Boys’ Play in the Fourth Space: Freedom of Movements in a Tween Virtual World


Searle Kristin A. Kafai Yasmin B.
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

Over a decade ago, Henry Jenkins wrote “‘Complete freedom of movement’: Video Games as gendered play spaces” in which he argued that video games provide a contemporary alternative to the out of doors freedom of movement boys historically accessed. Video games operate like a ‘fourth space’ (a term coined by Van Vliet), a muchneeded alternative to the adult-supervised and structured spaces of home, schools and playgrounds. These findings echoed the work of many developmental psychologists and others who have long understood that children’s access to play in particular spaces is gendered. We draw on Jenkins’ understanding of “freedom of movement” and developmental psychologists’ research into gender play and gendered play spaces to examine boys’ play within Whyville.net, a virtual world that had 1.5 million registered users between the ages of 8 and 16 at the time of our study. While we have a lot of quantitative information about boys’ play in video games and virtual worlds, we know little qualitatively about how they play. This stands in contrast to our nuanced understandings of why girls and women do or do not play, and how they play. Our goal was to extend Jenkins’ notion of “freedom of movement” into virtual worlds, which differ from console games in that players are responsible for constructing much of the content and they often lack a finite goal and story. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, we analyzed logfile data of 595 players involved in online gaming over a sixmonth period. Twenty-one players also participated in an afterschool gaming club with online and offline spaces. We looked at activity frequencies across 13 categories and analyzed logfile data qualitatively, supplementing our understandings with data from field notes, interviews, and video. Three case studies of boy players were developed, with each player representing a different level of expertise and participation (core, semi-core, peripheral). In extending “freedom of movement” into virtual worlds, we address boys’ navigation of virtual spaces as a process with geographical, personal and social dimensions. We also view these play spaces as gendered along three dimensions; mobility within the space, access to the space, and control over the space. An overview of the boys’ day-to-day activities in Whyville and discussion of their establishment of “home bases,” or spaces which they used as platforms for further exploration in Whyville, shows commonalities across boys’ play. These overviews are supplemented with in-depth analyses of boys’ activities in Whyville, which show nuanced differences connected to their varying levels of expertise. The fact that boy players have “home bases” where they settle for greater or lesser periods of time is compelling and contrasts with the perpetual motion of boys playing console video games. It also contrasts with previous studies of gendered play, which emphasized girls playing closer to home while boys ventured further afield. Along the social dimensions of boys play we found echoes of Jenkins’ characteristics of boys’ historical outdoors play and monster chasing in console video games. Finally, we found it difficult to compare the personal dimension because the possibilities offered to boys for gender play through avatar design activities are more expansive than their ability to choose from a set number of stock characters in console video games. The increased importance of body image in relation to masculinity was also evident in the boys’ attention to avatar design. We conclude that virtual worlds allow for freedom of movement, but in slightly different ways than console video games. Without a finite goal to their play, boys are able to place an increased emphasis on historical dimensions of boys play and create their adventures through interaction with one another and the space of the virtual world simultaneously, rather than through following a prescribed adventure.

 

The new gatekeepers: The occupational ideology of game journalism


Sihvonen Tanja
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper will contextualize the occupational ideology of game journalism by providing a brief introduction to the political economy of game publications. The role of various industry actors (e.g. game publishers, PR agents and brand managers) will be positioned against those of the peripheral industry (e.g. critics, journalists, and editors). Because the game industry is the principal advertiser for many game publications, and because of its tight grip on the most valuable source material, i.e. (early) access to games and restricted insider information, the job of a game journalist consists in many ways of balancing acts between a perceived loyalty to the reading public and a dependency on industry material.

 

An affordance based model for gameplay


Pinchbeck Dan
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper presents a formal model for gameplay based upon the affordances available to the player that are linked to game objects. It has been constructed via an extensive analysis of major first-person games 1998-2008, although it is argued it may extend to all diegetic games. Gameplay can be understood as a network of allowed actions, that can be summarised as a small number of archetypal affordances mediated by a set of parameters that define their functional relationships. As well as the capacity for the model to elucidate the ludic structures of games, it is argued that an affordance based model also provides a means to understand the relationship and role of story and content within a ludological context.

 

Researching player experiences through the use of different qualitative methods


Ribbens Wannes Poels Yorick
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

Since gameplay is only realized when the player and game interact, studying player experiences is complicated. Most research designs often emphasise either the structure of the game or the player in isolation of the game itself. In this study an attempt was made to test three different qualitative methods to study playing styles and by extension player experiences, while trying to take into account both the player and the game. An analysis scheme was developed to serve as a framework within the three methods and to direct respondents’ attention to the interaction with the game. 42 university students (casual and hardcore gamers) participated in the study during three months after which they wrote a paper on their playing style. During the first three weeks respondents had to fill in a diary every time they had played the videogame. Four weeks later, respondents participated in the video commentary model (VCM). In a game experience lab, a researcher observed the respondent playing the game he had played during the diary study. Afterwards, the researcher interviewed the player on different aspects of his playing style, with the aid of the gameplay session video. Finally, respondents that played the same game participated in a focus group interview (FGI), discussing the topics that stemmed from the diary and the video commentary model. Based on theoretical arguments and participants’ evaluation of the methods, we contend that all three methods are suitable to study player experiences. However, methodological triangulation provides the researcher with more accurate data, allowing to study gamers both in context (diary), through gameplay activities (VCM) and by interaction with other players (FGI).

