scholarly journals Dressing Commander Shepard in pink: Queer playing in a heteronormative game culture

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tereza Krobová ◽  
Ondřej Moravec ◽  
Jaroslav Švelch
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Mass Effect ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Mutual Exclusivity ◽  
Heterosexual Male ◽  
Imaginative Play ◽  
Gay Communities ◽  
Age Series

This article explores the strategies of queer playing of video games and their relationship to the heteronormative game culture. Its premise is that most video games are, either implicitly or explicitly, heteronormative and the inscribed player of such games is in the majority of cases a heterosexual male. In order to achieve the same level of identification with an avatar and to enjoy a similar gameplay experience as the heterosexual player, the LGBT player may have to deploy various strategies to challenge the game and work around it, or to find the LGBT content which some more progressive games offer. The study is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with six players (5 males and 1 female) who identified themselves both as homosexual and as players of the Mass Effect or Dragon Age series, games that include several opportunities to initiate same-sex romance. We have identified three different queer playing strategies: imaginative play (queer reading of unspecified or heterosexual characters), stylized performance (the use of gay stereotypes to mark one as queer) and role-playing of a LGBT character. However, players do not seek sexuality in games to the same extent as they do in film or TV, and they tend to use these strategies, and especially the latter two, reluctantly or with reservations. These reservations may be linked to our finding that LGBT players consider their gay (or lesbian) identities disconnected from their identities as players or gamers. This can be explained by the mutual exclusivity of gay communities and the heteronormative game culture.

Ars Erotica

2020 ◽  
pp. 112-149
Author(s):  
Christopher B. Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Role Play ◽  
Mass Effect ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Sexual Role ◽  
Power Differentials ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Material Process ◽  
Liberal Tolerance

This chapter compares narratives of digital utopia against the turgid material process of factory labor in Asia. It begins by exploring how role-playing video games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Guild Wars 2, and others shore up evidence for digital utopia by enacting its values of liberal tolerance, freedom, and egalitarianism within a virtual realm. Yet played erotically, role playing offers new connections between the empire and its Asian provinces through playing a role, an act characteristic of the power positions of sexual role play (domination and subjugation). Using Michel Foucault’s theories of ars erotica and aphrodisia, this chapter argues that role playing bounds the gamelike, the queer, and the erotic, as all develop rule-based fantasy worlds with hierarchized avatars or roles. Role play can make explicit the transnational power differentials that function as digital utopia’s conditions of possibility.

What qualities can make TRPG more appealing to new players?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Huayu Liu
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Primary Language ◽  
Design Problems ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
Design Elements ◽  
Board Games ◽  
Role Playing Games

<p>Tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) have more than 40 years of history and have achieved far-reaching influence, especially in countries where English is the primary language. However, even though many new games appear every year, TRPGs still does not occupy a dominant position in the game market. Most gamers prefer video games and board games to TRPG. The aim of this project is to use qualitative analysis to investigate which parts of TRPG design prohibit players from engaging with TRPGs and then to create a novel TRPG that addresses these design problems. This project will combine newly formulated design elements into a game designed to attract new players and ensure that player engagement is sustained in subsequent play. The project focuses on the example of China, where many people play video games and board games, but few know about or play TRPGs. Therefore, this research will mainly study the gaming behaviour and feedback of Chinese participants to study what methods can attract Chinese players to TRPGs.</p>

The Persuasive Language of Action

2014 ◽  
pp. 113-129
Author(s):  
Martin van Velsen
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Digital Video ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Digital Rhetoric ◽  
Current Generation ◽  
Role Playing Games ◽  
Body Of Knowledge

Besides the visual splendor pervasive in the current generation of digital video games, especially those where players roam simulated landscapes and imaginary worlds, few efforts have looked at the resources available to embed human meaning into a game's experience. From the art of persuasion to the mechanics of meaning-making in digital video games and table-top role playing games, this chapter investigates the changes and new opportunities available that can extend our understanding of digital rhetoric. Starting with a breakdown of the role of choice, workable models from psychology and the untapped body of knowledge from table-top role playing games are shown to allow game designers to enrich their products with a deeper human experience.

An Overview of Child Abuses in 3D Social Networks and Online Video Games

2012 ◽  
pp. 101-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel A. Garcia-Ruiz ◽  
Miguel Vargas Martin ◽  
Patrik Olsson
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Child Abuse ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Second Life ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Child Pornography ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Text Messages ◽  
Ethical And Legal Issues ◽  
Network Approaches

It appears that child pornography distribution and child abuses on the Internet have permeated to massively multiplayer online role-playing video games (MMORPG) and 3D social networks, such as Second Life (SL), a compelling online virtual world where millions of users have registered. Although SL is intended for general entertainment in its adult (over 18) version, cases of simulated pedophilia have been reported inside SL’s virtual world, generated by some of its users, employing SL communication capabilities to trade and show child pornography images to exchange related text messages. This chapter provides a literature review on child pornography in MMORPGs and other 3D social networks including SL, as well as policy and network approaches for overcoming child abuse. A review on ethical and legal issues of dealing with child pornography and other types of child abuse in 3D social networks and MMORPGs is also addressed in this chapter.

Does Anyone Really Identify with FemShep?

