Month: October 2017

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Games and Life

https://rhetoricofgaming.digitalwcu.org/customizingidentity/

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dzWlqUB0YaTBnyTlC8JFRqrDSnUdu7di02j73cY0iWo/edit

I remember my first console: Playstation 2. I remember my first favorite game: Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. I remember the first game that I ever played online with my friends: Call of Duty: World at War. I also remember the first Xbox controller I broke from throwing it on the ground in rage. I was quickly lectured by my very angry father but I can wholeheartedly say that I have learned from my situation and never broken a controller since. Besides learning the value of a $60 controller, from all of my gaming experience I have learned so much from playing video games contrary to my father’s belief.

Games have taught me cognitive skills ever since I could hold a controller. I’ve learned about problem-solving, spatial awareness, and motivation more from playing games like Sly Cooper for an hour than playing baseball for a decade. I still learn new things from games now. It may seem like I’m just playing a game but after reflecting on the gameplay I had just experienced, games are much deeper than I perceive. Games like Assassin’s Creed have taught me about history and culture, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice has taught me about mental illness, and games like Minecraft have taught me about creativity. With the new advancements in the video game world, games should be as complex as their operating systems and most of the time, they are.

When it comes to analyzing the rhetoric of games, one must go beyond the visual and auditory. As Bogost points out, the imagined systems the player inhabits are explored procedurally “by imposing sets of rules that create particular possibility spaces for play”. In a sense, the freedom of play is defined and facilitated by the rules and restrictions that create the play space.

Ostensibly, each of the original Metroid titles tell the same story. Bounty hunter Samus Aran is contracted by the Galactic Federation to investigate an alien threat. Isolated in an alien world, she fights for survival as she explores endless interconnected labyrinths. Obviously, these are not the same games, but why? The answer, as I will explore, comes from how the game allows the player to play. Though each of the games looks nearly identical–even the 8-bit NES version draws from the same inspiration—and the formula untouched, each game feels different.

Horror is a tone aspired for in each title, but the way it is conveyed varies. In Understanding Video Games as Emotional Experiences, Aki Jarvinen Identifies the ways in which game systems ellicit emotions from the player. This is in part because the outcome of play is unknown to the player, creating tension. For Super Metroid, this tension comes largely from exploring unknown territory. With no direction, the player must make their way through the game on their own. This sense of being lost creates feelings of isolation and confusion. Fusion is much more linear though. The level design is much easier to navigate and your progress is facilitated by waypoints on the map and a narrative largely told to you by a computer that briefs you on your missions. This “on rails” gameplay removes the suspense created from getting lost in exploration, but allows for new emotions to be elicited. As stated earlier, the parameters of a play space define the experience of playing.

Proposal: I propose that the advent of ubiquitous (pervasive) play goes hand in hand with transmedial discourses, as both have real world distinctions. Though ubiquitous gaming is still continuously being defined, it harbors a blurred line between created reality and actuality, often incorporating a mix of both to sufficiently and mimetically create the most interactive game possible. However, this hybrid play has fueled modern escapism, and the potentially undefined boundaries this genre could parallel the likes of recent sci-fi horror (I, Robot, The Terminator series, Ex Machina, etc). Though real world consequences might not currently be so exaggerated, the lack of cemented lines has already influenced contemporary society, and therein a game becomes reality. The network that this dual united front creates eradicates the tacit understanding of play being a gateway leading to an anti-ordinary life, and therefore creates a paradox between the codes of play, and the necessity of reality. Using examples of well known transmedial and ubiquitous games, I will investigate this ongoing complexity and its potential consequences.

