(Re)Mark(s) of the Ninja: Replaying the Remnants

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Côté Pierre-Marc
2014 DiGRA '13 - Proceedings of the 2013 DiGRA International Conference: DeFragging Game Studies

The author makes an appraisal of the videogame Mark of the Ninja (Klei 2012) through the analysis of its construction of temporality. Appropriating the framework of litterature scholar Éric Méchoulan, time is described as the anachronistic folding of the past upon the present. The theme of time and memory in the game is paralleled with Méchoulan’s media-archeological approach to western metaphysics, insisting on the material processes and ethics of thought, mediation and transmission. As the game applies such treatment of the mythical past of the fictional world, it is also aesthetically molding the experience of gameplay through marks as objects for an archeology of gamespace. It leads to critical approaches to cultural legitimacy and violence that nonetheless leaves the pleasures of narrative and play intact. Finally, the author uses David Bohm’s concept of suspension, showing how the articulation of contemplation and gameplay performances makes time for critical play.

 

Temporal Frames: A Unifying Framework for the Analysis of Game Temporality

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Zagal José P. Mateas Michael
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

This article introduces the notion of temporal frames as a tool for the formal analysis of the temporality of games. A temporal frame is a set of events, along with the temporality induced by the relationships between those events. We discuss four common temporal frames: real-world time (events taking place in the physical world), gameworld time (events within the represented gameworld, including events associated with gameplay actions), coordination time (events that coordinate the actions of players and agents), and fictive time (applying socio-cultural labels to events, as well as narrated event sequences). We use frames to analyze the real-time/turn-based distinction as well as various temporal anomalies. These discussions illustrate how temporal frames are useful for gaining a more nuanced understanding of temporal phenomena in games.

 

Do We Need Real-Time Hermeneutics? Structures of Meaning in Games

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Arjoranta Jonne
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

Games differ from most other forms of media by being procedural and interactive. These qualities change how games create and transmit meaning to their players. The concept of “real-time hermeneutics” (Aarseth 2003) is analysed in order to understand how temporality affects the understanding of games. Temporal frames (Zagal and Mateas 2010) are introduced as an alternative way of understanding time in games.

 

Playing Through: the Future of Alternative and Critical Game Projects

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

This paper explores a number of experimental game-based projects (including Tekken Torture Tournament, Painstation, September 12th: A Toy World, Under Ash, Desert Rain) in order to interrogate the critical potential of computer games. Gonzalo Frasca’s proposition this this potential arises from the nature of computer games as simulations will be evaluated with reference to Bernard Stiegler’s conceptualization of the mnemotechnical forms humans have developed for the recording and interpretation of cultural experience. In this light, simulation will be compared to narrative and theatrical forms, the forms to which Frasca opposes it in his account of simulation as the “form of the future.” We will see that the past of computer simulation, a past dominated by military techno-scientific developments, comes with it and must be considered in any theorisation of its critical potential as a cultural form.