I'm a Lecturer for the School of English and Media Studies at Massey University in New Zealand. Most of my work explores the ways in which a media form changes the experience of stories they mediate.
My primary research interests are: Digital media, media studies, + digital, popular and fan cultures.
Affective materiality is a tool for exploring how engaging with textual structures shapes the aff... more Affective materiality is a tool for exploring how engaging with textual structures shapes the affective experience of a story. The experience of video games is distinctive because their modes of engagement can lead to players feeling responsible for the decisions they make within the diegetic space of the game and its contextual storyworld. Night in the Woods and Undertale both use the perception of responsibility found in video game modes of engagement as an active storytelling tool, but apply it in different ways. Despite the differences in their contextual application, both games use affective materiality to encourage players to reflect on the consequences of their decisions in multiple arenas: within the context of the game, their engagement with other games and their engagement with the wider world. In doing so, both games apply storytelling techniques that distinguish playing video games from the experience of other media forms and encourage an empathetic engagement with fictional storyworlds.
Homestuck is a textual and experiential chameleon that manipulates its own structure to shape the... more Homestuck is a textual and experiential chameleon that manipulates its own structure to shape the audience’s affective experience of the story by mimicking not just the storytelling techniques of other media forms, but their modes of engagement as well. This article introduces terminology to illustrate how and why the online serial Homestuck qualifies as a distinctive form of storytelling. I introduce the term transmodal engagement to illustrate how Homestuck uses the affective, experiential affordances of different media forms to sculpt and shape the experience of the text in completely different ways to ‘transmedia’ storytelling. The second term this article introduces is metamedia storytelling, which describes how the audience’s familiarity with storytelling across multiple media forms can be used to manipulate their experience of fiction. Homestuck deploys metamedia storytelling to continually destabilise the reader’s understanding of the text and their investments in the storyworld by forcing re-evaluations of not just what is happening, but what kind of mediated relationship the readers have with the content of the story.
Gone Home is a videogame that uses storytelling specific to the ‘affective materiality’ of its me... more Gone Home is a videogame that uses storytelling specific to the ‘affective materiality’ of its medium to produce a sense of responsibility for the player, reinforcing their affective investment in the storyworld. The game employs this affective materiality for political ends – to create empathy for the queer sister of its protagonist – by placing it within a recent but unsympathetic historical moment. Gone Home understands nostalgia as a way to recognise the positive and negative elements of the past, and then reflect on them in order to take action for a better future. It uses nostalgia in this mode to highlight the differences in how progressive the western world is in treating LGBTQIA+ youth: through their own decisions, the player gets to know two young women as they come to terms with their sexuality and identities against a backdrop that is even less welcoming to difference than today. The historical and political engagement of the videogame resonates with attempts by museums ‘to educate or otherwise influence how people understand and use the past to understand themselves and others’, through embracing the links between recollection, affect, emotion and empathy.
The experience of videogames is distinct from other forms of mediated storytelling because the pe... more The experience of videogames is distinct from other forms of mediated storytelling because the person playing the game can come to feel responsible for events and characters within a fictional world due to dynamics within what Brendan Keogh calls the 'messy, hybrid assemblage' of videogame play: Games function through modes of engagement where people need to make decisions and take actions in order to proceed through a hybrid text, in a context that the player is affectively invested in, and which is personally relevant to both the player and their situation. A perception of responsibility grows out of that agency, since the player's decisions have a meaningful impact on a world and characters that they already invested in treating as if they were real.
The experience of engaging with the television show 'My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic' is stru... more The experience of engaging with the television show 'My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic' is structurally and affectively analogous to the experience of an alternate reality game. The community presents multiple tiers of engagement in which individual contributions can be recognized; the creators of the show include material with the specific intent that it be taken up by the community but without any control of the way in which it is used, and material created by the community is folded into the text by the creators in a dialogue. The context of the cocreative dialogue that surrounds the show and its community is a good example of both what Paul Booth identifies as a digi-gratis economy and the forensic fandom used by Jason Mittell to understand community engagement and response to 'Lost.'