 

Using an RFID game to phenomenologically test a theoretical systemic model for describing ambient games


Eyles Mark Eglin Roger
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

Imagine what Brian Eno’s genre defining 1978 album Music for Airports (Eno, 1978) would be if it were a game. The game might produce a mood in an environment; the player able to dip in and out of play, which could be facilitated by not having to carry gaming devices, allowing periods of disengagement from the game. The player’s everyday actions would generate data to move the game forward, causing game events. However, it should also be possible for the player to change their behaviour in order to participate more actively in the game, varying their involvement with the game from intense engagement to forgetting they are even playing. The proposed game would span both real and virtual worlds, with player actions in the real world affecting events in the virtual world. We have named this imagined game genre ‘ambient games’ (M. Eyles & Eglin, 2007a). Ambient games may be considered a type of pervasive game (‘a radically new game form that extends gaming experiences out into the physical world’ (Waern, 2006)) in which the game is embedded in the environment and the player may not need to carry digital equipment around with them and, crucially, can continue to actively play while ignoring the game. This paper proposes a systemic domain (Eglin, Eyles, & Dansey, 2007) theoretical model for understanding the underlying properties of ambient games, comparing and contrasting them with computer and video games. The theoretical models of both computer and video games and ambient games are used to generate player activity gameflow diagrams, in which the progress a player makes through the domains in the systemic models while playing a game are clearly shown. A game design research methodology (M. Eyles, Eglin, R., 2008) is used to investigate the ambient game systemic domain model and player activity gameflows. Ambient games, using RFID technology and pedometers, allow players to experience a game in which they are able to vary their involvement while engaged in other everyday activities. In order to discover the lived experience of players of ambient games existential phenomenological methods and in particular template analysis (King, 2008) are used. Studies and observations are described in which ambient games are used within the overarching game design research methodological framework.

 

“I Like the Idea of Killing But Not the Idea of Cruelty”: How New Zealand youth negotiate the pleasures of simulated violence


Schott Gareth
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

‘For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat … It fills the eye. It commands you. You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not’. The aim of this paper is to account for the experience of a two-year research project, funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand. This project sought to interrogate commonly articulated beliefs concerning the contribution of games to the ‘debauched innocence of our young’. Akin to the seemingly incompatible sentiments expressed in the opening quotation, the project broadly acknowledged the complexity of players’ relationship with violence as it is articulated in interactive digital games. To achieve this the project prioritized the experiences and perspectives of young people on the nature and function of what is commonly understood as ‘violent’ content within games. Despite forming the readership of popular culture, young people are commonly denied a voice by the very ‘authorities and opinion makers’ that chastise their practices. This paper highlights how players variously contested the term ‘violence’ for its expansive nature and the appropriateness of the way it is unquestioningly and legitimately employed to express what happens in games.

 

Agency Reconsidered


Wardrip-Fruin Noah Mateas Michael Dow Steven Sali Serdar
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

The concept of “agency” in games and other playable media (also referred to as “intention”) has been discussed as a player experience and a structural property of works. We shift focus, considering agency, instead, as a phenomenon involving both player and game, one that occurs when the actions players desire are among those they can take (and vice versa) as supported by an underlying computational model. This shifts attention away from questions such as whether agency is “free will” (it is not) and toward questions such as how works evoke the desires agency satisfies, employ computational models in the service of player action and ongoing dramatic probability, use interfaces and mediation to encourage appropriate audience expectation, shift from initial audience expectation to an understanding of the computational model, and can be shaped with recognition of the inherently improvisational nature of agency. We focus particularly on agency in relation to the fictional worlds of games and other playable media.

 

The Game Frame: Systemizing a Goffmanian Approach to Video Game Theory [Extended Abstract]


Deterding Sebastian
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper offers a review, explication and defense of Erving Goffman’s Frame Analysis (1974) as a valid contemporary sociological theory of play, games, and video games. To this end, it provides an introduction the frame analytic conception of play, games and video games. It demonstrates that this account provides an explanatory (rather than merely descriptive) model for the sociality of the game/non-game boundary or ‘magic circle’, as well as phenomena that trouble said boundary, like pervasive games or ARGs. To substantiate the timeliness of a frame analytic approach to games, the paper compares it to and partially takes issue with practice theory, specifically Thomas Malaby‘s recent “new approach to games”. The conclusion summarizes the key characteristics, advantages and limitations of a frame analytic account of video games.

 

Through the Looking Glass: Weavings between the Magic Circle and Immersive Processes in Video Games


Ferreira Emmanoel Falcão Thiago
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper proposes a critical discussion about the magic circle concept, through a debate with prior works on the issue, as those elaborated by Johan Huizinga and Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman, as well as with cognitive psychology studies regarding attention. We shall argue that the magic circle, instead of separating fiction and reality, would work as a cognitive mediation structure with graded “boundaries”, which existence occurs in diverse forms, depending on variables like player immersion and attention. Thus, these boundaries get defined and “solid” as the immersive process is developed and one reality seems to change into another: as the player “gets into the looking glass”.

 

Kingdom Hearts, Territoriality and Flow


Huber William Mandiberg Stephen
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper explores the relationship between companies Square-Enix and Disney as played out within the games of the Kingdom Hearts (キングダムハーツ) franchise. We contrast the relationship between these two transnational companies within the franchise's aesthetics and theoretical logics over the course of the various games. We are particularly interested in the games' own thematization and problematization of concepts of globalization, transnationalism and cultural flow. The games narratively and interactively foreground the collapse of membranes that separate worlds, producing legitimate and illegitimate modes of territoriality and intermixture.