/hide: The aesthetics of group and solo play

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Myers David
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

In this essay, I examine differences between individual and social play and, in particular, the differences between individual and social play within digital media forms designed to promote both: massively multi-player online computer games (MMOGs). The analysis considers in most depth differences between group and solo play within the NCSoft’s and Cryptic Studios’ MMOG, City of Heroes. Based on over 1000 hours of play within City of Heroes, observation of online forums and other texts devoted to social activities within City of Heroes, and conversations with City of Heroes players inside and outside of the game context, the essay describes an antithetical relationship between group and solo computer game play. Conclusions present a semiotic model of play in which game designs promoting social play are ineffective in significantly altering individual play forms and functions.

 

The Study of Computer Games as a Second-Order Cybernetic System

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Kücklich Julian
2002 Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings

The following paper is part of a larger analytical study of various contexts of computer games. Here, I elaborate on the method on which I base my study of the semiotic process constituted by playing a computer game. This method is derived from a critique of earlier approaches to the field from the perspective of literary and media studies. While most of these approaches employ a twolevel model with undeniable roots in structuralist narratology, the model suggested here is based on the constructivist concept of viability. This presupposes a change of perspective from "naïve objectivity" to informed subjectivity.

 

The playability of texts vs. the readability of games: towards a holistic theory of fictionality

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Kücklich Julian
2003 DiGRA '03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up

Playful interaction occurs not only in games, but in literary texts as well. One cannot describe what takes place between author, text, and reader more accurately than by calling it a game. Games, on the other hand, cannot be reduced to playthings, but must be considered as cultural objects that are being read and interpreted. One does not, however, read solely for the plot. This is why a purely narratological analysis of both digital and analog games is bound to fail. Many games create a fictional world to be inhabited and explored by the players. In this respect, games are similar to literary texts, and a philological approach to games is therefore primarily justified because of their fictionality, rather than their narrative qualities. This is my starting point in an exploration of different models of ‘playability’, and how they can be used to understand the ‘readability’ of games.

 

Narrating machines and interactive matrices: a semiotic common ground for game studies

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Ferri Gabriele
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

Between playing a game and enjoying a narration there is a semiotic and semantic common ground: interpretation and meaning-making. A semiotic methodology to describe situated gaming practices will be presented in three phases. At first, the intuitive concept of "meaning" will be discussed and substituted by the generative semiotic notion of "content". Then the structuralist semiotic notion of "text" will be criticized and substituted by the the concept of "interactive matrix" and "game-text", referring also to Rastier's differential semantics, Peirce's diagrams and other recent proposals in semantics of perception. Situated gaming practices will be the focal point of the last part of this paper, showing how these practices and the game-text mutually influence and modify each other during interpretation and meaning-making.

 

The Pervasive Interface: Tracing the Magic Circle

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Nieuwdorp Eva
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

This paper is an addition to the discourse surrounding interface theory and pervasive games. A buzzword by nature, the term ´interface´ needs to be investigated and redefined in order to remain academically valid; at the same time the pervasive game, being part of recent developments in game culture, needs to be given a place in the discourse of digital games. By approaching the interface through formal game theory, I will investigate the place and status of the interface in the pervasive game, as well as the border between everyday reality and the virtual game world, in search of defining the interaction between fantasy and reality in pervasive gaming. Next to the conventional interface of hard- and software, I argue that in pervasive gaming there exists the two-levelled “liminal” interface, which initially transfers the player into a playful state of mind (paratelic interface) before implementing more rigid structures that belong to the game itself (paraludic interface).