Aspekty funkcjonowania gier cyfrowych we współczesnej kulturze: Studia przypadków to zbiór studiów poświęconych zarówno teoretycznemu, jak i praktycznemu wymiarowi badania gier cyfrowych. Centralny punkt zainteresowania tej książki... more
Aspekty funkcjonowania gier cyfrowych we współczesnej kulturze: Studia przypadków to zbiór studiów poświęconych zarówno teoretycznemu, jak i praktycznemu wymiarowi badania gier cyfrowych. Centralny punkt zainteresowania tej książki stanowią dwa zagadnienia związane z badaniem gier. Pierwszym z nich, będącym jednocześnie głównym celem tej publikacji, jest uporządkowanie terminologii związanej z grami oraz wyjaśnienie niejasności obecnych w tłumaczeniu i stosowaniu terminów w międzynarodowym dyskursie groznawczym oraz opisanie cech właściwych grom cyfrowym. Drugie zagadnienie stanowią rozmaite zjawiska związane z grami cyfrowymi, zbliżające do siebie graczy i twórców oraz takie, które sprzyjają łączeniu się graczy, tworzeniu społeczności i kreowaniu tożsamości. Książka skierowana jest do badaczy gier, a także do osób dopiero zapoznających się z tą tematyką.
Videogames are evolving as a medium, so in order to reach all kinds of audiences, games with very different types of gameplay and metaphors are being made. One of this new type of titles are disempowering fantasies, in which the player... more
Videogames are evolving as a medium, so in order to reach all kinds of audiences, games with very different types of gameplay and metaphors are being made. One of this new type of titles are disempowering fantasies, in which the player experiences a metaphor that has as an objective to make him/her feel weak or vulnerable. In order to understand this new phenomenon, we will analyze Darkest Dungeon (Red Hook, 2016), a game that uses the empathy that the player has for his characters to create a powerful experience that resonates with the players.
In this long critical reflection, I review the videogame Bioshock and engage with the academic discourse surrounding it. As a literary artefact, Bioshock uses its ludic medium to engage with and eventually deconstruct notions of freedom,... more
In this long critical reflection, I review the videogame Bioshock and engage with the academic discourse surrounding it. As a literary artefact, Bioshock uses its ludic medium to engage with and eventually deconstruct notions of freedom, agency, coercion and control in a presently unmatched way. The game has already received a great deal of critical attention, though some of it seems to miss the 'point.' Must gamers only ever interpret the mechanical rules of the game, or can designers allow for purely narrative/aesthetic choices? Bioshock is an important milestone in the history of videogames as an artistic medium and deserves the attention it is paid.
Agency has long been considered one of the core pleasures of interacting with digital games. Recent treatments of agency in games culture and game design have grown increasingly concerned with providing the player with limitless freedom... more
Agency has long been considered one of the core pleasures of interacting with digital games. Recent treatments of agency in games culture and game design have grown increasingly concerned with providing the player with limitless freedom to act. While this describes one form of pleasure, in narratively focused games it has the unfortunate consequence of pitting the agency of the player against the will of the designer. We contend that for narrative games it is valuable to refocus our definitions of agency on the notion of meaning, and propose a treatment of agency that emphasises communicative commitments. This form of agency draws on ideas from speech act theory, and relies on a degree of ‘communicative competence’ on the part of both the game designer and player in order to function. We discuss mechanisms for training players in the necessary literacies needed to commit to meanings in games, and provide an example analysis of a game that successfully accomplishes this task.
The paper explores several areas of game design which either stem or are closely connected to player agency. After a brief explanation of how player agency is different from the philosophical concept of agency, chapter one delves into... more
The paper explores several areas of game design which either stem or are closely connected to player agency. After a brief explanation of how player agency is different from the philosophical concept of agency, chapter one delves into problems directly resulting from player agency such as Heads-Up-Display immersion and flow from the perspective of the consumer. Chapter two analyses several cases in which game design was changed in order to accomodate for player agency and, in turn, how it can be used to encourage certain behaviours from the perspective of game designers. In the final chapter contained is a number of cases in which game systems bleed over to reality, e.g. in marketing campaigns. Some of them are positive, and others exploitative.
The purpose of the article is to show how video games can make their players feel, think, and reflect on their own actions and choices. Due to its participatory nature, a video game narrative evokes a personalised emotional response in... more
The purpose of the article is to show how video games can make their players feel, think, and reflect on their own actions and choices. Due to its participatory nature, a video game narrative evokes a personalised emotional response in the player, of a kind unprecedented in fiction. In the instant of Telltale’s fictional post-apocalypse The Walking Dead this personal emotional response primarily manifests itself in the feelings of discomfort and personal responsibility.
Player representation within the videogame is one of the main topics in Game Studies. Although the term “avatar” is commonly used, its meaning is not clearly defined and therefore can be misleading. In this paper, a new ... more
Player representation within the videogame is one of the main topics in Game Studies. Although the term “avatar” is commonly used, its meaning is not clearly defined and therefore can be misleading. In this paper, a new and more detailed concept is proposed: the “avatarness”, or the different formal factors of this representation, whether they are linked to a virtual subject or not. At the same time, a theoretical model for its analysis that breaks down all of these factors and a way of describing them in a functional, measurable and comparable manner is presented. In addition, the notion of “avatarization” is discussed as the process of converting an existing fictional character into a functional and fictional representation of the player.
To illustrate said model of avatarness, the case of Batman is studied through three games featuring the character: Batman (Ocean, 1986), the first work based on it, Batman (Sunsoft, 1990), published for the Nintendo Entertainment System and base don the film by Tim Burton and Batman: Arkham City (Rocksteady, 2011), a work that has been defined as the best playable adaptation of the Dark Knight. Each one represents a different design approach and help establish a first step towards the study of functional avatarization in transmedia products.
Abstract for the Presentation 'The Last Designer' delivered at the Thinking, Analysing and Designing Expressive Games conference, Université de Lorraine, Metz on November 24th and 25th 2014.
This paper examines the concept of agency within games and proposes a shift from the notion of agency as representing choice or freedom to one of agency as representing commitment to meaning. This conception of agency is aimed at... more
This paper examines the concept of agency within games and proposes a shift from the notion of agency as representing choice or freedom to one of agency as representing commitment to meaning. This conception of agency is aimed at understanding the pleasures of engaging with narratively rich games, and helps to address the tension between player choice and authorial intent. We draw on what speech act theory says about how trust, meaning and communication are achieved in human conversation, applying these notions to interactive storytelling. This new perspective on agency provides us with a better analytical tool for understanding the relationship between interaction and narrative pleasure, and provides a useful metric for designers of story-rich games.