Stories told through different media forms feel very distinctive from each other, to such an exte... more Stories told through different media forms feel very distinctive from each other, to such an extent that there are stories which can only be told through one media form -- at least, if preserving the distinctive affective quality of the experience is a priority. Is this due to something innate to the story which makes it hard to translate outside of its context, or is it the context itself that sets the experience apart? Phenomenology provides a way of understanding how the media-specific structures of textual storytelling can shape the experience of negotiating that text, through altering the affective processes associated with its navigation. This project argues that it is possible to distinguish amongst storytelling in multiple media forms by analysing how differences in textual structure (and the processes required to engage with them) shape the phenomenological experience of those texts. I apply an analytical framework of affective phenomenology to case-study forms of textual storytelling, including videogames, hypertext fiction, webcomics, and Alternate Reality Games. All of these case studies share a new media context, and so their outward similarities will highlight the differences in the experiences they present. I argue that hypertext fictions provide environments for readers to engage with, either as explorers negotiating unfamiliar territory, or detectives seeking connections between disparate material. The webcomic is distinguished from other forms of mediated storytelling by the amount of time spent engaging with characters within the text, which leads to a perception of intimacy as part of the experience. Videogames are set apart by the sense of responsibility felt by the player for events and their consequences within the Heideggerian world-of-concern established with the text and its characters. Alternate Reality Games are texts which function at the level of the community rather than the individual, are experienced as phenomenologically real, and are further distinguished by their textual boundaries functioning at the level of affective investment rather than the specific processes involved in negotiating the text. I argue that the definition of media texts should include how we engage with their textual structures, rather than focus purely on the textual structures themselves. Affective phenomenology and the process of analytical juxtaposition presented in this project provide the beginnings of a map for negotiating this new conceptual territory, and will become particularly relevant as texts and textual forms migrate across platforms.
Presently, academic criticism of games approaches them either as vehicles for the expression of n... more Presently, academic criticism of games approaches them either as vehicles for the expression of narrative, or as ‘ludic’ experiences where any aspects of traditional narratives are purely incidental to playing the game itself. Drawing on current critical work on videogames, theories of immersion, varying perspectives on narrative in games and on what games are, I argue that narrative theory is insufficient to deal with gaming. The interest of this thesis lies in the way that games enable narratives which are different in kind from narratives in other media, and in what gaming may have to teach us about more traditional forms of narrative. I use elements of actor-network theory and cybernetic studies in two case studies, Planescape: Torment and System Shock 2, to explain how narratives function in games through the ‘mechanical constitution’ of the subject or agent of the game. I argue that computer games achieve a different affect than other media by establishing a different relationship with their users through the mechanical constitution of a hybrid identity. Because of this different affect, games enable narratives which cannot be duplicated in other media without severe alteration to suit those media. The recombinant logic found in the hybrid causes the loss of the subjective element as a hybrid is created, hence narrative-theory cannot be usefully applied to games. I offer an alternative approach to narrative-theory, called the amniotic sac, which consolidates previous critical theories of the experience of gaming. In linking the immersive amniotic sac to previous studies of affect, such as those found in Reader-Response theory, I suggest that games are entering a post-narrativist space where affect replaces narrative in relevance.
Videogames bring science fiction into the affective present. By and large, videogame texts are st... more Videogames bring science fiction into the affective present. By and large, videogame texts are structured so that there is none of the mediation presented by the protagonists of books or films; instead, the relationships the player forms matter to them because they are personal. The agency provided to game players means that they have a direct relationship to the consequences of their actions, which give science fiction videogames impact at a personal level. Since videogames are distinguished by the player’s experience of the text, tools from phenomenology can be applied to consider how the player forms affective relationships with fictional characters and science fiction concepts. Affect, the dynamic and transportable zone of potential emotions, functions through cathexis, whereby an individual becomes invested in something regardless of what that may be. The investment occurs within a contextual world-of-concern which envelops the player and grounds his/her investment in the experience of the game’s story. The impact of having the player directly involved and affectively invested in the experience presents opportunities for inter-affective storytelling which would not be possible outside of an interactive context, since agency is a fundamental part of what makes the affective connection personal.
