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Engaging with Videogames
 Critical Issues

Series Editors
Dr Robert Fisher Lisa Howard
Dr Ken Monteith

Advisory Board

Karl Spracklen Simon Bacon

Katarzyna Bronk Stephen Morris
Jo Chipperfield John Parry
Ann-Marie Cook Ana Borlescu
Peter Mario Kreuter Peter Twohig
S Ram Vemuri Kenneth Wilson
John Hochheimer

A Critical Issues research and publications project.

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/

The Cyber Hub

‘Videogame Cultures and the Future of Interactive Entertainment’

2014
 Engaging with Videogames:

Play, Theory and Practice

Edited by

Dawn Stobbart and Monica Evans

Inter-Disciplinary Press
Oxford, United Kingdom
© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2014
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First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2014. First Edition.
 Table of Contents

Introduction ix
Dawn Stobbart and Monica Evans

Part 1 Gaming Practices and Education

Toward a Social-Constructivist View of Serious

Games: Practical Implications for the Design
of a Sexual Health Education Video Game 3
Sara Mathieu-C. and Louis-Martin Guay

From Adventure to Education: Exploring Meanings

of Scenario and Dimension in Video Games 17
Justina Gröber

Exploring the Idealised Self: Avatars as a Vessel for

Adolescent Identity Exploration and Growth 27
Peter Wonica

Situating Play Cultures: A Survey of Videogame Players

and Practices in France 37
Rufat Samuel, Coavoux Samuel, Hovig Ter Minassian

‘Where Is Life?’ Commitment and Micro-Interactions

in Videogames 53
Hovig Ter Minassian, Isabel Colón de Carvajal,
Manuel Boutet and Mathieu Triclot

The Phenomenology of Video Games: How Gamers

Perceive Games and Gaming 65
Benjamin Čulig, Marko Katavić, Jasenka Kuček and
Antonia Matković

Part 2 Gaming Practices and Culture

The Involvement of Mythology with Player Experience

in MMOs 79
Michael Andreen

It’s Just a Game, or Is It?: A Study of Racism in Game

and Character Design 91
Steven Billingslea II
 Exploring Experimental Video Gaming as a ‘Body
without Organs’ 101
Corné du Plessis

Funny Games: Understanding Videogames as

Slapstick and the Experience of Game-Worlds
as Shared Cultural References 109
Ben Hudson

Gaming the Taboo in the Finlandisation Era Finland:

The Case of Raid over Moscow 121
Tero Pasanen

Immersion vs. Emersive Effects in Videogames 133

Piotr Kubiński

Part 3 Videogame Theory

Playing with Fiction: Ludology and the Evolution of

Narrative in Videogames 145
Dawn Stobbart

What Is Videogame History? 155

Nick Webber

Text as Ruleset: How Games Precede Humanities 169

Roger Travis

Challenging Ideologies of Gender through Indie Games 177

Karen Mentz

The Backwards Progressional: Is More Really Better? 187

Sarah Hope Scoggins

Videogames as Art: The Spirit of the ‘Literary Artist’ in

the Discourse of Game-Making 195
Agnieszka Kliś-Brodowska and Bartłomiej Kuchciński

Ergodic Agency: How Play Manifests Understanding 205

Isaac Karth
Part 4 From Theory to Practice

‘Get Over It!’: Sexuality and Sexual Diversity

in Video Games 219
René Schallegger

The End of the End as We Know It: A Philosophical

Look at the Narration in Mass Effect 231
Thomas Morisset

The Virtual Identities of Actual Gamers: An Analysis

of Popular Response to Mass Effect 3 239
Jakub Siwak

Implicit and Explicit Video Game Structure in Shaun of

the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World 247
Jamie Skidmore

Rewriting Morality: Women, Sexuality and Morality

in Dishonored 255
Meaghan Ingram

Spaces of the Past: Nostalgia in the Murder on the

Orient Express and The Last Express 265
Radha Dalal

Constructing a Reality: A Post-Structural Analysis

of Deus Ex 277
Luke S. Bernfeld
 Introduction

Dawn Stobbart and Monica Evans

The chapters in this volume reflect the discussions that occurred during the 5th
Global Conference on Videogame Cultures and the Future of Interactive
Entertainment, held as part of Cyber Hub activity within the Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Critical Issues research hub at Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom in July
2013. This edited collection of chapters provides a snapshot of the inquiries,
discussions, and conclusions drawn at this conference.
Game studies remains a highly interdisciplinary field, and as such tends to
bring together scholars and researchers from a wide variety of fields. This
conference included experts in literature, visual art, history, classics, film studies,
new media studies, phenomenology, education, philosophy, psychology and the
social sciences, as well as game studies, design, and development. Additionally,
twelve nationalities were represented at this conference, which included scholars
from Austria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, New Zealand,
Poland, Qatar, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States (including
an unusually large delegation from the state of Texas).
Throughout the conference, numerous topics were developed among the
presentations and discussions. The most prevalent conversation involved linking
the practices of gaming to educational possibilities, particularly for adolescents and
young adults. Discussions of identity theory and formation led easily to structural
concerns about developing serious games to raise awareness, inspire change, and
educate underserved or at-risk populations. Much discussion also surrounded the
identity of ‘gamers’ themselves, from surveys of the habits and practices of gamer
populations to individual and cultural perceptions of gamer-ness. Another series of
conversations centred on the cultures of gaming, particularly as they relate to
gender identity, racial identity and nationality. These discussions expanded to other
cultural expressions, such as comedy, horror, political history and nostalgia.
Also pervasive throughout the conference were the presentation of new theories
and models for understanding the videogame as a medium. Theories covered a
wide variety of topics, including a controversial suggestion that the humanities be
recontextualised as a subset of game studies. Other theories involved ideologies of
gender, new forms of player agency and immersion, player progression and the
categorisation of rulesets. Discussions of narratology and ludology were again
present, although framed this time in wider questions of videogame history, games
as art practice, and the evolution of narrative structures as a whole.
Much of the conference considered movement between theory and practice in
the field of game studies as a whole. In-depth discussions, close readings, and
analyses of games included the Mass Effect series, Dishonored, Murder on the
Orient Express, Deus Ex, Braid, The Walking Dead and World of Warcraft.
Delegates discussed games that spanned genres, platforms and history, from triple-
x Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
A games released only months before the conference such as The Last of Us and
Tomb Raider 2013, to games nearly thirty years old such as Raid over Moscow, to
obscure experimental games such as Slave of God. Close analyses were also
influenced by the techniques and practices of numerous fields, from art history to
true literary criticism, and many discussions centred on the potential translation of
analytical techniques to game studies from other fields.
The conference included two workshop sessions, in which participants explored
practical and methodological aspects of game development and design. Tim
Christopher led the workshop ‘Metagaming for Academics,’ in which participants
learned to rapidly prototype multiple sets of game mechanics, a widespread
practice in both digital and analogue game development. Monica Evans led the
workshop ‘Digital Mobile Game Design,’ which introduced participants to
concept, pre-production, and design methodologies for digital games intended for
mobile, social and handheld platforms. Two game prototypes resulted from these
workshops, ‘Tim’s Game,’ and ‘Animal Regatta,’ a competitive zoo-centric boat
racing game.
To reflect the primary topics of the conference discussed above, the twenty-six
chapters of the book have been organised into four parts:

Part 1: Gaming Practices and Education

Part 2: Gaming Practices and Culture
Part 3: Videogame Theory
Part 4: From Theory to Practice

The first part of the book presents six chapters focused on gaming practices as
they relate to various forms of education. Sara Mathieu-C. and Louis-Martin Guay
begin the section with their chapter ‘Toward a Social-Constructivist View of
Serious Games: Practical Implications for the Design of a Sexual Health Education
Video Game.’ Looking primarily at sexual health education programmes for
adolescents, the chapter discusses how a social-constructivist educational paradigm
might be leveraged to create innovative and impactful serious games in the field of
sexual health.
Justina Gröber, in her chapter ‘From Adventure to Education: Exploring
Meanings of Scenario and Dimension in Video Games,’ also considers the benefits
of videogames for adolescents. By applying Foucault’s concept of heterotopic
spaces to interactive virtual environments, Gröber posits that videogames enable
teens to explore and understand hybrid spaces, which may allow for new
educational practices and possibilities.
Peter Wonica also addresses serious games for adolescents but from the
standpoint of identity formation, in his chapter ‘Exploring the Idealised Self:
Avatars as a Vessel for Adolescent Identity Exploration and Growth.’ Wonica’s
chapter explores the benefits that videogames might provide to adolescents in
 Dawn Stobbart and Monica Evans xi
__________________________________________________________________
terms of understanding, and thereby indirectly improving, one’s self-identity,
particularly in the age of digital natives.
The three chapters that follow present results of ongoing research in game
studies. ‘Situating Play Cultures: A Survey of Videogame Players and Practices in
France,’ by Rufat Samuel, Coavoux Samuel and Hovig Ter Minassian, presents
findings from a 2012 survey of two hundred French adults. The study focuses on
understanding players’ choices as they relate to play life and play career, as well as
how those choices are affected by family socialisation and other cultural norms.
‘Where Is Life? Commitment and Micro-Interactions in Videogames,’ by
Hovig Ter Minassian, Isabel Colón de Carvajal, Manuel Boutet and Mathieu
Triclot, presents an analysis of video recordings of game players. While the
research is ongoing, the chapter presents the act of playing videogames as a bodily,
social, and spatial experience, one in which videogame practice is difficult to
separate from the physical act of playing games. The authors suggest that
videogame practice meddles with everyday life in such a way that all participants,
including spectators and players both in- and out-of-game, can be considered
‘players.’
Finally, Benjamin Čulig, Marko Katavić, Jasenka Kuček and Antonia Matković
present an analysis of gaming in Croatia, continuing a research project begun in
2011. In their chapter ‘The Phenomenology of Video Games: How Gamers
Perceive Games and Gaming’ they analyse why and how gamers game, what they
find appealing about game playing, and how critical a role sociability plays, while
laying a foundation for further quantitative studies.
The second part of the book presents six chapters that focus on gaming
practices as they relate to wider human experience. Michael Andreen begins this
section with his chapter ‘The Involvement of Mythology with Player Experience in
MMOs.’ Andreen examines the ways in which belief systems, particularly those
that centre on an invented or fictional mythology, are tied to a player’s investment
in a game space. These systems are examined through the lenses of
neuropsychology and literature, and approach a new understanding of how players
become immersed in fictional interactive worlds.
Other aspects of massively multiplayer online games are presented by Steven
Billingslea II in his chapter ‘It’s Just a Game, or Is It? A Study of Racism in Game
and Character Design.’ Billingslea indicts multiple influential games, notably
World of Warcraft and the Saints Row series, for failure to address issues of
prejudice, while pinpointing the difficulties with improving or even addressing
issues of race and diversity with a defensive developer population.
Corné du Plessis moves the discussion to experimental game forms. His
chapter ‘Exploring Experimental Video Gaming as a “Body without Organs”’
applies Deleuze and Guattari’s theory to investigate whether experimental games
can deterritorialise existing concepts and impel players towards new thought. Du
Plessis argues in favour of unique gameplay experiences that use the full potential
xii Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
of videogames as an art form, using the experimental game Slave of God as a case
study.
In his chapter, ‘Funny Games: Understanding Videogames as Slapstick and the
Experience of Game-Worlds as Shared Cultural References,’ Ben Hudson
examines the inherent incongruity of videogame worlds as a potential source of
humour. Hudson’s examination spans player communities, experimental mods, fan
creations and comedians incorporating gaming content in their acts. Hudson ends
with a brief analysis of one of his own performances.
Tero Pasanen looks to a historical incident in his chapter ‘Gaming the Taboo in
the Finlandisation Era Finland: The Case of Raid over Moscow.’ Pasanen explores
the chain of events that led to the first politically motivated videogame controversy
in Finland, documenting what was both a genuinely Finnish event and a unique
moment in gaming history.
Piotr Kubiński rounds out this section with his chapter ‘Immersion vs.
Emersive Effects in Videogames.’ Kubiński proposes a new term, ‘emersion,’
referring to the ways in which players might be broken out of an immersive state in
videogames, both to find new forms of game expression and to better understand
the concept of immersion in videogames.
The third section of the book presents seven chapters focused on videogame
theory. Dawn Stobbart begins this section by reintroducing the narratology-
ludology debate with her chapter, ‘Playing with Fiction: Ludology and the
Evolution of Narrative in Games.’ Citing both Juul and Eskelinen, Stobbart
ultimately uses both Gennette’s Narrative Discourse and a case study of Assassin’s
Creed 2 to place videogames in the historical thread of narrative evolution. She
concludes by noting that videogames present both a coherent narrative and a
ludological product, which traditional narratology does not account for, and
suggests that the role of player identity is critically important to our understanding
of the medium.
Nick Webber follows with an examination of the current state of videogame
history in his chapter, ‘What Is Videogame History?’ Webber considers the
videogame as economic object, cultural artefact and social environment,
questioning whether videogame history as a field should be concerned with the
history of the medium, the history of evolving virtual worlds – such as that of
World of Warcraft – or the stories and mythologies of the players themselves.
Webber’s examination of the complexities of videogame history ultimately sheds
light on the place and purpose of historical studies.
Roger Travis, in his chapter ‘Text as Ruleset: How Games Precede
Humanities,’ takes the controversial stance that games not only precede the
humanities, but that humanities as a field might be considered a subset of game
studies. He considers that, if we accept text as ruleset, it follows that we should
treat texts as games, rather than treating games as texts. Travis’ bold statement is
 Dawn Stobbart and Monica Evans xiii
__________________________________________________________________
supported by the history of humanistic study, including Homeric epic and Platonic
dialogue, and considers both digital and analogue games throughout history.
Karen Mentz approaches the construction of gender in games in both the AAA
and indie space, focusing on representations of femininity in Braid and Tomb
Raider 2013. Her chapter, entitled ‘Challenging Ideologies of Gender through
Indie Games,’ argues that the independent game movement allows for a more
substantive subversion of the ideologies prevalent in mainstream culture, and notes
that individual games successfully challenge these ideologies through ambiguity,
narrative perspective and encouragement of an aware and questioning player.
Moving from theory to design, in her chapter ‘The Backwards Progressional: Is
More Really Better?’ Sarah Hope Scoggins explores how game designers might
reverse some of the more common aspects of flow and pacing to present new
narrative experiences and new challenges to players. She also presents new design
methodologies for creating these structures within digital games.
Agnieszka Kliś-Brodowska and Bartłomiej Kuchciński approach videogames
theory from the standpoint of literary studies. Their chapter ‘Videogames as Art:
The Spirit of the “Literary Artist” in the Discourse of Game-Making’ discusses
whether game designers can lay claim to the status of a literary artist, based on an
analysis of the dialogues and discourses in course books and available educational
texts for game designers.
Isaac Karth presents a new model for understanding games in his chapter
‘Ergodic Agency: How Play Manifests Understanding.’ Karth suggests we can
measure whether in-game choices are meaningful or interesting by redefining
agency through an understanding of epiphany and aporia, a cycle that inherently
moves players through a game experience. This ergodic agency gives us a lens by
which we can reexamine player engagement in a multitude of digital spaces.
The fourth and final part of the book presents seven chapters that move from
theory to practice, including in-depth analyses of specific games. René Schallegger
begins this section with his chapter ‘“Get Over It!”: Sexuality and Sexual Diversity
in Video Games.’ Schallegger focuses mainly on the controversies surrounding
character sexuality and character choice in two successful BioWare franchises,
Mass Effect and Dragon Age. His analysis of sexual diversity in gaming concludes
with a case study of Mass Effect 3, in his view one of the few current games that
approaches inclusive representations of sexuality and sexual diversity.
Thomas Morisset presents a different view of the franchise in his chapter ‘The
End of the End as We Know It: A Philosophical Look at the Narration in Mass
Effect.’ Morisset also examines a media controversy, in this case the players’
reaction and BioWare’s subsequent response to the ending of Mass Effect 3, as it
applies to structures of narrative in videogames, and presents the history of the
released and re-released ending as a potential resource for artistic endeavours in
videogames.
xiv Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
Jakub Siwak also addresses this controversy in his chapter ‘The Virtual
Identities of Actual Gamers: An Analysis of Popular Response to Mass Effect 3.’
Siwak argues that the complexities of the players’ reaction to the ending,
culminating in an $80,000 campaign to release an ending where the main character
survives, makes it difficult to consider the game as a ‘body-without-organs,’ which
has significant ramifications for identity formation in videogames.
Jamie Skidmore examines the relationship between games and film in his
chapter ‘Implicit and Explicit Video Game Structure in Shaun of the Dead and
Scott Pilgrim vs The World.’ By applying the theory of spectatorship, as well as a
semiotic analysis of the morphological aspects of Wright’s films, Skidmore
explores the creation of simulated video game worlds as the setting for each film,
concluding that Wright’s use of video game motifs allows him to simultaneously
question society as a whole.
Meaghan Ingram focuses on the intersecting subjects of gender, sexuality, and
morality in her chapter ‘Rewriting Morality: Women, Sexuality and Morality in
Dishonored.’ Using the neo-Victorian themes of the game, Ingram attempts to
place Dishonored within the Neo-Victorian literary tradition, concluding that the
juxtaposition of the 21st century morality and Victorian aesthetics allows the player
to better connect with concepts they might otherwise find obscure or untouchable.
Radha Dalal looks at games as a representation of past history in her chapter
‘Spaces of the Past: Nostalgia in the Murder on the Orient Express and The Last
Express.’ Dalal approaches a close reading of both games through multiple layers
of nostalgia, proposing that they offers players a virtual form of mobility, both in
the game space itself and in the players’ ability to recontextualise and redirect
historical events.
Finally, Luke S. Bernfeld applies literary theory to Deus Ex: Human Revolution
in his chapter ‘Constructing a Reality: A Post-Structural Analysis of Deus Ex.’
Bernfeld’s argument draws on the works of Nietzsche, Derrida and Foucault to
make connections between the slippery nature of truth in post-structuralism and the
truth-less world of Deus-Ex co-created by the developers, the player’s actions, and
the game’s changing mechanical state, and concludes by connecting the language
of the game to the flawed languages of reality.
 Part 1

Gaming Practices and Education

Toward a Social-Constructivist View of Serious Games: Practical
Implications for the Design of a Sexual Health Education
Video Game

Sara Mathieu-C. and Louis-Martin Guay

Abstract
Sexual health education is aimed to equip individuals and communities with the
information, motivation and behavioural skills needed to enhance sexual health and
avoid negative sexual health outcomes. 1 Currently, the majority of existing sexual
health education programmes targeting adolescents are delivered via relatively
passive classroom-based strategies. If the effects of those programmes are still
uncertain, some strategies have been identified as promising, for instance the use of
video games. 2 Serious (video) games are now recognised to provide individuals
with intrinsic and extrinsic motivation during the learning process. They also
permit an anonymous, interactive and individualised intervention in a safe space at
a chosen time. 3 Despite those advantages, there is no theoretical or operational
guideline to design serious games addressing sexual health. Starting from the
assumption that a social-constructivist intervention is based on a situated and
interactive approach to learning, this chapter aims to discuss how it could be useful
to serious games design in the field of sexual health. This theoretical discussion
takes place in the context of a broader project aiming to develop a theory-driven
and evidences-based serious game for sexual health targeting Canadian youth.

Key Words: Sexual health, game design, serious game, social-constructivism,

sexual education.

*****

1. Context
Adolescents’ sexual health is a major public health issue in Quebec, Canada,
and the rest of the world. 4 Many educational and preventive sexual health
programmes have been conducted in recent years to deal with issues such as
sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unintended pregnancy among youth.
While few of those programs were evaluated and fewer recognised to have
significant effects on sexual behaviour, the diversification of pedagogical strategies
has been strongly recommended and the use of computer-based intervention,
including educational video games (serious games), was identified as promising. 5
Video games offer potential advantages over group-based and face-to-face
intervention. For example, it can be anonymous, repeated and accessible at
convenient times. 6 It can also provide highly interactive learning and
individualised feedback in a safe space that allows trial and error and identity
exploration. 7 Video games are very popular among youth, which still remains the
4 Toward a Social-Constructivist View of Serious Games
__________________________________________________________________
main justification when it comes to exploiting them for educational purposes. 8
Their potential and advantages for sexual health education are shared by a growing
number of researchers. 9 This interest is consistent with the global popularity of
serious games and their application in health sciences known as ‘Game for
health.’ 10
Despite those advantages and an increasing scientific recognition, there is no
actual guideline to design serious games addressing sexual health issues. In fact,
little literature currently provides theoretical or operational instructions for the
design of serious games in a coherent manner. 11 Those guidelines are, as far as we
know, absent in the specific context of sexual health education. Starting from the
assumption that a social-constructivist intervention is based on a situated and
interactive approach of learning, the purpose of the present chapter is to discuss
how the social-constructivist educational paradigm could be used to design serious
games in the field of sexual health education. This chapter briefly defines ‘serious
game’ as a premise, and then situates social-constructivism in the fields of
education, sexual health education and video game design. Finally, it discusses
three main video game design recommendations inspired by social-constructivist
assumptions.

2. A Definition of a Serious Game

In the past years, many computer-based and technological initiatives have been
launched as a contribution to sexual health promotion among youth. Few were
serious games, while most of them were gamified websites, mobile applications
and edutainment. In the context of this chapter, serious games are defined as games
that do not have entertainment, enjoyment or fun as their primary purpose. 12
Instead, serious games are the translation of educational goals into game forms. 13
They are computer applications that combine teaching, learning, training,
communication, knowledge and game design. 14 In comparison, gamification only
involves the application of game design thinking to non-game applications to make
them more fun and engaging. 15 In the same vein, edutainment is characterised by
an alternation of educational content and fun sequences of challenges (mini-games)
and rewards. 16 It is based on a simple dynamic of content transfer while serious
games should incorporate mechanics that have intrinsic value in a learning
context. 17
If digital technology and serious game offers potential for sexual health
education, it is uncertain how they might work and whether they are cost-
effective. 18 In fact, more research and understanding of the links between specific
video game mechanics/dynamics and their effectiveness on learning are needed
because it is unclear which attributes lead to which learning outcomes. 19 We still
need to know if videogames really increase learning experience even though some
studies are encouraging. 20 More specific studies have documented the
effectiveness of games in improving health-related outcomes, but few elaborate on
 Sara Mathieu-C. and Louis-Martin Guay 5
__________________________________________________________________
the consequences of game design and pedagogical decisions linked to those
effects. 21 However, those decisions seem central to whether games might be
engaging and effective. Thus, there is a clear need for reflexion on the subject of
serious game design guideline and their pedagogical foundation as a basis for the
development of effective serious games including in the field of sexual health
education.

3. Social-Constructivism: An Overview of Literature on Health Education

and Serious Games Design
In this section, we globally define the social-constructivism paradigm and we
present how it has been used both in the field of sexual health education and
serious gaming based on recent literature. Constructivism is defined as an
educational paradigm that mainly insists on the active role of the learner in the
development of his knowledge. 22 Social-constructivism also focuses on the active
process of knowledge development, but insists on the importance of interactions
between the learner and his environment. Its origins are largely attributed to
Vygotsky (1978) who applied Piaget (1963) constructivist assumptions taking into
account social context. 23 As Gordon emphasised, Vygotsky’s main contribution to
constructivism in education is probably his concept of ‘Zone of Proximal
Development’ (ZPD). 24 The ZPD is the distance between the actual developmental
level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential
development as determined through problem solving under guidance or in
collaboration with peers. In other words, learning is the process of problem solving
or adaptation when facing a new situation. This social cognitive conflict created by
the proximity to the new situation is described as essential to the learning process.
Social-constructivism can be understood as a general framework that guides
design, implementation and evaluation in a coherent way by giving a perspective
on how knowledge is constructed, accumulated, refuted and developed. 25 In
Quebec (Canada), social-constructivism has guided the development of the school
curriculum from kindergarden to high school and was globally adopted in 2001. 26
Since then, recommendations about teaching and learning have changed according
to social-constructivism assumptions and a competency approach. In brief, those
major assumptions are that (1) learners construct their learning based on anterior
knowledge and experience; (2) learners need to be involved and active through the
learning process and (3) learners construct their learning by interacting with their
environment. In coherence with Vygotsky’s ZPD, competency can only be
developed in action when adapting to situations. In this context, competency can be
understood as the result of all the actions that a learner undertakes by mobilising
and using a group of resources (information, attitude, skills, books, websites, etc.)
in order to handle a situation in which he is involved and the critical reflection on
those actions and their results. 27 According to a social-constructivist perspective of
learning, interactivity, situational setting and social cognitive conflict are
6 Toward a Social-Constructivist View of Serious Games
__________________________________________________________________
fundamental. These reflect an essentially learner-centred approach that can be
translated in different teaching methods and environments such as problem-solving
activities and discovery and experiential focused learning.

3.1 Social-Constructivist Paradigm in Sexual Health Education

In the field of sexual health education, the development and the implementation
of school-based curriculum have been influenced by social-constructivist principles
even if a behavioural paradigm remains dominant in health promotion. 28 Indeed,
some of the characteristics of effective curriculum-based and STDs/HIV education
programmes according to Kirby and al. are similar to social-constructivist
assumptions especially when it comes to activities and teaching methods. 29 For
example, an effective program needs to create a safe social environment for youth
to participate. It employs teaching methods that actively involved the participants
and address multiple sexual psychosocial risk and protective factors (resources)
that affect their sexual behaviour (ex. information, attitudes, skills, self-efficacy).
Also, curriculum goals of those programs focus on specific behaviour (action),
give clear messages about them and explicitly address situations that might lead to
them. 30
More recently in Quebec, the ‘Healthy School Approach’ promoted by the
National Institute of Public Health (INSPQ) has clearly based their
recommendations about sexual health education on a competency approach
oriented by social-constructivist assumptions. 31 According to INSPQ
recommendations, interactivity, active and situated-learning, repetitive feedbacks
and individualised accompaniment through learning are recommended as
exemplary practices when it comes to sexual health education. 32 That said, face-to-
face interventions such as school-based programs and group-based sexual health
promotion are hard to implement and have mixed success. 33 This partially explains
the increasing interest for interactive computer-based interventions including video
games. 34

3.2 Social-Constructivist Theory and Principles for Video Game Design

Even if Piaget and Vygotsky have both recognised games as a natural vehicle
for learning, very little is known about the explicit use of social-constructivism
principals for video games design. 35 That said, already in 1991, Lave and Wenger
identified social-constructivism and situated learning as the theories that best suit
educational game design because of how it emphasis the active role of learners
during an active learning process where doing is more important than listening. 36
Reinforcing this previous statement, Chee supported that realistic situations
provide challenging problems and are a fertile avenue for video game design. 37
Moreover, he argues that first-person experimentation of concrete situations gives
the opportunity to ground learning in reality. This integration of learning into
 Sara Mathieu-C. and Louis-Martin Guay 7
__________________________________________________________________
meaningful ‘real-life’ (virtual) situations is increasingly valued and mainly referred
as authentic learning. 38
A movement from a content-driven approach to a context-driven approach in
the field of educational video games can also be assimilated to the acceptance of a
social-constructivist perspective. Squire describe this transformation as a shift
toward a new model that focuses less on content and more on designing
experiences to stimulate new ways of thinking, acting and being in the world.
According to this author, this emergent paradigm of game-based learning would be
based on seven principles that can be assimilated to social-constructivist
assumptions mentioned previously: (1) create emotionally compelling contexts for
learning; (2) situate learners in complex information management and decision-
making situations where facts and knowledge are drawn on for the purpose of
doing; (3) construct challenges that confront and build on users’ pre-existing
beliefs; (4) construct challenges that lead to productive future understandings; (5)
anticipate the users’ experiences from moment to moment, providing a range of
activities to address learners’ needs; (6) invite the learner to participate in
constructing the solutions and interpretations; and (7) embrace the ideologically
driven nature of education and training. 39

4. Three Concrete Recommendations for the Design of Serious Games for

Sexual Health Using a Social-Constructivist Approach
Social-constructivist educational paradigm might represent an ideal framework
for the design of serious game because of how it emphasises problem solving and
situated learning. 40 With this in mind, there are still many unanswered questions
when it comes to the pragmatic implication of those assumptions. Based on the
brief literature review presented previously and by taking into account the specific
context of sexual health education, we propose three main recommendations in
order to contribute to the emergence of guideline for the design of serious games
with sexual health education purposes.

4.1 The Designing Process Should Start by the Identification of Critical

Situations That Youth Are Facing When It Comes to Their Sexual Health and
Well-Being
As demonstrated, social-constructivist paradigm and competency approach
focus on the importance of situated learning. In order to stimulate a meaningful
lesson and to allow learning transfer in real life, those situations need to reflect the
target audience reality. 41 To achieve this task, game designers, in collaboration
with sexual health researchers and experts, should identify problematic situations
that are specific to youth sexual experiences and use them as a starting point to
design game challenges. This approach of design could be assimilated to an
evidence-based approach of programme development that has already
demonstrated its interest in health promotion and face-to-face intervention. 42 That
8 Toward a Social-Constructivist View of Serious Games
__________________________________________________________________
said, starting from situations rather than pedagogical objectives does imply an
access to recent and valid data and a considerable analytic work. Without this
analysis, developers would not be able to identify gameful and challenging
elements intrinsic to chosen situations as well as essential knowledge that need to
be transferred to handle similar situations in real life.

4.2 Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Should Be a Design Focal Point

Allowing the Participant/Gamer to Mobilise and Use Different Resources in
Context
We recognise that the complexity of youth sexual experiences is hard to
translate into a video game. However, an intervention reduced to knowledge
transfer, even in a gamified form, has been proven not effective when it comes to
the modification of sexual behaviours and the ability to make reflexive choices.
Therefore, as Squire recommended, we need to situate learners in complex
information management and decision-making situations where resources (pre-
existing as newly acquired) are drawn for the purpose of doing. 43 Taking this into
account, certain types of games should be privileged such as role-playing and
adventure games. 44 In addition, first-person games seem to favour engagement and
positioning of the player in action and, therefore, are recommended for games for
health. 45 From a game design point of view, this recommendation implies a
reflexion on which mechanics will engage players into situations and push them
toward the decision process. At this point, Vygotsky’s ‘Zone of Proximal
Development’ could serve as a reference for game design by trying to maintain the
player in this uncomfortable zone which motivates him to mobilised new
knowledge and resources to progress through the game. In order to do this,
recurent and integrated feedback should be a huge part of the gameplay, in reaction
to every micro-decisions made by the player. Pushing further the social-
constructivist paradigm endorsed, an ideal feedback should reflect internal
cognitive conflicts as well as interactions with the (virtual) environment. This
means a work toward complexity, the adoption of a systemic and fluid approach of
game design and a development process highly iterative based on repetitive
prototyping.

4.3 The Virtual Learning Experience Should Be Characterised by

Authenticity Based on Gameplay, Not on Visual and Emotional Engagement
As we argued, the authenticity of the learning experience is one of the key
concepts of a social-constructivist educational paradigm and is known as one of the
recommended practices in sexual health education. In fact, authenticity and realism
in serious gaming are essential to knowledge transfer in real life. 46 Some authors
maintain that this authenticity reach is climax in a three dimensional virtual
world. 47 We argue that rather than by counting on visual and emotional
engagement or immersion that are associated with significant costs and no
 Sara Mathieu-C. and Louis-Martin Guay 9
__________________________________________________________________
assurance of achieving, authenticity should be achieved through gameplay. For
example, the authenticity of the experience could be increased by open-ended
quests and a highly responsive environment reflecting ‘reality.’ 48 Considering that
sexual health education should be adapted and individualised to every adolescent
characteristics and their psychosexual development stage, specific mechanics
should allow a customisation of the avatar and, more importantly, an adaptation of
the quest based on decisions that player had previously made. By favouring
player’s interactions with the game rather than the visual environment and the
storytelling, we think that his engagement could be more strong and stable.

5. Conclusion
This chapter aimed to contribute to the theoretical reflection on serious game
design in the context of sexual health education. However, some considerable
aspects could not been addressed in the context of this chapter. Those aspects
include challenges related to interdisciplinary collaborative work; funding and
resources; dissemination through traditional and untraditional track or ethical
issues for example. They must be address in further researches in order to complete
the picture surrounding the design of serious games for sexual health education and
to produce useful guideline that will allow the development of engaging and
effective games.
In this chapter, we have proposed to discuss the implication of a social-
constructivist approach of serious game design. Three concrete recommendations
were presented. They must be seen as the beginning of a broader work and as a
way to engage dialogue and collaboration between academics and professionals
from the video game industry. There is very good assumptions that videogames
could contribute to sexual health education, but in order to be a really effective
learning experience, the game must be designed with a proper methodology
constructed from a lot of complementary works.

Notes
1
ASPC, Lignes Directrices Canadiennes pour L’éducation en Matière de Santé
Sexuelle, Revised Edition (Ottawa: Agence de la Santé Publique du Canada, 2008).
2
Douglas Kirby et al., ‘Interventions to Prevent Pregnancy and Sexually
Transmitted Diseases, Including HIV Infection’, in Adolescent Health:
Understanding and Preventing Risk Behaviors, eds. Ralph J. Sales DiClemente, J.
S. Santelli and R. A. Crosby (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 303-335.
3
Julia V. Bailey et al., ‘Interactive Computer-Based Interventions for Sexual
Health Promotion’, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (Online) 9 (2010):
CD006483.
10 Toward a Social-Constructivist View of Serious Games
__________________________________________________________________

4
ASPC, Lignes Directrices Canadiennes Pour L’éducation En Matière De Santé
Sexuelle; OMS, ‘OMS | Santé Sexuelle et Génésique des Adolescents’, OMS
(2013); Kirby et al., ‘Interventions to Prevent Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted
Diseases, Including HIV Infection’.
5
Kirby et al., ‘Interventions to Prevent Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted
Diseases, Including HIV Infection’.
6
Mansi Kanuga and Walter D. Rosenfeld, ‘Adolescent Sexuality and the Internet:
The Good, the Bad, and the URL’, Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent
Gynecology 17, No. 2 (2004): 117-124.
7
Bailey et al., ‘Interactive Computer-Based Interventions for Sexual Health
Promotion’; Katrin Becker, ‘Digital Game-Based Learning Once Removed:
Teaching Teachers’, British Journal of Educational Technology 38, No. 3 (2007):
478-488; Vincent Berry, ‘Jouer pour Apprendre: Est-ce Bien Sérieux? Réflexions
Théoriques sur Les Relations Entre Jeu (Vidéo) et Apprentissage’, Canadian
Journal of Learning and Technology 37, No. 2 (2011): 1-14.
8
Tom Baranowski et al., ‘Playing for Real: Video Games and Stories for Health-
Related Behavior Change’, American Journal of Preventive Medicine 34, No. 1
(2008): 74-82.
9
Bailey et al., ‘Interactive Computer-Based Interventions for Sexual Health
Promotion’; Megumi Kashibuchi and Akira Sakamoto, ‘The Educational
Effectiveness of a Simulation/Game in Sex Education’, Simulation and Gaming 32,
No. 3 (2001): 331-343; Kirby et al., ‘Interventions to Prevent Pregnancy and
Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Including HIV Infection’; Lise Renaud,
‘Validation par les Experts et Évaluation de L’efficacité d’un jeu Éducatif en Ligne
sur les Attitudes des Jeunes de 13 et 14 ans à L’égard de la Santé Sexuelle’, Revue
des Sciences de L’éducation 36, No. 3 (2010): 671-694.
10
Berry, ‘Jouer pour Apprendre’; Brian A. Primack et al., ‘Role of Video Games in
Improving Health-Related Outcomes: A Systematic Review’, American Journal of
preventive medicine 42, No. 6 (2012): 630-638.
11
Conor Linehan et al., ‘Practical, Appropriate, Empirically-Validated Guidelines
for Designing Educational Games’, in Proceedings of the International Conference
on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2011, Vancouver, BC, Canada,
2011): 1979-1988.
12
David R. Michael and Sande Chen, Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train
and Inform (Boston: Thomson Course Technology, 2006).
13
Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007).
14
Julian Alvarez and Laurent Michaud, Serious Games: Advergaming, Edugaming,
Training and More, IDATE (Montpellier: IDATE, 2008).
 Sara Mathieu-C. and Louis-Martin Guay 11
__________________________________________________________________

15
Gabe Zichermann and Christopher Cunningham, Gamification by Design:
Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps, 1st Edition (O’Reilly
Media, 2011).
16
Dennis Charsky, ‘From Edutainment to Serious Games: A Change in the Use of
Game Characteristics’, Games and Culture 5, No. 2 (2010): 177-198.
17
Pablo Moreno-Ger and al., ‘Educational Game Design for Online Education’,
Computers in Human Behavior 24, No. 6 (2008): 2530-2540.
18
Bailey et al., ‘Interactive Computer-Based Interventions for Sexual Health
Promotion’.
19
Wendy L. Bedwell et al., ‘Toward a Taxonomy Linking Game Attributes to
Learning: An Empirical Study’, Simulation & Gaming (2012): 729-760.
20
Richard Blunt, ‘Does Game-Based Learning Work? Results from Three Recent
Studies’, in The Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation & Education
Conference (I/ITSEC) (Orlando: National Training Systems Association, 2007),
1-11.
21
Bailey et al., ‘Interactive Computer-Based Interventions for Sexual Health
Promotion’; Baranowski et al., ‘Playing for Real’; Kashibuchi and Sakamoto, ‘The
Educational Effectiveness of a Simulation/Game in Sex Education’; Primack and
al., ‘Role of Video Games in Improving Health-Related Outcomes’.
22
Renald Legendre, Dictionnaire Actuel de L’éducation, 3rd Edition (Montréal:
Guérin, 2005).
23
Ibid.
24
Mordechai Gordon, ‘Toward a Pragmatic Discourse of Constructivism:
Reflections on Lessons from Practice’, Educational Studies 45, No. 1 (2009): 39-
58.
25
Philippe Jonnaert, Compétences et Socioconstructivisme: Un Cadre Théorique
(Bruxelles: De Boeck, 2002).
26
MELS, Programme de Formation de L’école Québécoise. Secondaire, Deuxième
Cycle (Québec: Ministère de L’éducation, du Loisir et du Sport, 2007).
27
Philippe Jonnaert et al., ‘Contribution Critique au Développement des
Programmes D’études: Compétences, Constructivisme et Interdisciplinarité’,
Revue des Sciences de L’éducation 30, No. 3 (2004): 667-696.
28
Linehan et al., ‘Practical, Appropriate, Empirically-Validated Guidelines for
Designing Educational Games’.
29
Kirby et al., ‘Interventions to Prevent Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted
Diseases, Including HIV Infection’.
30
Ibid.
31
Jézabelle Palluy and Johanne Laverdure, Réussite Éducative, Santé, Bien-Être
Agir Efficacement en Contexte Scolaire: Synthèse de Recommandations (Montréal:
Institut National de Santé Publique du Québec, 2010).
12 Toward a Social-Constructivist View of Serious Games
__________________________________________________________________

32
Ibid.
33
Kirby et al., ‘Interventions to Prevent Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted
Diseases, Including HIV Infection’.
34
Bailey et al., ‘Interactive Computer-Based Interventions for Sexual Health
Promotion’.
35
Berry, ‘Jouer pour Apprendre’.
36
Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral
Participation, 1st Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
37
Yam San Chee, ‘Virtual Reality in Education: Rooting Learning in Experience’,
in International Symposium on Virtual Education (Busan, South Korea, 2001), 43-
54.
38
Jane L. Howland, David H. Jonassen and Rose M. Marra, Meaningful Learning
with Technology, 4th Edition (Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2011).
39
Kurt D. Squire, ‘Video Game-Based Learning: An Emerging Paradigm for
Instruction’, Performance Improvement Quarterly 26, No. 1 (2013): 101-130.
40
Charsky, ‘From Edutainment to Serious Games’.
41
Etienne Armand Amato, ‘Les Utilités du jeu Vidéo Sérieux: Finalités, Discours
et Mises en Corrélation’, Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology / La
Revue Canadienne de L’apprentissage et de la Technologie 37, No. 2 (2011): 1-19;
Carlton Reeve, ‘Narrative-Based Serious Games’, in Serious Games on the Move,
eds. Otto Petrovic and Anthony Brand (Vienna: Springer, 2009): 73-89.
42
L. Kay Bartholomew et al., Planning Health Promotion Programs: An
Intervention Mapping Approach (San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons, 2011).
43
Squire, ‘Video Game-Based Learning’.
44
Richard Van Eck, ‘Digital Game-Based Learning: It’s Not Just the Digital
Natives Who Are Restless’, EDUCAUSE Review 41, No. 2 (2006): 16-18.
45
Michele D. Dickey, ‘Engaging by Design: How Engagement Strategies in
Popular Computer and Video Games Can Inform Instructional Design’,
Educational Technology Research and Development 53, No. 2 (2005): 67-83.
46
David R. Michael and Sande Chen, Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train
and Inform (Boston: Thomson Course Technology, 2006).
47
Dickey, ‘Engaging by Design’.
48
James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and
Literacy, Vol. 1 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

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 Sara Mathieu-C. and Louis-Martin Guay 13
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Amato, Etienne Armand. ‘Les Utilités du jeu Vidéo Sérieux: Finalités, Discours et
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ASPC. Lignes Directrices Canadiennes Pour L’éducation en Matière de Santé

Sexuelle. Revised Edition. Ottawa: Agence de la Santé Publique du Canada, 2008.

Bailey, Julia V., Elizabeth Murray, Greta Rait, Catherine H. Mercer, Richard W
Morris, Richard Peacock, Jackie Cassell, and Irwin Nazareth. ‘Interactive
Computer-Based Interventions for Sexual Health Promotion’. Cochrane Database
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Baranowski, Tom, Richard Buday, Debbe I. Thompson, and Janice Baranowski.

‘Playing for Real: Video Games and Stories for Health-Related Behavior Change’.
American Journal of Preventive Medicine 34, No. 1 (2008): 74–82.

Bartholomew, L. Kay, Guy S. Parcel, Gerjo Kok, Nell H. Gottlieb, and Maria E.
Fernandez. Planning Health Promotion Programs: An Intervention Mapping
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Becker, Katrin. ‘Digital Game-Based Learning Once Removed: Teaching

Teachers’. British Journal of Educational Technology 38, No, 3 (2007): 478–488.

Bedwell, Wendy L., Davin Pavlas, Kyle Heyne, Elizabeth H. Lazzara, and Eduardo
Salas. ‘Toward a Taxonomy Linking Game Attributes to Learning: An Empirical
Study’. Simulation & Gaming (2012): 729–760.

Berry, Vincent. ‘Jouer pour Apprendre: Est-ce Bien Sérieux? Réflexions

Théoriques sur les Relations Entre Jeu (Vidéo) et Apprentissage’. Canadian
Journal of Learning and Technology / La Revue Canadienne de L’apprentissage et
de La Technologie 37, No. 2 (2011): 1–14.

Blunt, Richard. ‘Does Game-Based Learning Work? Results from Three Recent
Studies’, In The Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation & Education
Conference (I/ITSEC), 1–11. Orlando: National Training Systems Association,
2007.

Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge,

MA: MIT Press, 2007.
14 Toward a Social-Constructivist View of Serious Games
__________________________________________________________________

Charsky, Dennis. ‘From Edutainment to Serious Games: A Change in the Use of

Game Characteristics’. Games and Culture 5, No. 2 (2010): 177–198.

Chee, Yam San. ‘Virtual Reality in Education: Rooting Learning in Experience’. In

International Symposium on Virtual Education, 43–54. Busan, South Korea, 2001.

Dickey, Michele D. ‘Engaging by Design: How Engagement Strategies in Popular

Computer and Video Games Can Inform Instructional Design’. Educational
Technology Research and Development 53, No. 2 (2005): 67–83.

Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and
Literacy, Vol. 1. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Gordon, Mordechai. ‘Toward a Pragmatic Discourse of Constructivism:

Reflections on Lessons from Practice’. Educational Studies 45, No. 1 (2009): 39–
58. Doi:10.1080/00131940802546894.

Howland, Jane L., David H. Jonassen, and Rose M. Marra. Meaningful Learning
with Technology. 4th Edition. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2011.

Jonnaert, Philippe. Compétences et Socioconstructivisme: Un Cadre Théorique.

Bruxelles: De Boeck, 2002.

Jonnaert, Philippe, Johanne Barrette, Samira Boufrahi, and Domenico Masciotra.

‘Contribution Critique au Développement des Programmes D’études: compétences,
Constructivisme et Interdisciplinarité’. Revue des Sciences de L’éducation 30, No.
3 (2004): 667–696.

Kanuga, Mansi, and Walter D. Rosenfeld. ‘Adolescent Sexuality and the Internet:
The Good, the Bad, and the URL’. Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent
Gynecology 17, No. 2 (2004): 117–124.

Kashibuchi, Megumi, and Akira Sakamoto. ‘The Educational Effectiveness of a

Simulation/Game in Sex Education’. Simulation and Gaming 32, No. 3 (2001):
331–343.
 Sara Mathieu-C. and Louis-Martin Guay 15
__________________________________________________________________

Kirby, Douglas, R. A. Crosby, J. S. Santelli, and Ralph J. DiClemente.

‘Interventions to Prevent Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Including
HIV Infection’. In Adolescent Health: Understanding and Preventing Risk
Behaviors, edited by Ralph J. Sales DiClemente, J. S. Santelli, and R. A. Crosby,
303–335. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.

Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral

Participation. 1st Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

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Guérin, 2005.

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Appropriate, Empirically-Validated Guidelines for Designing Educational Games’.
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems, 1979–1988. Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2011.

MELS. Programme de Formation de L’école Québécoise. Secondaire, Deuxième

Cycle. Québec: Ministère de L’éducation, du Loisir et du Sport, 2007.

Michael, David R., and Sande Chen. Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train
and Inform. Boston: Thomson Course Technology, 2006.

Moreno-Ger, Pablo, Daniel Burgos, Iván Martínez-Ortiz, José Luis Sierra, and
Baltasar Fernández-Manjón. ‘Educational Game Design for Online Education’.
Computers in Human Behavior 24, No. 6 (2008): 2530–2540.

MSSS. L’épidémie Silencieuse: Les Infections Transmissibles Sexuellement et par

le Sang: Quatrième Rapport National sur L’état de Santé de la Population du
Québec. Québec: Ministère de la Santé et des Services Sociaux, Direction des
Communications, 2010.

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Palluy, Jézabelle, and Johanne Laverdure. Réussite Éducative, Santé, Bien-Être

Agir Efficacement en Contexte Scolaire: Synthèse de Recommandations. Montréal:
Institut National de Santé Publique du Québec, 2010.
16 Toward a Social-Constructivist View of Serious Games
__________________________________________________________________

Primack, Brian A., Mary V. Carroll, Megan McNamara, Mary Lou Klem, Brandy
King, Michael Rich, Chun W. Chan, and Smita Nayak. ‘Role of Video Games in
Improving Health-Related Outcomes: A Systematic Review’. American Journal of
Preventive Medicine 42, No. 6 (2012): 630–638.

Reeve, Carlton. ‘Narrative-Based Serious Games’. In Serious Games on the Move,

edited by Otto Petrovic, and Anthony Brand, 73–89. Vienna: Springer, 2009.

Renaud, Lise. ‘Validation par les Experts et Évaluation de L’efficacité d’un jeu
Éducatif en Ligne sur les Attitudes des Jeunes de 13 and 14 ans à L’égard de la
Santé Sexuelle’. Revue des Sciences de L’éducation 36, No. 3 (2010): 671–694.

Squire, Kurt D. ‘Video Game-Based Learning: An Emerging Paradigm for

Instruction’. Performance Improvement Quarterly 26, No. 1 (2013): 101–130.

Van Eck, Richard. ‘Digital Game-Based Learning: It’s Not Just the Digital Natives
Who Are Restless’. EDUCAUSE Review 41, No. 2 (2006): 16–18.

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Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps. 1st Edition. Sebastopol:
O’Reilly Media, 2011.

Sara Mathieu-C. is a PhD student at the University of Montreal. Her research

interest integrates youth sexual health education, serious gaming and theory- and
evidences-based pedagogical design.
([email protected]/ @SmathieuC).

Louis-Martin Guay is an assistant professor at the University of Montreal. His

research and teaching are about game design system, systemic approach to game
design and social games. ([email protected]).
From Adventure to Education: Exploring Meanings of Scenario
and Dimension in Video Games

Justina Gröber
Abstract
Place is often seen as central to creativity. In adventure-, mystery- or science
fiction novels locations often present conundrums, from which storylines develop.
Seeing video games as a privileged field of hybrid spaces that blend together
mental, physical and virtual worlds, the main goal of this chapter is to show, how
experiences of space emerge from videogame’s interactions with Game situations.
Although fictional by content, as mental spaces, adventure games engage through
the metaphysical immensity of their settings that escape a player’s actual reality.
Video games have recently had a rapid uptake amongst adolescents and have
diversified into an array of specific genres that are now a convenient commodity
forming a definite part of young people’s daily lives. Linking media space with
geographical space, video games have the power to challenge conventional
concepts of space, reinventing the role and meaning of location with respect to
social interactions and digital networks. I shall apply Michael Foucault’s concept
of heterotopic space to reinterpret the meaning of locality in adventure games as
re-embodiment of a long lost continuous space. Foucault explains heterotopias as
real sites that simultaneously represent, contradict and invert reality. Such
threshold situations portray adolescence as well as the contemporary condition of
inhabiting a fractured and disembodied world that weaves together experiences of
media- social- and geographical sites.

Key Words: Adventure games, information technology, graphical user interface,

heterotopia, virtual reality, education, hybrid spaces, cognitive capabilities,
embodiment.

*****

1. Space and Spaces

When playing video games, whose perspective is presented? Who is the subject
in the game? And how does game space influence immersion and ultimately the
psyche of the player? A player’s relationship with game spaces is obviously much
more complicated than the mental interactions occurring with visual texts in the
traditional arts. Marie Laure Taylor argues that game spaces use linear perspective
to construct three-dimensional virtual realities that allow the player to accurately
gage distances and safely move the character through game locations. But she
concedes that concepts of perspectival space are insufficient for articulating the
complexity of experiential spaces that players simultaneously navigate in order to
play the game. 1 Yet space is predominantly representational in many games. Game
18 From Adventure to Education
__________________________________________________________________
scenarios aim to imitate the familiar experiences of physical space, sometimes even
represent existing topographical sites and landmarks.
In contrast, postmodern theory refers to space more commonly as social sites or
media sites rather than topographical locations. Televisual- and digitally mediated
experiences of places stay with us after the actual experience and form a part of our
mental reality. During most of our waking time we are ‘simultaneously present in
more than one spatial domain.’ 2 It is quite normal for instance to be using the
Internet, while making phone calls, chatting to friends on face book and be
watching television. These simultaneous, hybrid spaces determine how we think
and act. Michel Foucault explains: ‘we do not live in a homogenous and empty
space, but in a space that is thoroughly imbued with quantities and perhaps totally
fantasmatic as well.’ 3 Commonly ‘spaces’ are referred to as places, as multitudes
articulating the post structural notions of simultaneity and of the disconnection
between space and time that is characteristic of non Euclidean concepts of space.
Foucault notes the influence of phenomenological thought on current models of
multi facetted space that can be applied to video games. These include Gaston
Bachelard’s Poetics of Space, initiating an understanding of imagination as an
integral part of real life. 4 Henri Lefebvre’s Production of Space, which specifies
lived-, perceived- and imagined space, introduces the idea that space is produced
rather than being a given. Edward Soja’s ‘Thirdspace’ as mentioned by Foucault
‘Thirdspace’ describes the dynamic realities that integrate social, mental and
topographical elements. 5 Above all Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia
articulates an ambiguity or uncertainty, a being in between specific modes of
reality. 6

2. Heterotopia as Willingness to Play the Game

With the concept of heterotopia Foucault describes non-hegemonic places and
spaces experienced as ‘Other,’ while being part of everyday reality. These are
spaces that are simultaneously physical and mental, such as the space of a phone
call or the moment when you see yourself in the mirror. Along with phone calls,
exotic holiday destinations, adolescence, old age video game play may be
heterotopic in the sense that players in videogames act in a double reality for which
two sets of norms, values and expectations simultaneously apply. In Foucault’s
words, video games construct ‘counter sites, in which all other real sites, that can
be found in culture are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted.’ 7
Foucault determines heterotopias by several principles characterising spaces
that exhibit dual meanings: Crisis- and deviation heterotopias describe a separate
space like schools, hospitals, prisons, rest homes or graveyards. Inhabitants of
these spaces act in ways that are outside general norms. Crisis- and deviation
heterotopias represent ‘slices of time.’ They are temporary, and particularly useful
for understanding the threshold conditions of adolescents. Within one space a
 Justina Gröber 19
__________________________________________________________________
heterotopic site may mirror and juxtapose a multitude of other real sites, like a
garden, containing plants that are native to different geographic locations.
‘Heterotopias of ritual or purification’ are spaces that are isolated and
penetrable yet not freely accessible like a public place. Rules and regulations apply
to be able to enter these places. Heterotopias of illusion create spaces of illusion
that expose every real space, and the heterotopias of compensation create a real
space but yet a space that is other. 8
Video game play exhibits these heterotopic principles in many aspects: rules
and conditions apply to game play. Games mirror and juxtapose a multitude of real
social and geographic sites. Conflict and deviation form the narrative content of
many games and lastly: scenarios create a space of temporary illusion. Players can
play video games at any real location, which is preferably one’s home or other
private space.
In addition video games are often associated with youth culture and seen as
symbolic resistance to the norms of adult society during a person’s transitional
stages of adolescence offering a sense of freedom, a temporary escape from
institutional controls and adult responsibilities. Or videogames may offer effective
temporary escapes from personal limitations and restrictions. Forming a secret
identify, identifying with one’s avatar, that is brave, motivated, risk-taking and
successful has been proven to have positive psychological effects and may lead to
developing resilience mental agility, willpower in real life. 9 However, played on
screens, the world we enter on video games is visual. If virtual scenarios articulate
heterotopic threshold situations in the sense of Foucault, the question arises, how
videogames may express conditions and experiences of digitally native
adolescents?
Long before the rise of video games, fantasy themes, have prevailed in youth
literature and film but virtual realities have boosted the persuasiveness of the
supernatural and are contributing strongly to entrenching gothic and mythical
themes in adolescent imagination.

3. Being Inside the Picture

As the three recipes of impressive spaces in the visual arts I want to suggest:
Being Inside the Picture, Piercing the Picture Plane and The Idea of the Sublime.
With these three categories in mind I aim to explore how representations of space
prompt viewers to experience the image as a simulation of a three dimensional
reality and how this experience may promise meaning.
Masaccio’s frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel at Santa Maria del Carmine in
Florence famously create a mimetic experience whereby viewers mentally enter the
space of the image. In modern art history Masaccio’s work has been considered as
one of the foundational explorations in Renaissance painting aiming at lifelike-
mimetic- imitation of three-dimensional reality on the flat surface of a wall or
canvas. 10
20 From Adventure to Education
__________________________________________________________________
In the mimetic model of vision the viewer’s gaze figuratively transcends the
picture plane, as if entering the visual world through a window. The space behind
the window frame thereby mimics reality or may even pretend to extend the actual
architectonical site. Through the explorations of the Quattrocento, visual space
became a homogenous isotropic whole, extending evenly in all directions, and
thereby representing objects at apparently measurable distances from each other
and from the viewer. Seen as part of Neo Platonic movement of the Renaissance
these innovations in painting broke with medieval hierarchies of places that
distinguished realms of the sacred and the profane. In contrast to the ‘medieval
paradigm of emplacement’ 11 Renaissance art, by centralising space through one-
point perspective, introduced the notion of a projective, representational vision.
Through images, reality was now projected from a single focal point, juxtaposing
the eye of the viewer of player. Familiar spatial parameters such as windows, doors
stairways are an essential part of the illusionist strategy, temporarily suspend
distinctions between real and fictional space and persuading viewers to accept the
rules of the game of seeing something that does not exist. Vasari, 12 16th-century art
theorist and critique, considered Masaccio the best artist of his time due to his
work’s atmospheric truthfulness.
Just as lifelike appearance and proportions opened an entirely new narrative
dimension in Renaissance Painting, mimetic qualities of characters and sceneries
increased the immersive potential of action and adventure games. Persuasive game
spaces seem to reconstruct spaces that appear measurable and have similarities to
the actual world we live in. Spanish web developer and analyst of spatial
organisation in platform games notes that it is ‘through a pragmatic net of objects
that spaces can be simulated.’ 13 Very commonly games use heterotopic sites:
tunnels, platforms, mazes, streets, abandoned cities and ruins to cliffs, towers,
stairways, demolition places, etc., making elaborate use of thresholds situations
whereby keys and locks hidden in these sites, allow entry to new stages of the
game.

4. Piercing the Picture Plane

The second principle used in mimetic visual scenarios is to allow objects in the
image to pierce the picture plane, and invade the physical world of the viewer. If
one accepts that the world continues behind the picture plane as an illusion, a
mental interaction happens between viewer and image whereby an image comes to
life in a viewer’s imagination. Canvas paintings by the Italian Baroque painter
Caravaggio are classic examples for this strategy. Caravaggio represented people
with a combination of humanness and unsparing realism. Choreographed in his
studio, with sharp directional light, people are set against an amorphous darkness
that enhances the dramatic impact of gestures, postures and facial expressions.
Instead of simulating depth, Caravaggio’s spaces are shallow with figures and
objects propped up against the picture frame to seemly pierce the divide between
 Justina Gröber 21
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illusion and reality. Through physical and emotional closeness people in these
images feel real. In ‘David Holding the Head of Goliath’ for instance one feels
empathy with David, the under aged boy, as he stretches out his arm to show us the
giant’s head at close distance and is lead to experience the situation from David’s
perspective.

5. The Idea of the Sublime

A third ingredient for impressive space is the idea of the sublime. A hero’s
small size can be pivotal, as demonstrated by Link in the Legend of Zelda and
Wander in the Shadow of the Colossus, who convince us that courage, willpower
and the intelligence can overcome seemingly impossible challenges. In Shadows of
the Colossus the backdrops and sceneries in themselves impress by their emptiness
and infinite dimension just as the colossus’ gigantic dimensions evoke feelings of
the sublime. As such Shadow of the Colossus appropriates romantic landscape
painting of the 19th century where the sublime is associated most often with
destructive forces of nature. In addition juxtaposing the minute and gigantic
enhances the effectiveness of the sublime. This effect of reversing scales was
famously noted by Bachelard in his ‘Poetics of Space.’ 14 Domestic small spaces,
so Bachelard, hold a special potential for evoking imaginations of vastness,
‘inviting the entire universe to come back to one’s house…The more hermetic the
chrysalis, the greater the expansion.’ From the safety of their home game players
can experience imaginary vast spaces and encounter precarious situations. Classic
theories of the sublime note that in contrast to being in actual danger, horror or
pain, the mental evocation of these feelings can be a source of pleasure. 15 Edmund
Burke writes:

Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the idea of pain and

danger conversant in any sort about terrible objects or objects in
a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime.

Thus the feeling of the sublime is a mixed feeling, described as a rapid alteration
between pleasure and displeasure that insinuate rather than illustrate experiences of
the abject, dangerous or terrible. 16 Haze and blurriness, objects seen against the
light are classic sublime indicators and are common in game design. By diffusing
the major part of images, by shrouding details such as rubble in dust clouds or
mist, a city in ruins mentally transforms into a world in ruins. Visual ephemerality
can thus diffuse feelings of fear evoking imaginations of epic or apocalyptic
scenarios. Feature films use blur and soft focus in similar ways as art critique,
Gilbert Rolfe notes: ‘both beauty and the sublime play with or appeal to gravity’s
metaphorical connotations.’ 17
The topic of the sublime brings back the question about the meanings of
dimensions in adventure games. This question implies that games’ story spaces
22 From Adventure to Education
__________________________________________________________________
create meaning irrespective of the game-play experience. By distinguishing
discourse space from story space, game design considers settings as separate and
independent from the interactive space that players navigate. Discourse spaces are
functional and negotiated, rather than contemplated, while the visual enjoyment of
the story space remains a separate layer, often considered an ‘add-on’ to the game
experience. A more central role is attributed to game space by Henry Jenkins’
concept of embedded narrative, where the game world becomes an evocative
landscape that is charged with possible narratives. Sense of depth and distances are
experienced emotionally and pragmatically in order to navigate and contest game
spaces and become immersed in the game experience. For the purpose of evoking
strong mental images, spatial structures of video games incorporate landmarks and
topographic stereotypes to give visual stimuli to players to sharpen, release or
direct attention in accordance with the need of the game. 18

6. Sublime Heights
In questioning the impact of story space, certain extreme dimensions such as
height directly advance game narratives and progression. Height literally drives
game-play as it requires specific movements: climbing, jumping, holding on to
surfaces, etc. In addition height has symbolic meanings: Looking up at towering
cliffs may cause feelings of awe, looking down evokes sensations of power,
lightness and freedom. Some game locations in Assassin’s Creed and Prince of
Persia featuring ancient cities, ruins and mountains bear striking similarities to
sublime landscapes by Caspar David Friedrich and Friedrich Schinkel. Notions of
the sublime may also be implied in higher levels game play, whereby ultimate
challenges tend to occur at physically elevated places: cliffs, high rises or in the air.
Typically heroes must ‘fly high’ in order to defeat an equal opponent, alluding to a
character’s ‘high moral ground.’ Acrobatic moves, more precarious jumps and
higher risks at ultimate heights further advance the narrative climax as well as the
game challenge.

7. Digital Games at Schools

Schools are prime heterotopic spaces as they embody the threshold reality of
adolescence. As passageways between childhood and adulthood schools shape a
young person’s future and mark one’s personality. School curricula include studies
of myths and legends that nurture fantasies of heroism in young people’s minds.
Could therefore video game study be introduced into curricula as avenue to
connecting young people with their cultural inheritance? It is yet unknown, if video
games can qualify as popular continuations of the ancient legends, whether they
glorify bravery, courage and altruism or whether they lead to increased youth
violence. 19 In keeping with 18th-century ideas, one may believe that human beings
have a seismographic sense of right and wrong and therefore can fine-tune their
moral instincts by witnessing sublime images. 20 As, however, in real life the line
 Justina Gröber 23
__________________________________________________________________
between good and evil is often blurry, images of heroism clash with everyday
reality. By providing opportunities to play out one’s fantasies of heroism, digital
games have the power of modelling behaviour and attitudes. However, especially
for teenagers the mental images implanted through game play need conscious
interpretation in order to initiate critical reflection on the topics of morality, self-
determination and social responsibility. Although during the game one is focussed
on the operational aspects of the game, it is the images that linger in players’
memory after the game and continue to engage the imagination. ‘The meanings of
cyberspace, virtual reality and communication networks cannot be reduced to
technological prostheses, tools or sensory extensions.’ 21 This is where schools can
play a vital role through studying game spaces and spaces in the arts and human
sciences. In order to provide new possibilities for social and environmental
interaction a mixed method approach is needed that combines information
technologies with developing critical awareness of game narratives and the
messages they convey.
While digital classrooms are a fast growing reality, and many schools offer
electives on game design, school policies tend to ban gameplay in the attempt of
protecting students from the negative influences of violent games. However, in the
age of Internet and telecommunication schools share young people’s attention with
a range of other influences. Online youth communities spanning around the globe
not only engage but also mobilise young people to action in the real world. As an
example of positive activism the ‘Nerd fighters’ 22 community,, by rallying large-
scale support for charity projects amongst teenagers, demonstrate Foucault’s
second heterotopic principle of ‘slices of time’ that fulfil definite functions in
society. Opportunities for adolescents to make these transitions are crucial, and this
is where schools need to fill a gap. Performing and visual art faculties at secondary
schools are examples for such places of productive ambiguity where students can
visualise fantasies and where teachers can discuss critically with their students. In
such forums adolescents can connect with legendary heroes from the past. Schools
are testing-grounds for life and as such open up a safe space where boundaries can
be challenged without consequences and thresholds between fantasy and reality
can be sounded out. This space has a sense of immensity, where personal passions
can meet idealised aspirations fuelled by school mottos of ‘reaching out for the
stars.’ These spaces may also host personal dramas, social conflicts that may be
disguised within fantasy subject matter. Critically addressing game topics may give
schools more power to integrate and neutralise some of the crisis of adolescence
and help foster mutual respect, emotional intelligence, intellectual a play and the
fundamental desire to make the world a better place.
24 From Adventure to Education
__________________________________________________________________
Notes
1
Laure Taylor, Perspective, Point of View and Immersion (Florida: University,
2002), accessed 3 July 2014, http://www.laurientaylor.org/research/taylor_l.pdf.
2
Ibid.
3
Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces, Utopias and Heterotopias, trans. Jay
Miscowiec, Architecture, Mouvement, Continuite (October, 1994), accessed 29
April 2013, http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/foucault1.pdf.
4
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1991, Orig. Edition Anthropos, 1974), 47.
5
Brett Nicholls and Simon Ryan, Gameplay as Thirdspace, in The Pleasures of
Computer Gaming: Essays of Cultural History and Aesthetic, eds. Melanie
Swalwell and Jason Wilson (California: McFarland, 2008).
6
Foucault, Of Other Spaces; Kevin Hetherington, The Badlands of Modernity:
Heterotopia and Social Ordering (London: Routledge, 1997); Sarah McNamee,
‘Foucault’s Heterotopia and Children’s Everyday Lives’, Childhood 7, No. 4
(2000): 479-492.
7
McNamee, ‘Foucault’s Heterotopia and Children’s Everyday Lives’.
8
Foucault, Of Other Spaces.
9
Fengshu Liu, Urban Youth in China: Modernity, the Internet and Self (New
York: Routledge, 2011).
10
Sydney J. Blatt, Continuity and Change in Art: The Development of Modes of
Representation (Hillsdale, NY: Lawrence and Erlbaum, 1984), 43 and 45; William
V. Dunning, Changing Images of Pictorial Space: A History of Spatial Illusion in
Painting (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999).
11
Foucault, Of Other Spaces.
12
Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de Piu Eccelenti Pitturi, Scultatori e Architettori da
Cimabue Insino a Tempi Nostril (Fiorenze: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1550); Giorgio
Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, trans. with an introduction and notes by J. C. and
Peter Bondanello (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Giorgio Vasari, The
Lives of the Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
13
Joaquin Siabra-Fraile, Manic Minor Under the Shadow of the Colussus: A
Semiotic Analysis of the Spatial Dimension in Platform Video Games (2008),
accessed July 2013,
http://www.ec-aiss.it/monografici/5_computer_games/8_siabra_fraile.pdf.
14
Gaston Bachelard, La Poetique de l’Espace (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1958), in The Poetics of Space, the Classic Look at How We Experience
Intimate Spaces, trans. Maria Iolas (Boston: Beacon,1994), 66.
15
Edmund Burke, Of the Sublime, in Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our
Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (Harward Classics), Vol. 24, Par. 2 (New York:
Bartleby, 2002).
 Justina Gröber 25
__________________________________________________________________

16
Friedrich Schiller in Literary and Philosophical Essays, Vol. XXXII, The
Harvard Classics (New York: P.F., Collier and Son, 1909-14) at Bartleby.com.
17
Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime (New York:
Allworth, 1999).
18
Henry Jenkins, Game Design as Narrative Architecture in First Person: New
Media as Story, Performance and Game, eds. Noah Wardrip-Frain and Pat
Harrigan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), P126.
19
Ibid., 309-335.
20
Fengshu, Urban Youth in China; Schiller, Aesthetical and Philosophical Essays.
21
Wei Huaxin, Jim Bizzocchi and Tom Calvert, ‘Time and Space in Digital Story
Telling’, International Journal of Computer Game Technology 2010, Article ID:
897217/23 pages, doi: 101155/2010/897217.
22
Lily Wilkinson, ‘Nerdfighters, Papertown and Heterotopia’, Transformative
Cultures 10 (2012), accessed 10 March 2013,
http://journal.transformativeworks.ord/index.php/twc/index.

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(2008). Doi:10.1068/a39336.

Blatt, Sydney J. Continuity and Change in Art, the Development of Modes of

Representation. Hillsdale, NY: Lawrence and Erlbaum, 1984.

