Noel Brett | McMaster University (original) (raw)
Papers by Noel Brett
Gaming and Gamers in Times of Pandemic, 2024
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International Conference on Games and Narrative, 2023
Emergent Narratives (ENs) provide a rich tool for uncovering untold tales when we play video game... more Emergent Narratives (ENs) provide a rich tool for uncovering untold tales when we play video games. They are stories that are not embedded by the game's author, instead arising from the game's mechanics (Adams, 2013). This enables the game to create new events for the player to experience, generated from the player's choices (Louchart et al 2008). ENs, therefore, are generally understood as a cocreation of the player making choices and the game's author, who designed those choices. However, games themselves-independent of their authors-are important participants in creating narratives, as their involvement in gameplay creates meaningful experiences for players by drawing boundaries around the type and scope of those stories. And so, rather than seeing narratives as a series of events, we can look at them as a series of conversations between the player and game.
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Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, 2017
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INTRODUCTION In queering gameplay, cues of sexuality concentrate the possibilities of action comm... more INTRODUCTION In queering gameplay, cues of sexuality concentrate the possibilities of action communicated by (avatar) design. However, many games such as Blizzard’s World of Warcraft (Blizzard 2004) ensure the erasure of queerness by “correcting” threats on heteronormative gameplay – updating the queer bugs which permit the player to embody queerness. Centering a discussion of gaming as an embodied experience through avatar design, this paper explores how scripted values may constrain online performance, allowing a player to express queerness in World of Warcraft (WoW). Notably, this paper explores the alterations invested in avatar bodies and how they influence sexual affordances for players, compromising queer gameplay when the game is patched, or as new expansions are released.
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INTRODUCTION For many digital games, a player is able to construct their digital identity with an... more INTRODUCTION For many digital games, a player is able to construct their digital identity with an avatar. Digital games often prescribe character customization interfaces (CCIs) which allow the player to create or customize their avatar. Yet, the range of possibilities given to a player is restricted by the design choices placed by the game’s interface, ultimately limiting the “possibilities a certain [avatar] has to interact with the game mechanics” (Tronstad 2008, 253). This means that while avatars can aesthetically represent the player and offer them a virtual existence, mechanics can hinder the ways in which the player plays and performs in the virtual space. In these cases, there is very little negotiation accessible to the player, as the restrictions are unidirectional with no reciprocity between user and the hard-coded user interface affordances.
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Television & New Media, 2022
With live streaming rising in popularity, many people stream the creation of 3D avatars However, ... more With live streaming rising in popularity, many people stream the creation of 3D avatars However, many of these avatars end up following a similar output: a hyper-feminized anime girl. Why is this? What are the social and technological processes constructing these avatars? To answer these questions, I propose that human (streamer and audience) and non-human (streaming platform and 3D modeling software) participants interact to produce the cultural experience of the live stream, re-producing common heteronormative, cisgendered, and racialized tropes about bodies and desirable avatars. And so, I take as my object of study the interaction that happens when all of these participants merge, forming what I call a white heteronormative assemblage. I argue that this assemblage is collective, relational, and self-reinforcing. Analyzing the relations between human and non-humans participants helps us turn our analytical lens away from media content or streamer motive, and instead toward the re...
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With live streaming rising in popularity, many people stream the creation of 3D avatars However, ... more With live streaming rising in popularity, many people stream the creation of 3D avatars However, many of these avatars end up following a similar output: a hyperfeminized anime girl. Why is this? What are the social and technological processes constructing these avatars? To answer these questions, I propose that human (streamer and audience) and non-human (streaming platform and 3D modeling software) participants interact to produce the cultural experience of the live stream, reproducing common heteronormative, cisgendered, and racialized tropes about bodies and desirable avatars. And so, I take as my object of study the interaction that happens when all of these participants merge, forming what I call a white heteronormative assemblage. I argue that this assemblage is collective, relational, and self-reinforcing. Analyzing the relations between human and non-humans participants helps us turn our analytical lens away from media content or streamer motive, and instead toward the restrictive outcomes of such interactions.