"Interactive Cinema" is a term that has been associated with videogames within historical media d... more "Interactive Cinema" is a term that has been associated with videogames within historical media discourse, particularly since the early nineties due to the proliferation of CD-ROM technology. It is also a fundamental misnomer, since the processes of experiential engagement presented by the textual structures of videogames and cinema are mutually exclusive.
The experience of cinematic texts is defined, in part, by the audience's lack of ability to alter events unfolding within the film's diegesis. In comparison, the experience of videogames is tied inextricably to the player's investment and involvement within the game's textual diegesis, and within a Heideggerian world-of-concern.
However, there has been a recent development that suggests a bridge between these two structures: texts which are less defined by their ludic qualities than by a set structure - but where the affective qualities of the experience rely entirely on the direct involvement of the person engaging with the text. These are a storytelling form which are neither "played" or "watched," and it may be that "interactive cinema" is an appropriate way of conceptualising these experiences.
Stories told through different media forms feel very distinctive from each other, to such an exte... more Stories told through different media forms feel very distinctive from each other, to such an extent that there are stories which can only be told through one media form – at least, if preserving the distinctive affective quality of the experience is a priority. Is this due to something innate to the story which makes it hard to translate outside of its context, or is it the context itself that sets the experience apart? Phenomenology provides a way of understanding how the media-specific structures of textual storytelling can shape the experience of negotiating that text, through altering the affective processes associated with navigating that form of text. I argue that it is possible to distinguish amongst storytelling in multiple media forms by analysing how differences in textual structure (and the processes required to engage with them) shape the phenomenological experience of those texts. Textual engagement in the context of new media storytelling produces Heideggerian worlds-of-concern which allow the people who engage with them to develop a sense of responsibility for their actions with regard to the text. Different forms of new media storytelling present distinctive contextual registers and affects experienced as part of negotiating the texts they mediate.
When considering the elements that shape our experience of fiction, the line distinguishing the t... more When considering the elements that shape our experience of fiction, the line distinguishing the text itself from the processes we go through in negotiating that text is easy to miss. Even something as simple as knowing roughly how far through a book we are as we read will influence our experience of the story. If the same story is moved into a hypertext context that eliminates that physical awareness from the experience, then that changes our mode of engagement.
Understanding how different modes of engagement shape our experiences of fiction will be helpful not just for the analysis of new media storytelling, but for understanding how we have already been telling stories for a very long time.
What sets the experience of videogames apart from other forms of mediated storytelling is that the person playing the game can come to feel responsible for events and characters within a fictional world.
Videogames bring science fiction into the affective present. By and large, videogame texts are st... more Videogames bring science fiction into the affective present. By and large, videogame texts are structured so that there is none of the mediation presented by the protagonists of books or films; instead, the relationships the player forms matter to them because they are personal. The agency provided to game players means that they have a direct relationship to the consequences of their actions, which give science fiction videogames impact at a personal level. In “System Shock 2,” the player is confronted with body-horror. Enemies yell for the player to hide or run away, even as those enemies cannot prevent their bodies from attacking, after being taken over by alien worms. “System Shock 2” then makes the body-horror personal by creating situations where the player questions her/his own humanity, due to cybernetic modification. The game asks the player, “What do you do? How does that feel?” The affective experience of videogame texts is distinct from that of other forms of media because the questions are directed to the players themselves, rather than to a character they identify with.
Since videogames are distinguished by the player’s experience of the text, tools from phenomenology can be applied to consider how the player forms affective relationships with fictional characters and science fiction concepts. Affect, the dynamic and transportable zone of potential emotions, functions through cathexis, whereby an individual becomes invested in something regardless of what that may be. The investment occurs within a contextual world-of-concern which envelops the player and grounds his/her investment in the experience of the game’s story.
The impact of having the player directly involved and affectively invested in the experience presents opportunities for inter-affective storytelling which would not be possible outside of an interactive context, since agency is a fundamental part of what makes the affective connection personal.
