The Disrupted Ludic Self: Aesthetics of character switching in NeiR: Automata

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Wright Ryan C.
2020 DiGRA ’20 – Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere

 

Beyond Procedurality: Situating The Witness in the Proceduralism Debate

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Wright Ryan C.
2019 DiGRA '19 - Proceedings of the 2019 DiGRA International Conference: Game, Play and the Emerging Ludo-Mix

This paper posits a comparative analysis between two views of ludic meaning in game studies. The same two puzzles from Thekla, Inc.’s 2016 puzzle adventure game The Witness are interpreted first from a proceduralist perspective and then are re-interpreted from a play-centric perspective derived from a combination of practice theory and game scholar Miguel Sicart’s formulation of play. The purpose of this analysis is to demonstrate how a game otherwise well-suited to proceduralist readings might be more completely understood from such a play-centric perspective and presents this experimental method of analysis by example.