Bachelard, Gaston. La Poetique de l’Espace. Paris: Presses Universitaires de

France, 1958. In The Poetics of Space, the Classic Look at How We Experience
Intimate Spaces. Translated by Maria Iolas. Boston: Beacon, 1994.

Burke, Edmund. Of the Sublime. In Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our
Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Harward Classics, Volume 24, Par 2. New
York: Bartleby, 2002.

Dunning William V. Changing Images of Pictorial Space, A History of Spatial

Illusion in Painting. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999.

Foucault, Michel. Of Other Spaces, Utopias and Heterotopias. Translated by Jay

Miscowiec. Architecture, Mouvement, Continuite (October, 1994). Accessed 29
April 2013. http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/foucault1.pdf.
26 From Adventure to Education
__________________________________________________________________

Gilbert-Rolfe, Jeremy. Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime. New York:

Allworth, 1999.

Hetherington, Kevin. The Badlands of Modernity: Heterotopia and Social

Ordering. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Huaxin, Wei, Jim Bizzocchi, and Tom Calvert. ‘Time and Space in Digital Story
Telling’, International Journal of Computer Game Technology (2010). Doi:
101155/2010/897217.

Johnson, Steven Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and
Software. New York: Scribner, 2004.

Kant, Emmanuel. Observations of the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime.
Translated by John T. Goldhweit. California: University of California Press, 2004
[1961].

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson.

Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. Originally Edition Anthropos, 1974.

Liu, Fengshu. Urban Youth in China: Modernity, the Internet and Self. New York:
Routledge, 2011.

McNamee, Sarah. ‘Foucault’s Heterotopia and Children’s Everyday Lives’.

Childhood 7, No. 4 (2000): 479–492.

Nicholls, Brett, and Simon Ryan. ‘Gameplay as Thirdspace’. In The Pleasures of

Computer Gaming, Essays of Cultural History and Aesthetic, edited by Melanie
Swalwell, and Jason Wilson. California: McFarland, 2008.

Zoran, Gabriel, ‘Towards a Theory of Space in Narrative’. Poetics Today 5 (1984):

309–335.

Justina Gröber is a German artist living in New Zealand. Justina has taught visual
art programmes in Germany and obtained a Doctorate of Fine Arts from the
University Auckland, New Zealand. Her work aims to articulate interrelationships
between perceptions, imagination and representation.
 Exploring the Idealised Self: Avatars as a Vessel for Adolescent
Identity Exploration and Growth

Peter Wonica
Abstract
Video games allow people to assume identities through avatars, reducing the
cognitive and environmental difficulties present in identity development. They also
shape our perceptions of self and our sense of identity. The concept of self-identity
is important in the education as it affects how students view frustration and
difficulty in pursuit of complex tasks. Video games could serve as tools to enhance
or repair an adolescent’s self-identity through safe exploration, improving
academic and/or emotional growth. Through interactions with an avatar, an
adolescent can explore and develop their understanding of ideal behaviours. The
avatar itself presents a unique topic in the development of serious games and
identity. Current theories in pedagogy and identity, as well as research into the
human-avatar relationship can better guide the development of avatars in serious
games. The avatar can thus become an idealised self that an adolescent can project
idealised characteristics onto in the process of creating a conversation between
one’s real life self and one’s ideal self. Traditionally, self-identity is built through
educational interventions and planned programmes, but it could be possible for
technology to offer new benefits in making these programs more efficient and
effective in teaching a new generation of digital natives.

Key Words: Serious games, educational games, identity exploration, human-

avatar relationship, adolescent learning, self-identity, real-ideal self.

*****

1. Exploring the Idealised Self

The player-avatar relationship can serve as a focal point for the exploration of
one’s idealised self. Through the construction of virtual histories, individuals can
begin a reflective conversation on how their real life self connects to their idealised
avatar. Through these reflections, conflicts within identity can be negotiated and
resolved, allowing digital interactions to assist in identity work and development.
For adolescents especially, their concepts of self are often in flux as they negotiate
different potential futures. During their youth, constructions of self are developed,
yet these ‘identities become sites of struggle at which various values and interests
meet and are negotiated.’ 1 While trends in educational gaming focus on
behavioural change and content instruction, identity work is an equally important
endeavour. Games can be used to foster the development of successful learner
identities through the player-avatar relationship, allowing students to explore their
idealised selves in a safe virtual environment. As players engage with their avatars,
28 Exploring the Idealised Self
__________________________________________________________________
a dynamic conversation between real and ideal self emerges, where conflicts can
be negotiated and resolved. While previous cycles of experience and reflection
create damaged histories, digital play offers the chance to enhance or repair one’s
concept of self through safe exploration and experimentation.
Identity is a crucial determinant in how people perceive themselves within their
culture and environment and can become an important consideration in educational
games. John H. Flavell, a psychologist specialising in cognitive development,
worked on metacognition theory, studying an individual’s understanding of their
own cognition. 2 Within this theory is self-identity, an understanding of own
abilities and their perception of efficacy within an environment. As young people
progress academically, it is important for difficult instruction to be seen as a
meaningful behaviour congruent to their identity. Educational games can benefit
from the inclusion of identity-focused gameplay to help ensure that classroom
instruction is actually meaningful to each student.
Adolescents are of particular interest due to their development stage, as argued
by Erik Erikson, where they need to negotiate between different selves, an act
complicated by modern media. Adolescents within the ages of 12 and 18 question
their identity and require a safe means of exploring identity to develop a stable
sense of self. 3 Yet, identity development is complicated because of the multiplicity
of roles present for young students in modern times. Researchers have noted that
the identities of children are influenced by their experiences with media and
technology, yet, it is possible to leverage digital technology to positively impact
experiences for youth. 4 Sherry Turkle, a researcher studying how adolescents
interact with modern multimedia, connects the goals of psychotherapy with
roleplaying in MUD’s (Multi-user environments). In the research, she proposes
that virtual environments can serve as a space for ‘acting out behaviours’ and
‘working through unresolved issues.’ 5 Just as games can be used to teach content
information, they can also be harnessed to promote healthy perceptions of self in
adolescent learners. As designers work to develop educational games, the avatar-
player relationship can be a unique tool in the development of positive student
growth.
Video games can be used for content instruction and behavioural change but
are also capable of creating self-reflective conversations for students in an
engaging way. Video games are motivating because they provide a context for
exploration to try on ideal characteristics. 6 Interactivity and designed scenarios
provide adolescents with accessible experiences and idealised identities, such as a
successful scientist or mathematician. Instead of going through the cognitively
demanding labour of constructing virtual identities, students can assume roles and
engage in experiences designed to encourage positive growth. Through interaction,
that child will be able to reflect on how their real life self connects to the ideals
presented within the game world.
 Peter Wonica 29
__________________________________________________________________
Yet, conflict emerges with a disconnection between real and ideal selves that
can lead to stress and frustration in students, prompting the need for safe spaces to
negotiate identity conflicts. Students often comprehend these conflicts and must
reduce the differences to reach stability. 7 Video games can serve as a safe virtual
space in which the real life pressures of identity negotiation are reduced, allowing
players to experiment freely and seek resolution. While identity negotiation is
difficult in real life, virtual avatars provide a means of practising ideal behaviours
in a way that is inherently satisfying due to the ease of interaction and distance
created away from real life. By making exploration and negotiation accessible,
video games can foster the development of healthy adolescent identities, allowing
young people to grow through digital action and reflection.

2. Games and Identity

Digital games provide a unique approach to enhance current practices in
improving learner self-identity due to the medium’s ability to explore identity. A
learner’s understanding of his/her own abilities is an important determinant to how
they will react to frustration and difficulty. Technology offers autonomy through
the avatar, empowering students to explore identity in a way that is difficult in
traditional educational settings. Paulo Freire, known for his work in critical
pedagogy, argued that traditional education results in negative self-identities due to
the learner-teacher relationship that removes control from the student. 8 In a video
game, the avatar provides agency to its user, allowing the student to explore and
experiment freely with minimal pressures. For effective academic instruction and
personal growth, it is important for learners to have healthy identities so that they
can develop into successful individuals and reduce the stresses of identity conflicts.
Interventions have been demonstrated to be effective in bolstering self-identity,
but it is possible for digital play to serve as a space for youth to negotiate and
reflect on their own abilities. Interactive media offers people experiences to
practice new roles, allowing young people to experiment. 9 Games provide planned
and designed roles that can specifically target the needs of adolescents and
encourage them to focus on developing an inner conversation about identity.
Virtual worlds can thus serve as spaces for interpersonal exploration due to their
focus on interactivity and experience. Researchers are even beginning to note that
video games ‘are ... fundamental tools for identity building … [and] also have a
great educational potential.’ 10 As developments into educational games progress,
there is a great potential for exploring identity-based gameplay as a means of
encouraging positive academic and emotional growth in youth. Research into
identification is low in video games, but gameplay could narrow the ‘perceived gap
between ideal self and actual self ... [on a long-term scale, allowing for] … this
mode of video game enjoyment [to] transfer directly into life satisfaction and
contribute to positive self-development.’ 11 As learners engage in a conversation to
negotiate between their real self and idealised self, digital interactions could serve
30 Exploring the Idealised Self
__________________________________________________________________
as a new means of improving self-identity and making the process of identity
resolution more effective and engaging than traditional classroom interventions.
Thus, it could be stated that serious games aimed at adolescents not to directly
teach content information, but serve as tools in enhancing the abilities adolescents
through identity exploration. Adolescents can become empowered in a low stress
environment where they have agency through an avatar, an idealised self that they
can project onto. Although traditional self-identity is improved through educational
interventions and planned programmes, using technology could offer new benefits
in making these programmes more effective in teaching a new generation of digital
natives. Through interactions with their avatars, youth are able to negotiate
different aspects of their identity and reflect on the conflicts between their real-life
self and idealised self. Games are able to provide the psychosocial moratorium
noted by Erik Erikson: a safe space where one can freely explore and develop an
awareness of one’s self. As developers create more educational media, the player-
avatar relationship is important in its role in creating a self-reflective discussion in
players on the differences between their real self and the ideals that they strive
towards.

3. Avatars as a Vessel for Identity Exploration

The player’s interaction with an avatar, a visual representation of self in the
virtual environment, is an important aspect in creating meaningful play due to the
avatar’s unique connection between real and digital selves. Avatars work as a
vessel through which the player performs, a relationship that becomes important in
serious games. 12 James Paul Gee, a prominent scholar in game-based learning,
theorized three major parts to identity in video games: the real life identity, the
virtual identity, or the avatar, and the projected identity, the projection of real self
onto virtual. 13 This connection between real and virtual identity is a crucial aspect
behind the transfer of in-game knowledge and efficacy outside the digital realm.
The relationship between the player and avatar, the projected identity, provides
promise in exploring one’s self, as well as a means of ‘inviting reflection... [and
rethinking how games] provoke us to think, feel, and choose.’ 14 Through
interactivity, the avatar serves as a focal point in a self-reflective conversation for a
student as they reflect on their inner thoughts, feelings, and choices. As a critical
element of gameplay, avatars become a powerful aspect of meaningful play that is
important in our understanding of developing more effective educational games.
Although the studies into avatar design for educational media are limited, there
is some research indicating the importance of having an idealised self in
comparison to a projection of real life self, or no avatar at all. While there have
also been studies on the human-avatar connection that have demonstrated that
avatar appearance and/or behaviour can influence player interaction according to
the Proteus Effect this chapter concentrates more on the aspects behind
identification and not solely on behavioural changes. 15 Melissa Lewis Hobart, a
 Peter Wonica 31
__________________________________________________________________
researcher working with efficacy in video games, studied avatars within
educational games in an experiment, and noted that ‘enjoyment of learning the
material … [and] involvement were all higher when players were playing as their
ideal selves.’ 16 This study compared the ideal self in relation to different conditions
of a projection of real life self and also no avatar at all when having students play
an educational game. 17 While limited in scope, the study shows a promising trend
in the importance of having adolescents engage as idealised selves. There is also
research being conducted on the effects of fictional literature in causing pro-social
behavioural change in people. While not directly connected to interactive media,
the results reveal that people need to lower their concept of self in order to
adequately experience the identity of another character. 18 Instead of direct
recreations of one’s real life self, avatars provide unique roles and characters to
assume. Avatars operate on a spectrum of complete freedom to limited control over
one’s potential interactions with the digital environment. By providing too much
freedom in avatar interactions, players might not explore identities intended by
designers and educators. Yet, on the opposite end of the spectrum, avatars cannot
be so limiting as to prevent players from projecting their own concepts of self,
limiting their ability to explore and experiment. Avatars that serve as vessels allow
students to explore different roles and identities for the purpose of growth and
development.
While students are able to identify with their virtual avatar, the actions they
take in the game environment are crucial in determining the identities they explore.
When players perform through avatars, they build a concept of identity based on
action and reflection. Current theories in pedagogy provide some answers on how
the projected identity relationship is constructed and reinforced. David Kolb, a
prominent educational theorist, proposed the Experiential Learning Theory, which
presents learning as a recursive cycle of action and reflection that emerges from
interactions with one’s environment. 19 It is through this recursive cycle that a
student builds a projected identity and can then analyse the connection between
their ideal and real selves. When considering educational games for adolescents,
Experiential Learning Theory is already present as a framework due to the
emphasis on learning through play. 20 When harnessed properly, the cycle can be a
compelling means of prompting introspection on one’s preconceived notions on
personal ability. A student’s concepts of self can be modified with experience
gained through digital interactions. Compared with traditional classroom
interventions, digital games offer a new medium to enhance adolescent identity
with play and interactivity.

4. Analysis of Identity-Based Play

An excellent example of a game with a strong sense of identity exploration is
the recently developed game Quandary, designed for students aged 9 to 14 to
develop critically thinking skills on ethical issues. Players engage in challenges as
32 Exploring the Idealised Self
__________________________________________________________________
the leader of a new colony on the recently discovered planet of Braxois where they
resolve conflicts between in-game characters by sorting through facts and opposing
viewpoints. 21 Quandary follows the experiential cycle, allowing players to develop
experiences with critical thinking, but also provides learners time to reflect on their
decisions through in-game prompts. Their in-game character becomes a vessel
through which students can project themselves onto as they participate in the
player-avatar relationship. The scenario presented provides the structure for
freedom and exploration for players to explore different conceptions of an ethical
self, not limited by an avatar that is too free form. Interactions are also not strict
either, allowing players the capacity to develop a unique understanding of how
they would respond and engage in critical thinking on ethical issues. For many
adolescents, these interactions can become a unique way of acquiring new
experiences and resolving conflicts in their ethical identity, allowing them to
develop an idealised conception of self that they can apply to their real life self.
An additional example of identity-focused play is a game still in development
called Futurebound. The game, developed by Collegeology Games, has middle
school students guide an avatar from middle school to high school, exploring
different career interests and using their passions to battle self-doubt and
insecurity. 22 For example, within the game world, a student might use their artistic
creativity to confront their doubt about themselves. One of the major aspects of
importance behind the game is the ideology behind its design that makes it
important in demonstrating an identity-focused gameplay. In a recent presentation
at Games for Change, Elizabeth Swensen and Sean Bouchard described the game
as not a game where it is ‘about choosing, it’s about dabbling,’ echoing the desire
to provide students with spaces for safe experimentation. 23 Games such as
Futurebound are able to thus not only encourage identity exploration into different
roles, but it is able to teach behaviours congruent to that identity as a model to
students. Players seeking to overcome their self-doubts within the game world, for
example, could draw on support from their peer groups and find success. While
only presented as a virtual experience, the modelled behaviour of the avatar could
help to further an adolescent’s inner conversation about their own peer group and
abilities, and steer them towards pursuing idealised behaviours within the real
world.
Futurebound and Quandary both connect back to the concept of the
psychosocial moratorium, by providing young people a safe virtual location in
which they can sample and experiment with different identities and reflect on the
connections between their ideal and real selves. Through the player’s interaction
with the game, they are able to project their ideal selves onto their virtual
representation and sample new identities for the purpose of gaining new
experiences and reflection. While serious games often have a focus on concrete
educational standards and behavioural changes, the concept of improving learner
 Peter Wonica 33
__________________________________________________________________
identities is abstract, but still can carry a significant impact on a student's
educational endeavours.
As developers attempt to positively impact young people with video games, the
role of identity is an important consideration in preparing youth for adulthood. The
projected identity relationship is a crucial aspect in developing these new virtual
histories. In real life, young people might have different histories of experiences.
Within these histories might be negative events, such as frequently receiving poor
grades, or encountering frustration when working in social situations. What unites
these situations is they all present an opportunity for personal growth that can lead
to better possibilities in the future. Having a strong identity is crucial to anybody’s
development, as it often determines how they will react to difficulty within that
field, or even their engagement with such actions. The virtual realm can provide an
opportunity to construct new virtual histories that can be then connected to one’s
real life experiences in the projected identity relationship.
Identity based play can have many practical implications in creating virtual
environments that encourage active experimentation and exploration of one’s
idealised self. A student with difficulties in social interaction can enter a structured
game environment where they can engage in social activities as an idealized avatar.
Through such interactions, they can begin to reflect on their real life capacity to
perform the actions demonstrated by their avatar, allowing for the growth and
development of that individual. Play can also be used in enhancement of present
identities as well. Considering the game examples presented, Quandary and
Futurebound, both games aim to enhance the identities of students in their
respective topic. Students playing Quandary can realise their own capacity to
engage in critical debate while those in Futurebound can discover and explore
different identities they might not have realised they enjoy yet. Avatars can serve
as unique vessels through which young students begin these self-reflective
conversations that help them realised their idealised selves.

Notes
1
Stacey Wieland, ‘Ideal Selves as Resources for the Situated Practice of
Identity’, Management Communication Quarterly 24, No. 4 (2010): 504-505.
2
Jennifer Livingston, ‘Metacognition: An Overview’, University at Buffalo:
Graduate School of Education (web article), last modified 1997, accessed 5 April
2013, http://gse.buffalo.edu/fas/shuell/CEP564/Metacog.htm.
3
Richard Stevens, Erik Erikson, An Introduction (New York: Open University
Press, 1983), 48-50.
4
Tyler Dodge, Sasha Barab, Bronwyn Stuckey, Scott Warren, Conan Heiselt and
Richard Stein, ‘Children’s Sense of Self: Learning and Meaning in the Digital
Age’, Journal of Interactive Learning Research 19, No. 2 (2008): 242-247.
34 Exploring the Idealised Self
__________________________________________________________________

5
Sherry Turkle, ‘Constructions and Reconstructions of Self in Virtual Reality:
Playing in the MUDs’, Mind, Culture, and Activity 1, No. 3 (1994): 163.
6
Andrew K. Przybylski et al., ‘The Ideal Self at Play: The Appeal of Video Games
That Let You Be All You Can Be’, Psychological Science 23, No. 1 (2012): 69-71.
7
Ibid.
8
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Continuum International Publishing
Group, 2000).
9
James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and
Literacy (New York: Palgrave: Macmillian, 2004), 51-72.
10
Rosa Gallelli and Fanelli Rossella, ‘Game and Narration. Identity Formation and
Identity De-Construction’, International Journal for Cross-Disciplinary Subjects in
Education 1, No. 2 (2010): 107.
11
Christoph Klimmt, Dorothée Hefner and Peter Vorderer, ‘The Video Game
Experience as “True” Identification: A Theory of Enjoyable Alterations of Players’
Self-Perception’, Communication Theory 19, No. 4 (2009): 351-373.
12
Alison Gazzard, ‘The Avatar and the Player: Understanding the Relationship
beyond the Screen’, in Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications, 2009.
VS-GAMES'09, IEEE (2009), 190-103.
13
Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, 51-
72.
14
Michael Abbott, ‘Me, My Avatar, and the Space Between’, Brainy
Gamer (blog), 23 August 2012,
http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2012/08/the-space-between.html.
15
Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson, ‘The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed
Self-Representation on Behavior’, Human Communication Research 33, No. 3
(2007): 271-290.
16
Melissa Lewis Hobart, ‘Learning from Myself: Avatars and Educational Video
Games’, Current Issues in Education 15, No. 3 (2012): 9.
17
Ibid.
18
Geoff F. Kaufman and Lisa K. Libby, ‘Changing Beliefs and Behavior through
Experience-Taking’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 103, No. 1
(2012): 14-16.
19
David A. Kolb, Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning
and Development, Volume 1 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984).
20
Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, 90-96.
21
Quandary, Learning Games Network (Learning Games Network, 2013).
22
Futurebound, Collegeology (Collegeology, 2013).
23
Elizabeth Swensen and Sean Bouchard, ‘G4C13: Futurebound’, Lecture, Games
for Change Festival 2013. New York, NY, 17 June 2013.
 Peter Wonica 35
__________________________________________________________________

Bibliography
Abbott, Michael. ‘Me, My Avatar, and the Space Between’. Brainy Gamer (blog).
23 August 2012.
http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2012/08/the-space-between.html.

Dodge, Tyler, Sasha Barab, Bronwyn Stuckey, Scott Warren, Conan Heiselt, and
Richard Stein. ‘Children’s Sense of Self: Learning and Meaning in the Digital
Age’. Journal of Interactive Learning Research 19, No. 2 (2008): 242–247.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum International Publishing

Group, 2000.

Futurebound, Developer: Collegeology. Collegeology, 2013.

Gallelli, Rosa, and Rossella Domenica Fanelli. ‘Game and Narration. Identity
Formation and Identity De-Construction’. International Journal for Cross-
Disciplinary Subjects in Education 1, No. 2 (2010): 107.

Gazzard, Alison. ‘The Avatar and the Player: Understanding the Relationship
Beyond the Screen’. In Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications, 2009.
VS-GAMES'09, 190–193. IEEE, 2009.

Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and
Literacy. New York: Palgrave: Macmillian, 2004.

Lewis Hobart, Melissa. ‘Learning from Myself: Avatars and Educational Video
Games’. Current Issues in Education 15, No. 3 (2012): 9

Kaufman, Geoff F., and Lisa K. Libby. ‘Changing Beliefs and Behavior through
Experience-Taking’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 103, No. 1
(2012): 14–16.

Klimmt, Christoph, Dorothée Hefner, and Peter Vorderer. ‘The Video Game
Experience as “True” Identification: A Theory of Enjoyable Alterations of Players’
Self-Perception’. Communication Theory 19, No. 4 (2009): 351–373.

Kolb, David A. Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and

Development. Volume 1. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984.
36 Exploring the Idealised Self
__________________________________________________________________

Livingston, Jennifer. ‘Metacognition: An Overview’. University at Buffalo:

Graduate School of Education. Last modified 1997. Accessed 5 April 2013.
http://gse.buffalo.edu/fas/shuell/CEP564/Metacog.htm.

Przybylski, Andrew K., Netta Weinstein, Kou Murayama, Martin F. Lynch, and
Richard M. Ryan. ‘The Ideal Self at Play: The Appeal of Video Games That Let
You Be All You Can Be’. Psychological Science 23, No. 1 (2012): 69–76.

Quandary, Developer: Learning Games Network. Learning Games Network, 2013.

Stevens, Richard. Erik Erikson, An Introduction. New York: Open University

Press, 1983.

Swensen, Elizabeth, and Sean Bouchard. ‘G4C13: Futurebound’. Lecture, Games

for Change Festival 2013. New York, NY. 17 June 2013.

Turkle, Sherry. ‘Constructions and Reconstructions of Self in Virtual Reality:

Playing in the MUDs’. Mind, Culture, and Activity 1, No. 3 (1994): 163.

Wieland, Stacey. ‘Ideal Selves as Resources for the Situated Practice of

Identity’. Management Communication Quarterly 24, No. 4 (2010): 504–505.

Yee, Nick, and Jeremy Bailenson. ‘The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed
Self-Representation on Behavior’. Human Communication Research 33, No. 3
(2007): 271–290.

Peter Wonica is a graduate student pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts degree at the
University of Texas at Dallas. His research interests are in identity in educational
games, and how people can better understand complex real life systems through
the collaborative creation of games.
 Situating Play Cultures: A Survey of Videogame Players and
Practices in France

Samuel Rufat, Samuel Coavoux and Hovig Ter Minassian

Abstract
The study of gamers and their actual practices still remains marginalised in the
Game Studies academic literature. At an international level, studies and surveys
have tended to spotlight the most spectacular and committed practices. As a result,
large segments of gaming practices have long been neglected, introducing strong
biases at the expense of less fashionable but far more standard, prevalent and
everyday practices. Consequently, we advocate refocusing videogame studies on
the players and moving from the fetishism of online gaming and spectacular play
to the inclusion of all types of videogames and all forms of commitment and
practices, without a priori expectations, in order to collect the full spectrum of
practices and audiences. With this perspective, this chapter explores the
preliminary results of a quantitative survey conducted in 2012, which is
representative of the French population over 11 years of age (n = 2,542). The
results highlight the diversity of playing practices in space and time, as well as the
divergence between social practices and their articulation to ‘play cultures.’
Similarly, the results allow us qualifying the feminisation of the public,
challenging the image of executives playing at work or clarifying the differences
between rural and urban practices when it comes to videogames.

Key Words: Videogames, gamers, play cultures, play careers, lived space, social
practices, environment, audiences, survey, France.

*****

Videogames have become a major cultural object. However, the study of

gamers and their actual practices still remains marginalised in the Game Studies
academic literature. 1 Existing quantitative studies are mainly carried out for the
industry in order to legitimise the practice, hence they focus on the feminisation of
players or the constant increase in their average age (often over 35 years of age).
However, these numbers do not make much sense to describe a practice to the
bursting public and the boundless different levels of investment in this practice.
Thus, the lack of knowledge of videogame players limits the consolidation of
the research on videogames in France. This makes it is quite difficult to answer
three basic questions for both academia and the industry: who is playing
videogames in France? How are they playing? And in what social or spatial
context or environment are they playing?
In addition, videogame studies have long remained focused mostly on MMO
gamers and online gaming. At an international level, studies and surveys have
38 Situating Play Cultures
__________________________________________________________________
tended to spotlight the most spectacular and committed practices. As a result, large
segments of gaming practices have long been neglected, introducing strong biases
at the expense of less fashionable but far more standard, prevalent and everyday
practices. Consequently, we advocate refocusing videogame studies on the players
and moving from the fetishism of online gaming and spectacular play to the
inclusion of all types of videogames and all forms of commitment and practices,
without a priori expectations.
With this perspective, this chapter will explore the preliminary results of a
quantitative survey conducted in 2012, which is representative of the French
population over 11 years of age (n = 2,542). This survey was designed as part of
the LUDESPACE 2 research project.

1. The Challenges of Refocusing on the Players

This focus on players seeks to transcend content analysis because are the same
players who at the end, make the game as well. We know that people play
differently in Seoul than in Paris. 3 But on a local scale, what are the demographic,
social and environmental drivers of videogame practices? Videogames seem to
have spread to all sections of society, but differences exist in the specific
modalities of playing, principally due to the diversification of videogames’
audiences (occasional vs. intensive play, solo vs. multiplayer, online vs. offline).
As a result, it is important to describe how playing practices fit into gamers’ lives,
‘play cultures’ 4 and in their ‘lived space’ 5 and to model their ‘play careers’ 6 in
order to appreciate the relation between gamers’ choices, their environment, and
the emergence of scattered videogame practices and cultures. This requires us to
explore the significant role of family socialisation and to reveal the links of those
practices with other cultural consumption practices but also with the places of play
and the everyday lived space.
The existing data on videogame practices face three main issues. Firstly, the
surveys and academic studies carried out often relate only to players 15 years of
age and older, even though we know that videogames are largely present among
the younger population. More qualitative works attempted to describe and explain
videogame practices, 7 but they are either older analyses, 8 exclusively qualitative
works, 9 or exclusively focused on specific genres such as MMORPG. 10 In
addition, a whole range of videogame products and practices are ‘invisible.’ Most
studies do not include free Internet games or default games integrated into a
machine (for example card games provided with the Windows operating system).
Finally, videogame practices are typically self-reported. This introduces a bias by
not including people playing only occasionally, rarely, or to games that are not
usually considered videogames. For example, the last Pratiques Culturelles des
Français survey, carried out every ten years by the French Ministry of Culture,
asks: ‘Over the last 12 months, did you play videogames?’ 11 This is a broad
question, so people failing to consider their daily practice of the Solitary as playing
 Samuel Rufat, Samuel Coavoux and Hovig Ter Minassian 39
__________________________________________________________________
videogames simply elude it. Thus, one of the main issues with reporting on
videogame practices is that many people may not think about themselves as gamers
or consider their actions as playing videogames. For all these reasons, it is of
paramount importance not to base the study on an a priori definitions. In the
tradition of Johan Huizinga 12 and Roger Caillois’ anthropology of games, 13 the
essentialist perspective defines playing and games by a limited set of features.
However, this approach presupposes the existence of game invariance allowing to
decide whether or not a cultural product is a game (i.e. is an educational software a
videogame?) and to normalise the practice of videogame (i.e. so many hours spent
in front of a screen, such corpus of software, etc). Nevertheless, these kind of a
priori expectations are the ones that have been biasing studies and obstructing the
reconstruction of the full spectrum of videogame players and practices.
Consequently, refocusing studies on the players requires a survey collecting the
data on the actual practices, asking about all the games that the respondent plays,
not only videogames, and challenging the existing categories.

2. Design of the Survey

The survey was conducted by phone on a 2,542 person sample representative of
the French population 11 years of age and over, in June 2012.
The heart of the questionnaire consists of questions about the kinds of games
played. To facilitate the collection of data about practices, the survey begins with
questions on cultural and sport activities in general. Then it collects data on
household equipment such as TVs, consoles, phones and computers. And only then
does it address games on computers, phones and consoles: ‘over the past 12
months, have you played at least once, either on a phone, a touch pad, a computer
or a console to games installed by default – for example Minesweeper or
Solitairy?’ The survey then breaks down the possible videogame genres, trying to
avoid the commercial classifications. It begins with the genres that are more
difficult to recognise as such: default games, adaptations of card games,
adaptations of word and number games. 19 categories were selected, offering
examples each time, starting from the games that are less often discussed in the
literature and moving eventually to the most studied games (which match to the
most committed practices).
40 Situating Play Cultures
__________________________________________________________________

Image 1: Number of Responses to the Survey by Game Genres. 2013.

©LUDESPACE. Courtesy of the authors.

Those who reported having played at least one of these kinds of games in the
last 12 months were considered players (n = 1,697). Those who reported having
played any of these games, but not during the last 12 months were considered
former players (n = 276). Finally, other people in the sample were considered non-
players (n = 569). Data on the context and the game environment was collected by
asking players about their playing frequency, locations, media and playing
partners. These questions were supplemented for the entire sample by demographic
and background variables.

3. Two-Thirds of the French Population Plays Videogames

This study shows that in 2012 videogame practices now include the whole of
society: both men and women, college students and retirees, blue collar workers
and executives, urban and rural dwellers. Almost 6 in 10 adults reported having
played (at least once) in 2012 a videogame over the last 12 months. This is an
opportunity to confirm certain trends: men are slightly more likely to play than
women. But also to challenge some old beliefs: in contrast to academic
publications which are focused on online games and the latest hits, the most played
 Samuel Rufat, Samuel Coavoux and Hovig Ter Minassian 41
__________________________________________________________________
games in France are Solitairy and Freecell, whereas MMOs are a minor genre. 14

Image 2: Proportion of players among respondents. 2013. ©LUDESPACE.

Courtesy of the authors.

But this generalisation may seem misleading: the majority of players play
videogames only occasionally and real fans are less appointed. A little more than 1
in 10 adults play almost every day. This observation is not far from that of the
cinema: many people go to the movies, but few are avid moviegoers. And as for
other hobbies, men and women do not maintain the same ratio as for video gaming.

4. The Gamer Is a Teen Just Like any Other

In terms of videogames, age continues to be the main element of
differentiation. While almost all younger people are players, including girls, the
proportion is less overwhelming in older generations and decreases with age.
42 Situating Play Cultures
__________________________________________________________________

Image 3: Differentiation of Practices according to the Age. 2013. ©LUDESPACE.

Courtesy of the authors.

Players ages 11 to 17 years olds play everything on any device and everywhere.
Among them, boys are the more involved: at least 8 out of 10 boys play every
week, compared to less than 5 out of 10 girls. In addition, they generally display a
more eclectic practice.

Image 4: Proportion of Gamers Playing Only Alone, by Age Categories. 2013.

©LUDESPACE. Courtesy of the authors.

Some genres of videogames are actually gendered: while girls play more dance,
music and life simulation games, boys prefer skill games, platform games and
 Samuel Rufat, Samuel Coavoux and Hovig Ter Minassian 43
__________________________________________________________________
shooting games. Six out of 10 boys are playing FPS, compared to only 1 out of 10
girls. Moreover, the younger the player are, the wider variety of game devices they
use. And for younger players, the practice of video gaming is an important agent of
socialisation. Those who never played (or almost never played) with other players
constitute a tiny minority of younger people. On the other hand, players who only
play alone represent more than half of the retired players. These differences show
differentiation in practices and audiences depending largely on age and gender.

5. Tell Me What You Play…

The practice of videogames has spread to all sections of society, but differences
are emerging in the specific modalities of playing, principally due to the
diversification of videogame audiences. These differences reinforce the scattering
of videogame practices (occasional vs. intensive play, solo vs. multiplayer, online
vs. offline). Among players, more than four out of 10 blue collar workers play
racing games, and more than 3 out of 10 play FPS, while less than 3 out of 10 and
less than 2 out of 10 players from the intermediate professions play these games
respectively. Meanwhile, skill games (Tetris, Angry Birds, etc) are more sought out
by highly educated players (more than 4 in 10 among graduates of higher
education, compared to less than 2 in 10 people among non-graduates).

Image 5: Videogame Genres Practiced by Different Age Groups. 2013.

©LUDESPACE. Courtesy of the authors.
44 Situating Play Cultures
__________________________________________________________________
Videogame genres appear also very distinctive between age groups. The
younger the gamer the more different game genres he or she plays. So it may seem
more difficult to distinguish the genre practices of older groups by using only raw
data. The previous figure shows genre practices by age groups, weighting the
practice by the average number of genres practiced in each group (base 100 =
maximum score within each age group). Older, younger, and middle-aged gamers
seem clearly to focus on different game genres. Life simulation games (The Sims,
animal breeding games, etc.) are almost exclusively popular among teenagers, and
experience a sharp decline after 17 years of age. On the contrary, some genres
actually increase with age, such as educational games, played mostly by 35 to 44
year old players with their children. Finally, card games (which include poker, but
also traditional games, like belote or French tarot) are most popular among older
players, aged 45 and over.
The different practices also mark the sociability the game requires. So when
women play videogames, it is more often within the family circle, while men are
likely to diversify the playmates and locations of the game. The distribution of
videogames throughout society also promotes forms of socialisation around the
game, which is presented in contrast to the current stereotypes of isolation and
withdrawal by videogame players. More than 4 out of 10 players play with friends
and this even constitutes a majority among the most regular players.

6. Exploring the Impacts of the Gaming Environment

The domestic space is the main venue for the practice of videogames: nearly 9
out of 10 adults play at home. But with the release of nomadic media games are
accompanying players in their travels: at friends’ homes (6 out of 10 players), but
also in transport (3 out of 10 players). Generally, the more regular a practice is, the
more it expands into different places, especially among younger players.
To explore the different gaming environments, a cluster analysis was performed
on the places where people said they had played over the last 12 months: at home,
at a neighbour’s home, in the workplace, in transport, in public places, in a gaming
centre. The number of different places where they played was then scored. The six
resulting clusters are presented in graphical form, along with the specific profile of
each cluster according to six different places and its score to reveal over-
representations and under-representations and associations. The figures represent
the relation between the mean of the cluster and the mean of the entire population
of players (n = 1697). A higher number indicates a concentration of people in this
cluster who answered yes to the question, a figure close to 0 indicates that the
cluster has no specificity compared to the general population for that question, and
-1 indicates that no person in this cluster answered yes to this question. All game
genres that people have played over the last 12 months are presented for each
cluster using the same approach for ease of interpretation, but they have not been
taken into account to achieve the clustering.
 Samuel Rufat, Samuel Coavoux and Hovig Ter Minassian 45
__________________________________________________________________

Image 6: Practices of the ‘Sedentarists’ (Cluster 1). 2013. ©LUDESPACE.

Courtesy of the authors.

The ‘sedentarists’ (cluster 1, 21% of players) are people playing mostly at

home, as much as the average with relatives, less than the average in transport or
public places and nowhere else. In this cluster, people have played a few more
game genres than the average. It groups people playing enigmas and puzzles,
tycoon games, MMO, FPS and wargames. This cluster consists of two different
populations, both those under 13 years of age and those over 35 years of age, with
no gender difference, living with a partner and children or parents. The
‘sedentarists’ are the youngest players and parents who play mainly at home, they
tend to be executives, people with higher education and those undergoing training.

Image 7: Practices of the ‘Housewives’ (Cluster 2). ©LUDESPACE.

The ‘housewives’ (cluster 2, 36% of players) are people playing only at home.
In this cluster, people have played considerably fewer different kinds of games
than other players. They exclusively played games installed by default on their
machines, cards, word and number games, educational games and strategy games.
Women over the age of 35 living with a partner and children are over-represented
46 Situating Play Cultures
__________________________________________________________________
in this cluster. People with low academic or no other qualifications, farmers,
pensioners and people with no occupation are also over-represented. The
‘housewives’ tend to live in individual houses or subdivisions with three or more
rooms and travel mostly using their own personal car. This is the group that has the
least spectacular practices and is almost never considered in the literature.

Image 8: Practices of the ‘Ubiquists’ (Cluster 3). 2013. ©LUDESPACE. Courtesy

of the authors.

The ‘ubiquists’ (cluster 3, 9% of players) play almost everywhere and are the
only players who play in gaming centres. In this cluster, people have played a far
greater variety of different games than other players, while these people have
played fewer default games, cards, word and number games, and educational
games. In this cluster, men younger than 18 years of age in training and middle
class workers are over-represented. The ‘ubiquists’ tend to live in urban areas and
large metropolitan areas, often live with their parents, in flats of five rooms or
more and moving on foot, by bike or skates.
 Samuel Rufat, Samuel Coavoux and Hovig Ter Minassian 47
__________________________________________________________________

Image 9: Practices of the ‘Working and Travelling’ (Cluster 4). 2013.

©LUDESPACE. Courtesy of the authors.

The ‘working and travelling’ (cluster 4, 9% of players) are the only players
who play at work. They also play slightly more in transport and public spaces, but
not elsewhere. In this cluster, people have played a bit of all kinds of games, with a
relative concentration of strategy games, puzzles and enigmas, RPG, FPS, combat
games and wargames. In this cluster, youths 18 to 24 years of age, with no gender
difference, and the working class, with low qualifications are over-represented. Far
from the conventional wisdom, ‘working and travelling’ do not represent
management and executives. These are young professionals from the most popular
classes, who tend to live on the periphery of major urban centres, often with their
parents and using public transport over long distances (train and metro).

Image 10: Practices of the ‘Neighborhood Sociability’ (Cluster 5). 2013.

©LUDESPACE. Courtesy of the authors.
48 Situating Play Cultures
__________________________________________________________________
The ‘neighborhood sociability’ (cluster 5, 11% of players) are playing mainly
at their neighbours’ homes and to a certain degree at their relatives’ place. In this
cluster, people have played a slightly greater variety of games than other players.
In particular it includes music and dance games, life simulation, platform, sports,
racing and combat games. The ‘neighborhood sociability’ cluster consists of men
under 18 years of age, with an over-representation of persons undergoing training,
blue collar workers, employees and intermediate occupations. They live mostly in
rural areas or on the outskirts of small urban clusters, often with their parents in
small dwellings or at boarding school and travel more on foot.

Image 11: Practices of the ‘Nomads’ (Cluster 6). 2013. ©LUDESPACE. Courtesy
of the authors.

The ‘nomads’ (cluster 6, 12% of players) play both in transport and in public
spaces, and to a lesser extent at their neighbours’ or relatives’ homes, yet in a
greater variety of places than the average. In this cluster, people have played more
different kinds of games than other players. In particular, it includes board games,
educational, skill, enigmas and puzzles, music and dance games. The ‘nomads’ are
young adults under 35 years of age, with a slight over-representation of women.
They tend to be executives and people with the highest levels of training, or people
pursuing their studies. So, intellectuals, managers and executives tend to play in
transport and in public spaces rather than at their place of work. This cluster
includes the inhabitants of large urban centres, especially Parisians, people who
tend to live with their parents or other family members, either in small apartments
or in very large houses, and moving both by public transportation (bus, tram,
metro) and green transportation (bicycle, roller-blades).

7. Conclusion
This is a work in progress that is presently being expanded, but also
supplemented by qualitative interviews. It highlights the importance of not using a
priori definitions of players and videogames in order to collect the full spectrum of
practices and audiences. These first results show the diversity of playing practices
 Samuel Rufat, Samuel Coavoux and Hovig Ter Minassian 49
__________________________________________________________________
in space and time, and allow us qualifying the feminisation of the public,
challenging the image of executives playing at work, emphasising that videogames
seems to promote integration and decrease social withdrawal, and clarifying the
differences between rural and urban practices when it comes to videogames.
Moreover, the LUDESPACE study also shows that the practice of videogames
does not compete with other cultural practices. In general, videogame players go to
the cinema or the museum as much as their non-player counter parts, and at
comparable ages they likewise share the same proportion of people practicing a
sport or a musical instrument. Ultimately, videogames appear as a hobby among
others within French cultural practices.

Notes
1
Samuel Rufat and Hovig Ter Minassian, Les Jeux Vidéo comme Objet de
Recherche (Paris: Questions Théoriques, 2011).
2
This work in progress takes place as part of the broader LUDESPACE research
project, which is funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR 2011 JSH
001 01) and led by the laboratory CITERES (CNRS 7324). Its main objective is to
describe in all their sociological and geographical diversity videogame players and
videogame practices in France.
3
Chloé Paberz, ‘Rendre compte d’un Ancrage Local. L’apport Original de
L’ethnologie aux Game Studies Au-Delà de L’ethnographie’, Espaces et Temps
des Jeux Vidéo, eds. Hovig Ter Minassian, Samuel Rufat and Samuel Coavoux
(Paris: Questions Théoriques, 2012), 236-259.
4
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).
5
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).
6
Howard Becker, Outsiders. Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (New York:
Free Press of Clencoe, 1963).
7
T. L. Taylor, Play between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture (Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 2006).
8
Pierre Bruno, Les Jeux Vidéo (Paris: Syros, 1993).
9
Laurent Trémel, Jeux de Rôle, Jeux Vidéo, Multimédia. Les Faiseurs de Monde
(Paris: PUF, 2001).
10
Vincent Berry, L’expérience Virtuelle: Jouer, Vivre, Apprendre dans un jeu
Vidéo (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012).
11
Olivier Donnat, Les Pratiques Culturelles des Français à L’ère du Numérique
(Paris: La Découverte, 2009).
12
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1955).
50 Situating Play Cultures
__________________________________________________________________

13
Roger Caillois, Les Jeux et les Hommes. Le Masque et le Vertige (Paris:
Gallimard, 1958).
14
The importance of card games like Solitary, FreeCell, and Spider is confirmed
when we look at the ‘most played games in the last 12 months.’ Solitary is the
most mentioned game (it represents 2% of the most played games mentioned),
followed by Spider (1.7%), FreeCell (1.6%) and Poker (1.3%) out of a total of 501
different references.

Bibliography
Becker, Howard. Outsiders. Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free
Press of Clencoe, 1963.

Berry, Vincent. L’expérience Virtuelle: Jouer, Vivre, Apprendre dans un jeu Vidéo.
Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012.

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Bruno, Piere. Les Jeux Vidéo. Paris: Syros, 1993.

Caillois, Roger. Les Jeux et les Hommes. Le Masque et le Vertige. Paris:

Gallimard, 1958.

Donnat, Olivier. Les Pratiques Culturelles des Français à L’ère du Numérique.

Paris: La Découverte, 2009.

Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Boston:

Beacon Press, 1955.

Lefebvre, Hneri. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.

Paberz, Chloé. ‘Rendre compte d’un Ancrage Local. L’apport Original de

L’ethnologie aux Game Studies Au-Delà de L’ethnographie’. Espaces et Temps
des Jeux Vidéo, edited by Hovig Ter Minassian, Samuel Rufat, and Samuel
Coavoux, 236–256. Paris: Questions Théoriques, 2012.

Rufat, Samuel, and Hovig Ter Minassian. Les Jeux Vidéo comme Objet de
Recherche. Paris: Questions Théoriques, 2011.
 Samuel Rufat, Samuel Coavoux and Hovig Ter Minassian 51
__________________________________________________________________

Taylor, T. L. Play between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture. Cambridge,

MA: The MIT Press, 2006.

Trémel, Laurent. Jeux de Rôle, Jeux Vidéo, Multimédia. Les Faiseurs de Monde.
Paris: PUF, 2001.

Samuel Rufat, PhD in geography, is lecturer at the university of Cergy-Pontoise

(France).

Samuel Coavoux is a PhD candidate in sociology at the École Normale Supérieure

de Lyon (France).

Hovig Ter Minassian, PhD in geography, is lecturer at the university François

Rabelais of Tours (France).
 ‘Where Is Life?’: Commitment and Micro-Interactions
in Videogames

Hovig Ter Minassian, Isabel Colón de Carvajal, Manuel Boutet

and Mathieu Triclot
Abstract
This contribution presents a research work in progress based on the analysis of
video recordings of people playing at videogames. The screen and the players are
both recorded, and then the two video records are synchronised. This methodology
allows observing precisely the immersive potential of videogame practices,
according to the socio-spatial contexts in which they take place. The results of such
analysis show that the videogame experience is not only immersive or intensive,
but also actually characterised by the superposition of discontinuities:
immersion/perturbation, connection/disconnection, pleasure/boredom etc. Thus,
the limits between what is real and what is not, between what is play and what is
not, are not given a priori, and are not the same according to the contexts of play.
There are several interests of such work. Firstly, it allows putting in perspective the
place given to the images in the analysis of videogame practices, and to focus on
what we could name, in the continuity of Raymond Bellour’s works on the body of
the spectator in a movie theatre, ‘videogame bodies.’ Secondly, such research
allows taking account of spatial and social micro-interactions which occur during a
videogame session, particularly between the videogame spaces and the players.
Lastly, it gives us a glimpse of the ordinary life of a group of players engaged in a
collective activity, in a context of leisure and friendship. The whole study shows
that the limits between what is real and what is virtual are due less to the
technological performances of more and more powerful videogame machines,
allowing the player to be dived into always more immersive and realistic universes,
than to the way the player is engaged in a videogame. Immersion in a videogame is
not reducible to a unique formula, and the circumstances of videogame practices
should be observed to be understood.

Key Words: Videogames, video recording, body, play, spatial interactions, social
interactions.

*****

What does it mean to play at videogames? More precisely, what is the diversity
of videogame practices and what are the different forms of socialisation which
surround them? What place do these practices take in the everyday life, and
particularly in the domestic space? Such are some of the questions we would like
to try and answer here, by the analysis of videogame practices, recorded by several
synchronised video cameras. 1
54 ‘Where Is Life?’
__________________________________________________________________
Although it offers an interesting alternative to the narratology/ludology debate,
this emphasis with regard to the study of videogame practices has been until now
defended by a minor branch of Game Studies, which led to ethnographies 2 and
micro-sociological analysis. 3 As there is a diversity of players and ways of playing
online videogames, like World of Warcraft 4 or Dark Age of Camelot, 5 we can
postulate a same diversity of players and ways of playing Tomb Raider or Super
Mario Bros Wii. We make the strong hypothesis that the videogame experience is a
situated experience, partly determined by the configuration of the place where the
game is played and by the social and cultural context in which it takes place. 6 If we
do not play the same way, according to where we play and to the people with
whom we play, then studying videogame practices leads to take into account the
spatial and social micro-interactions which take place during a videogame session.
As such, we avoid using some pre-determined categories, such as ‘casual gamer,’
‘solo gamer,’ or ‘on line game,’ which are, nowadays, more vernacular expressions
than scientific categories.
In this chapter, we will put the emphasis on the different forms of socialisation
which surround videogame practices, but also on the different ways with which
these practices take place in everyday life and in the domestic place. Those
interactions in the game and around the game show us that the blurring of the
borders between what is virtual and what is real is less linked to the technological
performances of the videogame machines – more and more powerful, able to dive
the player into always more realistic or immersive universes – than to the
commitment of the player within the game. By the different ways with which the
players inscribe their videogame practices into their domestic environment and
their ordinary life, they put the videogame worlds in continuity with the real world.
Indeed, during a videogame session, the players are both within and out of the
game, their position being different according to their commitment within the game
and the pleasure they take from the videogame practice.
The first part of this text presents the hypothesis and the methodology of such
work. The second part describes some results taken from the analysis of some case
studies, which will be discussed in the last part of the text.

1. To Play Videogames: A Bodily, Social and Spatial Experience

One of the first interests of working on video recording of game sessions, is to
put into perspective the more classical analysis of the images, and to put interest to
what we could name, following the works or Raymond Bellour on the body of the
spectator into a movie theatre, ‘videogame bodies.’ 7 The games, and the emotions
which emerge from their practice, would not exist without those diverse forms of
body movements, the observation of which allows us to underline the ‘primal
emotions of the dispositive.’ 8 These primary affects are not taken into account by
the classical psychological works, which only study already constructed affects of
high intensity. 9 Thus, following the propositions of the anthropologist Albert
 Hovig Ter Minassian et al. 55
__________________________________________________________________
Piette, 10 the aim here is to attend to the futile, contingent or not particularly intense
activities, on the hollow moments, or on the pauses which structure the activity of
gaming. Moreover, such a work gives us a glimpse of the ordinary life of a social
group committed to a shared, collective activity, in a context of leisure and
friendship. In such situations, different kinds of informal conversation are
identifiable, with their moments of tension, emotion or ‘affects,’ giving life to
particular verbal expressions. There can be micro interactional events, which are
generally not well – or even not at all – analysed in other case studies, for example
cut off utterances, short turns, uncompleted turns or repeated segments. 11 Lastly,
one of the aims of this study is to analyse the way videogame experiences occur
into interrelated spaces: the player space, the in-game space and the space around
the videogame practice. 12
To analyse those videogame situations, we used a methodology usually
associated to interactional linguistics, which consists in synchronised audio and
video recording, with several cameras, 13 of one or multiple game sessions, in
different contexts. The aim is to embrace the whole social and spatial events which
can be observed during a videogame session. They are, in the most part, oral or
body interactions (talking, gazes, gestures). The use of several video cameras
allows having a broad view of the place where the game is played, but also more
precise views of the player’s screens, as much as of the controllers (mouse,
keyboard or whatever else). Lastly, in order to preserve the spatial and social
ecosystem of the game session, the video cameras must be put in the less intrusive
way possible, 14 and the researcher goes out during the game session.

2. Differentiated Commitments to the Videogame Practice

The first analysis work of our corpus led us to identify the elements which
shape the videogame experiences and contribute to the differentiation of their
practice. 15 We present here three themes in particular, which show that the
commitment to a videogame practice can vary according to the players and to the
situations. These variations are due as much as to the proper characteristics of the
videogame played as to the social and spatial contexts in which the practice occur.
Thus, the videogame experience is firstly characterised by an alternation of tense
moments and relaxing moments, which can occur at three scales of analysis.
Primarily, it can be at the scale of the length of the situation (the whole afternoon
or the whole evening), with alternating game sessions and discussion sessions,
either related, or not, to the videogame practised. It can also be at the scale of a
game session, with preparation sequences (building up the teams, selecting the
rules or the map) and game sequences. Thirdly, at the scale of each of those game
sequences, there can be alternating tense and relaxing moments, due to more or
less intense or nervous action, according to what is going on within the game. The
tension is usually expressed by physical gesture, body movements or shouts.
56 ‘Where Is Life?’
__________________________________________________________________
By paying attention to these tense/relaxing moments, one of the most surprising
observations is the notable fragility of the game experience, the important part of
boredom, or at least of moments of low intensity, without particular expression of
pleasure. Thus, the idea along which videogames should be naturally fun,
immersive or fascinating, does not fit with what we can actually observe. These
characteristics appear to be more linked to the retrospective work, which takes
place ex post, for example the afterwards discussion around the game session
which has just finished. The tolerance to boredom, or playing by proxy, are
significant phenomena in the situations we observed. Thus, the Tomb Raider
Underworld player is constantly called upon by his girlfriend who wants to know
‘how is going?,’ if he’s ‘not too bored?,’ as if it was necessary to protect a fragile
situation of videogame practice, for a player who is not used to play those
videogames. During the LAN party, there are some surprising commentaries such
as ‘we’re playing while waiting...,’ ‘I begin an Unreal session in order to… well,
make something while waiting’… All these commentaries are linked to a
paradoxical, and yet common situation, which consists in playing without really
being in the game, or playing while waiting the game to ‘really’ begin. These in
between situations are favourable to low forms of commitment. They build the
fundamental basis of videogame experience, although they are too rarely discussed
in videogame studies. They show the fragility of the videogame pleasure (a
recurrent bug, a part of the game which is too hard, a too strong adversary…).
Then, the returns to ‘reality’ are numerous: we take time to discuss with the people
who stayed in the kitchen (during the LAN party), to brush our teeth (the girlfriend
of the Tomb Raider Underworld player) or to go and bring some food (during the
Super Mario Bros Wii evening), which act as so many moments of temporary
disconnections out of the game.
Finally, what can also characterise the videogame practices is the experience of
orientation, or more precisely of disorientation. This experience consists, for the
player, in localising and identifying his or her team-mates in the videogame space.
This need of orientation is, thus, expressed by the different linguistics forms that
players produce in order to bring reference to another player, or a character in the
game. These linguistics forms can be, for example: ‘who am I?,’ ‘where are you?,’
‘who’s the blue one?,’ and ‘where is life?’ (referring to the power-ups or bonuses
scattered in the videogame level). These expressions are linked to a need to
identify or localise the different characters in the in-game space, rendered
necessary as the players of a same team do not always play in the same room in the
domestic space.
A good perception of space is also important in order to participate actively in
the game. It allows localising oneself in maze-like levels of the game, to avoid
wanderings which often mean boredom and, in the case of more competitive
games, to take advantage on one’s adversaries. The perception of space occurs
through different modalities, which echo the distinction made by Abraham Moles
 Hovig Ter Minassian et al. 57
__________________________________________________________________
between the philosophy of centrality and the Cartesian philosophy of space. 16 The
first one refers to a phenomenological ‘auto-centered’ perception of space: we can
see it through the will of the players not to be lost in the levels of the game, or to
evaluate the proximity of their adversaries with regard to themselves. Conversely,
the Cartesian philosophy of space refers to an external perception of space, where
the subject is not inhabitant, but an observer of that space, which he or she can
delimitate, measure, or to which he or she can set attributes. We can see this in the
will of the players to find where secret passages or items are located, or with which
parts of the in-game space they can interact. Some kinds of games seem to favour
one modality of perception of space more than another. The philosophy of
centrality is dominant in games which propose a subjective view of the avatar and
into which the action is conducted at a fast pace (for example Unreal Tournament).
In platform games, like Super Mario Bros Wii, where the player has to visualise in
one glance his or her position and at the same time the one of his or her team-mates
and a part of the game level, it is more the Cartesian philosophy of space which
dominates. At last, some games (like CounterStrike) propose both, alternatively,
according to the game actions.

3. To Play Videogames: A Multiform Activity and of Blurred Contours

It arises from the whole analysis, that the practice of videogames is an activity
which contours are fuzzy, and which can produce different ways of commitment,
according to the game played and to the player committed.
Firstly, all the players are not connected in the game altogether: one of the
players of the LAN party, Mika, devotes the major part of his time to try and
configure the games, in order to make them playable on his computer, but in vain.
He is, indeed, present: he takes part of the conversation, sometimes he even
follows the course of a game on the screen of one of his friends, but he is also often
out of the videogame space. Secondly, all the connected players do not necessarily
play together: here again in the LAN party, some players play on a map of Unreal
Tournament, waiting for the other to prepare for another map. Finally, in the case
of multi-player games (especially during the LAN party), the distribution of the
players in the videogame space does not always coincide with the spatial
distribution of the players in the different rooms of the apartment where the LAN
party takes place. If technology makes possible the spatial expansion of the players
space (i.e. the possibility of playing in different rooms in order to play with more
people), it complicates in the same time the discussions: some players of the same
team have to speak loud in order to communicate from one room to another.
This entanglement of videogame spaces is accompanied by appropriation, and
even diversion of space. The characteristic of the domestic space, compared to the
space of the neighbourhood or of the city, is to be much more malleable for
individuals. 17 During a game session, the everyday configuration of the domestic
space is changed in order to fit to the needs of the videogame practice. Thus, in the
58 ‘Where Is Life?’
__________________________________________________________________
case of the LAN party, which takes place in an apartment, the configuration of the
living-room is modified so it can host four of the eight players, the other ones
setting themselves into the office room. The rooms also specialise themselves:
during the LAN party, the kitchen becomes naturally the place for catering.
Situated halfway between the office room and the living-room, it is where lively
debates take place, at the end of each game session and, which, as we have
underlined previously, are an important part of pleasure in videogame practices.
Thus, at the scale of the time passed playing videogames, the domestic rooms
acquire new ‘characteristics,’ which make sense both in the real and the virtual
worlds.
Those appropriations and diversions of the domestic space show the absence of
a clear limit between what is going on in the game and what is going on outside the
game: the videogame practice meddles with the everyday space-time and the
players enter the game with their skills, their previous experience of videogames,
and the relationships they already have with the other players. Also, the players go,
in turn, in and out of the ‘magic circle’ (following the famous word of
J. Huizinga), 18 including Mika, who ends up using the computer of another player
since he does not manage to make his to operate correctly.
Thus, in all our filmed situations of play, the videogame practice seems to take
a major part in the leisure time of the players, for example, the Tomb Raider
Underworld player who has difficulty to stop playing despite the late time, but also
for the girlfriend, who recognises the game she has already played, remembers
some of the puzzles and herself seems reluctant to turn off the console. It is also
the case of the LAN party players, who remember how their previous multi-player
videogames went on, ten years ago. Thus, for the players who appear in our study,
the videogame practice seems paradoxical: it is a very futile activity but made very
seriously.
Finally, what the study of videogame practice shows, is that the real world does
not fade into the virtual world. 19 The players who were filmed do not lose their feet
in the virtual worlds: they go out from them constantly in order to discuss about
their game, to answer the telephone or to go and grab some food. There is a life
outside the videogame (to take time with friends, to be gathered the time of an
evening around a mutual activity), but which, actually, is rendered possible
because of the videogame practice, both the aim and the pretext of those
gatherings. It is not contradictory with the fact that the exploration of virtual
worlds is indeed something else than a simple continuation of everyday life. It is a
full activity, the rules (how to win) and the codes (how to identify ones adversary)
which the player must know. Thus, there is no opposition, but continuity between
the real world and the virtual world, and that is what contributes to blur the limits
between them. Thus, the players identify themselves, in turn and according to the
situations, by their pseudo (Darius, Cosette…), their character (Mario, Lara
Croft…), or their first name.
 Hovig Ter Minassian et al. 59
__________________________________________________________________
To conclude, the alternation of in game/out of the game status, and the way the
videogame practice meddles with everyday life make difficult to delimitate the
videogame practice itself. Is the spectator who helps her boyfriend solving the
puzzles in Tomb Raider Underworld also playing, even if she does not push the
buttons? Are the LAN party players who are plugging in the cables and
configuring the computer and in the same time discussing about the games which
they should play, not already ‘in’ the game? At last, is Mika, who does not manage
to make the games work on his computer, more a ‘player’ than his friends,
reluctant to videogames, who are watching the end of the LAN party?

Notes
1
This work is one part of a broader research project named LUDESPACE, which
is funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR 2011 JSH 001 01) and
led by the laboratory CITERES (UMR 7324). Its main objective is to describe in
all their sociological and geographical diversity, the videogame players and the
videogame practices in France.
2
T. L. Taylor, Play between Worlds. Exploring Online Game Culture (Cambridge:
The MIT Press, 2006); Manuel Boutet, ‘De L’ordinateur Personnel aux
Communautés en Ligne. S’orienter dans les Mondes Informatiques’ (PhD diss.
Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, 2006); Tom Boellstorff, Coming of Age in
Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (Oxford: Princeton
University Press, 2008); Bonnie Bardi, My Life as a Night Elf Priest. An
Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft (Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Press, 2010); Celia Pearce, Communities of Play. Emergent Cultures in
Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2009);
Vinciane Zabban, ‘“Ceci est un Monde”. Le Partage des Jeux en Ligne:
Conceptions, Techniques et Pratiques’ (PhD diss., Université Paris-Est, 2011);
Vincent Berry, L’expérience virtuelle: Jouer, Vivre, Apprendre dans un jeu Vidéo
(Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012).
3
Seth Giddins, ‘Events and Collusions: A Glossary for the Microethnography of
Videogame Play’, Games and Culture 4, No. 2 (2009): 144-157; Manuel Boutet,
‘Jouer aux Jeux Vidéo avec Style. Pour une Ethnographie des Sociabilités
Vidéoludiques’, Réseaux 173-174 (2012): 207-234.
4
Vincent Berry, Manuel Boutet and Samuel Coavoux, ‘Playing Styles. The
Differentiation of Practices in Online Videogames’, Bourdieu and Data Analysis:
Methodological Principles and Practice, eds. Michael Grenfell and Frédéric
Lebaron (New York: Peter Lang, 2014).
5
Berry, L’expérience Virtuelle.
6
Sylvie Craipeau and Marie-Christine Legout, ‘La Sociabilité mise en Scène,
Entre Réel et Imaginaire’, in La Pratique du jeu Vidéo: Réalité ou Virtualité ?, ed.
60 ‘Where Is Life?’
__________________________________________________________________

Mélanie Roustan (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003), 115-128; Mathieu Triclot,

Philosophie des Jeux Vidéo (Paris: La Découverte, 2011); Manuel Boutet, ‘Un
Rendez-vous Parmi D’autres. Ce Que le jeu sur Internet nous Apprend du Travail
Contemporain’, ethnographiques.org 23 (2011), accessed 1 September 2013,
http://www.ethnographiques.org/2011/Boutet.
7
Raymond Bellour, Le Corps du Cinéma: Hypnoses, Émotions, Animalité (Paris:
P.O.L, 2009).
8
Graeme Kirkpatrick, Aesthetic Theory and the Videogame (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2011).
9
Daniel Stern, Le Monde Interpersonnel du Nourrisson (Paris: PUF, 2003).
10
Albert Piette, L’acte D’exister. Une Phénoménographie de la Présence
(Marchienne-au-Pont: Socrate Editions, 2009).
11
Isabel Colón de Carvajal, ‘Les Énoncés Choraux: Une Forme de Segments
Répétés Émergeant dans les Interactions de Jeux Vidéo’, in Les Jeux Vidéo comme
Objet de Recherche, eds. Samuel Rufat and Hovig Ter Minassian (Paris: Questions
Théoriques, 2011), 148-165.
12
The player space designates the place where the videogame practice takes place;
the in-game space is the space with which the player interacts within the game;
lastly the space around the videogame practice designates all the spaces and
territories which exist because of the videogame practices (videogame industry,
retailers, but also conferences, dedicated websites etc.). For more discussion, see
Samuel Rufat and Hovig Ter Minassian, eds., Les Jeux Vidéo comme Objet de
Recherche (Paris: Questions Théoriques, 2011).
13
Groupe ICOR, ‘La Démarche Ethnographique’, CORINTE (website), 2006a,
http://icar.univ-lyon2.fr/projets/corinte/recueil/demarche_ethnographique.htm;
Groupe ICOR, ‘Enregistrement des Corpus D’interaction’, CORINTE (website),
2006b, http://icar.univ-lyon2.fr/projets/corinte/recueil/enregistrement.htm.
14
Eric Laurier and Chris Philo, ‘Natural Problems of Naturalistic Video Data’, in
Video-Analysis Methodology and Methods, Qualitative Audiovisual Data Analysis
in Sociology, eds. Hubert Knoblauch, Bernt Schnetler, Jürgen Raab and Hans-
Georg Seffner (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006), 183-192.
15
Three videogame situations have been used here for the analysis: a man playing
in his living-room to a videogame on his Wii console (Tomb Raider Underworld)
with his girlfriend watching him; four friends (two women and two men) gathered
in a living-room during an evening in order to play to a multi-player Wii game
(Super Mario Bros Wii); lastly, eight friends (one woman and seven men), gathered
for a LAN party during the afternoon in an apartment, playing at several multi-
player computer games (Unreal Tournament, CounterStrike, Starcraft II).
16
Abraham Moles and Elisabeth Rohmer, Psychologie de L’espace (Paris:
L’Harmattan, 1998).
 Hovig Ter Minassian et al. 61
__________________________________________________________________

17
Jean-François Staszak, ed., Espaces Domestiques (Paris: Armand Colin, 2001).
18
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1958).
19
Anolga Rodionoff, Les Territoires Saisis par le Virtuel (Rennes: Presses
Universitaires de Rennes, 2012).

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Berry, Vincent. L’expérience Virtuelle: Jouer, Vivre, Apprendre dans un jeu Vidéo.
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Berry, Vincent, Manuel Boutet, and Samuel Coavoux. ‘Playing Styles. The
Differentiation of Practices in Online Videogames’. In Bourdieu and Data
Analysis: Methodological Principles and Practice, edited by Michael Grenfell, and
Frédéric Lebaron, 165–180. New York: Peter Lang, 2014.

Boellstorff, Tom. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the

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Boutet, Manuel. ‘De L’ordinateur Personnel aux Communautés en Ligne.

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—––. ‘Jouer aux Jeux Vidéo avec Style. Pour une Ethnographie des Sociabilités
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—––. ‘Un Rendez-vous Parmi D’autres. Ce Que le Jeu sur Internet nous Apprend
du Travail Contemporain’. ethnographiques.org 23 (2011). Accessed 1 September
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Colón de Carvajal, Isabel. ‘Les Énoncés Choraux: Une Forme de Segments

Répétés Émergeant dans les Interactions de Jeux Vidéo’. In Les Jeux Vidéo comme
Objet de Recherche, edited by Samuel Rufat, and Hovig Ter Minassian, 148–165.
Paris: Questions théoriques, 2011.

Craipeau, Sylvie, and Marie-Christine Legout. ‘La Sociabilité mise en Scène, Entre
Réel et Imaginaire’. In La Pratique du jeu Vidéo: Réalité ou Virtualité ?, edited by
Mélanie Roustan, 115–128. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003.
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Giddings, Seth. ‘Events and Collusions: A Glossary for the Microethnography of

Videogame Play’. Games and Culture 4, No. 2 (2009): 144–157.

Groupe ICOR. ‘La Démarche Ethnographique’. 2006a. Accessed 1 September

2013.
http://icar.univ-lyon2.fr/projets/corinte/recueil/demarche_ethnographique.htm.

Groupe ICOR. ‘Enregistrement des Corpus D’interaction’. 2006b. Accessed 1

September 2013.
http://icar.univ-lyon2.fr/projets/corinte/recueil/enregistrement.htm.

Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1958.

Kirkpatrick, Graeme. Aesthetic Theory and the Videogame. Manchester:

Manchester University Press, 2011.

Laurier, Eric, and Chris Philo. ‘Natural Problems of Naturalistic Video Data’. In
Video-Analysis Methodology and Methods, Qualitative Audiovisual Data Analysis
in Sociology, edited by Hubert Knoblauch, Bernt Schnetler, Jürgen Raab, and
Hans-Georg Seffner, 183–192. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006.

Moles, Abraham, and Elisabeth Rohmer. Psychosociologie de L’espace. Paris:

L’Harmattan, 1998.

Nardi, Bonnie. My Life as a Night Elf Priest. An Anthropological Account of World

of Warcraft. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2010.

Pearce, Celia. Communities of Play. Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and

Virtual Worlds. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2009.

Piette, Albert. L’acte D’exister. Une Phénoménographie de la Présence.

Marchienne-au-Pont: Socrate Editions, 2009.

Rodionoff, Anolga. Les Territoires Saisis par le Virtuel. Rennes: Presses

Universitaires de Rennes, 2012.

Rufat, Samuel, and Hovig Ter Minassian, eds. Les Jeux Vidéo comme Objet de
Recherche. Paris: Questions théoriques, 2011.

