Dissertation by Jan Švelch
The thesis explores paratextuality in the video game culture. This concept coined in 1982 by Géra... more The thesis explores paratextuality in the video game culture. This concept coined in 1982 by Gérard Genette in the context of literary publishing has been throughout the last thirty-five years adopted by other fields, including television and film studies, and game studies. However, the recent appropriations of the paratextual framework significantly deviate from its original conceptualization and cause terminological confusion. Still, paratextuality has the potential to provide a unique insight into cultural practices across various cultural industries, including video games. Figuratively described as a threshold, the concept of paratextuality deals with often overlooked elements of media ecosystems, such as promotional materials or instruction manuals. In the thesis, I present a thorough critical review of the current state of
paratextual research. Due to its unsatisfactory state, I propose an updated paratextual framework, which builds on the theoretical foundations of textual transcendence. Its more practical dimensions then acknowledge the cultural specificities of the video game cultural industry. In the empirical part of the thesis, I focus on video game trailers and analyze both their formal qualities as well as their audience reception. The findings uncover the ambiguous status of a video game trailer as both a paratextual element and a noteworthy text in its own right. In this regard, they confirm the need for a more nuanced treatment of paratextuality explicated within the theoretical framework.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Articles & Book Chapters by Jan Švelch
New Media & Society, 2020
Commented gameplay video is an established form of online media content, attracting millions of v... more Commented gameplay video is an established form of online media content, attracting millions of viewers on YouTube and Twitch and usually created by fans and players. This article, however, brings attention to video game voice actors who use their involvement in game production to create a new genre of gameplay video. Using a mixed-method approach that combines quantitative content analysis and qualitative thematic analysis, we explore three case studies of successful channels run by video game actors. We find that this new genre, which we term “definitive playthrough videos” based on the label used by one of the analyzed channels, is a hybrid form at the intersection of variety streaming and behind-the-scenes narratives. By broadcasting games in which they performed, actors capitalize on their connection to in-game characters, firsthand knowledge of production trivia, and access to other industry insiders, repurposing a genre of user-generated content from the position of industry practitioners.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Television & New Media, 2020
Video game voice acting does not rank among the core roles of video game production, yet actors i... more Video game voice acting does not rank among the core roles of video game production, yet actors in leading roles sometimes achieve wide recognition despite their contingent employment. In this article, we explore the role of voice actors in the video game culture using the specific case of the recasting of the video game series Life Is Strange, which was caused by the 2016 to 2017 SAG-AFTRA strike against video game companies. Our qualitative empirical analysis of journalistic coverage (including interviews with voice actors), promotional materials, press releases, and player discussions reconstructs the events of the game’s production and investigates the reception of the recasting with regard to actor-character identification and to labor conditions of voice actors. We find that voice actors, whose status is partly dependent on the popularity of their characters, attempt to rise “above the line” by engaging in relational labor.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Game Studies, 2020
Paratext is a frequently used concept in game studies, mentioned approximately 300 times in the 2... more Paratext is a frequently used concept in game studies, mentioned approximately 300 times in the 2010s alone. However, it is not Gérard Genette’s original definition from 1982, but rather the expanded version proposed by Mia Consalvo in 2007 that is used in 70 percent of the 235 analyzed academic texts written in English and published between 1997 and 2019. This article provides a critical theoretical review of current paratextual scholarship and uses citation analysis to quantify the existence and impact of three different approaches to paratext: original, expanded, and reduced. In particular, the expanded framework, which is, according to the analysis, usually attributed to Consalvo, tends to be too all-encompassing by stripping away the original limitation on authorship of paratextual elements and instead resembles the screen studies term cultural epiphenomena. In the article, I highlight the differences between the three frameworks and track the frequency of their use in game studies scholarship. Additionally, I propose a methodological intervention by suggesting to avoid the reductive term “paratext” in the sense of a category of texts, which implies a rigid textual hierarchy. Instead I recommend treating paratextuality as a link between a text and the surrounding socio-historical reality, emphasizing that paratextuality is often accompanied by other (trans)textual qualities.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Media, Culture & Society, 2019
