Game Studies

In this interview by Yujia Yao, I talk about the current state of the Japanese gaming industry within its cultural and economic context. Interview questions include topics such as: the general decline of the Japanese game industry in global markets, the place of Nintendo in the industrial landscape, Pokemon Go, the mobile gaming market, Virtual Reality, and cultural influences.

The paper explores the recent growth in critical gameplay, an application of critical design to the production of computer games. This paper outlines play pedagogy and game rhetoric, relating critical design practices to the creation of computer games. It attempts to explain the art practice of critical game design, providing a brief digital game history and identifying prominent creative works in this relatively new space.

With the ever-increasing number of applications for mobile phones, we are more and more likely to be confronted with a problem of a separation from our environment when looking at our screen. It can be easily illustrated with a mobile game that uses the real world as a platform (a location-based mobile game). Typically, the player must stop to look at the screen to get information, which then can alter the dynamics of the gameplay. One solution is to incorporate this constraint into the design of the gameplay, but there are also other options to solve this disconnect issue. The FeelTact project proposes an innovative approach that does not use the screen as the primary output device. Instead, it concentrates on maximizing rich tactile feedback, as opposed to simple vibrations. The FeelTact device is a new type of tactile bracelet that will drive the information a player receives. The first FeelTact game is an audiotactile mobile game based on an urban navigation system. The results ...

With hundreds of new games being released every week, designers rely on existing knowledge to design control schemes for their products. However, in the case of games with new game mechanics, designers struggle to implement new button schemes due to the lack of research on players’ adaptation to new and non-standard controls. In this study we investigated PC players habits when playing a game they have no knowledge of, and how they adapt to its non-standard control scheme. Data was collected by using a specifically designed game instead of relying on pre-existing ones, allowing us to design specific game mechanics to exploit users’ habits and monitor players’ behaviour in their home environments. Preliminary results seem to indicate that PC players do pay attention to control schemes and are able to quickly learn new ones, but they also prefer to make mistakes in favour of execution speed.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is considering the adoption of e-sports (i.e., organised competitive video gaming), which could be considered a radical innovation as it deviates in many areas from traditional sports (e.g., online game play format, lack of high physical exertion, complicated intellectual property rights for each game, etc.). However, collaboration with firms familiar with the innovation (e.g., National Association of Collegiate eSports-NACE) might mitigate risks surrounding the radical innovation. Thus, the purpose of this paper was to investigate whether a potential association between the NCAA and NACE would be advantageous to both organisations. Through a deductive qualitative content analysis underpinned by Rogers's (2003) innovation characteristics (e.g., complexity, compatibility and relative advantage), several themes emerged: physical exertion, e-sports structure, amateurism, eligibility, compensation, profitability, and diversity and ...

This paper focuses on the analysis of audiovisual materials according to the media circulation model of eSports-related content. Its aim is to assess the process of strengthening the commercial potential of formalized eSports enterprises in a relatively new, national market. This goal is achieved through looking at a case study of one of the leading media groups in the Eastern Europe taking interest in the eSports market and launching a multi-platform campaign to promote particular eSports titles, brands and initiatives in a short period of time. The methodological framework used for the analysis encompasses media circuit model developed through the work of British Cultural Studies. Paul du Gay and Stuart Hall’s concepts used in the text involve aspects such as production, consumption, regulation, identity and representation. Data concerning the multi-platform informational shows, websites, social media presence and the overall business model of supporting the local eSports scene ha...

As a yet small academic field, historical video game studies are in a crucial and interesting moment of development. The most recent contributions, looking at the re-validation of historical themed video games as proper historical narratives, are opening a door for new analysis on the discourses behind these portrayals of the past, and the role of historiography as a direct influence. In this context, the questions about the protagonists of such histories, as well as the perspective implied on these portrayals, appear as relevant for the future of video games and academia. This research is an attempt to answer such questions and bring some further considerations on the relation between the representation of the past and the characteristics of the medium. Applying comparative and critical discourse analysis, and focusing on the representation of non-Western societies, this research analyses the presence of Eurocentrism in two historical themed video games: Age of Empires II HD Edition and Total War: Rome II. The application of discursive devises within textual, visual, and game play elements are studied to clarify the approach and perspective of these games to the past, as well as the implications behind their portrayal of diverse societies and cultures. Linking back to postcolonial theory, discourse analysis, and video game studies, further considerations are made over multicultural representations, the conceptualization of history, and the capabilities of the medium to further explore the past in meaningful and complex ways. The expectation with this research is to open a path for future applications of the methodologies on video game studies, and deeper explorations of Eurocentrism and on the medium, as a most required subject to confront on the analysis of historiography and popular culture.

MA Thesis. MA in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies. University of Limerick.

