Computer Game Studies

Este artigo procura discutir as práticas de consumo no jogo digital League of Legends (LoL) a partir de um olhar baseado nos estudos do campo da comunicação e da cultura material. O objetivo é compreender a relação entre objetos e jogadores-sujeitos-consumidores. Para tanto, procuramos analisar a trajetória social e cultural dessas mercadorias nas experiências simbólicas em LoL. Nessa perspectiva, e fazendo uso de método etnográfico, são apresentados relatos e observações do consumo de objetos em LoL por jogadores das cidades de Belém (PA), Diadema (SP) e Osasco (SP). Os resultados apontam para a existência de uma complexa teia de significados interconectados responsáveis por (de)codificar os objetos e transformar aglomerados de pixels em experiências de comunicação, consumo e cultura material.

This thesis is an examination of kinaesthetic play from the lived experience of the player. The aim of this work is to show that the value of play runs much deeper than its applications and that play is a significant thing-in-itself; as such, play is shown to be an entirely independent entity to that of games and sport. Play, as investigated in this study, calls into question certain philosophical themes, most specifically the concept of self as discovered 'within' the horizon of a historically conditioned world. The level of embodied engagement in play collapses the dichotomies of subject and object, and indeed the self and world. In committing oneself to play one actively joins play and in doing so the player experiences a unity, a unique oneness that grounds and determines the felt experience of play. This significant experience is described in this thesis as 'selfless-play.' It happens when the players are no longer concerned for themselves and their own individual goals; the totality of the situation leads to an autotelic experience brought on by a mixture of challenge and focus, regardless of the form of the game or activity. There is no self-reflection in selfless play; when we think or examine the way in which we are playing we are no longer in play. The constitutional horizon of 'being-in-the-world', which is so important to everyday life, is not fundamental to play. The only fundamental horizon in play is play itself. In abandoning the horizon of being-in-the-world, play necessarily leads to the renunciation of other important concepts like selfhood, authenticity and freedom. While all these categories are necessary to enter into selfless-play, once in it we forfeit our agency and command in order to embrace a lived experience where the parts are more than their sum. In play, meaning is not measured by rational understanding but by the intensity of existence. In play everything is ubiquitous; all things are one under the constitution of play. v Declaration I, David (Davy) Walsh, wish to certify that the thesis is entirely my own work and has not been used to obtain a degree in this University or any other university or institute.

It is increasingly difficult in the modern university to find time for one's own ideas, still less anyone else's, so it is humbling when people read or discuss your project and think about it enough to enthuse, disagree, or point out things you missed. The following people have been generous in this way with their time, ideas and encouragement, so I am grateful to them:

The new field of computer occupations has acquired a masculine character in a very short time, even in a period in which women's participation in the labour market increased significantly. In this article, I want to show how the computer on symbolic level became inextricably bound up with prevailing masculine values as early as the '50s and '60s. The empirical material is based on an analysis of newspaper articles on computers from this period. I will argue that the brain metaphor played an important role in transferring masculine values to the computer and to the computer worker. At the end, I will discuss other meanings that could have led to a less masculine image, but I suggest these meanings were less powerful than the brain metaphor.

People play games to change or structure their internal experiences. Adults in this study, enjoy filling their heads with thoughts and emotions unrelated to work or school, others enjoy the challenge and chance to test their abilities. Games offer an efficiency and order in playing that they ...

In this paper, I discuss the elements of the avatarial game body. Using Don Ihde’s philosophy of technology, in addition with Richard Shusterman’s concept of somaesthetics, I break the avatar down into basic parts. I consider these parts through Shusterman’s understanding of the soma and Ihde’s postphenomenological discussions of human-technology relationships to devise somaster fiction. Somaster fiction, as I argue, is a convergence between the player’s real-life body and a computer game experience, presented through avatarial onscreen bodies in games such as the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and invisible non-avatarial agency, discussed in games like The Novelist and This War of Mine. This paper incorporates each of Ihde and Shusterman’s main ideas about the body, which coalesce during the gameplay experience to enable players to become masters of an avatarial body and virtual topographical space. Somaster fiction discusses the different human-technology relationships that occur dur...

The idea of textual space is normally associated with the space represented in the text, this is to say, with mimetic space (henceforth space 1). But the involvement of texts with space can take other forms: the embedding of textual objects in a spatial context (space 2); the space physically occupied by the textual object (space 3), and the spatial form of the text (space 4). These kinds of space will be illustrated with both print and digital examples.