Staszak, Jean-François, ed. Espaces Domestiques. Paris: Armand Colin, 2001.

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Stern, Daniel. Le Monde Interpersonnel du Nourrisson. Paris: PUF, 2003.

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Conceptions, Techniques et Pratiques’. PhD dissertation, Université Paris Est,
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Belfort-Montbéliard (France).
 The Phenomenology of Video Games: How Gamers Perceive
Games and Gaming

Benjamin Čulig, Marko Katavić, Jasenka Kuček

and Antonia Matković
Abstract
Throughout history, the game phenomenon has been observed by scholars of
various profiles. Today, the research focus is increasingly narrowing down from
classic concepts of game and play to the relatively recent global phenomenon of
video games. Numerous studies have pointed to a multitude of different
conceptions of gaming and video games; therefore, one gets the impression that it
is difficult to unambiguously define this seemingly understandable phenomenon.
Following the phenomenological tradition and adopting the idea that each
definition arises from subjective experience, we decided to conduct qualitative
research with the aim of identifying the elements of video games that are universal
and essential. For this purpose, we conducted focus groups and interviews on a
maximum variation convenience sample of gamers. Focus group transcripts were
coded using the open coding method and analysed as a whole, and the results were
used to draft questions for semi-structured interviews. In the first stage, the
interview transcripts were analysed using the in-vivo coding procedure, attempting
to accurately record the original meanings ascribed to the phenomenon by gamers.
At this level of generality, participants cited that by entering into the virtual world,
they became absent from the real world as well as that they saw gaming as a
hobby, means of relaxation and entertainment and a training ground for
competition against each other and against themselves. In the second stage of the
analysis the data underwent open coding procedure, which resulted in three major
aspects of the video game definition: video game as a richly developed world,
video game as a rule-bounded set of tasks or puzzles, and video game as a means
of social interaction. Due to specificity of this type of research, the findings cannot
be generalised on a larger scale, but can serve as a theoretical basis for future
quantitative research.

Key Words: Video games, phenomenology, focus groups, semi-structured

interviews, virtual world, story, competition, immersiveness, social interaction,
entertainment.

*****

1. Introduction
The game phenomenon has been analysed by numerous authors, ranging from
classics who mainly dealt with a broader concept of play to modern era
researchers, who have narrowed the focus to the contemporary issue of video
66 The Phenomenology of Video Games
__________________________________________________________________
games and gaming. Video games have become a tangible part of reality; the
gaming industry is rapidly becoming one of the largest in the world, and millions
of players engage in gaming on a daily basis. 1 In that sense, one could say that
gaming is becoming an increasingly important activity in human life. Therefore, a
growing interest of researchers for studying various aspects of video games and
gaming makes a great deal of sense. Researchers pinpoint topics such as gamer
mentalities, socio-demographic characteristics of gamers, as well as connections
between genre preferences and other aspects of life.
The study by Kallio et. al. points to the existence of nine substantively different
gamer mentalities, primarily based on a variety of subjective experiences of
gaming. The authors conducted a survey, as well as three sets of interviews –
structured, in-depth and focus groups – on a national sample of Finland, focusing
their attention on gamers’ everyday lives and their specific gaming experiences,
with a view to finding out what gaming meant to them and which gamer
mentalities they possessed. The identified mentalities were established upon three
components – intensity of gaming, sociability of gaming, and games played. Under
the intensity feature, authors took into account the length of playing sessions,
regularity of playing and level of concentration during the game. Sociability
feature entailed various spaces of sociable playing: physical space, virtual space
and space outside both physical and virtual gaming situations. Finally, the
component of games played included the means of gaming (devices and games
themselves, genres and access to games). The authors concluded that mentalities
were not mutually exclusive, but overlapping and interconnected. 2
However, there are a number of completely different approaches to games. For
example, Malaby specifies three inherent features of gaming as an activity: it is
detachable from everyday life, safe and non-productive as well as enjoyable or fun
(in a normatively positive sense). 3 Montola observes games as social constructs,
and therefore concludes that games can be viewed as an intersubjective
phenomenon, constructed individually by each participant. 4
Classic definitions of games, the majority of them being expressed in terms of a
much wider concept of play, also reflect a multitude of different interpretations.
Caillois mentioned four key features of play – freedom, detachment, existence of
rules and uncertainty, 5 whereas Huizinga believed that play had existed before
culture and that all human activities were imbued with it. 6
The foregoing implies a multitude of mutually incomparable sets of criteria for
classifying the game phenomenon, which raises the question: is it possible to
uniformly define the concept of game, i.e. video game, and consequently classify
all its forms unambiguously? Following the tradition of phenomenological
philosophy, embracing the idea that phenomena cannot be defined objectively, but
each definition stems from the subjective experience of the phenomenon, it can be
concluded that in order to be able to define a phenomenon conceptually and
operationally, and obtain a comprehensive understanding of it, it is necessary to
 Benjamin Čulig, Marko Katavić, Jasenka Kuček and Antonia Matković 67
__________________________________________________________________
extract its structural essence from various subjective perspectives of the
phenomenon. 7
Since there are many other authors whose approaches differ from the
mentioned ones to a greater or lesser degree, one gets the impression that it is very
difficult to produce an unambiguous definition of the seemingly understandable
phenomenon. In our opinion, studying the multidimensional and multifaceted
phenomenon of video games requires no fixed definition, but rather a
phenomenological classification that may be connected with the players’ attributes,
psychological profiles, personal beliefs, etc. We believe that all those differing
motivations which lead players into preference of different video game genres
contain some universal components – elements of game that appeal to each player.
This research is an attempt to identify those essential elements, with the aim of
gaining a clearer insight into the video game phenomenon.

2. Method and Data Collection

This study applies the phenomenological approach in qualitative research, as
described by R. H. Hycner: apart from exclusion of the researcher’s personal
experiences and preconceptions of the phenomenon (so as to begin the analysis
completely open), this approach requires detailed interpretation of the participants’
experiences of the phenomenon as well as meanings they ascribe to it, and finding
a mutual element essential to all the accounts. 8 Following those guidelines, the
study was conducted via direct communication with the gamers and documenting
how they themselves understood the video game phenomenon. Since gamers’
experiences are vital to the phenomenology of video games, it is important to treat
them as co-researchers. 9 To that end, in the first phase of the research, we carried
out focus groups which included detailed group conversations about video games,
thus covering as much different views and experiences as possible. In the second
phase, all the various views obtained through focus groups were listed and used as
a basis for the design of semi-structured individual interviews.
The sample used in the study was a convenience sample of maximum variation.
Based on previous research; the aim was to include as wide as possible range of
gamers, mutually differing in genre preferences and gaming intensities, in order to
obtain diverse gaming experiences. In the first stage, a screening questionnaire was
constructed and distributed via online gaming forums, in order to collect a large
pool of respondents and choose the most appropriate ones for participation in two
focus groups. Based on the questionnaire results; 14 participants were selected.
The focus groups were recorded and transcribed, with an attempt to keep all the
nonverbal elements of communication in the transcript. In the subsequent step, the
focus group data were used to create clusters of activities connectible with games
as well as concepts designated as structural game elements. Both were incorporated
into the protocol of semi-structured interviews. The interviews included five open
questions:
68 The Phenomenology of Video Games
__________________________________________________________________
1. What is a video game?
2. What does gaming with other people mean to you?
3. We are going to show you a few cards with various groups
of activities written on each. Could you identify the
similarities and differences between these activities and
video games?

3a Meditation and prayer, carnivals and parades, religious

ceremonies, celebrations
3b Martial arts, competitive sports, amateur and recreational
sports, adrenaline/extreme sports
3c Crossword puzzles and quizzes, board games and card
games, gambling, betting and games of chance; amusement parks
3d Driving a car or motorcycle, hobbies, travels and fieldtrips,
learning, work, surfing the Internet
3e Acting, artistic creativity (painting, writing, playing
musical instruments); consuming art (viewing pictures, visiting
theatres, watching films, visiting concerts, reading books)
3f Sex
3g War

4. We are going to show you a few cards with different

concepts written on each. Could you relate these concepts to
video games?
- Strong feelings; tactics; elaborated worlds and stories;
balance; logic; waste of time; challenge; design quality;
need; learning; rules; competition; playability

5. After everything we have discussed, could you please try to

compose your own definition of video games and gaming,
similar to a dictionary or lexicon entry.

The idea behind the interview design was to use the activities and concepts
previously associated with video games by focus group participants as guidelines
to encourage the interviewees to identify meanings associated with video games,
without affecting the formation of their opinion, which was assured by the lack of
secondary questions asking for examples or comparisons, as well as the lack of
verbal and nonverbal communication with the interviewer. Ultimately, the entire
interview was supposed to deviate from the structure written on the cards, which
proved attainable.
Interview participants were selected according to the criteria of covering the
extremes of gamer categories identified in previous research papers – nine
 Benjamin Čulig, Marko Katavić, Jasenka Kuček and Antonia Matković 69
__________________________________________________________________
participants were selected from the initial pool. The interviews were recorded and
transcribed, with an effort to keep all the nonverbal elements of communication in
the transcripts.
Interview transcripts were analysed in three stages. In the first stage, the in-vivo
coding procedure was used, with an attempt to document the meanings as
accurately as possible, exactly as uttered by the participants. Doing so, all the
possible meanings were taken into account, regardless of whether they fitted into
our preconceptions of video games and gaming. What followed was the attempt of
clustering the meanings into various thematic units, using the open coding
procedure. Analysing the documented thematic units, we tried to identify the most
prominent topics in every individual interview (those that were most frequently
discussed and stood out as important). Those topics were singled out to serve as a
basis for writing structural and thematic summaries of the interviews, trying to
remain as faithful as possible to the original gamer interpretation. The final stage
included a joint analysis of all the thematic units, with the aim of determining the
most prominent ones. The collected data were classified into three groups
according to the degree of generality: 1) Meanings which are essential, shared by
the majority of participants and constitute the bulk of the data collected; 2)
Meanings which comprise large thematic units, shared by a significant portion of
gamers, but are not comprehensive 3) Meanings which comprise individual
experiences and separate thematic units, and as such are not included in the
essential part of the phenomenology.

3. Findings
Essential meanings ascribed to the video game phenomenon by gamers are
related to the experience of gaming, as well as to the purpose of gaming as an
activity. Thus, gamers reported that with an entry into a video game, the real world
ceased to exist, and the gamer became absent and relocated into another world, a
world that exists while there is a game. It should be noted that, although all the
gamers described the experience of disconnection from the world, the reasons for
transition into another world varied from participant to participant. Some players
said that their disconnection from the world was related to the level of attention
and involvement required by the game:

While I was playing, I was completely absent... I mean

concentration and everything. I’m not sure what form of
meditation that is, but let’s say that a man is a little bit focused
and everything, so I can connect it with gaming in this way, in
my own case. Say, I was completely absent; I experienced
nothing but the game.
70 The Phenomenology of Video Games
__________________________________________________________________
In other cases, the world is abandoned in order to enter the virtual world which
offers more than can be achieved in the real world:

I mean we all started like that, there was at least one character in
those MMO-s that we played in such a way that we pretended we
were something else, but I think we actually, that we want, the
same as when driving a car, to pull it off... something we
otherwise cannot, or... it’s not conventional, or we are ashamed,
or it may be conventional but we are ashamed anyway, so it’s
easier this way, in the anonymity of our little rooms... to pull it
off.

Finally, some were abandoning this world to become involved in and fully
experience another one:

For me it’s extremely important to start this whole journey on my

own and discover the world, to have something happening
around me, to have an interesting story, to literally feel that I’m
discovering something on my own, that I’m influencing it and so
on.

In certain situations, transition into new worlds overlapped with another

essential concept of video game as a ‘break.’ Video game is a break from everyday
life and reality, something we need in order to minimise the impact of the existing
world, but is also an activity belonging to the area of free time. As put by a
participant:

Video games can give you a good idea, they can relax you,
isolate you, simply create that space all of us are more and more
missing because somehow, I think, with this globalization which
made us constantly accessible... And today we are so accessible,
networked, that we sometimes really need, at least I do, to isolate
ourselves from the world. You know, I want the whole world to
leave me alone, to have my phone turned off, to be in another
world all alone, I want all the characters I come across to be here
simply to entertain me and nothing else, and to rest myself from
that everyday obligation of dealing with problems, participating
and, you know, being present in society.

Furthermore, video games are primarily a competition. In some cases, it is a

competition against oneself – a challenge posed to an individual player:
 Benjamin Čulig, Marko Katavić, Jasenka Kuček and Antonia Matković 71
__________________________________________________________________
...I mean apart from the idea of comparing ourselves with others,
what games can provide is individual competition either with
oneself or with a goal one sets for oneself and, looking from this
perspective, I find it positive, I mean when you’re watching your
own development, that can be... the same like sport practices,
hobbies or anything else where you can compete with yourself,
and where in my opinion this is motivating, I mean – you’re
constantly seeing your own progress, in a level or something, I
mean, never mind what.

In other cases, video games serve as a training ground for competition between
gamers’ skills. It is easier to get organised and compete in a video game which is
available globally, than in real life.
To all the participants, video games first and foremost represent fun. Video
games cannot possibly imply work or a job – gamers reported that had they been
forced to play every day, it would no longer be a video game. Video games serve
entertainment and were created precisely for fun. According to a participant:

Now, we’re talking about devices that are intended for play. So,
these are not the devices that are prepared for one to work on
them, but can be also used for play, but you know, these devices
are designed for fun, for play.

Finally, the participants reported that video games were a hobby, a social
activity they engaged in (because they chose to do so, and not because they were
forced to), which represented a particular skill and enabled making objective
progress. Video games are consumed in free time, for the purpose of achieving
pleasure.
On the second level of generality three essential aspects emerged. One aspect
treats the video game phenomenon as a world to lose oneself in, with the
developed story being the key element. The world must be logical and structured.
The gamer must be offered many choices and is emotionally involved in the world.
The world needs to be interactive in order to deepen the gaming experience, and in
certain cases, it is essential that the world can be passed through fluidly, without
being challenging, but being immersive. Another aspect treats the video game
phenomenon as a rule-bounded set of tasks or puzzles – it is a certain goal, which
one can set for oneself or it can be set by the game, and which needs to be achieved
in an optimal way. For the purpose of solving problems, it is possible to develop
tactics and strategies, and pleasure arises from successful problem solving and
victory over the game mechanics. Finally, the third aspect of the phenomenon
concerns the social sphere; video games exist only as a virtual world which may
include rules and stories, can serve solving problems or participating in the story,
72 The Phenomenology of Video Games
__________________________________________________________________
but are primarily a world of social interaction, which enables us to socialise when
otherwise we could not.
It is worth mentioning that, at this level of generality, the vast majority of
gamers explicitly separated the video game phenomenon from small, casual games,
the most important feature of which is that they can be played ‘brainless,’ but still
contain all the basic video game elements.

4. Conclusions
The findings of this study can largely be related to those of previous research
cited in this chapter. The key difference is in the definition of essential features that
are present in the video game phenomenon regardless of the differing gaming
styles and interpretations. Such perception of games is certainly limited to gaming
experiences of the participants in this study and cannot be generalised on a larger
scale, but provides an interesting basis for further quantitative analysis and
confirmation. Particularly interesting are the three aspects of the phenomenon on
the second level of generality, where participants began to diverge in terms of
understanding the phenomenon. The differences between those aspects can be seen
as parallels with two modes of play by Caillois: paidia vs ludus – uncontrolled
fantasy, entertainment, freedom versus ingenuity, skill, effort and patience. 10
Additionally, it is interesting to note that it was precisely fun that was one of the
essential aspects of the video game phenomenon, as well as that most of the
players associated gaming with free time. This finding is consistent with previous
findings of quantitative research that we conducted where it was shown that
precisely fun and ‘killing time’ comprised the strongest dimension in gamers’
motivational structures. 11
It should be mentioned that this study, as well as qualitative research in general,
has certain limitations. First of all, the essence of the phenomenon found here is
restricted to the phenomenon as seen by the group of interviewed participants.
Considering the depth of the interviewing process and overlapping of some issues
with the categories established in previous research and theory, we can conclude
that the findings are satisfying, but cannot possibly be generalised as a universal
rule. This study analysed the phenomenology of the game on the structural level,
by encouraging players to deconstruct gaming and give their view on what games
mean to them. It would be interesting to approach the phenomenology of games
from the position of interpretative phenomenological analysis, treating players as
professionals, and analysing their recalls of specific gaming experiences and
emotions while playing as well as situational factors in the course of gaming itself.
 Benjamin Čulig, Marko Katavić, Jasenka Kuček and Antonia Matković 73
__________________________________________________________________
Notes
1
Entertainment Software Association, Essential Facts about the Computer and
Video Game Industry (Entertainment Software Association, 2011), 2, accessed 20
December 2012, http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2011.pdf.
2
Kirsi Pauliina Kallio, Mäyrä Frans and Kaipainen Kirsikka, ‘At Least Nine Ways
to Play: Approaching Gamer Mentalities’, Games & Culture 5, No. 4 (2011): 333-
339, accessed 13 October 2012,
http://gac.sagepub.com/content/6/4/327.full.pdf.
3
Thomas M. Malaby, ‘Beyond Play A New Approach to Games’, Games &
Culture 2 (2007): 96, accessed October 17, 2012,
http://gac.sagepub.com/content/2/2/95.full.pdf.
4
Markus Montola, ‘Social Constructionism and Ludology: Implications for the
Study of Game’, Simulation & Gaming 43 (2011): 314, accessed 15 October 2012,
http://sag.sagepub.com/content/43/3/300.full.pdf.
5
Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games (in Serbian) (Beograd: Nolit, 1979), 37-38.
6
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (London:
Routledge & K. Paul, 1949), 1-2.
7
John W. Creswell, Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among
Five Approaches (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2013).
8
Richard H. Hycner, ‘Some Guidelines for the Phenomenological Analysis of
Interview Dana’, Human Studies 8 (1985): 280-286, accessed 12 March 2013,
http://sunburst.usd.edu/~mbaron/edad810/Phenomenology%20Hycner.pdf.
9
Kristine Jørgensen, ‘Players as Coresearchers: Expert Player Perspective as an
Aid to Understanding Games’, Simulation & Gaming 43 (2011): 376, accessed 20
October 2012, http://sag.sagepub.com/content/43/3/374.full.pdf.
10
Caillois, Man, Play and Game, 40-41.
11
Benjamin Čulig, and Izvor Rukavina, ‘Psychosocial and Sociocultural
Determinants of Video Gamer Typology’, in Cultural Perspectives of Video
Games: From Designer to Player, eds. Adam L. Brackin and Natasha Guyot
(Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2012), 51.

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Sutton-Smith, Brian. The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 2001.

Benjamin Čulig works at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and

Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, Zagreb, Croatia. He is specialised in
methodology and scientific research in all the main fields of sociology. He teaches
statistics, all types of survey methods and multivariate analysis. Recently, he has
been preparing a new course: Sociology of game and gaming.
 Benjamin Čulig, Marko Katavić, Jasenka Kuček and Antonia Matković 75
__________________________________________________________________

Marko Katavić is a graduate student at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of

Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, Zagreb, Croatia.

Jasenka Kuček is a graduate student at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of

Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, Zagreb, Croatia.

Antonia Matković is a graduate student at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of

Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, Zagreb, Croatia.
 Part 2

Gaming Practices and Culture

The Involvement of Mythology with Player Experience in MMOs

Michael Andreen
Abstract
The roots of mythology lie in the formation of human understanding. We take our
fears, our hopes, our losses and our victories and exalt them, weaving them into the
tales we pass down through the generations. The final, structured set of these tales
for a given culture makes up that culture’s mythology, and as we look back on any
given mythos, we gain a new understanding of its values and principles. As we
learn more of these stories, we often take them and update or borrow from them in
a manner relevant to our current society. We can see this in a variety of modern
media, ranging from reinvigorated Norse gods in Marvel comics to Hollywood
blockbusters such as Troy or Beowulf. These stories ring true to use despite their
age, and we seek them out time and time again to be drawn deeper into worlds
steeped in millennia of storytelling. This chapter will examine the incorporation of
mythology and lore into the narrative structure of Massively Multiplayer Online
Role Playing Games (MMOs), and how the depth of lore contributes to the player
experience. Specifically, the chapter will investigate developer lore building and
player-drive lore participation as they pertain to the classical formation of human
mythology. It will further seek to understand the role of lore in the successful
launch and sustainability of MMOs by looking at several high-profile games with
varying levels of depth and public exposure.

Key Words: Lore, mythology, MMORPG, MMO, roleplay, narrative.

*****

Mythology and lore are vital parts of human culture, contextualising the world
around us for generations yet to come. Joseph Campbell says of the formation of
lore that

The “grave and constant” in human suffering, then, leads – or

may lead – to an experience that is regarded by those who have
known it as the apogee of their lives, and which is yet ineffable.
And this experience, or at least an approach to it, is the ultimate
aim of all religion, the ultimate reference of all myth and rite. 1

The patterns we develop from the need to understand our world serve as a social
foundation, and we naturally build upon that foundation. In the online space of
Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMOs), we see this same
effect both in the creation of the space by the developers, and in the social space
driven by the players.
80 The Involvement of Mythology with Player Experience in MMOs
__________________________________________________________________
1. The Neuropsychology of Belief
The framework by which we believe has a very specific structure that enables
us to engross ourselves in our entertainment worlds. Literary analyst Norman
Holland notes in his neuropsychological approach to narrative that:

Without movement or the impulse to act on what we are sensing

(the narrative), we need not check the reality of what we might
act toward, and we don’t. If we don’t know that we aren’t going
to act on a narrative, it doesn’t matter whether it’s real or not. 2

This principle is the opposite of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s willing suspension of

disbelief. Rather than turning off our disbelief, we believe everything that we see,
and must disbelieve when appropriate. This process seems to be evolutionary by
nature.
Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa’s explanation of Error
Management Theory and its relationship to survival clarifies the matter of
exclusionary belief. The theory states that there are two types of errors we can
make when inferring the consequences of a situation: a Type-I false positive, or a
Type-II false negative. A Type-I error might occur if we heard a rustle in the
bushes, assumed it was a tiger, and it turned out to be something innocuous. A
Type-II error would be the assumption that the rustling was harmless when in
reality it was a predator lying in wait. As Kanazawa puts it:

The cost of a false-positive error is that you become paranoid ...

the cost of a false-negative error is that you are dead ...
obviously, it’s better to be paranoid than dead, so evolution
should have designed a mind that overinfers personal, animate,
and intentional forces even when none exist. 3

Kanazawa and Holland’s observations in conjunction explain that our dedication to

the lore of a fantasy world comes from an inherent need to believe for survival.
Our minds even come equipped with the faculties to reinforce these beliefs in spite
of error.
Kevin Dunbar of the University of Maryland conducted several studies in
regards to just such cognitive processing. In one experiment, Dunbar examined the
responses of students to varying types of data on a theoretical anti-depressant
medication, and then presented each student with twenty different trials that either
conflicted or reinforced the original data. During this process, he used functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity. In another
experiment, he presented students of varying physics training with a classic physics
cognition test. The students watched videos of different sized objects falling at
 Michael Andreen 81
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both different and the same rate, and they were then asked to identify the correct
video. Both cases produced similar results.
Dunbar discovered that people who find information that reinforces their
preferred theories show higher levels of activation in areas of the brain associated
with learning. The brain fortifies learned processes when it encounters concordant
information. When confronted with conflicting information, the anterior cingulate
cortex (A.C.C.) – which is associated with error detection – activated. The non-
physics students cited the correct video as erroneous, where as those with training
accurately showed error detection when viewing the differently falling objects.
Surprisingly, in an extended version of the anti-depressant experiment, students
still showed A.C.C. activation even after 96 trials of data negated their original
information. Furthermore, in the physics-based trial, he also found that a number of
the students unfamiliar with physics answered the question correctly, but the error
centres of their brains still triggered, indicating that they did not fully believe or
understand why the answer was correct. 4
The two most poignant conclusions of Dunbar’s experiments are that, broadly,
‘participants are treating data that are inconsistent with their plausible theories in
ways that are different from consistent information,’ and specifically that ‘data
inconsistent with one’s expectations are treated as errors and thus not easily
incorporated into one’s knowledge representation.’ 5 If our belief structure is rooted
in our brain’s propensity to compensate for error, and our brains assess reality by
information exclusion, then it would seem we are predisposed to believing in
narrative fiction by nature as Holland predicted. Kanazawa’s explanation bolsters
Holland’s point if we view it from the perspective of survival. Even though we
believe narrative innately, the fact that we need not act upon a novel or film for
survival might preclude us from actively checking for errors.
As a final complement to the neuropsychology of belief, narrative media has its
own neurological impact. In a 2009 study, researchers from Washington University
in St. Louis conducted fMRI scans on participants as they read lines of short
narrative. The participants read their respective stories one word at a time with
controlled delays between each word. The researchers found that, as the
participants read specific words, the subject matter of those correlated with the
parts of the brain that activated. Regions of the brain related to the definition of
visual fields and that process spatial location activated when characters moved
spatially. 6 Not only do our brains help us to accept and believe in fictional worlds,
but they even attempt to simulate the experience of the actions within those worlds.

2. Lore of the World

Humans have been creating lore for longer than they have been writing. Rooted
in our beliefs and our metaphorical capacity, our stories have passed through many
mouths and taken on many meanings. Even today, we still create lore with
determined speed, with every new film or video game creating a trove of history.
82 The Involvement of Mythology with Player Experience in MMOs
__________________________________________________________________
An article by The Telegraph’s science correspondent Richard Gray traces some of
the variants of the Little Red Riding Hood tale, discussing its morphology from
culture to culture. In Iran, the little girl is a little boy, where as in China, the wolf is
a tiger. Fundamental to all of these stories, however, are the core themes of
mistrust and lurking danger. 7
In Gray’s article, Jack Zipes from the University of Minnesota says that:

Little Red Riding Hood is about violation or rape, and I suspect

that humans were just as violent in 600 BC as they are today, so
they have exchanged tales about all types of violent acts ... tales
relevant to our adaptation to the environment and survival are
stored in our brains and we consistently use them for all kinds of
reference points. 8

This coincides with notions addressed by the neuropsychological view of belief

while operating on a more practically applicable level of a fable’s morality. There
is meaning in the story because of the consistency and persistence of its message.
The schema into which Red Riding Hood fits is local in nature, describing a
single metaphor with a single lesson. When we look at an entire mythos of a
culture such as the Greeks, we see that the larger narrative is composed of multiple
stories offering explanations of both mental and physical phenomena. Helios
pulled the sun across the sky in his chariot, while Poseidon conducted the waves
from the deep. The richness of the Greek’s stories comes from the depth of their
lore, the inspiration that lore gave to artists, and the resulting social impact. Lore
both drives and is driven by society, and that is exactly why MMOs seek out the
construction of a world rich in history and magic.
In an interview with Oli Welsh, Chris Metzen, senior vice president of creative
development at Blizzard, explains World of Warcraft’s (WoW) magnetism, calling
the game ‘a study of societal breakdown and ... why does hatred persist
generationally?’ 9 Indeed, in WoW’s setting and inhabitants we find the same
themes that we might find in any mythology addressing conflict between groups.
The war between the orcs and humans, for instance, is a war of mistakes and
misunderstanding rather than of good versus evil, but these mistakes shape the
stories of players fighting with other players, and colour the lens through which the
player views the game. 10
Angel McCoy, one of the writers for Guild Wars 2, reinforces Metzen’s point
from a technical perspective:

Writing for a game differs from every other type of writing ... it
serves a practical purpose and is rarely just creative. Even the
dialogue between NPCs may be there to guide or inform players.
 Michael Andreen 83
__________________________________________________________________
It’s all there to build a cohesive imagining experience for
players. 11

Everything about the construction of lore in games is built around driving the
player forward through the world in a believable fashion. In order to progress,
players must eventually pursue the destruction of major figures in the world’s
history. Without such direct interaction with history, the player is removed from
the larger narrative.
The neuropsychology of belief provides more insight into why such careful
crafting could produce greater connection. We favour information that supports
known knowledge patterns. It is likely no accident that the most successful MMO
launches have come from intellectual properties already steeped in history. Ultima
Online was the first MMO to reach 100,000 subscribers. 12 WoW blazed past
Ultima with 240,000 copies sold in its first day. 13 In 2008, Age of Conan, set in the
world of Robert E. Howard’s Cimmerian adventurer, again broke MMO records
with its 700,000 subscribers. 14 Warhammer Online shortly thereafter surpassed
Age of Conan with 750,000 subscribers. 15 In 2011, Star Wars: The Old Republic
claimed the title for best launch with over one million copies sold. 16 Within the last
eight years, the largest breakout successes have come from properties with which
large groups of people are familiar.
Ultimately, the world must come together in such a way that the player’s
mental responses create a sense of realism. Successful worlds do not necessarily
demand a total belief that the world is real, but rather the world must be consistent
enough to appear as a functional reality. Fantasy author R.A. Salvatore held such
consistency sacrosanct in his creation of the MMO world Amalur. In an interview
with Laura Parker, the associate editor of gamespot.com, he addresses his
methodology:

Why did some cultures succeed and others fail? Why did one
thing work in part of society but fail in another? I tasked my
team of writers on Amalur to ask these questions and to research
different mythologies from around the world and imagine what
the world would be like if some of these stories were actually
true. 17

In order to create a believable world, he drew directly on real-world mythologies.

Forging lore is just as much an appeal to the mindset of the player as it is an
attempt to generate a cohesive world. In this regard, using elements from
established patterns of thought and belief make sense when trying to generate a
new world; that is the very nature of folklore’s evolutionary process.
84 The Involvement of Mythology with Player Experience in MMOs
__________________________________________________________________
3. Lore and the Player
For as much effort as the developers put into their stories, the worlds would be
nothing without the players. Agency is of great concern, especially in MMOs
where multiple people often compete for the same items and prestige. Chris
Metzen calls Blizzard a ‘Hero factory,’ 18 and the term is accurate. Everyone gets to
play the hero. What results is an often-strange mixture of interesting new ideas and
narrative discrepancies stemming from the interaction between the players with
each other, the lore, and the game’s systems.
Until video games, we were largely observers of stories. With some exceptions,
stories in art were put on the canvas, stories in writing put into books, and films set
on a screen to watch. Now, we have the capacity to participate. This is particularly
curious in regards to Holland’s earlier stipulation that we are able to believe so
readily in fiction because we do not have to act in it. With games, we act within the
fiction, and with MMOs we do so with thousands of others in the same world. The
MMO is a simulacrum of life, only it is of a life where everyone is a hero who
must therefore have access to all the heroic trappings.
In WoW, defeating the Lich King on the challenging Heroic Difficulty earns
the player the title ‘Bane of the Fallen King’ and potentially a weapon unique to
the Heroic fight. Narratively, this makes the player a hero. Complications arise,
however, when another player with the same achievements and weaponry appears
before the first. From a mechanical standpoint, this scenario is like two baseball
teams each claiming separate victories over the same third team. From a narrative
standpoint, this is like two baseball teams both winning the same World Series and
getting the same trophy in the same year. The vast number of players and player
types make such a scenario practically an inevitability.
Player type greatly affects interaction with lore, as well as the generation of
individualised content. An experiment conducted by Nick Yee attempted to refine
a breakdown of player categories while recognising that these categories are not
mutually exclusive. Yee identified ten subcategories housed within three
overarching classifications: achievement, social, and immersion. 19 With the
understanding that crosspollination of player types occur, the three master
categories can reveal how players might generally interact with the world, and how
their personally generated lore thus differs.
Achievement players will generate stories of accomplishment, will carry titles
like the aforementioned Bane of the Fallen King, and they will likely see the
majority of game content. Their stories, therefore, will carry the weight of moving
the world’s history forward. Social players will build group relationships, seeking
the thrill of cooperation. They embrace the behavioural elements that lead to
teaching newer players in the same fashion that folk wisdom passes from elder to
youth. The experiences the world has imparted on the social player will serve to
augment or detract from those who enter their social sphere. Most deeply engaged
with the world’s history are the immersive players. These players draw heavily
 Michael Andreen 85
__________________________________________________________________
from their virtual surroundings, sometimes even adopting a full persona informed
by the game world. Those who choose to act out this persona are called role-
players, and entire communities grow out of this sort of digital theatre. Again, all
degrees of crosspollination are possible according to Yee, so an achiever might be
equally accomplished in the world as he is immersed.
Perhaps one of the best games to examine for the intersection of player types
and immersion is Champions Online. The game is set in a comic book themed
world and focuses heavily on character creation. Subscribers can choose from
twenty-four archetypes that dictate the character’s skillset, or they can build a
custom character out of all the skills in the game. Avatar creation provides a
massive variety of customisations for the hero’s unique look, and character
creation also provides a section for the player to write a publically visible
backstory for the character. Every piece of this process is engineered to help
immerse the player in the role of a superhero. 20
In the developer blog for Champions Online, one entry discusses an early idea
in regards to the power archetypes where the developers considered implementing
bonuses for staying within an archetype as a guide for new players, but community
feedback resisted this notion. The blog states ‘Many people pointed to the “total
customization” experience touted for Champions Online, and how making
archetype distinctions effectively restricted power choices.’ 21 The player base
recognised the potential for personal involvement in their characters and rose up
when it seemed they would lose some of their agency.
Though Champions Online illustrates the points of player involvement well, it
is not the only game that offers role-playing experiences. MMOs such as WoW and
Star Wars both offer servers designated for role-playing. Mobile game developer
Tony Ventrice says this of role-playing: ‘I think the distinction is this: we role-play
for the opportunity to feel what it is like to have a different identity; in a way, to let
the adopted identity dictate our choices.’ 22 Acting in a collaborative space provides
the uncertainty and fluidity of natural reaction absent from interactions with
computer-controlled characters. The downside to this narrative freedom, however,
is that everyone in the social space has it, and just as the achievers might encounter
others who have duplicated their achievements, the role-players might find other
stories that contradict their own.
Players in MMOs are more than just participants in games; they are active
members of vast social circles built upon years, often decades, of history building
and personal investment. The landscape of the MMO is, in its own way, analogous
to that of reality, producing its own historical events and lore that lodge themselves
in the MMO cultural consciousness, acting as a collective framework that current
and past players build, and within which future players will make their way. As
such, these worlds must fit within our capacity to believe in them consistently
because they are under the scrutiny of players not just as consumers or agents of
86 The Involvement of Mythology with Player Experience in MMOs
__________________________________________________________________
casual play, but as people with a broad spectrum of involvement in an ever-
growing, virtual society.

Notes
1
Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology (New York: Arkana, 1991), 54.
2
Norman Holland, ‘Spider-Man? Sure! The Neuroscience of Suspending
Disbelief’, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 33 (2008): 312-320.
3
Satoshi Kanazawa, ‘Why Do We Believe in God?’, Psychology Today, March 28,
2008, accessed 6 August 2012, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-
scientific-fundamentalist/200803/why-do-we-believe-in-god-ii.
4
Kevin Dunbar and Courtney Stein, ‘Do Naïve Theories Ever Go Away? Using
Brain and Behavior to Understand Changes in Concepts’, in Thinking with Data,
eds. Marsha C. Lovett and Priti Shah (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
2007), 193-205.
5
Ibid.
6
Nicole K. Speer, Jeremy R. Reynolds, Khena M. Swallow and Jeffrey M. Zacks,
‘Reading Stories Activates Neural Representations of Visual and Motor
Experiences’, Psychological Science 20, No. 8 (August 2009): 989-999.
7
Richard Gray, ‘Fairy Tales Have Ancient Origin: Popular Fairy Tales and Folk
Stories Are More Ancient Than Was Previously Thought, According Research by
Biologists’, The Telegraph, September 5, 2009, accessed 6 August 2012,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6142964/Fairy-tales-have-ancie
nt-origin.html.
8
Ibid.
9
Chris Metzen, ‘The Hero Factory’, Interview by Oli Welsh, Eurogamer, October
20, 2011, accessed 6 August 2012, http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-10-20-
the-hero-factory-interview.
10
World of Warcraft, Computer software (Irvine, CA: Blizzard Entertainment,
2004).
11
Angel McCoy, Bobby Stein and Peter Fries, ‘Writing Your Story: An Interview
with the Writers of Guild Wars 2’, Interview by Verene, Under the Pale Tree, May
15, 2012, accessed 4 August 2012, http://thepaletree.net/2012/05/15/writing-your-
story-an-interview-with-the-writers-of-guild-wars-2/.
12
Electronic Arts, Corporate Communications, ‘EA Announces Ultima
Online(TM): Kingdom Reborn (Working Title); The Game That Firmly
Established the MMORPG Genre Receives a Massive Visual Overhaul and New
Content in 2007’, News release, August 24, 2006, EA, accessed 1 August 2012,
http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=314331.
13
Blizzard, ‘World of Warcraft Blows Away Retail Expectations’, News release,
December 2, 2004, Mania, accessed 30 July 2012, http://www.mania.com/world-
 Michael Andreen 87
__________________________________________________________________

warcraft-blows-away-retail-expectations_article_43085.html.
14
Funcom, ‘Funcom Reveals Record Age of Conan Preorders’, News release, May
19, 2008, GamesIndustry International, accessed 30 July 2012,
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/funcom-reveals-record-age-of-conan-pre-
orders.
15
Ibe Van Geel, MMO Subscription Numbers, May 8, 2012, Raw data,
http://www.MMOData.net.
16
Electronic Arts, Publicity, ‘Star Wars: The Old Republic Jumps to Light Speed’,
News release, December 23, 2011, EA, accessed 1 August 2012,
http://news.ea.com/portal/site/ea/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&ndmConfigId
=1012492&newsId=20111223005439&newsLang=en.
17
R. A. Salvatore, ‘Creating the World of Amalur: An Interview with R.A.
Salvatore’, Interview by Laura Parker, Gamespot, January 30, 2012, accessed 29
July 2012,
http://www.gamespot.com/features/creating-the-world-of-amalur-an-interview-wi
th-ra-salvatore-6349389/.
18
Metzen, ‘The Hero Factory’.
19
Nick Yee, ‘Motivations for Play in Online Games’, CyberPsychology &
Behavior 9, No. 6 (January 2007): 772-775,
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2006.9.772.
20
Champions Online, Computer software (Los Gatos, CA: Cryptic Studios, 2009).
21
‘Evolution of Game Design: Rethinking Archetypes’, Champions Online, May
23, 2008, accessed 4 August 2012,
http://launcher.champions-online.com/dev_blog/evolution_of_game_design_rethin
king_archetypes.
22
Tony Ventrice, ‘Gamification Dynamics: Identity and Story’, Gamasutra,
February 20, 2012, accessed 5 August 2012.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/135103/gamification_dynamics_identity_.
php?page=2.

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Yee, Nick. ‘Motivations for Play in Online Games’. CyberPsychology & Behavior
9, No. 6 (January 2007): 772–775.
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2006.9.772.

Michael Andreen received his B.A. in Literature from the University of Texas at
Austin, an M.F.A. in Arts & Technology with a focus in sound in video games
from the University of Texas at Dallas, and is currently a doctoral candidate at the
University of Texas at Dallas. His area of research involves the role of cognitive
and sensory processes in the development and reception of immersive virtual
worlds. He currently teaches Sound Design at the University of Texas at Dallas,
and has contributed game design, vocal work, sound design, and musical
composition to some of the university’s grant projects.
 It’s Just a Game, or Is It?: A Study of Racism in Game and
Character Design

Steven Billingslea II
Abstract
Prejudice in videogames can be an uncomfortable subject to deal with. The idea
that such a detestable issue could taint not just the game, but also the medium
itself, makes some gamers very uneasy. With today’s current outlook on prejudice
in America, some gamers prefer to ignore accusations of racism and stereotypical
characters in games, telling critics that ‘it’s just a game’ and that they are ‘reading
too much into it.’ The view that prejudice in videogames is fake because it does not
target real people can cause gamers to believe that representations of cultures
steeped in negative stereotypes is just a part of their world and that others would
just have to learn to ‘deal with it’ or decide to quit playing. While I believe this
approach is harmful, it is not surprising to see a blind eye turned to the subject.
Dealing with such an issue would mean taking a look at the cause, and in effect,
possibly changing the way videogames and the characters within are developed.
This chapter aims to look at where prejudice in videogames, most notably games
centered on war, crime and battle, and character design comes from, why it is such
an issue, what type of effects it has on players, and what possible solutions there
may be to resolve the issue.

Key Words: Racism, gaming, cultural issues, experience, gaming, behaviour,

social, game design, character design.

*****

1. Introduction
Before we can begin to analyse the issue of prejudice in videogame and
character design, we should first find a foundation that most games are built upon.
Games, at their core, are centered on conflict and achieving a goal. From the start
of the game, a player is given a formal set of rules and a goal to achieve. In many
cases, conflict arises when there is an obstacle preventing the player from reaching
that goal. The conflict in videogames arouses player effort and works to keep the
player immersed, forcing them to focus on the issue at hand. This conflict can be
between a player and a computer/system or a player and another player. In both
cases, the player and the opponent have conflicting goals and must work against
each other to achieve said goals. To reinforce the idea that games are centered on
conflict, I point to Dr. Jesper Juul’s definition of game where he states that:

A game is a rule-based system with a variable and quantifiable

outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different values,
92 It’s Just a Game, or Is It?
__________________________________________________________________
the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the
player feels emotionally attached to the outcome, and the
consequences of the activity are negotiable. 1

Dr. Juul also states that ‘The notion of conflict entails (conflicting) goals; the
notion of goals seems to entail the possibility of not reaching the goal, and thereby
also a conflict.’ 2
In the case of modern videogames, especially those centred on virtual wars,
crime or battle, conflict is war and the end goal is eventually winning the war, or at
least gaining the upper-hand. For developers, and in turn the players that play their
games, this can create a mindset where a human enemy is no longer a person and
instead an obstacle to overcome. Enemies are usually stripped of most of their
humanity (i.e. compassion, reason), made to look noticeably different than the
player’s avatar, and given motives and values that are foreign to the player. This
serves to dehumanise the enemy character and thus make the player’s task of
killing them easier.

2. Deep Rooted Cultural Messages

This is where things start to become a bit muddled. If a developer is choosing
to use another culture as a background for their enemy characters, dehumanising
these characters can broaden the reach of negative racial stereotypes and shape
how these cultures are viewed. While it may seem natural and harmless to place the
Native American Apache tribe as enemies in the western themed game Gun, the
role of the characters becomes slightly more uncomfortable when you see them
portrayed as savage, animalistic men who attack without provocation. By
portraying the enemy characters in this way the developers of Gun, whether
consciously or not, reinforce the stereotype that Native American tribes were
‘savage warriors, screaming throughout the game, as a sign of both an animal
instinct and a determination to kill.’ 3
Of course, that is not to say that videogame developers invented the idea of
dehumanising an enemy. No, that idea has existed as long as humankind, allowing
cultures and communities to go to war and kill without mercy. It is a common
tactic used by military forces and leaders to rally troops against other human
beings. From the Crusades, to Nazi Germany, to the Cold War, every society
involved in a conflict has used this tactic to motivate troops to kill opposing
forces. 4 This tactic is not only used on troops; propaganda in the form of posters,
movies and even videogames has been used to convince civilians that an opposing
culture is the enemy. This type of speech can ‘affect our thoughts and behavior’
and cause ‘hostility and aggression, not coexistence and compromise.’ 5
Dehumanisation is a learned behaviour that is taught throughout our lives by our
leaders and community and could have a direct influence on a development team’s
view towards outside cultures. Lessons learned, ‘harmless’ jokes heard, and
 Steven Billingslea II 93
__________________________________________________________________
cultural ideals that were passed down while growing up definitely have an impact
on how we view the world as adults and while they may seem ‘harmless’ or ‘good
natured’ to one group, they can be totally demoralising to another.
This leads to the issue of understanding how deep rooted cultural messages can
affect the development of a videogame. In the case of modern, American-
developed videogames based on war, these cultural messages appear in the form of
global policing, Caucasian-dominated casts, and an overwhelming desire to quash
any enemy that would oppose American ideals. This is primarily due to the
demographic that makes up development studios in America, which is
predominately Caucasian and male, 6 and the willingness to pass along cultural
ideals learned over their lifetimes. Seeing as these themes permeate our culture,
especially during wartime when there is a national enemy to focus on, shaking
them can be difficult. These cultural messages can become more visible when a
predominately Caucasian development team is tasked with creating a game or
characters centred on a culture they may not be inherently familiar with.
In such cases you can end up with titles like True Crime: Streets of LA, a game
in which players assumed the role of Chinese-American police officer, Nick Kang,
and were tasked with the order of taking down ethnic gangs and cleaning up the
‘“other” side of Los Angeles.’ 7 While the game made strides by casting a Chinese-
American character as the lead, Dr. Dean Chan noted that the game displayed
‘Problematic sub-text of ethnic or diasporic community self-surveillance and self-
disciplining.’ 8 In a sense, it felt like the developers were saying that the idea of
policing stereotypical ethnic groups is fine as long as it is carried out by a minority.
The enemies you fight are either Chinese or Russian and one portion of the game
even has you dealing with dark magic and dragons from Chinese mythology.
Normally this would not seem out of place in a videogame but considering that the
plot was centred on the more realistic approach of an undercover police officer
trying to infiltrate a crime syndicate, it seems odd that the developers would waste
their time trying to stuff an eastern themed dragon into the game. Scenes like this
reaffirm the fact that you are not dealing with the ‘normal’ side of LA and you are
not tasked with ‘normal’ police work. By including the mysticism that can stem
from negative stereotypes, the game reinforces that this culture is meant to appear
way different than the typical American culture. This sentiment is affirmed Dr.
Chan, noting that the game ‘pro-actively cultivates a sense of relative cultural
“otherness” to the point of deleterious effect.’ 9
While I do not believe the developers of True Crime meant any harm, I do
think a lack of cultural knowledge and sensitivity can have potentially harmful
effects. A developer’s genuine desire to accurately portray a culture in their game,
while laden with good intentions, can result in the proliferation of negative
stereotypes. In many cases, their ‘accurate portrayal’ is usually based on the
developers’ perception of that culture as opposed to culturally relevant studies.
This perception is then relayed through videogames, as well as other forms of
94 It’s Just a Game, or Is It?
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media, to consumers who may take it as an accurate portrayal of another culture.
This is the point where potential harm can be inflicted.

3. Negative Psychological Effects

Studies have shown that stereotypes portrayed by various forms of media have
a substantial effect on people’s views of other cultures. In a study on racial
stereotypes, Caucasian participants were shown either images of aggressive Black
males from videogames or images of positive Black role models. This was
followed up by a study in which the participants were asked to evaluate a website
for a political candidate. The candidate was shown as either Caucasian or African-
American and participants were asked to grade the candidate’s political capability.
The study revealed that participants exposed to the images of aggressive Black
males from videogames rated the African-American candidate as less favourable
and capable than the Caucasian candidate. Those who were shown images of
positive Black leaders did just the opposite of their counterparts. 10 Studies like this
show that there is cause for concern when dealing with stereotypical characters in
videogames, as these portrayals have the ability to affect a players outlook on other
cultures.
Negative stereotypes in videogames can also have an effect on how a player
sees their own culture. In fact, some players who identify themselves as not
Caucasian actually prefer to play as Caucasian characters because it ‘makes the
game feel more normal.’ 11 It would seem that by making most of the main
characters Caucasian (84.95%) and placing the majority of minority characters in
videogames in supporting roles; 12 videogames have built a scenario in the virtual
world where it is more ‘normal’ to be White than anything else. That is, of course,
as long as you are not playing a game set in a run-down, urban environment. In that
case, the player character is much more likely to be a minority. 13
Games set in urban environments can go a long way in reinforcing the idea that
impoverished neighbourhoods are an unsafe place to be. Rundown areas filled with
broken-down cars, busted windows, and accompanied by ambient sounds that
include gunshots in the distance can offer the perception that simply going near
this part of town can bring you harm. The fact that they are usually populated by
African-American and Latino characters also does not help the negative
connotations already associated with the people living in these environments. 14 On
one hand, developers are looking to recreate a popular theme in media to tell a
compelling story in their game. On the other, those same developers are reinforcing
a negative image of a culture that has already been shown in a negative light by
other forms of media. While the scenario may be perfect for the story that is being
told, the danger lies in the setting being taken as an authentic portrayal of life in
these environments. At that point, the game can become a source for negative ideas
on race and culture.
 Steven Billingslea II 95
__________________________________________________________________
4. Reaction to Criticism
The discussion and debate over these subjects in videogames certainly is not
new, but it is worth noting the hostility that can arise when prejudice in games is
talked about in a public space. Claims that stereotypes and prejudice could be an
issue in games are generally met with a negative response from gaming
communities. With comments on forums suggesting that players should not ‘read
into every stupid detail looking for a social issue that doesn’t exist’ 15 or insinuating
that the member who brought the topic up is merely trying to stir up trouble, it
becomes fairly obvious that the issue provokes defensive mechanisms as opposed
to thoughtful discussion. Unfortunately, these defensive mechanisms seem more
intent to brush the issue under the rug instead of attempting to deal with it. This
brings up the question as to why the mere mention of the issue on gaming forums
can incite such hateful responses.
It has been said that the current dominant view on prejudice, at least amongst
Caucasians, is that it is not as big as a problem as it used to be and that overall
Caucasians are more tolerant now than ever before. 16 The lack of public displays
of prejudice is the basis for this belief, as the use of prejudiced language in private
generally is not seen as a problem. With videogames, characters are represented by
digital avatars and thus can present a disconnect for some players when it comes to
prejudice. Because players generally play their videogames in a private space, they
could see prejudiced language as harmless because they are not actually targeting a
real person, just an avatar. In a sense, prejudice in the virtual space may not be seen
as ‘real’ by players because they do not see actual people being affected.
Unfortunately, the affects of this mindset can be seen in public discussions on
gaming forums, where some go as far to say that prejudice in games is ‘only
obvious if you look for it.’ 17 Because the issue is such a hot-button topic the
defense of their favorite medium becomes more important than discussing the
effects of stereotypical characters.
Of course, criticism is not always met with hate-filled vitriol, as some gamers
paraphrase the videogame’s story, or lore, as an explanation for why a certain
character appears the way they do. In the case of World of Warcraft, the subject of
stereotypical characters has been broached many times. The trolls, a playable race
in the game, have been noted to ‘draw upon modern Western stereotypes about
Caribbean, South American, and African blacks’ 18 while the human faction in the
game features Caucasians as the primary race, with very few NPCs that represent
other races. Defenders of these stereotypes note that in World of Warcraft’s lore,
Humans were descendents of an ancient race known as the Vrykul. Due to this race
living in the cold lands of Northrend, their skin was pale and thus their descendents
skin was pale. 19 Because humans in Warcraft are a relatively young race at 15,000
years of existence, some gamers speculate that evolution has not had time to work
towards different skin tones depending on environment. As for the stereotypes
exhibited by the troll race, one player noted that ‘Each race in WoW is based off a
96 It’s Just a Game, or Is It?
__________________________________________________________________
Culture somewhere in the world we do live in, it isn’t Racism it’s just useing (sic)
what is familiar without making everyone the same.’ 20 While I do not think it was
Blizzard’s intention to harm anyone with characters rooted in cultural stereotypes, I
think it is worth noting that it is a subject that has been brought up multiple times
and that perhaps their choice of character traits and words for the descriptor of said
races should have been more thought out.

5. Possible Solutions
With prejudice being rooted so deeply across many cultures, it is difficult to
perceive a way to fix the issues affecting game and character design today.
Solutions become cloudier when you consider that 88.5% of game developers are
male; with 83.3% being Caucasian and all of them being between the ages of 20
and 40. 21 There is the theory that ‘creators of media simply make media that reflect
their own identity’ 22 and if that is the case, diversification could be the answer to
seeing fewer stereotypes in games. Game development camps for underprivileged
children at an early age could sway them to choose game development as a career
path later in life. Introductory game development courses in middle schools and
high schools could also increase the likely-hood of a more culturally diverse game
development environment. With fresh new faces and ideas, we could see a
movement away from blatant stereotypes and towards more diverse characters in
games.
Another possible solution is more cultural awareness in game development
studios. If writers and developers spent some more time researching the cultures
they were using as a basis for their characters and environments then I believe we
would see fewer instances of stereotypes. This has been the case in several games
already, with development studios calling in historical and cultural advisors to help
with the development of their games. Titles like Assassins Creed 3 benefitted from
this by hiring Thomas Deer, a cultural liaison officer at the Kahnawake Language
and Cultural centre. Mr. Deer’s job was to judge the ‘overall cultural sensitivity of
the game to ensure that nothing is culturally offensive or inappropriate.’ 23 This
practice turned out to be effective as Deer was able to help make some changes to
the game to increase its historical accuracy all the while making the game less
offensive to its Native American users. More instances of this practice could have a
positive effect on the industry and make games as a whole more appealing to
minority groups.

6. Conclusion
In conclusion, the issue of prejudice in games and character design is not an
easy thing to fix. Not only is it difficult to pinpoint instances of actual prejudice, it
is also hard to argue against the idea of free speech. Videogames, while more
widely accessed now than ever before, are still a creative medium and deserve the
freedom to tell the stories they would like to tell without restriction. However, as
 Steven Billingslea II 97
__________________________________________________________________
the industry continues to grow and reach more and more people and as
demographics morph, it will become increasingly important for developers to
avoid stereotypical characters and game environments. My hope is that eventually
there will be more diverse characters that a broader range of players can connect
with on a personal level, more diverse environments that represent cultures in a
more positive way, and ultimately, there will be better gaming experiences for a
larger group of people.

Notes
1
Christopher Jonas Ritter, ‘Why the Humans Are White: Fantasy, Modernity, and
the Rhetorics of Racism in World of Warcraft’ (diss., Washington State University
2010), 11.
2
Jesper Juul, ‘The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of
Gameness’, in Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference Proceedings, eds.
Marinka Copier and Joost Raessens (Utrecht: Utrecht University, 2003), 31.
3
David Leonard, ‘Replaying Empire: Racialized Violence, Insecure Frontiers, and
Displaced Terror in Contemporary Video Games’, Ethinicity and Race in a
Changing World: A Review Journal 1, No. 2 (2009): 7.
4
Haig Bosmajian, ‘Religion Online’, accessed 28 November 2012,
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1442.
5
Ibid.
6
Dmitri Williams et al., ‘The Virtual Census: Representations of Gender, Race and
Age in Videogames’, New Media & Society 11, No. 5 (2009): 830.
7
Dean Chan, ‘Playing with Race: The Ethics of Racialized Representations in E
Games’, International Review of Information Ethics 4, No. 12 (2005): 29.
8
Ibid., 28.
9
Ibid., 29.
10
Melinda Burgess, Karen Dill, S. Paul Stermer, Stephen Burgess and Brian
Brown, ‘Playing with Prejudice: The Prevalence and Consequences of Racial
Stereotypes in Video Games’, Media Psychology 14, No. 3 (2011): 291.
11
Anna Everett and S. Craig Watkins, ‘The Power of Play: The Portrayal and
Performance of Race in Video Games’, Volume on the Ecology of Games:
Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning (2008): 157.
12
Williams, ‘The Virtual Census: Representations of Gender, Race and Age in
Videogames’, 825.
13
Everett and Watkins, ‘The Power of Play’, 155.
14
Ibid., 144.
15
Justserved to World of Warcraft Forums General Discussion online forum,
September 11, 2011, Racism in WoW,
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3566007304.
98 It’s Just a Game, or Is It?
__________________________________________________________________

16
Lisa Nakamura, Mass Media and Society, 5th Edition (New York: Bloomsbury,
2011).
17
Saguaro to World of Warcraft Forums General Discussion online forum,
September 11, 2011, Racism in WoW, accessed 10 December 2012,
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3566007304.
18
Ritter, ‘Why the Humans Are White: Fantasy, Modernity, and the Rhetorics of
Racism in World of Warcraft’, 16.
19
Wikia, ‘WoWWiki’, last modified April 2012, accessed 28 November 2012,
http://www.wowwiki.com/Human.
20
Cecilia to World of Warcraft Forums General Discussion online forum,
September 11, 2011, Racism in WoW, accessed 10 December 2012,
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3566007304.
21
Williams, ‘The Virtual Census: Representations of Gender, Race and Age in
Videogames’, 830.
22
Ibid.
23
Patrick Lejtenyi, ‘Assassin’s Creed 3’s Mohawk Character Shaped by
Kahnawake’s Thomas Deer’, Montreal Gazette (blog), December 4, 2012,
accessed 5 December 2012,
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Assassin+Creed+Mohawk+charact
er+shaped+Kahnawake+Thomas/7649966/story.html.

Bibliography
Bosmajian, Haig. ‘Dehumanizing People and Euphemizing War’. The Christian
Century, 5 December 1984. Accessed 27 November 2012. http://www.religion-
online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1442.

—––. ‘Religion Online’. Accessed 28 November 2012.

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1442.

Burgess, Melinda C. R., Karen E. Dill, S. Paul Stermer, Stephen R. Burgess, and
Brian P. Brown. ‘Playing with Prejudice: The Prevalence and Consequences of
Racial Stereotypes in Video Games’. Media Psychology 14, No. 3 (2011): 289–
311.

Cecilia. ‘Racism in WoW.’ September 11, 2011. Blizzard Entertainment, Online

Posting to World of Warcraft Forums General Discussion. Web. Accessed 10
December 2012. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3566007304?page=1.
 Steven Billingslea II 99
__________________________________________________________________

Chan, Dean. ‘Playing with Race: The Ethics of Racialized Representations in E-

Games’. International Review of Information Ethics 4 (2005): 24–30.

Everett, Anna, and S. Craig Watkins. ‘The Power of Play: The Portrayal and
Performance of Race in Video Games’. Volume on the Ecology of Games:
Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning (2008): 143–160.

‘Human’. WoWWiki. Wikia, April 2012. Accessed 10 December 2012.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Human?action=history.

Justserved. ‘Racism in WoW’. September 11, 2011. Blizzard Entertainment,

Online Posting to World of Warcraft Forums General Discussion. Accessed 10
December 2012. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3566007304.

Juul, Jesper. ‘The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness’.
In Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference Proceedings, edited by Marinka
Copier, and Joost Raessens, 30–45. Utrecht: Utrecht University, 2003.

Lejtenyi, Patrick. ‘Assassin’s Creed 3’s Mohawk character shaped by

Kahnawake’s Thomas Deer’. Montreal Gazette (blog), December 4, 2012.
Accessed 5 December 2012.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Assassin+Creed+Mohawk+charact
er+shaped+Kahnawake+Thomas/7649966/story.html.

Leonard, David J., and C. Richard King. ‘Replaying Empire: Racialized Violence,
Insecure Frontiers, and Displaced Terror in Contemporary Video
Games’. Ethnicity and Race in a Changing World: A Review Journal 1, No. 2
(2009): 2–14.

Nakamura, Lisa. ‘Race and Identity in Digital Media’. Mass Media and Society,
edited by James Curran, 1–10. London: Hodder Education, 2010.

Ritter, Christopher Jonas. Why the Humans Are White: Fantasy, Modernity, and
the Rhetorics of Racism in World of Warcraft. Diss. Washington State University,
2010.

Saguaro. ‘Racism in WoW’. September 11, 2011. Blizzard Entertainment, Online

Posting to World of Warcraft Forums General Discussion. Accessed 10 December
2012. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3566007304?page=5.
100 It’s Just a Game, or Is It?
__________________________________________________________________

Williams, Dmitri, Nicole Martins, Mia Consalvo, and James D. Ivory. ‘The Virtual
Census: Representations of Gender, Race and Age in Video Games’. New Media &
Society 11, No. 5 (2009): 815–834.

Steven Billingslea II is an independent developer and adjunct professor from

Dallas, Texas. When he is not spending time with his wife and their three dogs, he
is working to improve his skills in game development, writing and making craft
beer.
 Exploring Experimental Video Gaming as a ‘Body
without Organs’

Corné du Plessis
Abstract
In A Thousand Plateaus, among other texts, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
advance the value of producing a ‘body without organs’ which can offer a domain
in which deterritorialisation of existing concepts can occur. Accordingly, the latter
process can potentially lead to the formation of new experiences, which open up
new possibilities for thought, by differing from those of tradition, insofar as they
are active and creative instead of merely descriptive or representational. In this
regard, Deleuze valorises certain experimental aesthetic products – such as the
paintings of Francis Bacon – for their capacity to impel us toward new thought.
Although experimental video gaming often employs comparably innovative
features, it is potential to approximate a ‘body without organs’ has seldom been
investigated. In the interest of addressing this deficit, this chapter will explore the
extent to which certain experimental video games may operate as deterritorialising
works of art that break free of the tropes of representational art, and pursue new
‘lines of flight’ toward spaces of radical creative alterity. Increpare’s Slave of God
will be focused upon as a ‘body without organs’ that affects players at multiple
levels, not only by rending old assemblages in relation to video games, but also
through problematising the familiarity of a dance club, via an interrogation of the
associated concept of shared or universal experience. This will be done with a view
to appraising the potential of such experimental video games to provide a space for
creative and complexity thinking, thereby affecting life itself.

Key Words: Body without organs, affect, deterritorialisation, experimental

gaming, Francis Bacon.

*****

Video games, like all forms of art, have the ability to produce ‘affects,’ which
should not be interpreted as mere feelings, but rather as new experiences that are
presented as ‘open’ domains of exploration, requiring active participation and
creative thinking. 1 In Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (1981) Gilles
Deleuze explores the manner in which Francis Bacon’s art produces affects by
approximating a ‘body without organs,’ which, in relation to art, can possibly be
understood as a loosely organised, ‘deterritorialised’ body (it is important to note
that Deleuze’s use of the word ‘body’ includes not only living bodies, but also non-
living material things, such as works of art). The body without organs is
undoubtedly one of Deleuze and Guattari’s most complex concepts, thus I will
attempt to explain it through the analysis of specific paintings and video games,
102 Exploring Experimental Video Gaming
__________________________________________________________________
simultaneously showing how this concept might invigorate video games as a form
of critical art. Initially, I will examine Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope
Innocent X (1650) – a work of art that can be viewed as a ‘body of organisation,’
which denotes the opposite of a body without organs, since it employs rigid
organising principles based on predetermined concepts. Not only will an analysis
of a painting that manifests as a body of organisation help to understand the body
without organs as a concept, but it will also clarify why such works of art, which
include the majority of mainstream video games, fail to direct the mind towards
new thought. Subsequently, I will analyse Francis Bacon’s Study of Velázquez’s
‘Portrait of Pope Innocent X’ (1953) – a response to Velazquez’s painting – which,
according to Deleuze, is an apt example of a painting manifesting as a ‘body
without organs,’ which problematises existing concepts, while simultaneously
producing affects that encourages critical and creative engagement. Finally, this
analysis will be extended to a particular video game, Increpare’s Slave of God
(2012), which could be viewed as a possible ‘body without organs’ that displays
many of the affective qualities that are present in the paintings of Bacon, and could
point the way for a form of gaming that opens up domains for new thought.
Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X is an oil on canvas portrait that
is viewed by many artists and critics as one of the finest portraits ever painted.
However, Velázquez’s painting is an example of a body of organisation, since it
assumes the form of representational art – the attempt of reflecting the ‘real’ as
perceived through generalised human perception. According to historical accounts
by Velázquez’s contemporaries, this portrait is an extremely accurate
representation of the Pope, capturing not only his features, but also his posture and
facial expression. Furthermore, the Pope is represented in a position of great power
– seated upright on the Papal throne (a symbol of religious sovereignty), garbed in
the symbolic Papal attire, with a stern, almost regal, expression and a determined
look in his eyes. Each symbol has a largely predetermined meaning that can be
understood in relation to a specific context, and merely reproduces established
conceptions concerning the particular Pope and his disposition. Throughout his
project Deleuze undermines this kind of representation, since it ‘cannot help us to
encounter the world as it appears in the flow of time and becoming.’ 2
Representation such as this relies on general and homogenous concepts, fixed
identities and a stable reality. Thus, not only is it a surface-level portrayal of
reality, but it also inhibits the creation of the uniquely ‘New.’
As I suggested earlier, the majority of mainstream video games can also be
classified as representational art. Similar to Velázquez’s painting, these games
merely reflect established conceptions of reality, thereby perpetuating the dominant
discourses of society and reducing the affective quality of the art. Perhaps the best
example of this can be found in Maxis’ The Sims series (2000-2012) – a video
game series that practically mimics the contemporary consumer lifestyle. The Sims
employs a graphical approach that attempts to re-present reality as experienced
 Corné du Plessis 103
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through human perception. From the virtual characters, to the buildings and even
the consumer products, the graphical style mirrors the ‘real’ world that we
experience on a daily basis, with literally no attempts at artistic experimentation. In
terms of gameplay, the gamer is tasked with maintaining the happiness level of
his/her virtual character, or Sim, by balancing work, social life and consumption in
the appropriate manner. If the player manages to achieve the appropriate balance,
the Sim stands a chance of gaining a promotion at work and, in turn, receives a
higher income that can be used on social activities and the consumption of virtual
products. This is the extent of the gameplay in The Sims – not only do you
purchase and consume the game itself, but you also replicate these patterns of
consumption by controlling the virtual characters’ mundane lives. A very
important implication to note is the extent to which members of Western society
are imbricated within consumer culture: The Sims is the bestselling computer game
of all time, with over 119 million copies sold in the franchise, arguably due to its
surface level re-presentation of consumer discourse – achieving autonomy and
happiness through mindless consumerism.
According to Deleuze, a body without organs can oppose bodies of
organisation by deterritorialising the commonly accepted homogenous values and
meanings that would usually be perpetuated through a body of organisation, and, in
turn, it can offer new ‘lines of flight’ that range from new concepts and
experiences to complete new modes of living. Thus, a body without organs
replaces fixed meanings and values with potential meanings and values, thereby
encouraging creativity, experimentation and complexity thinking over mere
interpretation. In A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari provide the following
suggestion on how to produce a body without organs:

Lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it

offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential
movements of deterritorialisation, possible lines of flight,
experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there…
have a small plot of new land at all times. 3

In this relatively complicated quotation Deleuze and Guattari are essentially

proposing experimentation as the means to approximate a body without organs.
This means that in order for the artist to create a body without organs, he/she will
have to experiment with new assemblages, determined by the materiality and
internal-laws of the particular art form, that aim at pushing the art form towards its
potential, rather than merely reproducing the tried and tested. In many ways, the
paintings of Francis Bacon exemplify the manner in which to approach
experimentation as an artistic process. Central to Bacon’s approach is ‘chance,’ a
feature that is integral to experimentation itself. To start with, Bacon’s unique
tendency to use the ‘unprimed’ (backside) side of the canvas not only gives the
104 Exploring Experimental Video Gaming
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colours a coarse texture, but it also prevented him from cleaning or washing off
any of the paint. Once a line was painted, or a colour used, it remained on the
canvas, forcing Bacon to work with it or to scrap the painting completely. This also
meant that the direction his paintings followed were not always determined by him
as the artist, but were often dictated by the chance of a brushstroke.
However, the most important feature of Bacon’s technique is that he moved
beyond figuration and representation. Instead of representing surfaces and painting
recognisable subjects with fixed meanings – a task that has practically been
perfected in photography and cinema – Bacon paints ‘Figures,’ which Deleuze
describes as ‘the sensible form related to a sensation; it acts immediately upon the
nervous system... Sensation is the opposite of the facile and the ready-made, the
cliché, but also of the “sensational”, the spontaneous, etc.’ 4 For this reason,
Bacon’s paintings cannot accurately be described in words – being pure sensations
that can only be experienced, they are beyond the intelligible. In Study of
Velázquez’s ‘Portrait of Pope Innocent X,’ Bacon paints his own version of Pope
Innocent X, which, at first glance seems almost nothing like Velázquez’s
masterpiece: A ghost-like, translucent figure being pulled down into what seems
more like an electric chair than the Papal throne. The stern, regal features of the
face are replaced by a mostly featureless head that is clearly screaming – the mouth
more of an abyss than an orifice. The passionate reds that represent life in the
original have been replaced by purple and black.
Deleuze provides two reasons why this painting can be viewed as a body
without organs. Firstly, instead of painting the sensational – a representation of the
horror at which the Pope screams – Bacon paints the sensation, which, in this case
could arguably be horror, frustration, or the scream itself. Not only are the eyes of
Bacon’s Pope severely deformed, but the curtain that appears in the background of
Velázquez’s portrait has now moved to the front of the Pope. This is not only a
means of isolating the Pope, but also ‘the way in which the Pope himself sees
nothing, and screams before the invisible. Thus neutralized, the horror is multiplied
because it is inferred from the scream, and not the reverse.’ 5 Secondly, instead of
representing reality on a surface level, Bacon attempts to paint the unseen forces
that shape and affect bodies. Hence the wraith-like body and distorted features of
the Pope. This is also the reason why the torturous chair seems to be pulling the
Pope down and inwards, as well as the reason for the isolating curtain – they
represent forces instead of everyday objects. Importantly, there are no fixed
meanings to be discovered; ‘as a spectator, I experience the sensation only by
entering the painting, by reaching the unity of the sensing and sensed,’ 6 or, put
differently, the spectator can only sense and make sense of the painting by
creatively and experimentally engaging with it. In other words, Bacon’s Study of
Velázquez’s ‘Portrait of Pope Innocent X’ operates as a body without organs that
can, potentially propel the mind towards new and creative thought, since the
observer is forced to make sense of the painting him/herself.
 Corné du Plessis 105
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While it may be argued that certain mainstream video games can be considered,
at least during certain moments, as bodies without organs, the most practical
examples can be found within the genre of experimental games. Increpare’s Slave
of God (2012) presents a ‘scrambled’ simulation of a dance club – arguably
constructed as forces rather than representations – in which the player is required
to experiment with semi-recognisable objects and contorted human figures in order
to progress. In terms of graphical design, Slave of God resembles Bacon’s
paintings in multiple ways: deformed stick-like bodies, featureless faces, an intense
use of colours that seem to shift and change as the player turns the camera, etc.
Integral to the visual style is the sound, which consists of different overwhelming
songs that share a rhythm with the shifting colours, objects and figures. Thus, as
was the case in Bacon’s painting, instead of re-presenting a dance club through a
lucid perspective in which all the figures and objects are clearly identifiable, Slave
of God presents it as forces and sensations. In many ways the senses, especially
sight and sound, are bombarded, undoubtedly causing a sense of disorientation.
Through the shifting colours and writhing figures the music becomes not only
audible, but also visible, almost felt, as a penetrating force. Numerous other
sensations also become visible and audible, such as the sense of isolation,
presented through a change in music accompanied by visibly encroaching walls,
which is experienced when the player moves to a solitary corner; or the sensation
of physical attraction, presented as an intense play of colourful lines and heart
beats, when the player ‘connects’ with a figure on the dance floor. One of the most
dominant forces present in the game is the force that keeps the player confined to
the club. At first there is a sense of freedom and exploration while moving about
the colourful environment, with corridors and open spaces trailing off on all sides.
However, the illusion is quickly shattered when you discover that this is merely a
‘trick of the senses,’ and that each corridor and open space leads to a dead end of
changing colours. In fact, the only objective in the relatively short game seems to
be to somehow escape the pervasive space of the dance floor.
Furthermore, in terms of gameplay, instead of giving you specific tasks and
instructions, Slave of God requires you to experiment with the environment and its
objects in order to ‘progress.’ Employing typical first-person camera controls, you
have to move around the club and interact with specific figures and objects. For
example, in order to eventually bring the night to an end, you need to establish a
‘connection’ with one of the figures on the dance floor, which entails moving about
the dance floor while continuously keeping the said figure in your line of sight.
Although this sounds fairly straight forward, it is the sensations presented by the
game that affects you during this activity – a change in music and a spiralling of
scenes, accompanied by lines (possibly presenting sight) and a beating heart that
phases in and out of view. After finishing this 15-20 minute game, and being
greeted by the rising sun as you finally escape the club, you almost feel a sense of
fatigue, as well as relief, probably brought about by the constant sensual
106 Exploring Experimental Video Gaming
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bombardment. There are many more sensation-based encounters such as these, but
due to the limited scope of the chapter, they cannot be explored.
The parallels between Slave of God and Bacon’s painting are quite apparent,
but how can a game such as this propel us towards new thought? Although there
are multiple answers to this question, I will focus on the way in which it can affect
our conception of shared or universal experience. Think of a popular representation
of a dance club in which all meanings are immediately clear, such as in a film or
mainstream video game. Such a representation can create the impression that we
all share a universal experience of a dance club, thereby not only denying the direct
sensation, but also denying different, unique and singular experiences. On the other
hand, Slave of God provides us with exactly the opposite – instead of representing
the universal experience of a dance club, it gives us a direct, singular experience,
which is open to interpretation, thus turning the very concept of shared or universal
experience on its head. One only needs to turn to the public’s reception of the game
to see how true this statement actually is: some gamers describe it as ‘a night at the
club on acid,’ or ‘being drunk or high at a club,’ 7 others as ‘a déjà vu experience in
which you can touch the vibrations and bass of the music,’ 8 while others describe
the experience as ‘weird,’ ‘unsettling’ and even ‘nauseating.’ 9 All these examples
point to the same conclusion: for each gamer Slave of God is a unique experience
that they are forced to grapple with, in terms of both gameplay and content.
In conclusion, I am not suggesting that all video games should mimic Slave of
God’s extreme visual and gameplay approach, but that they should attempt, if only
at times, to approximate a body without organs and experiment with the digital
landscape that is on offer. Not only can such a movement rejuvenate video games
as a form of art, but it can also allow it to achieve its potential as a power that can
affect thinking and, in turn, life itself.

