Video Game Studies Research Articles

Gaming Sinographs beyond the Ludic

This article rethinks the notion of the Sinophone through digital technology by using the Taiwanese videogame Word Game (Wenzi youxi, Team9, 2022) as a case study. The digital Sinophone sees Chineseness as an act of positive identification claimed by engaging with digital artifacts; it defines a single mass audience coterminous with the Sinophone cultural sphere. Word Game constructs a two-dimensional space in which all objects are composed of sinographs, requiring the player to possess extensive knowledge of the construction of and relationship between sinographs according to Chinese grammatical and semiotic uses in order to progress in the game. Contrary to the internationalizing tendencies of the videogame market and the long history of tension between sinographic writing and the typographical technologies of technological modernity, the result is a uniquely Sinophone videogame. In Word Game, the logic of gameplay mechanics consists not of mathematical universals but culturally determined relationships between sinographs. The article concludes by examining the implications for the interdisciplinary study of videogames. Whereas contemporary videogame studies seeks to situate video gaming in broader cultural discourses, a culturalist view of videogames sees game mechanics as cocreators of culture rather than a mirror of culture.

The Future of Games Scholarship: An Interview With James Paul Gee

James Gee's work at the intersection of literacy, education, and game studies has explored how videogame affinity spaces are examples of how good teaching and learning often occur outside of schooling. His work can be safely characterized as influential in these fields. For instance, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy helped catalyze a lasting surge of interest in videogame studies. Game studies currently represent a diverse group of scholars that continually push the field into promising spaces. With our eyes on these promising spaces, we interviewed Gee on the topic of what is—and should be—the future of game studies. Gee discussed how the future of game studies would be well-advised to explore ways to network multiple experiences and technologies—including the real world—to focus on how to make people healthier, more prosocial, and better able to collaborate. This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity.

Дискурс-анализ интерактивного сериала «Найден_жив» (первый сезон)

The article deals with the discourse analysis of the mythologization of time in the interactive web series "Found Alive" (first season). The author explores the formation of interactive cinema, considering its genre, stylistic and technological features. The principal feature of interactive cinema is to change the communication scheme typical for cinema, in which the viewer is assigned a passive role. Since the viewer becomes a participant in the narrative of the film and can influence the development of its plot, the discourse of interactive cinema acquires new features associated with the introduction of computer game mechanics into the structure of the film. The formation of the temporal structures of the film is enriched by the potential of game mechanics, which requires calibration of research optics. Choosing N. Fairclough's discourse analysis algorithm as a starting methodological point, the author uses J. Bogost's ideas about the work of object-oriented ontology in the study of computer games. She refuses to consider the interactive component of the series as an additional narrative and focuses on identifying the work of the aesthetics, mechanics and dynamics of the game inserts of the film to analyze the experience they form. As a result, the discourse analysis of interactive cinema involves three levels: a syntagmatic analysis of the cinematic narrative, a paradigmatic analysis of the interactive game and an appeal to the external nodes of the narrative. The author shows that the key element of the discourse of the series "Nayden_Zhiv", reproducing the principles of the work of the search and rescue team "LizaAlert", is time as the main factor in the effectiveness of the search for a missing child. The film's discourse forms the image of time as an anti-force opposing rescuers, clashing two temporal strategies. The strategy of the cinematic narrative is aimed at gradually accelerating the subjective perception of time, leading to an acute experience of its deficit. The interactive strategy uses the potential of slowing down when mastering simulators and solving quests in the subjective experience of the player delays the solution of the basic goal of the film. The external narrative nodes formed by the creators of the series when contacting the press, online and offline audiences coincide with its internal nodes. According to the author, the complex discourse of interactive cinema enhances the mythologization of time.

