Weekly Writing for Rhetoric of Gaming F2017

There has recently been a discourse around the idea that some games are stupid and/or stupidly simple but at the same time fulfilling. Herein the saga of Bennett Foddy appears relevant, whose ridiculous online games have gained notoriety for their intensively specific and limiting nature. Fairly difficult to master, his games such as QWOP and GIRP became infamous for said attributes; the fury they incur has become their lasting legacy, as unending YouTube videos will attest. However, theses seemingly fruitless endeavors foster a new form of determination that turns into a games designated reward when finally conquered. So, no medal or trophies are awarded within his games, as is the usual expectation for success, instead, the recognition and mastering of said canons is in and of itself the journey and the prize.

http://www.foddy.net/

The physical space of play has a lot to do with how we experience games. Often times, a player can enjoy play more if he/she is in a comfortable environment/position. A lot of video games can be played sitting down, but some, like specific arcade video games such as PacMan, etc., are played standing up. What does the arcade environment do to the space of play? It makes it more social. A video game arcade is a space dedicated to creating a social gaming environment. It’s unique, nostalgic, and a little archaic, but still fun. Arcades can encourage physical social interaction while playing. The way that arcades are are set up encourages others to watch an individual who is playing the game, thus becoming the player’s audience. It doesn’t always have to happen this way, but the arcade seems to be an accepted place for this. The mood and atmosphere of the arcade creates a social space where others can come together to experience games as either the player or the audience.

Link for Reference: https://bindingofisaacrebirth.gamepedia.com/Binding_of_Isaac:_Rebirth_Wiki

The Binding of Isaac casts each player as Isaac, a very young boy who has just fled from his mother into a trapdoor to avoid being sacrificed to God.  From here, the player must fight their way farther and farther down into the ground beneath Isaac’s house, killing monsters and bosses along the way.  Looming over the player’s head throughout each playthrough, however, is the unshakable message that death is unavoidable.  There is no real chase – only a power struggle.

If the player loses the game, they are killed by Mom (Isaac’s mother).  If the player wins the game, then they have successfully killed themselves, as Isaac must un-birth himself in order to reenter his mother’s womb and defeat her from the inside out, destroying her heart.  In either case, Isaac dies; there is no victory on the side of life in The Binding of Isaac.  Instead, the victory comes in controlling the terms of death – not its timing, but its dealing.  Winning in The Binding of Isaac is wrestling the reigns of death from God and from Isaac’s mother in order to administer that fate upon one’s own self.  This is shown all throughout the game, from the items you pick up, to the monsters you fight (many of which look like dead or aborted forms of Isaac), and everything in between.  Under such a light, death is revealed as nonnegotiable, although the hands that bring it are not.

After reading a chapter in a book I Know Who my Comrades Are, I wanted to muse on what privacy actually is, specifically in relation to mobile apps. While many users of mobile apps, when they first install an app, are asked if they want to allow the app to use their camera, microphone, and location, they don’t actually think about the implications of what that actually entails. For all intensive purposes, whenever a user of the app gives consent to the app to use their microphone, camera, and location, they essentially allow the app to not only use these things when they want it to, but also when they are unaware of it, as well.

It’s almost as if the app argues that unless someone wants to give up certain aspects of their own privacy that they will not be allowed to participate in the realm of the app. Many different types of media make this argument that one cannot participate in society while maintaining their own type of privacy. This is similar to many websites that do not allow people access without signing up for the website and creating an account when, for all intensive purposes, one would be able to enjoy what the website or app has to offer without needing to sign up.

Niantic, the parent company for the now infamous Pokemon Go, has just dropped information about an upcoming “Harry Potter” game they intend to release. Presumably under the umbrella of ubiquitous play, as that’s what Niantic is known for, the game was given no release date, but promises to immerse it’s players in the fictional world’s canon. Of course this marriage is as strong an allure as the aforementioned Pokemon Go was, as there exists a current generation wherein these  discourses, among many other, have become a connecting dialogue. Does this trend of nostalgia re-imagined, as the recent revamp and release of Crash Bandicoot will further attest, mean that the culture of gaming itself will turn less towards originality and lean more towards familiar foundations in the future? If so, how will that impact the industry, and what will happen when all the nostalgic oil is tapped? And if the revamped games aren’t up to par with their origin materials, will that halt production via gamers’ disappointed expectations? Will, like with Pokemon Go, the shine wear off fast and this trend disappear? Or will humanity’s obsession with the past be a driving force forward within gaming culture?

http://www.businessinsider.com/harry-potter-game-pokmon-go-iphone-android-2017-11

This week, I will analyse in a rhetorical manner the video game Crusader Kings II. CK2 is a dynastic simulator, where the player takes control of a medieval dynasty somewhere between the years 769 and 1337. What this translates to in-game is a lot of incest, infanticide, possible genocide, human sacrifice, cannibalism, and all sorts of wholesome family activities. The game is an absolute sandbox, so the player’s goal is whatever they make it. Thus a player might make a goal like conquer all of Britain, or convert India to Norse paganism, or seduce the pope and have his babies. Every character in game is represented by a group of traits that also determine their in-game personality (for example, with a character with the ambitious trait will be more aggressive and will be much more willing to act against their liege if it gets them something). The game excels at emergent story telling, where in-game events will form a narrative that creates a coherent story in the context of that specific game. I’ve had the game form interesting stories of assassination, familial intrigue, insane rulers, unstable political situations, and much more that is nearly akin to reading a novel like Game of Thrones with more interactivity.