Gamer Trouble ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 137-170
Author(s):  
Amanda Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Mass Effect ◽  
Audre Lorde ◽  
Black Feminists ◽  
Diversity And Inclusion ◽  
The Future ◽  
Female Version

This chapter argues that we should understand identity in video games as a way to value incommensurable difference rather than organized diversity. It focuses on FemShep, the female version of the Mass Effect trilogy’s Commander Shepard, who became an icon of diversity and inclusion in conversations about video games. FemShep is not a fully realized woman in her own right, but a character designed as a man and minimally altered to become a “woman.” The chapter explores the ways that Mass Effect betrays these origins through improbable animations and relationship choices, comparing it to similar oversights in Lionhead Studios’ Fable 2, and then suggests that it is the fact that FemShep is not a fully realized character that makes her a useful rallying point for political gamers. The chapter closes by drawing from Black feminists Kara Keeling and Audre Lorde to propose that “unity in difference” is the future (and past) of identity politics, and that the individualist war hero so popular in video games is no way to implement a politics of coalition and justice.

Educational Games to Support Caring and Compassion Among Youth

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sinem Siyahhan ◽  
Adam A. Ingram-Goble ◽  
Sasha Barab ◽  
Maria Solomou
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Educational Games ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Academic Learning ◽  
Design Work ◽  
Design Decisions ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Work Identity ◽  
Design Elements ◽  
Role Playing Game

In this paper, the authors argue that video games offer unique and pervasive opportunities for children to develop social dispositions that are necessary to succeed in the 21st century. To this end, they discuss the design of TavCats—a virtual role-playing game that aimed to engage children (ages 9 to 13) in understanding, acting upon, and coming to value being caring and compassionate. The authors' discussion takes the form of a design narrative through which they explain the connections between their theoretical commitments and design decisions. Specifically, they review four design elements they utilized in their design work: identity claims, boundary objects, profession trajectories, and cyclic gameplay. The authors briefly share their observations from a pilot study with children in an afterschool setting to illustrate how their design work might be realized in the world. They conclude their paper with a discussion of the implications of their work for designing educational video games for supporting social dispositions as well as academic learning, and future directions.

“They May Be Pixels, But They're MY Pixels:” Developing a Metric of Character Attachment in Role-Playing Video Games

2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 515-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa L. Lewis ◽  
René Weber ◽  
Nicholas David Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Role Playing

Putting Pleasure First: Localizing Japanese Video Games

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minako O’Hagan
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Digital Platform ◽  
Global Industry ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Localization Model ◽  
Role Playing Game ◽  
A Chain ◽  
Research Domain

Since their humble beginnings, video games have undergone huge technological advances, becoming a significant global industry today and highlighting the role played by translation and localization. Despite the continuing localization activities undertaken in the industry, translation studies (TS) have not paid much attention to video games as a research domain. Drawing on the author’s previous work on the Japanese Role Playing Game (RPG) Final Fantasy titles, this paper attempts to demonstrate the ample research scope that this domain presents for TS scholars. In particular, it discusses the unique localization model used by Final Fantasy’s Japanese publisher, illustrating how the games’ new digital platform allows the (re)creation of a new gameplaying pleasure directly through the localization process itself. In this model, the original game merely sets off a chain of improvements through localization. In turn, understanding the different pleasures drawn from different localized versions of games will contribute useful insights into emerging games research.

scholarly journals Straight-washing "Undertale": Video games and the limits of LGBTQ representation

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonnie Ruberg
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
Innovative Design ◽  
Heterosexual Male

A widely beloved video game, Undertale (Toby Fox, 2015) has proven popular with players, reviewers, and commentators from across sectors of games culture that often hold conflicting views. What makes Undertale's broad appeal particularly surprising is its queer content, which can be found in both the game's representational and interactive elements. As many have observed, homophobic attitudes have long characterized reactionary gamer subcultures, which are often explicitly hostile toward diversity. Yet these subcultures are also among those most vocal in their appreciation of Undertale. What explains this seeming contradiction? While it is tempting to interpret this phenomenon as a sign that gamer culture is becoming more inclusive, a critique of the discourse surrounding the game's reception reveals that Undertale has in fact been straight-washed by many writers and fans. This straightwashing entails both an erasure of the queerness found in Undertale and a recasting of the game as one that jibes with the interests of heterosexual male gamers, such as innovative design, player mastery, nostalgia, and humor. At a moment when diversity has become central to academic and popular discussions of video games, increased LGBTQ representation is often presented as the ready-made fix to antiqueer discrimination. Yet the straightwashing of Undertale serves as a cautionary tale. It suggests that the cultural impact of LGBTQ representation in video games has its own limitations, and that a game with queer characters may not only fail to change the mindsets of straight players; it may itself be stripped of its queer potential by its reception.

scholarly journals IMPLEMENTASI ALGORITMA A-STAR PADA PERMAINAN KOMPUTER ROGUELIKE BERBASIS UNITY

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendi Hermawan ◽  
Hari Setiyani
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Shortest Path ◽  
System Development ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Development Model ◽  
Prototype System ◽  
Role Playing Games ◽  
The Right

<p><em>There are many genres found in video games, one of which is role-playing games (RPGs). Roguelike was originally a type of RPG subgenre whose game was based on a risk-aware pattern. The Roguelike game is synonymous with games that require players to play efficiently in order to minimize the risk of losing game progress. This research is in the form of making a Roguelike game by implementing the A-star algorithm to search for the shortest path in the process of chasing enemies against player characters. Overall, this final assignment research is carried out by applying a prototype system development model. The results of this study are able to prove that using the A-star algorithm is one of the right methods for the shortest search in the process of chasing enemies against player characters.</em></p><p><strong><em>Keywords</em></strong><em>: </em><em>A-star, Roguelike, unity</em><em></em></p>

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