Notes on Contributors

Ron Ben-Tovim is a senior lecturer at Ben Gurion University's Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics, where he focuses on modern and contemporary war literature, with a special interest in trauma and disability studies. His book Poetic Prosthetics: Trauma and Language in Contemporary Veteran Writing is forthcoming via the Edinburgh University Press series Advances in Critical Military Studies.Sophus Helle is a postdoctoral researcher at Freie Universität Berlin. His research focuses on Babylonian epic poetry, especially Gilgamesh, and the Sumerian poems of Enheduana, both of which he has translated into Danish and English. His latest project explores the poetics of philology.Theresa Krampe is a doctoral researcher at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) at Giessen University and a lecturer in media studies and media education at Osnabrück University, Germany. Her PhD project focusses on the forms and functions of metareference in videogames. Publications include “No Straight Answers: Queering Hegemonic Masculinity in BioWare's Mass Effect” (Game Studies 2018) and “The World Machine: Self-Reflexive Worldmaking in OneShot,” published in the edited volume Game | World | Architectonics (ed. Marc Bonner, Heidelberg UP 2021).Spencer Lee-Lenfield is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at Yale University. His other research has appeared or will soon appear in Modern Language Quarterly and the Proceedings of the Modern Language Association. His current dissertation research focuses on translation between Korean and English in the Korean diaspora.Stephanie Lotzow is a PhD candidate at the Giessen Graduate Centre for Humanities (GGK) and research assistant at the German Department of Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen, Germany. In her teaching, she focuses on critical media analysis in contemporary German culture. As speaker of the Game Studies Working Group at GGK, she organizes interdisciplinary workshops on the academic study of videogames. Her PhD project presents a ludo-narratological theory for analyzing forms and functions of perturbations in horror games.Marina Ludwigs is a docent at the English Department of Stockholm University. Her specializations include narratology, generative anthropology, Girard's Mimetic Theory, and philosophy of explanation in the humanities. She has recently worked with the questions of paradox and reverse causality. Her recent articles on this topic are “Hierarchical Thinking, Grammatical Structures, and the Originary Scene” (Anthropoetics, 2020) and “Retrieving the Paradox: Freud's Death Drive and the Originary Concept of Deferral” (Anthropoetics, 2022). She is currently working on an interdisciplinary project on the topic of events and eventfulness in literature and science.Jeremy Page is a Sydney-based designer, writer, and (currently) independent researcher, with particular interests in aesthetics, phenomenology, and the various ways in which philosophy intersects with poetry and the arts. He holds a BA with double majors in writing and philosophy, a master's of creative writing, a master's of research (English), and a PhD in English from Macquarie University, with a dissertation exploring the intersections of phenomenology, music, and contemporary American poetry. His creative and scholarly works have been published in Cordite, Meanjin, Journal of New Music Research, and Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology. He can be reached at jeremy.page1@hdr.mq.edu.au.Brian Richardson teaches at the University of Maryland. His most recent works include A Poetics of Plot for the Twenty-First Century: Theorizing Unruly Narratives (2019), Essays on Narrative and Fictionality: Reassessing Nine Central Concepts (2021), and Unnatural Narratology: Extensions, Revisions, and Challenges, coedited with Jan Alber (2020). His website is https://brianerichardson.weebly.com.Jan-Noël Thon is professor and chair of media studies and media education at Osnabrück University, Germany. Recent books include From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels (coedited with Daniel Stein, 2013), Storyworlds across Media (coedited with Marie-Laure Ryan, 2014), Game Studies (coedited with Klaus Sachs-Hombach, 2015), Transmedial Narratology and Contemporary Media Culture (2016), Subjectivity across Media (coedited with Maike Sarah Reinerth, 2017), Comicanalyse (coauthored with Stephan Packard, Andreas Rauscher, Véronique Sina, Lukas R. A. Wilde, and Janina Wildfeuer, 2019), and Comics and Videogames (coedited with Andreas Rauscher and Daniel Stein, 2021).Helena Van Praet is a teaching assistant in Dutch literature and PhD student in comparative literature at Université catholique de Louvain. Her research focuses on the experimental poetry of contemporary poets Rozalie Hirs and Anne Carson. Her articles have appeared in Canadian Literature, English Text Construction, and Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en littérature canadienne.

COMPUTER GAMES AS A SUBJECT OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH

The article is devoted to the specifics of the study of computer games. The authors propose to analyzethe phenomenon of computer games in three dimensions: philosophical and cultural, socio-economic andpsychological and pedagogical. The research methodology consists of general scientific methods of systemanalysis and an interdisciplinary approach to the subject of study. As a result, the authors conclude that thereis a need for an integrated approach to the study of computer games and the impossibility of studying one ofthe aspects of computer games in isolation from the other. The experience of interdisciplinary research makesit possible to prevent a one-sided view of computer games and to consider the game as a key accompliceof progress that has led to the development of digital culture, new forms of cognition, means and scales ofcommunication, ways of monetization, new methods of psychological relief.

The Effects of New Communication Technologies on Teenagers: The Case Study of Computer Games

The Effects of New Communication Technologies on Teenagers: The Case Study of Computer Games

Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames: Representation, Play, Transmedia

Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames: Representation, Play, Transmedia

Fabula Nova Obscura Est: Possible Worlds in “Final Fantasy XIII-2”

Modern narratological researches are quite well developed and has long gone beyond the purely philological field. One of the applications of narratology is the study of computer games, the most relevant new medium. This paper is devoted to the issue of unusual narrative strategies used in games on the example of Final Fantasy XIII-2. The analysis is conducted via the possible-worlds method, which is currently in demand in modern humanities, but it is less known in Russia. The aim of the research is to determine the function of possible worlds existing in Final Fantasy XIII-2 for a better understanding of the game design. In the course of the work, the author examines the internal structure of the game world with the help of the theory of possible worlds, analyzes the narrative strategy, and makes a game scheme of possible worlds with accessibility links which let to see the deep internal structure of the narrative game world. In conclusion, it is clear that Final Fantasy XIII-2 contains a non-trivial narrative structure with multiple branches that is smoothed out by the gameplay and cinematic experience of the player, although such a composition of possible worlds represents a complex scheme of the game's macrocosm which demands a close attention to the narrative. The article is intended for various humanitarian specialists interested in the study of computer games.

