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Identity
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
In this article, I introduce a theoretical framework, based on the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, for grasping how and why members of online communities construct narratives in their communications with one another. This is exemplified through a study of how players from one particular game, World of Warcraft , make sense of their gaming experience, and how they build and uphold a community identity by telling stories online. I argue that in studying and conceptualizing these types of texts through the proposed theoretical framework, we can gain insights into the process of the formation of meaning and the building of identity and community in an online setting.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This article considers the social importance of sports-themed video games, and more
specifically, discusses their use and role in the construction of gaming and wider
social narratives. Here, building on our own and wider sociological and video games
studies, we advocate adopting an audience research perspective that allows for consideration
of not only narratives within games but also how these narratives are used
and located within the everyday lives of gamers. In particular, we argue that sportsthemed
games provide an illustrative example of how media texts are used in identity
construction, performances, and social narratives.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This article analyzes the quick-response binary combat game genre, suggesting that
so-called "finger-twitch" games, often maligned by academics, are both complex and
significant for cultural studies. While the game structure of binary combat is most often
seen in terms of simple entertainment, lacking narrative power and encouraging an apathetic
and passive attitude to violence, the author argues that games such as Mortal
Kombat, Street Fighter, and Soul Calibur are complex in terms of their construction of
stereotyped identity and in the binary structure of combative play. Further, the significance
of the genre lies in the performative aspects of gameplay, which problematize
accepted models of identification and immersion. Once the player is introduced into the
superficial binary structure of combat, then that player’s choice and agency become the
primary factors in gameplay, ultimately creating space for the inversion of stereotype,
the subversion of gender roles and the possible transcendence of the binary system
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This study examines how individual differences in the consumption of computer games intersect with gender and how games and gender mutually constitute each other. The study focused on adult women with particular attention to differences in level of play, as well as genre preferences. Three levels of game consumption were identified. For power gamers, technology and gender are most highly integrated. These women enjoy multiple pleasures from the gaming experience, including mastery of game-based skills and competition. Moderate gamers play games in order to cope with their real lives. These women reported taking pleasure in controlling the gaming environment, or alternately that games provide a needed distraction from the pressures of their daily lives. Finally, the non-gamers who participated in the study expressed strong criticisms about game-playing and gaming culture. For these women, games are a waste of time, a limited commodity better spent on other activities.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
While shows like The X-Files and 24 have merged conspiracy theories with popular science (fictions), some video games have been pushing the narrative even further. Electronic Art's Majestic game was released in July 2001 and quickly generated media buzz with its unusual multi-modal gameplay. Mixing phone calls, faxes, instant messaging, real and "fake' websites, and email, the game provides a fascinating case of an attempt at new directions for gaming communities. Through story, mode of playing, and use of technology, Majestic highlights the uncertain status of knowledge, community and self in a digital age; at the same time, it allows examination of alternative ways of understanding games' role and purpose in the larger culture. Drawing on intricate storylines involving government conspiracies, techno-bio warfare, murder and global terror, players were asked to solve mysteries in the hopes of preventing a devastating future of domination. Because the game drew in both actual and Majestic-owned/-designed websites, it constantly pushed those playing the game right to borders where simulation collides with " factuality'. Given the wide variety of "legitimate' conspiracy theory, alien encounters and alternative science web pages, users often could not distinguish when they were leaving the game's pages and venturing into " real' World Wide Web sites. Its further use of AOL's instant messenger system, in which gamers spoke not only to bots but to other players, pushed users to evaluate constantly both the status of those they were talking to and the information being provided. Additionally, the game required players to occupy unfamiliar subject positions, ones where agency was attenuated, and which subsequently generated a multi-layered sense of unease among players. This mix of authentic and staged information in conjunction with technologically mediated roles highlights what are often seen as phenomenon endemic to the Internet itself; that is, the destabilization of categories of knowing, relating, and being.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Discourse and self-perceptions are likely to be related in bidirectional ways. That is, people's self-perceptions are likely to shape their discourse behavior, but their (and their partners') discourse behavior in turn will shape their subsequent self-perceptions. To provide empirical evidence for this proposal, we conducted a study in which pairs of friends (n = 21 pairs) encountered a computer game. One friend played the game while the other observed; subsequently, both were asked to jointly tell a third party about their experience with the game. The resulting conversations were coded for narrative and other contributions, and discourse elements were examined in relation to pre- and postparticipation perceptions of expertise at the game. Players produced more narrative contributions than observers but only when observers had low self-perceived expertise prior to the game. Observers' narrative contributions were linked to changes in the players' self-perceptions of game expertise from prior to postconversation. These findings show that self-perceptions of expertise both shape, and are shaped by, discourse behavior.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Young people’s participation in online digital culture is one of the most efficient means by which they become proficient in the management of Information and Communications Technologies and the new literacies emerging there. This paper reports on a small project investigating the gendered dimensions of teenagers’ engagement in and out of school with stand-alone and multiplayer computer games. The study explored the game playing practices of a group of students in an English curriculum unit and the social and game playing practices of a group of young women of South East Asian backgrounds in a LAN café who had formed their own Counterstrike clan. It found that expertise is not just a matter of specific skills, strategies and familiarity, but is more broadly located within the complex dynamics of in- and out-of-school discourses and contexts that need to be factored in to the construction of gender-equitable pedagogy and curriculum.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Identification is regarded as an important aspect of beneficial online interaction. In addition to providing the individual with potential psychological benefits, identification with an online self or avatar can also increase individual and social understanding and tolerance of difference. The ability to create a character, or avatar, that can be identified with is the initial, and arguably the most important, step in the process of identification. However, this process has changed significantly with the advent and development of visually oriented games. Through participant-observation conducted in World of Warcraft and textual analysis of online forums associated with the game, this paper investigates the ways in which visual elements of online games affect the process of identifying with an online self. Ultimately, it argues that although interacting in a virtual environment where everything is immediately visible can ease the identification process, limits on character appearance, movement, and interaction imposed by visually rendering the game could simultaneously compromise this benefit.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This article discusses how console video games map televisual space as both simulated and contiguous with the non-virtual space of the gamers and their own bodies. Gamer identification, identity politics in video games, video game stars and video game violence are also explored here. Murphy argues that video games utilize televisual technology to produce interactive experiences for gamers, whose own bodies are physically impacted by game play in subtle ways. How video gamers interact with the virtual bodies of their player-characters is key to understanding how video games facilitate a different interaction with televisual space than that enacted through viewing television programming.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This article proposes a theoretical explanation for the popularity of violent video games among adolescent male gamers. The author uses theories about media and emotion as well as theories about emotion as a process to develop a model for the unfolding of emotion in violent video games. It is argued that violent video games provide a gratifying context for the experience of emotions. The fact that gamers are largely in control of the game implies that they can voluntarily select the emotional situations they confront. This freedom is attractive for adolescents who are in the midst of constructing an identity. For them, the violent game is a safe, private laboratory where they can experience different emotions, including those that arc controversial in ordinary life. Gamers may deliberately select emotions that sustain dominant masculine identity (e.g., anger), as well as emotions that are at odds with dominant masculinity (e.g., fear).
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