Ethics at Play in Undertale: Rhetoric, Identity and Deconstruction

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Seraphine Frederic
2018 DiGRA '18 - Proceedings of the 2018 DiGRA International Conference: The Game is the Message

This paper focuses on the effect of ethical – and unethical – actions of the player on their perception of the self towards game characters within Toby Fox’s (2015) independent Role Playing Game (RPG) Undertale, a game often perceived as a pacifist text. With a focus on the notions of guilt and responsibility in mind, a survey with 560 participants from the Undertale fandom was conducted, and thousands of YouTube comments were scraped to better understand how the audience who watched or played the different routes of the game, refer to its characters. Through the joint analysis of the game’s semiotics, survey data, and data scraping, this paper argues that, beyond the rhetorical nature of its story, Undertale is operating a deconstruction of the RPG genre and is harnessing the emotional power of gameplay to evoke thoughts about responsibility and raise the player’s awareness about violence and its consequences.

 

Playing with History’s Otherness. A framework for exploring historical games

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Cruz Martínez Manuel Alejandro
2016 DiGRA/FDG ’16 – Proceedings of the 2016 Playing With History Workshop

In this paper, I present a provisional framework for analysing and exploring historical games based on identity/alterity theorizations. Using this approach, I situate history in different roles exploring multiple dimensions of identity/alterity. I propose an application of these dimensions to analyse how games represent historical themes and convey specific discourses. I will argue that similar frameworks that aim to deconstruct history are pertinent tools for exploring the medium’s potential as they allow deeper insights on historical representations and unveil new designing perspectives. In this sense, I use this approach to identify unique characteristics of games that could challenge specific discourses, adventuring how games can add further historical reflections, reaching creative and critical interpretations of the past. While the framework presented here requires further development, I hope this paper will encourage debate on the applicability of critical approaches as tools for the design of subversive historical games.

 

Press Enter or Escape to Play – Deconstructing Escapism in Multiplayer Gaming

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Warmelink Harald Harteveld Casper Mayer Igor
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

The term escapism tends to be used in game research without providing any extensive definition of what it means or acknowledging its composite nature. In this paper, the authors question the possible conceptualizations of escapism and the extent to which gamers identify with them. Beginning with a theoretical deconstruction of escapism, the authors developed a framework that they applied in an empirical study with three focus groups. Respondents in these groups completed a survey and participated in a group discussion. The resulting data allowed the identification of eight different discourses of escapism in the context of playing multiplayer computer games. In addition, the study showed that citing escapism as a reason for playing games elicits debate and emotional responses. Given the existence of multiple interpretations and connotations, this paper concludes that escapism is problematic for use in surveys, interviews, and other research techniques.