(Un)Playful player responses to exclusive video game publishing

---

Piittinen Sari
2020 DiGRA ’20 – Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere

This paper analyses playful and serious player responses to Remedy Entertainment’s announcement to publish their new game Control’s PC version exclusively in the Epic Games Store. Through discourse analysis of player tweets, it produces new understanding about player expectations and responses prior to a game’s release and how players express their criticism in (un)playful ways. The findings show that through creative use of humour and complaints players retake power from game companies and construct meanings in a way that is only understandable to fellow players. They discursively and morally take an expert stance while underlining the incompetence of the company.

 

Incongruous Avatars and Hilarious Sidekicks: Design Patterns for Comical Game Characters

---

Dormann Claire Boutet Mish
2014 DiGRA '13 - Proceedings of the 2013 DiGRA International Conference: DeFragging Game Studies

Integrating humour in games or designing humorous games can be challenging but rewarding. Contributing to practical knowledge of these contexts, we examine the role and value of humour in game character design. We begin with a brief review of main theories of humour. Next, we outline our methodology, describing steps taken to develop game design patterns on humour. From our investigation, we present a classification of comic characters and discuss a sampling of patterns for characters, highlighting design considerations particular to these. Then we enrich our collection by situating our character patterns within the comic worlds the characters inhabit. Our intent is to create tools that game designers can use for laughter-inducing entertainment, to generate new, amusing gameplay experiences.

 

Among pasta-loving Mafiosos, drug-selling Columbians and noodle-eating Triads – Race, humour and interactive ethics in Grand Theft Auto III

---

Dymek Mikolaj Lennerfors Thomas
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

This paper explores the intersection of race, humour and interactivity in Grand Theft Auto 3. We argue that video games not only diffuse cultural and symbolic meanings, but also provide new loci for reflection and critique of issues of inter alia race. Two different analytical perspectives are juxtaposed when studying racial issues of GTA3. The first perspective is Critical Race Theory (CRT). The second perspective derives from the phthonic and incongruity theory of humour (Morreall 1986). We will argue that the CRT perspective is consistent with the phthonic theory of humour, while the incongruity theory goes beyond CRT presenting a novel way of interpreting games. This theoretical framework is applied when analysing the controversial game GTA3. By presenting stereotypical images of race in GTA3 as humorous, the player is provided with cues for reflecting and evaluating his/her own perspectives on issues of race.