This book argues that online harassment communities function as Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) wh... more This book argues that online harassment communities function as Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) where the collective goal is to ruin peoples’ lives. Framing these communities like ARGs highlights ways to limit their impact in the future, partly through offering people better ways to control their own safety online.
The comparison also underlines the complicity of social networks in online harassment, since online harassment communities use their designs as tools. Social networks know this, and need to work on minimizing the problem, or acknowledge that they are profiting through promoting abuse.
Affective materiality is a tool for exploring how engaging with textual structures shapes the aff... more Affective materiality is a tool for exploring how engaging with textual structures shapes the affective experience of a story. The experience of video games is distinctive because their modes of engagement can lead to players feeling responsible for the decisions they make within the diegetic space of the game and its contextual storyworld. Night in the Woods and Undertale both use the perception of responsibility found in video game modes of engagement as an active storytelling tool, but apply it in different ways. Despite the differences in their contextual application, both games use affective materiality to encourage players to reflect on the consequences of their decisions in multiple arenas: within the context of the game, their engagement with other games and their engagement with the wider world. In doing so, both games apply storytelling techniques that distinguish playing video games from the experience of other media forms and encourage an empathetic engagement with fictional storyworlds.
Homestuck is a textual and experiential chameleon that manipulates its own structure to shape the... more Homestuck is a textual and experiential chameleon that manipulates its own structure to shape the audience’s affective experience of the story by mimicking not just the storytelling techniques of other media forms, but their modes of engagement as well. This article introduces terminology to illustrate how and why the online serial Homestuck qualifies as a distinctive form of storytelling. I introduce the term transmodal engagement to illustrate how Homestuck uses the affective, experiential affordances of different media forms to sculpt and shape the experience of the text in completely different ways to ‘transmedia’ storytelling. The second term this article introduces is metamedia storytelling, which describes how the audience’s familiarity with storytelling across multiple media forms can be used to manipulate their experience of fiction. Homestuck deploys metamedia storytelling to continually destabilise the reader’s understanding of the text and their investments in the storyworld by forcing re-evaluations of not just what is happening, but what kind of mediated relationship the readers have with the content of the story.
Gone Home is a videogame that uses storytelling specific to the ‘affective materiality’ of its me... more Gone Home is a videogame that uses storytelling specific to the ‘affective materiality’ of its medium to produce a sense of responsibility for the player, reinforcing their affective investment in the storyworld. The game employs this affective materiality for political ends – to create empathy for the queer sister of its protagonist – by placing it within a recent but unsympathetic historical moment. Gone Home understands nostalgia as a way to recognise the positive and negative elements of the past, and then reflect on them in order to take action for a better future. It uses nostalgia in this mode to highlight the differences in how progressive the western world is in treating LGBTQIA+ youth: through their own decisions, the player gets to know two young women as they come to terms with their sexuality and identities against a backdrop that is even less welcoming to difference than today. The historical and political engagement of the videogame resonates with attempts by museums ‘to educate or otherwise influence how people understand and use the past to understand themselves and others’, through embracing the links between recollection, affect, emotion and empathy.
The experience of videogames is distinct from other forms of mediated storytelling because the pe... more The experience of videogames is distinct from other forms of mediated storytelling because the person playing the game can come to feel responsible for events and characters within a fictional world due to dynamics within what Brendan Keogh calls the 'messy, hybrid assemblage' of videogame play: Games function through modes of engagement where people need to make decisions and take actions in order to proceed through a hybrid text, in a context that the player is affectively invested in, and which is personally relevant to both the player and their situation. A perception of responsibility grows out of that agency, since the player's decisions have a meaningful impact on a world and characters that they already invested in treating as if they were real.