OMG! Lol n00b :)! Quando os jogadores, sobretudo de MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, i.e. jogos de interpretação online em massa para múltiplos jogadores) como o World of Warcraft®, falam entre si, adaptam a linguagem às suas necessidades, a exemplo do que fazem os falantes de uma língua. É errado presumir que expressões como smileys, acrónimos e neologismos constituem uma deterioração da linguagem atual. Antes pelo contrário, estas expressões podem ser vistas como exemplos de criatividade, eficiência e marcadores de grupo. Além disso, estas expressões ajudam os jogadores a posicionarem-se nas conversas, podendo por conseguinte ser vistas como estratégias de interação ativas no discurso dos jogos. Mas embora a comunicação seja de importância primordial para alcançar os objetivos e para efeitos de interpretação nos MMORPG, há vários desafios que se colocam aos jogadores, como situações de elevado stress, falta de pistas paralinguísticas e obstáculos intercultu...

Technology games are parts of ways of life. The rules of technology games are the customary restrained practices people engage in, in consort with artefacts. Artefacts are not media shaping themselves more closely around human needs but are active participants in technology games which constitute nations, genders, professions and so on. Gradually, the technological ecology changes and consequently self-images change. Engineering is itself a technology game that attempts to turn visions of other technology games into a material form. Engineers are thus cultural leaders who regulate self-images through innovations in artefacts and proposed rules for their use

The philosophical and theoretical standpoint, presented in this paper, are comprised of a combination of the analytical philosophical tradition known as 'external realism' as laid forward by John Searle, JL Austin, and David Favrholdt among others and Ludwig Wittgenstein's theory of ...

This paper presents a frame-theoretic account of the inferential and non-inferential use of German perception verbs like klingen ‘sound’, aussehen ‘look (like)’, and sich anfühlen ‘feel (like)’. We argue that a proper analysis of constructions based on these verbs requires explicit reference to object attributes like SOUND, SIGHT, and TOUCH, to which we refer as ‘dimensions’. It will be shown that a frame analysis, in which object dimensions can easily be represented as frame attributes, is ideally suited for the treatment of perception verbs of this type. Following Barsalou (1992), we define frames as recursive attribute-value structures, which are represented as directed labeled graphs with the arcs corresponding to attributes and the nodes to their values (cf. Petersen 2007). Furthermore, we assume that the knowledge about admissible frames is represented in type hierarchies which restrict the set of appropriate attributes and their values for object classes. Given our frame mode...

The subfield of game ontology has seen many models and structural hierarchies, but few that actively build on each other, or even attempt comparisons. This paper introduces a meta-model, which in addition to being an ontological model of its own, also offers a method for comparison between competing or isolated models and concepts. It does so by treating games as mechanisms (Craver 2007) with multiple levels of description, and differentiates between four main layers of the game-mechanism. In the first part of the paper we present the model in detail. In the second part of the paper we show applications of the model-we present how some of the existing approaches to game ontology can be compared within it and how it can be used to describe two case examples: the ancient Egyptian funeral game Senet and the difference between game mechanics and game rules.

This essay concerns with the overlap of interactive art and computer games. In order to arrive at a critique of the feasibility of using playability’s absence as a strategy in the design of ‘art games’, the essay contextualizes contemporary non-playable ‘art games’ in the discourses of both interactive art and computer games. For this purpose, a notion of ‘playability’ is derived from notions of freedom and responsibility. In the ‘crossexposure’ of traditions, questions arise about authorship, and, the aesthetics and ethics of the relationship between the artworks and its audience.

In recent years, an increasing number of games have created spaces which radically depart from our experience of space in reality. Digital games have used clandestine relocations of the avatar and semi-scripted reconfigurations of game spaces to great effect. Often characterised as non-Euclidean, virtual environments such as these foreground otherwise barely noticeable principles of navigation. Drawing on the well-established theories of game spatiality, neuroscience, and developmental psychology, this article investigates how two of the most well-known and extreme examples, Antichamber (Demruth 2013) and P.T. (7780s Studios [Kojima Productions] 2014), defamiliarize game spaces and their navigation. The result is an identification of shared aesthetic principles of non-Euclidean game spaces, which evoke fundamental disorientation and helplessness by withholding information we learn to rely on in reality at an early age for basic cognitive processes.