Twitch is a site dedicated to interactive online video game streaming. It was recently bought by Amazon for around 970 million dollars. My question is: what does this online platform do to the space of play? If players are streaming their playtime live on screen for others to see, then how do other’s interactions with the game affect the way the player plays? How do these online gaming communities expand the space of play? I think that websites such as Twitch can enhance the motivation of a play only in the sense of achievement or ego-boosts a player gets while performing for an audience. However, this leads me to think that Twitch makes play a more superficial performative act once it is broadcasted out. In this sense, does Twitch transform the space of play into instant-gratification? Does play, then, become more about showing skill to viewers than it does about actually defeating the game?

On Sunday, November 5th, the Philadelphia Eagles destroyed the Denver Broncos 51-23, and given the nature of the game, there was a great amount of celebration among Eagles fans. By the end of the game, the Eagles used their back-up quarterback, Nick Foles, instead of their starting quarterback, Carson Wentz. This example of switching players argues that a team is willing to not play as hard if they feel that they have certainty of their win in a game. Because of this, it could be suggested that the better a team is playing, the more willing they are to slack off in the end of a game. This is almost like an analogy for the tortoise and the hare story; the hare feels far enough ahead in the race so it decides to take a break.

What one may wonder, though, is when does this point occur in a situation of play? At what point does a player or team decide to throw in the towel and stop playing like the game is on the line and become content with just relaxing? One could argue that this choice is directly related to the choice of how seriously one takes the game to begin with. If the team truly cares about winning, they would not at any time decide to take things easy.

Call of Duty: World War II – https://www.callofduty.com/wwii

As a die-hard fan of the original Call of Duty game play in games like Modern Warfare and World at War, I couldn’t be happier to see the Call of Duty franchise return to its traditional way of play. The recent games were fun to play but the movement mechanics brought me out of the game. In older Call of Duty games, I got consumed in the game play because of the small details that made the game play feel more real. Details like my character gets tired after sprinting for a while and would stop, the sway of a sniper scope when trying to pin point a distant shot, and the gore helped build the world in game play because they were aspects that I would expect from real world war. I would see other players get their legs blown off during a multiplayer match and in recent games, that wasn’t the case. I would shoot somebody in the kneecaps with a 12-gauge shotgun and the enemy player would fly back like a rag-doll. In real world experiences, the enemy should have no legs and the realistic consequences in the older games are what brought me in to the game play, ultimately investing me into the game further.

Link for Reference: https://youtu.be/9UOXhb6ZeHw

In many instances, the audience can play an important role in the game at hand.  The cheering crowd at a sports arena, the coaches on the sideline of a boxing match, the audience at a game show, etc. – all of these examples show a distinct and momentous relationship between the spectator(s) and player.  But, in my daily life, there’s one player-audience relationship that sticks out to me most prominently and interestingly.

Imaqtpie (a popular Twitch streamer and YouTuber for League of Legends) and his video editor, Sequence, are a perfect example of this relationship between the player and spectator(s).  Essentially, Imaqtpie only plays the game.  He spends his gaming time live-streaming on Twitch, just him, his natural commentary, and the gameplay itself.  He does not, however, create any of his YouTube videos himself.  Instead, Sequence does.  Sequence, as a member of Imaqtpie’s audience, goes through all of the day’s live-stream footage and compiles the best parts into a ten-minute (approx.) video that flows almost as if it were happening real-time.  He edits the video with his own appreciation and knowledge of Imaqtpie’s gameplay and style, creating content of his own in turn, full of jokes, sound effects, and overall feel characteristic of Sequence.  These YouTube videos are quite different than Imaqtpie’s live-streams on Twitch despite the gameplay being the same.  And this magic comes to fruition each time because of the interplay and understanding between Imaqtpie and Sequence – the player and the spectator.

Trivia Crack is a mobile app game. It was launched in 2013 and was modeled after Trivial Pursuit. The game allows the user to play against friends and strangers around the world. There are six different categories: Entertainment, Art, Sports, History, Science, and Geography. The player will spin a wheel that determines what category of question they will be asked. If they answer correctly, they will earn an icon representing the category they got correct. The first player to earn all six category icons wins the game. This app allows players to continue socializing with friends they may not be able to interact with in person. A player can use their Facebook friends or search by username in order to play games with people they know. This option allows players to maintain a constant social communications with friends over long distances. Players also have the option of choosing a random opponent, in which they will be placed in a game with someone from any location in the world.