The experience of engaging with the television show 'My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic' is stru... more The experience of engaging with the television show 'My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic' is structurally and affectively analogous to the experience of an alternate reality game. The community presents multiple tiers of engagement in which individual contributions can be recognized; the creators of the show include material with the specific intent that it be taken up by the community but without any control of the way in which it is used, and material created by the community is folded into the text by the creators in a dialogue. The context of the cocreative dialogue that surrounds the show and its community is a good example of both what Paul Booth identifies as a digi-gratis economy and the forensic fandom used by Jason Mittell to understand community engagement and response to 'Lost.'
Stories told through different media forms feel very distinctive from each other, to such an exte... more Stories told through different media forms feel very distinctive from each other, to such an extent that there are stories which can only be told through one media form -- at least, if preserving the distinctive affective quality of the experience is a priority. Is this due to something innate to the story which makes it hard to translate outside of its context, or is it the context itself that sets the experience apart? Phenomenology provides a way of understanding how the media-specific structures of textual storytelling can shape the experience of negotiating that text, through altering the affective processes associated with its navigation. This project argues that it is possible to distinguish amongst storytelling in multiple media forms by analysing how differences in textual structure (and the processes required to engage with them) shape the phenomenological experience of those texts. I apply an analytical framework of affective phenomenology to case-study forms of textual storytelling, including videogames, hypertext fiction, webcomics, and Alternate Reality Games. All of these case studies share a new media context, and so their outward similarities will highlight the differences in the experiences they present. I argue that hypertext fictions provide environments for readers to engage with, either as explorers negotiating unfamiliar territory, or detectives seeking connections between disparate material. The webcomic is distinguished from other forms of mediated storytelling by the amount of time spent engaging with characters within the text, which leads to a perception of intimacy as part of the experience. Videogames are set apart by the sense of responsibility felt by the player for events and their consequences within the Heideggerian world-of-concern established with the text and its characters. Alternate Reality Games are texts which function at the level of the community rather than the individual, are experienced as phenomenologically real, and are further distinguished by their textual boundaries functioning at the level of affective investment rather than the specific processes involved in negotiating the text. I argue that the definition of media texts should include how we engage with their textual structures, rather than focus purely on the textual structures themselves. Affective phenomenology and the process of analytical juxtaposition presented in this project provide the beginnings of a map for negotiating this new conceptual territory, and will become particularly relevant as texts and textual forms migrate across platforms.
Presently, academic criticism of games approaches them either as vehicles for the expression of n... more Presently, academic criticism of games approaches them either as vehicles for the expression of narrative, or as ‘ludic’ experiences where any aspects of traditional narratives are purely incidental to playing the game itself. Drawing on current critical work on videogames, theories of immersion, varying perspectives on narrative in games and on what games are, I argue that narrative theory is insufficient to deal with gaming. The interest of this thesis lies in the way that games enable narratives which are different in kind from narratives in other media, and in what gaming may have to teach us about more traditional forms of narrative. I use elements of actor-network theory and cybernetic studies in two case studies, Planescape: Torment and System Shock 2, to explain how narratives function in games through the ‘mechanical constitution’ of the subject or agent of the game. I argue that computer games achieve a different affect than other media by establishing a different relationship with their users through the mechanical constitution of a hybrid identity. Because of this different affect, games enable narratives which cannot be duplicated in other media without severe alteration to suit those media. The recombinant logic found in the hybrid causes the loss of the subjective element as a hybrid is created, hence narrative-theory cannot be usefully applied to games. I offer an alternative approach to narrative-theory, called the amniotic sac, which consolidates previous critical theories of the experience of gaming. In linking the immersive amniotic sac to previous studies of affect, such as those found in Reader-Response theory, I suggest that games are entering a post-narrativist space where affect replaces narrative in relevance.
Videogames bring science fiction into the affective present. By and large, videogame texts are st... more Videogames bring science fiction into the affective present. By and large, videogame texts are structured so that there is none of the mediation presented by the protagonists of books or films; instead, the relationships the player forms matter to them because they are personal. The agency provided to game players means that they have a direct relationship to the consequences of their actions, which give science fiction videogames impact at a personal level. Since videogames are distinguished by the player’s experience of the text, tools from phenomenology can be applied to consider how the player forms affective relationships with fictional characters and science fiction concepts. Affect, the dynamic and transportable zone of potential emotions, functions through cathexis, whereby an individual becomes invested in something regardless of what that may be. The investment occurs within a contextual world-of-concern which envelops the player and grounds his/her investment in the experience of the game’s story. The impact of having the player directly involved and affectively invested in the experience presents opportunities for inter-affective storytelling which would not be possible outside of an interactive context, since agency is a fundamental part of what makes the affective connection personal.
