Video Game Spaces Research Articles

“You Feel Like You’ve Found a Place Where You Belong”: Symbolic Interactionism and Online Social Video Games in the Age of COVID-19

This paper investigates how players perceive and understand the sociality afforded by online social video games (OSGs), framed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing data from semi-structured interviews ( n = 20), we apply Blumer’s concept of symbolic interactionism to explore the ways in which video games take on new meanings in co-constructed, collaborative and contributory digital spaces. We argue (a) that games offer a meaningful social experience, (b) that this sociality flourishes due to the perceived lack of social risk particularly due to OSG characteristics of perceived or real anonymity, (c) that this works to facilitate social development, and (d) that these characteristics were valuable in the context of a pandemic at a time of reduced social interaction. Our contribution shows that online video game spaces alter the risk profile of forming and maintaining connections by reframing interaction as the cooperation toward shared goals.

Preference-Learning Emitters for Mixed-Initiative Quality-Diversity Algorithms

In mixed-initiative co-creation tasks, wherein a human and a machine jointly create items, it is important to provide multiple relevant suggestions to the designer. Quality-diversity algorithms are commonly used for this purpose, as they can provide diverse suggestions that represent salient areas of the solution space, showcasing designs with high fitness and wide variety. Because generated suggestions drive the search process, it is important that they provide inspiration, but also stay aligned with the designer's intentions. Additionally, often many interactions with the system are required before the designer is content with a solution. In this work, we tackle these challenges with an interactive constrained MAP-Elites system that leverages emitters to learn the preferences of the designer and then use them in automated steps. By learning preferences, the generated designs remain aligned with the designer's intent, and by applying automatic steps, we generate more solutions per user interaction, giving a larger number of choices to the designer and thereby speeding up the search. We propose a general framework for preference-learning emitters (PLEs) and apply it to a procedural content generation task in the video game Space Engineers. We built an interactive application for our algorithm and performed a user study with players.

LOCALIZATION PECULIARITIES IN VIDEOGAME PLACE NAMES AND ANTHROPONYMS TRANSLATION

Place names and anthroponyms translation in fantasy videogames is important in the process of the game space localization and cultural adaptation. 500 place names and 500 anthroponyms and their translation into Russian are analyzed on the material of three fantasy videogames. The main translation transformations of place names include calquing, transliteration and transcribing. The most frequently used means of localizing anthroponyms in videogames include transliteration, transcribing and calquing. Both national and cultural peculiarities of the original proper name can be preserved in translation and cultural adaptation can be used for the better videogame space perception. Translation misrepresentations in transcribing and transliterating place names are analyzed, the main groups of anthroponyms translated by calquing are specified.

Видеоигровая медиариторика: уровни и характеристики

The paper aims to identify the specifics of the representation of video-game media rhetoric in the modern so-cio-cultural space. This problem is analyzed from the standpoint of the sociology of culture. In the course of the research, along with general scientific methods, the methodology of sociological and linguistic knowledge was used. It is emphasized that the specific feature of video-game space is dynamism, which is peculiarly reflected in the speech practice of gamers, causing the desire to simplify it. Three groups of videogame terminology, ranked by the degree of prevalence of the corresponding words, terms and turns in the gamer environment, are identified: local, global and hyper-level. There is a large number of anglicisms in video game media rhetoric, the reasons for this are identified and analyzed. The authors define, analyze and give concrete examples of word formation methods within the framework of video-game media rhetoric – transcription, transliteration, calcification, semi-calcification. It is also shown on the basis of which principles the speech interaction between gamers is carried out.

Gaming & Geography (Education): Gaming and Geography (Educa-tion): A Model of Reflexive Analysis of Space and Action in Video Games

Since philosophical turns such as the spatial turn etc., geography has been dealing more intensively with the subjective per-ception and construction of space. Video games, and especially the vast digital spaces therein, are developed by teams of programmers, developers, and designers who make creative spatial construction decisions based on different worldviews, experiences, values, and skills. These processes result in a specific intended spatial experience for players to traverse. How-ever, these players also approach the games with certain worldviews, prior experiences, values, etc., and the question arises to what extent spatial experiences can be intentionally passed through and what consequences the perception has for the (young) players we address with geography instruction. Thus, there is undoubtedly communication be-tween both sides about digital space in video games. Furthermore, the question arises what role the creation of digital spaces in the games plays for the experience, understanding and reception of real analog spaces as well as for the further competences of stu-dents like, exemplary, in the field of sustainability or decision reflections. Thus, it cannot be dismissed that an engagement with video games should play a stronger role in the context of addressing the reflection of spatial perceptions and construc-tions in geography education. Yet, they are still largely underrepresented in studies of geography education and many stud-ies lack sufficient empirical proof and orientation for teacher professionalization. In the paper, results from the research pro-ject "Gaming & Geography" will be presented, which attempts to create further legitimizing foundations for the integration of video games as a medium in the didactic discourse of geography via a mixed method a-proach and transfer services for teachers. Based on the research in the project, a model for reflexive analysis of digital space and action in video games will also be presented, which should facilitate a stronger and more serious didactic integration of video games in geographic education. The results of the study provide a significant contribution to take the medium of video games as a geographical medium more seriously and the study provides further establishment measures to use the presented model didactically, be-cause they show that students actively engage in geographic contexts in games, they reflect on the contexts presented and the experts encourage the necessity of the presented model.

Simulating Dissociation: The Psychedelic Experience and Videogame Space

In this essay, the author details their own original experiments with using the qualities of psychedelic experiences, specifically those brought on by the atypical psychedelic, salvia divinorum, to inform game design. It discusses the brief history of games designed with varying levels of influence from psychedelic drugs and culture. It details the benefits of this approach, such as the development of design strategies that are potentially useful in creating simulations that provoke empathy for symptoms of mental illness, suggesting paths for future exploration.

VIDEOGAMES AS A SPACE FOR RECONSTRUCTING MYTHOLOGICAL STRUCTURES

The article is dedicated to the cultural-philosophical study of the video game space as a place for the reconstruction of archaic mythological structures. The study of narrative video games, which emerged in the early 1980s, represents new media that interactively transmit mythological motifs into the gaming experience. To identify and study mythological elements in video games, the methodological basis includes the works of C.G. Jung and C. Kerényi, who developed concepts of archetypes in culture. Also utilized is the concept of the monomyth by J. Campbell, which involves the realization of the hero's journey cycle initially in legends and myths, and later in narrative artistic structures. The novelty of the study is determined by the low level of research into the replication of mythological elements in the environment of new interactive media. Analyzing the universality of myth in gaming realms is part of a comprehensive approach to studying the phenomenon of video games and is an important element of the non-reductionist concept in the field of Game Studies. The relevance of the work lies in the need to comprehend the video game experience as a practice of personal living through history by the player, rather than passive contemplation. The study identified trends in constructing plots in narrative games according to the principles of the monomyth. In narrative games of the late 20th century, we find more primitive expressions of monomyth elements, often associated with technological limitations in construct implementation. Instead, video games of the past two decades reflect the monomyth in its entirety, characterized by complications and repetitions of the hero's journey stages. Equally pronounced are the reconstructions of archetypes and archetypal figures in the video game space. Thus, among the first archetypal figures in the gaming industry are the images of the hero, translated into the player's avatar, the damsel in distress - as a plot-forming element, and the gatekeeper, realized in level bosses. Modern narrative games allow for the differentiation of additional archetypes, such as the mentor, shadow, or ally. The main feature of reconstructing mythological structures in the gaming space is recognized as interactivity and the ability to experience events in a virtual world, which creates a new type of experience for the player in actively realizing universal mythological motifs through playing myths, rather than simply observing them.

Challenging the asymmetry of online interactions between humans and avatars in an online video game space: a unique example of relative independence and autonomy

Are avatars simply a vehicle of sorts, allowing us to move about in an otherwise inaccessible digital world? The present article intends to challenge the standard conceptualization of this particular figure by offering a different vision. Through research based on interactionism and data collected from an ethnography, it is possible to go beyond the conventional, asymmetrical understanding of the avatar figure and consider it as an entity unto itself, having a certain degree of independence and autonomy.

Virtual Heterotopias and the Contested Histories of Kowloon Walled City

Hong Kong's Kowloon Walled City has found new life in videogames during the three decades since its demolition, taking on unstable and sometimes contradictory forms when reimagined through virtual architecture. At stake in these acts of memory are the historical discourses surrounding everyday life in Kowloon Walled City, its uncertain political and cultural status, and ongoing postcolonial debates concerning Hong Kong identity. I analyze Kowloon's Gate, Shenmue II, and Mr Pumpkin 2: Walls of Kowloon to uncover the contestation of the city's histories through the types of spaces Michel Foucault described as heterotopic: at once real and unreal, and existent and non-existent. This analysis reveals the fluid nature of cultural memory and historical discourse in videogame spaces, as well as how virtual spatiality and the past can be used together to understand and define the present.

Applying aspects of deliberate practice to help low performers improve manual control in a complex task

Investigations of expert performers across many domains have suggested the accumulation of deliberate practice over many years is a key component of developing expertise. Researchers propose deliberate practice is effective for improving performance in the long term because it includes several structured elements that facilitate learning. However, the effects of such structured practice across shorter training periods are less understood. The current study examined the acquisition of manual control skill in the experimental video game Space Fortress. Video demonstrations and continuous auditory feedback were combined in a 90-min intervention session designed to discourage behaviors correlated with low performance and encourage behaviors associated with high levels of skill. After 4 h of gameplay, the initially lower-performing participants who received the intervention displayed significantly greater manual control performance than the initially lower-performing participants who received undirected training. This performance difference corresponded with durable improvements in behaviors targeted by the intervention once feedback was removed. These findings suggest training that incorporates elements of deliberate practice can be successfully applied in short-term skill acquisition settings.

Una perspectiva inesperada. De la perspectiva en el antiguo Egipto al videojuego Adventure

<p>En 1979 Atari lanzó el videojuego Adventure, considerado pionero en los juegos de aventuras rpg (rol-player game), inaugurando un sistema de representación propio que recibió el nombre de perspectiva tres cuartos, que sería empleado posteriormente por todas las grandes compañías de videojuegos. Esta perspectiva tres cuartos se trataba en realidad de un caso particular de perspectiva isométrica frontal de ángulos ZY’=Z’Y que en dibujo arquitectónico se ha venido denominando ‘perspectiva egipcia’ o perspectiva Hejduk. Este acontecimiento tuvo gran repercusión en el comienzo de la representación del espacio virtual mostrando una concepción determinada del mundo, demostrando que la producción del espacio en los videojuegos tiene desde su origen un vínculo interdisciplinar con el espacio materializado de la arquitectura.</p>

Where Are the Girls? Locating Girlhood in Game Studies

Where Are the Girls? Locating Girlhood in Game Studies Ashley P. Jones (bio) Cunningham, Carolyn M. Games Girls Play: Contexts of Girls and Video Games. Lexington Books, 2018. 181 pp. $90.00 hc. ISBN 9781498554565. Carolyn M. Cunningham’s Games Girls Play: Contexts of Girls and Video Games paints a picture of how girls within the United States interact with, relate to, and understand video games at large and within their personal lives. The book works to better understand the relationship between gender constructions and video games. Cunningham takes a media ecology approach to the different contexts in which girls in elementary, middle, and high school consume and interact with video games within the United States. Cunningham builds on Adrienne Shaw’s Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture, which focuses on marginalized populations of gamers and their relationships with video games in their everyday lives. Shaw focuses on the effects of social contextualization of video games within player’s experiences as an important factor to consider when exploring gaming in conjunction with gender identity and performance (22). “Girl Games” are games that feature female protagonists or feminine gameplay (Cunningham 26). Addressing the marginalized gamer population of girls and drawing from research on girls elementary school age through high school, Cunningham explores the intersection of girlhood with gaming through a variety of lenses, such as marketing and consumption as well as feminist theory and activism. Cunningham argues that gendered differences in video games are reflections of both the video-game industry and the home lives of girls in her study. Girls reported that games designed for and marketed to them often operate in accordance with a rigid form of femininity that does not capture their attention. Furthermore, video games are a leisure activity that many felt was denied to them, in part due to the challenges of accessing video [End Page 194] games within their homes. Limited access was often attributed to the role of brothers and the assumed masculinity of video games, as well as rules imposed by parents on access to certain games and hardware to play the games. In addition to the gendered differences advertised by marketing companies, the girls’ understanding of how video games fit into their personal lives, and access to video games, Cunningham also looks at how feminism is playing a role in video-game culture at large. Historically, female gamers have been excluded from the public spaces of gaming including, but not limited to, gaming conventions (Huntemann 75), Xbox Live clans (Gray 413), and in e-sports competitions (Witkowski 186). Within these spaces, Nina B. Huntemann, Kishonna L. Gray, and Emma Witkowski have all shown that female participation is policed and regulated in ways that keep the gaming space masculine oriented. Furthermore, Gray argues that these spaces are also policed to keep the spaces white through such tactics as linguistic profiling and the use of language in the spaces (414–16). Recent changes brought about by hashtag activism have shown that cultural discourses surrounding feminism, gender, and video games are changing, and, as a result, video game spaces are becoming more friendly to those who have historically been excluded. The Gamergate controversy—a campaign of hate speech and sexual harassment directed toward female video game designers by young, male gamers— highlights how issues of sexism, gender discrimination, and feminism have been making their way into these discourses for the last decade. Cunningham argues that it is within these feminist conversations that video games have the potential to make an impact in shaping larger cultural values. She also argues that STEM-directed community groups show potential for change, as they provide opportunities to girls of all ages to participate in video-game design. While Cunningham argues for the developmental benefits that these programs provide to a marginalized group within the video-game industry, she also adds that the economic justifications that tend to be featured as benefits of these types of programs are not reflected in real video game development companies. Women within the gaming industry still face problems with being hired and staying with companies for any extended amount of time. Cunningham presents a well-researched perspective...

