The Game Space of Dear Esther and Beyond

2016 ◽  
pp. 73-94
Author(s):  
Harrington Weihl
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Experimental Games ◽  
Formal Category

This chapter argues that the spaces created by video games are central to the formulation of player agency in the game. More precisely, this chapter analyzes several recent independent and experimental games—Dear Esther, Menagerie, and the work of games collective Arcane Kids—to argue that the dislocation or alienation of player agency through the formal category of game space has political and aesthetic significance. The dislocation of player agency sees ‘agency' taken away from the player and granted instead to the game space itself; players are placed at the mercy of the game space in such a way that their lack of agency is emphasized. The effect of this emphasis is to enable these games to critique the atomized, neoliberal undercurrents of contemporary cultural production.

Gaming Extractivism: Indigenous Resurgence, Unjust Infrastructures, and the Politics of Play in Elizabeth LaPensée’s Thunderbird Strike

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan B Kinder
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
North America ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Cultural Resistance ◽  
Resistance Analysis

Background: Indigenous-led struggles against fossil fuel infrastructure in North America have become increasingly visible. These struggles occur on the ground as well as through cultural production that performs cultural resistance. Analysis: This article examines Anishinaabe, Métis, and settler-Irish media theorist and artist Elizabeth LaPensée’s video game Thunderbird Strike as a form of Indigenous cultural resistance to extractivism. Conclusion and implications: Thunderbird Strike expresses the necessity of halting the expansion of extractivism by inviting players to participate in the sabotage of unjust infrastructure. In asking players to enact the very forms of generative resistance that the game articulates at a narratological level, Thunderbird Strike reveals the possibilities for video games to prefigure the transition to a decolonial, post-extractive future. Contexte : Les luttes menées par les groupes autochtones contre l’infrastructure des combustibles fossiles en Amérique du Nord deviennent de plus en plus visibles. Ces conflits se produisent sur les plans du territoire et de la « résistance culturelle ». Analyse : Cet article interroge Thunderbird Strike (2017), un jeu vidéo d’Elizabeth LaPensée—anishinaabe, métisse, irlandaise-canadienne—en tant que type de résistance autochtone culturelle aux pratiques extractivistes. Conclusion et implications : L’auteur démontre que Thunderbird Strike incite l’arrêt de l’extractivisme en invitant ses participants à saboter « l’infrastructure injuste ». En demandant aux participants de promulguer les formes de résistance générative que le jeu articule au niveau de la narratologie-même, Thunderbird Strike dévoile le potentiel des jeux vidéos de préfigurer la transition à un futur décolonial et post-extractif.  

scholarly journals Video Games & the Novel

Daedalus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 150 (01) ◽  
pp. 178-187
Author(s):  
Eric Hayot
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Video Game ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Video Game Industry ◽  
World Today ◽  
Game Industry

In the last sixty years, the video game industry has grown from quite literally nothing to a behemoth larger than the film or television industries. This enormous change in the shape of cultural production has failed to make much of an impact on the study of culture more generally, partly because video games seem so much less culturally important than novels. No one has ever imagined the Great American Video Game. But video games have more in common with novels than you might think, and vice versa. Anyone trying to understand the combination of neoliberal individualism and righteous murderousness that characterizes our world today will do well to pay them some attention.

scholarly journals Vampires in Video Games: Mythic Tropes for Innovative Storytelling

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Dillon ◽  
Anita Lundberg
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Malay Archipelago ◽  
History Of ◽  
Experimental Games ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Selection Of