Abstract: This article discusses the processes involved in the construction of group membership and cohesion in a semiprofessional team of esports in the city of Belém, the capital of the state of Pará, in the Brazilian Amazonian territory. This effort discusses what characterizes the progression and union of a particular team in a local competitive scenario in which ephemeral teams predominate. Based on an eleven-month ethnography with a set of players engaged in professional competitive practice, and through observations from field research, we compiled a set of 12 essential characteristics filled out by the team. Also, this study points to the development of an ethos of professionalism in a peripheral context, indicating the existence of an Amazonian esports scenario – in the North Region of the Brazil, with emphasis in Belém, Pará. The results indicate the subsistence of a social fabric composed of a variety of other elements that, in turn, constitute an ethos of group camaraderie that plays a central role in the competitive dynamics that underlie the team as a group.

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As a nature parable, THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD involves players in a dreamlike gameworld in which their unconscious desires for an ecological sustainable Utopia and a romantic imagery of nature are evoked, exposed to distress, and eventually saturated. By sending players on the journey of a hero to restore order in a polluted but majestic world, the game evokes a bewildering variety of affects in them. These oscillate between positive and negative ones—such as curiosity and fear, excitement and distress, startle and anger, pleasure and terror—and are outlined by the game’s structural peculiarities (its implied player) in different ways, depending on the region of the gameworld. The players’ affective responses then culminate in the tumultuous emotion of astonishment and in the aesthetic response of the sublime. The experience of play—in the interaction between (eco)game, player, and world (culture)—is thus a regenerative one on an affective and subsequent aesthetic level. It resensitises players to the beauty of the natural world, while granting them a different point of view on ecosystems and ecological issues that plague their contemporary surroundings.

This paper broaches the issue of exploration as a virtual fictional strategy and critical agent to immerse players in vast open world games. Complex networks of places, quests and spatial arrangements are built for simulating a freely explorable environment full of diverse and dense atmospheres. The non-linear multipath landscape is the core gameplay experience and leaves it to the player where to go, what to accomplish and in which order. Narration then mostly is embodied by the environmental storytelling of evocative landscapes and architectures with multiple nuances communicating the world’s story. The core thesis is, that classical strategies like dialogue or text as well as stringent quest chains or story arcs are neglected in favor of a landscape experience and the player’s individual ludic creation of meaning by the urge for discovery.
The paper differentiates between urban and rural open world game intrinsic space and analyzes current open world franchises in order to verify the above thesis. Exploration needs the simulation of vastness which means the dichotomy of free roaming and helplessness at the same time. In order to analyze the exploration and structure of non-linear landscapes in open world games an interdisciplinary approach is used merging methods and terms from research fields such as architecture, art history, urbanism, philosophy, game studies, landscape gardening, geography and theory of space. Thus not only the players’ courses of action, play patterns, agency and embodiment with the avatar are thematized, but also the concepts of wilderness, landscape and navigation. Critical to the latter points are modular treaties on European landscape gardens as modular and atmosphere creating areas as well as Jay Appleton’s prospect-refuge theory (1975). For the game intrinsic distillation of former survival instincts and navigation habits of men, which nowadays are used or experienced for entertainment, the term prospect pacing is coined. Thus open world games with a focus on exploration simulate a distinct, rhythmized environment in order to immerse the players into a vast network of places and points of interest.

New Forms and Interactions is a collection of eleven articles highlighting the controversial relation between the two traditionally opposed realms. By determining the forms, conditions and consequences of interaction between fiction and reality, the texts in this book refute this opposition. They also reflect on the status of the deconstructed and reconstructed boundary that separates the two ontological realms and strive toward multiple possible applications of both terms. This volume features studies of various works of literature, film, photography, video and performance art, television, fan fiction and computer games and discusses their various interrelations and hybrid forms. The diversity of media and the plurality of approaches and academic traditions build the keystone of these discussions while opening them up to the non-canonised, formerly peripheral fields of comparative literary studies. The articles are grouped into three sections which focus on (1) forms of ‘interacting with fictions’, (2) the complexity of ‘indicating realities’ and the reality status of fiction, and (3) different methods involved in the ‘realisations of fictions’.

This book is about the three identities of the videogame, the gamer, and Game Studies. I write that there are no definitive truths but rather discourses and constructions; ideas, actions, beliefs, and practices related to videogames are discourses that merge and shape our perception of videogames as an area of study of its own right. These discursive responses meet and clash creating what we call truths, which are temporary and negotiable.

This perspective is inspired by Foucauldian ideas and present few questions about videogame-related identities in and outside of academe. Does Game Studies have a conceptual core? What makes game studies difficult to be disciplined in academe? What do we learn from the scholarly and popular discourses on videogames that would help understand the identity questions related to games?

I go on to describe what makes the videogame identity according to game studies: aesthetics, fictions, meaning-making, performance, transformation, etc. and what makes it difficult for game studies being an open market of ideas and an academic "un-discipline". This leads me to the gamer's identity: an aficionado first, and a connoisseur of fictional worlds.

The contemporary video game market is more and more crowded with titles that are expanded by digital contents that can be downloaded for free or payment: from annexing additional costumes to the characters, to implementing large portions of narrative, today expansion packs represent a phenomenon potentially and concretely capable of redefining the lifespan of each video game initially sold as a standalone creation, to then prove to be partial when new contents are released. This essay will try to group the variety of these digital contents into two essential sets, and then it will try to understand if the video games expanded by future downloadable contents can be included among the canons of serial gaming, now explicitly represented by the advent of episodic video games.

