Assassin's Creed: A Multi-Cultural Read (original) (raw)
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emotions about the deniable/undeniable: sketch for a classification of game content as experienced.
This paper deals with the emotions experienced by a player. It problematises the empirical psychological study of players' emotions. The paper suggests emotions to be understood as structured relationships instead of as reactions. It proposes players' emotions to be analysed through their intentionality, by looking at games as constituting the objects of the emotions. The article questions the validity of objective knowledge about games for the purpose of understanding games as experienced. It presents a method of categorizing game content as it appears as objects of the players' emotions. The categorization is further demonstrated by looking at two erotic variations of Tetris.
In Gameplay : the invariant structures and varieties of the video game gameplay experience
2018
This dissertation is a multidisciplinary study on video game gameplay as an autonomous form of vernacular experience. Plays and games are traditional research subjects in folkloristics, but commercial video games have not been studied yet. For this reason, methods and concepts of the folkloristic research tradition have remained unknown in contemporary games studies. This thesis combines folkloristics, game studies and phenomenological enactive cognitive science in its investigations into playergame interaction and the video game gameplay experience at large. In this dissertation, three representative survey samples (N=2,594, N=845, N=1,053) on "Rewarding gameplay experience" are analyzed using statistical analysis methods. The samples were collected in 2014-2017 from Finnish and Danish adult populations. This dissertation also analyzes data from 32 interviews, through which the survey respondents' gameplay preferences, gaming memories, and motivations to play were further investigated. By combining statistical and qualitative data analyses, this work puts forward a mixed-methods research strategy and discusses how the findings relate to prior game research from several disciplines and schools of thought. Based on theoretical discussions, this dissertation argues that the video game gameplay experience as a cultural phenomenon consists of eight invariants in relation to which each individual gameplay experience can be interpreted: The player must demonstrate a lusory attitude (i), and a motivation to play (ii). The gameplay experience consists of explorative and coordinative practices (iii), which engender a change in the player's self-experience (iv). This change renders the gameplay experience inherently emotional (v) and performative (vi) in relation to the gameworld (vii). The gameplay experience has the dramatic structure of a prototypical narrative (viii) although a game as an object cannot be regarded a narrative in itself. As a key result of factor analytical studies and qualitative interview analyses, a novel approach to understanding player-game interaction is put forward. An original gameplay preference research tool and a player typology are introduced. This work argues, that, although video games as commercial products would not be intuitive research subjects for folkloristics, video game gameplay, player-game interaction, and the traditions in experiencing and narrating gameplay do not differ drastically from those of traditional social games. In contrast to this, all forms of gameplay are argued to be manifestations of the same vernacular phenomenon. Indeed, folkloristic research could pay more attention to how culture is experienced, modified, varied and expressed, regardless of whether the research subject is a commercial product or not.
The roles we play: dichotomies of the visual and the experiential in video games
2020
This thesis analyses seven contemporary video games with regards to male and female stereotypisation. Contrary to the majority of previous studies, the analysis not only assesses visual cues to ascertain common themes of sexualisation, passivity or aggression of the characters within the game, but also suggests an additional methodological approach to measure the roles of each playable character. In order to categorise the thirty-three sample characters, the available skills for each character were analysed to subsume the characters under general archetypical roles related to overarching male or female stereotypes respectively, The roles deduced from this analysis, additionally can be regarded as predictors for the game play experience of players. Moreover, the sources of power deduced from the skill descriptors of each character were analysed in order to assess stereotypical tropes from a narrative perspective as well. Finally, the results of the visual analysis and the occupied ro...
"Screening Play: Rules, Wares, and Representations in 'Realistic' Video Games"
"In highlighting the apparatus as the keystone for the magic circle of video gaming, we displace players—the subject of ludology—and “text”—the subject of narratology. This is not to deny the importance of players’ agency or the meanings of texts in video gaming; rather it is to reconsider these with regard to the screening of player from played inherent in the gaming apparatus. To better understand the situation of homo ludens in these more mediated play spaces, we turn to Jacques Lacan’s account of “split” subjectivity and retread it by explaining how it may well explain the operation of a magic circle spanning three dimensions of screen-play: rules (Symbolic dimension), representations (Imaginary dimension), and wares (Real dimension). In the end, we come around to the other space of Huizinga’s theory—the connections with the non-game world—to show that the value of video game play is also found beyond the apparatus, that the experience and enjoyment of video games are affected in part by social reality and, in turn, social reality is being affected by the experience and enjoyment of video games. Arriving at this point by first theorizing the video game apparatus, however, highlights matters of video game design more so than issues of audience or textual analysis. To illustrate this perspective, we conclude by defining three ways to analyze video games in terms of “realism,” proposing three types of video game realism: representational, simulative, and inverse. "
Remarks on Video Game Analysis
Mediaesthetics – Journal of Poetics of Audiovisual Images, 2024
Bakels, J.-H., Dolkemeyer, L., Hochschild, B., Lukman, C., Scherer, T., Schotten, R., & Wiese, A. (2024). Remarks on Video Game Analysis. Mediaesthetics – Journal of Poetics of Audiovisual Images, (5). https://doi.org/10.17169/mae.2024.103 Across the following pages, we want to present a collection of thoughts on academic video game analysis, making a plea for a more central role the actual experience of gaming should inhabit in the field of video game studies. At the same time, these thoughts are the result of a working group on video games based at “Cinepoetics – Center for Advanced Film Studies” situated at Freie Universität Berlin. In this group (2018–2024), scholars with film and media studies backgrounds have played and analyzed video games as well as engaged with theoretical texts from the field of game studies and beyond. The group aimed to transfer theoretical and methodological approaches from film and video analysis to the field of video games while at the same time discussing, testing, and adapting approaches from video game studies. We have chosen to structure the research perspective and respective challenges along fundamental questions that accompany all of our analytical studies of playing video games: What do you play? Why do you play? What’s the scope of your play? How does the game let you/lead you to play? What is your play-setting (and setup)? How do you record/observe play?
Games and Culture
This study investigates players’ perceived realism of historical video games. Perceived realism is understood as a multidimensional concept, going beyond the more traditional use of ‘realism’ in historical game studies, where it often refers to the plausibility or accuracy of historical reconstructions. The study further examines how perceived realism relates to players’ enjoyment of historical games. Specifically, this study analyses Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed Unity and Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Through an online survey among 1,317 respondents, this study found that the five-dimensional structure of perceived realism holds for historical games. The three games differed in their perceptions of social realism, perceptual pervasiveness, freedom of choice and enjoyment. Finally, perceptual pervasiveness and character involvement were identified as strong predictors of enjoyment in historical games. This study contributes towards further validation of the perceived r...
Over the last few decades videogames have increasingly grown to influence our lives in different fields. It is an important media, a tool for play and interaction, as well as a cultural phenomenon. The aesthetics of videogames is something this paper tries to investigate in terms of gameplay to the individual player, and how it affects the emotional investments sub consciously delegated to the player. In this paper we headlight the different elements that conduct the aesthetics of videogames. The main purpose of this is to define the term in videogames, and thus get a better understanding towards the importunateness of it and how it can be exposed to investigate the necessary emotions generated by the player.
Are Videogames Art? - A Phenomenology of Game Experience
My aim in this essay is to compare the aesthetic experience with the experience of a game, and in particular of a videogame, to determine whether they are the same kind of thing or essentially different. The result of this inquiry has a decisive impact on the nature of videogames themselves.
The gaming experience from a viewer’s perspective
Affective responses to the “Let’s Play” Videos on YouTube This study intends to enhance our understanding in the field of online consumer behaviour by exploring the popular phenomenon of branded user-generated content and the consumers’ emotional responses to such content that seem to be overlooked by the current literature. Given the numerous forms of the available user-generated content, the study is focused on a particular type of user-generated videos on YouTube named “Let’s Play” videos and the viewers’ generated emotions while consuming them.
A Cognitive Psychological Approach to Gameplay Emotions
Although emotions elicited by the fictional world or the artefact play a part in story-driven video games, they are certainly not the focus of the experience. From a cognitive psychological perspective, this paper studies the appraisal and action dimensions of emotions arising from gameplay. As it relies on cognitive film theories about popular narrative movies, it also revisits their conceptual sources in order to better reflect on the specificity of those gameplay emotions.