This paper discusses traditional vampire tropes as a tool for innovation and novel experiences in the history of video games. A selection of games and vampires will be analysed in terms of  gameplay and storytelling elements to show how the rich  mythology and folklore that characterises these liminal beings can be successfully employed in a variety of settings and contexts. We draw on examples from the early days of video games with titles like “Dracula” (Imagic for Intellivision, 1982) set in a virtual London and evoking European folklore, to the rich possibilities offered by “Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines” (Activision for PC, 2004) which conjures up the sub-tropical New Orleans vampire tradition, and then turn to the latest experimental games using the example  of “Tainted” (ITE/NUS for PC, 2016), which taps into the rich Pontianak vampire-ghost myths of the Malay Archipelago. Different experiences will be discussed via explanatory lenses – such as  Labov’s (1972, 1997) narrative analysis and the AGE/6-11 framework (Dillon, 2010, 2016) – to gain insights into how to build compelling myth-based narrative in games in original and surprising ways. The paper also analyses how specific vampire myths reflect socio-cultural issues of particular times and places. Thus, every  telling of such myths – whether though oral tales, novels, cinema,  or video games – brings the myth alive to engage with liminal or repressed aspects of a society.

Video Games: Rules Required

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (19) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
LISA J. MERLO
Keyword(s):  
Video Games

Frustration and Violence in Mobile Video Games

2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-70
Author(s):  
Petr Květon ◽  
Martin Jelínek
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Implicit Association Test ◽  
Self Determination Theory ◽  
Psychological Needs ◽  
Basic Psychological Needs ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Mobile Video ◽  
Violent Content ◽  
Before And After

Abstract. This study tests two competing hypotheses, one based on the general aggression model (GAM), the other on the self-determination theory (SDT). GAM suggests that the crucial factor in video games leading to increased aggressiveness is their violent content; SDT contends that gaming is associated with aggression because of the frustration of basic psychological needs. We used a 2×2 between-subject experimental design with a sample of 128 undergraduates. We assigned each participant randomly to one experimental condition defined by a particular video game, using four mobile video games differing in the degree of violence and in the level of their frustration-invoking gameplay. Aggressiveness was measured using the implicit association test (IAT), administered before and after the playing of a video game. We found no evidence of an association between implicit aggressiveness and violent content or frustrating gameplay.

Hostile and Hardened? An Experimental Study on (De-)Sensitization to Violence and Suffering Through Playing Video Games

2008 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frithjof Staude-Müller ◽  
Thomas Bliesener ◽  
Stefanie Luthman
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Physiological Measurement ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Downward Spiral ◽  
Spiral Model ◽  
Post Hoc ◽  
Game Violence ◽  
First Person Shooter ◽  
Physiological Reactions

This study tests whether playing violent video games leads to desensitization and increased cardiovascular responding. In a laboratory experiment, 42 men spent 20 min playing either a high- or low-violence version of a “first-person shooter” game. Arousal (heart rate, respiration rate) was measured continuously. After playing the game, emotional responses to aversive and aggressive stimuli - pictures from Lang, Bradley, and Cuthbert’s (1999) International Affective Picture System - were assessed with self-ratings and physiological measurement (skin conductance). Results showed no differences in the judgments of emotional responses to the stimuli. However, different effects of game violence emerged in the physiological reactions to the different types of stimulus material. Participants in the high-violence condition showed significantly weaker reactions (desensitization) to aversive stimuli and reacted significantly more strongly (sensitization) to aggressive cues. No support was found for the arousal hypothesis. Post-hoc analyses are used to discuss possible moderating influences of gaming experience and player’s trait aggressiveness in terms of the General Aggression Model ( Anderson & Bushman, 2001 ) and the Downward Spiral Model ( Slater, Henry, Swaim, & Anderson, 2003 ).

Video Games and Emotion Regulation

GeroPsych ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 205-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn L. Ossenfort ◽  
Derek M. Isaacowitz
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Interactive Media ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Media Usage ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Media Preferences

Abstract. Research on age differences in media usage has shown that older adults are more likely than younger adults to select positive emotional content. Research on emotional aging has examined whether older adults also seek out positivity in the everyday situations they choose, resulting so far in mixed results. We investigated the emotional choices of different age groups using video games as a more interactive type of affect-laden stimuli. Participants made multiple selections from a group of positive and negative games. Results showed that older adults selected the more positive games, but also reported feeling worse after playing them. Results supplement the literature on positivity in situation selection as well as on older adults’ interactive media preferences.

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