A machine for playing in: Exploring the videogame as a medium for architectural design

This paper aims to investigate what is unique about videogame spaces and their construction, and how they might be utilised by architects. This design-led study establishes videogames as an architectural medium through practice-based research projects, examining game worlds as architectural spaces by developing design methods to analyze their environments. It then discusses developing games as architectural representations combining virtual space with computational rules. The paper's final study suggests how game structures might be applied in design approaches for ostensibly real sites. Through four case study projects, I outline a new form of architectural design practice operating between physical and virtual, reflecting the cultural influence of game worlds and exploring videogame environments as new ways to ‘realise’ architecture. • In videogame worlds player interactivity is integral to their architectural design. • Architecture designed within game spaces can impart meaning through interaction. • Videogame worlds can be sited within the history of architectural representation. • Analyzing videogames through architectural design methods expands existing games studies scholarship. • New forms of architectural practice will operate across the virtual and physical.

From Symbolism to Realism. Physical and Imaginary Video Game Spaces in Historical Aspects

Physical and imaginary video game spaces have been constantly evolving, starting from dark indefinable space to ultimately become an incredibly realistic world. This paper aims at illustrating how physical and imaginary spaces have evolved. The older games are, the more indefinable and iconic their physical spaces become. In more modern games physical spaces are being more and more developed. It is now possible to move the place of action from the heights of a symbolic universe to a particular land located in a specific timeline, which made it possible to create realistic settings and characters in a life-like manner.

Thought-Provoking Play: Political Philosophies in Science Fictional Videogame Spaces from Japan, written by Martin Roth

Thought-Provoking Play: Political Philosophies in Science Fictional Videogame Spaces from Japan, written by Martin Roth

Learning rapid and precise skills.

A theory is presented about how instruction and experience combine to produce human fluency in a complex skill. The theory depends critically on 4 aspects of the ACT-R architecture. The first is the timing of various modules, particularly motor timing, which results in behavior that closely matches human behavior. The second is the ability to interpret declarative representations of instruction so that they lead to action. The third aspect concerns how practice converts this declarative knowledge into a procedural form so that appropriate actions can be quickly executed. The fourth component, newly added to the architecture, is a Controller module that learns the setting of control variables for actions. The overall theory is implemented in a computational model that is capable of simulating human learning. Its predictions are confirmed in a first experiment involving 2 games derived from the experimental video game Space Fortress. The second experiment tests predictions from the Controller module about lack of transfer between video games. Across the 2 experiments a single model, with the same parameter settings, is shown to simulate human learning of 3 video games. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Wandering in the City: Time, Memory, and Experience in Digital Game Space

Wandering in the City: Time, Memory, and Experience in Digital Game Space

Straight Paths Through Queer Walking Simulators: Wandering on Rails and Speedrunning in Gone Home

This article identifies the limitations of queerness in Gone Home (The Fullbright Company, 2013) by exploring the ways in which players’ movements through space in video games can be considered queer or “straight.” Drawing from Sara Ahmed, I demonstrate how the potential for queer in-game movement in Gone Home has been straightened both by the game itself and by elements of its player reception. Gone Home is widely seen as exemplifying a current shift toward increased LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) representation in video games. The game is also associated with queerness through its status as a “walking simulator,” a genre with ties to the queer flaneur. Indeed, Gone Home’s gameplay seems to encourage queer wandering, moving not straight but instead meanderingly. Yet, a closer analysis of its interactive elements reveals that Gone Home is far less queer than it may initially appear. The player’s path is rigid and linear, much like in a “rail shooter.” The potential for queer movement in Gone Home has been furthered straightened by speedrunners who play the game along the straightest possible paths. This article argues for player movement as an important site of meaning in video games and calls for an increased engagement with the tensions that surround queerness and video games.

Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames by Stephanie Boluk and Patrick Lemieux

Reviewed by: Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames by Stephanie Boluk and Patrick Lemieux Melvin G. Hill (bio) Stephanie Boluk and Patrick Lemieux, Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017, 379 pp. $30.00 paper. Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames is a comprehensive and highly ambitious text that argues how games extend beyond the television screen and how gamers are changing the way we play videogames. Through meticulous research, digital media scholars Stephanie Boluk and Patrick Lemieux uncover different gaming experiences and an unexpected development that occurs when players engage in videogames. The authors demonstrate that "alternate histories of play [are] defined not by code, commerce, and computation but by the diverse practices and material discontinuities that emerge between the human experience of playing videogames and their nonhuman operations" (p. 4). To this end, metagames, as Boluk and Lemieux compellingly argue, "transform videogames from a mass medium and cultural commodity into instruments, equipment, tools and toys for playing, competing, spectating, cheating, trading, breaking, making, and ultimately intervening in the sensory and political economies of those technologies responsible for the privatization of play" (p. 4). Their eclectic, diverse analysis includes video game spectatorship, hacking, modding, and competitive e-sports, among others. By focusing on specific various practices, material discontinuities, and human experiences of videogame engagement, Metagaming not only examines the history of play but reimagines the different ways we make metagames. Boluk and Lemieux present dual persuasive arguments. First, they claim that metagames share an implicit relationship with the engagement of play and an explicit range of practice of play that impacts gaming culture. According to Boluk and Lemieux, "[Metagames] are not just games in, on, around, above, between, below, or through; [but] the metagame expands … historical attributes of human (and nonhuman play)" (p. 17). Also, they point out that metagaming is the truest form of play. Developing their first claim, they next argue the richness and depth of the various play possibilities located within metagaming. When considering their arguments, it is difficult to ignore any longer the value that metagaming brings to game culture. Most crucially, Boluk and Lemieux's arguments are compelling enough to consider metagaming as a serious topic of study. Beyond the introduction, each chapter is undergirded with original software and appropriate images as examples to help shape the authors' argument. Although chapter 1, "About, Within, Around, Without: A Survey of Six Metagames," offers the least engagement of explorations of specific metagaming practices, it does provide a critical overview through six metagame vignettes of how players have transformed video-games into something beyond what developers and the industry had expected. Their analysis includes indie games, glitches located in modern gaming consoles, spectator-ship and popular international e-sports, and how online gaming communities engage in play without videogames. Chapter 2, "Stretched Skulls: Anamorphic Games and the Memento Mortem Mortis," introduces Boluk and Lemieux's central thesis: "there is no game without metagame" (p. 14). The authors explain "the pursuit of graphic realism through the development of increasingly powerful and complex modeling, rendering, and animation technologies" (p. 18). Additionally, the text explores the aesthetic and technical graphics that extend beyond graphic technologies. In chapter 3, "Blind Spots: The Phantom Pain, The Helen Keller Simulator, and Disability in Games," Boluk and Lemieux use a critical lens to address questions of disability. Their case in point includes Hideo Kojima's "tactical espionage" game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015) and the minimal experimental game The Helen [End Page 418] Keller Simulator to carefully scrutinize disability in videogames and gaming practices. They point out the "little-known metagaming practice in which both blind, low vision, and sighted players navigate videogame spaces without the use of video and invent new ways of playing according to the alternate sensory economies" (p. 125). They maintain that metagames have the potential to become "lucid experiments that challenge contemporary models of videogame production to reveal new modes of play" (p. 126). To underscore Boluk and Lemieux's claims, several forthcoming videogames such as the virtual reality game Blind and the live-action cinema video game The...

Super Smash Covers!

Videogame music has crossed the boundaries of the digital realm and is now performed and remixed in online spaces and live venues. This is due to the interactive nature of gameplay, which promotes the appropriation, rework and remix of game music by gaming audiences. This relationship with music reinforces the engagement of gaming communities with the experiences they have collectively shared in the videogame space and translates it into a new one. In Australia, few bands dedicate themselves solely to the performance of videogame music, partly due to copyright restrictions and niche performance spaces and events, with some bands performing as a professional endeavour and others as a side project. This article focuses on the case studies of Australian videogame music cover bands Boss Fight and The Consouls, whilst analysing the spaces in which they perform, and how real-life performances influence the experiences of videogame communities.