"Interactive Cinema" is a term that has been associated with videogames within historical media d... more "Interactive Cinema" is a term that has been associated with videogames within historical media discourse, particularly since the early nineties due to the proliferation of CD-ROM technology. It is also a fundamental misnomer, since the processes of experiential engagement presented by the textual structures of videogames and cinema are mutually exclusive.
The experience of cinematic texts is defined, in part, by the audience's lack of ability to alter events unfolding within the film's diegesis. In comparison, the experience of videogames is tied inextricably to the player's investment and involvement within the game's textual diegesis, and within a Heideggerian world-of-concern.
However, there has been a recent development that suggests a bridge between these two structures: texts which are less defined by their ludic qualities than by a set structure - but where the affective qualities of the experience rely entirely on the direct involvement of the person engaging with the text. These are a storytelling form which are neither "played" or "watched," and it may be that "interactive cinema" is an appropriate way of conceptualising these experiences.
Stories told through different media forms feel very distinctive from each other, to such an exte... more Stories told through different media forms feel very distinctive from each other, to such an extent that there are stories which can only be told through one media form – at least, if preserving the distinctive affective quality of the experience is a priority. Is this due to something innate to the story which makes it hard to translate outside of its context, or is it the context itself that sets the experience apart? Phenomenology provides a way of understanding how the media-specific structures of textual storytelling can shape the experience of negotiating that text, through altering the affective processes associated with navigating that form of text. I argue that it is possible to distinguish amongst storytelling in multiple media forms by analysing how differences in textual structure (and the processes required to engage with them) shape the phenomenological experience of those texts. Textual engagement in the context of new media storytelling produces Heideggerian worlds-of-concern which allow the people who engage with them to develop a sense of responsibility for their actions with regard to the text. Different forms of new media storytelling present distinctive contextual registers and affects experienced as part of negotiating the texts they mediate.
When considering the elements that shape our experience of fiction, the line distinguishing the t... more When considering the elements that shape our experience of fiction, the line distinguishing the text itself from the processes we go through in negotiating that text is easy to miss. Even something as simple as knowing roughly how far through a book we are as we read will influence our experience of the story. If the same story is moved into a hypertext context that eliminates that physical awareness from the experience, then that changes our mode of engagement.
Understanding how different modes of engagement shape our experiences of fiction will be helpful not just for the analysis of new media storytelling, but for understanding how we have already been telling stories for a very long time.
What sets the experience of videogames apart from other forms of mediated storytelling is that the person playing the game can come to feel responsible for events and characters within a fictional world.
Videogames bring science fiction into the affective present. By and large, videogame texts are st... more Videogames bring science fiction into the affective present. By and large, videogame texts are structured so that there is none of the mediation presented by the protagonists of books or films; instead, the relationships the player forms matter to them because they are personal. The agency provided to game players means that they have a direct relationship to the consequences of their actions, which give science fiction videogames impact at a personal level. In “System Shock 2,” the player is confronted with body-horror. Enemies yell for the player to hide or run away, even as those enemies cannot prevent their bodies from attacking, after being taken over by alien worms. “System Shock 2” then makes the body-horror personal by creating situations where the player questions her/his own humanity, due to cybernetic modification. The game asks the player, “What do you do? How does that feel?” The affective experience of videogame texts is distinct from that of other forms of media because the questions are directed to the players themselves, rather than to a character they identify with.
Since videogames are distinguished by the player’s experience of the text, tools from phenomenology can be applied to consider how the player forms affective relationships with fictional characters and science fiction concepts. Affect, the dynamic and transportable zone of potential emotions, functions through cathexis, whereby an individual becomes invested in something regardless of what that may be. The investment occurs within a contextual world-of-concern which envelops the player and grounds his/her investment in the experience of the game’s story.