Magic: The Gathering is a household name among analog games. Its publisher, Wizards of the Coast,... more Magic: The Gathering is a household name among analog games. Its publisher, Wizards of the Coast, has experimented with digital adaptations since the late 1990s, however, it was only in 2018–2019 when the company announced a more radical push for the video game market, including a strategy for streaming and esports. By analyzing streaming content, paratextual elements, and online discussions leading up to the first major digital tournament, I explore the attempted and heavily promoted transition of Magic: The Gathering from a primarily analog card game toward a transmedia esports property. Beside conflicting reactions from players and fans to particular aspects of this transformation, this change brings along deepened mediatization of the game as a way to improve the spectator experience by following the media logics of streaming and esports. Professional players in the newly formed esports league along with other sponsored content creators were recruited to serve as advocates for this transition.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
New Media & Society, 2019
This article explores the evolution of video game updates and patches from a mechanism of custome... more This article explores the evolution of video game updates and patches from a mechanism of customer support to a tool of control over the way games are played in the ecosystem of digital gaming platforms. It charts a historical trajectory across various cultural industries, including literary publishing, screen industries, and music, to show a shift from multiplicity of editions to one perpetually updated contingent commodity. Focusing on the issues of power and control enabled by the always-online platforms, the analysis shows that previously updating was often voluntary. However, now players must actively resist patches if they wish to play the game on their own terms. As illustrated by three case studies of update resistance, developers, publishers, and platform holders wield protocological power, which can be successfully opposed—although the outcome often remains localized and tends to alter a specific iteration of protocol and not the underlying infrastructure.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
G|A|M|E, the Italian Journal of Game Studies, 2015
This paper explores video game trailers, their various forms and the roles they play within video... more This paper explores video game trailers, their various forms and the roles they play within video game industry and culture. It offers an overview of the current practice of video game trailer differentiation and proposes a new typology of video game trailers based on their relation to ludic and cinematic aspects of a video game, combining the theory of paratexts, video game performance framework, the interface effect concept, as well as the concept of transmedia storytelling. This typology reflects the historical evolution of a video game trailer and also takes into account current trends in the audiovisual paratexts of video games.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Evolution and Social Impact of Video Game Economics, 2017
Additional monetization has undoubtedly been one of the emerging trends of game industry. Microtr... more Additional monetization has undoubtedly been one of the emerging trends of game industry. Microtransactions have become the norm in casual and social gaming with the advent of the freemium model (Nieborg, 2016) which combines seemingly free-to-play games with in-game purchases. These microtransactions can provide various perks to a player willing to spend real money – from faster progress and in-game advantage to new content, cosmetic upgrades, more play time and other virtual goods. Players have become accustomed to this economic model and freemium games now belong among the most successful apps for the mobile market (Carter & Björk, 2016; Nieborg, 2015, 2016). Due to their success and through the process of market convergence (recently manifested in Activision Blizzard’s acquisition of King (Activision Blizzard, 2015), makers of the successful Candy Crush Saga (King, 2012) mobile game), microtransactions were adopted by developers and publishers of traditional full-price video games as an alternative source of revenue. However, this implementation has been received rather negatively by players and the video game press (Milner, 2013; Nieborg, 2014) leading to occasional boycotts and backlashes. Often seen as a continuation of the already contested practice of DLC (downloadable content) which is considered “an emergent standard in gaming” (Milner, 2013, p. 15), microtransactions became a topic of player discussions and video game reviews. However, not much attention has been paid to how players talk about their stances towards mainstream video games with microtransactions on a scholarly level. This chapter aims to deepen the understanding of discourses on microtransactions in mainstream full-price video games with an emphasis on justifications and explanations of player attitudes and declarations of consumer and player behavior using the case examples of five recent mainstream video game titles (in the chronological order): Mass Effect 3 (BioWare, 2012), Dead Space 3 (Visceral Games, 2013), Dragon Age: Inquisition (BioWare, 2014), Mortal Kombat X (NetherRealm Studios, 2015) and Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain (Konami Productions, 2015).