Notes
1
In Negotiations (1995) Deleuze defines affects as ‘Becomings that spill over
beyond whoever lives through them.’
2
Deleuze posits that life is in a perpetual state of becoming, which should be
understood as becoming as all there is without ground or foundation – it does not
mean valuing becoming over being, but completely doing away with the
opposition. Adrian Parr, ed. The Deleuze Dictionary (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2005), 227.
3
Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (London: University of Minesota Press,
2005), 161.
4
Gilles Deleuze, Francis Baon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith
(New York: Continuum, 2004), 34.
 Corné du Plessis 107
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5
Ibid., 38.
6
Ibid., 35.
7
‘Slave of God Comment Section’, Increpare Games, accessed 9 May 2013,
http://www.increpare.com/2012/12/slave-of-god/.
8
Carla Ellison, ‘Wot I Think: Slave of God’, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, 4 January
2013, http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/01/04/slave-of-god-review/.
9
‘Slave of God Comment Section’.

Bibliography
Colebrook, Claire. Gilles Deleuze. London: Routledge, 2002.

Deleuze, Gilles. Negotiations 1972-1990. Translated by Martin Joughin. New

York: Columbia University Press, 1995.

—––. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. Translated by Daniel W. Smith.

New York: Continuum, 2004.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. What Is Philosophy?. Translated by Hugh

Tomlinson, and Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

—––. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Robert Hutley,

Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2000.

—––. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian

Massumi. London: University of Minesota Press, 2005.

Ellison, Carla. ‘Wot I Think: Slave of God’. Rock, Paper, Shotgun, 4 January
2013. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/01/04/slave-of-god-review/.

Increpare Games. ‘Slave of God Comment Section’. Accessed 9 May 2013.

http://www.increpare.com/2012/12/slave-of-god/.

Parr, Adrian, ed. The Deleuze Dictionary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2005.

Sylvester, David, ed. Interviews with Francis Bacon. London: Thames and
Hudson, 1988.
108 Exploring Experimental Video Gaming
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Corné du Plessis is a lecturer and Doctoral student in Philosophy at Nelson

Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. His current area
of research is radical hermeneutics and digital art.
 Funny Games: Understanding Videogames as Slapstick and the
Experience of Game-Worlds as Shared Cultural References

Ben Hudson
Abstract
Videogames can be comedies that are amusing as a result of artistic choice, but
they can also be seen as artifacts: objects (or virtual objects) that have their own
intrinsic man-made qualities that are often unintentionally funny or can be
exploited for comic value. Players experience videogames by interacting with an
imperfect simulation – virtual worlds pre-defined by rules and boundaries that
govern the player’s ability to express their ideas and individuality. The virtual
environment is therefore immersive, yet incongruous with the experience of reality.
This chapter will examine this incongruity as a potential source of humour. By
embodying avatars and inhabiting virtual realities, it will be suggested that
individuals must confront what Bergson terms a ‘mechanical inelasticity... where
one would expect to find the wide-awake adaptability and the living pliableness of
a human being.’ 1 This chapter will look at examples of online gaming culture,
from shooters such as Valve’s Counter-Strike (2000) to experimental modifications
such as Dean Hall’s Arma 2 ‘mod’ DayZ (2012), where communities of players
have found comic ways to utilise artificially limited ranges of expression and draw
on the game world as a shared reference-point for humour. Fan-made internet
memes and ‘Machinima’ proliferate videogame-based humour, lampooning
videogame tropes and logic for an audience familiar with their subjects, but
discussion will also include the impact of videogame slapstick in popular culture,
looking at the work of comedians such as Dara O’Briain and Seann Walsh who
have recently parodied videogame content in their acts. Lastly, with reference to
the practice as research presentation Ben Hudson, Live in Virtual Reality (2009), a
Stand-up Comedy performance hosted in Sony’s online social network PlayStation
Home, this chapter will examine the potential for virtual spaces to act as venues for
comedy performance.

Key Words: Slapstick, videogames, machinima, technology, stand-up comedy,

humour, internet, meme, virtual reality.

*****

1. Tripping over Slapstick Theory

Why is a man slipping on a banana skin funny? In his essay Laughter: An
Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, Henri Bergson argues that it is because the
man is forced into behaving in an inelastic, automated manner.
110 Funny Games
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Through a lack of elasticity, through absent-mindedness, and a
kind of physical obstinacy: as a result, in fact, of rigidity or of
momentum, the muscles continued to perform the same
movement when the circumstances of the case called for
something else. 2

In Bergson’s view, for the survival of our species, human beings have evolved
to remain flexible and adaptable. Machines are rigid, dead, objects that cannot
adapt to their circumstances in the same way as a living creature and therefore,
when people act in a mechanical fashion, it is somehow against nature. Not
threatening, but anomalous. In order to make a social gesture acknowledging a
behaviour that should not be encouraged, laughter is the body is chosen response.
This explanation would seem to chime with Mary Douglas’ assertion that joking is
a ‘temporary suspension of the social structure;’ an act of establishing ‘consensus’ 3
in a social group by pointing out some recognisable folly. In addition, Douglas
categorises Sigmund Freud’s notion of jokes being a release of repressed libido or
anti-social emotions as harmonious with Bergson’s claims. For both, writes
Douglas, joking represents an ‘attack on control.’ 4
This type of gag-structure is typical of slapstick performance. The banana peel
slip is used as the opening pratfall that instigates the infamous pie fight in Laurel
and Hardy’s Battle of the Century (1927), 5 though the pratfall itself has been
attributed to ‘Vaudeville comedian “Sliding” Billy Watson.’ 6 In fact, the act of
falling, or the ‘pratfall,’ was itself practiced as an art-form. Lupino Lane, the Music
Hall, theatre and film performer, dedicates a chapter to ‘Funny Falls,’ in his book
How to Become a Comedian, writing ‘the “business” that makes the fall funny also
makes it dangerous, for the fall must give the appearance of hurting the
performer.’ 7
Lane’s advice introduces another element crucial to the understanding of
slapstick performance; the idea that something painful or malevolent must befall
the subject of the joke. Consequently, it is worth remembering that some of the
very earliest attempts to understand comedy attribute it to an aggressive impulse or
a feeling of superiority over another individual. In his Poetics, Aristotle describes
comedy as ‘an imitation of people who are worse than average.’ 8 In Leviathan,
Thomas Hobbes suggests that laughter is a ‘Sudden Glory...’ caused ‘by the
apprehension of some deformed thing in another,’ making us feel empowered in
comparison. 9 And, as a recent example, Keith Johnstone, in his book Impro,
counters Bergson’s assertions about automaton behaviour with his suggestion that
‘the man who falls on the banana skin is funny only if he loses status, and if we
don't have sympathy with him.’ 10
The original term ‘slapstick’ is derived from the prop carried by Arlecchino
(later known as Harlequin), a stock character of the Italian, 16th century comic art-
form Commedia dell’Arte. Arlecchino’s ‘batocchio,’ was made of two ‘thin pieces
 Ben Hudson 111
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of wood... kept apart at the handle’ so they would ‘slap against each other’
imitating the sound of an impact as pretend blows were thrown. 11 A comic routine
comprised entirely of one person being hit by someone else certainly plays with the
idea of one-upmanship, if not aggression. Indeed, The Three Stooges depicted acts
of brutality that, outside of the context of a slapstick skit, could have been
considered gratuitous. 12
Nevertheless, though violence and slapstick go hand in hand, the idea that
sadism is at the heart of all humour does not ring true. Pain, loss and suffering are
not inherently funny. For this reason, video compilation shows such as You’ve
Been Framed, and popular ‘Fail’ compilations on YouTube always cut away a few
seconds after a painful incident has occurred. 13 It is the chaotic of out of control
element that remains. Carr and Greeves write that ‘laughter is a response to a
conceptual shift, a change in our perception of the state of the world around us.’ 14
The man slipping on the banana peel is not amusing because it is painful, but
because it is incongruous. There has been a shift: control to chaos, organic to
mechanical, upright to collapsed.

2. Interacting with the Inelastic Game-World

To understand game-worlds, it is necessary to explore the concepts of
simulation and virtual reality. Benjamin Woolly, in Virtual Worlds explores the
origins of simulation in Link flight trainers – early, mechanical flight simulators
built to mimic air-craft systems. On the Link trainer, he writes ‘It could imitate
flying, but it could not simulate flying,’ suggesting that in order to simulate an
experience ‘You need a working model.’ 15 With computers, mathematical models
can be made that allow realistic simulations to occur. But the level of simulation is,
logically, tied to the ability of the computer to process these calculations. For
videogames, this presents a limitation. While simulating physical properties for a
two-dimensional ball might be simple enough to compute a working, life-like
model, ambitious scenarios like the virtual battlefields and cities found in many
modern action and role-playing games present an insurmountable computational
(and practical) challenge for available videogame systems to model in their
entirety. A surface level of modelling provides a balance of simulation and
imitation, leaving the mechanical artifice of the game-world exposed.
However, simulation is only one part of creating a virtual reality. Pimentel and
Teixeira write that ‘a virtual reality system should have the three following
characteristics: response to user actions, real-time 3-D graphics, and a sense of
immersion.’ 16 Players need an interface that provides them with a way of
performing actions inside the game-world – the more sophisticated the interface,
the greater the sense of immersion. Here again, the limitations of technology are
quite apparent. Most players interface with games by way of a hand-held controller
(or keyboard and mouse), speakers and a screen. The player’s level of immersion is
related to the fidelity of their interactions and quality of their interface with the
112 Funny Games
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game. As of the time of writing, these are still significantly neutered from the
human experience of reality.
And yet, despite clunky controls and robotic in-game simulations, millions of
people still enjoy videogames, and the numbers are growing. In 2011, videogames
outsold video products for the first time in the UK sales market. 17 Immersion in, or
at the very east engagement with videogames, is a simpler task for individuals than
the sophistication of the technology would suggest. Videogames are, after all, a
type of drama, and humans, as imaginative and creative beings, have little trouble
suspending our disbelief. Evoking ancient Greek theatre, Pimentel and Teixeira go
as far as to say, ‘…engaging the audience’s attention and immersing them in the
sights and sounds of a performance, these creative simulations weren’t unlike the
way we use computers today...’ 18 Man-kind also has a long history of extending
itself through media. Marhsall McLuhan, writing before the advent of the personal
computer, states that with ‘the arrival of electric technology, man extended, or set
outside himself, a live model of the central nervous system itself.’ 19
Players live out a paradox in their virtual exploits, feeling an immersion and
embodiment in the game-world and their player avatars, whilst contending with
and confronting a mechanical and inhuman simulation. It is here that the potential
for videogame slapstick resides.

3. Slapstick in Counter-Strike
Online multiplayer games, such as team-based shooter Counter-Strike (2000)
and popular Arma 2 modification (‘mod’) DayZ (2012) places players in simulated
3D environments where individual users share the same virtual space via an
internet connection and interact with each another by manipulating their in-game
characters. In Counter-Strike, for instance, humour has arisen from players
attempting to communicate and interact as they would in real-life, using only the
limited set of animations and actions that the game-world allows. Players will
‘greet’ each other at the start of a match, but, given the lack of a ‘wave’ animation,
resort to the few options available to them. Actions include jumping on the spot,
spinning, looking up and down as if to wave, flicking their flashlight on and off, or
mischievously shooting each other in non-lethal body-parts. Bergson’s ‘mechanical
inelasticity’ is manifest in the model of a man jumping on the spot to say ‘Hello!’ –
it expends too much energy and is far too overstated a gesture to be appropriate on
a human-level. But the most amusing action, unsurprisingly, is the shooting of
another player; an act that is too violent to be appropriate for ‘teammates,’ and too
serious to walk away from unscathed in real-life. Status also shifts, with the shot
player being the ‘subject’ of the joke. More often than not, this player will shoot
the first player in retaliation, causing a tit-for-tat altercation in which both players
do damage to each other until one or other has had enough. These actions present
parallels with slapstick acts, such as The Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy, in the
 Ben Hudson 113
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sense of the inappropriateness of the violence, the lack of serious consequences to
violence, and the escalation of violence between parties.
I can identify two factors that explain the overwhelming similarities between
social behaviour in Counter-Strike and slapstick comedy. The first is immersion, or
the suspension of disbelief. This theatrical convention of imagination overtaking
reality is what allows players to project human or emotional qualities onto 3D
avatars in virtual space. It explains the phenomenon that ‘people tend to stand more
or less the same distance apart in virtual worlds as they do normally in real life.’ 20
Without this suspension of disbelief, players would not ascribe human qualities to
their avatars and the mechanical inelasticity of their actions would represent no
deficiency in adaptability or awareness. Second, is the notion that joking is ‘an
attack of control’? 21

The character of the joker or trickster is so consistent a part of

every separate mythological system that pioneering
psychoanalyst Carl Jung identified him as one of the archetypes
or central symbols of our collective unconscious. 22

The ‘trickster’ is an ever-present character, and in online game-worlds where

anonymity is assured and there are no real-life consequences to their actions, the
power of this archetype is undeniable. Hence, the twisted humour of the team-killer
(or ‘Tker’) 23 or cheater who chooses inopportune moments to cause chaos and go
against the rules of the game. As Carr and Greeves describe, ‘There’s nothing
funny about a lot of the practical jokes he plays, which leave a trail of destruction
and pain.’ 24 But on a less malicious level, it is this anarchistic desire to use the
tools that the game-world provides to perform actions that were ‘unintended’ by
the developers, that lends the subsequent tom-foolery its sense of fun. The ‘fool,’
after all, is cousin to the trickster and ‘expresses himself through selfless play.
Beyond that there are no rules and the options are endless – it’s playtime.’ 25 And
what are videogames for, if not for play?
Results of this ‘play’ can be seen in videos across the internet. YouTube
contains millions of Counter-Strike videos and many thousands of them are
described as humorous. These include compilations of ‘funny’ slapstick moments
from matches – players blowing themselves up by accident, failing to avoid
obstacles, friendly-fire, unlikely ‘kills’ and players sneaking up on or failing to see
other players. 26 Moreover, players have even experimented with creating comedy
content that does not involve traditional gameplay and instead is entirely made up
of ‘improvised’ in-game actions, such as creating awkward, robotic dances or
attempting games such as Red light/Green light with their avatars and then
shooting each other when they lose. 27
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4. Videogames as Shared References
Dean Hall’s DayZ, a sandbox, survival simulator, has built a loyal following of
fans. The official website for the free mod lists over 1.7 million players at the time
of writing. 28 This community, according to stats tracking, has spent over 2.9
thousand collective years in-game since the mod was released in 2012. 29 Players
know the game-world, the design features and quirks of the mod, and the
behaviour of other players very well. As such, the community has created its own
series of ‘in-jokes’ based on shared references to the game.
The phrase ‘Anyone in Cherno?’ has become a recognised meme from the
game, with its own cartoon logo appearing on official merchandise. 30 Referring to
a particular type of ‘new player’ behaviour, the phrase has no comic value outside
the DayZ community. The repeated phrase only found relevance in the shared
experience of multiple players interacting in the game-world and the organic
situations that arose from the mod’s design. As Double writes, ‘extraneous
variables are the very stuff of what makes us laugh,’ 31 whether it be the setting of a
comedy club or the apocalyptic, wasteland of DayZ.
Proliferating these shared references are video uploaders and ‘streamers,’
hosting live events where people can watch them play the game online. YouTube
uploader ‘PewDiePie’ achieved over 2.3 million views for a recording of himself
and a friend playing DayZ. 32 The video starts with PewDiePie and his partner
‘Cry’ running towards each other along a beach to the theme tune from TopGun,
mocking a movie-style romantic reunion – ‘it takes forever to find each other in
this game’ reads an on-screen subtitle. Reunited, Cry performs a ‘vaulting’
animation to make it look as if he is jumping for joy, then both fall to the ground
and ‘combat roll’ as if tumbling in the grass with each other, laughing at the
slapstick humour of the their avatars’ mechanical expressions of emotion and the
incongruity of their actions in the context of a zombie apocalypse.
Likewise, references to games, gaming and game worlds is an essential part of
‘Machinima,’ a hybridisation of the words ‘machine’ and ‘cinema,’ referring to
‘the process of creating real-time animation by manipulating a video game’s
engine and assets.’ 33 Machinima is ‘generally considered as started by fans making
demo movies with the game Quake in the 1990’s,’ 34 but today web-series such as
Red vs. Blue, ‘filmed’ inside the game worlds of the Halo franchise have garnered
an online viewership extending into the hundreds of thousands.
Now, experiences of game-worlds have increasingly become accepted
references in popular culture as well, relatable to audiences of various ages.
Performing on Live at the Apollo in 2010, stand-up comedian Dara O’Briain
describes his experiences playing Metal Gear Solid, acting out his inability to
control the game’s hero Solid Snake. 35 In a similar routine, Seann Walsh adopts
the physicalities of player characters in Mortal Kombat in order to demonstrate the
difficulty of trying to perform a finishing move. 36 By using their own bodies to
 Ben Hudson 115
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assume the physical qualities of videogame characters, both comedians lay bare the
mechanical and inelastic way in which videogames interpret human input.

5. Conclusion
Slapstick is a difficult style of comedy to categorise, describing an effect as
much as it does a genre. It is a non-literary, non-narrative form that would rather
convey ‘attitudes, emotions, and experiences than ideas.’ 37 This is perhaps why
slapstick has become associated ‘with children...’ and ‘...with anarchistic and
subversive tendencies...’ as opposed to ‘established power relations.’ 38 As a
medium of play, videogames have taken on similar associations. And humour,
particularly slapstick humour, is an inescapable product of play within mechanical
game worlds, creating shared experiences of the bizarre or incongruous in player’s
virtual adventures.
Even so, despite the ability to recreate and make reference to the slapstick
experiences of videogames in real-life (the Counter-Strike parody, ‘Counter
Struck,’ 39 is another excellent example of this) the conveying of real-life
experiences in game-worlds is much more difficult. Ben Hudson, Live in Virtual
Reality (2009), combined a performance in a real theatre, with a virtual
performance taking place in Sony’s Playstation Home. 40 As the performer, I
controlled my avatar from the stage in the theatre, talking to the in-game audience
via microphone. While distractions and comments related to what is happening on
screen provide constant amusement for the theatre audience, the virtual audience
seem oddly static. The formal audience seating is somehow inappropriate for the
virtual crowd. All they have to look at is a relatively static avatar of a comedian
whose performance is largely delivered via voice, with only a limited pre-set of
animations as a means of physical expression. Used as a mediation of real-life
communication alone, the virtual world, acting as a prosthesis or conduit, becomes
an awkward, dull space. It is only when one participant places a bubble machine –
an in-game item – at their feet, making it look as if they have their own foot-
Jacuzzi, that the abstractness of the virtual world is turned into something
humorous. The item is being used out-of-context. It is another ‘attack on control.’
In 2007, British comedian Jimmy Carr performed a similar ‘virtual gig’ inside
Second Life. 41 Once again, confronted with Carr’s usual gags, the virtual comedy
club appears a very sterile and unresponsive venue. And yet, Carr’s comments on
events inside the virtual world, on avatars in the virtual audience, or at the moment
when Carr’s own avatar ‘glitches’ and falls face-down on the stage, are much more
successful in provoking laughter. Without reference to, or exploitation of, the
virtual stage, comedy inside videogames can feel rather prosaic. An imperfect
simulation of real-life comedy, much like the virtual comedy club in Grand Theft
Auto VI (2008), featuring motion-captured recordings of Ricky Gervais, among
other stand-up acts, highlights the disconnectedness of the experience and longs to
embrace and respond to the here and now of the game.
116 Funny Games
__________________________________________________________________
Videogames are media, extensions of ourselves. Players are always on the
outside looking in. Conversely, immersed in a game-world, the real world is less
contextually relevant as a shared point of reference than the virtual experience of
the game itself. Therefore, interfacing with videogames is an opportunity to forge a
creative relationship with the media object and to see game worlds as a place of
refraction, rather than reflection.

Notes
1
Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (New York:
The Macmillan Press, 1911), 10.
2
Ibid., 9.
3
Mary Douglas, ‘Jokes’, in Implicit Meanings (2nd Edition) (London and New
York: Routledge, 1999), 158-159.
4
Ibid., 149.
5
‘Battle of the Century – Laurel & Hardy’, accessed 10 May 2013,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDgnqfepRfI.
6
‘How Did Slipping on a Banana Peel Become a Comedy Staple?’, accessed 10
May 2013,
http://mentalfloss.com/article/31135/how-did-slipping-banana-peel-become-come
dy-staple.
7
Lupino Lane, How to Become a Comedian, ‘Funny Falls’ (London: Frederick
Muller, 1945), 32.
8
Aristotle, Poetics, Chapter 5, 1449a, quoted in John Morreall, The Philosophy of
Laughter and Humor (Albany: State of New York Press, 1987), 14.
9
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, reprint (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 45.
10
Keith Johnstone, Impro, Improvisation and the Theatre (London: Methuen
Drama, 1989), 40.
11
John Rudlin, Commedia dell’Arte: An Actor’s Handbook (London: Routledge,
1994), 77.
12
‘Three Stooges Most Violent Sequence Ever YouTube’, accessed 10 May 2013,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha0h4ReHy7M.
13
‘Fail Compilation of the Month April 2013’, accessed 10 May 2013,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-zac0SYjks.
14
Jimmy Carr and Lucy Greeves, The Naked Jape: Uncovering the Hidden World
of Jokes (London: Penguin Books, 2006), 21.
15
Benjamin Woolley, Virtual Worlds, A Journey in Hype and Hyperreality
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992), 44.
16
Ken Pimentel and Kevin Teixeira, Virtual Reality: Through the New Looking
Glass, 2nd Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill Inc., 1995), 11.
17
‘Game Sales Surpassed Video in UK, Says Report’, accessed 10 May 2013,
 Ben Hudson 117
__________________________________________________________________

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17458205.
18
Pimentel and Teixeira, Virtual Reality, 26.
19
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1964), 243.
20
Mark Meadows, I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second
Life (Berkeley: New Riders, 2008), 50.
21
Douglas, Implicit Meanings, 149.
22
Carr and Greeves, Naked Jape, 41.
23
‘Definition of Tker’, accessed 10 May 2013,
http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/tker.
24
Carr and Greeves, Naked Jape, 45.
25
Tony Allen, Attitude: Wanna Make Something of It? The Secret of Stand-Up
Comedy (Glastonbury: Gothic Image Publications, 2002), 52.
26
‘CS 1.6 Top 10 Funny Moments’, accessed 10 May 2013, http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=h2nrJMiMWR8; ‘Counter-Strike Funny Plant’, accessed 10 May
2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DaWsI3XbRs.
27
‘Counter-Strike: Dust 2 Muck Around’, accessed 10 May 2013,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KL4LQwbADA.
28
‘DayZ Official Website’, accessed 10 May 2013,http://dayzmod.com/.
29
Ibid.
30
‘DayZ Official Store’, accessed 10 May 2013, http://joystickjunkies.com/dayz/.
31
Oliver Double, Stand-up! On Being a Comedian (London: Methuen Drama,
1997), 247.
32
‘Day – Two Girls on a Zombie Survival Quest – DayZ – Part1’, accessed 10
May 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKoR6PAIbjc.
33
‘About Machinima’, accessed 10 May 2013,
http://www.machinima.com/overview.
34
‘Understanding Machinima: Applying a Dialogic Approach’, accessed 10 May
2013, http://worlds.ruc.dk/public_uploads/2011/02/Lisbeth.pdf.
35
‘Dara O Briain Live at the Apollo – I Love Videogames’, accessed 10 May
2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKIiUsbOO24.
36
‘Mortal Kombat – Live from the Apollo’, accessed 10 May 2013,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4B9F1uCVks.
37
Alan Dale, Comedy Is a Man in Trouble, Slapstick in American Movies
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 27.
38
Peter Kramer, ‘“Clean, Dependable Slapstick”: Comic Violence and the
Emergence of Classical Hollywood Cinema’, Violence and American Cinema 102
(2001): 103-116.
39
‘Counter Struck High Definition’, accessed 10 May 2013,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxq2QbMg-H8.
118 Funny Games
__________________________________________________________________

40
‘Ben Hudson, Live in Virtual Reality (April, 2009) – Part One’, accessed 10
May 2013,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MdUpljRc7JI.
41
Jimmy Carr, ‘Second Life Gig’, Comedian, 2007.

Bibliography
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BBC NEWS. ‘Game Sales Surpassed Video in UK, Says Report’. Accessed 10
May 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17458205.

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Cloudesley Brereton, and Fred Rothwell. New York: The Macmillan Press, 1911.

Carr, Jimmy. Comedian. DVD. Directed by Dominic Brigstocke. UK: Bwark

Productions.

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Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.

DayZ. ‘DayZ Official Website’. Accessed 10 May 2013. http://dayzmod.com/.

Double, Oliver. Stand-up! On Being a Comedian. London: Methuen Drama, 1997

Douglas, Mary. Implicit Meanings 2nd Edition. London and New York: Routledge,
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Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961.

Johnstone, Keith. Impro, Improvisation and the Theatre. London: Methuen Drama,
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Joystick Junkies. ‘DayZ Official Store’. Accessed 10 May 2013.

http://joystickjunkies.com/dayz/.
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Kramer, Peter. ‘“Clean, Dependable Slapstick”: Comic Violence and the

Emergence of Classical Hollywood Cinema’. Violence and American Cinema 102
(2001): 103–116.

Lane, Lupino. How to Become a Comedian. London: Frederick Muller, 1945.

Machinima. ‘About Machinima’. Accessed 10 May 2013.
http://www.machinima.com/overview.

Meadows, Mark. I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second

Life. Berkeley: New Riders, 2008.

Mentalfloss. ‘How Did Slipping on a Banana Peel Become a Comedy Staple?’

Accessed 10 May 2013. http://mentalfloss.com/article/31135/how-did-slipping-
banana-peel-become-comedy-staple.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: The

MIT Press, 1964.

Morreall, John. The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor. Albany: State of New
York Press, 1987.

Online Slang Dictionary. ‘Definition of Tker’. Accessed 10 May 2013.

http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/tker.

Pimentel Ken, and Kevin Teixeira. Virtual Reality: Through the New Looking
Glass, 2nd Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Inc., 1995.

Rudlin, John. Commedia dell’Arte: An Actor’s Handbook. London: Routledge,

1994.

Virtual Worlds Research. ‘Understanding Machinima: Applying a Dialogic

Approach’. Accessed 10 May 2013.
http://worlds.ruc.dk/public_uploads/2011/02/Lisbeth.pdf.

Woolley, Benjamin. Virtual Worlds, A Journey in Hype and Hyperreality. Oxford:

Blackwell Publishers, 1992.

YouTube. ‘Battle of the Century – Laurel & Hardy’. Accessed 10 May 2013.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDgnqfepRfI.
120 Funny Games
__________________________________________________________________

—––. ‘Ben Hudson, Live in Virtual Reality (April, 2009) – Part One’. Accessed 10
May 2013.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MdUpljRc7JI.

—––. ‘Counter-Strike Funny Plant’. Accessed 10 May 2013.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DaWsI3XbRs.

—––. ‘Counter-Strike: Dust 2 Muck Around’. Accessed 10 May 2013.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KL4LQwbADA.

—––. ‘Counter Struck High Definition’. Accessed 10 May 2013.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxq2QbMg-H8.

—––. ‘CS 1.6 Top 10 Funny Moments’. Accessed 10 May 2013.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2nrJMiMWR8.

—––. ‘Dara O Briain Live at the Apollo – I Love Videogames’. Accessed 10 May
2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKIiUsbOO24.

—––. ‘Fail Compilation of the Month April 2013’. Accessed 10 May 2013.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-zac0SYjks.

—––. ‘Mortal Kombat – Live from the Apollo’. Accessed 10 May 2013.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4B9F1uCVks.

—––. ‘Three Stooges Most Violent Sequence Ever YouTube’. Accessed 10 May
2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha0h4ReHy7M.

Ben Hudson is a PhD Practice as Research student at the University of Kent,

researching and conducting practical investigations into liveness, presence and
immersion in mediatised stand-up comedy performance.
 Gaming the Taboo in the Finlandisation Era Finland: The Case
of Raid over Moscow

Tero Pasanen
Abstract
The present chapter examines the first politically motivated computer game
controversy in Finland, stirred by the release of Raid over Moscow and its
subsequent review published in MikroBitti magazine in February 1985. The game’s
open anti-Sovietism and certain utterances used in the review trespassed on the
most notable taboo in the Cold War era Finland, and thus the case quickly gained
both interest and notoriety in the Finnish media. The events took a political turn
when a communist MP proposed a written parliamentary question concerning the
distribution of the game. The USSR responded with an entreaty that demanded the
Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MFA) to restrict the marketing and sales of
the game. The Soviet officials considered Raid over Moscow as war propaganda
that advocated a space war against the USSR, whereas the review was perceived as
an intentional provocation against the Finno-Soviet relations. The MFA conducted
an enquiry about possible restrictions, but outdated legislation concerning digital
games prevented the ban. The USSR objected the result of their entreaty and
responded with a political protest concerning recurrent anti-Soviet expressions
published in the Finnish media.

Key Words: Cold War, Finlandisation, Raid over Moscow, game controversy,
self-censorship, propaganda.

*****

1. Introduction
An isometric action game Raid over Moscow 1 was the best-selling Commodore
64 (C64) game on the Finnish game markets in 1985. The game unapologetically
flirted with anti-Sovietism, which was one of the most fundamental taboos in the
Cold War era Finland. 2 The USSR was depicted as deceitful aggressor that attacks
the United States without a warning with ballistic missiles carrying nuclear
warheads. The game ends with the symbol of Soviet power, the Kremlin, being
reduced to a pile of ruins by the American forces.
In February 1985 a review of Raid over Moscow ignited the first politically
motivated computer game controversy in Finland. 3 The debate concentrated more
on the deviancy of the subject matter than on the medium of digital games or
gaming as an activity. The unique aspect of the controversy was the unofficial
diplomatic arm wrestling that took place behind the political scenes between the
Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and the Soviet officials. Their dispute
concerned restricting marketing and sales of the game, as well as recurrent anti-
122 Gaming the Taboo in the Finlandisation Era Finland
__________________________________________________________________
Soviet expressions in the Finnish media. This chapter is based on a series of
declassified MFA documents that became open to public in 2010, after their 25
year confidentiality period expired under the freedom of information legislation
(621/1999). 4

2. The Political Context

Finlandisation, which can be defined as ‘process or state of affairs in which,
under the cloak of maintaining friendly relations with the Soviet Union, the
sovereignty of a country becomes reduced,’ 5 determined the Cold War zeitgeist in
Finland. 6 Adaptation of such policy meant conversion through conciliation rather
than military force. The Finns considered the term pejorative as it undermined the
country’s non-alignment. The Finlandisation has been strongly personified to the
presidency of Urho Kekkonen (1956-1982). 7 Its heyday was between the late-
1960s and the early-1980s. Finlandisation has a threefold meaning: it can be
perceived as a Realpolitik doctrine, as a strategy motivated by the domestic power
politics or combination of both. To maintain its sovereignty under the Soviet
influence Finland could not challenge its stronger neighbour. On the other hand the
boundaries between the Finnish internal and foreign policies were blurred during
the Cold War. Fawning towards the Kremlin and the so-called ‘east card’ offered
Finnish politicians a way to advance their careers.
Self-censorship i.e., censorship practiced by the publisher and/or author, was
one of the central tools of Finlandisation. Salminen 8 has divided self-censorship of
the Finlandisation era into categories of passive and active. The former refers to
self-censorship that stemmed from the actual Soviet threat, whereas the latter refers
to a practice motivated by internal power politics. The seeds of self-censorship
were sown during the Danger Years (1944-1948). During the 1970s the practice
became endemic. Self-censorship completely saturated the Finnish media field
from broadcasting to newspapers, from non-fiction to fiction literature, and from
music to cinema. However in the early-1980s the Finnish media culture became
less constrained. Critical opinions about the USSR and Finnish politicians, which
were not tolerated during the Kekkonen era, were now being published and
broadcasted.

3. The Controversy Commences

The actual flashpoint of the controversy can be traced to a review of Raid over
Moscow, published in the February -85 issue of MikroBitti. The magazine was one
of the early Finnish periodicals to focus on computers and gaming. The reviewer,
15-year-old Aki Korhonen, praised the game as ‘an exciting national defence game
where you must attack the USSR before their missiles reach their targets in the
United States.’ 9 Korhonen had accidentally trespassed on a national taboo with his
remark.
 Tero Pasanen 123
__________________________________________________________________
On February 13th magazine programme A-Studio introduced Raid over Moscow
to the general public. The host Kari Mänty concluded the show by summarising: ‘it
shouldn’t be a big surprise where this game was developed, but must Finland
always try to act as Europe’s Little America.’ 10 On February 20th Tiedonantaja
(English: The Informer), a newspaper affiliated with the Taistoist movement, 11
published an article ‘Teaching the Children – Knocking Down the Gates of
Kremlin,’ which harshly criticised the review. Tiedonantaja described the game as
high tech anti-Sovietism and demanded distribution restrictions on such computer
games. On February 21st Ensio Laine, a MP of the communist Finnish People’s
Democratic League (SKDL), proposed a written parliamentary question that
reflected similar sentiments:

What measures does the government intend to take on certain

imported American CMB-games that are targeted against our
neighbour Soviet Union and children’s peace education efforts? 12

4. The Political Course of the Controversy

The controversy took an unofficial political course on February 22nd as
Embassy Counsellor Konstantin Kosatshev urged Charles Murto, Director of the
Office of Socialist Countries, to meet him at the Soviet embassy in Helsinki,
because of ‘a pressing and serious matter.’ 13 The choice of venue was quite
exceptional as meetings between Finns and Soviets were normally held at the MFA
premises. Kosatshev emphasized that Ambassador Vladimir Sobolev had
personally requested the visit. Murto declined at first, but agreed after consulting
his superiors.
At the embassy Kosatshev underlined the seriousness and sensitivity of the case
at hand before presenting Murto a copy of the Tiedonantaja article. The Soviets
considered Raid over Moscow as war propaganda that advocated a space war
against the USSR. The MikroBitti review was perceived as ‘one of the most blatant
anti-Soviet provocations to occur in Finland in the post-war decades.’ 14 Should its
marketing and sales should continue, the USSR would heed the attention of the
Finnish government in the gravest diplomatic manner. As an example of possible
resolution to the matter Kosatshev mentioned an American anti-Soviet film that
was banned few years earlier with the help of the MFA. 15
At the end of the meeting Murto offered some observations on the matter. He
stressed that Raid over Moscow was targeted for international markets, and
therefore it was unlikely that it was designed specifically to weaken the Finno-
Soviet relations. He also doubted that there were no juridical means that could be
applied to cases like this. Murto estimated that any attempts to ban the game could
actually increase its publicity and demand. On a more personal note Murto
considered it regrettable that such war games were even designed for children.
Kosatshev understood these concerns, but reiterated that the USSR found the
124 Gaming the Taboo in the Finlandisation Era Finland
__________________________________________________________________
matter particularly serious and reprehensible. He thanked the MFA for paying
attention to the matter unofficially and confidentially.
In the early March the MFA officials conducted a series of enquiries. In a
memorandum, dated March 6th, Antero Viertiö, a negotiating official for the
Department for External Economic Relations, examined the case from a
commercial policy perspective. Viertiö pointed out that the measures to control
computer games and other software were extremely challenging to implement. The
aforementioned products not only played integral part in the growing computer
markets and general shift towards information society, but their illegal private
copying thrived due to the outdated legislation. Furthermore games were declared
to custom under several tariff headings. The commercial policy means to restrict
the importation were also rather limited. Although the commercial treaties included
a clause that enabled imposing restrictions based on moral arguments, such actions
could have unintentional and counter-effective results. In addition appealing to this
clause could open a larger public debate on whether war games were more harmful
than pornography or other violent entertainment. Viertiö was also quite sceptical
whether an embargo would have desired ramifications. Restrictions could create an
international controversy and in the process increase the popularity of such war
games.
Viertiö recommended the MFA to distance itself from the decision-making
process, suggesting the Ministries of Justice and/or Education should handle the
matter, as ‘Star Wars was the problem of the coming generation.’ 16 Scandinavian
cooperation was also thought over. Viertiö suspected that some Swedish politicians
could swallow the bait set by the Finns and sponsor regulation of deviant computer
games in the Nordic Council. Viertiö also proposed investigating whether
Korhonen had quoted the phrase ‘exciting national defence game’ from other
source or if it was his own personal musing. He reproached Korhonen for
undermining the efforts to uphold friendly Finno-Soviet relations and causing such
a provocation with his inconsideration. Viertiö ended his report with an Orwellian
notion: ‘game developers probably have – or at least should have – some sense of
ethics and morals. But what happens in the imagination of players is completely a
different matter. At the time being it is a place beyond laws and regulations.’ 17
Holger Rotkirch, Assistant Director of the Department of Legal Services,
mapped out the juridical grounds to restrict the marketing and sales of Raid over
Moscow. In a memorandum, also dated March 6th, he concluded that there were no
existing legal regulations or binding treaty obligations that could be applied to
resolve the dispute. Rotkirch mentioned the chapter 14 of the Finnish Criminal
Code, which handled offences of treason. Its section 4a stated that a person, who
publicly and purposely insulted a foreign nation with mediated material, and by
doing so damaged diplomatic relations to that nation, could be fined or imprisoned
for the maximum of two years. However Rotkirch doubted its applicability to this
matter. The act was clearly public, but proving its deliberateness would be
 Tero Pasanen 125
__________________________________________________________________
difficult. Furthermore prosecution under the section 4a was reserved for the most
egregious cases and required a specific presidential diktat. A protracted legal
process could also attract extensive public interest and pose even more strain to the
diplomatic relations.
The larger political context of the controversy started to take shape in March
7th, when the MFA received a dispatch from Finnish Ambassador to Moscow
Aarno Karhilo. He reported on a meeting with G.N. Farafonov, Director General of
the Department of Scandinavia from the Soviet Ministry of External Relations
(MER). Farafonov had handed a non-paper, which included a démarche 18
concerning recent anti-Soviet expressions published in the Finnish media. The
paper listed mainly written publications, including the MikroBitti article. 19 The
MFA was reprimanded for allowing the marketing of ‘the space war game’ to
continue unhindered, regardless of the previous entreaty. According to the USSR
these publications were provocations designed to disseminate distrust towards its
politics and attempts to weaken the Finno-Soviet relations. Such material was also
in conflict with the spirit of the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947 and the Finno-Soviet
Treaty of 1948. The USSR expected appropriate measures from the Finnish
authorities to restrict these types of publications.
On March 13th Seppo Pietinen, Director General of the Political Department,
briefed the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI) about the findings of the
MFA enquiries. The MCI had requested a statement from the MFA concerning the
parliamentary question. Pietinen noted that albeit the game content was regarded
offensive towards the USSR there were no juridical grounds or commercial policy
means to restrict its marketing and sales. He suspected that the developer had
utilized the theme of anti-Sovietism for promotional purposes in the US. Pietinen
deplored that the international political tensions were exploited in computer games
for children.
On March 14th, Minister of Foreign Trade Jermu Laine (Social Democratic
Party) gave his answer to the parliamentary question. The minister stated that the
MCI could only restrict and ban products that posed physical danger to children.
The ministry lacked legal grounds to intervene with the possible psychological
impact that war toys and games might have on children’s mental development or
world view. Laine referred on the Act on the Previewing of Video and Other
Audiovisual Programmes (697/1987), which was being drafted at the time, as a
possible solution to cases like this. 20
The political arm wrestling came into a conclusion on April 11th, as Minister
for Foreign Affairs Paavo Väyrynen gave response to the Soviet démarche to
Ambassador Sobolev in Helsinki. Väyrynen emphasised that all the noteworthy
political parties and societal organisations, as well as the Finnish people in general,
supported friendly relations to the USSR and the official foreign policy line i.e., the
Paasikivi-Kekkonen line. 21 He apologised for publications that depicted the USSR
in negative light, but denied that they were deliberately targeted against the Finno-
126 Gaming the Taboo in the Finlandisation Era Finland
__________________________________________________________________
Soviet relations. Furthermore the Finnish people were critical and could tell apart
agenda-driven and prejudiced writings from objective ones. The minister noted that
peacetime freedom of expression offered no legal grounds to interfere with such
utterances, but assured that the government paid attention to the matter and strived
to influence the media. For his part Sobolev thanked Väyrynen for the reply,
hoping that the mutual fostering of friendly relations between the two countries
would continue in the future. Not even a small group of dissidents should be
allowed to harm them. Lastly the ambassador returned to the case of Raid over
Moscow, urging the Finnish authorities to take appropriate measures to deal with
the matter. Sobolev quoted the general secretary of the Finnish-Soviet Society
(SNS) Erkki Kivimäki, who had enquired in a recent televised interview: ‘how
would the Finns feel, if a computer game where Helsinki is destroyed, would be
marketed and sold in the USSR?’ 22

5. Conclusions
The first politically motivated computer game controversy in Finland occurred
amidst a larger domestic societal change. The unitary culture that evolved from the
hardship of Winter War was fundamentally fractured in the mid-1980s. The old
faith towards socialism did not resonate with the younger generations, who rather
identified themselves with American popular culture and the values it conveyed. 23
However the open anti-Sovietism depicted in Raid over Moscow was still a taboo
and politically incorrect subject matter. From this perspective a reaction from the
USSR was quite expected, but its intensity and loose interpretation of Finland’s
treaty obligations confounded even the most experienced MFA officials. 24
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the declassified MFA documents was the
differing perspectives on Raid over Moscow’s objectives. The Soviets underlined
the external aims of the game, whereas the MFA considered them to be autotelic.
The USSR perceived the game as war propaganda with three-fold objectives: 1) to
advocate a space war; 2) to create mistrust towards its politics, and 3) to weaken
the Finno-Soviet relations. In turn the MFA perceived the anti-Sovietism as a mere
marketing ploy and questioned the claims that Raid over Moscow was designed to
harm the diplomatic relations.
But how justified was the Soviet vantage point? Unquestionably Raid over
Moscow included propagandistic elements, but to label it as war propaganda was
quite far-fetched. The claim was based on the obvious notion that the game
reflected the reality of Cold War. It was clearly inspired by the Strategic Defense
Initiative (SDI) aka Star Wars programme and the confrontational attitude of the
Reagan era politics. However Raid over Moscow had no political objectives and it
harnessed the theme of anti-Sovietism to boost sales. 25 Furthermore there were no
even slightest indications that the game was directed specifically against the Finno-
Soviet relations.
 Tero Pasanen 127
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The Soviet zeal to define Raid over Moscow as war propaganda can be
perceived as an attempt to indirectly affect the Finnish media by pressuring the
MFA. The USSR had also interests in hindering the spread of American popular
culture in its sphere of influence. The Finnish tradition of censorship and self-
censorship had deep roots. Raid over Moscow was meant to act as a precedent for
the medium of digital games. Eagerness to label the game review as ‘the most
blatant anti-Soviet provocation to occur in Finland in the post-war decades’ also
supports this reading.
The controversy treated in this chapter exemplifies the truism that legislation
always drags behind new emergent forms of media. In this case the outdated law
provided the MFA with a reasonable cause not to comply with the Soviet
démarche. The valid Film Previewing Act (299/1965) was not applicable as it did
not even recognise interactive media as audiovisual programmes. Had the
legislation been up-to-date the Board of Film Classification (VET) could have
banned Raid over Moscow on the grounds of explicit violence and anti-Sovietism,
as it did with Finnish director Renny Harlin’s film Born American (1986) a year
later. This would have removed the MFA from an awkward situation as the now
defunct VET was subordinate to the Ministry of Education. Prosecuting 15-year-
old Aki Korhonen of treason was also a ruled out possibility as it would have
surely brought the unwelcomed discussion on Finlandisation back to the news
headlines.
After the incident had calmed down politically various Finnish talking heads
appeared in the media and warned that private citizens should not disrupt the
existing status quo between Finland and the USSR with their careless comments.
Idolisation of America could impair their foreign policy judgements. The freedom
of expression was acknowledged, but the Finns were urged to consider what the
benefits of such comments were.
The Raid over Moscow controversy was genuinely a Finnish phenomenon. It
merged concerns over new media and morality with conventions of Finlandisation.
Finland’s geopolitical location and its special status between the Cold War blocks,
as well as the erstwhile tensions between the superpowers made the case unique in
the history of popular culture.

Notes
1
Access Software Inc., Raid over Moscow (Access Software Inc., 1984).
2
The definition of anti-Sovietism was all-comprehensive, basically including all
critical expressions and opinions about the USSR.
3
The case has been discussed earlier by Jaakko Suominen in
‘Mentaalihistoriallinen Katsaus Digitaalisuuteen’, in Johdatus Digitaaliseen
Kulttuuriin, eds. Aki Järvinen, and Ilkka Mäyrä (Tampere: Vastapaino, 1999), 75-
128 Gaming the Taboo in the Finlandisation Era Finland
__________________________________________________________________

94; Petri Saarikoski, Koneen Lumo: Mikrotietokoneharrastus Suomessa 1970-

Luvulta 1990-Luvun Puoliväliin (Saarijärvi: Gummerus, 2004); and Juhani Suomi
Epävarmuuden Vuodet: Mauno Koiviston aika 1984-1986 (Helsinki: Otava, 2006).
Finnish gaming press also briefly covered the case after MTV3 News reported on
the declassified MFA documents in January 2010. Thus far the only article treating
their content has been published in Finnish (Pasanen 2011).
4
All translations by the author.
5
Walter Laquer, The Political Psychology of Appeasement: Finlandization and
Other Unpopular Essays (New York: Transaction Books, 1980), 7.
6
The term itself was coined by German political scientist Richard Lowenthal in
1966. Rinna Kullaa, Non-Alignment and Its Origins in Cold War Europe:
Yugoslavia, Finland and the Soviet Challenge (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012).
7
Timo Vihavainen, Kansakunta Rähmällään: Suomettumisen lyhyt Historia
(Helsinki: Otava, 1991); Jukka Nevakivi, Miten Kekkonen Pääsi Valtaan ja Suomi
Suomettui (Helsinki: Otava, 1996).
8
Esko Salminen, Vaikeneva Valtionmahti?: Neuvostoliitto/Venäjä Suomen
Lehdistössä 1968-1991 (Helsinki: Edita, 1996).
9
Aki Korhonen, ‘CMB-Pelejä’, MikroBitti, February 1985, 67.
10
‘Little America’ (Finnish: pikku-Amerikka) was a Finnish pejorative term to
describe countries that excessively emulated and admired American politics and/or
way of life.
11
Taistoism was the radical wing of the Finnish Communist Party with extreme
pro-Soviet tendency.
12
Ensio Laine, written parliamentary question 40/1985.
13
Charles Murto, Memorandum no. 196 (Helsinki: The Archives of the Ministry
for Foreign Affairs, 1985), 1.
14
Ibid., 2.
15
Kosatshev could not specify the film, but probably referred to John Milius’ Red
Dawn, which was banned by the Finnish Board of Film Classification on October
15th, 1984.
16
Antero Viertiö, Memorandum no. 167 (Helsinki: The Archives of the Ministry
for the Foreign Affairs, 1985), 3.
17
Ibid., 4.
18
A protest or statement delivered through diplomatic channels.
19
Other sensitive topics mentioned in the paper were the Russification of Estonia,
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the internal state of Red Army and the Terijoki
Government.
20
The Act on the Previewing of Video and Other Audiovisual Programmes
(697/1987) excluded digital games from the preview process on the basis of
content and purpose.
 Tero Pasanen 129
__________________________________________________________________

21
The Paasikivi-Kekkonen line refers to a foreign policy of neutrality.
22
Taisto Tolvanen, Memorandum 417 (Helsinki: The Archives of the Ministry for
Foreign Affairs, 1985), 3.
23
Saarikoski in Koneen Lumo: Mikrotietokoneharrastus Suomessa 1970-Luvulta
1990-Luvun Puoliväliin argues that rebellion against the Finnish politicians was a
major factor behind Raid over Moscow’s popularity, although the sale figures were
not infallible indicator of their political attitudes.
24
Juhani Suomi, Kohti Sinipunaa: Mauno Koiviston aika 1986-1987 (Helsinki:
Otava, 2008).
25
John Jermaine, ‘Carver Gang at Large’, Commodore Magazine, July 1987, 74-77
and 118-119.

Bibliography
Jermaine, John. ‘The Carver Gang: Still at Large’. Commodore Magazine, July
1987.

Karhilo, Aarno. Dispatch no. 217/March 7th 1985. Helsinki: The Archives of the
Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Korhonen, Aki. ‘CMB-Pelejä’. MikroBitti, February 1985.

Kullaa, Rinna. Non-Alignment and Its Origins in Cold War Europe: Yugoslavia,
Finland and the Soviet Challenge. London: I.B. Tauris, 2012.

Laqueur, Walter. The Political Psychology of Appeasement: Finlandization and

Other Unpopular Essays. New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1980.

Murto, Charles. Neuvostoliiton Suurlähetystön Vetoomus Neuvostovastaisen

Amerikkalaisen Kotimikrosotapelin Mainostamisen ja Myynnin Ehkäisemiseksi
Suomessa. Memorandum no. 196/February 22nd 1985. Helsinki: The Archives of
the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Nevakivi, Jukka. Miten Kekkonen Pääsi Valtaan ja Suomi Suomettui. Helsinki:

Otava, 1996.

‘Oppia Lapsille – Kremlistä ovet Sisään’. Tiedonantaja, 22 February, 1985.

130 Gaming the Taboo in the Finlandisation Era Finland
__________________________________________________________________

Pasanen, Tero. ‘“Hyökkäys Moskovaan!” – Tapaus Raid over Moscow Suomen ja

Neuvostoliiton Välisessä Ulkopolitiikassa 1980-Luvulla’. Pelitutkimuksen
Vuosikirja (2011): 1–11.

Pietinen, Seppo. Kansanedustaja Laineen Eduskuntakysely Amerikkalaisen

Kotimikropelin Maahantuonnista. Memorandum no. 21900/ March 13th 1985.
Helsinki: The Archives of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Rotkirch, Holger. Neuvostoliiton Suurlähetystön Vetoomus Neuvostovastaisen

Amerikkalaisen Kotimikrosotapelin Mainostamisen ja Myynnin Ehkäisemiseksi
Suomessa; Poliittisen Osaston Muistio no. 196/22.2.1985. Memorandum no.
45/March 6th 1985. Helsinki: The Archives of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Saarikoski, Petri. Koneen Lumo: Mikrotietokoneharrastus Suomessa 1970-Luvulta

1990-Luvun Puoliväliin. Saarijärvi: Gummerus, 2004.

Salminen, Esko. Vaikeneva Valtionmahti?: Neuvostoliitto/Venäjä Suomen

Lehdistössä 1968-1991. Helsinki: Edita, 1996.

Suomi, Juhani. Epävarmuuden Vuodet: Mauno Koiviston aika 1984-1986.

Helsinki: Otava, 2006.

—––. Kohti Sinipunaa: Mauno Koiviston aika 1986-1987. Helsinki: Otava, 2008.

Suominen, Jaakko. ‘Mentaalihistoriallinen Katsaus Digitaalisuuteen’. In Johdatus

Digitaaliseen Kulttuuriin, edited by Aki Järvinen, and Ilkka Mäyrä, 75–94.
Tampere: Vastapaino, 1999.

Tiilikainen, Erkki. Farafonov Suomessa Ilmestyneistä, Neuvostovastaiseksi

Luonnehdituista Julkaisuista. Dispatch no. 151/March 7th 1985. Helsinki: The
Archives of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Tolvanen, Taisto. Neuvostovastaisiksi Luokitellut Julkaisut; Ulkoasiainministeri

Väyrysen Vastaus Neuvostoliiton Demarche’iin. Memorandum no. 417/April 4th
1985. Helsinki: The Archives of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Viertiö, Antero. Kotimikropelien Myynti ja Mainostaminen Suomessa;

Neuvostoliiton Suurlähetystön Reaktio. Memorandum no. 167/March 6th 1985.
Helsinki: The Archives of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
 Tero Pasanen 131
__________________________________________________________________

Vihavainen, Timo. Kansakunta Rähmällään: Suomettumisen Lyhyt Historia.

Helsinki: Otava, 1991.

Tero Pasanen is a graduate student at University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His

dissertation (in progress) examines how games reflect their surrounding reality.
 Immersion vs. Emersive Effects in Videogames

Piotr Kubiński
Abstract
Author of the chapter approaches the concept of immersion from a philological
perspective and concentrates on those mechanisms and effects, which weaken the
phenomenon in question. All those mechanisms – described collectively as
‘emersive effects’ – are considered in terms of their influence on the game
structure, on the cohesion of the game world, and on possible interpretations.
Occurring on various game levels, the emersive effects are sometimes a result of
creator’s mistakes, other times they are embedded in the convention of a game.
The effects in question might also be achieved deliberately – for artistic or
humorous purposes. 1

Key Words: Immersion, emersive effects, emersion, videogames, irony, ironic

distance, ludology, digital humanities, palimpsestic attempt.

*****

1. Introduction
According to many gamers, game-reviewers, and researchers immersion is
often considered to be one of the most desired effects a game can cause: calling a
game ‘fully immersive’ is probably one of the greatest compliments one could pay
to its creators. But at the same time there is no universal consensus on what in fact
immersion is. As Gordon Calleja summarises, 2 terms such as (tele)presence,
absorption, incorporation, and immersion are still under discussion. The purpose of
this chapter is neither to arbitrate this dispute, nor to propose its final solution; but
since the main topic of this chapter is the phenomenon of ‘emersive effects,’ it is
necessary to outline the category of immersion that serves as their necessary
background. The definition adopted in this chapter states that immersion is an
impression of a non-mediated participation in a digital world generated by the
machine, a sensation of a direct presence, which makes players lose sight of the
physical world surrounding them. Without intending to induce anyone to adopt
such a definition, it is should be pointed out that this understanding of the term is
related to the one coined by Janet Murray:

A stirring narrative in any medium can be experienced as a

virtual reality because our brains are programmed to tune into
stories with an intensity that can obliterate the world around us.
[…] The experience of being transported to an elaborately
simulated place is pleasurable in itself, regardless of the fantasy
content. We refer to this experience as immersion. Immersion is
134 Immersion vs Emersive Effects in Videogames
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a metaphorical term derived from the physical experience of
being submerged in water. We seek the same feeling from a
psychologically immersive experience that we do from a plunge
in the ocean or swimming pool: the sensation of being
surrounded by a completely other reality, as different as water is
from air, that takes over all of our attention, our whole perceptual
apparatus. 3

It is worth noting that, according to Murray, immersion is not a term

inextricably linked to videogames and might also appear in non-digital media.
However, virtual realities (and within them especially videogames) provide their
unique techniques and possibilities that deepen immersion and players’ presence in
fictional world; that is why the debated term gained its popularity in the context of
electronic entertainment.

2. Emersive Effects
Academic researchers who examine this matter tend to analyse how immersion
works and what techniques, used by game developers, help players to immerse into
the game’s world. The aim of this chapter is to analyse this problem from the
opposite perspective and to present the techniques and strategies, which
(intentionally or not) reduce or even preclude the effect of immersion.
To examine that problem, one should start from indicating what conditions are
necessary to create the sense of immersion. Alison McMahan, a prominent
researcher of immersion in video games, points to three of such conditions:

(1) the user’s expectations of the game or environment must

match the environment’s conventions fairly closely;
(2) the user’s actions must have a non-trivial impact on the
environment; and
(3) the conventions of the world must be consistent, even if they
don’t match those of “meatspace”. 4

That third condition (consistency of fictional world’s conventions) seems to be

the most interesting in the context of my research, as creating and choosing
between those conventions are the game creator’s textual (and in some cases:
artistic) choices. Before concentrating on various examples of deviations within
conventions, a general term should be proposed, which could embrace the whole
phenomenon in its many aspects. Keeping in mind a Latin root of the word
‘immersion’ (lat. ‘immergo’ – to dive, to submerge), the term emersion or emersive
effect (lat. ‘emergo’ – to rise up from water) will be used here to describe opposite
strategies, i.e. those which reduce the sense of immersion, bring players back to the
meatspace or – if one follows Murray’s metaphor – forces that pull player out from
 Piotr Kubiński 135
__________________________________________________________________
a swimming pool or ocean (e.i. from digital environment) back to his primary
reality.

3. Shock
Emersive factors may affect players on many levels of their contact with a
videogame. McMahan writes about bugs and errors in videogames, which she calls
shocks:

Shocks are poor design elements that jar the user out of the sense
of “reality” of the VRE, such as the “end of the world” shock –
the user can see where the environment ends; “film set shock” –
buildings are incomplete; polygon leaks – seeing through cracks;
and latency and motion sickness caused by poor design or
overlong use of the hardware. 5

One can say that shocks are elements which reveal mediated character of the
virtual reality: its dependence on electronic devices such as computers or gaming
consoles with their illusive technical nature. Rather than deliberate designing
strategy, shocks are mostly the result of mistakes during the development of a
game, or imperfections arising from the nature of digital medium. On less frequent
occasions, however, game creators use the structure of such a startling element in a
meaningful way. The eminent example of such a technique is Batman: Arkham
Asylum. 6 In a scene where Batman is captured by Joker and Scarecrow, there is a
moment (after a few Batman’s hallucinations), when the game looks as if it had
crashed and the screen freezes for a few seconds – long enough for the player to
think that his gaming device has been broken.
Of course we can find more examples of games pointing to their screen-
mediated nature. Murray underlines the importance of identifying an equivalent of
the ‘theatre’s fourth wall,’ 7 which is a symbolic, conventional border between
spectators of a theatre performance (gamer) and the scene with actors performing
on it (virtual reality). The sequence from Batman: Arkham Asylum can be
compared to an act of breaking the fourth wall and pointing to the user that all what
has been experienced is just a videogame with all its conventions. One might (quite
reasonably) conclude that the concept of ‘breaking the fourth wall’ is not quite
accurate in the context of video games, it is still hard to deny that such an event
wrecks the feeling of immersion. Nevertheless, although it pulls the player out
from the fictional world, it also gives something in return. The refreshing and
amusing effect of astonishment might be even a bigger reward and could
compensate for being knocked out of the in-game presence.
136 Immersion vs Emersive Effects in Videogames
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4. Ironic Distance
Similar surprise and playfulness may be achieved (again: at the cost of reducing
immersion) by populating the in-game world with references that point outside the
game’s context. An example is provided by the second part of the Witcher series,
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. 8 Half-way into the storyline, the player
encounters a group of Elven rebels who use a secret password. The password
shouted by one of the characters is ‘Kier-ke-gaard.’ Countersign to that turns out to
be ‘Hei-de-gger.’ This is an interesting example at least for two reasons. Firstly:
the joke is constructed in such way, that if player does not understand it (if he does
not recognise two famous philosophers’ names), he will probably think that ‘Kier-
ke-gaard’ and ‘Hei-de-gger’ are just another Elven words and it is completely
normal not to understand them. Additional argument for such a reading is that the
notation of those words uses hyphens (as it is indicated by the in-game manner of
transcription of the Elven language). But on the other hand the situation of the
player who recognises the reference is even more interesting. To understand the
joke, the gamer needs to use his cultural knowledge. As a result the player is in fact
provoked to leave the on-screen fictional world, to remind himself of the actual
reality of which he is supposed to forget by the means of immersive mechanisms of
the game.
Situations similar to the described above create an ironic distance, which is yet
another way to achieve artistic effect using an emersive factor. The element of
irony is crucial, because through this mechanism, the authors of the game wink at
the player and send him a second, hidden meaning. It is not, however, a classic
literal or verbal irony, within which the actual meaning of the text is opposed to
that one expressed in the primary one (or, as Søren Kierkegaard, great theoretician
of irony, would put it: ‘phenomenon is not the essence, but the opposite of the
essence’ 9 ). In the cited example, one does not find such an opposite content.
Instead game creators develop a different, whole new meaning functioning
somewhat over the literal text.
Of particular interesting in this context is the division of ironic roles proposed
by David S. Kaufer, according to whom there are three roles within an ironic
situation: 1) ironists, 2) observers of irony, and 3) the victim of irony. 10 The triad
can be expanded by a fourth element: 4) tools of irony. In the situation described
above, the role of such tools is taken by the characters who pronounce the two
names of philosophers. There is no doubt that Zoltan (the dwarf who says ‘Kier-ke-
gaard!’) is not an ironist in this situation – he is oblivious to the additional meaning
of his own words. Exactly as in the Polish version of the first Witcher 11 – a game,
where a bard named Dandelion was singing songs of the popular band Kult, much
recognised in Poland. Of course Dandelion could not known that he was using
someone else’s words, to borrow Bachtin’s terminology. In both situations it is not
the characters, but the creators of the game, who are ironists. The role of a (co-
)ironist is taken by the player who recognises the duality of the message.
 Piotr Kubiński 137
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If one consistently draws conclusions from this scheme, the victim of irony is a
user who is not able to recognise the ironical signal that was being sent, and who is
not able to become one of the two subjects in this communication scheme. After
all, irony puts a clear requirement: it must be identified. As Michał Głowiński, a
Polish theoretician of irony, puts it:

If the irony is not recognized, significant misunderstandings

arise. Sometimes such confusion shows that the participant of
the communication process is not able to go beyond his literal
understanding of the words. As a result, his perception is lacking
a particular factor of expression which is crucial to understand
the statement in accordance with the nature and intentions of the
speaker. 12

5. Palimpsestic Attempt
Last emersive form, which is to be taken into consideration in this chapter, is
connected to the very core mechanisms of games. Some of those mechanisms
decrease the level of player’s immersion, and yet they are constantly used. A good
example is the well-known option of saving/loading a game status, provided by
e.g. some cRPGs or strategy games. This means that player sometimes (rarely or in
every moment of gameplay) is able to create a checkpoint that remembers all the
settings of the game – including the exact story time. With the option of loading
the game, you can always go back to the past events and experience them again or
make them completely different than the original.
It is possible to name four structural reasons for implementing this option into a
game:

1) it enables players to return to the game at any time without

losing the progress of it (otherwise we would have to finish the
game in one sitting);
2) in case of a failure (e.g., death of a protagonist), players can
repeat a selected stage of the game without having to start anew;
3) players who feel dissatisfied with their actions (e.g. fight
brought too much damage, business transaction turned out to be
insufficiently beneficial), may want to repeat them to achieve
better results;
4) players may want to know the alternative version of a co-
created history.

