Classifying the Digital Athletic Body: Assessing the Implications of the Player-Attribute-Rating System in Sports Video Games

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Baerg
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Rating System ◽  
Digital Game ◽  
Action Simulation ◽  
Sports Video ◽  
Digital Sports ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Although other digital-game genres have received increasing amounts of scholarly attention, the digital sports game remains relatively unexamined. This essay explores one of the most prominent and nearly ubiquitous features of the digital sports game, the player-attribute-rating system. By explaining the nature of the rating system and how it functions and then situating it in a theoretical and historical context, the author traces out some of the implications of the system’s operation. As part of this argument, the essay examines Electronic Arts’ popular football action simulation, FIFA Soccer ’09, as a case study to illustrate how the rating system positions gamers to understand sport in and through this new medium.

scholarly journals American Wedding Albums: a Case Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marisa Catherina D’Agostino
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Main Section ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
Popular Medium ◽  
Production Organization ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Wedding photography is an area of vernacular studies that receives surprisingly little scholarly attention. This thesis explores the material culture of wedding photography, with a specific focus on the analysis of the wedding album in terms of presentation and consumption by families from the 1950s to the 1980s. The main section of this thesis provides an examination of selected wedding album owners. This case study contains a collection of oral histories from seven individuals on their experiences with presenting and displaying their wedding photographs. The analysis provides qualitative research on the production, organization, and consumption of the wedding album as a popular medium for exhibiting wedding photographs. In addition, this thesis offers some social and historical context on the development of the wedding album and wedding photography.

scholarly journals American Wedding Albums: a Case Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marisa Catherina D’Agostino
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Main Section ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
Popular Medium ◽  
Production Organization ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Wedding photography is an area of vernacular studies that receives surprisingly little scholarly attention. This thesis explores the material culture of wedding photography, with a specific focus on the analysis of the wedding album in terms of presentation and consumption by families from the 1950s to the 1980s. The main section of this thesis provides an examination of selected wedding album owners. This case study contains a collection of oral histories from seven individuals on their experiences with presenting and displaying their wedding photographs. The analysis provides qualitative research on the production, organization, and consumption of the wedding album as a popular medium for exhibiting wedding photographs. In addition, this thesis offers some social and historical context on the development of the wedding album and wedding photography.

scholarly journals Re-writing histories of colonization in video games: the case of Elizabeth LaPensée

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (38) ◽  
pp. 123-141
Author(s):  
Anna Nacher ◽  
Filip Jankowski
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Game Design ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Digital Game ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
Auteur Theory

The article is aimed at presentation of the case study in video games creation by Indigenous auteur and designer, Elizabeth LaPensée, which at the same time demonstrates how video games can both mediatize the process of re-writing history and decolonize popular imagination. The analysis of LaPensée’s three games: Invaders, Thunderbird Strikes, and When the Rivers Were Trails to some extent follows her own strategies of self-identification as Anishinabee (Ojibwe). Drawing upon reconfiguration of the auteur theory and the framework of ludostylistics by Astrid Ensslin, we also strive to demonstrate how the notion of a singular author is in fact grounded in collective and collaborative qualities of indigenous digital culture, including digital game design.

Battle Hymn of the God-Slayers

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-19
Author(s):  
Thomas B. Yee
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Real World ◽  
Sacred Music ◽  
Analytic Methods ◽  
Topic Theory ◽  
Scholarly Attention

“God is dead,” declared philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “… and we have killed him” (1887)—a proclamation that numerous video game protagonists could aptly say by journey's end. The prominent god-slayer trope in video game storylines casts the gameworld's god(s) as the final boss, to be slain by players, inviting connection to real-world religious ideas. Adequate scholarly attention has not been given to the musical features of the god-slayer trope—specifically, the bosses’ unique battle tracks—to discover what the music's meaning contributes to the trope. Quantitative analysis of video games featuring the god-slayer trope reveals that the bosses’ battle tracks may strategically combine rock and sacred music topics for significant semiotic effect. This article explores the meanings associated with rock and sacred music topics, using analytic methods from the burgeoning field of musical semiotics. By invoking music-theoretic work in topic theory (Monelle 2006, Hatten 2004), agential modalities (Tarasti 1994), and virtual agency (Hatten 2018), I argue that the rock and the sacred music topics initially appear to conflict—but the trope serves as a hermeneutic premise for a meaningful and productive synthesis uniquely fit for the narrative god-slayer trope. Xenoblade Chronicles (2010) forms a striking case study, with its tracks “Zanza” and “The God-Slaying Sword” exemplifying the sacred-rock trope and its semiotic meaning in relation to the game's plot—a narratively apt battle hymn for the game's god-slaying protagonists. Using a cultural-historical lens, the conclusion explores connections between the narrative god-slayer trope and the descent of Japan's god-emperor from divinity to humanity.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Harris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Art World ◽  
Dance History ◽  
The Core ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
Global Art ◽  
Scholarly Attention

The introduction presents the core historiographical problem that Making BalletAmerican aims to correct: the idea that George Balanchine’s neoclassical choreography represents the first successful manifestation of an “American” ballet. While this idea is pervasive in dance history, little scholarly attention has been paid to its construction. The introduction brings to light an alternative, more complex historical context for American neoclassical ballet than has been previously considered. It places Lincoln Kirstein’s 1933 trip to Paris, famous for bringing Balanchine to the United States, within a transnational and interdisciplinary backdrop of modernism, during a time when the global art world was shifting significantly in response to the international rise of fascism. This context reverberates throughout to the book’s examination of American ballet as a form that was embedded in and responsive to a changing set of social, cultural, and political conditions over the period covered, 1933–1963.

Tusslers, Beatdowns, and Brothers: A Sociohistorical Overview of Video Game Arcades and theStreet FighterCommunity

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 742-762
Author(s):  
Michael Ryan Skolnik ◽  
Steven Conway
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Historical Movement

Alongside their material dimensions, video game arcades were simultaneously metaphysical spaces where participants negotiated social and cultural convention, thus contributing to identity formation and performance within game culture. While physical arcade spaces have receded in number, the metaphysical elements of the arcades persist. We examine the historical conditions around the establishment of so-called arcade culture, taking into account the history of public entertainment spaces, such as pool halls, coin-operated entertainment technologies, video games, and the demographic and economic conditions during the arcade’s peak popularity, which are historically connected to the advent of bachelor subculture. Drawing on these complementary histories, we examine the social and historical movement of arcades and arcade culture, focusing upon the Street Fighter series and the fighting game community (FGC). Through this case study, we argue that moral panics concerning arcades, processes of cultural norm selection, technological shifts, and the demographic peculiarities of arcade culture all contributed to its current decline and discuss how they affect the contemporary FGC.

Waltzing on Rooftops and Cobblestones

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 34-55
Author(s):  
Ailbhe Warde-Brown
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Real World ◽  
World History ◽  
Interaction Model ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
Open World ◽  
Integrated Approaches ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between music, sound, space, and time plays a crucial role in attempts to define the concept of “immersion” in video games. Isabella van Elferen’s ALI (affect-literacy-interaction) model for video game musical immersion offers one of the most integrated approaches to reading connections between sonic cues and the “magic circle” of gameplay. There are challenges, however, in systematically applying this primarily event-focused model to particular aspects of the “open-world” genre. Most notable is the dampening of narrative and ludic restrictions afforded by more intricately layered textual elements, alongside open-ended in-game environments that allow for instances of more nonlinear, exploratory gameplay. This article addresses these challenges through synthesizing the ALI model with more spatially focused elements of Gordon Calleja’s player involvement model, exploring sonic immersion in greater depth via the notion of spatiotemporal involvement. This presents a theoretical framework that broadens analysis beyond a simple focus on the immediate narrative or ludic sequence. Ubisoft’s open-world action-adventure franchise Assassin’s Creed is a particularly useful case study for the application of this concept. This is primarily because of its characteristic focus on blending elements of the historical game and the open-world game through its use of real-world history and geography. Together, the series’s various diegetic and nondiegetic sonic elements invite variable degrees of participation in “historical experiences of virtual space.” The outcome of this research intends to put such intermingled expressions of space, place, and time at the forefront of a ludomusicological approach to immersion in the open-world genre.

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