From Video Games to Virtual Reality (and Back). Introducing HACS (Historical-Analytical Comparative System) for the Documentation of Experiential Configurations in Gaming History


Therrien Carl
2017 DiGRA '17 - Proceedings of the 2017 DiGRA International Conference

This paper introduces a comparative analytical system that seeks to document the evolution of the game experience in the history of video games. Following an overview of formal and ontological inspections of games, ten interactive figures – domains of human agency typically modelled by game systems – are presented. The study of figures in art history traces the emergence and resurgence of different types of characters, poses or scenes, and indeed this is the meaning that is ascribed to the term here; games propose different “roles” depending on the specific ways they model this agency. These concepts are ideal to segment any game experience, and each of these segments are then analyzed with four conceptual categories: three layers of interface (the manipulation, mapping and feedback layers), and the ludic modes of engagement associated with each figure. The presentation of the system is encapsulated in an argument about the recurring fascination for VR technology in the world of video game; the analytical system will be able to document the actual integration of such elements along with other important parts of the ludic mediation

 

Modeling the Semiotic Structure of Game Characters


Vella Daniel
2014 DiGRA '14 - Proceedings of the 2014 DiGRA International Conference

When game studies has tackled the player-character, it has tended to do so by means of an oppositon to the notion of the avatar, with the result that the ontological and semiotic nature of the character in itself has not been given due attention. This paper draws on understandings of character from the fields of narratology and literary theory to highlight the double-layered ontology of character as both a possible individual and as a semiotic construction. Uri Margolin’s narratological model of character signification is used as the basis for developing a semiotic-structural model of the player-character that addresses its specific medialities and formal nature – a task which is performed through illustrative close examinations of the player-characters in The Last of Us (Naughty Dog 2013) and Gone Home (The Fullbright Company 2013).