It is definitely more beneficial to concentrate not on the motivations, but on the

textual results of this mechanism. For example, in a cRPG game, such as The
Witcher 2, the main protagonist may face an unexpected danger (e.g. enter the
138 Immersion vs Emersive Effects in Videogames
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place full of enemies). If the result of such action is a failure, the player might want
to load the game, then prepare for the ‘unexpected’ fight and eventually achieve
success. As a result, we end up with two (or even more) alternative versions of the
story. Note that the player can return many times to once saved game. All those
imperfect attempts have an undisputed influence not only on the player’s
experience (in fact: they are part of that experience) but also on the in-game’s
world cohesion and therefore: on player’s immersion. One of the factors which
contribute to fictional (not only digital) world’s cohesion is psychological realism.
That means that all character’s actions and all other diegetic events: (1) must be
subject to the rule of Cause and Effect; and (2) must be possible to be explained by
in-world’s (diegetic) factors and motivations. If this psychological realism
condition is not fulfilled, then a game (but also: a film or a novel) is less
believable.
However, while analysing the above-mentioned example from The Witcher 2,
one will face a certain dissonance. If the main character dies in the first attempt
because he was taken by surprise by his enemies, then the player loads a game. In
the second attempt the gamer will start preparations before entering the dangerous
spot (e.g. the witcher will drink some strengthening potions). But then one could
ask about a psychological realism of the situation: why did the witcher Geralt
really drink his potions? The first (failed) attempt showed that he had not in fact
expected any enemies. The obvious answer is: Geralt did not know but the player
did and it is the player’s knowledge that determines Geralt’s actions. Their real
motivation lies in an abandoned (failed) attempt. Therefore if we want to analyse
the course of events in all their complexity (i.e. including motivations, causality
etc.), we need to take into consideration not only the ‘final version’ of events but
also those failed attempts. This has a crucial importance especially for the theory of
narrative or theory of interpretation. In traditional media the reader/viewer always
faces a finite version of events – of course there are texts that are open for
interpretations 13 and texts that play around with the narrative frames (e.g. films
like Memento, where time of action is reversed and consecutive scenes reinterpret
each other), but generally interpretation of a traditional-media’s plot is usually
linear, because the text itself is not fluid. Meanwhile in those digital texts which
involve user’s participation (especially in plot-concentrated videogames)
interpretation of events very often needs to be as non-linear as the gaming
experience itself.
To describe these versions of fictional events, which mutually influence each
other, I submit the term, which refers to Gérard Genette’s theory of transtextuality.
Genette compared literary hypertexts to medieval palimpsests. Palimpsests were
manuscripts written on material, in which the previous text was wiped or scraped
out; as Genette describes it: ‘[o]n the same parchment, one text can become
superimposed upon another, which it does not quite conceal but allows to show
through.’ 14 This Genette’s metaphor is surprisingly adequate when considered in
 Piotr Kubiński 139
__________________________________________________________________
the context of player’s various attempts which superimpose one on another and
need to be interpreted as a whole. That is why I call them palimpsestic attempts. 15

6. Summary
As shown in this chapter emersive effects – that is moments or mechanisms that
weaken player’s immersion – appear in many aspects of game’s structures. Shocks
(which are the result of game’s technical imperfections), emphasising game’s
mediated nature (which sometimes is unintended side-effect), creating ironic
distance (e.g. as a result of a joke referring to the outside of the game’s cultural
contexts), or breaking the rule of psychological realism (according to palimpsestic
nature of some games’ course of events) – these are just a few meaningful
examples of mechanisms triggering the concept in question and they surely do not
make a complete list of emersive factors. Given samples bring several significant
conclusions: Firstly, immersion does not need to be the most important or the most
desired effect delivered by videogames, and player may get pleasure from other in-
game elements, which may be contrary to the immersion and may pull the player
out of felling of presence. Secondly – and that is a result of the first statement –
video games as a medium are torn between two opposite tendencies (one is their
immersive potential, but the second is emersion with all its various – and not yet
well-discovered – potential). Thirdly, axiological status of emersive effects is not
unequivocal. Sometimes emersion might be a result of designer’s or programmer’s
mistakes or of game’s frailty as a medium (which has rather young tradition and
still coins its language and conventions). But on the other hand sensible and
meaningful use of emersion (like in the scene quoted from Batman: Arkham
Asylum) should be considered as a proof of maturity of the medium. Using
mediality to create a meaningful message is a very strong postmodern artistic
technique (similarly as in other forms of cultural expression, such as literature or
films), which may cause various effects – e.g. user’s reflection on the character of
in-game’s experience. Therefore understanding of those effects should be
developed and deepened in further researches, and they definitely should not be
omitted or ignored in game studies, as they play an important role in
comprehending the specificity of videogames as a medium.

Notes
1
This chapter is part of the research project NN 103398340 with funding from the
Polish National Science Centre (Narodowe Centrum Nauki) in Kraków.
2
Gordon Calleja, In-Game: From Immersion to Incorporation (Cambridge and
London: The MIT Press, 2011).
3
Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997), 98-99.
140 Immersion vs Emersive Effects in Videogames
__________________________________________________________________

4
Alison McMahan, ‘Immersion, Engagement, and Presence: A Method for
Analyzing 3-D Video Games’, in The Video Game Theory Reader, eds. Mark J. P.
Wolf and Bernard Perron (New York: Routledge, 2003), 68-69.
5
Ibid., 76.
6
Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady, 2009).
7
Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck, 103.
8
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (CD Projekt RED, 2011).
9
Søren Kierkegaard, On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to
Socrates, eds. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1989), 247.
10
David S. Kaufer, ‘Irony, Interpretive Form and the Theory of Meaning’, Poetics
Today: The Ironic Discourse 4, No. 3 (1983): 451-464.
11
The Witcher (CD Projekt RED, 2007).
12
Michał Głowiński, ‘Ironia jako Akt Komunikacyjny’, in Ironia, ed. Michał
Głowiński (Gdańsk: Słowo/obraz terytoria, 2002), 5-16.
13
Concept of open text/open work (it.: ‘opera aperta’) was developed by Umberto
Eco in Umberto Eco, Open Work, trans. Anna Cancogni (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1989).
14
Gerard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, trans. Channa
Newman and Claude Doubinsky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997).
15
I presented this concept for the first time during in the paper ‘Kategoria “Próby
Palimpsestowej” jako Narzędzie Badania Narracji w Komputerowych Grach
Fabularnych’ (‘Category of “Palimpsestic Attempt” as a Tool in Narrative Studies
of Computer Role-Playing Games’) at the conference ‘KULTURA POPULARNA
– CZĘŚCI I CAŁOŚCI. Narracje w Kulturze Popularnej’ which took place at
Warsaw University, 7-9 of October 2010.

Bibliography
Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady, 2009).

Calleja, Gordon. In-Game: From Immersion to Incorporation. Cambridge and

London: The MIT Press, 2011.

Eco, Umberto. Open Work. Translated by Anna Cancogni. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, 1989.

Genette, Gérard. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Translated by

Channa Newman, and Claude Doubinsky. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1997.
 Piotr Kubiński 141
__________________________________________________________________

Głowiński, Michał. ‘Ironia jako Akt Komunikacyjny’. In Ironia, edited by Michał

Głowiński, 5–16. Gdańsk: Słowo/obraz terytoria, 2002.

Kaufer, David S. ‘Irony, Interpretive Form and the Theory of Meaning’. Poetics
Today: The Ironic Discourse 4, No. 3 (1983): 451–464.

Kierkegaard, Søren. On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates.

Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong, and Edna H. Hong. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1989.

McMahan, Alison. ‘Immersion, Engagement, and Presence: A Method for

Analyzing 3-D Video Games’. In The Video Game Theory Reader, edited by Mark
J. P. Wolf, and Bernard Perron, 67–86. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Murray, Janet. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace.

Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997.

Piotr Kubiński, PhD student at Warsaw University (Institute of Polish Literature,

Section of Comparative Studies). While interested in many aspects of videogames,
new medias and digital humanities, currently his research is concentrated on
poetics and semiotics of videogames. Observations made in this chapter are
abbreviated version of one of the topics in author’s doctoral thesis, which is in
progress.
 Part 3

Videogame Theory
 Playing with Fiction: Ludology and the Evolution of Narrative
in Videogames

Dawn Stobbart
Abstract
Although videogame scholars have argued that ludology and narrative are at odds,
for example Juul 1 and Eskelinen, 2 this chapter counters this perceived difference,
showing instead that the partnership of narrative and ludology has produced an
evolution in narrative. Since Juul’s critique, ludology and narrative have co-
evolved to produce increasingly complex narrative modes, many of which are
found only in videogames, not in other media. In order to identify and adequately
comprehend the evolution of narrative in videogames, it is essential to engage
older narrative theories as well as older narratives. This allows us to probe ways in
which videogames support and go beyond older narrative theories as well as older
narrative structures and to test older theories against contemporary practice.
Using the popular videogame Assassin’s Creed 2 3 as a case study, this chapter will
show the contributions and limitations of Gerard Genette’s Narrative Discourse 4
for addressing narrative in videogames and the ways in which narrative practice
has outstripped traditional narrative theory and to further show the videogame as
part of the evolution of narrative.

Key Words: Videogames, narrative, ludology, gaming, theory, Assassin’s Creed

2, Narratology, narrative evolution, Genette.

*****

1. Introduction
As a fairly prolific gamer, I know that it can be harder to maintain attention in a
videogame that can take many hours to play than it might be to read a book, or
watch a film. Equally, I understand that there is a fine line between gameplay and
narrative content, too much of either and I could lose interest (think about Final
Fantasy XIII, for example – whilst the graphics and story were amazing, the lack of
gameplay made me give up within a few hour of playing!) But videogames are a
complex medium, able to carry both gameplay and narrative simultaneously,
adhering to ludological standards as well as traditional literary rules, such as the
much debated Narratology, ideally creating what has been coined ‘ludonarrative,’
the presence of a narrative that a player can both interact with, and influence.
Briefly, for anyone not familiar with the term, Narratology is ‘the study of the
structure and function of narrative’ with prominent narratologist Gerard Genette
defining it as the
146 Playing with Fiction
__________________________________________________________________
succession of events, real or fictitious, that are the subject of […]
the oral or written discourse that undertakes to tell an event or
series of events’ [...]without regard to the medium, linguistic or
other, through which knowledge of that totality comes to us. 5

Although to some extent this branch of narrative theory has been debunked by the
theoretical turn, the original Ludology versus Narratology debate is predicated on
such theories and it is essential to look back and to investigate how such theories
operate in contemporary videogames, a task that has not yet been extensively
undertaken, and while there is not enough time today to fully explore the status of
narrative in contemporary videogames, I shall primarily concentrate on a small, but
vital, aspect, that of temporality, one of the contested elements of narrative using
Assassin’s Creed 2 as a case study. Temporality has been an issue when
incorporating narrative in games; the now of the game, the time passing within the
virtual world is concerned with the events taking place in the game, while narration
is ‘about something that happened at some other time,’ which involves the player
‘exert[ing] effort in order to influence the outcome’ and following rules which
make playing possible; this is in conflict, according to Juul, with the presence of
narration in a game. At the time of publishing both Hamlet on the Holodeck and
Half Real, there were issues which made this relevant; whilst technology made
home computing and gaming possible, they were relatively simplistic in
comparison to similar equipment in 2013.
Assassin’s Creed 2 is the collective name for three instalments of the
videogame franchise Assassin’s Creed, all of which follow the same narrative and
gameplay structure. These are known individually as Assassin’s Creed 2, 6
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, 7 and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. 8 The series
was selected for a number of reasons: it is a successful videogame, both in
economic and critical terms, has a strong narrative, and contains a variety of
gameplay tropes. The franchise also uses traditional narrative tropes in its
construction, which allows the ludic and narrative facets of the game to become
merged, instead of being at odds with each other, such as the use of the framing
narrative.

2. Narrative Frameworks
Genette regards framing narratives primarily in terms of temporal levels and
anachronies, which is defined as a discrepancy between the chronological order of
events and the order in which they are related in a plot. In Narrative Discourse he
explains that ‘every anachrony constitutes, with respect to the narrative into which
it is inserted – onto which it is grafted – a narrative that is temporally second,
subordinate to the first,’ 9 by which he means that there is a primary narrative
timeframe, and a secondary, or subordinate one that relies on the first for its
delivery. In Assassin’s Creed 2, this is found in the ‘Desmond’ and the ‘Ezio’
 Dawn Stobbart 147
__________________________________________________________________
narratives, two temporally distinct but related part of the game. Centred on the
character Desmond Miles in the early twenty-first century, the Desmond narrative
overarches the franchise, whilst the Ezio narrative focuses on the Renaissance
character Ezio Auditore da Firenze. The Ezio narrative takes up the majority of the
game, but is framed by, or ‘grafted onto’ the Desmond narrative. Mieke Bal
explains this in terms of fabula relationships (Bal uses fabula to refer to ‘a series of
logically and chronologically related events that are caused or experienced by
actors;’ 10 she explains that ‘often the primary fabula is hardly more than the
occasion for a perceptible, character-bound narrator to narrate a story.’ 11 This is
found extensively throughout film and literature; a character in a narrative
recounting a story to another character constitutes a frame, for example. In
Assassin’s Creed 2, the Ezio narrative is constructed from a series of memories
found in Desmond’s DNA, relayed to player via the Animus, a virtual reality
machine. The time spent on the Ezio narrative might lead to an understanding that
this is the primary narrative, then. But, without Desmond’s interaction with the
Animus, there can be no Ezio narrative for the player to uncover. Narratalogical
analysis, therefore, shows the Ezio narrative to be subordinate to the Desmond
narrative, making Desmond’s temporality in Genette’s terminology, diegetic; that
is, set in the primary fictional universe of the 21st century. Continuing this analysis,
the Ezio narrative is metadiegetic, ‘a narrative within the narrative.’ 12
This traditional narrative structure has adapted well to the videogame format,
becoming an integral part of the immersive construction of many games, able to
explain and justify features that typically appear as non-narrative aspects of
videogame play, such as the Heads up Display (HUD), maps, character death and
reanimation and to overcome the knowledge that the player is not part of the game
world. It furthermore maintains interaction with the narrative, allowing a level of
immersion and interaction with the game world as a believable diegetic space that
transcends that of other media. Usually, user interface (or UI) information is
available only to the player and is therefore outside the game world; incorporating
the UI information into the diegesis allows a higher level of what Murray terms
‘immersion – actively creat[ing] belief […] to reinforce rather than to question the
reality of the experience.’ 13 As already mentioned, in the Assassin’s Creed
franchise, Desmond is accessing ancestral memories via his DNA, through
interaction with the Animus. The Animus controls what the player can and cannot
do throughout the game, and therefore has a veneer of authorial control over the
narrative, as well as revealing it. Functioning much like the holodeck of Janet
Murray’s utopian ideal, 14 the Animus allows Desmond to directly interact with his
ancestor – to become Ezio and relive his memories. The player takes control of
Desmond, and by extension Ezio, to interact with the memories and complete the
game, and to uncover the narrative. In addition to combining ludic and UI
information for the player, the Animus is the primary method of linking Desmond
to the secondary narrative in all the Assassin’s Creed games, although this is more
148 Playing with Fiction
__________________________________________________________________
readily apparent in Assassin’s Creed 2 through the introduction of the upgraded
Animus 2.0. This new Animus allows any non-player characters of the Desmond
narrative to communicate with Desmond as he is immersed in Ezio’s memories and
to relay information, such as maps and historical facts to Desmond (and by
extension the player), as well as to impart quest information that would typically be
non-diegetic.
The primarily sandbox structure of Assassin’s Creed 2 allows individual
memory fragments to be considered as separate entities, permitting what Genette
calls the anachronic extent of each narrative fragment to be variable. Genette uses
this term to describe ‘duration of story that is more or less long.’ 15 In practice, this
means that the memories last a particular length of time within the game. This is a
sophisticated temporal structure in any medium; these memories are woven
together to create a character complex enough to rival literary models and the
ability to interact with the memories of Ezio is a significant factor in understanding
his character. The memory fragments (which function much as chapters in a novel)
are spread throughout its entirety, taking a relatively short time (within the game
diegesis) to complete each one. There are a number of memories that have to be
completed in a specific time, for example, such as fighting or racing; the time taken
to play through these memories can be measured in minutes, making the
anachronic extent of the fragment this short, within a diegesis that covers many
years. Alternately, there are larger memories which are measured in days, or even
weeks – and while the anachronic reach is this long, ellipses and an exaggerated
timeframe within the scene that comprises each specific memory allows them to be
completed in minutes or hours, rather than the extended timeframe necessary if the
game were to be completed in real time.

3. Building the Picture

One of the primary narratological functions found in Assassin’s Creed 2 is the
use of analepsis, ‘an event that took place earlier than the point in the story where
we are at any given moment.’ 16 Genette sub-divides analepsis into two categories,
internal and external, which are differentiated by the narrative level at which they
occur. An external analepsis is one which takes place outside the diegesis,
providing narrative information to the player, whereas an internal analepsis is one
which takes place within the same diegesis, albeit at an earlier time, with the same
function. Structurally, the entire Ezio narrative is a series of external analepsis, as it
is dependent on and occurs within the Desmond narrative. Other videogames also
feature external analepsis to carry the narrative forward; Bioshock, 17 for example,
features a series of ghostly scenes, which take place earlier than the fictional time
of the game, providing information to the player, which helps to construct the
narrative, whilst Heavy Rain 18 and Uncharted 19 both allow the player to control
past versions of characters to relay narrative information.
 Dawn Stobbart 149
__________________________________________________________________
Analepsis is used in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, when playing as Ezio, to
further the narrative, with no direct relevance to the game’s plot. One set of these
missions are known as The Cristina Memories. Rebecca Crane, an NPC character
tells Desmond ‘as you raise your synchronization by executing events the way Ezio
lived them, you might discover some... repressed memories.’ 20 These repressed
memories, dealing with Ezio’s lover and their ill-fated relationship, are analepsis
within an analepsis, a meta-analepsis. They are also an internal analepsis; that is,
the memories are part of the fictional world of Ezio, which the player is already
part of, rather than external to the memories being played out, as with the
Desmond/Ezio structure. These analepsis take the form of five memories, which
result in small cut scenes; these cut scenes are based on the novel of the game
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and chart the interactions of the lovers throughout
Ezio’s life, from his first meeting her in 1476, to her death in 1489. These
memories, while expanding on Ezio’s past, bear no relation to the game’s
progression and so are a purely narrative insertion, providing the player with
information that allows her to understand the character she is controlling, and the
bearing this character has on events in the game, rather than any ludic functions.

4. Only a Game?
So far, the analysis of the Assassin’s Creed games shows that the temporal
structure of the games adheres to the rules of Narratology, with Genette’s thesis
being visible when considering the games construction. However, videogames
have unique properties that allow the player to become intimate in a narrative not
available to traditional media. Game franchises such as Assassin’s Creed can take
over 100 hours to complete, with the player gaining insight into the protagonist, the
diegesis, and the narrative through direct interaction, rather than description. For
instance, the player becomes aware of the moral character of Ezio through
interacting with him and controlling his actions; for example, if the player kills
another character that is not prescribed by the structure and narrative of the game, a
message will flash on the screen: ‘Warning: Ezio Auditore did not kill civilians’
and subsequent innocent deaths result in the player being ‘desynchronised’ –
expelled from the memory by the Animus. The player becomes aware of the
protagonists characteristics through interaction, rather than interpretation; making
the wrong choice brings the player to awareness of the moral, rather than being
shown the incident.
Playing a videogame with a sophisticated diegesis brings an insight into setting,
allowing the player to place the narrative within a specific context; Assassin’s
Creed 2, for example, is set in the Renaissance period, and the Italian landscape is
historically represented within the game to allow the player an insight into this
time period through the architecture and without directly referencing these
(although this history is simplified). The mastery of space in quest narratives has
featured throughout videogame history, with early games Adventure 21 and The
150 Playing with Fiction
__________________________________________________________________
Hobbit 22 drawing heavily on the literary tradition of the quest. In a similar vein,
modern videogames such as Skyrim 23 and Fallout 3 24 have evolved from earlier
Dungeons and Dragons type games, which in turn evolved from fantasy fiction
such as The Lord of the Rings. 25 Already, we are in narrative territory, inflected by
narrative genealogies. All make mastery of and progress through game space the
basis of both narrative and ludic videogame structures.
Yet unlike traditional narratives, videogames are not limited to using game
space as a setting for narrative and play, nor are players simply viewers or readers
of this space. In order to make ludic or narrative progress, players must interact
with and navigate the game space, the game cannot progress without mastering it;
neither can the narrative. This creates a new relationship of narrative consumer to
narrative space, an accepted factor in videogames, but one that some literary
scholars are resistant to. Direct interaction with the setting, rather than observation
also heightens the immersion of the player into the game and the narrative, just as
character interaction allows identification and involvement in a game. Whilst
technology has progressed and allowed game designers to create more complex
video games which allow multiple layers of content, the issue of whether a game
should include narrative is still valid. That the games DO contain narrative cannot
be denied by anyone who plays; games contain stories, even if these stories are
simple by literary standards. However, game study scholars are correct in asserting
that games should be considered as a separate entity to other forms of literature;
their structure is unlike any other form of narrative delivery and as such needs to
be explored and considered as a medium in their own right, not ‘just interactive
bits and pieces tacked on to narratology or dramaturgy.’ However, to wholly insist
on this is to ignore some fundamental aspects of how video games present
narrative, such as using cinematic sequences, mise-en-scene and atmospheric
music; these are established within the analysis of other media, and are as relevant
to videogame analysis as the study of gameplay mechanics and rule sets.
One of the issues facing the narrative analyst in videogame media is that the
constituent elements of a videogame present a coherent narrative and ludological
product when taken in their entirety, even if those elements appear to be mutually
exclusive at first glance, of which traditional Narratology does not account for. The
interaction the player has with the game is an important part of the videogame
experience, and influences how the player views the narrative. Future studies of
videogame analysis need to consider the role that this interactivity plays on the
narrative and the way the player interprets narrative when it is delivered in this
manner. To further understand the unique immersive qualities found in
videogames, the analyst needs to consider the role of identity in videogame
narratives and how videogames allow the player a specific perspective and
understanding of characters and methods in which the videogame brings about new
ways of presenting characters and information to the player (and viewer) of
 Dawn Stobbart 151
__________________________________________________________________
videogame narratives alongside the more traditional methods such as film and
literature.

Notes
1
Jesper Juul, ‘A Clash between Game and Narrative’ (Masters Thesis,
Copenhagen, 1999); Jesper Juul, Half Real: Videogames between Real Rules and
Fictional Worlds (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005); Jesper Juul, ‘What
Computer Games Can and Can’t Do’ (JesperJuul.net. 2000), accessed 27 August
2011, http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/wcgcacd.html.
2
Marrku Eskelinen, ‘The Gaming Situation’ (Gamestudies.org 2001), accessed 19
March 2012, https://www.gamestudies.org/0101/eskelinen/.
3
Ubisoft Games, Assassin’s Creed 2 (Montreal: Ubisoft Montreal, 2007-2011).
4
Gerard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (New York: The
Cornell University Press, 1980).
5
Ibid., 24.
6
Ubisoft, Assassin’s Creed 2 (Montreal: Ubisoft Montreal, 2009).
7
Ubisoft, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (Montreal: Ubisoft Montreal, 2010).
8
Ubisoft, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (Montreal: Ubisoft Montreal, 2011).
9
Genette, Narrative Discourse, 40.
10
Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2009), 5.
11
Ibid., 58.
12
Genette, Narrative Discourse, 228.
13
Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005), 110.
14
Ibid.
15
Genette, Narrative Discourse, 48.
16
Ibid., 40.
17
2K Games, Bioshock (New York: Take 2 Interactive, 2007).
18
Quantic Dream, Heavy Rain (London: Sony, 2010).
19
Naughty Dog, Uncharted (London: Sony, 2008-2011).
20
Ubisoft, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations ingame quote by Rebecca Crane to
Desmond Miles.
21
Rick Adams, The Colossal Cave Adventure Page (Colossal Cave Adventure, no
date), accessed 27 April 2012, http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/index.html.
22
Martijn Van der Heide, The Hobbit (Sinclair Infoseek, 2012), accessed 12
August 2012, http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0006440.
23
Bethseda, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (London: Microsoft Games, 2011).
24
Bethseda, Fallout 3 (London: Microsoft Games, 2008).
25
J. R. R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (London: Harpercollins, 2007).
152 Playing with Fiction
__________________________________________________________________

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Aristotle. Poetics. Project Gutenberg Ebook, 335 BCE.

Bal, Mieke. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto:

University of Toronto Press, 2009.

Bluestone, George. Novels into Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1966.

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PhD Thesis, Ann Arbor: UMI Dissertation Services, 1985.

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Eskelinen, Marrku. ‘The Gaming Situation’. 2001. Accessed 19 March 2012.

https://www.gamestudies.org/0101/eskelinen/.

Fagerholt, Erik, and Magnus Lorentzon. Beyond the HUD: Uder Interfaces for
Increased Player Immersion in FPS Games. Master’s Thesis, Göteborg: Chalmers
University of Technology, 2009.

Frasca, Gonzalo. Ludology Meets Narratology. Ludology.org. 1999. Accessed

April 2011. http://www.ludology.org/articles/ludology.htm.

Frasca, Gonzalo. Simulation versus Narrative. In The Video Game Theory Reader,
by Mark J. Wolf, and Bernard Perron, 221–235. London: Routledge, 2003.
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—––. Play the Message. PhD Thesis, Unpublished, 2007.

Genette, Gerard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. New York: Cornell

University Press, 1980.

Juul, Jesper. ‘A Clash Between Game and Narrative’. Masters Thesis,

Copenhagen, 1999.

—––. ‘What Computer Games Can and Can’t Do’. JesperJuul.net. 2000. Accessed
27 August 2011. http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/wcgcacd.html.

—––. Half Real: Videogames between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds.
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Murray, Janet. Hamlet on the Holodeck. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997.

Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folk Tale, 20th Edition. Austin: University of
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Ryan, Marie-Laure. Beyond Myth and Metaphor: The Case of Narrative in Digital
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Ubisoft. Assassin’s Creed. Surrey: Ubisoft, 2007.

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Dawn Stobbart is a PhD candidate at Lancaster University’s English Department,

focusing on the way that videogames function as a carrier for narrative and its role
within this medium. She has an interest in contemporary Literature, and especially
the way this translates to the videogame.
 What Is Videogame History?

Nick Webber
Abstract
When we refer to ‘history’ in the context of videogames, what do we mean? At
first, this seems a simple question: taking, for example, Space Invaders, we could
focus on the design of the game, its arcade release and its ongoing remaking. Yet
as games become more complex so do the answers to this question, and scholars
have explored not only the history of games as economic and cultural objects but
also the ways in which games both present and represent the history of the world
around us. Further complexity is added, however, by multiplayer games, particular
massively-multiplayer online games (MMOGs) such as World of Warcraft and
EVE Online. Should the historian of such games narrate the story of their creation,
or of the way they have changed over time, or of the in-game mythologies that set
the context in which their players play? Or, perhaps more interestingly, should they
recount the stories of the players themselves? This chapter seeks to examine the
way in which history is constituted and understood in and around videogames, as
economic objects (things made and sold), cultural artefacts (things experienced and
emulated) and as social environments (things inhabited and shaped). It considers
the ways in which games are historically interesting and the extent to which
historicity (historical accuracy) is important in constructing game histories. In
closing, it poses questions which may help us to understand more about the social
importance of MMOGs and about history itself. Can the most socially developed
game worlds be thought of as having credible and complete histories of their own?
And if, as Carr observed, our answer to the question ‘what is history?’ reflects our
position in time and our view of society, what are the implications of this
‘videogame history’ for the world of 2013?

Key Words: Gaming history, history, MMOG, culture, mythology, lore, EVE
Online, True Stories.

*****

1. Introduction
The history of videogames, gaming, and the games industry has been told and
retold in various media formats. Most of these histories are aimed at a non-
academic audience, written by non-historians, and intended to convey compelling
stories. We are told, for example, how Sony or Nintendo ‘conquered the world’
and regaled with tales of the ‘Golden Age’ of gaming. Iconic game names index
particular points in time – Pong, for example, features prominently – and
interviews with ‘industry luminaries’ are widely employed. 1 Alongside this
popular recounting sits a smaller number of works for a scholarly audience, which
156 What Is Videogame History?
__________________________________________________________________
declare themselves to be investigations of some aspect of videogame history,
situated in a variety of disciplines: electrical engineering, business studies and
cultural studies, among others. As with so much else in game studies, then,
videogame history presents us with a mixture of perspectives and priorities.
This variety suggests that concepts of history are important in our attempts to
understand videogames and their culture, and the study of games and history have
long been connected: Huizinga, originator of the much maligned ‘magic circle’
idea, was a historian first and foremost. In addition, a large number of games
include historical content, either explicitly (games set in World War 2, for
example) or thematically (as in the pseudo-medieval settings of many RPGs), and
discussions of games also engage with this material and other ‘historical’ ideas,
like nostalgia and tradition. In what follows, I will explore and try to make sense of
some of the ways in which the relationship between games and history is
articulated, and offer some thoughts and ask some questions about that relationship
and its meaning.

2. History
So what do we mean when we talk about the history of videogames? Historians
and philosophers have long sought to establish just what history is and what the
term history really means. A distinction is typically made between two common
meanings of history: between the sequence of past events and the inquiry into those
events conducted by the historian: 2 the notion of history is thus divided into an
object of study, and the discipline of studying it. For Carr, writing in the early
1960s, history was thus ‘the process of enquiry into the past of man in society;’ for
Oakeshott in the ‘70s, it was ‘a distinct kind of enquiry,’ clearly different ‘from an
inconsequential groping around in the confusion of all that may be going on.’ 3
More recently, recognising that history is not only practised in universities, it has
been suggested that history is a discourse as much as a discipline, 4 and
increasingly the importance of public history – the public understanding and
communication of history – has reshaped how we think about historical work. 5
Also important is the increasing breadth of approaches to the practice of history,
drawing on ideas from sociology, anthropology, philosophy and literary studies, to
name a few. 6 So, functionally, we can conceive of history as a term to describe
things which have gone before – the past – and also the discourses and practices
that surround the study, communication and memorialisation of that past.
For games, then, we can see that the notion of history has broad implications.
We can talk about histories of games, and also history in games, both reasonably
falling under the banner of videogame history. Videogames, and the context in
which they sit, can be objects of historical study, not only in the sense that they
exist at a particular point in past time, but that they can be explored from a variety
of viewpoints in order to allow us to better understand the society which produced
and consumed them. To take the so-called ‘three basic kinds of history,’ 7 games
 Nick Webber 157
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have political, economic and social pasts, and corresponding histories that might be
written about them. Politically, we might approach the history of videogames as
one of regulation, say, or of power relationships between government, industry and
players. Economically, we can explore the continuities and changes in the ways
games have been developed, produced and sold; socially, we might focus on game
communities and the environments in which they might be found. 8 And it may also
be productive to add a fourth category of history here: cultural history, reflecting
such things as the consumption of games, their emulation and tradition, and notions
of nostalgia.

3. History of Games
The game histories we have, however, do not necessarily echo such an
imagination of what history might be, and certainly do not address all aspects of
what we might think of as videogame history. Even in academic work, the term
history is often used quite imprecisely, leaving the reader wondering what exactly
is meant. 9 We are left to come to our own conclusions, and to realise for ourselves
the distinction between, for example, a notion of game history that we can ‘protect
and preserve’ (one imbued in some way with physicality), 10 and one which is
written down or which is experiential. The idea that a history of games is
articulated by a collection of the games themselves, and the platforms on which
they are played, seems common. 11 This conception of games as devices is closely
related to another prominent trend in game histories – the narrative of
technological innovation. Working backwards from the present to seek a ‘cause’ in
the past, many writers produce game histories designed to illustrate a progression,
either from innovative historical games such as ADVENTure to modern
incarnations, 12 or through developments in the technology used to deliver games. 13
And while chronology is the principal structuring device for many gaming
histories, 14 it is this narrative of progress which really stands out. Henry Lowood
notes similarities between the disciplines of game studies and the history of
science, and these can perhaps be reiterated for the history of games. But it appears
that, unlike the history of science, the history of videogames has thus far failed to
reach a point where new games and technologies can be thought of as ‘intellectual
disjunctions ripe for contextualization rather than a linear progression of
discoveries.’ 15
If Lowood’s observation rings true, so too does James Curran’s critique of
media history. 16 Curran observes three failings in the history of the media, 17 and
parallels can readily be drawn – we might in fact think of videogame history, in it’s
‘of games’ form, as a history of a medium. For Curran, media history often
separates the object of study from its broader context, both in media and in society,
and it tends to become parochial, problems which together result in the alienation
of the very media scholars it is intended to inform; and these are potential problems
for us, too. A focus on the games themselves tends to result in histories which seek
158 What Is Videogame History?
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connections with pre-computer games – board games, card games, etc. – ignoring
the relationship of gaming to other media consumption, even though scholars
elsewhere in the field are working to explore those relationships in the present.
Equally, the limited attention to the social history of gaming is problematic given
the hugely social nature of much modern videogame-playing. 18 Of course, the
history of videogames is yet young, but there is clearly much to learn here from the
practices of history in other, related fields.

4. History in Games
If that summarises in some way the history of games, what of history in games?
Here games present us with a number of interesting problems and opportunities.
Games offer a context for historical knowledge, and scholars have engaged with
issues surrounding historical games, with Medal of Honor and Civilization drawing
particular attention. Games such as these have been criticised for ‘presentations of
history that are stereotypically masculine, highly systematic, and focused on
spatially oriented interactivity’ and ‘aggressive power;’ 19 and commentators have
expressed concern that the line between videogame and historical fact is becoming
blurred, particularly in cases where historical videogames are used to illustrate
television history documentaries. 20 Yet some historians are eager to participate in
the development of historical games as educational platforms, 21 and Adam
Chapman has made plain his view that games such as Civilization and Assassin’s
Creed constitute history. 22 There is no doubt that games that deliberately
communicate history produce a discourse about the past; their engagement with a
mass audience, therefore, would qualify them as texts of public history. But as
Chapman notes, many historians approach historical games much as they approach
all attempts to move history beyond the traditional monograph; games are not
‘proper history’ because, ultimately, they are not books. 23
Of course, many games draw on conceptions of the past which are unconcerned
with historical accuracy or authenticity, and are thus less likely to convey historical
knowledge. Fantasy games in particular employ historical tropes – the knight,
perhaps, or agrarian society – to create a medievalised imaginary space in which
heroic deeds may be done. And even when a game setting has little to do with the
past of the world in which we live, it will often incorporate historical ideas,
providing a backstory to contextualise the events of the game and inviting you to
imagine a prehistory before, to use Juul’s example, the Space Invaders invaded. 24
This imagined past can be extraordinarily detailed, using inter-textual references to
enhance player engagement, and providing extensive historical information which
has no direct bearing on gameplay, but adds ‘thickness’ to the world. 25 World of
Warcraft, for example, incorporates an extensive mythology, played out in part
through regular game events tied to real world holidays and festivals. 26 Players can
demonstrate tremendous engagement with this seemingly ‘irrelevant’ information,
 Nick Webber 159
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some using the term ‘lore’ to describe their understanding of, and access to,
information about the perceived history of these worlds. 27

5. Players as History
And it is important to remember that history of any kind is dependent upon
people. In terms of videogames, ‘people’ overwhelmingly means ‘players,’ and
player histories offer a rich and rather underexploited source for those writing
videogame history. The gaming history of players is clearly important within game
culture, and is communicated in a variety of ways, through gamertags,
achievements and badges, for example. 28 Player experiences are less well recorded,
but they are prominent in discourses around practices like retro-gaming – where
nostalgia drives a compulsion to play specific games to try to recapture historic
experience. As mentioned above, however, popular histories often rely heavily on
interviews with ‘industry luminaries,’ seemingly in the belief that they offer an
incomparable insight into gaming history. But such practices create a privileged
history, akin to Victorian histories of great men, decision makers whose acts
changed the world.
So what is videogame history? Is it a combination of all these ideas, the
political, social, economic, cultural and technological history of games as objects,
the portrayal of the past in those games, and the experiences of their players? Or
might it be something more than that? It is clear that many of these notions of
history are complicated and extended by MMOGs, Massively Multiplayer Online
Games, especially those which are persistent and thus might be said to have an
existence over time, 29 rather than a ‘moment’ of existence in which they are played
and experienced. Given that, in the most developed online game worlds, there are
thriving economies, intricate social networks, organised groups with political
agendas and huge numbers of players engaging in a broad range of cultural
activities, might these worlds be thought of as having credible and complete
histories of their own?

6. EVE Online True Stories

To try to address that question, I will draw on the example of EVE Online, a
space-based MMOG celebrating its tenth anniversary this year (2013). EVE is of
particular interest here: unlike many MMOGs in which players are divided across a
number of servers, in EVE all players play on a single ‘shard.’ EVE has more than
half a million subscribers, 30 who come together to socialise, to play and,
predominantly in EVE, to fight. While EVE uses a backstory and fictional past to
explain basic game structures and contextualise player vs. environment content, the
majority of activity in EVE is player vs. player in nature. Thus the majority of
player experience is contextualised not by the history provided by the game, but by
relationships with other players. EVE is not a game you play alone; it is renowned
for its difficulty, and as a consequence is intensely social.
160 What Is Videogame History?
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The basic social unit in EVE is the corporation. As the game has developed
over time, however, corporations have come together to form alliances, the largest
of which boasts over 12,000 members 31 and, more recently, alliances have come
together to form coalitions, which are even bigger. One aspect of the game is the
ability to control space, and a map of sovereignty in EVE looks much like any
other political geography. The largest coalitions hold huge areas of space,
punctuated by smaller territories of less powerful alliances. These are organised
and often extremely hierarchical communities, and coalition and alliance members
conduct diplomacy with other polities. And EVE has economics, too: to build
spaceships in which to fight, you need materials and equipment, and these goods
are traded on an open market, managed by an economist employed by CCP Games,
EVE’s developer and publisher.
In EVE, then, we have an environment of shifting sovereignty, diplomatic
relations, extensive social networks and practices, and free-market economics, all
set against the cultural activity of play over a period of a decade. And the players
are real people, creating rich histories in fictional places, the consequences of
which can reflect into society more broadly – in relationships between players, say,
or through the connection of game assets and real world money arising from the
purchase and sale of subscription extensions. In EVE, there are very clearly two
kinds of history: the history the game presents, and the history players make for
themselves. How do we disentangle this complexity? Is this really history at all?
CCP certainly seem to think so. To celebrate EVE’s ten years online, in April
they launched a site entitled ‘True Stories from the First Decade,’ 32 ‘a place where
people can read the history of our Universe, as told by those that inhabit it.’ 33 The
site heralded a competition: players were invited to submit stories about their EVE
experiences, and these were posted publicly. Readers could add comments in the
‘debate’ section, and vote for the stories they liked. The contest closed in early
June, with 757 stories submitted, but CCP intend to continue to maintain the site. 34
Although a PR and marketing activity at heart, ‘True Stories’ offers a
fascinating resource for the historian. The discourse of the site is saturated with
contested and complex ideas: not only does the title proclaim the possibility of
truth, but commentators remark on the ‘importance’ of stories, 35 and on their
biased or propagandist nature. 36 The winning story, written by The Mittani, leader
of one of the largest alliances in the game, represents an event in which his alliance
was directly involved, on the winning side: history, then, being written by the
victors. In many ways, The Mittani plays the role of politician; and politicians
often do write histories, sometimes among the most contentious – Alan Clark’s The
Donkeys, 37 for example. It is difficult to see how these practices could not be
compared with history outside the game and, in reality many historians would be
overjoyed to have this level of rich engagement with a historical problem. So,
again, is this history? I do not think we can answer that question with any certainty.
 Nick Webber 161
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7. Conclusion
It seems, in fact, that videogame history provides us with a more complicated
problem than the history of the world around us, especially when we consider the
interrelationship between real world actors and fictional histories in persistent
multiplayer games, and that games represent the discourses of history which
societies produce when they communicate historical knowledge. If our answer to
the question ‘what is history?’ reflects, as Carr observed, our position in time and
our view of society, what then are the implications of ‘videogame history’ for the
world of 2013? Many scholars, Benedict Anderson prominent among them, 38 have
considered the importance for a community of a shared sense of history, and the
intricacies of videogame history seem to support more general ideas that our
concept of community has been reshaped by online activity and modern cultural
practices. When we look at EVE Online, we can see how the communities within
the game have arisen in response to struggles for power and control, producing
histories to underwrite this activity which can then form the basis of identities –
‘It’s important for us, to know where we came from,’ as one True Stories
contributor remarks. Games seem, in the construction of their history, to stand at a
cusp of development, where there is now an increasing drive to make them
genuinely educative, rather than to make games about education; to take the
complexities of history out of books and convey them through games with
expertise and skill. The rapidly increasing number of histories about games, and
the large public market for such histories, demonstrates that our society sees
videogames as important: our histories of their production, regulation and
consumption in some way index our notions of human ‘progress,’ whatever that
might mean, over the last 50 years. And finally, and perhaps fundamentally, the
difficulty of clearly answering the question of what videogame history is suggests
that we are perhaps no longer able to be clear about what history is.

Notes
1
I take the phrase from Daniel Pargman and Peter Jakobssen, ‘Five Perspectives
on Computer Game History’, Interactions 14, No. 6 (2007): 27.
2
For example, Edward H. Carr, What Is History? (Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books, 1964), 20-21; Michael Oakeshott, On History and Other Essays
(Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999), 1-3; Keith Jenkins, Rethinking History
(London: Routledge, 2003), 6-7.
3
Carr, What Is History, 48; Oakeshott, On History, 2.
4
Jenkins, Rethinking History, 31-32.
5
Ludmilla Jordanova, History in Practice, 2nd Edition (London: Hodder Education,
2006), 126-149.
6
Ibid., 63-80.
7
Ibid., 41.
162 What Is Videogame History?
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8
For example, the arcade: see Van Burnham, Supercade: A Visual History of the
Videogame Arcade 1971-1984 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).
9
See, for example, Timothy Burke, ‘Can a Table Stand on One Leg? Critical and
Ludological Thoughts on Star Wars: Galaxies’, Game Studies 5, No. 1 (2005),
accessed 11 July 2013, http://www.gamestudies.org/0501/burke/. Is the history of
the game distinct from the developmental history of the game here?
10
Joanna Barwick, James Dearnley and Adrienne Muir, ‘Playing Games with
Cultural Heritage: A Comparative Case Study Analysis of the Current Status of
Digital Game Preservation’, Games and Culture 6, No. 4 (2011): 374.
11
E.g. Ibid., 373-390; Diane Carr, ‘Game On: The Culture and History of
Videogames (May-September 2002, London; October 2002-February 2003,
Edinburgh)’, Visual Communication 2, No. 2 (2003): 163-168.
12
E.g. Bruce Damer, ‘Meeting in the Ether: A Brief History of Virtual Worlds as a
Medium for User-Created Events’, Journal of Virtual Worlds Research 1, No. 1
(2008): 1-17; Maeva Veerapen, ‘Where Do Virtual Worlds Come From?: A
Genealogy of Second Life’, Games and Culture 8, No. 2 (2013): 98-116.
13
E.g. Stephen D. Bristow, ‘The History of Video Games’, IEEE Transactions on
Consumer Electronics 23, No. 1 (1977): 58-68; Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost,
‘Random and Raster: Display Technologies and the Development of Videogames’,
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 31 (2009): 34-43.
14
Pargman and Jakobsson, ‘Five Perspectives’, 27.
15
Henry Lowood, ‘Game Studies Now, History of Science Then’, Games and
Culture 1, No. 1 (2006): 78.
16
James Curran, ‘Media and the Making of British Society, c.1700-2000’, Media
History 8, No. 2 (2002): 135-154.
17
Ibid., 135.
18
There are exceptions, of course, such as Dmitri Williams, ‘A (Brief) Social
History of Video Games’, in Playing Computer Games: Motives, Responses, and
Consequences, eds. Peter Vorderer and Jennings Bryant (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum, 2006), 229-247.
19
Kevin Schut, ‘Strategic Simulations and Our Past: The Bias of Computer Games
in the Presentation of History’, Games and Culture 2, No. 3 (2007): 214 and 222.
20
Jerome de Groot, Consuming History (London: Routledge, 2009), 144.
21
E.g. Kevin Kee et al., ‘Towards a Theory of Good History through Gaming’,
Canadian Historical Review 90, No. 2 (2009): 303-326.
22
Adam Chapman, ‘Privileging Form Over Content: Analysing Historical
Videogames’, Journal of Digital Humanities 1, No. 2 (2012), accessed 11 July
2013,
http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-2/privileging-form-over-content-by-adam-c
hapman/.
23
Ibid.
 Nick Webber 163
__________________________________________________________________

24
Jesper Juul, ‘Games Telling Stories? A Brief Note on Games and Narratives’,
Game Studies 1, No. 1 (2001), accessed 11 July 2013,
http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/.
25
Tanya Krzywinska, ‘World Creation and Lore: World of Warcraft as Rich Text’,
in Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader, eds. Hilde G.
Corneliussen and Jill Walker Rettberg (London: MIT Press, 2006): 123-4.
26
Ibid., 134-137.
27
See, for example, Eric Hayot, ‘Interview with Chris Lena’, Game Studies 9, No.
1 (2009), accessed 11 July 2013,
http://gamestudies.org/0901/articles/interview_lena.
28
Mikael Jakobsson, ‘The Achievement Machine: Understanding Xbox 360
Achievements in Gaming Practices’, Games Studies 11, No. 1 (2011), accessed 11
July 2013, http://gamestudies.org/1101/articles/jakobsson.
29
Burke, ‘Can A Table’ and Hayot, ‘Interview’ demonstrate some of the problems
of talking about history in terms of MMOGs.
30
CCP Loktofeit, ‘EVE Online Surpasses 500,000 Subscribers Worldwide’,
EVEOnline.com, last modified 28 February 2013, accessed 11 July 2013,
http://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/press-releases/eve-online-sur
passes-500-000-subscribers-worldwide/.
31
Daniel Hoffend, ‘Alliance Ranking: Sorted by Number of Members’, DOTLAN
EveMaps, accessed 11 July 2013, http://evemaps.dotlan.net/alliance/memberCount.
32
CCP Games, ‘True Stories from the First Decade’, EVEOnline.com, accessed 11
July 2013, https://truestories.eveonline.com/.
33
Torfi Frans, ‘Can You Help Us Find the True Stories of The First Decade?’,
EVEOnline.com, last modified 3 April 2013, accessed 11 July 2013,
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/true-stories-of-the-first-decade/.
34
Torfi Frans, ‘The Circle Is Complete: Voting Finished for True Stories’, last
modified 5 June 2013, accessed 11 July 2013,
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/the-circle-is-complete-voting-fini
shed-in-true-stories/.
35
For example, Spike Spiegel-XI, ‘History of the Creation of Goonswarm’, 21
May 2013, accessed 11 July 2013, https://truestories.eveonline.com/points/1741-
history-of-the-creation-of-goonswarm: ‘It’s important for us, to know where
we came from’; Burseg Sardaukar, ‘Hulkageddon Is Important in EVE
History’, last modified 23 April 2013, accessed 11 July 2013,
https://truestories.eveonline.com/points/851-hulkageddon-is-important-in-eve-histo
ry; Jiggle Physics, ‘Cornerstone of Eve’, last modified 18 May 2013, accessed
11 July 2013, https://truestories.eveonline.com/points/1695-cornerstone-of-eve:
‘Probably the single most important thing to happen to EVE’.
36
Peter Powers, ‘one sided view with a stretch on what really happened’, last
modified 8 May 2013, accessed 11 July 2013, https://truestories.eveonline.com/po
164 What Is Videogame History?
__________________________________________________________________

ints/1570-one-sided-view-with-a-stretch-on-wh at-really-happend: ‘the author of

this story presents a one sided propaganda view on what happend, stretching the
truth in actual events that where happening by exaggerating the role of his own
corp/alliance in the events’; Assistant Stone, ‘Poorly written, bias, no objective’,
last modified 20 May 2013, accessed 11 July 2013, https://truestories.eveonline.
com/points/1716-poorly-written-bias-no-objective: ‘its a bias political piece to
belittle CVA, not to tell a real story’.
37
Alan Clark, The Donkeys (London: Pimlico, 1991).
38
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism, Revised Edition (London: Verso, 2006).

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 Nick Webber 167
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Sardaukar, Burseg. ‘Hulkageddon Is Important in EVE History’. Last modified 23

April 2013. Accessed 11 July 2013. https://truestories.eveonline.com/points/851-
hulkageddon-is-important-in-eve-history.

Schut, Kevin. ‘Strategic Simulations and Our Past: The Bias of Computer Games
in the Presentation of History’. Games and Culture 2, No. 3 (2007): 213–235.

Spiegel-XI, Spike. ‘History of the Creation of Goonswarm’. Last modified 21 May

2013. Accessed 11 July 2013. https://truestories.eveonline.com/points/1741-
history-of-the-creation-of-goonswarm.

Stone, Assistant. ‘Poorly Written, Bias, No Objective’. Last modified 20 May

2013. Accessed 11 July 2013.
https://truestories.eveonline.com/points/1716-poorly-written-bias-no-objective.

Veerapen, Maeva. ‘Where Do Virtual Worlds Come From?: A Genealogy of

Second Life’. Games and Culture 8, No. 2 (2013): 98–116.

Williams, Dmitri. ‘A (Brief) Social History of Video Games’. In Playing Computer

Games: Motives, Responses, and Consequences, edited by Peter Vorderer, and
Jennings Bryant, 229–247. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006.

Nick Webber is Senior Researcher and Research Developer at the Birmingham

Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University, UK. His
current research includes contemporary popular music consumption, online
archiving and public history, and the culture of massively multiplayer online
games.
 Text as Ruleset: How Games Precede Humanities

Roger Travis
Abstract
In this chapter I argue that the unavoidable conclusion that text is ruleset, arising
from the analogy of oral epic with narrative games, allows us to understand the
humanistic study of games as both imperative and foundational for the humanities
themselves. When we realise that texts are rulesets, participation in the Iliad and in
Plato’s dialogues and in Skyrim becomes legible both as performances within
rulesets and as iterations of those rulesets. In turn, reading these performances as
commensurable allows us to see that games, as play-practice, precede and
condition the humanities themselves. The role of humanistic study, going back to
the Renaissance and even to the culture of Athens to which the Renaissance
humanists looked, is from a text-as-ruleset perspective to enable human beings,
performing in culture, to become aware of the way their performances are shaped
by the rulesets that have come before, and the way in turn that their performances
function as rulesets for performances that come after. Plato gave us a wonderful
image of that awareness in the prisoner getting up from his seat in the cave and
getting a good look at what is really going on; what is going on is that culture is
being transmitted through the shadow-puppet play – what I call the cave-culture
game, since the prisoners have contests to name the next shadow. As that game
precedes the humanistic reflection of the prisoner, as the works of the homeric
bards (the Iliad and the Odyssey) precede Plato, so do games precede humanities.
Instead of treating games as texts, we must treat texts as games.

Key Words: Games, humanities, text, practomime, Homer, Iliad, Odyssey, Plato.

*****

In this chapter, I try to open a new direction in the humanistic criticism of play
and art, based on a new way of establishing the relationship between the two. I see
games and other works of art as part of a continuum of mimesis – or, in my own
terminology, of practomime: that is, literally, the doing of playing pretend. In this
chapter I formulate the radical hypothesis that in order to put the humanistic
criticism of games on a secure footing, we must see the texts that humanists study
as rulesets and our study of them as play. We must, I argue, begin to understand
how games condition humanities and how the players of games are themselves
humanists.
I start with an example that is irreverent but arresting. For a period of about six
months, two years ago now, I was engulfed (not to say ‘immersed’) in the
audiobook versions of G. R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. It may well have
been a consequence of listening to them rather than materially, textually reading
170 Text as Ruleset
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them that I became fascinated by the way Martin plays with medieval history on
the one hand and high fantasy on the other, for what I was listening to when I
listened to those books was a performance of the actor Roy Dotrice of a
performance by G. R. R. Martin of materials afforded by historical and literary
tradition.
The relationship between Martin’s performance, Dotrice’s performance, and
my own receptive performance seems to me to be made much clearer when we
think less in terms of literature and more in terms of play, especially when there are
also such things as HBO series to work into a growing transmedia tapestry
(tapestries, as you will see below, being good to think with).
I want to suggest that it can be interpretatively helpful to see Martin as the
designer and first player of a mod of a game called ‘fantasy fiction’ and Roy
Dotrice as the player of that game designed by Martin. The text of the novels is the
ruleset of Martin’s game; the nearly infinite texts of medieval history and fantasy
literature are the rulesets of the undesigned one Martin modded and then played to
create it. As Martin’s scope for creativity was vast, a literary sandbox of almost
unlimited dimensions, Dotrice’s scope for creativity and virtuosity was by
comparison very narrow – yet at the same time infinite, in the same way that the
performance-scope of a 2D sidescroller – or of a level of HALO, or of a given book
of the Iliad – is both limited and infinite.
Call it the great chain of practomime: from Tolkien and the Bayeux Tapestry to
Martin to Dotrice to me, just as we might draw it from Beowulf to Tolkien to
Turbine to my students playing The Lord of the Rings Online in my Homer course.
Socrates proposes something very similar in Plato’s Ion: the rhapsode is the final
link in a chain of magnetic rings that begins with ‘Homer.’ Rulesets and game-
mechanics are perhaps not exactly what we think they are: perhaps, like more
traditional forms of metaphor, they both constrain and release our creativity, and
give us in that double-motion the opportunity for immersive, transformative
virtuosity that can enliven us and connect us to our communities.
If this idea has merit, not only may it be possible to read transmedia artefacts
both as discourse and as game, and to read them across their various media while
preserving both their totalising pretensions and the individuality of their
component practices (that is, we could for example read graphic Batman, the film
The Dark Knight, and the game Arkham Asylum isomorphically both separately
and together), but it may be possible to find the essential complementarity we have
been searching for between player-experience and game-design in a corresponding
complementarity between literary criticism and game-design criticism. Among
other things, this complementarity would put behind us the distinction between
content and rules forever, since we would at last be able to see that content is a
form of rule, as the Bayeux Tapestry is a part of the ruleset of A Song of Ice and
Fire, given that it controlled the relation between Martin’s input and the text he
produced; as the text of A Song Ice and Fire is a part of the ruleset of A Song of Ice
 Roger Travis 171
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and Fire, given that it controlled the relation between Roy Dotrice’s input and the
audiobook he produced; as the sound of the audiobook is a part of the ruleset of the
audiobook I listen to, given that it controls the relation between the state of mind I
bring to it and that state of mind in which I leave it.
It would in short mean that we could on the one hand read rulesets as literature
and on the other critique the design of discursive artefacts like texts. It would mean
that we could find new ways to appreciate and to critique the playfulness of novels
like Ulysses and epics like the Iliad, and new ways to appreciate and to critique the
lapidary literary qualities of games like Skyrim.
Martin titled A Song of Ice and Fire advisedly, I think, with reference to the
bardic traditions of European culture that gave us also the Iliad, the Odyssey,
Beowulf, and the Song of Roland among many others. As I have demonstrated, 1
those bardic traditions worked like games. That we call them ‘oral improvisatory
traditions’ rather than ‘games’ is a historical and semantic accident no more
remarkable than the one that has us calling Skyrim (or Mass Effect) a ‘game’ rather
than a ‘tale.’ For the truth is that as the homeric bards played the stories of Achilles
and Odysseus, Martin plays the stories of the Starks, the Lannisters, and the
Targaryens, and I play Skyrim. And, in each case, our play is bounded by a ruleset
that controls the choices we make and the effect those choices have on the state of
the performance in which we are currently engaged. Moreover, I want to suggest,
those rulesets may be read comparatively in the way they specifically allow the
player to play a mythic past.
As I proposed above, I want to go on along this line of inquiry to argue that
once these performances produce a more fixed kind of artefact – a recording of a
bard’s performance, the text of A Song of Ice and Fire, a gameplay video of Skyrim
– those fixed artefacts themselves function like games, as rulesets for performances
by the players in their audiences.
The first step, however, is to put the isomorphism among these various kinds of
mythic constraints (game-rules, bardic conventions, literary genre) on a solid
footing. The world of A Song of Ice and Fire is a pastiche of medieval Europe; that
much is clear from the opening paragraphs of A Game of Thrones, and nothing
changes at least as far as the closing paragraphs of A Dance with Dragons, except
that over the course of five enormous tomes and/or hundreds of hours of audiobook
we move from a world bounded by the limits of a historical reality we recognize
(perhaps there used to be dragons, and magic, but there is no evidence of it in the
world) to a world bounded by the much wider limits of high-fantasy (queens riding
dragons into the sky). Martin, that is, gradually changes the mythic rules on his
audience, and to wonderful effect.
That world created by those rules is a performance of the past in which Martin
takes events from our world – notably the Norman conquest, figured as the dragon-
enabled conquest of Westeros by Aegon – and projects them into the playspace of
his imaginative performance, leaving us the record of the text of A Song of Ice and
172 Text as Ruleset
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Fire as the rules of our own performance within that world. For comparison’s sake,
it’s worth noting that J. R. R. Tolkien did much the same thing in constructing
what he called the Quenta – the mythos behind The Lord of the Rings. Of course
all composers of fiction do something similar when they create their fictional
worlds, even in realistic fiction like that of Austen or Steinbeck.
But just as there is a continuum of usefulness in talking about games as
occasions of narrative (useful for Skyrim and BioShock, less useful for Tetris and
Temple Run, though no less true), there is a continuum of usefulness in talking
about textual performance as playing with the cultural materials of mythic history
(useful for The Lord of the Rings and Ulysses, less useful for Pride and Prejudice
and The Grapes of Wrath, though no less true).
The comparison between Skyrim and A Song of Ice and Fire helps because
when we read Martin’s saga as a play-performance in which he chooses and
transforms the elements of the Norman conquest and chooses and transforms
elements of Tolkien, and combines them as a bard combined the themes he had
from his professional forebears to create a mythic past, we gain the ability to
analyse the affinity between the experience of reading Martin’s work and the
experience of playing Skyrim, and, just as importantly, the affinity between the
cultural effects of the saga and the game, as demonstrated by such parergic player-
performances as A Wiki of Ice and Fire 2 and The Elder Scrolls Wiki. 3 One need
only compare the Jane Austen Wiki 4 to see that there is something in Martin’s
world that corresponds better with The Elder Scrolls than with Austen.
In fact, despite the appearance of futurity, the same is true of Star Wars (‘a long
time ago’) and of Battlestar Galactica (‘All this has happened before’) and of
Mass Effect (‘A myth common to several cultures in the galaxy, Reapers were
imagined to be space monsters who consumed entire stars’). The advent of reliable
records of the past (curse you, written culture!) has gradually robbed us of the
ability to imagine dragons and heroes in our past; the homeric bards’ mythic
ruleset is therefore no longer playable exactly as they played it, but with the
imaginative tweak by which the past of a fictional world becomes our own past
while we inhabit that world, we can keep playing by the rules of mythic archetypes
and keep fighting dragons whether those dragons have scales or titanium armour.
If a rule, in general, is a constraint placed on an agent by the agent’s cultural
situation, then in a cultural zone understood as appropriate for play that general
sense of ‘rule’ transfers nicely to a sort of constraint that allows a player to make
choices (cf. Sid Meier’s famous definition of a game as ‘a series of interesting
choices;’ 5 it is also worth noting that ‘metaphor’ means ‘transfer,’ etymologically
speaking). The constraint of such rules of play at the same time creates what we
can call a practomimetic possibility-space – what many critics of games would call
a ‘gamespace.’ A game-rule constrains players of a game in such a way as to create
a range of possible play-actions; a game’s ruleset is the sum total of those play-
action-defining constraints in a given instance of game-play.
 Roger Travis 173
__________________________________________________________________
In this chapter I thus argue that that same understanding of what a ruleset is
applies equally well to a literary text, and that this application is worth making
because 1) it allows us to critique games and literature commensurately, and 2) it
allows us better to locate both games and literary texts both in current cultural
experience and in relation to older cultural experience.
Above, I used the audiobooks of A Song of Ice and Fire to illustrate this idea;
it's very instructive now to consider the HBO version of the same work, entitled
Game of Thrones, and to make the same illustration by means of that masterly
performance of Martin’s ruleset. Even better, a comparison of Roy Dotrice’s
audiobook performances of the books, John Lee’s audiobook performance of one
of them – A Feast for Crows (Book 4 of the Song) –, and the HBO team’s
production of A Game of Thrones (Book 1 of the Song) as Season 1 of Game of
Thrones, will help me make my point much clearer.
The seeming pedantry of enumerating the exact titles, formats, and book and
series numbers of the above works (all equally instructively viewed as a single
work, as the Iliad is viewed as a single work despite being a patchwork-quilt of
lays sung by different bards) is actually quite germane to my point: each of these
instances of A Song of Ice and Fire is its own playing out of the ruleset established
by the text – which, as we also saw above, is itself a playing out of a ruleset
established by the set of cultural materials GRR Martin drew, and then elaborated,
upon in composing it. They must all both be seen as a single work, and seen as
separate works or, perhaps better, as separate instances of the single transmedia
work. Defining art in terms of rulesets can lead us, that is, to a new understanding
of how what we now call a ‘work’ organises itself in culture apart from the
individual agency that we used to think of as the province of the author.
This notion of what a work is when seen in terms of its rulesets is very well
illustrated by tabletop RPG’s like Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). Tabletop RPG’s,
in which a group of players together craft a narrative performance within a
multiply-determined ruleset (multiple in that some of the rules come from the
game-rules, others from the game-master, and still others from the players
themselves) demand to be seen along different, though parallel, lines when we
discuss the relationship of works of art to game-rules. The tabletop RPG based on
the world of A Song of Ice and Fire helps greatly here: 6 this ruleset (including of
course such content-driven and -driving constraints like choice of character-class,
choice of origin, and narrative geography) allows players (in which category I
would include the gamemaster) to create performances that stand as individual
instances of the work, analogous to e.g. HBO’s Game of Thrones.
My notion of a ‘Great Chain of Practomime’ is as a theory on which to base a
critical methodology that can ignore the false border between games and literary
texts, and by extension between those things and other kinds of practomime like
film and painting. According to that schema, the A Song of Ice and Fire: The
RPG’s ruleset is one link in the Great Chain, while D&D would be another; their
174 Text as Ruleset
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positions in the chain, though, are crucially, though also deceptively, different. I
close with a glance at this deceptiveness, which points a way forward for my
theory.
D&D organises many of the same performance materials Tolkien organises in
The Lord of the Rings (indeed, some of its performance materials, like halflings
and rangers, come directly from The Lord of the Rings) and Martin organises in A
Song of Ice and Fire; in that sense D&D, as a ruleset, ‘hangs’ on the chain from
multiple dependencies, while Song of Ice and Fire: The RPG seems to hang
directly from one – the text of the Song. But the Song of Ice and Fire RPG hangs
also from D&D itself, just as Roy Dotrice’s performance hangs both from Martin’s
text and from the incredible range of dramas he has performed in, and which he
both uses to shape his reading of the audiobook and evokes in his listeners’
memories. Just as HBO’s version hangs also from the films on which its visual
style draws (notably Ridley Scott’s period work and HBO’s own Rome). My chain
is becoming a web, or perhaps a hauberk.
Each link, each knot (nodus, a Roman would say), is a performance – that is, a
re-compositional enactment. When we read the records of such performances as A
Song of Ice and Fire – even when we read such records silently – we are ourselves
performing such a re-compositional enactment: the text is enacted in our
imaginations, and because we are individual agents, unique both as individuals and
also even from ourselves the way we were the day before, we must re-compose the
text as we enact it.
The ruleset of our performance is first and foremost the textual record left by a
performer like Martin, but just as Roy Dotrice re-composes that ruleset when he
records the audiobooks, just as a dungeon-master re-composes the ruleset of D&D,
allowing his players to do the same; just as a bard re-composed the Wrath of
Achilles, and allowed his audience to do the same – just as all those performances
draw on uncountable numbers of other performances –, our own re-compositional
enactments of Martin’s Song play by a ruleset that is itself determined by our
performance, in the moment of that performance.
That last formulation seems to me to imply that rulesets are bigger than we
usually give them credit for; one benefit of analysis across the text/game boundary
may be that it allows us to read game-rulesets (that is, what is there in the code – or
the box – and only what is there in the code, or box) as occasions for performances
that complete those rulesets, rather than as artefacts usefully analyzable in
themselves. In subsequent work, I try to demonstrate the usefulness of this
approach to the humanistic criticism of games. 7
 Roger Travis 175
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Notes
1
Roger Travis, ‘Achilles Phat Lewtz’, The Escapist 166 (2008), accessed 9 May
2013, http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_166/5230-Achil
les-Phat-Lewtz; Roger Travis, ‘Epic Style: Re-Compositional Performance in the
BioWare Digital RPG’, Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Denizens, eds. Voorhees
et al. (New York: Continuum, 2012), 235-256, with reference to Albert Lord, The
Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981).
2
A Wiki of Ice and Fire, accessed 9 May 2013,
http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Main_Page.
3
The Elder Scrolls Wiki, accessed 9 May 2013,
http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_Wiki.
4
The Jane Austen Wiki, accessed 9 May 2013,
http://janeausten.wikia.com/wiki/The_Jane_Austen_Wiki.
5
Andrew Rollings and Dave Morris, Game Architecture and Design (Scottsdale,
Az: Coriolis, 2000), 38.
6
Robert Schwalb, A Song of Ice and Fire: The RPG: A Game of Thrones Edition
(Seattle, WA: Green Ronin Publishing, 2012).
7
E.g. Roger Travis, ‘Ritual Immersion in Papo & Yo’, Play the Past, 1 May 2013,
accessed 9 May 2013, http://www.playthepast.org/?p=3697.

Bibliography
Lord, Albert. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1981.

Rollings, Andrew, and Dave Morris. Game Architecture and Design. Scottsdale,
AZ: Coriolis, 2000.

Schwalb, Robert. A Song of Ice and Fire: The RPG: A Game of Thrones Edition.
Seattle, WA: Green Ronin Publishing, 2012.

Travis, Roger. ‘Achilles’ Phat Lewtz’. The Escapist 166 (2008). Accessed 9 May
2013.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_166/5230-Achilles-Ph
at-Lewtz.

—––. ‘Epic Style: Re-Compositional Performance in the BioWare Digital RPG’. In

Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Denizens, edited Gerald Voorhees, Joshua Call,
and Katie Whitlock, 235–256. New York: Continuum, 2012.
176 Text as Ruleset
__________________________________________________________________

—––. ‘Ritual Immersion in Papo & Yo’. Play the Past, 1 May 2013. Accessed 9
May 2013. http://www.playthepast.org/?p=3697.

Roger Travis is Associate Professor of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, at

the University of Connecticut. He works on connections between ancient culture
and contemporary digital culture, digital games in particular.
 Challenging Ideologies of Gender through Indie Games

Karen Mentz
Abstract
The ‘innocent’ way in which video games are situated as entertainment render
them very successful media for the construction and maintenance of normative
myths and ideologies regarding gender. The emerging indie video game market
provides a solid platform for game developers to challenge and subvert ideologies
perpetuated in mainstream games. The main argument put forward in this chapter
is that contemporary indie games can and do, in subtle ways, subvert the
naturalised dominant ideologies circulating in mainstream popular culture. Laura
Mulvey’s contention in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) that
independent cinema can be seen as a possible means to subvert ideologies in
mainstream cinema is applied in this chapter to indie- and mainstream video
games. 1 The indie game Braid 2 and the mainstream game Tomb Raider are
analysed to explore the extent to which Braid in particular is directly challenging
widely accepted patriarchal structures perpetuated in Tomb Raider. 3

Key Words: Indie games, femininity, ideologies.

*****

1. Introduction
The main aim of this chapter is to analyse the ways in which patriarchal
structures presented in mainstream games are challenged by indie games. By
comparing different elements of mainstream and indie games, this chapter attempts
to clarify the important role that indie games play in providing a challenge to
dominant hegemonic systems and the binary coding of masculinity and femininity
as can be seen in a variety of mainstream games.
This chapter analyses and compares the representation of femininity and
dominant patriarchal structures in the mainstream game Tomb Raider video game
series and indie game Braid. These representations are compared and critically
analysed in relation to each other, to conclude whether or not indie games can be
seen as a medium or genre that operates in a subversive way and thus create a
space where stereotypes and hegemonic ideologies can be contested and even
altered.

