child-players rather than on the literary and artistic potential of the games themselves. This essay proposes that in-depth textual analyses of children's video games will not only illuminate the aesthetic value of specific texts, but also refashion and redirect scholarly debate about the medium itself. What is more, an open dialogue between games scholarship and children's literature scholarship is likely to yield the kind of rich, flexible and nuanced critical discourse necessary to navigate a rapidly evolving, increasingly diverse children's media ecology. Here the case is made for both a strong interdisciplinary alliance between children's literature scholarship and games scholarship, and for modelling a style of close reading that attends specifically to the visual, auditory, tactile and performative elements of children's video games. This method of close reading is called ‘critical ekphrasis’, where ‘ekphrasis’ denotes the careful and creative transcription of the supralinguistic, non-verbal signifiers of video games for the purpose of critical analysis. Critical ekphrasis is offered as a bridge between disciplines that enables children's literature scholars to bring their unique expertise to bear on the complex, varied and exciting body of texts that constitutes ‘children's video games’
Kideogames: Reimagining the Fringe of Literary Studies as the Forefront
No full textThe absence of children’s texts and ludic texts from traditional literary canons, curricula, journals, and conferences might appear obvious, practical, and natural—a straightforward reflection of theoretical and methodological divergence, and of the way texts are grouped outside of academic study. However, these seemingly self-evident explanations do not hold up under scrutiny. In this article, I posit that the omission of children’s texts and ludic texts from well-developed scholarly contexts is partly rooted in the ideological collocation of “children,” “play,” and “low culture.” I compare the strategies used by children’s literature studies and games studies to manage their marginalization and conclude that irrespective of the quality, the variety, the relevance, and the impact of research conducted within these two disciplines, neither will find a permanent home in the serious, sophisticated, “adults-only” space of the literature faculty. I ask whether this is necessarily a problem, and suggest that - when consciously embraced - the lightness of illegitimacy may be a potent as the heft of tradition. Finally, I advocate for an intersectional alliance between children's literature studies and games studies and explore some of the ways in which this kind of academic solidarity might counter the marginalizing effects of infantilization
The child in games: representations of children in contemporary videogames (2009-2019)
No full textThis paper examines representations of children in contemporary video games through content analysis. A selection of commercially successful and critically acclaimed video games published within the last ten years (n=506) was sampled in order to determine what proportion of these titles contained child characters. The games that contained child characters (including non-human and quasi-human child characters) were analyzed to ascertain the relative importance of these child characters. If they were found to play a significant role, the child characters were then coded for race, gender and age. The sample was categorized according to genre to discern whether child characters were more prevalent in some genres over others. Finally, the corpus was organized by year of publication to see if the proportion of games containing child characters varied over time. The results show that the majority of successful video games published between 2009 and 2019 did not contain any child characters at all. 19% of the total games sampled contained significant child characters, of which around half were playable characters. Most child characters were aged between 6 and 11 years old, and white, male children outnumbered non-white children of different genders. Child characters appeared more frequently in games categorised as “Action,” “Role-playing” and “Adventure” than they did in games from the “Sports,” “Strategy,” “Rhythm” and “Sandbox” genres, and the proportion of games containing child characters has remained fairly constant over the past ten years. The paper concludes by suggesting future directions for research conducted at the intersection of childhood studies and game studie
Treating symptoms or treating causes? therapeutic videogames for mental health
No full textThis short viewpoint piece poses the question, ‘what are the ethical implications of designing video games that address the societal causes of mental illness rather than an individual's symptoms?
'Who thinks beating a child is entertainment?': Ideological constructions of the figure of the child in 'Detroit: Become Human'
No full textThis article draws on sociological and anthropological theories relating to cultural constructions of the figure of ‘the child’ to determine whether Detroit: Become Human by Quantic Dream affirms or subverts ideological beliefs about children. It argues that much of the backlash Quantic Dream experienced following the premiere of the game’s trailer, which featured a scene of child abuse, can be understood part of a broader moral performance that relies on the sanctity of ‘the child’ to function as a touchstone for the modern Western society. It concludes that far from challenging dominant narratives about the moral value of ‘the child’, Detroit: Become Human replicates a conservative, reactionary, paternalistic view of children’s position within society
Secrets, Stealth, and Survival : The Silent Child in the Video Games Little Nightmares and INSIDE
No full textThis article combines critical theory from children’s literature studies with research methods from games studies to explore the connection between silence and childhood in two digital texts. Little Nightmares (2017) and INSIDE (2016) are wordless video games that feature nameless, faceless children as their avatars. Weak and weaponless, the children must avoid detection and stay silent if they are to survive. By slinking and skulking, crouching and cowering, the children navigate their way through vast, brutal adult environments in order to reach safety – or so the player thinks. Both games, in fact, end in shocking, unexpected ways, prompting the disturbing realisation that silent children have secrets of their own. The games use scale, perspective, and sound to encourage close identification between the player and avatar, and position the silent, blank-faced child as a cipher onto which the player can project their own feelings of fear, dread, and vulnerability. The child-character’s quiet compliance with the player’s commands also situates the player as an anxious parent, orbiting, assisting, and protecting a dependent child as it moves through a dangerous world. For both subject positions, the child-character’s silence closes the distance between the player and avatar. However, when it is revealed that the child-characters have hidden, unknowable, and potentially sinister motivations, the meaning of their silence is wholly transformed. Using aetonormative theory (Nikolajeva; Beauvais; Gubar) in conjunction with studies of ideologies surrounding childhood (Jenks; Kincaid; Meyer; Balanzategui; Stockton; Lury), this article examines the extent to which these digital texts affirm or subvert cultural constructions of “the Child.” It employs a close reading approach proposed by games scholar Diane Carr to argue that the player-avatar relationships in these games shed new light on some of the fundamental contradictions that characterise adult normativity and child alterity, and concludes by suggesting some ways in which video games might productively expand and disrupt conceptions of aetonormative power relations
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