Overview: This investigation will involve free roaming games such as Pokemon Go, along with inter-medial texts such as the Hive Propolis Transmedia Project, to goal oriented traveling interactions such as Geocaching. The break between the ‘false’ and the ‘real’ with be the main focus of this piece, with not just the potential consequences of each discourse being highlighted, but also the role that the player themselves take within said gameplays. When a concrete divisions is purposely muddled, how do said blurred lines exist both negatively and positively. Contemporary peer reviews and academic papers alike both feature aspects of ubiquitous play that add to the ever growing influence this game culture is amassing. Therein, transmedia acts as a tool, one that allows ubiquitous play’s effect to be further heightened. However, this hyper mimetic atmosphere could create a sense of lost self within the universally given avatar construct; when one is their own chess piece, how does that impact the player and the gameplay. Are these games and cultures the future of digestible media? What will even be considered a game in the future? How will media alter, and the digestion and creation thereof evolve alongside? How will this two constructs connect- will they one day be irrevocably intertwined?  

Thesis: The culture surrounding video games has been heavily altered and continues to evolve with the inter-connectivity of transmedial discourses and ubiquitous play. Along with the boundaries of what play even is, I will further discuss the role the player themselves enacts within said gameplay. The thin membrane between the virtual and the non-fictitious is ever thinning, and this membrane continues to be punctured via cross referencing literature that adds to the mimetic aspect of modern games. Along with the loss of a singularly anomalous avatar, how do the constructs of gaming currently exists and influence.  

Since its inception in 1999, the NBA 2K gaming franchise has grown to be one of the highest selling sports games in the world. With millions of copies being bought every year with the annual release, NBA 2K has evolved from the simple competitive play of battling it out on the hardwood against your friends, to being able to play online against someone on the other side of the world in real life time. One of the most distinct feature which has risen to prominence in the 2K gaming franchise, would be the addition of the career mode, which gives the player of the video game the ability to create their own avatar and follow the path to become an NBA legend. With this distinct feature, comes a unique situation that can be examined when looking at a type of play that allows a player to make an avatar that looks like how the player conceives them selves, acts and/or plays like how they may play the real-life version of basketball, and enter into a computer generated game which follows along a fictionalized storyline inside the constructs of the NBA lifestyle and basketball gaming aspects such as practicing and playing in a NBA game against the digitalized versions of real-life NBA stars. What I look to examine, would be this type of play I’ve described and how the player of this type of play interacts with their avatar, making them better in certain basketball attributes and/or customizing them to how they would see them selves if they were in the role of an NBA star and how these two types of style of play differentiate from one another in a rhetorical standpoint.

http://alexafurcon.digitalwcu.org/ENG400/

The three games I plan on examining are The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, and Fallout 3. I plan to explore immersion using a game’s playing on a player’s sense of morality (using Vampire and Fallout), the engagement of the player with the story (using Vampire), and with the player’s engagement with the world-space (using Vampire and Skyrim). The main aspect’s I’ll be looking at with each of these topics is believability (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4e2b/c7e3730273f8ef669aaea57a0e590a1957d7.pdf#page=96 deals with all three games I’ve listed) and level of player interaction (ie, how much control does the player have over their own actions? How much does their actions affect the world? Is the player given a solid reason to care about the world?). I’m planning on creating a webspace on wordpress and using gameplay videos (either of my own making or else taken from the internet) to augment and expand upon my points. I also should be able to provide plenty of screenshots of my own.

Thesis: Through an immersive play-space driven by story, world, and sense of morality, video games can engage the player to the point where they mentally transfer consciousness from the real world tot heir character in the game space, creating an escape from the present reality to another one.