2. What Is an Indie Game?

Defining an indie game proves to be quite challenging. A popular definition
prevalent in the indie development community insists that for a game to be
considered ‘indie’ the developer must experiment with unique ideas, technologies
and gameplay. 4 According to this definition, the artistic value of the game is
178 Challenging Ideologies of Gender
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therefore considered crucial to its categorisation as an indie game. Others argue
that any game that is not published by a big corporation can be considered indie. 5
This definition of an indie game focuses more on the anti-corporate attitude that
many indie developers assume. According to PC Gamer magazine journalist, Rob
Zacny, mainstream games on the other hand can be seen as games that are made to
please the masses. 6 These games provide entertainment and pleasure rather than
meaning and the opportunity to reflect on philosophical questions. For the purposes
of this chapter, an indie game is defined as a non-mainstream game that
consciously aims to subvert mainstream games and that which they represent.
By analysing certain structures that already exist in society, Mulvey explores
the visual manifestation of these structures in mainstream cinema. This chapter is
interested in examining the visual manifestation of similar social structures as
represented in games. These representations in mainstream games are then
compared to the way in which indie games represent social structures. Of particular
interest in this regard is Braid, an indie game that consciously aims to overthrow
the status quo in order to present an alternative to dominant ideologies concerning
women and the role of women in society.
According to Roland Barthes since myth is a type of speech, anything within a
specific discourse can be a myth. 7 Furthermore, a myth is a system of
communication that conveys a specific message. These myths or messages form
the foundation of certain social structures, beliefs and dominant ideologies. Video
games play an important part in the naturalisation of these myths. One often thinks
of a video game as a ‘toy’ or an innocent pastime. This positions the video game in
such a way that the myths that they create and sustain can become naturalised for
the player.
Mead states that roles are used to define the self, and that they form a basis on
which action is based. 8 Media messages, such as those portrayed in video games
for example, can serve as teachers of values and beliefs. 9 These messages can also
influence the way in which the player interprets the world, as well as the
expectations that the player develops of him/herself and others.
According to Danny Cowan, many indie game developers make the deliberate
decision to avoid addressing political and social issues in their games. 10 This is
because of the possible implications this might have in terms of the financial
success of the game, and also the challenge that it represents. Cowan argues that
the few indie games that do challenge traditional game content, are ‘certainly
impactful, if not commercially viable.’ 11
Pedercini explains that games are more likely to reach people who might
normally not be very receptive to political messages. 12 Complex systems are easily
explained through visuals and participation in a game. The disadvantage of using
video games as a medium to broadcast one’s message often means that it is very
difficult to implement a good narrative as well as good gameplay. Another
disadvantage to developing a game for a digital device that embodies a more
 Karen Mentz 179
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meaningful message is the fact that a computational device describes elements
inalgorithms and numbers. This means it is challenging to add human emotions
and experience to the video game. 13

3. Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider (Core Design & Crystal Dynamics) was first released in 1996 by
Eidos Interactive. 14 Lara Croft, the main character in the video game, has since
become a household name. Schleiner notes that until 1996 mostly only male
avatars or characters appeared in ‘shooter/adventure’ roleplaying games. 15 The
only female characters in this genre were previously the ‘princesses offered as
battle trophies’ 16 in games such as Prince of Persia and the like.
The appearance of Lara Croft thus embodies a very important shift in computer
games. She signifies a change where female lead characters start to feature and star
in video games. The obvious question this raises is how this female character is
represented and what possible meanings this representation facilitates. Schleiner is
of the opinion that Lara Croft is a ‘monstrous offspring of science: an idealized,
eternally young female automation, a malleable, well-trained techno-puppet
created by and for the male gaze.’ 17 She argues that the third-person view the
player has of Lara fragments Lara’s Barbie-like proportions. This mechanism
illustrates Mulvey’s notion that women’s bodies are fetishised and presented as
objects to be consumed by the male gaze. 18
Jansz and Martis refer to the increasing appearance of female characters in a
competent and dominant position in video games as the ‘Lara phenomenon.’ 19
These female characters are not portrayed as simply competent, but competent in a
traditionally masculine way as well as in traditionally male activities. She is also
overly sexualised and portrayed in an unrealistic manner.
Martti Lahti states that the representation of an avatar’s body forms an
important part of the desire for immersion that the player will have. 20 Even though
the player is able to choose their avatar in many video games, in games such as
Tomb Raider (Core Design & Crystal Dynamics) the gender boundaries are clearly
drawn. While the player is asked to merge with the female character, at the same
time the player is also encouraged to disassociate him/herself from the character
and instead of identifying with the character, to rather take visual pleasure in her
excessively eroticised feminine features.
As previously discussed, Mulvey 21 states that a film audience takes part in a
voyeuristic fantasy when watching a film. A video game player on the other hand
does not only take pleasure in looking at the character portrayed on screen, but is
also in control of it. When the character on screen is female, one might argue that
this creates a different meaning than when the character is male. Lara is portrayed
as a physically strong woman, and yet the player is controlling her actions and the
way she moves. This form of domination can possibly strengthen the scopophilic
pleasure that the player derives from watching Lara.
180 Challenging Ideologies of Gender
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On the other hand, Salen and Zimmerman argue that a player is never merely
‘immersed’ within a representation and that the player is always aware that the
avatar has been constructed digitally. 22 The avatar is both a subject and an object
simultaneously – the player uses the character as a mask but the character is also an
object to control and manipulate. In Tomb Raider the player views the overly
sexualised figure of Lara, but at the same time the player is also taking on an
‘empowering female role.’ 23
The original representation of Lara Croft is quite unrealistic and her physical
proportions are exaggerated. The most recent Tomb Raider instalment was released
in March 2013. The narrative of the newest Tomb Raider adventure focuses on
Lara’s first adventure – her initiation into becoming a tomb raider. In this game
Lara is represented as a remarkably ordinary and frightened young woman that
finds herself in tough situations. She is forced to embrace her tough (depicted in
the game as masculine) side to survive. In the 2013 version of Tomb Raider, Lara
is no longer wearing her trademark shorts and boots, but is dressed in what could
be considered a much more practical manner.
This radical change in Lara’s appearance also marks an important change in
video games and the representation of women. While Lara is no longer overly
sexualised, and her physical proportions appear more realistic, and not as stylised
as her previous version, this Lara may have an even more powerful impact on the
player and their ideas of femininity. Lara may appear more realistic and natural,
but she is still represented as a kind of ‘super’ woman. The stunts and tasks that
she performs in the new Tomb Raider game are still unrealistic and might
contribute to and influence the ideological perception of femininity.
The ‘new’ natural and realistic looking Lara might set out to close the gap
between reality and the video game world thereby creating a more immersive
environment. As previously mentioned, however, this immersion might also create
an even greater potential for the strengthening and perpetuation of normative
femininity. One can argue that because the original Barbie-like representation of
Lara is exaggerated, the figure almost becomes comical, thus potentially reducing
its power to influence the audience. The current representation of Lara on the other
hand might serve to perpetuate the same stereotype her previous-version Lara was
accused of, but in a much more subtle and covert way.
Genz argues that the female action adventure hero is mostly portrayed in one of
two ways: either as being semi-tough but ultimately too feminine to keep up with
her male counterparts, or alternatively, she is portrayed as a totally de-feminised
male impersonator. 24 Ultimately, both scenarios reinforce the link between
masculinity and toughness. Moreover, both representations are apparent in Tomb
Raider’s Lara. For, in the original Tomb Raider, Lara was portrayed as a de-
feminised hero, while in the 2013 version she has metamorphosed into a feminine,
strong, yet vulnerable character.
 Karen Mentz 181
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Steven Poole argues that video game players are generally more attracted to
lifelike, realistic characters. 25 When this is the case, however, argues Poole, the
player becomes attached to the character as a friend, rather than projecting
themselves into the character. This might imply that the more realistic Lara’s
appearance becomes the more potent and credible the underlying message also
becomes.

4. Braid
In contrast to the mainstream game, Tomb Raider, Jonathan Blow’s indie game
constructs femininity rather differently. Braid tells the story of Tim, who travels
through six unique worlds searching for his ‘princess.’ Tim has the ability to
control and manipulate the flow of time to solve puzzles. In each different world,
the laws of nature and time are different, and the player has to adapt to be able to
use these unusual situations to solve the puzzles.
Braid can be considered an indie game, as it was developed almost entirely by
Blow. David Hellman provided the environment artwork for Braid. At first glance
Braid might seem like a typical video game, perhaps reminiscent of Super Mario
Bros (1985). But the plot becomes dark, symbolic and open to interpretation
according to Rolling Stone’s Alex Vadukul. 26 In the beginning of the game, the
player is led to believe that Tim is trying to rescue a princess from an evil knight,
but as the game progresses it becomes unclear whether Tim is a rescuer or an
unwanted pursuer.
Vadukul describes Braid as a game that leaves ‘players rethinking what video
games are all about.’ 27 The art was done by web comic artist David Hellman.
Hellman explains that he chose a painterly, handmade style for the environment in
Braid which refer to Tim’s thought experiments and the questions that the game
asks. The dreamlike backgrounds therefore strengthen the notion that reality is
ambiguous in this world and that the laws of nature are not as they seem.
In a 2012 interview with Jonathan Blow, he explains that many gamers expect a
game to be ‘fun.’ But since the term fun is relative and ambiguous, he argues, it is
unrealistic to set out to produce a ‘fun’ game. Blow insists that the main aspect he
focuses on when developing a game, is not necessarily the entertainment value, but
rather the message. Blow admits that he did not design Braid to be fun, but rather
an interesting experience that provides difficult mental challenges for the player.
Blow respects the player as an intelligent being that wants to discover new things
and be stimulated mentally.
Blow argues that when watching a film of a specific genre, the viewer has
certain emotional expectations of the content of the film, but this is not necessarily
the same when it comes to video games. According to Blow, many gamers have
the expectation of all games to be enjoyable and entertaining (in other words, fun).
This is something that Blow specifically wants to challenge with his indie games.
By developing games that have a deeper meaning and purpose than to just entertain
182 Challenging Ideologies of Gender
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an audience, Blow believes that video games can play an important part in shifting
certain social paradigms and structures.
One of the final levels of Braid, shows the princess shouting for help. An all-
consuming fire wall starts moving towards the right side of the screen. Tim and the
princess are on different, parallel levels, and it seems as if the princess is helping
Tim to stay ahead of the fire. As they reach the end of the level, the firewall
catches up to them and there is suddenly a flash and the princess is alone and
asleep in her room. When the player reverses time, a whole other story is told. It
becomes clear that the player has been playing the whole game in reverse mode.
Tim started out by scaring the princess while she was sleeping, and then started
chasing her. While earlier it seemed as if the princess was helping Tim escape, it
now becomes clear that she is creating obstacles to slow him down.
This unexpected ending defies the stereotypical, mainstream ending that one
usually expects from a video game. The player is made aware that everything is not
always as it seems, and that they were actually controlling the antagonist during the
game, and not the protagonist. Even though the princess is eventually rescued by
another male character – strengthening dominant patriarchal ideologies – this
ending shows that it is possible for an indie game developer to create an
unexpected ending and still be successful in selling copies and reaching players.
Indie games can thus provide a platform on which developers can attempt to shift
dominant ideologies and notions.

5. Conclusion
Both Tomb Raider and Braid tend to perpetuate traditional and stereotypical
ideas. In the earlier Tomb Raider games Lara was portrayed as a hyper-sexualised
femme fatale that displayed characteristics that are traditionally considered to be
masculine. The more recent version of Lara is a more vulnerable character that
needs to be ‘protected’ by the (male) player. Braid, on the other hand, makes the
player aware of the ambiguity of known storylines and encourages the player to
view the narrative from an entirely different perspective. Even though Braid also
makes use of patriarchal ideas, emphasis is placed on the fact that the viewer
should question everything they see and experience.
Indie games can therefore be considered a viable platform from which to
challenge and subvert otherwise accepted ideas and ideologies. Even though indie
games have only recently begun to compete with main stream video games, it is
already a respected form of gaming. This creates the opportunity for developers to
convey more subversive and even controversial messages.
 Karen Mentz 183
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Notes
1
Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen Autumn (1975):6-
18.
2
Braid, Jonathan Blow, 2008.
3
Tomb Raider, Core Design and Crystal Dynamics, 1996.
4
Mike Gnade, ‘What Exactly is an Indie Game?’, accessed 9 June 2012,
http://www.indiegamemag.com/what-is-an-indie-game/.
5
Ibid.
6
Rob Zacny, ‘Skill, Abstraction, and the Complications of Mainstreaming’, 2011,
accessed 3 July 2012, http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/20/skill-abstraction-and-
the-complications-of-mainstreaming/.
7
Roland Barthes, ‘Myth Today’, in Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of
Changing Ideas, eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Woods (Cornwall: Blackwell,
2003), 693-698.
8
Tracy Dietz, ‘An Examination of Violence and Gender Role Portrayals in Video
Games: Implications for Gender Socialization and Aggressive Behavior’, Sex Roles
38 (1998): 426.
9
Ibid., 426.
10
Danny Cowan, ‘Ask IndieGames: Are Indie Developers Censoring
Themselves?’, accessed 1 October 2012,
http://indiegames.com/2012/09/ask_indiegames_are_indie_devel.html.
11
Ibid.
12
Patrick Dugan, ‘Hot Off the Grill: La Molleindustria’s Paolo Pedercini on the
McDonald’s Video Game’, accessed 1 October 2012,
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130980/hot_off_the_grill_la_.php.
13
Ibid.
14
Jeroen Jansz and Raynel Martis, ‘The Lara Croft Phenomenon: Powerful Female
Characters in Video Games’, Sex Roles 56 (2007): 141-148.
15
Anne-Marie Schleiner, ‘Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and
Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games’, Leonardo 34 (2001):
221-226.
16
Ibid., 222.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid.
19
Jansz and Martis, ‘The Lara Croft Phenomenon’, 1.
20
Martti Lahti, ‘As We Become Machines: Corporealized Pleasures in Video
Games’, in The Video Game Theory Reader, eds. Mark Wolf and Bernard Perron
(London: Routledge, 2003), 157-170.
21
Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, 8.
184 Challenging Ideologies of Gender
__________________________________________________________________

22
Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals
(Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2004), 526.
23
Ibid., 526.
24
Stephanie Genz, Postfemininities in Popular Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave,
2009), 154.
25
Mia Consalvo, ‘Hot Dates and Fairy-Tale Romances: Studying Sexuality in
Video Games’, in The Video Game Theory Reader, eds. Mark Wolf and Bernard
Perron (London: Routledge, 2003), 177.
26
Alex Vadukul, ‘What Made “Braid” a Punk-Rock Video Game? A Look Back at
the Innovative Title’, accessed 5 September 2012,
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/what-made-braid-a-punk-rock-video-ga
me-a-look-back-at-the-innovative-title-20090904.
27
Ibid.

Bibliography
Ask IndieGames: ‘Are Indie Developers Censoring Themselves?’ Accessed 1
October 2012.
http://indiegames.com/2012/09/ask_indiegames_are_indie_devel.html.

Barthes, Roland. ‘Myth Today’. In Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of

Changing Ideas, edited by Charles Harrison, and Paul Wood, 693–698. Cornwall:
Blackwell, 2003.

Camper, Brett. ‘Retro Reflexivity: La-Mulana’. In The Video Game Theory Reader
2, edited by Mark Wolf, and Bernard Perron, 169–195. New York: Routledge,
2009.

Consalvo, Mia. ‘Hot Dates and Fairy-Tale Romances: Studying Sexuality in Video
Games’. In The Video Game Theory Reader, edited by Mark Wolf, and Bernard
Perron, 171–194. London: Routledge, 2003.

Dietz, Tracy. ‘An Examination of Violence and Gender Role Portrayals in Video
Games: Implications for Gender Socialization and Aggressive Behavior’. Sex Roles
38 (1998): 425–442.

Dugan, Patrick. ‘Hot Off the Grill: La Molleindustria’s Paolo Pedercini on the
McDonald’s Video Game’. Accessed 1 October 2012.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130980/hot_off_the_grill_la_.php.
 Karen Mentz 185
__________________________________________________________________

Genz, Stephanie. Postfemininities in Popular Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave,

2009.

Gnade, Mike. ‘What Exactly Is an Indie Game?’ Accessed 9 June 2012.

http://www.indiegamemag.com/what-is-an-indie-game/

Jansz, Jeroen, and Raynel Martis. ‘The Lara Croft Phenomenon: Powerful Female
Characters in Video Games’. Sex Roles 56 (2007): 141–148.

Lahti, Martti. ‘As We Become Machines: Corporealized Pleasures in Video

Games’. In The Video Game Theory Reader, edited by Mark Wolf, and Bernard
Perron, 157–170. London: Routledge, 2003.

Mulvey, Laura. ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. Screen 16 (1975): 6–18.

Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.

Schleiner, Anne-Marie. ‘Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and
Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games’. Leonardo 34 (2001):
221–226.

Vadukul, Alex. ‘What Made “Braid” a Punk-Rock Video Game? A Look Back at
the Innovative Title’. Accessed 5 September 2012.
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/what-made-braid-a-punk-rockvideo-ga
me-a-look-back-at-the-innovative-title-20090904.

Zacny, Rob. ‘Skill, Abstraction, and the Complications of Mainstreaming’. 2011.

Accessed 3 July 2012. http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/20/skill-abstraction-and-
the-complications-of-mainstreaming/.

Karen Mentz is an MA Visual Studies student and part-time visual

communications lecturer at The University of Pretoria in South Africa.
 The Backwards Progressional: Is More Really Better?

Sarah Hope Scoggins

Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to examine player progression and how difficulty
and pacing affect player experience and overall development in a roleplaying game
(RPG). In an RPG, a player is presented with a challenge to which the player
responds based on the rules of the system. If the player is successful, the player is
rewarded and advances. Progression requires a challenge for the player to
overcome in order to progress. Games use story to pace and dictate these
challenges. A story is linear, while a game is nonlinear. The combination of story
and game determines the player experience. Story-based games develop characters
through progression and leveling. The majority of leveling systems use an upward
curve in which the player gains abilities as they progress through the game; the
player gains new abilities as they overcome challenges. By building games in this
fashion, designers run into problems. Because a player is always leveling a
character upwards, there is no diversity in gameplay from one game to another.
Essentially, the player is playing the same game type over and over. Another
common problem with this method appears when it comes to sequels. In the first
game, the player overcomes challenges and builds a top-level character. When the
second game emerges, the player is forced to rebuild the character due to them
arbitrarily losing the abilities acquired in the previous game. If standard
progression is an upward curve, what if players progressed in a downward fashion?
Instead of building a character upward, the player would start with a fully
developed character. This chapter will explore this type of progression and what
would be needed to make this type of progression work in terms of story and
mechanics.

Key Words: Progression, roleplaying, leveling, XP, character development,

difficulty.

*****

1. Introduction
In his book, Bob Bates expresses the goal of a designer when crafting
challenges, ‘A game should be easy to learn, but difficult to master.’ 1 In order to
create a memorable experience for the player, a game needs to balance difficulty
and pacing. Like most people, players do not want to attempt difficult feats without
some hint that their efforts will be rewarded. Hence, the designer must strive to
make challenges in a manner that is not overly difficult but is not too easy to
overcome. Many great games come from series consisting of multiple games, a few
examples being God of War, Assassin’s Creed, and Final Fantasy. Many of these
188 The Backwards Progressional
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fantastic games are long, treacherous journeys in which the player overcomes
difficult challenges in order to progress. How the players respond to these
challenges affects not only the players’ progression, but their overall experience of
the game.
A technical definition of a game given by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman in
their book Rules of Play is ‘A system in which players engage in an artificial
conflict, defined by rules, which result in a quantifiable outcome.’ 2 From this, one
can infer that a game’s rules define the action the players can take. This concept is
nothing new; however, what it does point toward is that games have tendencies as
systems, thus, an upward progressional systems exhibits specific tendencies that
need to be analysed and weighed against alternative systems and their tendencies.
For the purposes of this chapter, I am going to focus on player progression as it
relates to difficulty and how pacing in turn affects the player experience and
overall development in a roleplaying game (RPG). As an area of exclusion, I will
be focusing primarily on digital game franchises in which the players in some
aspect build or improve a specific character over multiple games.

2. What Is Progression?
Jesper Juul writes in his book Half Real: Video Games between Real Rules and
Fictional Worlds, ‘Playing a game is an activity of improving skills in order to
overcome challenges.’ 3 In an RPG, players are presented with a challenge to which
they respond based on the rules of the system. If successful, they are rewarded and
advance. Thus, upward progression requires a challenge for players to overcome in
order to advance. For most games these challenges present themselves in a pattern
of increasing difficulties: each challenge is more difficult than the last. Progression
is the experience players undergo as they journey through the game. As a player
progresses through the game, the player gains new abilities, rewards, information,
or new challenges to overcome. Overall, the player moves in a forward direction
towards unlocking new content.
In order to progress, the player must encounter an obstacle. The obstacle can be
as simple as a lock-and-key mechanism that controls access to parts of a level or a
complex AI-driven series of boss battles. No matter how the obstacle is presented,
this method of gameplay allows the player to pursue goals and develop abilities. As
the difficulty level of the game curves upward, the new skills and stats the player
accumulates help the player overcome the difficulty of the challenges further in the
game. Progression in games is one of the main mechanisms that designers use to
interact with the player.
Two crucial elements of progression are difficulty and pacing. These elements
dictate how and when challenges occur as well as the results of overcoming the
obstacle presented in the challenge. Difficulty can be further divided into actual
and perceived. Actual difficulty involves the relationship between character
abilities and game mechanics or environment; it revolves around system attributes
 Sarah Hope Scoggins 189
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and the inherent abilities the designer has made available to the character. On the
other hand, perceived difficulty is driven by the player’s skill, mind-set, and
overall gaming literacy. Unlike actual difficulty, perceived difficulty is about the
player’s skill in overcoming challenges and exists independently of the character’s
abilities. Perceived difficulty has to do with how quickly the player can learn the
system and process its rules to solve the challenge presented by the designer.
An example of difficulty is the indie game Antichamber, a single player puzzle
platformer in which players must learn the rules of an unfamiliar world in order to
overcome challenges and find tools that will help them beat the game. Antichamber
has a specific set of rules that the mechanics follow in regards to solving its
puzzles. The actual difficulty varies from puzzle to puzzle in regards to how many
steps the players must take in order to reach the desired outcome, while the
perceived difficulty pertains to the player’s skill in grasping what steps need to be
taken. Accordingly, all players are presented with the same actual difficulty;
however, a player who can grasp the mechanics of the game will progress faster
than a player who does not, and each will have a different overall experience
because of the variation in perceived difficulty. For this reason, players can
theoretically beat Antichamber in seven minutes with a little luck and intuitive
knowledge of the system; or they could be going through the same puzzles for
hours if they do not sufficiently and quickly grasp the mechanics of the world.
The other part of progression is pacing, which works hand in hand with
difficulty. Pacing is how quickly or slowly a player advances through the overall
game. A designer must understand that the player has relative freedom within the
system. Because of this, the designer can only indirectly influence the player’s
pace. For instance, difficulty, both actual and perceived, establishes how long the
player will spend on an obstacle: a player spends more time on a more difficult
task than an easier one. Therefore, in many games the designer will place smaller
obstacles before a larger one in order to keep the player motivated to progress, and
subsequently reward them for advancing. However, as is also the case with
perceived difficulty, ultimately the designer has neither complete nor direct control
over the pacing experienced by the player.

3. Pros and Cons of Traditional Progression

As discussed prior, traditional progression is an upward curve in which the
player gains new skills and rewards as they advance in the game. This system
works well on many levels. Over time, players have become accustomed to
building characters in an upwards fashion. By building characters in this manner,
players can build the character in a way that they prefer. By encouraging
personalisation, the player becomes more invested in the game and attached to
their character. Overall, the attachment to the character enables the player to
become immersed in the character, the world, and the narrative. This principle is
190 The Backwards Progressional
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exemplified by series with one or multiple player characters such as The Elder
Scrolls, Mass Effect and Final Fantasy.
Although largely effective, this prominent system of progression is not without
flaws. Because a player is always leveling a character upwards, there is no
diversity in gameplay from one game to another. In essence, the player creates a
character that they journey as and complete quests to gain experience to cause their
character to level. Yes, one game has a crafting system while another has dialogue
options, but the player is still building a story through his character’s ever-
increasing abilities.
Additionally, in some games when players grow stronger, the game fails to
adjust the difficulty curve. Players then become over-powered, and have to exert
little effort to overcome the ostensibly most difficult challenges of the game. In the
Kingdom Hearts games, players have the option to grind to raise their level.
Players can then over-grind, meaning that their characters have greatly surpassed
the intended level of the challenges in the game. The players effortlessly progress
through the game, making it feel too easy. For example, the final boss for both
games is designed for players to be around level 45-50. If the players over-grind
while trying to beat side quests and players’ characters are at level 60-70, they
defeat the boss with little effort which can cause them to lose interest, feel short-
changed, or see the culmination of their efforts as anticlimactic.
Another problem with upward progression systems are the contrived and
arbitrary feelings of sequels. In the first game of the series, the player works to
attain abilities, learn combos, gain equipment and achieve overall mastery of the
character. In the sequel, players mysteriously lose what they earned in the first
game and are forced to work to regain them. The Metroid series is well known for
having Samus lose her abilities at the beginning of the game for various seemingly
arbitrary reasons. In Metroid Prime, Samus loses her abilities via an explosion; in
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes they are stolen; and in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption she
gives them up. In Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Ezio loses all his gear because
he has to flee quickly to escape from capture. All of this is to say players spend an
entire game building a character to an amazing point, only to have the developer
take away what they have earned simply in order to make the players gain them all
over again in a similar fashion. Many designers use these methods for sequels in
order to compensate for players who may not have played the first game.
Although the current models can lead to redundancy and problems with
sequels, they are not necessarily bad systems. This system is familiar to players,
and overall it works. However, there is room for improvement and
experimentation.

4. The Backwards Progressional

Although many great games practice traditional upward progression and are
successful games, I think it would be interesting and fruitful to explore this model
 Sarah Hope Scoggins 191
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in reverse. There are few, if any that use backwards progression, and it would be
beneficial for both player and designer to explore this method of progression. For
the remainder of this chapter, I will explore what I am calling the Backwards
Progressional, a progression model in which the player starts as a fully developed
character who over time loses abilities and stats. This model was inspired by Ben
‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw who, in his article ‘What If We Leveled Backwards?!,’ raises
the issue of backwards progression. Yahtzee comments in the article that his
interest in a backwards leveling system arises from the redundancy and lack of
difficulty present in the majority of games.
The backwards progressional would be revolutionary for game design.
Specifically, this model taxes the player’s skill in adapting to challenges. Players
start with the best weapons, abilities, and skills available in the game. As players
progress through the game, their weapons will wear down, their stats will diminish,
and what abilities they can perform and how they are executed will be affected. In
addition, the player would occasionally need to combat their growing fatigue and
any wounds or illnesses as well.
The main objection to this model is that taking away abilities from the player
will upset and anger the player. Players are not accustomed to losing, and they will
react negatively. Players do not like to lose things because losing is not fun. The
answer to this argument lies in giving the player choices. If players feel they have
more choices or a say in how things will affect their characters, they will be better
able to accept losses. By doing this, players will not see themselves as losing
abilities but rather as overcoming a new challenge.
In Rules of Play, Salen and Zimmerman write: ‘Meaningful play occurs when
the relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are both discernible and
integrated into the larger context of the game. Creating meaningful play is the goal
of successful game design.’ 4 According to these authors, games are about making
choices and taking actions. Discernablity is whether players can reasonably tell
what will happen when they choose to take an action, while integration is the
designer’s choice of how player choices are used by the game world. While
character’s abilities diminish, the actual difficulty of the game will stay the same.
This type of difficulty curve will excite the player by engaging them in a way that
most games do not by presenting new challenges in a unique way and allowing the
player to form new strategies, emerging in meaningful play. Even though their
characters will be losing abilities, the players will be in control of the outcome.
I believe players will be better able to cope with loss if they have a choice over
what exactly their characters are losing.

5. Designing a Backwards Progressional

In order to build a backwards progressional system, a designer needs to be
aware of how the challenges and characters are presented. Half of backwards
progression is the challenges. How the player experience the obstacles will be
192 The Backwards Progressional
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affected by the abilities their characters have when they encounter them. A player
could experience the same obstacle with different abilities. A linear progression –
an extremely directed path – would be the easiest to design; but laying out
obstacles in a way that players could choose which one they approach would be a
more interesting experience. The real question is how to deal with difficulty.
Difficulty is problematic because of how the challenges have to be built. An
obstacle needs to be interesting but still demanding. Challenges have to be all these
things, while at the same time preventing the player from getting stuck. Because
the character is losing abilities, there is greater potential for game-breaking
challenges. One aspect that does not change with direction is pacing. The pace
players take is still dependent on the obstacles they must overcome.
In terms of character building, players should have some control over their
character’s stats during the character-building process. If players are going to play
a fully developed character, they should be able to personalise that character to fit
their own needs. This step is important because the character will not be able to
gain abilities after this point. In order to establish the immersion and connection
that an upwards progression provides over the entirety of the game and in order to
establish this level of player interaction in a backwards progressional, the player
needs choice and control, or at least the feeling of it with respect to how the
character is built.
The core element of a backwards progressional system is losing abilities.
For example, a character may have the ability to do a combo that has run, jump,
and slash in one quick movement so: Run + Jump Slash = Combo
However, over time as a result of choices made, the character loses speed and
has to separate the combo in run and then jump and slash so: Run triggered, then
Jump + Slash = Combo.
The abilities should be organised in a manner which can stack and be broken
down into components. Players will be learning how to take on more as they level
downwards. In addition to the physical stacking of abilities, the user interface (UI)
will have to be organised in a manner that the player can understand as visual
stacking. The abilities of a character built in a backwards progressional will have
several moving parts that start merged and later separate into components.
There are many ways one could arrange how the character loses abilities. One
way to organise how abilities are lost is the character starting with a pool of
abilities. Over time as result of choices the player makes, the player would lose
points in this pool, as these points would relate to what state the character’s
abilities would be. It would be best to arrange these points and their results using a
bell curve. Which pool the character loses points from should be decided by the
player. Players would be more receptive of loss and want to continue if they
choose what their characters lose.
 Sarah Hope Scoggins 193
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6. Conclusion
The goal of building a backwards progressional is to give the player a greater
sense of control that many players do not get to experience. This greater sense of
control comes from creating different types of challenge through the use of choice.
In order to give the player this freedom, the designer will have to balance
character-building and difficulty, while encouraging players to keep a pace that
will motivate them to continue through the game even in the face of loss. A
backwards progressional uses loss as a motivational tool instead of as a deterrent.

Notes
1
Bob Bates, Game Design (Boston, MA: Premier Press, 2004), 4.
2
Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), Amazon Kindle, Loc 1282.
3
Jesper Juul, Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), Amazon Kindle, Loc 75.
4
Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), Amazon Kindle, Loc 535.

Bibliography
Adams, Ernest, and Joris Dormans. Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design.
Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2012. Amazon Kindle.

Bates, Bob. Game Design. Boston, MA: Premier Press, 2004.

Brathwaite, Brenda, and Ian Schreiber. Challenges for Game Designers. Boston,
MA: Course Technology/Cengage Learning, 2009. Amazon Kindle.

Croshaw, Ben. ‘“What If We Leveled Backwards?!”’ The Escapist. 22 February

2011. Accessed 12 April 2012.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/8661-
What-if-We-Leveled-Backwards.

Dunniway, Troy, and Jeannie Novak. Game Development Essentials: Gameplay

Mechanics. Clifton Park, NY: Thomson Delmar Learning, 2007.

Howard, Jeff. Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives.
Wellesley, MA: A.K. Peters, 2008.
194 The Backwards Progressional
__________________________________________________________________

Juul, Jesper. Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. Amazon Kindle.

Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Amazon Kindle.

Schell, Jesse. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. Amsterdam:

Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann, 2008. Amazon Kindle.

Sarah Hope Scoggins is a graduate student in the Arts and Technology

programme at The University of Texas at Dallas, specialising in the design, theory,
and production of games.
 Videogames as Art: The Spirit of the ‘Literary Artist’ in the
Discourse of Game-Making

Agnieszka Kliś-Brodowska and Bartłomiej Kuchciński

Abstract
For a scholar versed in literature studies, ‘art’ may at times sound somewhat
unequivocally like ‘books.’ And not ‘just’ books, but books possessed of literary
merit, whatever it may be. It is true that postmodernism undid the distinction
between ‘high’ and ‘low’ literature to a large extent, exchanging it for ‘interesting’
and ‘uninteresting to analyse.’ Still, upon hearing the phase ‘Videogames as art,’
one may envision a medium which would have to be, somehow, comparable to
‘good’ literature in order to claim the status. As Lee Sheldon states, ‘[t]o ignore the
fundamentals of storytelling found in other media is to create work that fails to
touch our audience, the players.’ 1 Be as it may, speaking of videogames as art does
seem to invite comparisons with literature, at least for the reason that, according to
a course book on game level design, ‘When you begin to design a game, it usually
starts with a story.’ 2 Interestingly, comparing the place of story in games to the
place occupied by safe-actualisation needs at the top of Maslow’s pyramid, the
authors state some players will never reach that stage. 3 What arises as a result is
the question: Can we speak of artistic merit of games’ stories? Or perhaps game-
making business constructs its own status as external to the discourse of ‘artistic
merit’ present in literature studies? Looking at a number of course books written
for game designers, and available texts approaching games from the literary
standpoint, this chapter looks at the status of a designer as a ‘literary’ artist as
constructed by the very discourse of game-making, hoping to contribute to the
discussion on videogames as art.

Key Words: Videogames, designer-as-writer, artist, art, story, discourse.

*****

In 2012 the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures at the University of

Silesia, Poland, launched its Interactive Entertainment Design and Localization
programme. The objective of the programme is to train graduates who are to be
experts in game and software localisation, the cultural and theoretical analyses of
interactive entertainment, and who could work in game design industry as writers,
designers and translators. To that effect the programme comprises both the usual
elements of an English career, such as the study of literatures, cultures and history
of the English-speaking world, the study of literary theory, poetics, narratology and
all the other subjects found in the English curricula, as well as a set of subjects
directly related to game design: drawing, 2D and 3D graphics, storyboarding, game
level design and GDD composition, among others.
196 Videogames as Art
__________________________________________________________________
This turn towards interactive entertainment entails a number of problems, both
practical and theoretical. We could say that almost any aspect of literature and
literary theory has been analysed, challenged and debated. There exists a plethora
of interpretive strategies and methodologies for cultural and literary analyses, and
certainly no shortage of professors with expertise to try to teach and explain these
subjects. It is relatively simple to establish the status of literature or film as art.
Likewise, when teaching students creative writing or translation theory, it is
relatively simple to establish the status of a writer or a translator. In the worst case,
there is a number of already established perspectives to choose from. In practice,
this means (for us, the lecturers) that teaching theory and literary and cultural
analysis is a routine activity. It is not so with regard to computer games where we
discover that the ‘traditional’ approaches are either non-applicable or insufficient.
The situation is aggravated by the fact that we aim to train people actively creating
cultural content instead of being ‘mere’ analysts of it. To create that content one
requires an impressive set of technical skills, yet we teach humanities. So, who are
we teaching the students to be? Engineers? Philosophers? Writers? Artists? No
matter how we look at it, perhaps those people will be called artists one day, which
makes the situation truly unique for us. This is our problem, then: What is the
status of a game designer, in relation to our Institute? What is the status of a
computer game? What are the students told their status is? Speaking of students
being told, or taught their status: How is the discourse of game-making manuals,
the textbooks that our students (and us) work with, shaping that status, explicitly or
implicitly? These are the points which we attempt to raise in the present chapter.
Our analysis focuses on a set of textbooks available to our students. Our
observations are as follows:

1) it is almost never the case that the designer-as-writer is

discussed in terms of being an artist (and sometimes the writer is
not acknowledged at all);
2) if they are, the attitude towards that kind of status is most
often negative;
3) if any status of the designer-as-writer is discussed as positive,
it is that of a storyteller-craftsman.

One could perhaps conclude already at this point. Is it not obvious? While
humanities have eradicated the figure of the author from scholarly discussions, it
may seem justified to discuss whether games are art or not, but considering the
status of the author, in this case a designer, may seem to be a dated approach.
However, as Michel Foucault makes it clear, when we stop speaking about the
author but continue to speak about the work, or writing – without changing our
understanding of the concepts – the spirit, or perhaps we should say the ghost of
the author continues to haunt us. 4 That is one thing. Another one is that not all of
 Agnieszka Kliś-Brodowska and Bartłomiej Kuchciński 197
__________________________________________________________________
the textbooks we examine dismiss the question of the maker’s status. Some of them
do pay a lot of attention to it.
Let us start with examples of those textbooks that pay the least attention. Tracy
Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop is almost dismissive of the storytelling aspect
of games. Fullerton assumes a structural approach, heralded in the foreword by
Eric Zimmerman stating that ‘[t]here is magic in games[...] The magic in games is
about finding hidden connections between things, in exploring the way the
universe of a game is structured.’ 5 Thinking of games in terms of system dynamics
of goals and objectives leaves Fullerton little room to devote to considerations of
storytelling and game narrativity. Thus, she only focuses on presenting the
exposition-build-up-climax-resolution dramatic arc and the conflict which lies at
the heart of it, recognising that its presence is crucial to engage the player
emotionally in the plot of the game. At times Fullerton slips into banality as when
recognising that ‘it is very difficult to integrate traditional storytelling methods into
games’ 6 or when recognising that the story in Jaws is more developed than in
Donkey Kong. 7 This dismissive stance is highlighted by the omission of writers
from the description of the basic structure of the game design team. 8 By removing
the figure of the designer-as-writer from the game design process, Fullerton
obviously avoids the need to assign them a status, be it that of an artist or a
craftsman.
Rafael Chandler’s Game Writing Handbook insistently situates the writer and
the game writing process as subject to the general considerations of gameplay. To
that effect Chandler focuses mainly on the practical dimensions of game writing
such as formatting dialogue and the pragmatics of voice acting. Much like the
game writing is subject to gameplay, so the writer working in game design is
assigned a craftsman role. As practical advice Chandler quotes Chris Avellone:

[i]f I were to start to boil down the most important lessons for a
game writer entering the field, I’d start with the simple premise
that you’re working on a game first, and everything else,
including the narrative, is secondary to the game […] The game
mechanics, the gameplay, the fun factor is the meat of the game,
and the story needs to complement it and cater to it, not override
it. 9

With that in mind, Chandler recognises that ‘the core vision of a game is
determined by numerous external factors’ 10 and that sometimes the ‘writer’s job is
simply to fill in the blanks with dialogue and to submit the work for approval.’ 11
Thus, he assigns the writer and their role a secondary position.
The Computer Game Design Course, by Jim Thompson, Barnaby Berbank-
Green and Nic Cusworth, states that while looking for inspiration, it is useful for a
designer to research into ‘cultural activities such as literature, art, philosophy, and
198 Videogames as Art
__________________________________________________________________
history.’ 12 The book is explicit about ‘defining’ the designer team as responsible
for the game’s ‘concept, story, gameworld, and mechanics,’ noting that designers
can be subdivided into game designers, scriptwriters and level designers, 13 but
does not in any way expand on their artistic status. It does, however, deliver many
practical insights into what determines the story in the game, pointing out that
deciding to minimise the story ‘will save you millions on your budget.’ 14 Future
game designers are advised to consider current fads and Zeitgeist, 15 or to stay
cautious when it comes to brand new ideas, for novelty rarely ensures commercial
success. 16 At the same time, however, the authors are not ‘uneasy’ about stories
within games. As they state, ‘there are a large number of players who enjoy story-
based games. Like them or loathe them, stories in games are here to stay.’ 17 Still,
the degree to which the designer is to be occupied with the story is determined here
by the sales figures and not by artistic ambition.
David Perry’s Game Design is aptly subtitled ‘A Brainstorming Toolbox.’
Perry devotes a considerable portion of his book to storytelling. Nonetheless, he
devotes not a single passage to the direct consideration of the artistic status of the
designer-as-writer. His representation of the designer seems to be that of a
storyteller but he never refers directly to designers as storytellers – which is
perhaps not that surprising.
As in many accounts, the person of the designer is here removed from the
discussion of storytelling, in spite of being present at all times. Perry addresses
designers continuously, as when he defines the relationship of traditional
storytelling techniques to the videogame context:

It is important to keep in mind that even when electronic games

are based around stories, they may not always follow
conventional storytelling structures. This is partly because in
games, the hero is always the player, and the player is always
faced with the challenges of the game interaction. In more
passive media, it is necessary to take the audience through a
hero’s journey in such a way as to entertain and absorb them, to
focus the audience on identification with the hero of the story. In
games, this focus is automatic. 18

We may easily assume that it is a designer who is supposed to ‘keep in mind’ all
that is being said. However, Perry simultaneously removes from the designer the
central position of a storyteller as the one who performs the act of telling a story,
which can be seen in the rhetorical layer of the text: in interactive media, nobody
needs to take the audience on a hero’s journey – the medium itself does it. What is
more, this central position can be taken over by the player:
 Agnieszka Kliś-Brodowska and Bartłomiej Kuchciński 199
__________________________________________________________________
Today, people often watch other players. There are now game
audiences – people who enjoy the unfolding of the game story
passively, just as people used to gather around campfires and
listen to storytellers or, later, gather around radios, TVs, and in
movie theaters to watch stories unfold. 19

Importantly, in this passage, the displacement of the act of storytelling is extended

also to the non-interactive media – the radio, TV and film become ‘storytellers.’
The speaker, the presenter and the director simply vanish. The medium becomes
the message.
Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design focuses on the player’s experience and
it is this element which trumps all others. According to Schell, a game designer
must possess a broad set of competences ranging from the knowledge of
anthropology to visual arts. An essential supplementation to this broad technical
knowledge is a set of introspective and reflective strategies 20 of thinking about the
game experience in relation to the implied player. At the same time, Schell
recognises that ‘interactive storytelling is similar to traditional’ 21 and that games
generate their own stories.
Yet, while locating the process of game design very close to that of artistic
creation and recognising the games’ great potential, Schell distances himself from
the term ‘artistic’: ‘We can create games with powerful themes right now. But
why? Why do this? Out of a selfish need for artistic expression? No. Because we
are designers. Artistic expression is not our goal. Our goal is to create powerful
experiences.’ 22 What is interesting here is that ‘artistic expression’ is immediately
codified as ‘selfish,’ and opposed to creating ‘powerful experiences’ of the player.
It is players and their experiences that are stressed – the designer is here clearly
placed in the position of delivering a service.
In Beginning Game Level Design, John Feil and Marc Scattergood speak about
the designer as taking up the role of the artist (in general terms), but immediately
refute this role as highly undesirable. Their basic rationale for such a position is the
subordination of the designers’ ‘hubris’ to their role of the entertainers, the service-
providers. Their representation of the artist implies obsessive selfishness. As they
state, the game designer

often suffer[s] from hubris, or excessive pride and presumption.

[…] he begins to feel that he is an artist, who is allowing others
to play in a world of his own design. 23

In this account, being an artist means being obsessed with owning the creation,
which manifests itself through hostility towards the players, criticism, and ‘un-
authorised’ ways of handling the game. 24 The description aims to ‘demonize’ the
artistic ambition as leading one straight into being ‘a bad game designer.’ 25 The
200 Videogames as Art
__________________________________________________________________
artist is castigated for being convinced that they allow others to play. We could
bring this down to a simple conclusion: players are to do in the game what they
want (at least seemingly), and if they criticise, they criticise the game. But on the
other side, there seems to be a designer who becomes displaced as a non-owner of
the design (copyright considerations notwithstanding obviously), or an owner who
hands their ownership over to the player.
Proceeding form the assumption that the narratological and ludological
perspectives are complementary, Challenges for Game Designers, by Brenda
Braithwaite and Ian Schreiber, includes a clear recognition that video games can
and DO function as art. Their section on games as art includes articles by Patrick
Dugan, Ian Bogost and Clint Hocking who all raise the issue of games functioning
as art. Hocking writes:

if a game creator does have something specific he is trying to

communicate, and he designs his game well, and the mechanics
and dynamics are coherently supporting the aesthetic, and
providing the player […] with insight into that meaning, then
yeah… it’s art. 26

The figure of the game designer here is not expressly referred to as an artist, but
can implicitly be understood as such, for it is the designer who creates the game
(which is art). However, whatever artism might there appear in the game, whatever
artistic qualities and possible meaning can be expressed by it, is still subject and
subjected to the consideration of the game mechanics, the quality of which
becomes the means to enable the artistic expression.
Rules of Play by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman represents a theoretical
account rather than a guide or a course book, but it still addresses the prospective
designers. The basic assumption that Salen and Zimmerman make about play is
that it combines two dimensions, that of rules and that of experiences, the former
subordinated to the latter. Their definition of gameplay is ‘the formalized
interaction that occurs when players follow the rules of a game and experience its
system through play.’ 27 Designers are here represented as ‘craftsmen’ engaged in
crafting a meaningful experience for the player, 28 and their status is described as
follows:

Game players inhabit that wonderland space where the frame of

the game intersects the frame of the real worlds. Game designers
have the supreme pleasure of creating their own rabbit holes,
hoping players find their way down inside, in order to create
their own meanings. Game designers are the architects, the
meaning-makers, the storytellers that make the play of
wonderland possible. 29
 Agnieszka Kliś-Brodowska and Bartłomiej Kuchciński 201
__________________________________________________________________
This description seems to resolve the tension observed in other accounts
mentioned here. Due to the adopted perspective of craftsmanship, the designer is
not forced into oblivion, or displaced as the owner of the game world. Being a
skillful craftsman is ennobling while it does not entail rejecting the function of
service, and this is clearly visible in the passage. Designing for the players’
freedom of self-creation becomes ‘the supreme pleasure,’ but at the same time the
status of the architect, meaning-maker or the storyteller is achieved and relished. In
a similar way, Salen and Zimmerman seem to resolve the tension arising when the
game is spoken of as a narrative. They treat the game as narrative play, posing the
question not about ‘whether games are narrative, but how they are narrative.’ 30
This is a utilitarian approach, disclosed overtly as they state: ‘using literary theory
to argue that all games are (or aren’t) narratives ultimately doesn’t offer much
utility for game design,’ 31 and ‘as game designers we must ask how can we use
such an understanding to generate meaningful play.’ 32 Generating meaningful play,
obviously, in this case means as much as ‘crafting narrative experiences’ for the
players. 33 What emerges here is, therefore, a basic opposition between artistry and
craftsmanship; between selfish ownership and service.
So, what are our students told – by their textbooks? As far as the textbooks we
have considered are concerned, they are mainly told that being an artist is not
desired. That is because artists are selfish individuals who create mainly for
themselves and for their art’s sake. Who suffer from hubris and want to make their
themes powerful, but are incapable of communication with the audience. Who fail
to generate powerful experiences. Who do not understand that games are first and
foremost about the player. But then, we – as tutors – are trained to expose our
students to art, no matter how one defines it. And, while it is perhaps the matter of
fact that many artists in the history of the world suffered from incurable hubris, it is
also difficult not to notice that such a representation of the artist is a construct – a
defence mechanism.
The situation is as much a conundrum as it is immensely interesting. One the
one hand, if we do not wish to speak of designers as artists since we find such a
status undesirable, why is it impossible for us to simply let the author – and
simultaneously the artist – die by eradicating them from the discussion, and
focusing on the game instead? On the other hand, if we feel ‘resurrecting’ them is
necessary, why should we represent them through a construct which is at least
partly based on a ruse: if an artist’s role is not to create powerful experiences then
what is it?
The fact that the representation of the designer (not only as writer) is structured
against such a negative representation of the artist is an important one. There are,
of course, some immediate explanations of why such a representation has been
structured. For one thing, it is functional: e.g. games are expected to make profit. If
they fail to engage the player as the central figure, they will not make it – this is
what e.g. Thompson tells us, more or less directly. Yet in such a case it is
202 Videogames as Art
__________________________________________________________________
somewhat curious that the more theoretical the considerations of the designer’s
status get, the less is said of the market factor. Salen and Zimmerman, for example,
give the designer the right to be a maker-as-a-craftsman, but still subordinate their
role to the ultimate ends of crafting meaningful experiences. And it must be
noticed that even if the authors of the textbooks agree that games are about fun,
generating meaningful, or powerful, experiences sounds better that ‘being fun to
play.’ It also sounds larger. But if it does, what is to fill the space left after fun has
been catered for?

Notes
1
Lee Sheldon, Character Development and Storytelling for Games (Boston:
Course Technology, 2004), 14.
2
John Feil and Marc Scattergood, Beginning Game Level Design (Boston: Course
Technology PTR, 2005), 138.
3
Ibid., 139-140.
4
Michel Foucault, ‘What Is an Author?’, in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul
Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 103-105.
5
Eric Zimmerman, Foreword to Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach
to Creating Innovative Games by Tracy Fullerton (Boca Raton, London and New
York: CRC Press, 2008), xiii.
6
Ibid., 100.
7
Ibid., 105.
8
Ibid., 350.
9
Rafael Chandler, Game Writing Handbook (Boston: Course Technology,
Cengage Learning, 2007), 17.
10
Ibid., 26.
11
Ibid.
12
Jim Thompson, Barnaby Berbank-Green and Nic Cusworth, The Computer
Game Design Course (London: Thames and Hudson, 2012), 78.
13
Ibid., 76.
14
Ibid., 59.
15
Ibid., 84-85.
16
Ibid., 75.
17
Ibid., 59.
18
David Perry and Russel De Maria, Game Design: A Brainstorming Toolbox
(Boston: Course Technology, Cengage Learning, 2009), 69.
19
Ibid., 83.
20
Jesse Schell, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses (Boca Raton, London
and New York: CRC Press, 2008), 14-21.
21
Ibid., 204.
 Agnieszka Kliś-Brodowska and Bartłomiej Kuchciński 203
__________________________________________________________________

22
Ibid., 48.
23
Feil and Scattergood, Beginning Game Level Design, 21, emphasis added.
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid.
26
Clint Hocking in Challenges for Game Designers by Brenda Braithwaite and Ian
Schreiber (Boston: Course Technology, Cengage Learning, 2009), 241.
27
Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Games Design Fundamentals
(Cambridge, MA, and London: The MIT Press, 2004), 303.
28
Ibid., 302.
29
Ibid., 372.
30
Ibid., 378.
31
Ibid.
32
Ibid., 379.
33
Ibid., 381.

Bibliography
Braithwaite, Brenda, and Ian Schreiber. Challenges for Game Designers. Boston:
Course Technology, Cengage Learning, 2009.

Chandler, Rafael. Game Writing Handbook. Boston: Course Technology, Cengage

Learning, 2007.

Feil, John, and Marc Scattergood. Beginning Game Level Design. Boston: Course
Technology PTR, 2005.

Foucault, Michel. ‘What Is an Author?’ In The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul

Rabinow, 101–120. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.

Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating

Innovative Games. Boca Raton, London and New York: CRC Press, 2008.

Perry, David, and Russel De Maria. Game Design: A Brainstorming Toolbox.

Boston: Course Technology, Cengage Learning, 2009.

Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Games Design Fundamentals.
Cambridge, MA, and London: The MIT Press, 2004.

Schell, Jesse. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. Boca Raton, London and
New York: CRC Press, 2008.
204 Videogames as Art
__________________________________________________________________

Sheldon, Lee. Character Development and Storytelling for Games. Boston: Course
Technology, 2004.

Thompson, Jim, Barnaby Berbank-Green, and Nic Cusworth. The Computer Game
Design Course. London: Thames and Hudson, 2012.

Agnieszka Kliś-Brodowska is a PhD Candidate and Teaching Assistant at the

University of Silesia. She is interested in the contemporary criticism of Gothic
fiction and the history of Gothic studies, which she analyses in her doctoral thesis
from the perspective of Michel Foucault’s notion of discourse.

Bartłomiej Kuchciński is a PhD Candidate and Teaching Assistant at the

University of Silesia. He is interested in theory of narration and science-fiction and
is currently working on a doctoral thesis on science fiction from the perspective of
Darwinian Literary Studies.
 Ergodic Agency: How Play Manifests Understanding

Isaac Karth
Abstract
How do we measure meaningful choices? If a game is ‘a series of interesting
choices’ how can we determine if a choice is interesting? What do we do with un-
games that look like video games but don’t have clearly meaningful choices? The
usual metric is agency. Agency, in Janet Murray’s definition, is ‘the satisfying
power to make meaningful action and see results of our decisions and choices.’ By
Mateas’ definition, the player experiences agency when taking action balances the
allowed actions (material affordances) with the player’s motivation (formal
affordances). Strong agency occurs when the player’s motivation and means of
action are in balance, resulting in player advancement. These definitions lack a
clear metric for advancement. If we combine agency with Aarseth’s ergodic
cybertext, we can produce a clear metric to gauge player agency. Advancing in an
ergodic system occurs when the player enacts an epiphany that resolves a problem
or gap in understanding (aporia). This resolution reveals new problems and
continues the cycle. This sense of agency breaks down when the actions the player
wants to take do not lead to epiphanies that advance the player’s understanding.
Maximizing ergodic agency does not mean that the player can do anything. Rather,
when the player’s motivated actions also cause advancement, the player feels a
sense of agency. Therefore, ergodic agency is the player’s feeling of meaningful
control that facilitates the player’s transition into a deeper understanding of the
ergodic system. Using this new model of agency, we can analyse wildly different
works using a common metric. It gives us a lens to measure player engagement; a
guideline for what kinds of actions and affordances designers should focus on; and
suggests an explanation for linear experiences that still give the player a sense of
agency.

Key Words: Agency, ergodic, play, aporia, cybertext, meaningful choice, causes,
affordances, video games.

*****

1. Introduction
We lack a widely-known model that explains agency in both video games and
the larger context of interactive media. The recent debates about the existence of
‘not-games’ highlights this. 1 Though this debate is partially cultural, a central
division is the place of agency as an intrinsic interactive property.
One pre-existing model, Aarseth’s cybertextual ergodic literature, covers both
traditional games and the new interactive artworks, as well as print media
examples such as Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes. 2 Since video games are ergodic
206 Ergodic Agency
__________________________________________________________________
systems, we can use ergodic agency to explain radically different works, such as
Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Depression Quest.
Ergodic agency is the process through which the player’s sense of control
facilitates a transition to a deeper understanding of the underlying system. Ergodic
agency starts with the affordances between the rules, the virtual system that the
rules describe, and the player’s understanding of that system. The affordances
create aporias, gaps in the player’s understanding. These gaps are resolved by
epiphanies, which alter both the material cause and the efficient cause, linking back
to the aporia at the start and advancing the player’s eventual understanding of the
meaning behind the system.
This use of the word ‘ergodic’ comes from Espen Aarseth’s Cybertext, which
defines ergodic literature as a text that requires active effort (ergon) on the reader’s
part to experience the path (hodos) through the text itself. 3 While agency has been
much discussed, it is best defined as: ‘a phenomenon, involving both the game and
the player, one that occurs when the actions that players desire are among those
they can take (and vice versa) as supported by an underlying computational
model.’ 4 This model is partially based on Michael Mateas’ neo-Aristotelian
interactive poetics.
One drawback of this definition of agency, compared to earlier but less precise
definitions such as Murray’s ‘meaningful action,’ is the perception that Mateas’
affordances are harder to measure when compared to Murray’s player-centric
definition. 5 Since ergodic agency applies Aarseth’s ergodic model to Mateas’
agency model, we can use Aarseth’s aporia and epiphany structures to build an
analysis of the player’s interaction with the game.

2. Affordances
In Mateas’ model, ‘A player will experience agency when there is a balance
between the material and formal constraints.’ 6 Applying this to the ergodic
framework where it does, with a formal cause and a material case. These arise,
respectively, from the underlying system the rules create – the formal cause – and
the interface and associated virtual world which acts as the player’s interface for
control and feedback – the material cause.
The affordances created by these causes provide the player with both
motivation and a means to act on the motivation. The sense of agency is increased
when the causes are in balance. If the player is unable to act on the motivation, the
sense of agency is harmed.
Further, unlike Mateas’ model, ergodic agency explicitly considers player’s
changing knowledge of the system as the efficient cause. The player’s knowledge
sets the expectation for future interaction. If a video game is about pirates, the
efficient affordances lead the player to expect to be a pirate, not a gardener,
hedgehog, or space marine. If, additionally, the material affordances give the
player the means to act like a pirate and the formal affordances simulate pirate
 Isaac Karth 207
__________________________________________________________________
things, the player will experience a sense of agency. The player will experience an
even stronger sense of agency if the material affordances anticipate the efficient
affordances, such as including something that would be expected in real life but the
player does not expect in a simulated world, such as being able to play basketball
in the original Deus Ex, an example of agency highlighted in reviews. 7
The affordances must be in balance. Without a connection between the material
actions and the efficient player knowledge, the player will miss the affordances,
and the system will fall into Wardrip-Fruin’s Tale-Spin effect, where the lack of
actionable affordances means that player fails to see the complexity of the system, 8
or the Eliza effect, where the affordances make promises that the system does not
live up to. 9
But even when the player is a strongly motivated to take an allowed action, it
can fall short of agency if the action does not result in a meaningful response that
advances by deepening the player’s understanding and altering the state of the
system. These causes, and the conflict between them, create a desire for agency in
the player. 10 By themselves, they are not advancement. While they create the
affordances, they do not resolve them.

3. Aporia
We can identify the interactive affordances – the opportunities for meaningful
action – with Aarseth’s aporia. The term ‘aporia’ originally arises from philosophy,
where it is used by Socrates to describe a perplexing difficulty that can serve as a
catalyst to new understanding. 11 For ergodic literature, Aarseth uses the word as an
absence because something is inaccessible, not an ambiguity ‘but, rather, an
absence of possibility – an aporia.’ 12 An affordance creates a negative space in the
text, a gap that allows for the player’s input. Aporias invite exploration and exist
within a system that responds to the player’s actions.
In Aarseth’s ergodics, an aporia is not a positive goal but rather a negative
block to the player’s advance that can be resolved with a deeper understanding of
the system. 13 The affordances imply that there is a whole that can be composed
from the available fragments, ‘even if,’ as Aarseth points out, ‘there is no evidence
that the fragments ever constituted a whole.’ 14 The player’s exploration may even
be based on a faulty understanding of the system, or a false sense of the
affordances, 15 as discussed below.

4. Play
The player’s response to an aporia is to explore and interact: to play. While the
player can be working towards a particular end, the player’s moment-to-moment
play is improvised rather than planned, often involving momentary failure. 16 The
failure of the player’s plan spurs experimentation, which is short-circuited if the
player is forced to reload and try again. 17 While common at the limit of the
208 Ergodic Agency
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design’s abstraction, such a design forces the player to solve a single aporia at the
expense of the rest of the system.
The player’s central experience with the game is play. The act of play mediates
the gap between the player’s knowledge and the system. The player uses play to
explore a cybernetic feedback loop where the system reacts to the player’s actions.
Since the feedback is a ‘perceivable consequence,’ 18 it increases the perception of
interactivity, making this cycle vital to giving the player a sense of agency.
Note that this cycle can exist entirely within the player’s head, such as in a
solitaire card game where the player performs both the action and the feedback
within the magic circle. It include other players, as in Aarseth’s discussion of
MUDs. 19

5. Epiphany
Play is important for moment-to-moment interactivity but the play must
eventually resolve into an epiphany for the aporia. That is, the play must result in
an advance, in either the game’s event plane or the player’s progression time.
For Aarseth, an epiphany includes both the discovery and execution of the
resolution. 20 This explains why the feeling of agency persists if a player replays a
game: the question is not how to solve this aporia, but how to solve this aporia this
time.
The epiphany does not have to be correct. It only needs to satisfy an aporia, any
aporia. A wrong turn in a maze is still advancement for the player. If the epiphany
is based on a false understanding, it may resolve the current aporia and require
revision for future aporia. Wardrip-Fruin et al. consider this to be a common part of
the process:

In fact, many players actively misunderstand aspects of the

games they play and their experience oscillates between agency
and the illusion of agency (and even moments of minor
breakdown) in very successful games. But the phenomenon of
agency, however partial, grounds the success of these
experiences. 21

An epiphany changes the system in two ways: by deepening the player’s

understanding of the underlying system and by altering the state of the game. The
player’s knowledge of the system is the efficient cause. Altering the material cause
via the game-state gives the player access to new parts of the system.
By definition, ergodic literature requires reader effort to access parts of the text,
and therefore there are barriers in the text. The barriers can be mechanical
(material) or conceptual (efficient). For example, in Skyrim, 22 a locked door is a
material barrier, while mastering the lock-picking minigame is an efficient barrier.
 Isaac Karth 209
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Either way, the epiphany produces a change in the system, the player, or both. The
experience of the game is no longer the same.
The alteration forms another feedback loop. The epiphany (and resolution of
the aporia) changes the material cause through the altered game-state. It changes
the player’s perception of the formal cause. Changed understanding alters the
efficient cause. The altered causes complete the cycle by presenting new aporias to
the player. New aporias advance the system, and the player’s experience of that
ergodic advancement gives the player a sense of agency.

6. Closing the Loop

The complete cycle is necessary for the player to experience agency. If the
affordances are not in balance, the player will be unable to find the aporia. Lacking
the ability to play with the aporia, the player will fail to perceive the interactivity.
If the epiphany does not occur, the system does not alter – meaning that it does not
affirm the player’s proposed resolution, which leaves the player without a new
aporia. No new aporia means that, while the player’s new interpretations may
continue to hold the player’s interest, the player does not perceive the actions as
having an effect and therefore does not feel a sense of agency.
However, even an illusion of agency can temporarily work. An example is how
Façade’s opening establishes dramatic possibilities, which then carry the player
through later, less clear interactions. 23 The player’s sense of agency can coast on
previous epiphanies, since epiphanies create a mental model that allows the player
to predict future epiphanies.
Further, the expectations from the efficient affordances inform the player’s
motivations. An ergodic work that sets the player’s expectations at the start gives a
stronger sense of agency than one that does not. This expectation persists:

...audience expectation is still active even after system

understanding begins to develop. Agency becomes part of the
expectation, so that even when agency is not occurring, the
audience seeks it and can be more fully engaged than if the
experience did not support agency at all. 24

For example, at the start of Deus Ex: Human Revolution 25 the player is
exploring the safe space of Serif headquarters while a hostage crisis unfolds
elsewhere. Because most other games will only advance when the player takes an
action, inaction is expected to be meaningless. However, if the player delays this
time, the game reacts, causing some of the hostages to die. By giving the player’s
inaction an unexpected consequence, this disrupts the player’s prior low-agency
expectations and sets an expectation of strong agency for the rest of the game.
Because agency is not free will, 26 and Aarseth considers forking to be only one
of many ‘syntactical’ devices, 27 ergodic agency can also be applied to mostly
210 Ergodic Agency
__________________________________________________________________
linear experiences, such as Dear Esther, 28 whether or not they are classified as
games. It also explains agency with limited plot branches, as in The Walking
Dead, 29 or games such as Kentucky Route Zero 30 that lack significant puzzles.
For an example of applying ergodic agency to an art-game, consider the game
Depression Quest. 31 Depression Quest uses ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ tropes
to explore the experience of clinical depression. To convey its meaning, the
designers severely limited the player’s available actions. While this would
normally inhibit agency, the work’s presentation uses this as part of its message,
priming the player with the expectation that depression puts some choices out of
reach. Establishing efficient affordances that match the system’s processes allows
the work to create a sense of frustrated agency that still allows the player to
advance.

7. Advancement
Advancement happens when the player has an epiphany that closes the loop
with the aporia and the cycle repeats. The change caused by the epiphany can
either be a change in the game’s state (material cause) or in the player’s knowledge
(efficient cause). These can be expressed in terms of Aarseth’s categories of the
‘event plane’ and the ‘progression plane,’ 32 corresponding to the game-state’s
timeline and the player’s timeline, respectively.
Aporia/Epiphany structures can be linked in two ways: through an aporia’s
resolution leading to a new aporia, or through aporias being nested within each
other. 33 Chained aporias mostly affect the event plane, and nested aporias mostly
affect the progression plane.
In ‘The Open and the Closed,’ Jesper Juul defines two models for how games
present new challenges to the player: games of emergence, which consist of ‘a
number of simple rules combining to form interesting variation’ and games of
progression, ‘separate challenges presented serially.’ 34 These operate as ‘open’
systems and ‘closed’ systems, respectively.
Advancing in a closed system includes things like winning a scenario in Age of
Empires, 35 unlocking the hyper levels in Super Hexagon, 36 delivering the quest
object to the right NPC in Skyrim, 37 or triggering the next cutscene in
Psychonauts. 38 Advancing in an open system includes winning a skirmish by
selecting the right mix of units in Age of Empires, understanding the patterns in
Super Hexagon, and seeing the metapattern behind a particular opening in chess.
Chained aporias correspond most closely to closed games of progression, while
nested aporia correspond most closely to open games of emergence. 39
Few games are exclusively built out of progression or emergent structures. 40
An open system will have many nested aporias and be primarily concerned with
advancing the player’s understanding of the system in the progression plane, while
a closed system will be gated by chained aporias and be primarily concerned with
 Isaac Karth 211
__________________________________________________________________
advancing the state of the game in the event plane. In practice, most systems
interconnect all of these elements.

8. Finding the Aporia in the Four Causes

Brenda Laurel’s Computers as Theatre provided the background of Mateas’
neo-Aristotelian dramatic theory. 41 Aarseth critiqued Laurel’s theatrical metaphor
as having too limited a view of the user’s capabilities. 42 Mateas’ use of Douglas
Norman’s affordances addresses this critique 43 and enables us to take it one step
further, dropping the theatrical metaphor and using the neo-Aristotelian model to
consider the virtual ergodic system in light of Aristotle’s four causes.
The formal cause is the virtual form behind the mechanics, an elaborate multi-
layered machine that only exists within the magic circle. Aarseth supports a
metaphysical interpretation of the ergodic system: ‘the cybertext is a game-world
or world-game.’ 44 While discussing the existence of variability in ergodic
structures, he points towards ‘an objective level beyond the text, a primary
metaphysical structure that generates both textual sign and our understanding of it,
rather than the other way around.’ 45
The cybertextual rules create interactions that have strategic implications. The
state of the game is a complex multi-dimensional mathematical space – a simulated
game-world. Ergodic agency demonstrates the process by which the material
affordances change the player’s understanding of the system and therefore the
player’s understanding of the formal cause.
The player has an imperfect, virtual model of the system created by the
affordances of the rules. Epiphanies apotheosise the rules, translating them into
virtual mental space, sometimes unconsciously:

Successful play requires understanding how initial expectation

differs from system operation, incrementally building a model of
the system’s internal processes based on experimentation. This is
how agency happens. 46

As agency deepens the player’s understanding of the system in fits and starts,
the player’s imperfect model approaches the unchanging formal cause behind the
rules. Rules give way to meta-rules, as the player ascends toward the ideal
Aristotelian/Platonic form.
Without a player, a game is just a set of rules; therefore the efficient cause
includes the player. From the material cause expressed in the ergodic rules and
interface, the player creates a virtual model of the system. But Aristotle’s efficient
cause is not just the acting person but the knowledge that enables the action. 47
Therefore, a person is a player because the person has a player’s knowledge of the
system, and the player’s virtual mental model is the efficient cause. The final cause
of an ergodic system is reached through advancing the player’s understanding of
212 Ergodic Agency
__________________________________________________________________
the system toward the actual, virtual form of the system. The final cause of the
game is the player’s comprehension of the meaning behind the system.
The player’s mental model is an imperfect one. There are gaps between the
player’s accumulated knowledge and the system’s ideal form. A gap in knowledge
is an aporia. The gaps between the efficient knowledge and the final model make
up the aporias, and each epiphany brings the two models one step closer. This
brings us back to the beginning: Ergodic agency is the ergodically-mediated
process through which the player approaches the meaning behind the system.

9. Implications
Ergodic agency provides an explanation for how games became categorised by
shared mechanics rather than literary characteristics. The player’s familiarity with
previous epiphanies means that the player’s model starts with assumptions. The
efficient knowledge crosses to the next game, as new games build on previous
systems. This is similar to the learning process described in Koster’s game
grammar 48 and his explanation of the evolution of 2-D shooters. 49 Koster’s skill
atoms 50 may be the smallest possible aporia.