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We are interested in a systematic understanding the effect of visual scaling — changing the size ... more We are interested in a systematic understanding the effect of visual scaling — changing the size of the screen, while holding other factors constants — on gameplay. Through examples, we illustrate the effects that arise. We investigate scaling up as well as down, and find that the effects are quite different. We give a first classification of the underlying causes that give rise to these effects. We hereby hope to start a scientific analysis of visual scaling and its relation to gameplay.
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Rise of the Far-Right: Technologies of Recruitment and Mobilization, 2021
In this chapter, I develop the critical framework of moments of political gameplay using an appr... more In this chapter, I develop the critical framework of moments of political gameplay using an approach informed by radical relationism, microethnography, and performativity, in order to produce detailed readings of how video games and their players reproduce (far-right) political action. I form this concept through two qualitative case studies from two seemingly different games: Angry Goy II (AG2), a game developed with politics at its forefront; and Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2), a game that allows the players to “do whatever they want”. This concept does not consider video games as technologies that produce new violence on its players. Rather, this framework argues that in order to map the stages of gameplay that affect players, we must see political gameplay as made up of the coming together of multiple ingredients: the human, the technological, and the political. Each ingredient is fundamental in creating a final output: a racist, misogynist, or anti-progressive moment of gameplay. Hence, the object of study here is the processes by which players reproduce a political worldview from their involvement in gameplay. In doing so, I outline how spotting moments of political gameplay allows us to trace the processes which produce political features of play, mobilize the player to digitally enact and perform far-right play, concretize the political identities of its player, and outline the breadcrumbs that lead the player towards far-right recruitment.
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DiGRA, 2020
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Platypus - The Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing, 2019
In this blog post, I attempt to define the feelings that impress binary gender expectations in pl... more In this blog post, I attempt to define the feelings that impress binary gender expectations in place with the concept of hetero-comfortability from my ongoing ethnographic work in VRChat. Hetero-comfortability is a process of recognition, where feelings of familiarity — historically established through hetero-conditioning — create impressions that allow one to find comfort in the continuing appearance of hetero-signifiers. As Sara Ahmed (2004b) notes, “To follow the rules of heterosexuality is to be at ease in a world that reflects back the couple form one inhabits as an ideal.”
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DiGRA, 2018
For many digital games, a player is able to construct their digital identity with an avatar . Di... more For many digital games, a player is able to construct their digital identity with an avatar . Digital games often prescribe character customization interfaces (CCIs) which allow the player to create or customize their avatar. Yet, the range of possibilities given to a player is restricted by the design choices placed by the game’s interface, ultimately limiting the “possibilities a certain [avatar] has to interact with the game mechanics” (Tronstad 2008, 253). This means that while avatars can aesthetically represent the player and offer them a virtual existence, mechanics can hinder the ways in which the player plays and performs in the virtual space. In these cases, there is very little negotiation accessible to the player, as the restrictions are unidirectional with no reciprocity between user and the hard-coded user interface affordances.
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DiGRA, 2018
In queering gameplay, cues of sexuality concentrate the possibilities of action communicated by (... more In queering gameplay, cues of sexuality concentrate the possibilities of action communicated by (avatar) design. However, many games such as Blizzard’s World of Warcraft (Blizzard 2004) ensure the erasure of queerness by “correcting” threats on heteronormative gameplay – updating the queer bugs which permit the player to embody queerness. Centering a discussion of gaming as an embodied experience through avatar design, this paper explores how scripted values may constrain online performance, allowing a player to express queerness in World of Warcraft (WoW). Notably, this paper explores the alterations invested in avatar bodies and how they influence sexual affordances for players, compromising queer gameplay when the game is patched, or as new expansions are released.
