INTER - DISCIPLINARY PRESS 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 http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/ The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Inter-Disciplinary Press. Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland, Oxfordshire. OX29 8HR, United Kingdom. +44 (0)1993 882087 ISBN: 978-1-84888-295-9 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