Better Problems

Better Problems

Social capital in video game studies: A scoping review

This study explored how social capital has been utilized in video-game studies by conducting a scoping review. In total, 74 peer-reviewed publications were analysed from three different databases. The following aspects pertaining to social capital were analysed: definition, methodology, game or genre as stimulus, its utilization inside or outside the stimulus, whether it was the sole concept or variable, how it was utilized, whether social capital was used to predict variables or whether variables were used to predict it, and what where the predicted or predicting variables. The results of the analysis show that Putnam’s research, the quantitative method and Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games were most commonly combined. Social capital was predominantly utilized in binary form. It was utilized almost equally inside and outside the video games’ sphere of influence. The study then presents the main findings and discusses future research avenues.

What is Videogame Formalism? Exploring the Pillars of Russian Formalism for the Study of Videogames

This article provides a general overview of the theoretical foundations of formalism to assess their usefulness for the study of videogames and thereby establish grounds for a more robust approach. After determining that formalism has been used as a go-to term for a variety of ontological and methodological approaches in game studies, this article draws more specifically from Russian Formalism to use the label for a functionalist approach interested in how formal devices in videogames work to cue aesthetic responses. Through an exploration of three pillars of Russian Formalism, a videogame formalism emerges that focuses on the workings of the game as a machine while still taking the aesthetic player response as the methodological starting point and acknowledging the importance of synchronic and diachronic historical perspectives in establishing the functioning of game devices.

Videogame and Computer Intervention Effects on Older Adults' Mental Rotation Performance.

Objective: This article examined older adults' performance on two components of a mental rotation task (reaction time and rotation rate) in a home-based intervention study of videogame (Crazy Taxi [CT]) and computerized cognitive training (PositScience InSight). Materials and Methods: Participants were randomized to one of three groups: one group played an off-the-shelf videogame (i.e., CT), the second group engaged in a computerized training program focused on fast perceptual comparisons, visuospatial working memory, rapid scanning of a visual array and pattern recognition, visual discrimination, and selective and divided attention and processing speed (i.e., InSight), and the third (control) group received no training. Training in the two intervention conditions consisted of 60 training sessions of 1 hour each, which were completed in 3 months (5 hours a week). As part of a larger study, participants received mental rotation testing, which was administered immediately before (baseline), after (post-test), and 3 months after (follow-up) training. Results: Although the InSight group showed greater improvements in rotation rate at the immediate post-test, by the 3-month follow-up, the combined treatment groups (CT and InSight) had improved more than controls. Conclusion: The improvements in mental rotation performance found at 3-month follow-up add additional support to previous research, showing visuospatial benefits of both videogame play and cognitive training in older adults. Common elements of both interventions may include expansion of the attentional field of view and faster visual comparison efficiency.

Can we make true statements about the world through videogames? An indirect realist account of Alexander Galloway’s notion of social realism in gaming

In recent years, game-related scholars have claimed that the study of videogames can reveal important insights for understanding and challenging the concept of realism advocated by previous theories of visual culture. In fact, videogames have increasingly been acknowledged as a valuable site for opening up new ways of interrogating traditional theories of realism. Drawing upon Alexander Galloway’s seminal work Social realism in gaming, the argument we seek to advance here is that: his theorizations of social realism in gaming alongside the notion of “congruence requirement” are largely grounded on indirect realist assumptions. In order to provide support to our claim, we assumed that his theory of realism is suggestive of an indirect form of correspondence between the fidelity of gamers’ ordinary world, their derivative actions within the gaming-world and the modes of representation of objective reality depicted in videogames

What Is a Videogame Movie?

Cinematic adaptations of videogames are an increasingly common feature of film culture, and the adaptive relationship between these mediums is an increasingly common subject of film and videogame studies. However, our ability to historicize and theorize that relationship is hampered by a failure to fully define the generic character of our object of study. This essay asks, what is a videogame movie? It argues that film scholars (1) have not considered the full range of ways videogames have been represented in film; (2) have not attended fully to the historical, technological, figurative, and social dimensions of videogames; and therefore (3) have limited the set of possible texts that comprise the genre “videogame cinema.” The essay recommends a tropological approach to the problem, defining six tropes that comprise the “videogame movie” as a genre, and applying them to two films, Her and 1917, neither of them a direct adaptation of a videogame, the latter not “about” or referencing videogames in any way, yet both exemplary of a broadened concept of “videogame cinema”.

