1,720,965 research outputs found
Truck simulator, trucker-simulators, and the containment of neoliberal capitalism
No full textThis paper discusses truckers who play games (including Truck Simulator) while on the road. Inspired by the concept of “container technologies” and more recent work which distinguishes between containers and containment I ask how these trucker-simulators and their assemblage of concentric machines variously hold, filter, and leak the logics of neoliberal capitalism. To do so, I explore the work and play of the trucker-simulator through three relations of containment that increase in scale from one to the next. I begin with American Truck Simulator (ATS) itself, a game that I argue is designed to be a container of neoliberal, capitalist ideology. Next, I move from the game to the truck cab, which I frame as a physical site of containment for both the trucker-simulator and their gaming battlestation. Finally, I discuss the wider trucking industry as one arm of the organizational network known as logistics. This represents a return to containment-as-ideology, but instead of examining how a game like ATS is informed by culture, I show that is also an artifact that informs culture. I conclude with a discussion of capitalist realism and the ideal of convenience to ask whether we can conceive of other relations to work and play.Peer reviewe
Re-curating the Accident: Speedrunning as Community and Practice
Full text linkThis thesis is concerned with speedrunning, the practice of completing a video game as quickly as possible without the use of cheats or cheat devices as well as the community of players that unite around this sort of play. As video games become increasingly ubiquitous in popular media and culture, the project of accounting for and analysing how people interact with these pieces of software becomes more relevant than ever before. As such, this thesis emerges as an initiatory treatment of a relatively niche segment of game culture that has gone underrepresented in extant game and media scholarship. The text begins by discussing speedrunning as a community. By chronicling the community’s beginnings on SpeedDemosArchive.com and examining its growth with the emergence of contemporary content hosting sites like YouTube and Twitch, this thesis presents speedrunning as a collaborative and fast-growing community of practice made up of players who revel in playing games quickly. From there, an analysis of space and speed, both natural and virtual, is undertaken with a view to understanding how speedrunning as a practice relates to games as narrative spaces. Discussions of rule systems in games and within the speedrunning community itself follow. It is ultimately argued that speedrunning is a museum of accidents, a re-curating of a game according to what this thesis calls its explicit rules. This claim is expanded upon through the coining of a concept dubbed curatorial play as well as several case studies of developer responses to various games being speedrun
NOSTALGIA AND THE BACKLOG: /R/PATIENTGAMERS AND THE TRANSACTIONAL NATURE OF LEISURE
No full textThis paper uses the findings of an investigation into the
/r/patientgamers subreddit to account for the ways that our leisure time and our play have
been assimilated by the logics of neoliberal, late capitalism. I do this by tracing classed
experiences of slowness as experienced by video game players. The figure of the patientgamer
was selected not just because of their protracted approach to video game consumption, but
because the grows out of a frustration with the financial and temporal costs to access
leisure. Through Foucauldian discourse analysis, two major themes were detected across a
number of posts which traced how many players tried, and often failed, to slow down their
lives in restful ways through their play and the conversations that emerged from the impulse
to treat their leisure time as work. Specifically, users’ nostalgia for their childhoods and
their anxieties around possessing a video game backlog are both emblematic of the way that
video game play has been made legible to capitalist logics such that any distinction between
labour and leisure becomes moot and attempt to lift from the patientgamer ethos some
potential ways that the work of play may be reframed to undercut logics of efficiency and
productivity. The case study of /r/patientgamers holds relevance not just for the study of
games and/as culture, but of how technocapitalism instrumentalizes all leisure and the
consequences felt by those who try to slow their rhythms of consumption but do so without
proper attention to issues of class and power
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Combatting Exhaustion and Reclaiming Leisure: Radical Slowness and the (Re)Generative Potential of Play