10. Conclusion
Ergodic agency captures the important of response to the player’s action and
affordances in the design, while demonstrating how they enable the player’s
advancement. Because agency is a property unique to interactive works,
understanding agency is necessary to fully understand interactivity. Balancing the
affordances of the four causes create harmony between the play and the meaning of
the play, guiding the player from the first tentative assumptions to eventually see
the meaning behind the system.

Notes
1
Raph Koster, ‘A Theory of Fun 10 Years Later’, GDC Online 2012, video.
2
Espen Aarseth, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 10.
3
Ibid., 1.
4
Noah Wardrip-Fruin et al., ‘Agency Reconsidered’, in Breaking New Ground:
Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory: Proceedings of the 2009 Digital
Games Research Association Conference, eds. Barry Atkins, Helen Kennedy and
Tanya Krzywinska (London: Brunel University, 2009), 1.
5
Matthew William Fendt et al., ‘Achieving the Illusion of Agency’, in Interactive
Storytelling: 5th International Conference, ICIDS 2012, San Sebastián, Spain,
November 12-15, 2012. Proceedings, eds. David Oyarzun et al. (Heidelberg:
Springer, 2012), 115.
 Isaac Karth 213
__________________________________________________________________

6
Michael Mateas, ‘A Preliminary Poetics for Interactive Drama and Games’, in
First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, eds. Noah Wardrip-
Fruin and Pat Harrigan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 25.
7
Kieron Gillen, ‘Deus Ex’, Kieron Gillen’s Workblog (blog), last modified 20
May 2005, accessed 20 March 2013,
http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/assorted-essays/deus-ex/.
8
Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Expressive Processing (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009),
146.
9
Ibid., 25.
10
Ibid., 344.
11
Plato, Meno, 80c-d, 84a-c.
12
Aarseth, Cybertext, 3.
13
Ibid., 92.
14
Ibid., 91.
15
Wardrip-Fruin et al., ‘Agency Reconsidered’, 5.
16
Ibid., 7.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid., 2.
19
Aarseth, Cybertext, 142-161.
20
Espen Aarseth, ‘Aporia and Epiphany in “Doom” and “The Speaking Clock”:
The Temporality of Ergodic Art’, in Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology
and Literary Theory, ed. Marie-Laure Ryan (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1999), 38.
21
Wardrip-Fruin et al., ‘Agency Reconsidered’, 5.
22
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Softworks LLC: Bethesda Game Studios,
2011).
23
Wardrip-Fruin et al., ‘Agency Reconsidered’, 6.
24
Ibid.
25
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Square Enix: Edios Montreal, 2011).
26
Wardrip-Fruin et al., ‘Agency Reconsidered’, 1.
27
Aarseth, Cybertext, 91.
28
Dan Pinchbeck and Robert Briscoe, Dear Esther (thechineseroom, 2012).
29
The Walking Dead: Episode 1: A New Day (Telltale Games, 2012).
30
Kentucky Route Zero: Act I (Cardboard Computer, 2013).
31
Zoe Quinn, Patrick Lindsey and Isaac Schankler, ‘Depression Quest’, accessed
20 March 2013, http://www.depressionquest.com/.
32
Aarseth, Cybertext, 125.
33
Kristine Jørgensen, ‘Problem Solving: The Essence of Player Action in
Computer Games’, in Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference Proceedings,
214 Ergodic Agency
__________________________________________________________________

eds. Marinka Copierand Joost Raessens (Utrecht: DiGRA and University of

Utrecht, 2003), 5.
34
Jesper Juul, ‘The Open and the Closed: Games of Emergence and Games of
Progression’. in Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings,
ed. Frans Mäyrä (Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2002).
35
Age of Empires (Microsoft Corp: Ensemble Studios, 1999).
36
Terry Cavanagh, Super Hexagon (2012).
37
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Softworks LLC: Bethesda Game Studios,
2011).
38
Psychonauts (Majesco Entertainment: Double Fine Productions, 2005).
39
Jørgensen, ‘Problem Solving: The Essence of Player Action in Computer
Games’, 5.
40
Jesper Juul, Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 82.
41
Mateas, ‘A Preliminary Poetics for Interactive Drama and Games’, 23.
42
Aarseth, Cybertext, 140.
43
Mateas, ‘A Preliminary Poetics for Interactive Drama and Games’, 24.
44
Aarseth, Cybertext, 4.
45
Ibid.
46
Wardrip-Fruin et al. ‘Agency Reconsidered’, 5.
47
Aristotle, Physics, 195b, 21-24.
48
Koster, ‘A Theory of Fun 10 Years Later’.
49
Raph Koster, A Theory of Fun for Game Design (Scottsdale, AZ: Paraglyph
Press, 2005), 78.
50
Koster, ‘A Theory of Fun 10 Years Later’.

Bibliography
Aarseth, Espen. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

—––. ‘Aporia and Epiphany in “Doom” and “The Speaking Clock”: The
Temporality of Ergodic Art’. In Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and
Literary Theory, edited by Marie-Laure Ryan, 31–41. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1999.

Age of Empires. Microsoft Corp: Ensemble Studios, 1999.

Cavanagh, Terry. Super Hexagon. 2012.

 Isaac Karth 215
__________________________________________________________________

Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Square Enix: Edios Montreal, 2011.

Fendt, Matthew William, Brent Harrison, Stephen G. Ware, Rogelio E. Cardona-

Rivera, and David L. Roberts. ‘Achieving the Illusion of Agency’. In Interactive
Storytelling: 5th International Conference, ICIDS 2012, San Sebastián, Spain,
November 12-15, 2012. Proceedings, Volume 7648, edited by David Oyarzun,
Federico Peinado, R. Michael Young, Ane Elizalde, and Gonzalo Méndez, 114–
125. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012. Doi:10.1007/978-3-642-34851-8_11.

Gillen, Kieron. ‘Deus Ex’. Kieron Gillen’s Workblog (blog). Last modified 20
May 2005. Accessed 20 March 2013.
http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/assorted-essays/deus-ex/.

Jørgensen, Kristine. ‘Problem Solving: The Essence of Player Action in Computer

Games’. In Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference Proceedings, edited by
Marinka Copier, and Joost Raessens, [no page numbers]. Utrecht: DiGRA and
University of Utrecht, 2003.

Juul, Jesper. ‘The Open and the Closed: Games of Emergence and Games of
Progression’. In Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings,
edited by Frans Mäyrä, 323–329. Tampere: Tampre University Press, 2002.

—––. Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.

Kentucky Route Zero: Act I. Cardboard Computer, 2013.

Koster, Raph. A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Scottsdale, AZ: Paraglyph Press,
2005

—––. ‘A Theory of Fun 10 Years Later’. Filmed October 2012. GDC Online 2012
Video, 1:01:32. Accessed 29 August 2013.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016632/A-Theory-of-Fun-10.

Mateas, Michael. ‘A Preliminary Poetics for Interactive Drama and Games’. In

First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, edited by Noah
Wardrip-Fruin, and Pat Harrigan, 19–33. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.

Pinchbeck, Dan, and Robert Briscoe. Dear Esther. thechineseroom, 2012.

216 Ergodic Agency
__________________________________________________________________

Quinn, Zoe, Patrick Lindsey, and Isaac Schankler. ‘Depression Quest’. Accessed
20 March 2013. http://www.depressionquest.com/.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Bethesda Softworks LLC: Bethesda Game Studios,
2011.

The Walking Dead: Episode 1: A New Day. Telltale Games, 2012.

Wardrip-Fruin, Noah, Michael Mateas, Steven Dow, and Serdar Sali. ‘Agency
Reconsidered’. In Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and
Theory: Proceedings of the 2009 Digital Games Research Association Conference,
edited by Barry Atkins, Helen Kennedy, and Tanya Krzywinska, 1–9. London:
Brunel University, 2009. Accessed 29 August 2013.
http://www.digra.org:8080/Plone/dl/db/09287.41281.pdf.

Isaac Karth holds a Master of Fine Arts in Arts and Technology from the
University of Texas at Dallas. He is currently an independent game developer
researching the possibilities of interactive narrative and procedural generation.
 Part 4

From Theory to Practice

 ‘Get Over It!’: Sexuality and Sexual Diversity in Video Games

René Schallegger
Abstract
In recent AAA video games, a growing tendency to include romance options for all
sexes can be stated. This chapter takes a closer look at the representations of
gender, sexuality and sexual diversity in these artefacts, identifying resulting
problems in the aesthetics, mechanics and socio-cultural context of video games, as
well as possible solutions for them. Following a review of established theoretical
approaches and critical opinions, a closer look at BioWare’s Mass Effect series is
taken as a practical example for a mostly successful implementation of a very
inclusive design premise on both levels, content and form. But even in so carefully
balanced a text, an implicit gender bias, especially against male-male romance
options, can be identified. Market forces, the unwillingness to acknowledge
shifting player demographics, and self-censorship in reaction to various political
and cultural environments still prevent a free exploration of alternative identities
and patterns of behaviour in the medium, and thus the full development of video
games as an art form.

Key Words: Gender Studies, sexuality, sexual diversity, sexual identity, video
game aesthetics, LGBTQ identities, BioWare, Canadian Studies.

*****

1. Romance, Gender and Sexuality in Gaming

The trend in mainstream video games seems to be towards an increasing
inclusion of romance content. James Leach notes that the use of romance as a
universal, noble and strong motivation for the player has a long tradition in
Japanese gaming, but western gamers tend to see it as more problematic. 1 There
are basic experiential and conceptual problems to be considered: More dialogue
and cut-scenes shift the interaction from a configurational towards an
interpretational one, and even cleverly designed romance sequences simply cannot
make players feel the emotions their characters would go through, resulting in an
emotional disconnect endangering immersion. Addressing these dangers, Leach
puts together a To-Do-list for game designers:

Romance must not be forced or highlighted in games, it should

be discovered.

Romance must be optional, and the player must be able to end it

at any time.
220 ‘Get Over It!’
__________________________________________________________________
Relationships must be directly meaningful to the narrative.

Accept that including sexual relations in games will always be

awkward. 2

The immersive aspect of video games together with their separation from
primary reality and any detrimental effects such behaviour might have in real life
promise a way to live out sexual fantasies without fear. Yet players must not
underestimate the emotional feed-back between player and character generated by
the combination of immersion and agency at the heart of the medium. Richard
Bartle defines the irreducible emotional risk: ‘Players are real, characters are
virtual. Immersed players are their characters – they’re personae.’ 3 Even though
virtual characters do not have bodies, immersion affects the mediated and
seemingly safe experience, overcoming the distancing effect and creating real
emotional, sometimes even physical effects in primary reality.
When we look at representations of sexuality, the industry still has to come to
the realisation of their potential. Steve Swink demands they move beyond ‘big-
bosomed vixens, babes with guns and cutie-pie anime girls,’ grow up and stop
catering to the sexual fantasies of teenage boys. 4 He also identifies another
problem inherent to the medium: Sex in games can never be sexy. Since video
games cannot simulate the physical act of intercourse, they must find other ways to
convey a sense of intimacy and sensuality, focusing on the simulation of
interpersonal relationships. Advances must be well timed, Swink argues, control
mechanisms related to eye contact, body position and language implemented.
Decisions about proximity and awareness of clues for interest or lack of such must
be part of the simulation. 5 Only by respecting this complex set of factors and by
successfully translating them into a playable experience can video games establish
a sense of real emotional attachment. The only solution to ‘do’ sex in games,
following Swink’s argument, is to focus on what can be simulated, offloading the
sexual interpretation to the player’s mind. 6
Tynan Sylvester sees video games as engines of experience driven by what he
calls the ‘primacy of emotion.’ 7 In order to be meaningful, events must provoke
emotion, and that in turn means they must change a human value, i.e. ‘anything
that is important to people that can shift through multiple states.’ 8 Examples
provided by the author include [life/death], [victory/defeat], or
[friend/stranger/enemy]. The emotional relevance of an event is directly
proportional to the importance of the human value concerned and the extent of
change it goes through. As human beings are hardwired to respond to sexual
stimuli, Tynan argues, using them makes for an effective and easy strategy, which
has led to ruthless abuse in hyper-sexualised games. 9 However, gratuitous sex
harms the atmosphere and believability of the game experience, and the use of sex
generally runs the risk of alienating a large potion of the audience: those not
 René Schallegger 221
__________________________________________________________________
interested in the sexual signals on display. Tynan therefore concludes that using
sex is a risky strategy for any broadly targeted game and better restricted to more
niche-oriented titles. 10
In spite of all of these problems with representations of sexuality in video
games, James Portnow claims that it has been around almost as long as the medium
itself. 11 Going back to Atari’s Gotcha (1973) and Mystique’s infamous Custer’s
Revenge (1982), Portnow defines the still dominant representations in video
gaming as hyper-sexualised. 12 Even though a mature exploration of sexuality is
essential for games to be accepted as a fully-fledged form of art, the immature
style, commercial deliberations, as well as the perception of games as a medium for
children have made this impossible so far. The solutions Portnow suggests to this
problem closely resemble Leach’s approach: Sexuality must not be limited to
physicality and cheap titillation, instead it should be used to help define characters,
explore relationships, and colour character interactions by desire. The simulational
limitations of the medium must be respected, and sex must not be included in every
game, only those that aim to push the boundaries of public expectation. 13 The
desired result is for sex in games to no longer be shocking or gratuitous, but
meaningful.

2. Sexual Diversity in Gaming

All of the caveats concerning sex in games are even more critical for the
inclusion of sexual diversity. Diane Carr argues that gaming has pervaded the
popular imagination ‘to the point where it can accommodate differently zoned, and
differently defined, spaces – and this expansion creates room for diversification.’ 14
This potential of play to deconstruct norms and values immediately raises the
question of ethics and responsibility.
Bartle points out that game design can and will often promote specific gender
performances. 15 The exploration of identities possible should result in an extension
of the emotional range of players, as well as increasingly fluid gender roles, but
unfortunately most AAA games resort to stereotypical patterns of gendered
behaviour. And yet, there is a strong deconstructive potential in the dominance of
cross-gender play: According to Kathryn Wright’s research, 57% of straight male
players prefer female avatars, and among them the top reason given is that it adds
to their roleplaying experience (25%). 16 Within the security of the confined
narrative architecture of a game, male players seem to be willing to experiment
with other gender roles, even though they might be more hesitant to do so in
primary reality. Decision-makers in the industry, however, still resist any
adaptation of their design and marketing strategies geared towards young adult,
heterosexual males only.
Representations of sexuality in games directly touch upon questions of gender
politics and oscillate between objectifying victimisation and idealised liberation.
Bartle’s preferred position sees contemporary developments as the first steps
222 ‘Get Over It!’
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towards empowerment: Players can use games to question their own needs and
expectations and to explore them critically, developing a better understanding of
themselves in an individual learning process and transferring it to a process of
political emancipation. 17 This model of how games can affect personal and socio-
political change is applicable beyond questions of sexuality and gender, reaching
into philosophical, ethical and even political areas of players’ lives. Video games
emerge as effective tools for personal and social learning.
Including potentially problematic issues in a video game design must therefore
be seen as a conscious artistic statement, not just an element of play. Richard
Bartle’s warning is clear:

Designers of virtual worlds carry a responsibility for the

consequences of their designs. Real people play these worlds,
and the effects that a design has on them are real. 18

Even though this might seem to absolve players of responsibility for their
actions, Bartle develops a sense of shared responsibility, encompassing both
designer and player. The censorship the gaming industry faces in western societies
is largely self-censorship: Marketing decisions are made to maximise sellability,
and even if the creative team has daring ideas, IP-owners might not give their
consent. The ethics of representation in a game are also influenced by other factors:
the purpose of the game, the politics expressed, as well as diachronic and
synchronic variations in the socio-cultural context of reception. Possible strategies
to react to those are ignoring the context and losing sales, implementing switchable
content and accept higher costs, or to avoid sticky issues altogether, which results
in the prevalent stance of self-censorship.
Players implicitly project their expectations into the narrative architecture of a
game, so designers need to make a decision whether they want to confirm or
frustrate these expectations. Challenging preconceptions may lead players to
rethink their positions, or, as Bartle puts it, ‘Designers can influence ways in which
people change in virtual worlds.’ 19 In order to get there, a design must be internally
consistent, deepen immersion to maximise transfer between secondary and primary
reality, and it must also be flexible enough to allow a player not to reintegrate a
challenge experienced with his personality. The responsibility of the designer is
limited and shared, as they only design a system while the use the player makes of
it is entirely up to them, but the distribution of authorial power is unbalanced:

When all is said and done, the ethics of a virtual world reflect
those of its designer. […] Your beliefs, your attitudes, your
personality – they’re all reflected in your virtual world. You have
to take responsibility, because (at least initially) you are the
world. 20
 René Schallegger 223
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Marsha Kinder sees video games as intrinsically connected to identity politics
in how they create awareness of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity, giving players the
ability to enact and experience other roles to promote personal change. 21 Recent
psychological research provides evidence that players unconsciously conform to
their avatars and their behaviour: The so-called Proteus effect describes a direct
transfer between the secondary – and the primary – reality personalities a player
enacts. 22 It is therefore essential to be able to represent oneself accordingly in
games, and marginalised gamers rightfully feel under- and misrepresented in most
contemporary AAA video games. Even though alternative sexual and gender
identities have arrived in the public awareness of most western societies, self-
censorship still upholds an unrealistic status-quo in games. New approaches are
needed to empower young adults about their gender and sexual identities.
Kinder formulates the steps necessary to deconstruct the rigorous gendering of
AAA games: Omnipresent hyper-sexualised gender representations must be
denaturalised, choices beyond the traditional framework of gender offered, and a
fearless play with gender and sexuality possible. 23 This challenge of cultural
stereotypes must, however, be part of an entertaining narrative to create immersion.
Eventually, Kinder argues, games will have to leave behind all structures of
domination and subordination based on categories of gender and sexuality, 24 in
order to become what Henry Jenkins calls ‘spaces to imagine alternative roles.’ 25
In his analysis of diversity in games, Portnow identifies the central shortcoming
in how the issue has been handled so far: Token characters are not the solution;
they are part of the problem, since stereotypes alienate marginalised players. 26 In
the history of mainstream gaming, he only identifies five LGBTQ characters before
Mass Effect, and only one of them, Kanji Tatsumi in Persona 4 (2008), is explored
in a realistic and serious way. 27
What are then the suggestions Portnow offers to produce more convincingly
written LGBTQ characters? First of all, a character’s sexuality must only be
included to create an interesting and multi-dimensional personality. Symbolism,
psychology and empathy should be used to talk about sexuality as one aspect of
identity and to think about the creation and contextualisation of identity per se. All
players, irrespective of their own gender or sexual identities, should be invited to
learn from the experiences of a character, to explore narratives otherwise
unavailable to them. Sexuality, Portnow concludes, must not define a character, but
it must be shown to be an essential and integral aspect of their human condition. 28
In AAA gaming, I would argue, Mass Effect 3 has so far gotten closest to
Portnow’s suggestions, and it can therefore be seen an example of how to
successfully provide inclusive representations of sexuality and sexual diversity in
gaming.
224 ‘Get Over It!’
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3. A Case-Study: Mass Effect
The Mass Effect game series has become a major IP in popular culture since the
release of the first game in 2007. The complexity and richness of its narrative and
its socio-cultural impact have singled it out as ‘the next big thing’ in sci-fi. It has
by now dispersed into other media, so there are iOS-apps, novels, comics, an animé
and even an upcoming life-action movie. Mass Effect must also be seen in
continuation of the outstanding work BioWare have been doing in video game
design since they were founded in 1995: After a series of highly successful
adaptations of Dungeons & Dragons and Star Wars, they started their own IPs with
Jade Empire (2005), Mass Effect (2007), and Dragon Age (2009). Most of the
BioWare games since Baldur’s Gate (1998) have also included same-sex romance
options.
BioWare has frequently been under attack from right-wing conservatives for its
liberal treatment of sexual and gender diversity in their games. Mass Effect (2007)
was described as a ‘porn simulator’ by Fox News, 29 heavily criticised in the US,
and forbidden in several Asian countries. Even with their impressive track record,
BioWare decided not to take a risk: they stopped the development of m/m romance
content and locked the existing assets in the game, while the f/f option remained
intact. This unfortunate pandering to the straight male gaze might also be
connected to the influence of EA on BioWare’s creative decisions after the take-
over in 2007.
With Mass Effect 2 (2010), BioWare resorted to the self-censorship typical of
the anticipatory obedience to the supposed target audience in the gaming industry.
There are no m/m options in the game, and all three possible romance options for
MaleShep are straight ones, but three out of the six romance options for FemShep
are f/f. Already the fact that the female avatar is given twice the romance options
smacks of gender bias, but the utter exclusion of all m/m content led to fierce
criticism by the liberal media in North America and Europe. To add insult to
injury, BioWare decided that f/f-romances would not give a player the ‘Paramour’-
achievement, an extradiegetic reward for the completion of a romantic relationship.
The message was clear: m/m-romance was unwanted, and f/f-romance was not real
romance anyway. This was in utter contradiction to the utopian setting of the
series, depicting a humanity that has moved beyond issues of gender, sexuality,
ethnicity, or class. It also reproduced the dominant conservative perspective on
same-sex relationships: ignore and repress the males, sexually fantasise about and
belittle the females.
And then BioWare’s did something unprecedented in AAA gaming with
Dragon Age 2 (2011): For the first time, a character not controlled by the player
initiated a m/m romance. The result was uproar in the gamer community, as many
straight male players felt threatened in their sexual identities by the unwanted
advances. Even though BioWare took great care in the game design so that the
player still remained in control of the situation, the offended players considered
 René Schallegger 225
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themselves the majority and wanted only their desires and expectations to be
represented in the game.
The majority argument must be seriously questioned, as according to US
statistics, in 2011 42% of gamers were female, which together with gay and
bisexual men would most certainly add up to a majority of non-‘straight males.’ 30
But BioWare did not resort to statistics to reply to the demands: They issued a bold
statement by the game’s openly gay lead writer, David Gaider, telling the offended
players to ‘get over it,’ 31 refuting the attack on fundamental (gender-) political and
ideological grounds: All players, Gaider argues, have a right to be equally
represented in the games they play, and privilege always lies with the majority, so
it is not used to representations of minority or marginal positions. This results in
the naturalisation of their expectations and the false claim to sole representational
authority. Like all romance options, he points out, the offending m/m content is
purely optional, providing equal opportunities for all players, and he makes it clear
that he believes in creating appropriate choices for all players, concluding:

And the person who says that the only way to please them is to
restrict options for others is, if you ask me, the one who deserves
it least. 32

Obviously under the impression of earlier controversies and backed by the

considerable financial success of their earlier games, BioWare finally decided to
step it up with the same-sex romance options in Mass Effect 3 (2012). With a
simple tweet, game director Casey Hudson told the world that he was ‘Happy to
confirm #ME3 supports wider options for love interests incl. same-sex for m&f
chars, reactive to how you interact w/them in-game’ a year prior to release. 33 The
first exclusively gay and lesbian romantic interests in AAA gaming, Samantha
Traynor and Steve Cortez, were written to provide the seamless integration of
believable and life-affirming representations of same-sex relationships. All of the
content was still written by white/male/straight authors Patrick Weekes and Dusty
Everman, but they approached LGBTQ staff in BioWare for proof-reading and –
playing. 34 Their aims were to avoid stereotyping – Weekes conceded that it did not
work 100% 35 – to stay realistic in their representation and development of
relationships, and to seriously think about what can be shown, what must be, and
what must not, especially during the sex scenes.
Special attention was given to the m/m romance options, while the f/f
relationships were seen as less problematic. 36 MaleShep not only has to take the
initiative to establish a m/m relationship, he also has to make a serious and
continued effort and to mechanically confirm his intentions twice. Weekes and
Everman explain that this was in reaction to the Dragon Age 2 controversy: Some
straight male gamers were obviously afraid of being ‘ninja romanced,’ i.e. of
becoming the object of a male character’s affection without intentions on the
226 ‘Get Over It!’
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player’s side. 37 Certain players are afraid of missing the subtle hints that a
bromance they have built with another male character might turn into a romance
with just one ‘wrong’ choice in the dialogue wheel. The repeated confirmation
necessary to lock in a romantic path with a male character is a nod in their direction
to give them more control and to safeguard their agency in the matter. This is an
interesting case of how again the m/m option is perceived as a threat and therefore
treated differently from the f/m, m/f, or even f/f options available in the game.
Still, the existence of loving same-sex relationships and their contextualisation
with the game setting are essential. Within the diegesis of the game, the ‘special’
character of these relationships is not marked. Gender roles and expectations are
irrelevant in this fictitious 22nd century, even though gender and sexual preferences
still exist as part of the human condition: There is no reaction whatsoever when
Steve Cortez tells Shepard about how he lost his husband during the war, nor when
Samantha Traynor shares her thoughts about her girlfriend at university. Even the
straight, super-macho space marine James Vega has no problem with being
sexually looked at and appreciated by his gay team-mate during his training
sessions, as evidenced by the friendly teasing that goes on between them. All
serious relationships in the game, regardless of gender constellations, are built on
strong friendships and a growing sense of intimacy. Gender and sex only come in
once the intimacy established is to cross the boundary into a sexual relationship, as
it should be in an otherwise gender-blind society.
Yet even this model case of how to handle the inclusive treatment of sexual
diversity in video gaming still shows a disappointing disproportion in the available
romance options based on the gender of the player character: While 60% of
FemShep’s possible romances are f/f, MaleShep only has 25% m/m options – he
can choose between a gay man of colour (Steve Cortez) and a bisexual
Russian/Ukrainian-Canadian (Kaidan Alenko). This minor flaw shows how
prejudice and misconceptions still inform representations of sexuality and sexual
diversity in video gaming, but BioWare’s daring push towards a more egalitarian
representative regime must be seen as a decisive step forwards and a milestone in
the development of the medium and the associated subculture. In a war to save
humanity, Shepard’s humanity remains unquestioned, no matter their gender or
sexual identity, no matter the person they love. This, I would argue, is Mass
Effect’s greatest triumph.

Notes
1
James Leach, ‘Word Play: All You Need Is Love’, in Edge #243 (Bath: Future
Publishing, 2012): 154.
 René Schallegger 227
__________________________________________________________________

2
Richard A. Bartle, Designing Virtual Worlds (Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2004),
549.
3
Ibid.
4
Steve Swink, Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation
(Amsterdam and Boston, MA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2009), 316.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid., 317.
7
Tynan Sylvester, Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences
(Beijing and Cambridge: O’Reilly, 2013), 8.
8
Ibid., 12.
9
Ibid., 29.
10
Ibid.
11
James Portnow, ‘Sex in Games’, video on Penny Arcade’s Extra Credits,
accessed 24 May 2013, http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/sex-in-games.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid.
14
Diane Carr et al., Computer Games: Text, Narrative, and Play (Cambridge and
Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2008), 176.
15
Bartle, Virtual Worlds, 532.
16
Kathryn Wright, ‘Gender Bending in Games’, womengamers.com, 2000, in
Richard A. Bartle, Designing Virtual Worlds (Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2004),
536.
17
Bartle, Virtual Worlds, 555.
18
Ibid., 671.
19
Ibid., 702.
20
Ibid.
21
Marsha Kinder, ‘An Interview with Marsha Kinder’, in From Barbie to Mortal
Combat, eds. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (Cambridge, MA and London:
MIT Press, 2000), 219.
22
‘The Psychology of… Avatars’, Edge #240, 100.
23
Kinder, ‘An Interview’, 221.
24
Ibid.
25
Henry Jenkins, ‘“Complete Freedom of Movement”: Video Games as Gendered
Play Spaces’, in From Barbie to Mortal Combat, eds. Justine Cassell and Henry
Jenkins (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2000), 276.
26
James Portnow, ‘Diversity’, video on Penny Arcade’s Extra Credits, accessed 24
May 2013, http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/diversity.
27
Ibid.
28
Ibid.
29
‘FOX NEWS Mass Effect Sex Debate’, accessed 25 May 2013,
228 ‘Get Over It!’
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKzF173GqTU.
30
Entertainment Software Association, Essential Facts about the Computer and
Video Game Industry 2011, taken from Entertainment Software Association.
‘Industry Facts’, accessed 24 May 2013,
http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2011.pdf.
31
Michael Jensen, ‘Bioware Tells Straight Men to “Get Over” Being Hit on by
Gay Men in “Dragon Age 2”’, on The Backlot, accessed 25 May 2013,
http://tinyurl.com/pw6vn78.
32
David Gaider, untitled forum post on BioWare Social Network, accessed 25 May
2013, http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/304/index/6661775&lf=8.
33
Casey Hudson, tweet on Twitter (May 15, 2011), accessed 25 May 2013,
https://twitter.com/CaseyDHudson/status/69833443067969536.
34
Patrick Weekes, ‘Same-Sex Relationships in Mass Effect 3’, on BioWare
homepage (May 7, 2012), accessed 25 May 2013,
http://blog.bioware.com/2012/05/07/same-sex-relationships-in-mass-effect-3/.
35
Ibid.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid.

Bibliography
Bartle, Richard A. Designing Virtual Worlds. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2004.

Carr, Diane, David Buckingham, Andrew Burn, and Gareth Schott. Computer
Games: Text, Narrative, and Play. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press,
2008.

Entertainment Software Association. Essential Facts about the Computer and

Video Game Industry 2011. Entertainment Software Association. Accessed 24 May
2013. http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2011.pdf.

‘FOX NEWS Mass Effect Sex Debate’. Youtube, 21 January 2008. Accessed 25
May 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKzF173GqTU.

Gaider, David. Untitled forum post. BioWare Social Network, no date. Accessed 25
May 2013. http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/304/index/6661775&lf=8.

Hudson, Casey. Untitled tweet. Twitter, 15 May 2011. Accessed 25 May 2013.
https://twitter.com/CaseyDHudson/status/69833443067969536.
 René Schallegger 229
__________________________________________________________________

Jenkins, Henry. ‘“Complete Freedom of Movement”: Video Games as Gendered

Play Spaces’. In From Barbie to Mortal Combat, edited by Justine Cassell, and
Henry Jenkins, 262–297. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2000.

Jensen, Michael. ‘Bioware Tells Straight Men to “Get Over” Being Hit on by Gay
Men in “Dragon Age 2”’. The Backlot, 24 March 2011. Accessed 25 May 2013.
http://tinyurl.com/pw6vn78.

Kinder, Marsha. ‘An Interview With Marsha Kinder’. In From Barbie to Mortal
Combat, edited by Justine Cassell, and Henry Jenkins, 214–228. Cambridge, MA
and London: MIT Press, 2000.

Leach, James. ‘Word Play: All You Need Is Love’. Edge #243 (2012): 154.

Portnow, James. ‘Diversity’. Extra Credits. Penny Arcade, 27 February 2013.

Accessed 24 May 2013. http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/diversity.

—––. ‘Sex in Games’. Extra Credits. Penny Arcade, 27 February 2013. Accessed
24 May 2013. http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/sex-in-games.

Swink, Steve. Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation.

Amsterdam and Boston, MA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2009.

Sylvester, Tynan. Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences. Beijing

and Cambridge: O’Reilly, 2013.

‘The Psychology of… Avatars’. Edge #240, May 2012, 96–103.

Weekes, Patrick. ‘Same-Sex Relationships in Mass Effect 3’. BioWare, 7 May

2012. Accessed 25 May 2013.
http://blog.bioware.com/2012/05/07/same-sex-relationships-in-mass-effect-3/.

Wright, Kathryn. ‘Gender Bending in Games’. Designing Virtual Worlds, by

Richard A. Bartle, 536. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2004.

René Schallegger was trained in English and American Studies, as well as French,
with focus on literary criticism at Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt (Austria),
and Anglia Ruskin University (Cambridge/UK). His Master’s thesis entitled
‘Voices of Authority – A Postmodern Reading of BABYLON 5’ (2002) was
followed after several years of working for the Provincial Government of Carinthia
230 ‘Get Over It!’
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(Austria) by a doctoral thesis on ‘Joyful Games of Meaning-Making: Role-Playing

Games and Postmodern Notions of Literature’ (2013). His main research interests
are theories of Postmodernism, Game-, Comics-, TV-, and Film Studies, especially
in a British and Canadian Studies context. Currently, he is Post-Doc Assistant for
British-, Canadian-, and Game Studies and Vice Head of the Department of
English and American Studies at Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt (Austria.)
The End of the End as We Know It: A Philosophical Look at the
Narration in Mass Effect

Thomas Morisset
Abstract
The roots of our reflection about such a modern invention as videogame lie in the
philosophy of Aristotle, mainly in Poetics, 1450b25-35, where he stated that ‘A
whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end.’ This chapter aims to
show how videogames challenge the very definitions of the middle and the end and
how those redefinitions affect its storytelling. The interactive nature of videogames
involves a spatial turn in narration that prevents us from speaking of middle the
way Aristotle, or today’s literature, does. Electronic media have been previously
categorised as ‘rhizomatic’ medias (Deleuze, Murray). However, drawing upon our
play through of the Mass Effect franchise, this statement remains a theoretical one
because the common equivalence between the ‘good ending’ and ‘the ending-
where-you-played-the-most’ seems us to be problematic and anti-rhizomatic.
Linking this to the emergence of capitalism, and its ideology of engagement, in
storytelling, we would like to open a discussion on new and creative forms of game
completion. Even the ‘perfect’ ending of Mass Effect 3 was a disappointment,
which prompted Bioware to change it a few months later. Changing the ending
because of the audience is nothing new (see A. Conan Doyle), but erasing the
previous one is and should be questioned. Moreover, over these couples of months,
one could ask: what became of the end of Mass Effect? What transpired during this
time, mainly over the Internet, was the so called ‘indoctrination theory’: a
conspiracy-theory-like interpretation of the previous ending stating that the future
one would be entirely reversed. By retracing this idea’s history, we would like to
show the artistic and creative potentials of such moments of suspicion that Mass
Effect 3 has unwittingly created and encourage the authors and editors to use these
moments as an artful resource.

Key Words: Aristotle, art, end, middle, narration, rhizome, spatial turn.

*****

1. The Narrative Canvas in Video Games: From Middle to Milieu

Mass Effect is one of the most successful video game franchises of the past few
years, acclaimed by both public and critics. One of its most praised features was
the epic storyline and deep universe, in which the player was given access to a
large array of moral decisions, sometimes as painful and emotionally engaging as
choosing which member of your crew will live or die.
This quite perfect picture was tarnished by the end of Mass Effect 3, which was
scheduled to put an end to Commandant Shepard’s story arc. The reaction was so
232 The End of the End as We Know It
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overwhelmingly negative that, in April 2012, just a month after the release,
Bioware, the developer, announced that an ‘extended cut’ version would be
released later that year. 1 We would like to show how this event questions the very
definition of an end and how video games, as a cultural medium, blur the frontier
between what is art and what is not.
Before we further examine this event, let us take a look at the structure of the
narration in all three episodes. The player is able to navigate between mandatory
missions and optional ones (Mass Effect 2 adds a third category, but we will come
to that later). The mandatory missions develop the main plot whereas the optional
ones are just ways of gaining some more experience points and delving deeper in
the universe. The plot can be summed up as follows: Commandant Shepard, helped
by alien races, has to save the galaxy from the Reapers, a race of giant synthetic
spaceships determined to annihilate all organic life.
The vast majority of these primary missions do not have to be played in a well-
defined order. For example, the first three main missions of Mass Effect 1, after
Shepard left the ‘Citadel’ with her ship, may be completed in any order, which may
prompt small variations in various dialogue scenes. These additions of small plot
variations, the player’s own rhythm of exploration and very dramatic and plot-
twisting choices, make each game of Mass Effect a very personal experience.
For these reasons, it seems safe to assume that video games perform a kind of
spatial turn by making the text of the scenario look like, and be experienced as a
map. To better understand what it means, let us take a look at the now classical
book of Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck. Murray makes a clear distinction
between two modalities of interactive storytelling, ‘the solutionless rhizome or the
solvable maze. 2 ’ The latter is associated with adventure games, like the old text-
based RPGs: there is only one way out, but multiple dead-ends occur. The former,
deemed as a more artful form by Murray, is to be found in electronic and hypertext
literature as a web of equally relevant text fractions that offer a wide variety of
points of view.
Nonetheless, we believe that these two forms share a common trait: the lack of
a middle. To understand this sentence, we have to look at this small and seemingly
innocuous extract of Aristotle’s Poetics:

A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end. A

beginning is that which is not a necessary consequent of anything
else but after which something else exists or happens a natural
result. An end on the contrary is that which is inevitably or, as a
rule, the natural result of something else but from which nothing
else follows; a middle follows something else ans something
follows from it 3 .
 Thomas Morisset 233
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This – otherwise good – translation missed the point of the last sentence. In the
original text, there is no verbal form, which may mean two things: it is either the
Greek verb ‘eimi’ (to be) which would have been eluded, or it implies the
repetition of the last employed verb. Most of the translations we know consider the
former to be correct. However, we think that the symmetry of the first two
sentences should be extended and therefore the same verb used a third time.
The verb used by Aristotle is ‘pephuken,’ a past perfect form of ‘phuô,’ which
means, when talking about plants, to grow and is the root of ‘phusis,’ nature. The
translation ‘happens as a natural result’ should convey the idea of something
growing according to the harmony and regulation of nature. That is to say that
nothing comes to be by accident and that every meaningful middle embodies the
form of the whole. In a video game such as Mass Effect it is impossible to say that
something ‘happens as a natural result’ of something else. It is always a decision of
the player, an actualisation of a narrative possibility. There is no middle, there are
only milieu, i.e. a configuration of possibilities, of different points on a map.
It has to be understood that the remark of Aristotle was not plain theoretic, but
also an aesthetic judgment: Aristotle was not initially speaking of every type of
literature but only of tragedy. In this regard, video game narration has more to do
with the improvised poetry of a Homeric bard singing on a loose canvas than with
the Athenian tragedy.
As such, though it has a solvable outcome, Mass Effect and other games that
present similar patterns of narration appear to be closer to a rhizome, than to a
maze. Contrary to Murray, we think that being a maze or a rhizome is far more a
matter of travel than a matter of destination.

2. Mass Effect 2 and the Issue of Personal Investment

Let us investigate further this canvas as it appears in Mass Effect 2. We have
already said that this game introduces a tweak in the primary/secondary mission
structure of the first episode. It introduced the ‘loyalty missions.’ In these, the
player has to help one of her crew mates to settle once and for all a personal issue
in order for them to be loyal to the commandant. In the game, being means gaining
a new ability in combat, and having greater chance to survive the final encounter of
the game. Though all of these missions rather stand on the optional side, the player
is led towards completing these, both through diegetic and extra diegetic
encouragements. The so-called ‘perfect ending,’ in which no one of Shepard’s
friends is killed in action, can only occur if all these missions have been correctly
completed.
Why is it the deathless ending that is defined as perfect? Death is nothing but a
part of every story, so are not we a bit naive and too happy ending oriented? We
think that death is a powerful story element as long as it is meaningful – but here,
the death of a member of the crew has no other meaning than: you have played
something wrong, try again later. Moreover, this ‘perfect’ or ‘good ending’ term is
234 The End of the End as We Know It
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of common use in the video game industry to qualify the outcome that the player
encounters when his percentage of completion of the game is at its maximum.
We are bothered by these distinctions between good and bad endings because
they are undermining the purpose of a rhizome. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
have noted that all idea of hierarchy was alien to the very nature of the rhizome. 4
The meaning of a rhizome is not set in stone, whereas the meaning of Mass Effect
is subdued to the player’s investment: the more you play, the more you deserve an
ending that pleases you. Thus, a good part of the potential of video game as an art
form remains unexplored.
Another detail: after accomplishing their loyalty missions, Miranda and Jack
will have a fight. If Shepard takes sides in this quarrel, she will lose the loyalty of
her other crew mate. The only way to keep both women loyal is to choose a special
appeasing dialogue option, unlocked by a high dialogue skill. But, to the best of
our knowledge, it is impossible to reach this mark unless the player has started
with higher dialogue skills than normal by importing his Shepard of the first
episode into the second one.
This importation feature is one of the most enjoyable aspect of the franchise, as
it strongly connects every decision and experience from all three games. It creates
investment by allowing a strong emotional connection between the player and her
Shepard. But here occurs a deviation of this system as it hinders your progression
if you have not played; i.e. bought the first installment.
This logic of investment is at its peak in Mass Effect 3 with the necessity of
playing multiplayer for a while in order to have access to the perfect ending.
Playing multiplayer death match increases a ‘military preparation’ score that
unlocks some of the features of the final scenes. It is worth noting that these
multiplayer levels are on a free-to-play economic model: if she wants to acquire
rapidly new and enhanced equipment, the player has to spend real money for it.
Therefore it seems that the promise of a better ending was nothing but a hook to
sell more contents.
The player is rewarded for his investment – including financial investment
(another example is the use of DLC to unlock new characters and, therefore, new
dialogue options). Thus is stressed one of the most important stakes for the video
game to solve: to what extent do success and meaning have to depend on each
other? By merging together the satisfaction of achievement and the satisfaction of
fiction, it clearly seems that developers are limiting the available array of emotions
and narrative possibilities.

3. The End of the End: Mass Effect 3’s Final and the ‘Indoctrination Theory’
We cannot dovetail any more the utterly negative reaction of the public when
the third installment of the game was released. BioWare themselves had previously
stated that Mass Effect 3 was due to conclude the Commandant Shepard’s story
arc. However, the players were infuriated with the ending for two main reasons.
 Thomas Morisset 235
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First, these endings were criticised because of their likeness and because they
carried various plot-holes. Second, they were charged with not respecting the
player investment and being incoherent with the fictional universe. 5 This overly
negative response led Bioware to announce that an ‘Extended Cut’ DLC would be
released later that year.
Flash forward to the end of June 2012. This ‘Extended Cut’ did not drastically
alter the previous ending, the most meaningful change being the addition of a
fourth end. Otherwise, it mostly did what the the players were crying for: it
featured additional sequences that, on the one hand, allowed the player to better
understand the way his choices affected the universe, or, on the other hand, fixed
some discrepancies. If most of the formal issues were fixed, the meaning issue that
was raised by the spreading of the so-called ‘indoctrination theory’ seemed, in our
opinion, not to be perfectly tackled.
What was the indoctrination theory? To sum up briefly, it was the belief in an
aesthetic conspiracy theory: Bioware had done on purpose a disappointing end in
order to later reverse it. This belief relied on the supposed fact that the last minutes
of the game were part of a dream. The term ‘indoctrination’ means in the Mass
Effect universe: a process used by the Reapers to control the mind of other sentient
races. The partisans of this theory stressed, as one of their major arguments, that
the final choices were biased. The ‘synthesis choice,’ which prompts a synthesis of
organic and artificial lifeforms, could clearly be identified as the good choice: it
had no real drawback and its presentation was slightly more developed than the
others. But the main antagonist of the first Mass Effect, Saren, who was
indoctrinated, held the exact same discourse. Therefore the last twenty minutes of
the game were said to be a mental trap set by the Reapers to prevent Shepard from
winning the war led against them. 6
This theory was ultimately proven wrong but why did it emerge? The belief in
the indoctrination theory was the expression of a denial: to deny the very
possibility that the authors of acclaimed and engaging video games could
miserably fail. What this theory expressed was a strong relationship to the concept
and to the figure of authorship as guardian of coherence. As in the physical world,
conspiracy theories seem to be a defensive mechanism set to protect a way of
things encountering a dramatic shift: what the player here wanted to protect was
the meaningfulness of the dozen, if not hundred, hours spent on the game.
But why is this event so important? After all, it is commonplace, between
friend or on message boards, to speak about series, to imagine what is about to
happen in the next episode or to blame writers for their lack of imagination.
Moreover the fan fictions are numerous and some of them are as well written and
as deep as the stories told in the canon. As long as Bioware remained silent, it was
no different. But as soon as they stated that they shall change the ending, they, so to
speak, opened their work.
We take the word ‘open work’ in a very different meaning as Umberto Eco
236 The End of the End as We Know It
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does. 7 According to his ideas, Mass Effect is already an open work because its very
structure grants the player freedom of movement and choice. This dimension is
undeniable but in our case, ‘open’ has the same meaning as, when armies are on the
verge of defeat, they declare a city open, abandoning the inhabitants to the enemy
and creating a power vacuum. The statement of Bioware was not an invitation to
take part to an interactive work of art but for a few month Mass Effect 3 was like a
field that players could storm or just patiently wait in. But players weren't just
excitingly waiting for the release of another product, they were facing an
unexpected vacuum in a formerly complete artwork. Thus the vacuum itself, as
well as what tried to replace it, became part of the artwork. Our concept of ‘open
work’ means that the form of an artwork may be torn apart by artful events which
expend the frame of the aesthetic experience. In these cases, we think that the
public’s right and duty is to fill the vacuums created by such unexpected events. In
other words, every article about the indoctrination theory are not just critical
reviews, they are part of an extended definition of Mass Effect as an artwork.
Taking a step back from the meaning of the game, one has to ask itself: why did
Mass effect end like this, i.e. why did it take this disappointing form? The
journalist Paul Tassi expressed what is, I believe, the correct interpretation of this:
for him, the end of Mass Effect 3 was meant to be disappointing in order for
Bioware to sell DLC that would add more depth to the story, thus finally meeting
player’s expectation. 8 It seems that his predictions were true as the last solo DLC
of Mass Effect 3, called ‘The Citadel,’ offers the possibility to wave good bye to
Shepard’s best friends, a possibility whose absence was originally greatly missed
by the fans.
This logic of additional content shows two things. First it is the pinnacle of the
logic of investment and flexibility that spawned the entire playthrough of the game.
Thus, we understand this phenomenon as the emergence of a capitalistic way of
making art form. Second, it dramatically alter the very concept of end because,
being potentially easily modified by DLC, any end may never be set in stone. The
mere possibility of DLC makes the players suspicious. Theoretically, no
videogames that are able to use the DLC technology have an end, in the
aristotelician meaning of this term.

4. Conclusion
We do not want to say that the ‘indoctrination theory’ turned Mass Effect into a
participative work of art. But we do think that the player that will play the game
and its DLC in twenty years will miss what was an engaging aesthetic experience:
to have a work of art that was open. One could argue that the same could be said of
watching series during its first season and watching all the episodes at once years
later. But the purpose of series is to be linear and to build excitement – and series
do not erase their former episode. The politics of DLC, as it appears in the Mass
Effect franchise, builds disappointment and complete a work in a nonlinear way by
 Thomas Morisset 237
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replacing or enhancing the previous experience.
Mass Effect 3 has unwittingly showed that it is possible to apprehend the
release of a DLC, not only as a cynical and economical event, but as an engaging
and artful experience. There are mind games to be played between the public and
the developers that could use the suspicion of DLC to modify their game, forcing
the public to craft theories to fill temporary vacuums. The flexibility of the
medium, thanks to the DLC, allows such an era of suspicion to emerge and it's up
to the creators to use this potentiality of aesthetic experience outside of the game
time. We truly wish that what happens by accident in this case becomes an artistic
resource. By doing so, the rhizome would not only take place in the virtual world
but in the interaction between the video game, its creators and the public.

Notes
1
The official press release is available at the following address:
http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=662095.
2
Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997),
173.
3
Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Stephen Halliwell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1995),1450b22-32.
4
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Mille Plateaux (Paris: Éditions de Minuit,
1980), 9-37.
5
See for example Sparky Clarkson, ‘Mass Effect 3’s Ending Disrespects Its Most
Invested Players’, Kotaku, 3 April 2012, accessed 25 October 2013,
http://kotaku.com/5898743/mass-effect-3s-ending-disrespects-its-most-invested-
players.
6
More information can be found in Paul Tassi, ‘Did the Real Mass Effect 3 Ending
Go Over Everyone’s Heads?’, Forbes, 21 April 2012, accessed 25 October 2013,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/03/21/did-the-real-mass-effect-3-end
ing-go-over-everyones-heads/.
7
Umberto Eco, L’œuvre Ouverte, trans. Chantal Roux de Bézieux (Paris: Éditions
du Seuil, 1965), 15-37.
8
Tassi, ‘Did the Real Mass Effect 3 Ending Go Over Everyone’s Heads?’.

Bibliography
Aristotle. Poetics. Translated by Stephen Halliwell. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1995.
238 The End of the End as We Know It
__________________________________________________________________

Clarkson, Sparky. ‘Mass Effect 3’s Ending Disrespects Its Most Invested Players’.
Kotaku, 3 April 2012. Accessed 25 October 2013.
http://kotaku.com/5898743/mass-effect-3s-ending-disrespects-its-most-invested-
players.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Capitalisme et Schizophrénie II. Mille

Plateaux. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1980.

Eco, Umberto. L’œuvre Ouverte. Translated by Chantal Roux de Bézieux. Paris:

Éditions du Seuil, 1965.

Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3. Bioware, EA Games, 2007-2012.

Murray, Janet. Hamlet on the Holodeck. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997.

Tassi, Paul. ‘Did the Real Mass Effect 3 Ending Go Over Everyone’s Heads?’
Forbes, 21 April 2012. Accessed 25 October 2013.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/03/21/did-the-real-mass-effect-3-end
ing-go-over-everyones-heads/.

Thomas Morisset is a Philosophy PhD and a member of the laboratory EN-ER at

the Parisian ‘École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs.’ His work focuses on
the aesthetics of videogames. He is also director for the theater troupe ‘Compagnie
du Quart de Siècle’ and publishes poetry.
The Virtual Identities of Actual Gamers: An Analysis of Popular
Response to Mass Effect 3

Jakub Siwak
Abstract
From the perspective of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the recent debacle
surrounding the Mass Effect 3 gaming series arguably indicates the difficulty of
producing a ‘body-without-organs’ in the contemporary era. For Deleuze and
Guattari, a ‘body-without-organs’ may be a creative artefact which exceeds the
axiomatic stratification that informs present-day capitalist society, and thereby
makes possible an immanent field in which new experiences can precipitate new
thinking. On the one hand, Mass Effect 3 initially continued to mirror aspects of
such stratification, insofar as it remained a traditional third-person action role-
playing game replete with valorisation of the dominating, exploitative, hyper-
individualistic consumer subject. However, on the other hand, the tragic ending of
the game, involving the demise of the protagonist, Shepard, constituted a ‘line of
flight’ away from such stratification. Arguably, this ‘line of flight’ not only
thematised the fragility and vulnerability of human beings, but also pointed toward
their loss of individuality – or ‘dividualisation’ – within contemporary ‘control’
society; the process of which Deleuze explores in his article ‘Postscript on Control
Societies.’ This chapter takes as its point of departure many gamers’ formidable
negative reaction to the tragic ending of Mass Effect 3, which culminated in an
online petition during which no less than $80,000 was raised, in order to force the
game developer to create an alternative ending in which Shepard survives. In this
chapter, it will be advanced that these gamers constituted a conglomerate – or a
‘desiring machine’ – which attached itself to the ‘body-without-organs’ of Mass
Effect 3, with a view to stratifying the latter in accordance with the axiomatic of
capitalism. This study has a bearing on the issue of identity formation through
gaming.

Key Words: Action role-playing game, actual, virtual, desiring machine, identity.

*****

In terms of cultural studies, which of course draw heavily from philosophical

enquiry, we always try to examine and contend with the features of contemporary
society. It is through looking at instances, or points of contention within that
society, that those features make themselves evident. One of the features that
makes itself most evident today is the impact of technology in terms of identity.
I have always been interested in digital spaces, and the possibilities they seem
to offer for those that experience and immerse themselves in them. Recently, a
fascinating conflict emerged from within this space. Here, the developer 1 of the
240 The Virtual Identities of Actual Gamers
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highly rated game Mass Effect 3 was being battered by gamers who found that the
ending to the game, and by extension, to the trilogy, had failed to meet their
expectations. As a result, they had taken to internet forums en masse, created
online petitions, and even collected money in order to demonstrate their
displeasure with the developer’s creative decisions. 2
The conflict could be examined in a variety of ways:
Firstly, it could be discussed in terms of narrative. We could debate the
storyline and say that a well-executed development and progression has collapsed
at its end under the weight of expectation.
Additionally, we can take a more deterministic route and argue that a game
must always be tied to certain parameters, statistical configurations, and so forth.
Thus, we can argue that the infuriated collection of individuals battering the
developer has missed the point – there will always be a framework that surrounds
even the most expansive of games.
Both discussions are in themselves fascinating talking points, but in terms of a
cultural studies perspective, it is essential to ask a more oblique question. That is,
we need to discuss why games evoke such strong reactions amongst gamers.
What is it about games that evoke such strong reactions? Certainly, other media
artefacts have elicited strong responses in the past, but these reactions on the part
of the audience can easily be tied to a certain discourse. For instance, Mel Gibson’s
Passion of the Christ (2004) was met with much controversy, with claims of anti-
Semitism, unhappiness with the graphic violence within the film, and so forth. If
one examines these responses, the personal investment on the part of the audience
is relatively simple to trace. Here, religious discourse and its undeniable emotive
attachments would be the primary area of focus for anyone examining the
controversy generated. If we attempt to understand the responses to the ending of a
game, we must then look at the attachments and investments made by the gamer in
terms of the media artefact in question. Certainly, it is peculiar that people would
be so attached to what is in essence, a commercial product.
The central question with regard to the conflict between the developer and the
disenchanted gamers must then revolve around locating the discourse at play here.
In other words, we need to try to understand why something virtual would be so
important to so many; so much so that they would raise thousands of dollars in
order to prove a point to the developer.
In order to build up a context around this conflict, this chapter will reference
the post-structuralist thinker, Gilles Deleuze, and in particular his article Postscript
on Control Societies, 3 in order to explain the societal context operating around this
conflict between the game developer’s vision and the fan reaction.
Let us first establish the features of contemporary society, one in which the
angry gamer above would find themselves operating within:
Deleuze developed his notion of ‘control society’ in the 1990’s, drawing on the
work of Michel Foucault. In his two seminal texts, Discipline and Punish (1975)
 Jakub Siwak 241
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and History of Sexuality Volume 1, Foucault showed how during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, a disciplinary society came into operation. This society was
based on the idea of confinement. John Marks explains this idea thus:

Disciplinary society developed a network of sites and institutions

– prisons, hospitals, factories, schools, the family – within which
individuals were located, trained, and/or punished at various
times in their life…Essentially, [this] system is one of contiguity:
the individual moves from site to site, beginning again each
time. 4

Deleuze, in developing his notion of ‘control society’, argues that ‘control

societies are taking over from disciplinary societies.’ 5 He certainly does not
disregard Foucault’s argument, but states that post WW-II, a shift has occurred, in
which confinement is no longer the primary means of control. Instead of the
‘moulds’ that one would find in a disciplinary society, individuals within a society
of control find themselves in a constant state of ‘modulation.’ That is, we move
from contiguity to continuity. Foucault himself acknowledged that as he was
tracing disciplinary society, something new was emerging. So, today, we find that
contemporary society takes on an amalgamation of features (both disciplinary and
beyond).
We must next determine how Deleuze comes to his assertion that in present
times, individuals are constantly in a state of modulation (the defining feature of
control society). It certainly makes sense that when we enter sites of confinement,
we must function in a particular way, and according to particular restrictions we
may not enjoy. Additionally, we may disagree with many of the rules enforced
within these sites, but subordinate ourselves to them in order to be able to function
effectively. Surely though, when we leave these sites, these moulds, we have the
luxury of escaping these restrictions. For instance, playing a game at home, in
one’s free time, should be regarded as an escape from the everyday pressures we
face as we negotiate the many restrictions of being out in society. Although this is
an appealing idea (this idea of ‘getting away’ when in private), a Deleuzian
approach would disagree that this is possible. Deleuze points out that ‘control
societies function within a time where information technologies and computers are
the constantly utilized machines of our time (original emphasis).’ 6 It is certainly
indisputable that we live in an information age; this emphasis on information has a
number of implications, namely that information and the instant communication
that it allows becomes that which allows for constant modulation. We receive
messages related to work at home, our debts follow us around everywhere, never
mind that this is a virtual concept tied to constantly fluctuating conditions based on
a virtual common marketplace, we are constantly ‘switched on’ and tied to others.
The distinctions that had existed in disciplinary society now cede and blur in a
242 The Virtual Identities of Actual Gamers
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society of control. In a way, the individual becomes dismantled and is made into an
interface through which messages constantly travel. In a way, there is a severe
objectification – we become ‘dividuals,’ 7 to be interpreted as ‘data, samples and
markets ‘and ‘constantly coerced into forms of communication.’ 8
In essence then, Deleuze charts a vision of a highly restrictive society, one in
which we are disallowed from reaching our potential as beings. Instead of living in
an open system that promotes ‘becoming,’ we turn to poverty-stricken definitions
of the self, finding release in the information that we access.
If we are living within such a society, that is, one in which we are always
exposed to the dictates of the virtual, how then does this relate to that gamer who
so angrily reacted to Mass Effect 3 not having an ending which correlated with
their expectations. Here, we come to three points; the first relating to the gamers
themselves, the second to the developer and the medium of gaming, and the third
to the Deleuzian concept of ‘lines of flight’ (his term for resisting restrictive and
dominating discourses).
With regards to the disaffected gamer, an idea that can immediately be pointed
to is that, on the part of those protesting the ending, there seems to be a lack of
distinction between the character employed in the game and the self. The gamers,
having invested not only their money, but more importantly, hours upon hours of
their time, cease to see the game as a commercial media product that is
encountered; rather, it becomes a space in which they explore themselves. This
level of immersion and investment opens up a multitude of avenues for discussion.
Before a discussion can be performed around the gamer, it is important to
briefly account for the specific point of difference, and the source of the conflict
with regards to the game. Mass Effect 3allows the gamer to make moral choices
throughout the period of play – these choices will then affect the eventual outcome,
that is, the protagonist’s fate. It is here that the conflict arises. Despite the element
of choice on offer for those that engaged in the game, ultimately, the game ends in
a pre-determined way, regardless of the gamer’s input throughout the course of
play. As one gamer, involved in the protest stated, ‘the game is about choices and
consequences. You do good things and bad things. We were promised by the
developers to have 16 different endings. All these choices you make and you get a
choice of three different endings which are exactly the same, minus a couple of
tweaks here and there.’ 9
So, there is a sense of absolute betrayal circling around this issue. If we take
Deleuze into account here, we can say that the gamer involved in this argument
becomes that interface alluded to earlier – a cipher of sorts who allows themselves
to ‘become’ a character in a commercial media product. In this way they reject
their potential, tying themselves to an image created for them. Rather than escaping
from restrictive realities, or societal conditions through gaming, they openly apply
for admission into an identity created for them by a game developer (who,
ultimately, besides the aesthetic and creative aspects, is simply trying to shift
 Jakub Siwak 243
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enough units to sustain itself and to turn a profit). Another point here could be tied
to the concept of autonomy. While the gamers affected may have believed that they
had a significant input in terms of the outcome, they fail to realise that a game
operated within a closed system, or structure. Certainly, any game has a set of
parameters which cannot be overcome, and thus the element of choice becomes
something of a misnomer. While the gamer may be given choice at certain times,
ultimately, the over-arching structure of the game, and its features, will remain
unaffected by their decisions. Again, we must ask as to why someone would invest
so personally in such a project. Once more, we come to Deleuze’s assertion that we
always experience modulation within a control society, personally investing in that
which serves a particular function; that is, the generating of profit.
Looking at the other side of the conflict also exposes the various limitations
that a restrictive society places on the creators of content. While it is undeniable
that the developer’s reason for releasing the game under discussion would be to
make money, one could point to the game’s aesthetic and creative merits, and
include them within the developer’s motivation. The ending of Mass Effect 3
signals a move away from its competitors within this sub-genre of gaming. Unlike
in other titles, where the protagonist participates in an orgy of violence without fear
of recrimination or death, the protagonist in Mass Effect 3 simply dies, regardless
of how the gamer played the game. In doing so, one can’t help but feel that the
developer made a deliberate choice; to end the trilogy on their own terms, and not
on the terms associated with this form of gaming. However, this unique move, this
‘line of flight,’ as Deleuze would call it, is disallowed by commercial pressures.
Creativity, a necessary component for resisting restrictive societies, is under
pressure from the dictates of the market. The target audience, its monetary clout,
and the commercial interests involved soon become the determining factors of a
storyline within a game. The audience are determined for the game to match its
preceding promotional campaign. Any deviation from this course, any challenging
conclusion, is deemed sacrilegious. As one complainant stated, ‘After reading
through the list of promises about the ending of the game they made in their
advertising campaign and PR interviews, it was clear that the product we got did
not live up to any of those claims.’ 10 Here once more, we begin to see the influence
of a society in which one type of thinking begins to exclude all others. A few
months after the controversy, a patch had been released, offering the gamers’ some
consolation. To their credit, the developer’s did not alter the original ending. The
patch’s effect is described as follows:

The expanded ending sequences for Mass Effect 3 were patched

into BioWare’s spacefaring RPG today on Xbox 360, potentially
remedying a large portion of the community’s dissatisfaction
with the original finales. The free, 1.9 GB update doesn’t change
the contents of the original Mass Effect 3 endings – a point
244 The Virtual Identities of Actual Gamers
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BioWare has repeatedly and eagerly made when discussing the
additions. Rather, it adds “additional cinematic sequences and
epilogue scenes” which provide “more ... answers and closure.” 11

Regardless of the eventual outcome of the tussle between developer and gamer,
one idea begins to surface; the idea that the potential of gaming is so often stifled
by the discursive limitations of what Deleuze terms a control society – a discursive
development which, through consistent modulation, outline the parameters of
possibility, and thus has a negative impact on both sides of the exchange.
Heading towards a conclusion, and to move away from such a pessimistic
overview, the chapter will quickly reference Deleuze in terms of what gaming can
do to loosen the shackles of restrictive societal dynamics. Deleuze always states
that something should be seen in terms of its potential. So, for instance, we would
ask as to what a medium like gaming could produce. It is plausible to suggest that
gaming has a tremendous scope to it, but often, it becomes tied down in clichés,
demands for repetition, and caught up in financial interests – all of these being
factors that call for a restrictive focus, and a rejection of creativity. Claire
Colebrook, writing on Deleuze, offers a wonderful, evocative example of how
trying to think outside of restrictive parameters opens up the possibility of the new:

A philosophical concept works against this reductive and

generalising tendency by expanding difference. It creates new
ways of thinking. Take the concept of love. Opinion will reduce
love to its already known forms – bourgeois marriage – and then
dismiss all other forms: “That’s not love; it’s perversion!” A
concept in its philosophical sense moves beyond any example or
model to think the very power or possibility: so “love” would not
be reducible to any given form, whether that be familial,
homosexual or heterosexual. We might form a concept of love,
as Deleuze did, that was as open as possible (Deleuze 1973:
140). Love is the encounter with another person that opens us up
to a possible world. This concept does not take a form of love –
the couple – and then say that this is what love is. The concept of
love as “a possible encounter with another as a whole new
world” allows us to think of forms of love that are not yet given,
that are not actual but virtual. 12

In terms of gaming then, if we allow the medium to move towards such a space,
the possibilities then of gaming to become an open space of creativity, both for the
developer and the gamer, become more realistic. Gaming certainly has this
potential to allow us to move away from those restrictive fixed signifiers that we
cling to in order to make sense of lives. A strange virtual interaction, such as
 Jakub Siwak 245
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Botanicula (Amanita Design, 2012), gets us to experience outside of those fixed
structures of meaning (the political subject and the psychological subject).

Notes
1
BioWare: A Canadian video game developer currently owned by Electronic Arts
2
This is evidenced in the mainstream media. Although sums tend to differ, there
are multiple articles that reported on the conflict. The BBC for instance, reported
that a Sebastian Sobcyzk was heading the UK protest against the ending of the
game, and that $70 000 had been raised thus far. With regards to the ending, he
laments, ‘They just completely destroyed the whole game for us. If I wanted to get
my soul crushed, I could just turn on the TV and put the news on’. BBC
Technology, ‘Mass Effect Campaign Demands New Ending to Series’. The article
also refers to a US gamer who had allegedly filed a complaint to the Federal Trade
Commission against the developer.
3
This article appears in Deleuze’s text Negotiations (1995) and offers a useful
insight into the implications of information technology, at a time when (relatively)
it was in its infancy.
4
John Marks, ‘Control Society’, in The Deleuze Dictionary, ed. Adrian Parr
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 53-54.
5
Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 178.
6
Ibid., 180.
7
Marks, ‘Control Society’, 54.
8
Ibid.
9
‘Mass Effect Campaign Demands New Ending to Series’, BBC Technology,
accessed 6 May 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17444719.
10
Statement taken from the ‘Mass Effect Campaign.’
11
‘Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut Endings Available Today, Watch Them Here’,
Polygon, accessed 8 May 2013,
http://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/6/26/3118472/mass-effect-3-new-endings.
12
Claire Colebrook, Routledge Critical Thinkers: Gilles Deleuze (New York:
Routledge, 2002), 17.

Bibliography
BBC Technology. ‘Mass Effect Campaign Demands New Ending to Series’.
Accessed 6 May 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17444719.

Colebrook, Claire. Routledge Critical Thinkers: Gilles Deleuze. New York:

Routledge, 2002.
246 The Virtual Identities of Actual Gamers
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Deleuze, Gilles. Foucault. Translated and edited by Sean Hand. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 1986.

—––. Negotiations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.

—––. Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975-1995. Cambridge,

MA: Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents/MIT Press, 2006.

McElroy, Griffin. ‘Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut Endings Available Today, Watch
Them Here’. Accessed 8 May 2013.
http://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/6/26/3118472/mass-effect-3-new-endings.

Parr, Adrian, ed. The Deleuze Dictionary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2005.

Patton, Paul. Deleuze: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1996.

Jakub Siwak is a doctoral student and lecturer at the Nelson Mandela

Metropolitan University, South Africa. His current area of research involves post-
structuralism and emerging media formats.
Implicit and Explicit Video Game Structure in Shaun of the Dead
and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Jamie Skidmore
Abstract:
Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, are films by director Edgar
Wright modelled on video games. Shaun of the Dead, for example, is a simulacrum
of a video world, in which Shaun and his sidekick Ed are the equivalent of avatars.
The ‘game’ possesses many of the traits of a first-person shooter game, such as
weapon upgrades and boss levels, and it contains aspects of open world racing
games. This chapter employs formal and semiotic theory to examine the
development of the video game paradigm in Shaun of the Dead through to its very
explicit representation in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. This research uses formal
analysis to examine shot composition, pacing, and camera movement in order to
reveal how Wright emphasises the aesthetic of a video environment. A semiotic
analysis of the morphological elements of the films further reveals parallels to
video games. Applying the theory of spectatorship, this chapter examines the
reasoning behind Wright’s decision to create a simulated world that attempts to
replicate that of a video game. In Shaun of the Dead, Wright juxtaposes the
‘zombies’ over normal human beings living an oblivious existence. In a similar
vein, this chapter concludes by answering the question: ‘What is Wright
commenting on when he ties his films to the world of the video gamer?’

Key Words: Video game, zombie, Edgar Wright, Shaun of the Dead, Scott
Pilgrim, first-person shooter, racing.