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TACAS, 2017
Analysis of complex security and privacy policies (e.g., information flow) involves reasoning abo... more Analysis of complex security and privacy policies (e.g., information flow) involves reasoning about multiple execution traces. This stems from the fact that an external observer may gain knowledge about the system through observing and comparing several executions. Monitoring of such policies is in particular challenging because most existing monitoring techniques are limited to the analysis of a single trace at run time. In this paper, we present a rewriting-based technique for runtime verification of the full alternation-free fragment of HyperLTL, a temporal logic for specification of hyperproperties. The distinguishing feature of our proposed technique is its space complexity, which is independent of the number of trace quantifiers in a given HyperLTL formula.
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Conference Presentations by Noel Brett
International Conference on Games and Narrative, 2023
Gameplay is a conversation, and as such is a vehicle for ideological exploration. While video gam... more Gameplay is a conversation, and as such is a vehicle for ideological exploration. While video games by themselves as technologies do not produce new violence onto its players, I argue that in order to map the stages of gameplay that affect players, we must see political gameplay as a conversation made up of multiple ingredients: the player, the game, and the political. Each ingredient is fundamental in creating a final output: a racist, misogynist, or antiprogressive political narrative.
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Within virtual play spaces such as digital games, certain types of attributes and abilities are g... more Within virtual play spaces such as digital games, certain types of attributes and abilities are granted through a series of restrictive design choices imposed on user interface (UI) inputs, allowing a player to create their avatar or personal representation. Avatars are utilized as a representation of identity in these play spaces, allowing for certain prescribed ways of being that are embedded within the UIs of the avatar creation screens, as well as in the code itself. These restrictions can ultimately limit the “possibilities a certain [avatar] has to interact with the game mechanics” (Tronstad 2008, 253), such as certain in-game abilities. In this way, the capacities of the player are proscribed through choices made as early in the digital game as avatar creation. This means that while avatars aesthetically represent the player and offer them a virtual existence, the mechanics can hinder the ways in which the player can play and perform in the virtual space. Ultimately, there is very little negotiation accessible to the player, as the restrictions are unidirectional with no reciprocity between user and hard coded UI affordances. These avatars function as a performative representation of a player; within these restrictions, avatars arguably showcase limitations to ways of being and embodiment that enforce certain ways of being online.
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Gaming and Gamers in Times of Pandemic, 2024
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
International Conference on Games and Narrative, 2023
Emergent Narratives (ENs) provide a rich tool for uncovering untold tales when we play video game... more Emergent Narratives (ENs) provide a rich tool for uncovering untold tales when we play video games. They are stories that are not embedded by the game's author, instead arising from the game's mechanics (Adams, 2013). This enables the game to create new events for the player to experience, generated from the player's choices (Louchart et al 2008). ENs, therefore, are generally understood as a cocreation of the player making choices and the game's author, who designed those choices. However, games themselves-independent of their authors-are important participants in creating narratives, as their involvement in gameplay creates meaningful experiences for players by drawing boundaries around the type and scope of those stories. And so, rather than seeing narratives as a series of events, we can look at them as a series of conversations between the player and game.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, 2017
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
INTRODUCTION In queering gameplay, cues of sexuality concentrate the possibilities of action comm... more INTRODUCTION In queering gameplay, cues of sexuality concentrate the possibilities of action communicated by (avatar) design. However, many games such as Blizzard’s World of Warcraft (Blizzard 2004) ensure the erasure of queerness by “correcting” threats on heteronormative gameplay – updating the queer bugs which permit the player to embody queerness. Centering a discussion of gaming as an embodied experience through avatar design, this paper explores how scripted values may constrain online performance, allowing a player to express queerness in World of Warcraft (WoW). Notably, this paper explores the alterations invested in avatar bodies and how they influence sexual affordances for players, compromising queer gameplay when the game is patched, or as new expansions are released.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
INTRODUCTION For many digital games, a player is able to construct their digital identity with an... more INTRODUCTION For many digital games, a player is able to construct their digital identity with an avatar. Digital games often prescribe character customization interfaces (CCIs) which allow the player to create or customize their avatar. Yet, the range of possibilities given to a player is restricted by the design choices placed by the game’s interface, ultimately limiting the “possibilities a certain [avatar] has to interact with the game mechanics” (Tronstad 2008, 253). This means that while avatars can aesthetically represent the player and offer them a virtual existence, mechanics can hinder the ways in which the player plays and performs in the virtual space. In these cases, there is very little negotiation accessible to the player, as the restrictions are unidirectional with no reciprocity between user and the hard-coded user interface affordances.