The impact of having the player directly involved and affectively invested in the experience presents opportunities for inter-affective storytelling which would not be possible outside of an interactive context, since agency is a fundamental part of what makes the affective connection personal.
This book argues that online harassment communities function as Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) wh... more This book argues that online harassment communities function as Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) where the collective goal is to ruin peoples’ lives. Framing these communities like ARGs highlights ways to limit their impact in the future, partly through offering people better ways to control their own safety online.
The comparison also underlines the complicity of social networks in online harassment, since online harassment communities use their designs as tools. Social networks know this, and need to work on minimizing the problem, or acknowledge that they are profiting through promoting abuse.
Uploads
Papers by Kevin Veale
I introduce the term transmodal engagement to illustrate how Homestuck uses the affective, experiential affordances of different media forms to sculpt and shape the experience of the text in completely different ways to ‘transmedia’ storytelling.
The second term this article introduces is metamedia storytelling, which describes how the audience’s familiarity with storytelling across multiple media forms can be used to manipulate their experience of fiction. Homestuck deploys metamedia storytelling to continually destabilise the reader’s understanding of the text and their investments in the storyworld by forcing re-evaluations of not just what is happening, but what kind of mediated relationship the readers have with the content of the story.
Since videogames are distinguished by the player’s experience of the text, tools from phenomenology can be applied to consider how the player forms affective relationships with fictional characters and science fiction concepts. Affect, the dynamic and transportable zone of potential emotions, functions through cathexis, whereby an individual becomes invested in something regardless of what that may be. The investment occurs within a contextual world-of-concern which envelops the player and grounds his/her investment in the experience of the game’s story.
The impact of having the player directly involved and affectively invested in the experience presents opportunities for inter-affective storytelling which would not be possible outside of an interactive context, since agency is a fundamental part of what makes the affective connection personal.
Key Words: Affect, immersion, responsibility
The experience of cinematic texts is defined, in part, by the audience's lack of ability to alter events unfolding within the film's diegesis. In comparison, the experience of videogames is tied inextricably to the player's investment and involvement within the game's textual diegesis, and within a Heideggerian world-of-concern.
However, there has been a recent development that suggests a bridge between these two structures: texts which are less defined by their ludic qualities than by a set structure - but where the affective qualities of the experience rely entirely on the direct involvement of the person engaging with the text. These are a storytelling form which are neither "played" or "watched," and it may be that "interactive cinema" is an appropriate way of conceptualising these experiences.
Key Words: Affect, alterbiography, ergodicity, interactive cinema, phenomenology, responsibility, tmesis, textual structure, world-of-concern
Talks by Kevin Veale
Phenomenology provides a way of understanding how the media-specific structures of textual storytelling can shape the experience of negotiating that text, through altering the affective processes associated with navigating that form of text.
I argue that it is possible to distinguish amongst storytelling in multiple media forms by analysing how differences in textual structure (and the processes required to engage with them) shape the phenomenological experience of those texts. Textual engagement in the context of new media storytelling produces Heideggerian worlds-of-concern which allow the people who engage with them to develop a sense of responsibility for their actions with regard to the text. Different forms of new media storytelling present distinctive contextual registers and affects experienced as part of negotiating the texts they mediate.
Understanding how different modes of engagement shape our experiences of fiction will be helpful not just for the analysis of new media storytelling, but for understanding how we have already been telling stories for a very long time.
What sets the experience of videogames apart from other forms of mediated storytelling is that the person playing the game can come to feel responsible for events and characters within a fictional world.
Since videogames are distinguished by the player’s experience of the text, tools from phenomenology can be applied to consider how the player forms affective relationships with fictional characters and science fiction concepts. Affect, the dynamic and transportable zone of potential emotions, functions through cathexis, whereby an individual becomes invested in something regardless of what that may be. The investment occurs within a contextual world-of-concern which envelops the player and grounds his/her investment in the experience of the game’s story.
