scholarly journals Interpassivity and the Joy of Delegated Play in Idle Games

Author(s):  
Sonia Fizek

This paper examines the youngest video games genre, the so called idle (incremental) game, also referred to as the passive, self-playing or clicker game, which seems to challenge the current understanding of digital games as systems, based on a human-machine interaction where it is the human who actively engages with the system through meaningful choices. Idle games, on the other hand, tend to play themselves, making the player’s participation optional or, in some cases, entirely redundant. Interactivity and agency – qualities extensively theorised with reference to digital games – are questioned in the context of idling. In this paper the author will investigate the self-contradictory genre through the lens of interpassivity, a concept developed by Robert Pfaller and Slavoj Žižek to describe the aesthetics of delegated enjoyment. This contribution aims at introducing interpassivity to a wider Game Studies community, and offers an alternative perspective to reflect upon digital games in general and self-playing games in particular.

2014 ◽  
pp. 84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Duret

The term immersion, when applied to RPGs and video games, refers to phenomena that sometimes pertain to perception, sometimes psychology. It means a sensation experienced by the player in their relationship with the diegesis of the game, with the stories generated when interacting with the game itself or with their character. Immersion therefore appears to be a concept whose usefulness for game studies seems to be compromised by the multiplicity of phenomena it covers. We therefore propose to, on the one hand uncover the different meanings of immersion through a review of the literature, and on the other hand, to offer an alternative to this notion by proposing an explanatory model which subsumes the phenomena to which it refers in conjunction with the concepts of attentional resource distribution and the framing of the videoludic experience.


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 32-52
Author(s):  
L.V. Moyzhes ◽  

The purpose of this article is to propose a method for analyzing the ideo­logical content of video games while taking into account the agency of the players. The interactivity of video games as a medium has been attracting the attention of researchers for many years, raising, in particular, the ques­tion of how this unique property serves to broadcast certain ideologies. The ability of games to make ideological statements was discussed by Bogost, Frasca, Aarseth, and many other pioneers of game studies. Video games were analyzed both in the context of older media forms that promoted certain ideas through plots, visuals, and other traditional means, and as unique types of objects that can make statements through rules. I aim to introduce the player — as a subject who is able to transform and conceptual­ize the game based on their own cultural background — to this discussion. Using James Gibson’s theory of affordances, I want to acknowledge the player’s freedom of interpretation, the potential to assign one or another ideology to the game in each playthrough. On the one hand, the player acts as a consumer of content; on the other hand, they are a co-author who will use the tools offered by the video game to produce their own state­ments, to be interpreted independently. This leaves the final decision about the ideology of the game to the consumer; thus, game studies need an ap­proach that allows the analysis of the ideological content of specific games. It is especially important in the light of more and more games prioritizing player freedom and not providing any clear plot or even victory conditions. Of course, research can still proclaim, and rightfully so, that the specific rules in such games bear traces of certain ideological systems — capitalism or secularism, for example. But individual players could undermine such interpretations both at the level of reading the game as a “text”, and at the level of interactive actions inspired by those readings.


Author(s):  
Stefan Krause ◽  
Markus Appel

Abstract. Two experiments examined the influence of stories on recipients’ self-perceptions. Extending prior theory and research, our focus was on assimilation effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in line with a protagonist’s traits) as well as on contrast effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in contrast to a protagonist’s traits). In Experiment 1 ( N = 113), implicit and explicit conscientiousness were assessed after participants read a story about either a diligent or a negligent student. Moderation analyses showed that highly transported participants and participants with lower counterarguing scores assimilate the depicted traits of a story protagonist, as indicated by explicit, self-reported conscientiousness ratings. Participants, who were more critical toward a story (i.e., higher counterarguing) and with a lower degree of transportation, showed contrast effects. In Experiment 2 ( N = 103), we manipulated transportation and counterarguing, but we could not identify an effect on participants’ self-ascribed level of conscientiousness. A mini meta-analysis across both experiments revealed significant positive overall associations between transportation and counterarguing on the one hand and story-consistent self-reported conscientiousness on the other hand.


2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 80-93
Author(s):  
Jort de Vreeze ◽  
Christina Matschke

Abstract. Not all group memberships are self-chosen. The current research examines whether assignments to non-preferred groups influence our relationship with the group and our preference for information about the ingroup. It was expected and found that, when people are assigned to non-preferred groups, they perceive the group as different to the self, experience negative emotions about the assignment and in turn disidentify with the group. On the other hand, when people are assigned to preferred groups, they perceive the group as similar to the self, experience positive emotions about the assignment and in turn identify with the group. Finally, disidentification increases a preference for negative information about the ingroup.


Author(s):  
Stacy Wolf

This chapter examines the eight female characters inCompany, what they do in the musical, and how they function in the show’s dramaturgy, and argues that they elicit the quintessential challenge of analyzing musical theater from a feminist perspective. On the one hand, the women tend to be stereotypically, even msogynistically portrayed. On the other hand, each character offers the actor a tremendous performance opportunity in portraying a complicated psychology, primarily communicated through richly expressive music and sophisticated lyrics. In this groundbreaking 1970 ensemble musical about a bachelor’s encounters with five married couples and three girlfriends, Sondheim’s female characters occupy a striking range of types within one show. From the bitter, acerbic, thrice-married Joanne to the reluctant bride-to-be Amy, and from the self-described “dumb” “stewardess” April to the free-spirited Marta,Company’s eight women are distillations of femininity, precisely sketched in the short, singular scenes in which they appear.