While video games come with an array of graphics, there is one thing that a lot have in common: bright colors. Games such as Candy Crush use bright colors to stimulate the the player’s vision, allowing for more visually-appealing game play. But what is the strategy behind these bright colors? Why are they there, and what do they do? Essentially, in color theory, colors set the mood or tone. Usually, in video games, the colors and the background music go hand-in-hand. In Candy Crush, the bright colors are accompanied by happy music. Colors can certainly have an emotional response ; the bright colors in Candy Crush seek to appeal to happy emotions (as does the music). In this way, color theory is an important rhetorical strategy in video games. If the goal is to insight a specific emotion, that emotion’s coordinating colors should be used. In Candy Crush, the bright colors are supposed to insight joyful emotions.

Rhetorically speaking, literature has long since employed the tactic of foreshadowing, an action that has translated just as excellently into cinema, wherein foreshadowing can be even the smallest aspect of a sequence that still holds importance. The recent release of Stranger Things highly anticipated second season highlights aforementioned mechanism for a second time around, wherein an everyday game play later on becomes an obvious foreshadowing item. In the first season the infamous Dungeons and Dragons acts as the catalyzing impetus and final answer for the seasons big questions, and season two has kept that construct alive with a video game rather than a board one. Without dropping any spoilers, there exists a less obvious connection within this season’s prophetic game play and its predecessor arc, but that doesn’t lessen its inevitable impact. Therefore, as both tactics work wonderfully, are games therefore a potentially potent literary and rhetorical mechanism within foreshadowing? (on top of everything else games culture can do)

While it may seem that Dungeons and Dragons is a simple role-playing game, it actually argues that one’s success in life is not reliant on how well equipped someone is for a situation, but rather how they are able to find solutions to a situation with what they already have.

The definite aspect of dice rolling in the game, while it does leave certain aspects of a situation up to chance, it never guarantees that a player is going to have a situation play out in a definitive way until the Dungeon Master says whether or not the roll was successful. With this in mind, players must continuously take into account the role of uncertainty with the decisions that are made.

The only real certainty that a player has is in their ability to make new decisions after seeing the success of their first decision. This aspect of the game appeals to cynical players who are willing to scrutinize every decision that they make, understanding that all things in life are uncertain. It is almost as if the game argues that every situation in life has a different type of kairos to it that is unknown until the situation plays out in its entirety.

http://dnd.wizards.com/

After reading Montola’s argumentation on pervasive games, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about games that expand past the point of having a particular time, place, etc. for their play.  Many of such games have become known to us so recently, because they use mobile phones as their platform of play, and many pre-existing games have developed mobile versions to follow this craze, as well.  Old School RuneScape, for example, is about to release a mobile version this winter, which will allow players to use all of OSRS’s features anytime, anywhere.  And this focus on mobile phones, devices that have become essential to and inseparable from everyday life, has sparked my interest in some of the other applications on our phones – staple applications that necessitate the use of smart phones.

Facebook is arguably the world’s most popular role-playing game.  It lets the player create an avatar that looks just like themselves, and it lets the player use that avatar to navigate the game’s complex web of social situations.  The way the player conducts their avatar’s behavior in these interactions inevitably comes with the reward of social acceptance and appraisal or the punishment of social rejection and disapproval.  To improve or maintain their avatar’s dignity and fame on Facebook (or any social media), the player must make posts that they hope other players will enjoy and support.  The posts don’t necessarily have to coordinate with the player’s real life either; even if the player’s current life experience is a negative one, the player’s avatar can purport to be having positive experiences.  And, with Facebook’s integral role on our phones, the game never ends – the game is carried with us everywhere.

Play and Emotion

This week I’m going to talk about one of my favorite games, Verdun. The game is a WWI first person shooter with a heavy emphasis on trench warfare and (near) realism. Gameplay centers around capturing the enemy teams trenches; whichever team has advanced the most wins. Since the game centers around capturing and holding territory rather than killing as much of the enemy as possible, teamwork is absolutely essential to victory. Players won’t accomplish much if they aren’t working in coordination with their teammates; a team must cover all parts of the trench in order to successfully defend it, must outnumber the enemy in their trench to take it, must coordinate gas and artillery strikes to where it would be most effective for the team.

Other than the game objective, the main element of the game that encourages teamwork is the squad-based organization of teams. When the player joins the game, they are put into a four-person squad that represents a specific military unit. Each squad has four different roles that are meant to fill specific functions. For example, the U.S. Army unit, the “Doughboys” (as they were called in the war), consists of an NCO, a sniper, a machine gunner, and a grenadier. Each is meant to accomplish something that the others can’t (the NCO calls in artillery while the machine gunner provides cover fire, or the sniper picks off enemy machine guns while the grenadier lobs grenades around corners to clear out enemies). While a player could try to go it alone, working with the other members of their squad is their best bet for overall victory.