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Television & New Media, 2022
With live streaming rising in popularity, many people stream the creation of 3D avatars However, ... more With live streaming rising in popularity, many people stream the creation of 3D avatars However, many of these avatars end up following a similar output: a hyper-feminized anime girl. Why is this? What are the social and technological processes constructing these avatars? To answer these questions, I propose that human (streamer and audience) and non-human (streaming platform and 3D modeling software) participants interact to produce the cultural experience of the live stream, re-producing common heteronormative, cisgendered, and racialized tropes about bodies and desirable avatars. And so, I take as my object of study the interaction that happens when all of these participants merge, forming what I call a white heteronormative assemblage. I argue that this assemblage is collective, relational, and self-reinforcing. Analyzing the relations between human and non-humans participants helps us turn our analytical lens away from media content or streamer motive, and instead toward the re...
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With live streaming rising in popularity, many people stream the creation of 3D avatars However, ... more With live streaming rising in popularity, many people stream the creation of 3D avatars However, many of these avatars end up following a similar output: a hyperfeminized anime girl. Why is this? What are the social and technological processes constructing these avatars? To answer these questions, I propose that human (streamer and audience) and non-human (streaming platform and 3D modeling software) participants interact to produce the cultural experience of the live stream, reproducing common heteronormative, cisgendered, and racialized tropes about bodies and desirable avatars. And so, I take as my object of study the interaction that happens when all of these participants merge, forming what I call a white heteronormative assemblage. I argue that this assemblage is collective, relational, and self-reinforcing. Analyzing the relations between human and non-humans participants helps us turn our analytical lens away from media content or streamer motive, and instead toward the restrictive outcomes of such interactions.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
We are interested in a systematic understanding the effect of visual scaling — changing the size ... more We are interested in a systematic understanding the effect of visual scaling — changing the size of the screen, while holding other factors constants — on gameplay. Through examples, we illustrate the effects that arise. We investigate scaling up as well as down, and find that the effects are quite different. We give a first classification of the underlying causes that give rise to these effects. We hereby hope to start a scientific analysis of visual scaling and its relation to gameplay.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Rise of the Far-Right: Technologies of Recruitment and Mobilization, 2021
In this chapter, I develop the critical framework of moments of political gameplay using an appr... more In this chapter, I develop the critical framework of moments of political gameplay using an approach informed by radical relationism, microethnography, and performativity, in order to produce detailed readings of how video games and their players reproduce (far-right) political action. I form this concept through two qualitative case studies from two seemingly different games: Angry Goy II (AG2), a game developed with politics at its forefront; and Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2), a game that allows the players to “do whatever they want”. This concept does not consider video games as technologies that produce new violence on its players. Rather, this framework argues that in order to map the stages of gameplay that affect players, we must see political gameplay as made up of the coming together of multiple ingredients: the human, the technological, and the political. Each ingredient is fundamental in creating a final output: a racist, misogynist, or anti-progressive moment of gameplay. Hence, the object of study here is the processes by which players reproduce a political worldview from their involvement in gameplay. In doing so, I outline how spotting moments of political gameplay allows us to trace the processes which produce political features of play, mobilize the player to digitally enact and perform far-right play, concretize the political identities of its player, and outline the breadcrumbs that lead the player towards far-right recruitment.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
DiGRA, 2020
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Platypus - The Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing, 2019
In this blog post, I attempt to define the feelings that impress binary gender expectations in pl... more In this blog post, I attempt to define the feelings that impress binary gender expectations in place with the concept of hetero-comfortability from my ongoing ethnographic work in VRChat. Hetero-comfortability is a process of recognition, where feelings of familiarity — historically established through hetero-conditioning — create impressions that allow one to find comfort in the continuing appearance of hetero-signifiers. As Sara Ahmed (2004b) notes, “To follow the rules of heterosexuality is to be at ease in a world that reflects back the couple form one inhabits as an ideal.”