2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 805-810
Author(s):  
Baoshan Zhang ◽  
Jun-Yan Zhao ◽  
Guoliang Yu

An examination was carried out of the influences of concealing academic achievement on self-esteem in an academically relevant social interaction based on the assumption that concealing socially devalued characteristics should influence individuals' self-esteem during social interactions. An interview paradigm called for school-aged adolescents who either were or were not low (academic) achievers to play the role of students who were or were not low achievers while answering academically relevant questions. The data suggest that the performance self-esteem of low achievers who played the role of good students was more positive than that of low achievers who played the role of low achievers. On the other hand, participants who played the role of good students had more positive performance self-esteem than did participants who played the role of low achievers.


Rhetorik ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jens Fischer

Abstract According to the self-image of lawyers, jurisprudence is a science: the premises in legal conclusions are truth-apt, as are the conclusions or judgements that follow from them, the cognition of true law is consequently regarded as their task. Against this background, a program that understands and analyzes law as the product of a rhetorical practice is confronted with fierce resistance. According to the research of analytical legal rhetoric, on the other hand, the evidence for a rhetorical imprint on law is overwhelming: starting with the logical status of legal inferences, to the peculiarities of judicial procedure, to the motivational situation of those involved in it, everywhere it becomes apparent that the image of strict truth-orientation inadequately describes the genesis of law. Following Aristotle, who assigned law to the field of phrónēsis and not to epistēmē, contemporary legal rhetoric research aims to draw a realistic picture of the genesis of law. Subdivided into the triad of logos, ethos, and pathos, it attempts to fully grasp the interrelationships involved. It becomes apparent that the rational or argumentative dimension is far from dominating in legal justifications. It is precisely at the neuralgic point, i.e., where arguments are opposed to each other, that the rhetor typically uses a rhetorical figure that links all levels of the triad: the restrictio.


2021 ◽  
pp. 64-73
Author(s):  
Irena DIMOVA

The proposed article examines two problems – the poetic formations (generations and groups) and the manifestations of "narcissism" in poetry. Two Slovak authors, representatives of different literary formations, are analyzed - Michal Habaj of the so-called Text Generation and Katarína Kucbelová of the ANesthetic Generation. Both their affiliation to these creative associations and the nature of the latter is discussed. In order to understand these literary phenomena, we use Karl Mannheim’s concept of generation and Michał Głowiński’s approach to literary groups. The interpretation of selected texts by the two poets is based on the view of contemporary culture as a "culture of narcissism" (Kr. Lash) and on the reflection on this concept, which we find in a literary-critical article by Katarína Kucbelová herself on Michal Habaj. Her reflection on the fragile boundary between narcissism as a theme and narcissism as deficiency of interpreted work we try to apply on her own poetry texts. The selected poems are from her poetry book “Duals” (Duály), which identifies her as part of the so-called ‘new sincerity’ in Slovak literature. In her texts, Katarína Kucbelová thematizes the closure of the lyrical self within its own existence, in which the presence of the other is allowed only as a concept or an idea. Michal Habaj's experimentalism in “Poems for Dead Girls” (Básne pre mŕtve dievčatá), on the other hand, "opens" his textual world, binds him to many discourses and distances him from the self.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (7) ◽  
pp. 2206-2209
Author(s):  
Nahit Özdayi

Aim: This paper aims to analyse the self-efficacies of coaches of different branches. Methods: This study, which was conducted by using coach self-efficacy scale, reached totally 192 volunteering coaches who lived in Çanakkale and Balıkesir. The data collected were then analysed on the SPSS programme. The kurtosis and skewness values were examined so as to check the distribution of the data, and consequently, the data were found to have normal distribution. Results: As a result, statistically significant differences were found between the coaches aged 28-32 and coaches aged 33-37 in their levels of self-efficacy in general and in the sub-factor of efficacy in impersonating. Accordingly, the coaches who were in 28-32 age group had higher self-efficacy and efficacy in impersonating than the ones who were in 33-37 age group. On the other hand, there were no statistically significant differences between the participants’ levels of self-efficacy according to gender, branch and professional experience. Conclusion: The coaches in the 28-32 age group were found to have higher self-efficacy and efficacy in impersonating than the coaches in the 33-37 age group on examining the results obtained. No differences were found between the participants in the other factors. Key Words: Self-efficacy, coaches, sport


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Fizek

Abstract Automation of play has become an ever more noticeable phenomenon in the domain of video games, expressed by self-playing game worlds, self-acting characters, and non-human agents traversing multiplayer spaces. This article proposes to look at AI-driven non-human play and, what follows, rethink digital games, taking into consideration their cybernetic nature, thus departing from the anthropocentric perspectives dominating the field of Game Studies. A decentralised posthumanist reading, as the author argues, not only allows to rethink digital games and play, but is a necessary condition to critically reflect AI, which due to the fictional character of video games, often plays by very different rules than the so-called “true” AI.


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