I intend to explore the idea that video games provide an outlet for each player to construct, observe, and alter versions or reflections of their own self/subjectivity/ego through the realization of their in-game avatar.  This realization includes character creation/customization (designing the avatar), in-game choices/decisions, prioritized activity, speech (personality, style, dialect, etc.), internal dialogue over imaginative processes, performance of player-type characteristics, and so much more.  Simultaneously, and arguably inevitably, I will also examine how players construct and critique the subjectivity and identity of other players by encountering their avatars in the game, so that all players are intersubjectively perceiving representations of each other through their interactions.  I expect to use mostly role-playing video games (especially online ones) in my endeavors with this project.  One game that I’ll use is RuneScape, an MMORPG (fully online).  Another game that I’ll use is Dark Souls (both single player and online).  And, finally, I’ll use Oblivion (TES IV) as my single-player example.  In the realm of theory that I’ll use to back my assertions, I plan on using Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness for its utility in the field of subjectivity/intersubjectivity as it relates to meaning-making, essence-placing, etc.  This should provide the rudimentary basis for my arguments, but I will expand on this with “Player Commitment to MMORPGs: An Integrated Model” by Junghoon et al, other scholarly, peer-reviewed articles within a similar vein, and (why, yes, of course) my own original thoughts.

For this project, I will argue how different personality types influence different aspects of gaming and the types of interactions and fulfillment that individuals look for when they choose to play games. The main personality type test that these arguments will be based on is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which splits people into 16 different types of personalities. These personalities are based on introversion or extroversion (I/E), sensory or intuitive (S/N), thinking or perceptive (T/P) and perceptive or judgmental (P/J).

After focusing on the different things that each personality type looks for in a game–board game and video game–then I’m going to shift focus to how different personality types may play a similar game. Specifically I’ll be looking at how different personality types may be apt to play role playing games and sandbox games, in this case Skyrim, Dungeons and Dragons and Grand Theft Auto. In order to better explain the decisions that different personalities make in these games, there will be an incorporation of scholastic texts and articles in order to better understand different rhetorical appeals and understandings of definitions of play. By defining what play is, or could be, one will better be able to see what ways an individual seeks out games that invite and encourage their definition of play.

Thesis: While different games obviously have appeals to different people, the following that games gain is based on how they appeal and are able to appeal to varying personality types. These different appeals manifest through differing definitions of play which are directly related to the personality type of an individual. 

For my project, I will be using prompt #2 to discuss the relationship of play and player when looking at popular sporting video games, and the game modes that involve a creation of a personal player and the playing of that player in game modes that have you build your character to become a hall of fame caliber player. Though in the game modes, one will usually tend to creat players that look at even play the sport like they feel they play as, I would like to point out that the overall goal of the player of the video game would be to construct the greatest version of them selves and creating a more than ideal version of a life they create in the game. I will be looking mostly at the NBA 2K franchise, as well as the Madden games.

Since the introduction of digital gaming in 1958, video games have expanded the space of play, forging a strong relationship between physical and digital worlds. With the increasing dependence on technology as a whole, it certainly follows that we can now look to technological spaces for personal development and growth. Theoretically, the mental aspects of play-through-gaming can develop the mind in ways that traditional learning spaces cannot, because players have to, for example, learn to think quickly and critically in short periods of time in order to complete a certain task. However, “games are [also] an active medium that requires constant physical input by the player: action, doing, pressing buttons, controlling, and so on” (Galloway 83). Therefore, this combination of mental and physical engagement creates a foundation for growth in many different types of literacies. Games teach us visual, critical, technological, and linguistic literacies that further help us to develop not only how we play games, but how we enjoy play. Furthermore, Jonathan Alexander makes a brief suggestion in his article that people may not necessarily be addicted to the video games, but to play itself (36). Although the word addiction may be a bit ambitious, Alexander is getting to a valid point. The literacies learned from games help the player to enjoy play more because they are actively understanding both the technological, linguistic, and visual spaces within the game, which then gives them governance within the game. These literacies can also certainly carry over into the real-world, providing players with advantages in school, career, and relationships. Furthermore, the more technologically literate an individual is, the better equipped they are at operating within our technologically dependent society.

Thesis: Therefore, it is the literacy-aspects learned through game play that breed competence, allowing the player to expand understanding of technology, mature linguistic practices, and garner critical skills which allows for success not only within the game but within the real world as well. This gives meaning to play while fulfilling one of the most important psychological aspects of play: dominance.