Figuren sind ein zentrales Attraktionsmoment aktueller Computerspiele, doch ihre medienwissenschaftliche Erforschung ist bislang nur in Ansätzen erfolgt. Diese Arbeit schließt diese Forschungslücke, indem sie allgemeine Gestaltungsprinzipien und Wirkungsweisen von Computerspielfiguren in figurenzentrierten Mainstreamspielen untersucht. So trägt sie im Rahmen ihrer Beschäftigung mit der Darstellung, Ontologie und Rezeption von Computerspielfiguren dazu bei, die verstreuten Forschungsbefunde zu systematisieren und in einen einheitlichen Theorierahmen einzuordnen.

Dabei werden Ansätze der kognitiven Film- und Medientheorie, der transmedialen Narratologie und der Game Studies zusammengeführt, um Figuren als fiktive Wesen, Spielfiguren und Repräsentationen von Spielerinnen zu beschreiben. Die systematische Herleitung und Ausdifferenzierung unterschiedlicher Modi der Darstellung und Rezeption von Computerspielfiguren erlaubt, die Ästhetik spielergesteuerter, computergesteuerter und Mitspieler-gesteuerter Figuren theoretisch fundiert und begrifflich präzise zu  beschreiben. So erweisen sich Figuren als Kulminationspunkt für körperlich-affektive Erfahrungen von Subjektivität und Embodiment, als Objekt vielfältiger Formen emotionaler Anteilnahme und als Element ‚strukturierter Sozialität‘ in Mehrspieler-Kontexten. Ihre Analyse wirft dadurch auch ein Licht auf den Zusammenhang ästhetischer Gestaltung und ästhetischer Wahrnehmung im Computerspiel generell.

"Lo que diferencia al videojuego de otros medios audiovisuales para la divulgación científica reside en su capacidad de transmitir conocimiento sobre sistemas complejos a través de la experimentación y la experiencia. Además, como forma de cultura popular, el videojuego constituye un vehículo especialmente interesante para la divulgación científica. El objetivo del presente artículo es analizar el potencial y las limitaciones de divulgación científica de los videojuegos. Para ello, se analizan las reglas de juego y la experiencia interactiva del jugador (gameplay) en cuatro videojuegos comerciales relacionados con un referente científico. La muestra seleccionada incluye: Crayon Physics, un laboratorio de mecánica clásica; Trauma Center, donde el jugador adopta el rol de cirujano; SimCity 4, sobre la planificación urbana, y Civilization IV, un recorrido por la historia universal."

Adapting Bernard Suits' account of game-play, we can show that, in games, competition can be converted into cooperation. Suits says that to play a game is to voluntarily take up unnecessary obstacles for the sake of overcoming them. Thus, in games, we can become each others' desired obstacles. Others in the philosophy of sport have argued for such cooperation, but typically but the weight of conversion on player consent or player intention. I argue for a more distributed model of conversion, in which player consent, proper match-ups of player temperament and skill, features of game-design, and psychological fit of players with game design all contribute to the conversion process. As a result, conversion isn't guaranteed, even when all players have consented. Finally, I use the conversion model to argue against the popular view in philosophy of sports that the purpose of sport is the display or development of excellence; instead, the social function of converting competition into cooperation is just as plausible an account of the purpose of sport.

This paper addresses the lack of solid historical information concerning early computer game sales and preferences. Two consistent data series from the magazines Softalk and Computer Gaming World (CGW) are analyzed to give an overview of the best selling and best rated games by players for the period of 1980-1984. A “genre palette ” is inferred from the sources, giving a snapshot of how contemporaries framed and interpreted the offer in computer games. A comparison of the series reveals the CGW readership constitutes a distinct “hardcore ” play community amongst general computer game players. It is also observed that genre preferences vary in time: arcade games peak in 1982 and then recede in favor of computer-native genres. A brief comparison with Atari 2600 best sellers reveal the inadequacy of the computer game genre palette to describe home console games. The historical and constructed nature of genres as “horizons of expectations ” is discussed.

The multiplatform Ni no Kuni (Bandai Namco, 2010/2013) represents anime studio Studio Ghibli's first dedicated video game project. Although Japanese video game company Level-5 developed Ni no Kuni, Ghibli contributed to the story and was responsible for its visual design. The game demonstrates not only Ghibli's distinct visual style, but it also shares with the studio's films similar themes (loss of innocence, youth empowerment, the relationship between nature and technology) and storytelling characteristics (a young hero and a synthesis of Eastern and Western elements). Beyond its aesthetic and narrative contributions, Studio Ghibli also provided Level-5 a means of differentiating itself within the contemporary Japanese video game industry, as several companies attempt to expand into the West in response to shifts in the domestic market. Likewise, Ghibli has been adjusting to its own shifts, including co-founder Hayao Miyazaki's retirement from feature films and the studio's subsequent hiatus on film productions. As such, Ni no Kuni represents a particularly significant example of convergence between the anime and video industries, as it suggests paths for both Studio Ghibli and Level-5, as they each look to diversify into new markets and revenue streams.