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
100 Greatest Video Game Characters, 2017
The chapter discusses the role of The Virmire Survivor characters (Ashley Williams/Kaidan Alenko)... more The chapter discusses the role of The Virmire Survivor characters (Ashley Williams/Kaidan Alenko) in the Mass Effect trilogy as a testament to player choice.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Transformative Works and Cultures, 2016
In this article, we argue that fannish histories should not be dismissed as mere nostalgia over p... more In this article, we argue that fannish histories should not be dismissed as mere nostalgia over past experiences of one's own media fandom. Instead they should be understood as complex narratives which combine various historical layers (personal, productional, fictional) and influence the future reception of and anticipation for sequels. They also shed light on the personal histories of fans, which are often juxtaposed with extratextual and fictional histories of a video game series. The subjective nature of these historical discourses is not to be seen as a constraint but as a feature of everyday history which points to the prominence of historicizing in fan cultures of video game series. These topics are examined in the selected multimodal material from the site DeviantArt consisting of fan art pieces, authorial captions, and respective comments inspired by two single-player video game series: Tomb Raider and Mass Effect.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Analog Game Studies, 2016
The article discusses the notion of platform studies and its computational essentialism in the co... more The article discusses the notion of platform studies and its computational essentialism in the context of Magic: The Gathering.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Analog Game Studies, 2014
This article explores analog game errata and discusses the differences between them and video gam... more This article explores analog game errata and discusses the differences between them and video game patches, including access to these paratextual phenomena.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
New Perspectives in Game Studies: Proceedings of the Central and Eastern European Game Studies Conference Brno 2014, 2015
The article explores the way a particular glitch is defined in video game culture and argues that... more The article explores the way a particular glitch is defined in video game culture and argues that the process of definition is in fact a negotiation between different groups of stakeholders. After a glitch is identified, the process of negotiation among the players, press and developers continues. The use of a glitch also has to be defined and interpreted. In this article, I take a closer look at glitches that interact with microtransactions in full-price video game titles, using examples from two games published by EA: Mass Effect 3 and Dead Space 3. While players of both games used glitches to bypass the microtransactions, fan and press reactions to these two cases of glitch exploitation were significantly different. While nearly no one questioned Mass Effect 3’s missile glitch to be a cheat of sorts, the infinite respawn glitch from Dead Space 3 was subject to many discussions regarding its nature as a glitch or a feature. This article analyzes the discourse of glitch discussions and offers explanations as to why the two cases have differed so radically.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Replay. The Polish Journal of Game Studies, 2016
Fans are an essential part of video game culture. As such, they also find their way into promotio... more Fans are an essential part of video game culture. As such, they also find their way into promotion of video games, either willingly or unknowingly. In the article we aim to enrich the current understanding of fan-producer relations by providing a quantitative overview of official Facebook communication of four mainstream video games (in chronological order): Dragon Age: Inquisition (BioWare, 2014), Evolve (Turtle Rock Studios, 2015), Mortal Kombat X (NetherRealm Studios, 2015) and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (CD Projekt Red, 2015). Using content analysis, we explore the frequency at which fans appear on official Facebook pages, what types of fans they are, and whether they are given credit for their creations. By combining these findings with the basic metrics of user activity collected by Netvizz (Rieder, 2013), we are also able to see if these communication strategies generate greater or lesser user activity than regular promotional posts.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Kinephanos, 2017
Since the 1980s trailers have been influencing the promotional practices of video game industry, ... more Since the 1980s trailers have been influencing the promotional practices of video game industry, first aesthetically and starting from 1993 also discursively. Despite this established position, trailers still fuel controversies and heated discussions based on how accurately they represent the final video game product. This article explores the discourses concerning the notion of a representative trailer by analyzing online user discussions of 12 official trailers for recent mainstream video game titles. Results show that while players are to a certain extent aware of potential misrepresentations and that they revisit old cases of disillusionment caused by trailers, some still expect truthful promotion and base their expectations of upcoming games on trailers.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Contemporary Research on Intertextuality in Video Games, 2016
This chapter provides a revised framework of paratextuality which deals with some of the limitati... more This chapter provides a revised framework of paratextuality which deals with some of the limitations of Gérard Genette's (1997b) concept while keeping its focus on the relationship between a text and socio-historical reality. The updated notion of paratextuality draws upon Alexander R. Galloway's (2012) work on the interface effect. The proposed revision is explained in a broader context of intertextuality and textual transcendence. Regarding Genette's terminology, this chapter rejects the constrictive notion of a paratext and stresses that paratextuality is first and foremost a relationship, not a textual category. The new framework is then put to the test using four sample genres of official video game communication – trailers, infographics, official websites of video games and patch notes.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Dissertation by Jan Švelch
paratextual research. Due to its unsatisfactory state, I propose an updated paratextual framework, which builds on the theoretical foundations of textual transcendence. Its more practical dimensions then acknowledge the cultural specificities of the video game cultural industry. In the empirical part of the thesis, I focus on video game trailers and analyze both their formal qualities as well as their audience reception. The findings uncover the ambiguous status of a video game trailer as both a paratextual element and a noteworthy text in its own right. In this regard, they confirm the need for a more nuanced treatment of paratextuality explicated within the theoretical framework.
Articles & Book Chapters by Jan Švelch
paratextual research. Due to its unsatisfactory state, I propose an updated paratextual framework, which builds on the theoretical foundations of textual transcendence. Its more practical dimensions then acknowledge the cultural specificities of the video game cultural industry. In the empirical part of the thesis, I focus on video game trailers and analyze both their formal qualities as well as their audience reception. The findings uncover the ambiguous status of a video game trailer as both a paratextual element and a noteworthy text in its own right. In this regard, they confirm the need for a more nuanced treatment of paratextuality explicated within the theoretical framework.