The impact of having the player directly involved and affectively invested in the experience presents opportunities for inter-affective storytelling which would not be possible outside of an interactive context, since agency is a fundamental part of what makes the affective connection personal.
Books by Kevin Veale
The comparison also underlines the complicity of social networks in online harassment, since online harassment communities use their designs as tools. Social networks know this, and need to work on minimizing the problem, or acknowledge that they are profiting through promoting abuse.
I introduce the term transmodal engagement to illustrate how Homestuck uses the affective, experiential affordances of different media forms to sculpt and shape the experience of the text in completely different ways to ‘transmedia’ storytelling.
The second term this article introduces is metamedia storytelling, which describes how the audience’s familiarity with storytelling across multiple media forms can be used to manipulate their experience of fiction. Homestuck deploys metamedia storytelling to continually destabilise the reader’s understanding of the text and their investments in the storyworld by forcing re-evaluations of not just what is happening, but what kind of mediated relationship the readers have with the content of the story.
Since videogames are distinguished by the player’s experience of the text, tools from phenomenology can be applied to consider how the player forms affective relationships with fictional characters and science fiction concepts. Affect, the dynamic and transportable zone of potential emotions, functions through cathexis, whereby an individual becomes invested in something regardless of what that may be. The investment occurs within a contextual world-of-concern which envelops the player and grounds his/her investment in the experience of the game’s story.
The impact of having the player directly involved and affectively invested in the experience presents opportunities for inter-affective storytelling which would not be possible outside of an interactive context, since agency is a fundamental part of what makes the affective connection personal.
Key Words: Affect, immersion, responsibility
The experience of cinematic texts is defined, in part, by the audience's lack of ability to alter events unfolding within the film's diegesis. In comparison, the experience of videogames is tied inextricably to the player's investment and involvement within the game's textual diegesis, and within a Heideggerian world-of-concern.
However, there has been a recent development that suggests a bridge between these two structures: texts which are less defined by their ludic qualities than by a set structure - but where the affective qualities of the experience rely entirely on the direct involvement of the person engaging with the text. These are a storytelling form which are neither "played" or "watched," and it may be that "interactive cinema" is an appropriate way of conceptualising these experiences.
Key Words: Affect, alterbiography, ergodicity, interactive cinema, phenomenology, responsibility, tmesis, textual structure, world-of-concern
Phenomenology provides a way of understanding how the media-specific structures of textual storytelling can shape the experience of negotiating that text, through altering the affective processes associated with navigating that form of text.
I argue that it is possible to distinguish amongst storytelling in multiple media forms by analysing how differences in textual structure (and the processes required to engage with them) shape the phenomenological experience of those texts. Textual engagement in the context of new media storytelling produces Heideggerian worlds-of-concern which allow the people who engage with them to develop a sense of responsibility for their actions with regard to the text. Different forms of new media storytelling present distinctive contextual registers and affects experienced as part of negotiating the texts they mediate.
Understanding how different modes of engagement shape our experiences of fiction will be helpful not just for the analysis of new media storytelling, but for understanding how we have already been telling stories for a very long time.
What sets the experience of videogames apart from other forms of mediated storytelling is that the person playing the game can come to feel responsible for events and characters within a fictional world.
Since videogames are distinguished by the player’s experience of the text, tools from phenomenology can be applied to consider how the player forms affective relationships with fictional characters and science fiction concepts. Affect, the dynamic and transportable zone of potential emotions, functions through cathexis, whereby an individual becomes invested in something regardless of what that may be. The investment occurs within a contextual world-of-concern which envelops the player and grounds his/her investment in the experience of the game’s story.
The impact of having the player directly involved and affectively invested in the experience presents opportunities for inter-affective storytelling which would not be possible outside of an interactive context, since agency is a fundamental part of what makes the affective connection personal.
The comparison also underlines the complicity of social networks in online harassment, since online harassment communities use their designs as tools. Social networks know this, and need to work on minimizing the problem, or acknowledge that they are profiting through promoting abuse.