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
DiGRA, 2018
For many digital games, a player is able to construct their digital identity with an avatar . Di... more For many digital games, a player is able to construct their digital identity with an avatar . Digital games often prescribe character customization interfaces (CCIs) which allow the player to create or customize their avatar. Yet, the range of possibilities given to a player is restricted by the design choices placed by the game’s interface, ultimately limiting the “possibilities a certain [avatar] has to interact with the game mechanics” (Tronstad 2008, 253). This means that while avatars can aesthetically represent the player and offer them a virtual existence, mechanics can hinder the ways in which the player plays and performs in the virtual space. In these cases, there is very little negotiation accessible to the player, as the restrictions are unidirectional with no reciprocity between user and the hard-coded user interface affordances.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
DiGRA, 2018
In queering gameplay, cues of sexuality concentrate the possibilities of action communicated by (... more In queering gameplay, cues of sexuality concentrate the possibilities of action communicated by (avatar) design. However, many games such as Blizzard’s World of Warcraft (Blizzard 2004) ensure the erasure of queerness by “correcting” threats on heteronormative gameplay – updating the queer bugs which permit the player to embody queerness. Centering a discussion of gaming as an embodied experience through avatar design, this paper explores how scripted values may constrain online performance, allowing a player to express queerness in World of Warcraft (WoW). Notably, this paper explores the alterations invested in avatar bodies and how they influence sexual affordances for players, compromising queer gameplay when the game is patched, or as new expansions are released.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
TACAS, 2017
Analysis of complex security and privacy policies (e.g., information flow) involves reasoning abo... more Analysis of complex security and privacy policies (e.g., information flow) involves reasoning about multiple execution traces. This stems from the fact that an external observer may gain knowledge about the system through observing and comparing several executions. Monitoring of such policies is in particular challenging because most existing monitoring techniques are limited to the analysis of a single trace at run time. In this paper, we present a rewriting-based technique for runtime verification of the full alternation-free fragment of HyperLTL, a temporal logic for specification of hyperproperties. The distinguishing feature of our proposed technique is its space complexity, which is independent of the number of trace quantifiers in a given HyperLTL formula.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
International Conference on Games and Narrative, 2023
Gameplay is a conversation, and as such is a vehicle for ideological exploration. While video gam... more Gameplay is a conversation, and as such is a vehicle for ideological exploration. While video games by themselves as technologies do not produce new violence onto its players, I argue that in order to map the stages of gameplay that affect players, we must see political gameplay as a conversation made up of multiple ingredients: the player, the game, and the political. Each ingredient is fundamental in creating a final output: a racist, misogynist, or antiprogressive political narrative.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Within virtual play spaces such as digital games, certain types of attributes and abilities are g... more Within virtual play spaces such as digital games, certain types of attributes and abilities are granted through a series of restrictive design choices imposed on user interface (UI) inputs, allowing a player to create their avatar or personal representation. Avatars are utilized as a representation of identity in these play spaces, allowing for certain prescribed ways of being that are embedded within the UIs of the avatar creation screens, as well as in the code itself. These restrictions can ultimately limit the “possibilities a certain [avatar] has to interact with the game mechanics” (Tronstad 2008, 253), such as certain in-game abilities. In this way, the capacities of the player are proscribed through choices made as early in the digital game as avatar creation. This means that while avatars aesthetically represent the player and offer them a virtual existence, the mechanics can hinder the ways in which the player can play and perform in the virtual space. Ultimately, there is very little negotiation accessible to the player, as the restrictions are unidirectional with no reciprocity between user and hard coded UI affordances. These avatars function as a performative representation of a player; within these restrictions, avatars arguably showcase limitations to ways of being and embodiment that enforce certain ways of being online.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact