Wrecking the Game: The Artist as Griefer

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Fantacci Gemma
2018 DiGRA '18 - Proceedings of the 2018 DiGRA International Conference: The Game is the Message

This paper aims at examining the anti-game practice of artists that assume a subverting behaviour inside video games. They hijack gameplay to turn it into a space for artistic intervention. The artists discussed in this paper are Kent Sheely, Marque Cornblatt, Justin Berry, and Alan Butler. Their practice shares similarities with the artistic interventions developed by Dada and International Situationist, two artistic movements that aimed at redefining the culture of their time thanks to subversive actions. The artists featured in this paper are defined griefers, deliberate hecklers. Their works are then analysed along with the concepts of counter-gaming and ludic mutation defined by Alexander Galloway and Anne-Marie Schleiner to better understand the characteristics of their subversive behaviour.

 

Configuring the player: subversive behavior in Project Entropia

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Jakobsson Peter Pargman Daniel
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

This paper presents the concept of a “black box” as a tool for analyzing virtual worlds. The concept comes from the field of Science & Technology Studies (STS) and we employ it here more specifically to study one such virtual world in particular, Project Entropia. The concept of a “black box” is used to describe the developers’ efforts to hide or to build certain assumptions into the very fabric of the virtual world in order to get the players to perform certain prescribed roles. The concept is also used to describe players’ efforts to open up this black box in order to get access to and play other roles – roles not prescribed by the game publisher and that in some cases function as a threat to the publisher’s business model. The focus of the analysis is on the imperative to “pay to play”. This imperative is essential to the developers of the game since Project Entropia does not employ the usual subscription-based revenue model that most other Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) use.

 

Videogame art: remixing, reworking and other interventions

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Mitchell Grethe Clarke Andy
2003 DiGRA '03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up

This paper explores some of the areas of intersection between videogames and both digital and non-digital art practice. By looking at examples of art practice drawn from videogames, it outlines some categories and so provides an overview of this area, placing it within the wider context of contemporary and historical art practice. The paper explores the tendency for much of this work to have elements of subversion or “détournement”, whilst also identifying areas of tension in the appropriation of videogames as material for art practice