Proposal for 2015 CGSA Congress
Descrição do Produto
On Both Sides of Trenches: studying players’ interest in weak video game characters Soldiers, or at the very least any kind of representation of war and masculinity, have always been an important aspect within the video game industry. This demonstration of bloodsoaked testosterone in video games has been noticed ever since the initial launch of the famous Space Invaders , in which a tank battles against the destroying forces of outer space, to the glistening musculature of Contra ’s characters and today’s yearly iterations of Call of Duty , amongst many others. It seems that the militarized masculinity a concept defined by Steven Kline, Nick DyerWitheford and Greig De Peuter as being “strongly gender coded scenarios of war, conquest, and combat [...] [played mostly by] a base of young male hardcore fans” ( Digital Play , 2003, p. 247) dominates video game sales and evokes a prominent presence in various marketplaces, on physical as well as on digital platforms. However, due to the growing popularity and visibility of the “independent industry”, it seems that the tension between “violence” and “variety”” (Kline et al. , p. 248) is exponentially growing as more and more varied games are released to the public, a public that is not exclusively limited and constituted of “young male hardcore fans”. Even though violence is still present in most modern video games, indies or not, variety is often represented by the inclusion of gameplay mechanics, themes or avatars that do not embody, in some way or another, to this militarized masculinity. These gaming experiences give players the possibility to (or, in somes cases, force them to) control what could be considered as weak characters or “regular joes” (limited resources or skills, permanent death, etc.) instead of “badasses” (onemanarmy blazing through countless enemies with a plethora of weapons as powerful as doomsday devices), thus making these games less “easytomaster” compared to conventional AAA games (Therrien, 2014). Following an overview of what defines weak video game characters compared to strong (militarized and/or masculine) characters in other medias (Eco, 1962), we will consider two games, This War of Mine (11 bit studios, 2014) and XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Firaxis Games, 2012), that bends the militarized masculinity thematic in considerable ways to create an interesting experience. In the first, players control a group of civilians in a contemporary war in which they need to gather resources and survive various hazards, such as sickness and hunger. In
the second, they control a small squadron who can permanently die while fighting against an extraterrestrial invasion on Earth. Furthermore, we will determine what is the “ideal player” needed to construct a close playercharacter relationship, based on readerresponse criticism theories, mostly use in literary studies (Eco, 1985). Additionally, we will consider how the player may feel empathy or any other emotion towards the character (Therrien, 2013). To conclude, we will consider how disturbances in the flow, mostly due to a lack of skills compared to astonishing challenges according to psychology theories, (Csikszentmihalyi), and, ultimately, failure may mean a more meaningful and memorable gaming experience, proving “that the world does not simply continue regardless of our actions” (Juul, 2013, p.122). Bibliography ● CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, Mihaly (1996). Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement With Everyday Life . New York: BasicBooks. ● ECO, Umberto (1962). De Superman au Surhomme . Paris, France: Grasset (1993 [2012]). ● ECO, Umberto (1985). Lector in Fabula: ou, La coopération interprétative dans les textes narratifs . Paris, France: Grasset. ● JUUL, Jesper (2005). HalfReal : Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press. ● JUUL, Jesper (2013). The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games . Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ● KLINE, Steven, Nick DyerWitheford and Greig De Peuter (2003). Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing. Montreal: McGillQueen's University Press. ● THERRIEN, Carl (2013). “La présence vidéoludique. De l’illusion à la projection dans l’écosystème affectif de la fiction” in Avatars, personnages et acteurs virtuels (Renée Bourassa and Louise Poissant, directors), Québec, QC: Presses de l’Université du Québec.
● THERRIEN, Carl (2014). “From the deceptively simple to the pleasurably complex. The rise of the cooperative address in video game design” in The Handbook of Digital Games (Harry Agius and Marios Angelides, directors). IEEE Press.
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