*****

‘Get Ready.’ ‘Here We Go!’ These iconic words inform the video game player
that the game is about to start. In the film world of British director Edgar Wright, it
informs the spectator that an epic battle is about to begin. These lines preface the
climatic moment in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, but they could also signal the start
of the barroom battle in Wright’s best known film, Shaun of the Dead.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a film about a young, Canadian man, Scott
Pilgrim (Michael Cera), and his developing relationship with a mysterious,
American girl, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). It begins with Scott in
a relationship with the 17-year-old Knives Chau (Ellen Wong) who idolises him.
Scott catches a glimpse of Ramona at the library and immediately falls for her. In
order to completely win over Ramona, however, he must first defeat all of her
exes, collectively known as ‘The League of Evil Exes.’
Upon viewing Scott Pilgrim vs. The World it is immediately obvious that
Wright has fashioned the film after a video game. At least this seems to be the
248 Implicit and Explicit Video Game Structure
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case, as video game iconography appears throughout the film. In reality, the movie
is based on a graphic novel by Bryan Lee O’Malley, which is also titled Scott
Pilgrim vs. The World. The graphic novel, in turn, is based on a video game
paradigm, which is where the film finds its template.
In the graphic novel, unlike the film, Scott Pilgrim is an avid game player.
Whenever he talks on the phone with his roommate, Wallace Wells (Kieran
Culkin), for example, Scott is always at his Nintendo game console, playing a
game reminiscent of Super Mario Brothers, but with cats. Wells, meanwhile, is at
work playing computer solitaire. In the film it is another character, Young Neil
(Johnny Simmons), who eventually replaces Scott in his band, who is constantly
playing on his Nintendo DS.
In the comic book, we discover that Scott’s knowledge of language is
influenced by video game culture. For example, when his girlfriend, Ramona
Flowers, asks him, ‘Are we an item?’ He answers, ‘I’m sorry, what?’ Meanwhile,
‘items’ found in Super Mario, such as a mushroom, star, and a flower appear in
‘thought clouds’ above his head. He is attempting to equate this word that he
understands in his game world to the real world.
Essentially, for Scott Pilgrim the real world and the video game world are
interchangeable. The environment of Super Mario Brothers is as legitimate of a
world for Scott as the one in which he exists outside the game. Therefore, the title
of the film, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, relates in part to Scott’s struggle as a
young man to come to terms with love and relationships. By setting both the
graphic novel and the movie in a setting that has the same rules, characters, and
consequences of a video game, Scott’s character is able to examine his own angst.
The video game paradigm in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World acts as a metaphor for
Scott dealing with the issues of dealing with a young woman with a romantic past.
Scott is placed with Knives at the beginning of the film, as she is innocent and
most likely a virgin. When he meets Ramona, he must deal with the fact that she
has baggage in the form of multiple ex-boyfriends and even an ex-girlfriend. All of
the exes challenge Scott both ethically and physically, as he has to deal at times
with their superior strengths and successes. He also has to face the fact that some
of the relationships are complicated, such as the fact that Ramona dated another
woman; or that she dated twins at the same time.
By fighting within a video game environment, Wright is able to use game
battles as a metaphor for dealing with a steady stream of shocking prior
relationships that Ramona was in before moving to Scott’s hometown of Toronto,
Canada. Violence in video games is ameliorated by the fact that characters do not
die, they are not permanently hurt or injured, nor do they feel pain. When Scott is
killed by the last of Ramona’s exes, for example, he does not die, but instead uses
his ‘1-up’ that he was awarded in an earlier battle.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is modelled after a seven level game, with a boss at
each stage. Every zone is influenced by a different style of video game, such as
 Jamie Skidmore 249
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Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Rock Band, Mortal Combat and Double Dragon. Each
level is progressively challenging, as in a normal video game.
The first boss that Scott faces is Ramona’s ex from the seventh grade, Matthew
Patel (Satya Bhabha). He has a group of cronies, known as the Hipster Demon
Chicks. All of the enemies in Scott Pilgrim, below the level of boss, look the same
as the others in the group to which they belong. The Hipster Demon Chicks, for
example, are all played by one actor performing a single set of movements. This
character is then replicated four times in the background behind Patel. During the
movie, as in a video game, the bosses become increasing difficult to defeat.
Consequently, Patel is the easiest battle for Pilgrim to win. Following the model of
the battles being metaphors for dealing with Ramona’s past relationships, it makes
sense that Patel goes down with relative ease. As her grade seven fling, he would
not have had a significant relationship with her, so it is easy for Pilgrim to not be
overly affected by her romantic history in this instance. After each battle Scott is
awarded points, as in a video game, and he receives a 1000 points for defeating
Patel. This increases by a 1000 points after each fight, so when Scott defeats his
next opponent, Lucas Lee (Chris Evans), he’s awarded 2000 points. The exception
to this rule is when he beats the final boss, Gideon and receives ‘7,000,000,000’
points.
As Scott’s second opponent, Lucas Lee literally throws him for a loop. In fact,
Lee throws Scott through the air into a tower that is part of Castle Loma in
Toronto. Scott then comes crashing back to earth, both literally and figuratively,
when he falls through a series of scaffolding to the ground. Lee also has a series of
minions, which are his own stunt doubles. Lee, it turns out, is now an action film
hero and he is in Toronto shooting a new movie on location at the historic Castle
Loma. Lee was Ramona’s second boyfriend, and was a young, geeky skateboarder
when they dated during their freshman year in high school. Scott is able to defeat
Lee’s henchmen, but cannot beat Lee in battle. Instead, Scott challenges Lee to ride
the rails of the steep steps going down from Castle Loma to the street below. The
ride down is reminiscent of a game such as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, but Lee loses
control at the end and explodes, giving Scott his second victory. Lee’s succumbing
to peer pressure is reminiscent of his relationship with Ramona. He was an
insecure skater dude when he met Ramona, and she left him for her next boyfriend,
Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh). She also cheated on Lee with Ingram, so he always
feels he is not good enough and must prove himself to her and others over and
over. This also explains his need to be an action hero, which provides a facade over
his weak sense of self worth.
After Scott defeats Lee he realises that Ramona has vanished. The next day as
he walks down the street, underneath seven crosswalk signs with their ‘X’ icons,
he notices the ‘X-Men’ patch on his own coat. He tears the patch off of his coat,
not wanting to be one of Ramona’s exes.
Ramona’s fourth ex, Todd Ingram, is reminiscent of Storm from the X-Men
250 Implicit and Explicit Video Game Structure
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with his white hair and eyes, and his ability to levitate. He also has a
‘Deveganizing Ray,’ reminiscent of Cyclop’s laser eyes in X-Men. As it turns out,
Ingram is currently dating Scott’s former great love Envy Adams and is the bass
player in her band. Scott also plays the bass in the band Sex Bob-Omb (a character
from Super Mario Brothers whose icon also appears on the band’s bass drum), but
is defeated by Ingram in a battle reminiscent of a Rock Band duel. Scott is not able
to beat Ingram, but ‘cheats’ by slipping half and half cream into his coffee. Ingram
is then arrested by the Vegan police and loses his vegan powers for consuming
milk products on three separate occasions. Ingram is akin to that better looking
version of yourself, who is also seemingly better at everything. Scott’s use of a
‘cheat’ in this instance turns out to be justified, when we discover that Ingram
knowingly consumed Chicken Parmasano in the past. It is also a reference to using
a ‘cheat’ in a video game, which allows you to avoid difficult characters and
obstacles.
The next three exes that Scott must face are reflective of Ramona’s sexuality
and therefore all prove to be difficult opponents. Roxy Richter (Mae Whitman) and
twins Kyle (Keita Saito) and Ken Katayanagi (Shota Saito) represent Ramona’s
experimental period when she tried bisexuality and menage a trois with the
Katayanagi twins.
His final battle with Gideon Graves (Jason Schwartzman) is the most difficult
of all, which is consistent with fighting the final boss in any game. This is because
Graves represents an adult, committed relationship for Ramona. Scott is unable to
defeat Graves until he is able to find his own sense of self-respect. As well, he
must come to terms with cheating on knives and Ramona. In the end, Scott is only
able to defeat Graves after using an extra-life and fighting him in sync with Knives
in a fight reminiscent of a scene earlier in the film when they play Ninja Ninja
Revolution, a play on Dance Dance Revolution.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World follows an explicit video game template. Besides
the many battles noted above, there are many other indicators that the film is set in
a video game environment. When Scott pee’s a ‘Pee’ meter, reminiscent of health
meters found in video games, appears. Graves also has a similar meter indicating
his health in his final battle with Scott. When each battle begins a ‘vs.’ sign
appears between the two combatants, and points are scored whenever an opponent
is defeated.
Unlike the explicit video game template found in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World,
Shaun of the Dead, Edgar Wright’s comedic horror/zombie film, has a video game
sub-structure that is not as obvious to the spectator at first glance. Shaun of the
Dead is a parody of horror films, such as Dawn of the Dead, George Romero’s
classic zombie movie. Clearly, the title of Shaun of the Dead is an homage to
Romero’s cult classic. On the surface, Shaun of the Dead appears to be a simple
comedic take on zombie films, but like Scott Pilgrim, Shaun (Simon Pegg) must
move through a variety of levels and defeat numerous bosses in order to ‘win the
 Jamie Skidmore 251
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game’ and the girl.
The first suggestion that Shaun of the Dead is a simulacrum of a video game is
when he plays Timesplitters 2 with his best friend Ed, played by Nick Frost.
Timesplitters 2 is a first-person shooter game, which is one of the templates for
Shaun of the Dead. Enemies in Timesplitters 2 include zombies, which is another
hint that Shaun is a giant video game being played out on screen. Shaun and Ed
encounter their first low level enemy in the backyard where they find the zombie
named Mary. The first weapons they have at their disposal are simple: a rock and
hand-to-hand combat. After a short fight, Shaun impales Mary on a spike, only to
have her re-animate. Like in many video games (and zombie films) the enemy has
to be killed in the correct manner. During this fight, they face another zombie who
is the splitting image Stitches in World of Warcraft. They enter the house to
regroup and they are attacked by a third zombie, while the other two look in
through the window. This time they try to defeat him with beer cans, a video game
controller, and finally defeat him by smashing an ashtray into his skull. The game
controller, which moves quickly across the screen, is a subtle reminder that this
world is modelled after a video game.
After ‘leveling up’ and gaining additional knowledge on how to kill zombies
from a television newscaster, Shaun and Ed collect additional ‘weapons’ from their
kitchen, including knives and forks, a sugar jar, and a toaster – essentially,
everything except for ‘the kitchen sink.’ These weapons are useless against the
zombies, but they find a record on the ground in the same manner that weapons are
found in video games and the duo end up throwing dozens of records at the two
zombies. Although they have little affect on them, it is equivalent to leveling up in
the lower levels of video games. When records prove to be insubstantial, Shaun
finds the iconic cricket bat found on the film’s poster and Ed finds a shovel.
Although the weapons seem simple and mundane, they foreshadow Wright’s
choice of weapons in the subsequent Scott Pilgrim film. During his second battle
Scott fights the low level skater enemies with a skateboard.
During the next section of the film, Shaun plays out in his head how he will
rescue his mum from his stepfather, who he imagines is now a zombie, and then
saves his girlfriend who has recently dumped him. We see this scenario played out
three times, which is suggestive of the manner in which video game players can
attempt the same sequence multiple times until they figure it out and move on to
the next level. Ed drives the car to Shaun’s mum’s house, in a scene reminiscent of
a game such as Crazy Taxi. In this driving game scenario, Nick drives into a
(zombie) pedestrian, and then after dropping off Shaun, inexplicably crashes the
parked car into a danger sign. They then ‘move up’ from their first vehicle into a
Mercedes Benz owned by Shaun’s stepfather.
After picking up Shaun’s girlfriend, and two roommates, and another Crazy
Taxi-esque sequence in the Benz, the group abandons the car when the stepfather
turns into a zombie. On foot through back alleyways, Shaun’s group encounters a
252 Implicit and Explicit Video Game Structure
__________________________________________________________________
group of what appears to be doppelgängers. They are dressed in a similar fashion
to Shaun’s group and carry many of the same weapons. The doubling of characters
is another nod to the video game sub-structure of this film – these ‘doppelgängers’
represent the repetition of many characters found in games such as World of
Warcraft. Like other role-playing games, characters can share costumes and
weapons and you often find players who are identical in every way to your own.
The most obvious parallels with video games occur at The Winchester, the pub
where Nick and Ed always hang out and where they take refuge from the zombie
horde. Their first opponent is Big Al, the bartender of the Winchester, who proves
almost impossible to take down. The crux of the argument that Shaun of the Dead
is modelled after a video game takes place after Nick and Ed upgrade from the
pool cues they use on Big Al to the Winchester rifle that hangs above the bar. This
sequence of events is straight out of a first person shooter game, right down to the
P.O.V. camera shots straight down the barrel of the rifle. As Nick fires, Ed shouts
instructions you would often hear in video games: ‘12 o’clock’ and ‘reload’ are
two examples. The most obvious refrain, however, is when Ed to aim ‘top left,’
referring to how a shooter in a video game observes the screen. This is also a
repeat of a scene at the beginning of the movie when Nick tells Ed to ‘reload’ and
‘top left’ when he’s playing Timesplitters 2.
During the shooting sequence, Nick misses his first few targets, hitting targets
on the bar walls instead. When he strikes the brass bed warmer the bullet rings off
the metal with the same sound found in many target shooting arcade games.
The film concludes with Ed having been bitten and now living in the garden
shed in the backyard. Nick drops in for a visit and finds Ed, now a zombie, playing
a video game. Nick picks up the controller and the game announces that: ‘player
two has entered the game.’ Echoing an earlier scene in the movie, this line sums up
the construct of the movie as a simulacrum of a video game.
In Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, director Edgar Wright
uses a video game model to structure the films. It is a logical decision, as the ‘plot’
of a typical video game mirrors that of horror and action films. A protagonist faces
a variety of challenges, which become increasingly more difficult to overcome.
The plot builds towards a climax, similar to that of the final meeting with a boss,
and the game ends, like the films, when the protagonist triumphs. The decision to
mirror video games in his films also allows Wright to hold a mirror up to society,
questioning how we react to the past relationships of our own partners, and how we
can easily become zombies in our own, waking existence.

Bibliography
Bacall, Michael, and Edgar Wright. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Directed by
Edgar Wright. 2010. Universal Pictures. iTunes.
 Jamie Skidmore 253
__________________________________________________________________

O’Malley, Bryan Lee. Scott Pilgrim: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Vol. 2. Portland:
Oni Press, 2012.

Pegg, Simon, and Edgar Wright. Shaun of the Dead. Directed by Edgar Wright.
2004. Rogue Pictures. iTunes.

Scott Pilgrim Wiki. Accessed 14 April 2013.

http://scottpilgrim.wikia.com/wiki/Video_Game_References.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. 2010. Accessed 13 April 2013.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446029/?ref_=sr_1.

Shaun of the Dead. 2004. Accessed 15 April 2013.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365748/?ref_=sr_1.

Jamie Skidmore is a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland where he

teaches practical courses in film and theatre production. He is also a writer,
director and designer, and works in professional theatre outside of the university.
His research includes work on Newfoundland theatre and circus, amongst other
areas.
 Rewriting Morality: Women, Sexuality and Morality
in Dishonored

Meaghan Ingram
Abstract
This chapter is focused on the intersecting subjects of gender, sexuality, and
morality in Dishonored (2012). I would like to posit that the game’s strong 19th-
century British influence is connected to its rereading/writing of Victorian
sexuality and attitudes toward illegitimate offspring (as well as the moral stigma –
or lack thereof – that comes with bastard children), particularly for the relatively
few female characters. Through Victorian female literary tropes, ideals and
attitudes, it is possible to gain a better and more complex understanding of the
game’s treatment of its female characters and their place in the world of the game.
Simultaneously, it is necessary to address the backwards-looking and revisionary
nature of a game set in an unVictorian world created by modern developers, and
the role of contemporary biases (gendered and otherwise) in this setting. Neo-
Victorian literary critics such as Samantha Carroll, Alexia Bowler and Peter
Widdowson provide a mode of critical discourse that help to understand and
explain Dishonored’s re-vision (and lack of re-vision) of gendered roles, tropes and
archetypes. Additionally, Stefania Forlini provides perspective on the question of
morality in Neo-Victorian texts, which proves interesting when considering
Dishonored’s female characters and their places in the game’s moral system. The
overall aim of this chapter is to place Dishonored alongside the Neo-Victorian
literary tradition and apply relevant critical thought to explore the overlapping and
intersecting traditions of gender within the game.

Key Words: Gender, sexuality, morality, Dishonored, literary tropes.

*****

To get the basics out of the way first: Dishonored (2012) is a first-person
action-adventure game with an emphasis on stealth combat developed by Arkane
Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks in 2012. The game’s relatively linear
story follows Corvo Attano, former bodyguard of the late Empress Jessamine
Kaldwin, as he tries to clear his name and coronate the new empress (Emily
Kaldwin). The premise is made interesting by virtue of the game’s setting in the
fictional city of Dunwall on the island of Gristol where (not-quite) whale oil
powers electric arc pylons and the city is being ravaged by a plague. For anyone
familiar with the game or its development, the setting is quasi-Victorian; the world
may be completely fictional, but the setting is intended to mimic Victorian
aesthetics and atmosphere.
256 Rewriting Morality
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There is a lot to be said about Dishonored’s aesthetic, plot, values and
characters, but I am going to focus on Empress Jessamine Kaldwin. Through
examining Victorian ideals of femininity, it is possible to gain a better and more
complex understanding of the game’s treatment of its female characters and their
place in the world of the game by understanding the history that informs the
game’s world. Characters’ interactions with the Victorian constructions of
femininity within a Victorian-influenced (but distinctly not-Victorian) world can
be more broadly approached through neo-Victorian criticism, and laid against ideas
of revision, recursion, repetition and dissonance. Questions such as, ‘What is
Victorian about this game? What’s different – what isn’t Victorian? And why is it
different?’ are important to consider in light of the intersecting nature of
constructed femininity. I would like to posit that the game’s strong 19th-century
British influence is connected to its rereading and rewriting of Victorian sexuality
and attitudes toward illegitimate offspring (as well as the moral stigma – or lack
thereof – that comes with bastard children), particularly for the relatively few
female characters.
Samantha Carroll, Alexia Bowler and Peter Widdowson note that there is a
present-day interest (bordering on infatuation, depending on the critic) with
Victorians and Victoriana. Widdowson writes that ‘[i]t is surely a truism by now to
remark that large swathes of British “contemporary fiction” by a diverse range of
authors … are in fact “historical novels.”’1 About the commercial viability and
popularity of historical and neo-Victorian novels (and perhaps more broadly, neo-
Victorian fiction), Carroll writes that ‘Gutleben suggests that these paratactic
blurbs frequently overstate the neo-Victorian novel’s connection to best-selling
Victorian novels or their authors in order to capitalize on (or cannibalize) the
Victorian novel’s continuing popularity.’2 This suggests that there is a value to
connecting with the Victorians, a value that can be capitalised/cannibalised. So
although critics are talking specifically about books, Victorian history and culture
is clearly still fascinating to readers, writers, and other consumers of media. I
would argue that (Victorian) literature, (Victorian) history and (neo-Victorian)
literary criticism are useful when applied to this game as they help to situate it in
both a cultural past and a cultural present.
An interesting dialogue starts when present-day authors, artists, and, in this
case, game developers, try to write about or re-create a Victorian past, or an
imagined past not far removed from real history. Widdowson writes that Neo-
Victorian authors ‘“[write] backwards,” a kind of mirror-writing in which inverted
images depict a very different reality to that authoritatively represented by the
received tradition.’3 Widdowson is writing about re-visionary texts; that is, texts
that literally rewrite pre-existing texts, but with structured differences (his
examples include The Wide Sargasso Sea and The French Lieutenant’s Woman). I
feel the theory of revisionary or recreative texts can be applied more broadly,
 Meaghan Ingram 257
__________________________________________________________________
encompassing texts which revise both history and fiction, and including literary
tropes as a sort of socially-constructed text undergoing recreation.
Widdowson writes that to ‘“rewrite” … canonic texts from the past, [means to]
call to account formative narratives that have been arguably central to the
construction of “our” consciousness.’4 Re-vision to Widdowson is an act of
revising history and literature through patterns of repetition and structured
dissonance. Widdowson did not have a game in mind when he wrote his paper, but
nevertheless the theory of revision through fiction is certainly applicable to a game
set in an imagined approximation of 1890s London. Dishonored is not a re-vision
as Widdowson imagines it, but more a re-creation through recreation. For one,
there is no text for it to revise in the traditional sense; Dishonored writes its own
text(s) in its own world, and selectively borrows and revises the things it does
incorporate from the world we know. The player is allowed to move through an
environment that is inarguably informed by a Victorian aesthetic and influenced by
a Victorian past. The events, characters and world are uniquely not-Victorian, and
it is the differences, modifications and disinclusions that make it a re-creation
instead of a re-vision.
But there is a balance that must be maintained between the Victorian influence
and the re-creation in order to preserve the authenticity of the historic/cultural
influence. If the game attempts to rewrite too much, it risks losing the close
connection to the historical source and merely sheathing itself in a veneer of
Victoriana instead of reflecting backwards on a Victorian heritage. In order to do
more than ‘look’ Victorian, it must also have characters driven by Victorian ideals
or functioning within prescribed roles that resemble (if not replicate) Victorian
roles.
It is worth noting once again that Dishonored is not set in 1890s London;
rather, it is set in a fictional world (The Isles/Gristol) based on the British Empire
during the 19th century. It is not a perfectly accurate replication of the British
Empire with different names for similar places, although the developers did state
that they took significant influence from London architecture and British history.
However, this is not just an imagined Victorian London; the main source of power
is a sort of magical whale-oil, for one thing. So although Dishonored strives for a
very Victorian aesthetic, there are significant differences in the visual landscape.
Finally, the main point: I would like to talk about the dead Empress. She is in
the game for all of five or ten minutes, so it seems (at the outset) as though she’s
not very important except as a catalyst for the plot. And, to some degree, that is
true. The story is not, after all, Empress Jessamine hunting down the killers of her
bodyguard. However, she does have an important and interesting role, even if it
largely goes unstated. Jessamine has a daughter and heir (Emily Kaldwin) but there
is no conclusive answer (in-game or from the developers) to who Emily’s father is.
Jessamine is never stated to be married, or have been married, or be widowed.
258 Rewriting Morality
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There is no suggestion of any prince consort skulking in the background. But most
importantly: no one in the game world is bothered by it.
There are some suggestions (voiced by two side characters) that Corvo, the
protagonist and player avatar, might be Emily’s father, but it is speculative and
never confirmed or denied. The game developers are incredibly cagey about
confirming or denying anything left ambiguous by the plot, so it is likely never
going to be addressed head-on. The point of that is: Emily does not have a named
father. She is a bastard, which is... sort of a big deal, in a Victorian-not-Victorian
setting. (By the way, another character mentions ‘recognizing one of his bastards,’
so bastardy as a concept does exist). But the most significant thing about Emily
Kaldwin’s bastardy is its insignificance. She is the undisputed heir apparent to the
throne of the Isles, and given that this world is in turmoil and there are at least two
attempted political coups during the game, you’d think now would be the time to
denounce Emily’s legitimacy – and, given that we know bastards exist and are not
the social norm, it seems as though it would be the perfect time to suggest she was
not a ‘real’ heir. And yet, no one does.
This strange sort of silence is made really strange when laid against real-world
Victorian values, where the mothers of illegitimate children were frequently
criminalised, sometimes demonised, and often objects of pity and scorn.
Higgenbotham suggests that the mothers of illegitimate children were almost-
always classed as poor and needing support; ‘Sin of the Age: Infanticide and
Illegitimacy in Victorian London’ discusses exclusively the alarm over unmarried
mothers in Victorian London, and the perception of unmarried mothers being at
risk of committing infanticide.5 In addition to the perception that unmarried
mothers were always lower class, there was the social stigma attached to an
illegitimate child as proof that the mother had sexual relations outside of wedlock.
Higgenbotham writes that ‘the unmarried mother, it was assumed, would seek
above all to conceal her fall from virtue by destroying the evidence of her sin, the
illegitimate infant.’6
Furthermore, Higgenbotham notes that ‘the mother’s deed was blamed not
simply on her poverty but also on her betrayal by the father of her child.’7
Jessamine is clearly not impoverished, and there is never any suggestion that the
father of Jessamine’s child is missing, or at fault, or has ‘betrayed’ them; in fact, he
is completely unimportant to establishing the legitimacy of the child. There is also
no suggestion that anyone is trying to conceal Emily being born out of wedlock.
While two characters speculate on whether Corvo is Emily’s father, no one ever
brings up Jessamine’s marital status in relation to the legitimacy of her daughter.
English bastardy laws during the Victorian period stated that a bastard child
was filius nullius – literally, ‘nobody’s child.’ The identity of the mother, then, had
no importance in determining the identity of the child as far as the historical
English legal system was concerned; the only identity that mattered regarding
legitimacy was the father’s. Frank writes that ‘even where a child is subsequently
 Meaghan Ingram 259
__________________________________________________________________
legitimized, he is not entitled to inherit by descent from the father, and the
restrictive nature of married women’s property laws frequently left the mother no
property to bequeath.’8 Illegitimate female children were at even more of a
disadvantage for inheriting property than male illegitimate children, given that they
1) in most cases could not inherit property anyway, and 2) if they could, it would
transfer away from them if they married.
In contrast to Victorian ideals, which are aggressively present in many other
ways in the game, there is absolutely no social stigma attached to Emily’s identity
as a bastard daughter. In fact, Jessamine’s daughter is the unquestioned heir of the
empire. There is no ending of the game where Emily does not inherit the crown
(except – spoiler alert – if she dies; and if she dies, the empire dissolves entirely.
There is no empire without Emily). And, far from being ‘nobody’s child,’ Emily is
most definitely established as Jessamine’s daughter; she may be a bastard, but she
is very much legitimate and capable of inheriting land, property, and titles. In this
way, Dishonored inverts Victorian traditions by privileging the mother’s
legitimacy over the father’s, and making paternal heritage unimportant.
First, it suggests that sexuality, at least, is not as strictly policed as modern
viewers expect of Victorian-themed texts. Jessamine is able to have a child out of
wedlock – a pretty clear expression of heterosexual intercourse – with no negative
consequences for her or her child. She is not challenged for having an illegitimate
daughter, and it neither disqualifies her from ruling her empire nor casts her in a
negative moral light. Secondly, it inverts a Victorian paternal tradition of
inheritance and legitimacy by writing out the importance of the father and re-
writing the importance of the mother as taking precedence – at least, in this
instance.
As revolutionary as that might sound, I am not trying to suggest that this is a
matriarchal society; it is very much patriarchal. Professions are, for example, still
very much gendered. Women can’t work on whaling ships, or in the militant arm
of the clergy, or the city guard, or the navy. Women who do not fit into socially-
constructed boxes are overwhelmingly ostracised or persecuted as heretics. So
although Emily is free to inherit the empire, it is not indicative of an overall system
that favors female supremacy.
This is a game, not a history textbook. But it is a sort of imagined history – a
fictional world that looks and feels very similar to what is held up as true history.
And by bending the rules and re-writing them to refocus values, Dishonored is able
to get the viewer closer to a thematic understanding of historic spaces and the rules
that govern them by making those rules completely unfamiliar. At the same time,
the values that underscore the changed elements of the game – that illegitimacy is a
non-issue, that the mothers of illegitimate children have nothing to be ashamed of –
are very much a 21st century values laid over a Victorian aesthetic that carries sets
of coded values; values such as, ‘unmarried mothers are poor,’ or ‘unmarried
women are likely to kill their illegitimate children.’ Giving players something they
260 Rewriting Morality
__________________________________________________________________
can connect with (an underlying set of values and morals that correspond to what a
21st century person can understand) allows them to better connect with concepts
they might otherwise find obscure or untouchable. Additionally, it demonstrates
that a game – or any text that chooses to revise and rewrite history into fiction –
can do so in a way that imagines both an accurate estimation of the past but refuses
to reiterate the sexist dogmas of that past, and does so while still feeling
authentically Victorian.

Notes
1
Peter Widdowson, ‘“Writing Back”: Contemporary Re-Visionary Fiction’,
Textual Practice 20, No. 3 (2006): 491-507 .
2
Samantha J. Carroll, ‘Putting the “Neo” Back into Neo-Victorian: The Neo-
Victorian Novel as Postmodern Revisionist Fiction’, Neo-Victorian Studies 3, No.
2 (2010): 172-205.
3
Widdowson, ‘“Writing Back”’, 501.
4
Ibid., 491.
5
Ann R. Higginbotham, ‘“Sin of the Age”: Infanticide and Illegitimacy in
Victorian London’, Victorian Studies 32, No. 3 (1989): 319.
6
Ibid., 319.
7
Ibid., 322.
8
Cathrine O. Frank, ‘Fictions of Justice: Testamentary Intention and the
(Il)Legitimate Heir in Trollope’s Ralph the Heir and Forster’s Howard’s End’,
English Literature in Transition (1880-1920) 47, No. 3 (2004): 315.

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Meaghan Ingram is newly-graduated from Simmons College (Boston, MA).

While interested in Renaissance Florence, Victorian history and game
development, currently her research and writing is focused toward videogames and
their use as cultural artefacts.
Spaces of the Past: Nostalgia in the Murder on the Orient Express
and The Last Express

Radha Dalal
Abstract
In this chapter, I examine films and videogames as virtual assists in the recovery of
Istanbul’s threshold space and the Orient Express’ pre-World War I prestige. Post-
war crime stories taking place on the Orient Express and in Istanbul emphasise the
chaos and instability of a new era inaugurated by the shocking aftereffects of an
all-too-modern war. Filmic and ludic media offer immersive experiences that
spatially draw the viewer/player (virtual flâneurs) into visual adaptations of these
popular crime narratives. As I demonstrate, however, the visual incarnations of
Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express deviate considerably from the
original text to emphasise the elite, nineteenth-century salon-like space of the
Orient Express and the liminal quality of Istanbul as the gateway between the West
and the East. Jordan Mechner’s videogame, The Last Express, also forms a
believable closed universe, but on an alternate historical timeframe that parallels
the unfolding of real events. The elite status of the train and the dangerous plurality
of Istanbul are highlighted in this narrative as well, but the goal of the game, futile
as it may be, is to stop World War I at all costs. The ultimate aim is to allow the
uninterrupted continuation of pre-war times. From a contemporary vantage point,
the nostalgic access in both narratives is to an unreal and an unwitnessed history.
The viewer/player engages in a virtual form of mobility, a virtual travel into the
past or into another temporal frame, even into another space.

Key Words: Nostalgia, space, flâneur, crime, Istanbul, Orient Express, mobility,
Great War.

*****

1. Introduction
In the final filmic sequence of The Last Express (1997), Robert Cath, an
American physician, and Anna Wolff, an Austro-Hungarian violinist, jump out of a
moving Orient Express as it approaches Istanbul’s Sirkeci Station. But Cath
realises that Tatiana Obolenskya, a young, aristocratic Russian passenger, is
trapped in it and rushes forward to save her. The scene shifts to Tatiana humming a
wistful melody as she handles a crate full of ammunition. In an inner monologue,
she states: ‘They mustn’t get the guns. There must be no more war.’ With a
determined expression she strikes a lighter. Seconds later the train explodes and a
large, sinister shadow in the form of a soaring falcon spreads its wings across a
map of Europe. It signals a gathering darkness, the coming of war. The date is July
27, 1914. It coincides with history – on July 28 Austria-Hungary declared war.
266 Spaces of the Past
__________________________________________________________________
Emphasised in the game is the rupture of gentle tradition by the Great War.
During the post-war period, stories about the Orient Express evoke longing for a
pre-war purity, when the train was the quintessence of elite culture based on
distinct class hierarchies – after all it was a luxury train with only first-class
compartments. The introduction of second class in the 1920s diluted its prestige,
creating a microcosm of blurred social divisions which mirrored the same
instabilities in this hallowed bourgeois space that were beginning to destabilise fin-
de-siècle Europe. Its exotic destination, Istanbul, also endured drastic changes,
shifting identities from the capital of a struggling Ottoman Empire to a mere city of
the new Turkish Republic.
I examine two strands of fiction that capitalise on these transformations: Agatha
Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, with special emphasis on its filmic and
ludic adaptations, and Jordan Mechner’s, The Last Express. The visual
‘remediations’ of Christie’s novel give increasing prominence to Istanbul. 1
Mechner’s game engages the marginalised city as the destination where the fate of
humanity will be decided. The blend of reality and fiction woven into the intricate
fabric of the video games impels players, virtual flâneurs, to participate in
‘nostalgic-play.’ 2 My aim here is to trace two distinct intertwined nostalgic
narratives embedded within each of these stories – a longing for the bourgeois
space of the train and for the threshold space of Istanbul.

2. Modalities of Nostalgia and Space

Murder on the Orient Express and The Last Express reveal undercurrents of
multilayered nostalgia for the elite Belle Époque identity of the train and also draw
upon the literature in the twentieth century that hopes to recover the ‘authentic’
Istanbul from its westernised and modernised urban space. The films and games
recreate the liminality of Istanbul for their respective characters and, through their
visual immersion capabilities, for a contemporary audience. The nostalgia,
therefore, is for that lost experience of the city as a liminal space rather than its
actual cityscape. Similarly, the nostalgia is also for the bourgeois space of the train,
which connotes a different level of socio-political interaction with Istanbul.
Susan Stewart, in On Longing, argues that the nostalgic’s desire to find the
‘authentic’ space, this prelapsarian utopia, is a reconciliatory gesture suffused with
naive idealism. 3 Nostalgia transcends lived experience; therefore, the object of
nostalgia has never existed except in narrative. In her treatment of miniatures,
which she considers ‘a metaphor for the interior space and time of the bourgeois
subject,’ Stewart asserts that such spaces, the nostalgic’s objects, are visually
controllable. 4 In the case of the films and video games, which I read as miniatures,
the represented visual space is one that is fleetingly possessed and one that negates
full possession by intensifying a loss never experienced. The reductive capabilities
of these media shrink space into a visually consumable miniature. They serve as
‘stand ins’ for historical figures and events colored with collective nostalgia.
 Radha Dalal 267
__________________________________________________________________
3. Istanbul and the Orient Express: Post-War Spaces for Crime
In spite of the shift from an imperial and Islamic regime to a democratic and
secular nation, the image of Turkey in the Western imagination barely altered
during the early twentieth century. Negative representations of Istanbul continued
and proved the means to comprehend this dual loss of the city – its Byzantine
lineage and its Ottoman exoticness. Istanbul became the ideal setting for numerous
tales of intrigue and espionage that presented its Middle Eastern heritage as
barbaric and decadent. 5 Many novels emphasise the relationships amongst travel,
crime, and Istanbul. The city is either the fateful destination or the charged point of
departure, yet seldom figures prominently in the narratives; the prevailing
relationship between the train and the city is enough to conjure the thrill of
adventure. The Orient Express’ unique mobility across nations and kingdoms
served to monumentalise and mythologise the intersections between the two.
Agatha Christie’s classic set in the tense interwar period of the 1930s, features
one of her most memorable characters, Hercule Poirot, who becomes a last minute
passenger on the Simplon-Orient Express as it prepares to depart from Istanbul. A
murder takes place in the middle of the night. Immediately thereafter, and based on
a true historical event, the train is stuck in a snowdrift stranding the passengers.
During this stationary period Poirot investigates the identities and possible motives
of the passengers who represent a diversity of Euro-American nationalities and
social statuses. In the end, the victim turns out to be a murderer himself, the
kidnapper and killer of a small child. As officials work to restore the tracks, Poirot
reveals the complexities of the crime – twelve killers, all connected to the child
victim. Through the clever plot Christie explores themes of collective justice,
bourgeois family connections, and crisp detective logic.
Unlike Christie’s novel, which is a reflection of justice administered in what
was once a solely bourgeois space, Mechner’s The Last Express underscores the
hollow power of the bourgeoisie and their inability to prevent catastrophe.
Beginning a few days prior to the start of World War I, the story is an ingenious
blend of history and fiction. Instead of Christie’s strictly Euro-American cast of
characters, The Last Express’ passengers reflect the high society associated with
the pre-war Express and a cross-section of the political entities and ideologies
about to clash in the war. The train also has compartments allocated for real figures
of history: the pacifists Jean Jaurès and Marshall Putnik. Their presence calls
attention to the purpose of this journey – to bring about a peaceful resolution that
allows the pre-1914 era to continue without interruption.
Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and Mechner’s The Last Express
refashion and remap spaces of urban life to create a believable closed universe. In
both, the trains offer segregated, modern social spaces where murders and other
mysteries are introduced in a rationalised and sanitised manner. Coupled with this
ordered space is the unfathomable and disordered space of Istanbul, which
provides the countering instability to draw the audience into the narrative. Within
268 Spaces of the Past
__________________________________________________________________
these micro-universes, some of the same anxieties provoked by the alienating
modern condition are explored through the eyes of the protagonist/detective and,
by extension, through the interpretation and interaction of the reader/viewer/player.

4. Bourgeois Spaces and Iconic Losses

To fully appreciate the atmosphere generated by the powerful images in the
Murder on the Orient Express and The Last Express, a look at the train’s history
and its perception as an emblem of bourgeois culture is useful. The interiors of the
train in these new media reflect the luxury and aesthetic tastes that characterized
the standard of living of the privileged in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, a lifestyle whose existence was directly threatened by the Great War. In
the Murder on the Orient Express, a group of elite Euro-Americans rides on the
train to purge a vile member of society who continues to endanger their way of life.
In The Last Express, the set of international travelers, from Europe and other
nations, represent the already frayed and fragmented character of ‘global’ unity
leading up to the War. The scenes in the train reveal a palpable anxiety related to
the loss of influence and political control, and a shift in the distribution of power
and the relevance of sovereign authority. 6 Preventing war was also a means to
prevent the dissolution of a class system that had facilitated political power and
social solidarity. Visualising the elite luxury of the train is central to perpetuating
nostalgia for the loss of innocence.
The Orient Express’ first-class passenger list, combined with its elegant
interiors, created a private space where the intermingling of society was quite
similar, for instance, to a nineteenth-century Parisian salon. The exclusivity of the
train ensured that the traveling companions would encounter fellow passengers of
equal or higher status, that is, from the bourgeoisie or the nobility. 7 In spite of
being a mode of public transportation, the train’s rich, sophisticated, salon-like
atmosphere is in direct opposition to Jürgen Habermas’ reading of salon culture as
part of the ‘public sphere’ and even Joan Landes’ assertion that salons were ‘an
extension of the institutionalized court.’ 8 Rather, as Steven Kale has suggested of
Parisian salons, the train’s culture is a reflection of European high society,
imbricating public and private spheres. 9
The sensory experience within the enclosed space of the train also lends itself
to a Benjaminian reading of the intérieur. In his Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin
suggests that the passages of the Parisian arcades demarcate a space that turns the
outside into a landscape to be enjoyed from the comforts inside. The Orient
Express serves as a mobile equivalent of the arcades; its interior space is a refuge
for the bourgeoisie, isolated and remote from the vagaries of street life of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But the fateful events of 1914 temporarily
disrupted the train’s passage and permanently altered its luxurious service,
initiating an era of melancholy and nostalgic reminisces.
 Radha Dalal 269
__________________________________________________________________
To recapture some of the social flavor of prewar Europe, European bourgeoisie
began to invent iconic markers that would remind them of the Belle Époque. 10 The
reinstatement of the Orient Express gave them an opportunity to once again
experience some of the luxuries of their former life. But certain changes remained
irreversible – the inclusion of second-class compartments and border checks by
customs officials became the norm. The train concurrently became a symbol of the
endangered bourgeois culture and a perfect setting for crime. This coincides with
the rise of the detective, more specifically, the flâneur-detective. The flâneur is an
ambiguous modern figure, part of the crowd and detachedly observing it. He is at
once a fugitive, intensely suspicious, and a detective, passionately surveilling. The
flâneur-detective searches for clues that will lead him to uncover the mysteries
hidden in social interactions. Through the narrated spaces of Murder on the Orient
Express and the Last Express, the criminal fantasy of the bourgeois interior is
nostalgically brought to the surface. Indeed, the depiction of social classes and the
interior décor of the Orient Express in these narratives attempt to capture the elite
prestige of the train while simultaneously hinting at the possibility of dangerous
encounters.

5. Recuperating the Threshold Space of Istanbul

While Istanbul is the site of deathly climax in The Last Express, it plays a
minor role in the Murder on the Orient Express. Yet, new media adaptations of
Christie’s novel increasingly elevate the city’s importance in the trajectory of the
plot. The first cinematic adaptation was Sidney Lumet’s 1974-film of the same
name. In 2008, the Adventure Company released a PC video-game version of the
book/film with a new character, Antoinette Marceau, who assists Poirot in solving
the crime. In July 2010, PBS Masterpiece Theatre produced a television version of
the book. Just as the locus of the ‘authentic’ Orient Express and Istanbul is in the
past before the Great War, these remediations of the Murder on the Orient Express
attempt to ‘honor, rival, and revise’ the textual origin to provide an immediate and
authentic experience of the train and the city. 11
Remediation alone, however, does not adequately address the desire to
repeatedly animate a particular narrative in different media. This emerges from a
deeper interdependence between the individual and collective memories of a
society, and their nostalgic relationship to a real or imagined past. This
phenomenon is perhaps best explained by Svetlana Boym’s bifurcation of nostalgia
into two discernible types: restorative, with its emphasis on nostos and rebuilding
the lost origin, and reflective, which resides in algia, the perpetual feeling of
longing and loss. 12 In both Murder on the Orient Express and The Last Express,
the two forms of nostalgia surface within the complexities of temporal and spatial
manipulations that transform the original text – the novel in the former case and
history itself in the latter. 13 Laurie Taylor and Zach Whalen inquire if such
nostalgic remediations ‘comment on the ideologies embedded in the older form,
270 Spaces of the Past
__________________________________________________________________
or… suggest a sense of loss.’ 14 By examining the different forms of the Murder on
the Orient Express, I argue that such remediation does both: it reveals and
highlights some of the embedded ideologies by seeking to ‘authenticate’ the text in
space and time and, consequently, this reworking makes the loss manifest. My
underlying interest here is to understand how earlier interwar-period nostalgia
permeates the depictions of Istanbul in contemporary media.
In Christie’s book, Istanbul is a passing experience, a brief stop for Poirot
before he embarks on the Orient Express. Christie does not paint a vivid picture of
the settings for her stories – she does not describe the trains or Istanbul save for a
mention of relevant landmarks. Her plot operates on popular pretexts already
existing in Western imagination – the Orient Express, Istanbul, train, intrigue –
together generate the right criminal tone. In contrast, the authenticity of a setting in
films is often dependent on filming in the right historical location. Lumet achieves
this by situating the narrative of Christie’s novel in real spaces, that is, the city of
Istanbul and actual trains. Extensive filming in Istanbul diverges greatly from
Christie’s text and her own interest in describing the city. The Orient Express’
intimate association with Istanbul is not enough to produce the right kind of visual
tension in the film. The city’s interwar-period character has to be visualised to
make it believable and to provide the background for the subsequent story. The
threshold geography of Istanbul is stressed through aural and visual markers in the
opening scenes: the call to prayer sounds in the background just as the camera pans
over the Golden Horn and Istanbul’s distinctive minaret-filled skyline. These shots
and the dialog authenticate the location for the viewers.
At Sirkeci Station a colorful, ethnographic parade of people including Asian
women in kimonos, African nobles, Arab men in long robes, and even Indian
porters intersect the paths of the elite characters. Again, the emphasis is on Istanbul
and particularly the train station as a threshold. While this focus on the city is new
to the filmic edition of the story, the rest of the narrative follows the book fairly
closely. The Masterpiece Theater version, on the other hand, forms a stark contrast.
The narrative begins in Istanbul with Poirot presumably crossing the waters of the
Golden Horn. Yet, it is clear from the passing scenery, the preposterous placement
of domes and minarets, the city is not Istanbul. A faithful representation is not at
stake here; Islamic markers are enough for authentication.
Two of Christie’s characters also get entangled in a skirmish, which ultimately
ends in men stoning a woman to death while others cheer them on. This event is
not part of Christie’s original book, but is newly inserted to tap into the underlying
theme of mystery, murder, and collective justice. Yet, in this they are providing a
representation of Istanbul that relegates it neatly back into a fictitious past, a past
beyond Christie’s own creation. The stoning is inserted as commonplace
occurrence where people rather than the law perform the acts of justice. Given
recent events in Iran and Afghanistan, where freedom for women is still a highly
contested issue and violent acts against women are often sanctioned in the name of
 Radha Dalal 271
__________________________________________________________________
Islam, the stoning in 1930s Istanbul becomes a social comment on the religion
rather than a historically contextualised depiction of the city itself. 15 Istanbul’s
close association with Islam makes this association fair game. The presumed
inferiority of races that allow such subjugation of women in the name of religion is
thinly veiled in this version. In addition, a subtle cultural dichotomy is suggested in
the comparison between the heroic Euro-Americans, who justifiably avenge the
brutal murder of a young child in Christie’s original story, versus the barbaric
treatment elicited by possible adultery in this new adaptation. Are such liberties
possible because the representation is supposed to be of a past event?
Anne Friedberg, following Benjamin’s assessment of cinema as effecting a
spatio-temporal transformation within society, argues that such displacement of
time and history is caused in part due to ‘the implicit time travel’ in cinematic
viewing. 16 As she states, ‘One of the essential properties of cinema is its temporal
displacement of the spectator: the time of a film’s production, the time of its
fiction, and the time of its projection are all conflated into the same moment of
viewing.’ 17 This can also apply to video games, which provide one further level of
displacement through spatial immersion.
Istanbul’s representation as a dark and mysterious place is tempered in the
video game version of Murder on the Orient Express. Through minor quests, the
game takes on a heuristic dimension where Sirkeci Station becomes the venue to
gain knowledge about Turkish culture, especially its prized Iznik and Kütahya
ceramics. Antoinette Marceau, a new character created to allow a player greater
degree of control within the scope of the narrative, has to walk around Sirkeci
Station repeatedly to complete various small quests. She often comments on the
beauty of the station. Its neo-Islamic façade becomes the oriental marker of
Istanbul. The liminal space of the station, at once a gateway between two different
forms of traffic – the city and the railway – is also the metaphorical stand-in for
Istanbul’s ambiguous geography. 18 The scenery imitates earlier representations of
Istanbul in the placement of domes and minarets. Inside the train station, the space
is pristine and clean and shows nothing of the plurality present in the films. The
game’s emphasis is on play and aesthetics rather than characterisation of Istanbul.

6. Conclusion
Real world history is integrated into the games’ narratives where nostalgia links
the past to the present. 19 For the Murder on the Orient Express, this means placing
the player in the fictional time and space of Christie’s masterpiece; for The Last
Express, the historical trajectory closely parallels actual developments in world
history, but the flow of history is changed to suit the narrative of the game. Video
games allow players change the outcome of pivotal historical events. This creates
new and lasting images of a past that has been reanimated to serve the needs of the
present. In the case of The Last Express, it is impossible for the current generation
to have any firsthand knowledge of World War I or its preceding time. Nostalgia
272 Spaces of the Past
__________________________________________________________________
for this period then is not based on a memory of origins, of a witnessed but
unattainable past. Rather, the forces of postmodern consumption foster this
nostalgia and create a yearning for the lost object that the player never experienced.
Arjun Appadurai defines this as ‘imagined nostalgia’ – a longing for a loss that did
not occur. 20
This nostalgia also emerges from a specific kind of twenty-first century
flânerie. As noted earlier, railways offered the flâneur a new form of locomotion
and a new means to survey the landscape. From the interior spaces of the railway
compartment it is possible to gaze outside and yet remain unobserved. This same
type of spectatorship is possible in the virtual world. The monitor or television
screen becomes the window through which images are transported. 21 For players
of The Last Express and Murder on the Orient Express, this time-space
compression brings about a virtual form of mobility, which establishes a new kind
of virtual flânerie and infuses the viewing/playing experience with the pleasures of
exploring and [re]playing the past.

Notes
1
Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).
2
I use the term ‘nostalgic-play’ as defined by Anna Reading and Colin Harvey:
‘Video game stores are replete with titles that allow players to fight wars already
won or lost and visit cities and times long since gone. Yet video games can invoke
the memory of the past in other ways than simply recreating historical vistas or
reenacting past events. Video games can reinvent the narratives established by
other media in a particular and playful fashion. It is this process that we call
nostalgic-play.’ Anna Reading and Colin Harvey, ‘Remembrance of Things Fast:
Conceptualizing Nostalgic-Play in the Battlestar Galactica Video Game’, in
Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video Games, eds. Zach Whalen and
Laurie Taylor (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008), 164.
3
Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the
Souvenir, the Collection (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 23.
4
Ibid., xii.
5
For examples see Greenmantle (1916) by John Buchan, Eunuch of Stamboul
(1935) by Dennis Wheatley, and Eric Ambler’s The Mask of Dimitrios (1939).
6
Charles Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany,
and Italy in the Decade After World War I (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1975), 9.
7
Purchasing a ticket for the Orient Express was no small feat. As a columnist for
the 1894 The Speaker notes: ‘It is no ordinary train for which you take a ticket
from a booking-clerk at a hole in the wall. You go to 122, Pall Mall, and negotiate
 Radha Dalal 273
__________________________________________________________________

your place with a gentleman in an office. You are warned in the concise and stately
language that Bradshaw commands, that otherwise it [Orient Express] may not
condescend to take you at all.’ To make the run from Paris to Constantinople
profitable, the train executives rarely sold tickets for journeys shorter than a stop in
the Balkans. The Speaker (1894), 666.
8
Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An
Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991)
and Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French
Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 23-25.
9
Steven Kale, French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from the Old
Regime to the Revolution of 1848 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2005), 12.
10
See Natalia Starostina’s excellent study on how railways, including the Orient
Express, were reconfigured during the interwar period to be symbols of elite
culture. Natalia Starostina, ‘Engineering the Empire of Images: The
Representations of Railways in Interwar France’ (Ph.D. diss., Emory University,
2007).
11
Bolter and Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media,17.
12
Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 41.
13
David Lowenthal argues, ‘The diverse goals of contemporary nostalgia do have
one point in common. They mainly envisage a time when folk did not feel
fragmented, when doubt was either absent or patent, when thought fused with
action, when aspiration achieved consummation, when life was wholehearted; in
short, a past that was unified and comprehensible, unlike the incoherent, divided
present. Significantly, one thing absent from this imagined past is nostalgia – no
one then looked back in yearning or for succour.’ David Lowenthal, ‘Nostalgia
Tells It Like It Wasn’t’, in The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia, eds.
Christopher Shaw and Malcolm Chase (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1989), 29.
14
Zach Whalen and Laurie Taylor, eds., Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in
Video Games (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008), 9.
15
Even during Ottoman rule stoning of women in retribution for adultery was not a
routine practice. Fariba Zarinebaf notes that ‘The stoning to death of women
accused of adultery and fornication was a fixed shari’a penalty that did not exist in
the Qu’ran and was rarely applied in the Ottoman Empire’. Fariba Zarinebaf,
Crime and Punishment in Istanbul: 1700-1800 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2010), 105. Under the Turkish Republic, adultery remained illegal for
women through Article 440 of the Turkish Penal Code. Women convicted of this
charge could be sentenced for up to three years in prison – no retaliatory stoning
involved. The law was repealed in 1998. For more, see Pınar İlkkaracan, ‘How
274 Spaces of the Past
__________________________________________________________________

Adultery Almost Derailed Turkey’s Aspirations to Join the European Union’, in

Deconstructing Sexuality in the Middle East, ed. Pınar İlkkaracan (Hampshire:
Aldershot, 2008).
16
Anne Friedberg, ‘Les Flâneurs du Mal(l): Cinema and the Postmodern
Condition’, PMLA 106, No. 3 (May, 1991): 421-420.
17
Ibid., 427.
18
Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time
and Space in the 19th Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986),
174.
19
Whalen and Taylor, eds., Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video
Games, 2.
20
Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 77.
21
Mike Featherstone, ‘The Flâneur, the City and Virtual Public Life’, Urban
Studies 35, Nos. 5-6 (1998): 923.

Bibliography
Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.
Edited by Dilip Gaonkar, and Benjamin Lee. Vol. 1, Public Worlds. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000.

Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2001.

Featherstone, Mike. ‘The Flâneur, the City, and Virtual Public Life’. Urban
Studies 35, Nos. 5-6 (1998): 909–925.

Friedberg, Anne. ‘Les Flâneur s Du Mal(L): Cinema and the Postmodern

Condition’. Modern Language Association 106, No. 3 (1991): 419–431.

Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry

into a Category of Bouregois Society. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1991.

Kale, Steven. French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from the Old
Regime to the Revolution of 1848. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2005.
 Radha Dalal 275
__________________________________________________________________

Landes, Joan. Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.

Lowenthal, David. ‘Nostalgia Tells It Like It Wasn’t’. In The Imagined Past:

History and Nostalgia, edited by Christopher Shaw, and Malcolm Chase, 18–32.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989.

Maier, Charles. Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany,

and Italy in the Decade after World War I. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1975.

Reading, Anna, and Colin Harvey. ‘Remembrance of Things Fast: Conceptualizing

Nostalgic-Play in the Battlestar Galactica Video Game’. In Playing the Past:
History and Nostalgia in Video Games, edited by Zach Whalen, and Laurie N.
Taylor, 164–182. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008.

Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and

Space in the 19th Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

Starostina, Natalia. ‘Engineering the Empire of Images: The Representations of

Railways in Interwar France’. PhD Dissertation, Emory University 2007.

Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the

Souvenir, the Collection. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.

Whalen, Zach, and Laurie N. Taylor, eds. Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia
in Video Games. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008.

Zarinebaf, Fariba. Crime and Punishment in Istanbul: 1700-1800. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2010.

Radha Dalal is Assistant Professor in the Art History Program at Virginia

Commonwealth University in Qatar. She researches visual cultures of mobility
with a particular emphasis on the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and early 20th
centuries.
 Constructing a Reality: A Post-Structural Analysis of Deus Ex

Luke S. Bernfeld
Abstract
This chapter will present a post-structural reading of Deus Ex: Human Revolution,
a video game developed by Edios Interactive. Specifically, I will demonstrate that
in this game the notion of ‘truth’ is revealed to be slippery and radically open-
ended. In making my argument, I draw on three prominent post-structuralists,
namely, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Drawing on
Derrida, I will show that language produces substitutions and intermediaries rather
than a direct representation of ‘reality.’ Moreover, Foucault addresses the
obsession with wanting to find meaning emanating from texts’ authors in our
culture and suggests that, in order to allow for more freedom of interpretation, texts
should be read without using their authors as a key to meaning. I will use
Foucault’s argument to illustrate that in the game there are unreliable authors of the
game’s ‘truths;’ in the game the player determines the game’s ultimate outcome.
Finally, I will use Nietzsche’s argument that all language is a linguistic response to
nerve stimuli; this concept is evident in the game as a player attempts to find
‘truth’ but encounters only linguistic creations that determine the player’s reality.
In other words, as the game shows, language produces its own reality based on
perception and cultural understandings. Ultimately, in the game the player operates
in a world devoid of ‘truth,’ in which truth is created by the game itself and the
player’s particular actions within it. Overall, my chapter also argues that these
three post-structural game elements offer a compelling reflection of our own
‘reality’ – a world in which, like a player in Deus Ex, individuals create truth
through language (intermediaries) and thus what they take to be their reality.

Key Words: Theory, games as text.

*****

1. Introduction
This chapter will present a post-structural reading of Deus Ex: Human
Revolution, a video game developed by Edios Interactive. Specifically, I will
demonstrate that in this game the notion of ‘truth’ is revealed to be slippery and
radically open-ended. In making my argument, I draw on three prominent post-
structuralists, namely, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Friedrich Nietzsche.
Drawing on Derrida, I will show that language produces substitutions and
intermediaries rather than a direct representation of ‘reality.’ Moreover, Foucault
addresses the obsession with wanting to find meaning, and a sense of truth
emanating from a texts’ author in our culture, and suggests that, in order to allow
for more freedom, and openness with regards to interpretation, texts should be read
278 Constructing a Reality
__________________________________________________________________
without using their authors as a key to meaning. I will use Foucault’s argument to
illustrate that in the game there are unreliable authors of the game’s ‘truths’; in the
game the player determines the game’s ultimate outcome. Finally, I will use
Nietzsche’s argument that all language is a linguistic response to nerve stimuli; this
concept is evident in the game as a player attempts to find ‘truth’ but encounters
only linguistic creations that determine the player’s reality. In other words, as the
game shows, language produces its own reality based on perception and cultural
understandings. Ultimately, in the game the player operates in a world devoid of
‘truth,’ in which truth is created by the game itself and the player’s particular
actions within it. Overall, my chapter also argues that these three post-structural
game elements offer a compelling reflection of our own ‘reality’ – a world in
which, like a player in Deus Ex, individuals create truth through language
(intermediaries) and thus what they take to be their reality.

2. Review of Literature
In his work, The Exorbitant Question of Method, Derrida illuminates the issue
of ‘total absence and the absolute plenitude of presence.’ 1 To illustrate this point, if
one were to say the word chair, while the chair does exist the word does not
capture everything about said chair, therefore there is not a total absence, also no
plentitude of presence. Derrida adds that substitutions and intermediaries are all
that can be accessed in language. Derrida states, ‘The play of substitution fills and
marks a determined lack.’ 2 As words are used to describe the world around us it
becomes obvious that there is a lacking connection between the words and the
thing that they are intended to describe.
To define what these substitutions and intermediaries are, I turn to Nietzsche’s
work On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense. In his work Nietzsche illuminates
the lack of a ‘thing itself’ or a connection to the reality that words fail to describe.
As Nietzsche puts it, ‘What is a word? It is a copy in sound of a nerve stimulus.’ 3
So, words do not preexist the thing that they are attempting to describe, but rather
the words are created in order to make sense of the thing that is in front of the one
labeling it. This interaction then does not lead to language being able to interact
with ‘the thing itself,’ instead language is all that remains after this interaction is
done. According to Nietzsche these left overs are the ‘boldest metaphors,’ and
‘arbitrary assignments.’ 4
In Foucault’s essay, ‘What Is an Author?’ he inserts the necessity to remove the
author to open interpretation and to make the text the focal point of interrupting a
text. As Foucault puts it, ‘we can easily imagine a culture where discourse would
circulate without any need for an author.’ 5 Without the author, the freedom of
interpretation opens and a culture develops wherein the author losses his/her power
to affect that process. Foucault even compares writing and the effect of
authorlessness in interpretation, to a game. Foucault states, ‘Writing unfolds like a
game that inevitability moves beyond its own rules and finally leaves them
 Luke S. Bernfeld 279
__________________________________________________________________
behind.’ 6 When the text is free of its author, it will begin to break the constructed
rules of academic interpretation that bind the reader to the set interpretation given
by the author.

3. The Game
The game Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a first person shooter role playing
game, takes place in the year 2027 in a world were cybernetic implants, called
augmentations, are emerging. Augmentations are used by the military and by
common citizens as well. Augmentations can be used in order to replace lost limbs
or to create super soldiers. As with any leap in technology in reality, there are those
in the game who question the morality of such actions. These people make up the
base of the anti-augmentation, Humanity Front. The player character, Adam
Jensen, is stuck in the middle of this controversy; as an ex-SWAT officer turned
private security working for Sarif Industries, a company that specializes in
augmentation technology. Adam’s ex-girlfriend, Megan Reed, has discovered a
way to cure augmentation sickness, an illness that, if not treated by expensive
injections, can kill the augmented host. At the beginning of the game the player
learns that there is a secret society that does not want this research to see the light
of day. The research facility that both Adam and Megan work in is attacked, during
the attack Megan is seemingly killed, as well as Adam. Adam wakes to find that he
has been resurrected by Sarif and was heavily augmented in the process.
Due to the amount of damage that Adam has taken, most of his body is covered
in augmentations, even to the point that the player cannot see correctly without
them. As soon as he enters Sarif Industries, he experiences issues with his visual
implants. Adam is directed to Frank Pritchard, the head of Sarif’s cyber-security
team. Afterward, the player as Adam starts his investigation into the events at the
facility and learns that there is a greater conspiracy involved in the events that lead
to the attack on Sarif Industries. Adam, in an attempt to discover the truth, heads to
Heng Sha Island in China. There he is stopped by the local police who are
controlled by the Bell Tower Corporation. Once he gains entry into the core of the
Bell Tower office building, he learns that a group calling themselves the Illuminati
are behind the conspiracy and that the scientists from Sarif Industries, like Megan
Reed, are in fact alive and working for the Illuminati. Adam believes that the
scientists are being held against their will and decides to mount a rescue attempt.
Adam returns to Detroit to find that he has received a message from the global
news anchor, Eliza Cassan. Adam decides to follow the tip, only to find that the
news station is empty. After finding Eliza’s office, Adam’s questions are thwarted
when Eliza reveals herself to be a hologram and vanishes. With the help of Serif’s
tech wiz Frank, he finds the source of Eliza’s hologram in the basement. Once
there, Adam learns that Eliza is actually a super computer programed to spin the
news in favor of an unknown client. Adam’s questions are thwarted again when
Eliza blames an augmented mercenary for her inability to tell Adam the truth. After
280 Constructing a Reality
__________________________________________________________________
a long battle with the mercenary, Eliza tells Adam that she cannot tell him what
happened to the scientists but another man can.
The trail of half-truths and outright lies, like the one that Eliza continuously
feeds the public and the player persists until the end of the game, where the player
is told that the world’s augmented population has been fitted with cerebral implants
that, when activated, will make them puppets to the Illuminati, as if owning and
controlling all the information that flows through the news was not enough. This
chip is then short circuited, by a rouge member of the Illuminati to make
augmented people violent toward any non-augmented people around them. In this
final level of the game, Adam tries to stop the signal effecting augmented people
and attempts to find the truth of who is behind the short in the chip. As Adam
makes his way through the floating station, he is directed by Eliza. Also, Adam
questions David Sarif, who is the head of Sarif Industries, and Bill Taggart, the
head of Humanity Front. In the end Eliza presents Adam with four choices. He can
give the humanity the whole truth as given him by the news spinning computer, he
can make the chip short seem like a terrorist attack by Humanity Front, or make it
seem like the augmentations are malfunctioning, or the player can sink the station
and let society learn for themselves what happened. The player then choses which
end he or she wants. No matter what ending is chosen, however, after the credits
are over, the same unknown man from the beginning of the game has a
conversation about a greater project he is sure will not be held up too much by the
events at the floating station. He invites Megan Reed into his office and discusses a
new project with her. The unknown man then reveals himself to be Bob Page, a
new character to the game, and the leader of the Illuminati.

4. No Truth
The player as Adam never had a chance at the ‘truth’ because he never runs
into a reliable narrator to give him information. All that is accessible for the player
and for the characters in the game are intermediaries and metaphors, all of which
are provided by the ‘bad guys.’ Adam cannot even see without the substitutions of
his augmentations. The player requires implants to see the world and, as is proven
throughout the game, these images can be hacked to make the player see things
that are not there or if they even malfunction slightly the player is greatly disabled.
Even more than seeing though, is the fact that the player as Adam seems to
always be following orders given by others who will never tell the player the whole
truth of the situation and whose motives are rarely in consideration of Adams
interests. At the beginning of the game David Sarif is giving the player orders,
David makes it perfectly clear that his first priority is to make money and keep the
stock holders happy. In the middle of the game, however, Adam’s loyalty shifts to
Eliza Cassan. Adam, after working his way to the basement of a global news
organisation, discovers that the lead anchor for the organisation, Eliza, is a super
computer. Eliza states, ‘Hello Adam, I knew you would find the real me
 Luke S. Bernfeld 281
__________________________________________________________________
eventually,’ to which Adam replies, ‘This is … impossible. People would know.’
Eliza then reveals what her programing is for, ‘Would they? I was engineered to
monitor communications and data-streams. To find out what people are talking
about and make sure it’s being discussed correctly.’ Up until this point Eliza has
informed Adam and the world about events taking place; now she has revealed that
it has all been configured to suit some unknown person or group of persons’ goals.
After this, Adam inquires whose angle she is protecting, and the player is left never
know who is having Eliza spin the news.
Adam asks about the location of the kidnapped scientists. Eliza responds by
saying ‘I want to tell you Adam but I cannot’ Adam asks, ‘Why not?’ Eliza
answers, ‘Because she won’t let me’ as Eliza says this she points to a heavily
augmented mercenary in the same room with them. The player then kills the
heavily augmented mercenary. Eliza then tells Adam, ‘I cannot tell you where
Reed and the others were taken. They vanished from the global grid as soon as the
doctor removed their GPL implants.’ It is here that Eliza starts to use the player as
her personal hit man; after he kills the mercenary she still does not have any real
‘truth’ to give the player. The ‘truth’ that the player is trying so desperately to find
is once again left outside his reach, because all that the player is ever able to
interact with are the intermediaries and substitutions of the truth. The player is
becoming stuck in a cycle of language not being the truth that he or she is seeking,
and so will never be able to access the ‘truth.’ After sending Adam after the doctor
described in the scene, and hinting that David Sarif may be involved, Eliza tells
him that he has to leave and warns him, ‘Just ... be careful, Adam. Because
everybody lies.’ Eliza essentially is telling Adam that she has been lying to him. If
everybody lies, then she is lying, and, likewise, every character that Adam interacts
with lies. The lack of a reliable author of truth leaves Adam to sift through the pile
of lies for some truth. These truths will only elude him and all that he can find are
intermediaries claiming to be the truth but never delivering anything more than
more intermediaries.
In the end, the player has to make a choice which of the four possible endings
offered by Eliza most suits the way that the player wants the game to end. This
choice, however, does not ultimately matter, because the mastermind behind all the
events of the game as revealed after the credits, a Mr. Bob Page, has been pulling
the strings the entire time. Also, Megan Reed is revealed to be in league with Mr.
Page, who has been working on a Project Morpheus. None of the player’s actions
have led to any real ‘truth.’ Additionally, the player’s actions have seemingly done
little to affect the overall goal of the Illuminati. All that is left are the
intermediaries and substitutions that have been feed to the player by Eliza and the
Illuminati. No real ‘truth’ is available for the player; he or she is left to serve those
who are able to control the information flowing to the player.
The construction of a reality applies to the real world in that the reader or
player is only able to serve the author of ‘truth,’ truth that is created by
282 Constructing a Reality
__________________________________________________________________
intermediaries that are unable to access the actual and ultimate truth. Leaving the
reader or player with unreliable narrators to guide them to more intermediaries,
thus the cyclical nature of the construction will continue. Thus, there is a need to
remove the authors in order to open the interpretation of the construction, so the
player can realise that the ‘truth’ is hidden behind an impenetrable veil of
constructed language.

5. Final Thoughts
The game and the real worlds in which we live are linked in the lack of reliable
sources of truth. As with the player in the game, the search for ‘truth’ is never truly
over. Just when the reader or player thinks that the truth has been found, another
intermediary is all that is revealed. The deception in Deus Ex: Human Revolution
leaves the player never really finding anything that could lead to the source of the
problem. So, the ‘truth’ can never truly be found because the source of truth is non-
existent. Every source that comes in contact with the player either tells the player
that the source has an angle, or in the case of Eliza, tells the player that the sources
are lying to them. So the player and the reader are left without a source for truth
and, therefore, they are left to sift through the intermediaries and the substitutions
with no hope for ever interacting with the core truth.
Ultimately, language cannot access Truth. However, language has the capacity
to communicate truth. Language is all that is available to communicate the
knowledge that each individual gains, and each individual brings their own
experiences, lending a multiplicity to interpreting reality. If the player was able to
gain more lenses to see the events of the game, that may lead to a greater truth
found in the game. In the real world, a multiplicity of interpretation, or freedom of
interpretation, allows for new ways to look at older issues. So, freedom of
interpretation allows for those individuals open to multiple interpretations to gain
more information and therefore more truth.

Notes
1
Jacques Derrida, ‘The Exorbitant. Question of Method’, in On Grammatology,
trans. Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976
[1967]), 157.
2
Ibid.
3
Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense’, 1873, in The
Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, eds. Patricia
Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg (Boston, MA: Bedford Books, 1990), 890.
4
Ibid.
5
Michel Foucault, ‘What Is an Author?’, in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice:
Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, trans. Donald Bouchard and
 Luke S. Bernfeld 283
__________________________________________________________________

Sherry Simon, ed. Donald Bouchard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977),
138.
6
Ibid., 116.

Bibliography
Derrida, Jacques. ‘The Exorbitant. Question of Method’. In On Grammatology,
157–164. Translated by Gayatri Spivak. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1976 [1967].

Edios Interactive. Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Square Enix. 2011. PC

Foucault, Michel. ‘What Is an Author?’. In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice:

Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, 113–138. Translated Donald
Bouchard, and Sherry Simon. Edited by Donald Bouchard. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1977.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. ‘On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense’. 1873. In The
Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, edited by
Patricia Bizzell, and Bruce Herzberg, 888–896. Boston, MA: Bedford Books,
1990.

Luke Bernfeld is a Masters Student at University of Texas at Dallas. After

achieving a Bachelors in English Literature from Utah Valley University. He is
now turning his focus on video games and the textual nature of gaming.