Full text linkThe neoliberal, capitalist logics that underpin our globalized world are failing. To wake up each day is to be reacquainted with the sense that we are on the verge of social, political, economic, and ecological collapse. It is so clear to so many who are impacted by this exhausting status quo that something must be done, but even collective desires to steer away from unfettered profit and growth are stymied by the fatigue of everyday life. We want change, but we are tired… This dissertation is concerned with the pursuit of meaningful, systemic change and it approaches the problem through an investigation of the intersectional politics of leisure and exhaustion in both video games and culture at large. From my investigations into the designs and discourses surrounding play, slowness, and rest, I argue that, far from offering a break from the fatigue of our daily work, video games are often designed in ways that uphold neoliberal values of productivity and self-management. Through a combination of critical theory, discourse analysis, and game analysis, I examine how our individualistic, “grind culture” perpetuates the exhaustion of bodies (both the extraction of people-as-resource for productive ends and the cultivation of fatigue to hamper dissent) even when we are supposedly “at rest.” I draw parallels between the rule-based systems of games and the real-world crises of labour and wealth disparity and ask whether there is a way to work both on and at leisure so that it operates against exhaustion and against the logics of neoliberal, late capitalism. To answer this, I analyze case studies of video games and play practices which I see as potentially operating against exhaustion. I conclude by arguing that a willful slowing of our relation to play and media consumption can produce a generative (and regenerative) suspension of neoliberal, capitalist logics that carves out time and space for imagining and indeed enacting more socially just alternatives to the status quo
Stasis and Stillness: Moments of Inaction in Games
Full text linkThis 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
The Politics of Wholesome Games: Conservative Comforts and Radical Softness
No full textWholesome games are those that eschew dominant fightor-flight logics and instead embrace softness, kindness, and warmth. While most academic and popular writing on such titles frames wholesomeness as an aesthetic or affect, in this paper I emphasize its politics in an effort to understand how these games variously reify and combat systemic oppression. My analysis focuses on the competing discourses that emerged from the first Wholesome Direct, a video showcase of then-forthcoming cozy video games. I read these perspectives from industry professionals through critical concepts from feminist media studies and queer art spaces, including nostalgia, exit, and radical softness. Through a distinction between what I call comfort and rest, I conclude that wholesome games must wear their politics on their sleeve if they wish to address the systemic issues that make many people seek them out.Peer reviewe
Buying Time: Capitalist Temporalities in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
Full text linkIn November 2017, Nintendo released Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp (Nintendo 2017) for iOS and Android devices. At first blush, the game is much like previous instalments in the series. The player character finds themselves as a new denizen of a rural space populated by sentient animals that all have wants and offer rewards for those that satisfy those wants. However, the conversion of Animal Crossing from console game to mobile game was not without its major changes. A free-to-play game par excellence, Pocket Camp introduces Leaf Tokens, a separate currency from bells which can be bought with real money. Leaf Tokens can be used to buy certain in-game objects but, for the most part, are used to eliminate instances of waiting in the game, which stands in direct opposition to the series’ apparent valorization of slower, simpler living. Through a discussion of this translation of Animal Crossing’s mechanics and values into the mobile game genre, Pocket Camp is shown to gamify the capitalist monetization of time. In the face of this reality, the paper concludes examining the role of the player as a critical actor within this system and suggests that, far from being a passive victim of the game’s capitalist logics, one might engage with the game in subversive ways that articulate a virtual refusal of virtual labour and an instance of what the author has taken to calling radical slowness
Animal Crossing Special Issue Foreword
No full textWelcome, dear reader, to this selection of essays on Nintendo’s Animal Crossing series. This was one of those special issues that came into being for the simple reason that both of us felt that we needed it to exist. It involved a lot of hard work and planning on our part, but we were certainly not alone. Our authors, of course, whose pieces are teased in more detail below, all presented us with intriguing, high-quality essays and have diligently polished them to a mirror shine. The sheer quality of this work would of course not have been possible without the efforts of our generous and discerning peer-reviewers. Finally, we would certainly be remiss to not mention the journal itself, without which this project would not even have gotten off the ground. So while this foreword is our chance as editors to throw our voices into the conversations contained within this issue, we wanted to ensure that we acknowledged all the people whose labour made what follows possible since we strongly feel that this has been much more than a pragmatic exercise in producing scholarly deliverables
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