Mapping Persona and Games

For those new to games studies, the most important primer is the recognition that, as a field of research, it is at its most revealing when in conversation with perspectives from other fields and domains of inquiry. Espen Aarseth (2001) announced that the first issue of Game Studies, the international journal of computer game research, marked the commencement of computer game studies. Aarseth's editorial launched the trajectory for the following two decades of game research, obscuring much of the previous work examining digital and analogue games that had contributed to the tipping point at which the fields' coalescence could become a reality. Emerging from media studies, sociology, and a particular tradition of textual analysis in cinema and literature studies, games studies has since had a reputation for being the latest kid on the block. Like persona studies, game studies features key moments in which intersections between it and other fields and their theoretical and analytical perspectives prove enlightening, enriching, and even entertaining.

A Flattering Robopocalypse

A Flattering Robopocalypse

Interactive sound art and animated notation as an ensemble performance platform in primary level music education

This article showcases excerpts of my artistic research in progress. In particular, I demonstrate how an interdisciplinary approach combining knowledge from the fields of artistic research, Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and game studies mayinspire primary level music education of today. I highlight examples of novel digital music technology and present an innovate approach to using these for group performance exercises in the music classroom. In particular, I report from a study where my interactive sound art exhibition LINES, in combination with animated music notation, was used as a digital ensemble music platform. The data of the study comprises five workshop sessions with pre-schoolers using this platform. An autoethnographic method and analysis of video documentation of the workshop sessions were used as methods for the study. The results showed that LINES was both engaging and easily accessed. Moreover, it allowed the majority of the target group to perform musical exercises as an ensemble. I argue that the use of traditional instruments and traditional notation creates a democratic issue in primary level music education. Furthermore, with support from the study and related research, I argue that platforms such as this may democratize music education involving pupils aged 5-15 years.

Finding Common Ground in Meta-Analysis “Wars” on Violent Video Games

Independent meta-analyses on the same topic can sometimes yield seemingly conflicting results. For example, prominent meta-analyses assessing the effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior have reached apparently different conclusions, provoking ongoing debate. We suggest that such conflicts are sometimes partly an artifact of reporting practices for meta-analyses that focus only on the pooled point estimate and its statistical significance. Considering statistics that focus on the distributions of effect sizes and that adequately characterize effect heterogeneity can sometimes indicate reasonable consensus between “warring” meta-analyses. Using novel analyses, we show that this seems to be the case in the video-game literature. Despite seemingly conflicting results for the statistical significance of the pooled estimates in different meta-analyses of video-game studies, all of the meta-analyses do in fact point to the conclusion that, in the vast majority of settings, violent video games do increase aggressive behavior but that these effects are almost always quite small.

Fictionally Flipping Tetrominoes? Defining the Fictionality of a Videogame Player’s Actions

In this paper, I use the case of player actions in Tetris to explore possible problems in existing descriptions of videogame actions as fictional actions. Both in the philosophy of computer games and videogame studies, authors often make use of Kendall Walton’s make-believe theory to describe videogame actions as fictional. According to the Waltonian description of fictional actions, however, the actions players perform when playing Tetris, such as flipping tetrominoes, would also be fictional. This is a counterintuitive idea, as players of Tetris seem to be really manipulating the graphical shapes in this game. I will thus discuss two other possible descriptions of fictional actions hinted at by Grant Tavinor (2009). Firstly, the (non-)fictional status of videogame actions might depend on the nature of the affordances to which they are reactions. Secondly, it might be the case that the player must take on a role in the fictional world for her action to be fictional. In the end, I will combine this second idea with a Waltonian description of fictional actions to form a new description of fictional actions that corresponds to and explains videogame players’ experiences.

Shooting a metastable object: targeting as trigger for the actor-network in the open-world videogames

ABSTRACTTargeting is the most basic skill a gamer needs to master to survive from enemies, solve puzzles, and unfold a story in videogames. Before this simple gamer action happens, most game objects distributed in a game world are isolated in metastable states performing each predefined routine without causing any actual interaction with others. Therefore, in order to pull away these objects from their initial non-communication and to mobilize their interactions for the gamer’s goal, the disturbance from the gamer’s targeting is indispensable. In today’s open-world videogames, the readiness of these objects for being aimed is aestheticized in the forms of aura they radiate when the player characters use certain magical/technological skills. In this genre, a gamer’s narrative and ludic experiences, all triggered by his/her shooting the glittering objects, are thus translatable into the networking patterns of these objects under topological transformations. As an object-oriented approach in videogame studies, this essay examines how the recent videogame design for the open-world of objects redefines the cultural meaning of videogame.