In this paper, we reassess the notion and current state of ludohermeneutics in game studies, and propose a more solid foundation for how to conduct hermeneutic game analysis. We argue that there can be no ludo-hermeneutics as such, and that every game interpretation rests in a particular game ontology, whether implicit or explicit. The quality of this ontology, then, determines a vital aspect of the quality of the analysis.

The subfield of game ontology has seen many models and structural hierarchies, but few that actively build on each other, or even attempt comparisons. This paper introduces a meta-model, which in addition to being an ontological model of its own, also offers a method for comparison between competing or isolated models and concepts. It does so by treating games as mechanisms (Craver 2007) with multiple levels of description, and differentiates between four main layers of the game-mechanism. In the first part of the paper we present the model in detail. In the second part of the paper we show applications of the model we present how some of the existing approaches to game ontology can be compared within it and how it can be used to describe two case examples: the ancient Egyptian funeral game Senet and the difference between game mechanics and game rules.

MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games) like World of Warcraft® require gamers to communicate in English regardless of their language competence in it. Therefore, English becomes the lingua franca of many gamers. Furthermore, gamers have to communicate effi ciently with one another in high stress situations causing another linguistic challenge. These conditions do not lead to the assumption that politeness is of any relevance in MMORPGs but rather that these games are hostile and impolite environments. A survey investigating the language usage of gamers, including a questionnaire and a selfcompiled corpus, sheds light on the language usage and politeness of gamers. This survey asks how and why gamers coming from different language backgrounds using ELF in MMORPGs utilize politeness to position themselves.

This article interrogates Andrew Feenberg’s thesis that modern technology is in need of ‘re-aestheticization’. The notion that modern technology requires aesthetic critique connects his political analysis of micro-contexts of social shaping to his wider concern with civilization change. The former involves a modified constructionism, in which the motives, values and beliefs of proximal agents are understood in terms of their wider sociological significance. This remedies a widely acknowledged blind-spot of conventional constructionism, enabling Feenberg to identify democratic potential in progressive agency at the scene of technology design. Feenberg argues that the aesthetics of naturalistic modernism may serve as a bridge between such interventions and cultural transformation. Referring to developments in design culture, especially as this relates to the human-machine interface on digital artefacts, the article suggests that this part of Feenberg’s argument has been falsified. Thi...

The book describes how games played on computers became computer games. By analysing the first gaming magazines it shows how a culture of reception and appreciation was produced around games produced for home computers and circulated in the hobbyist culture of 'bedroom coding'.

The author retains ownership of the copyright in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive permettant a la Bibliotheque nationale du Canada de reproduire, preter, distribuer ou vendre des copies de cette these sous la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format electronique. L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur qui protege cette these. Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou aturement reproduits sans son autorisation. In compliance with the Canadian Privacy Act some supporting forms may have been removed from this dissertation. Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la protection de la vie privee, quelques formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de ce manuscrit. While these forms may be included in the document page count, their removal does not represent any loss of content from the dissertation. Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

This paper deals with play as an important methodological issue when studying games as texts and is intended as a practical methodological guide. After considering text as both the structuring object as well as its plural processual activations, we argue that different methodological considerations can turn the focus towards one of the two. After outlining and synthesizing a broad range of existing research we move beyond the more general advice to be reflective about the type of players that we are, and explore two methodological considerations more concretely. First of all, we discuss the various considerations to have with regards to the different choices to make when playing a game. Here we show how different instrumental and free strategies lay bare different parts of the game as object or process. Secondly, we consider how different contexts in which the game and the player exist, can function as different reference points for meaning construction and the way they can put limi...

This paper deals with play as an important methodological issue when studying games as texts, and is intended as a practical methodological guide. After considering text as both the structuring object as well as its plural processual activations, we argue that different methodological considerations can turn the focus towards one of the two (without completely excluding the other). After outlining and synthesizing a broad range of existing research we move beyond the more general advice to be reflective about the type of players that we are, and explore two methodological considerations more concretely. First of all, we discuss the various considerations to have regarding the different choices to make when playing a game. Here we show how different instrumental and free strategies lay bare different parts of the game as object and/or process. Secondly, we consider how different contexts in which the game and the player exist, can function as different reference points for meaning co...

Contemporary videogames make use of a diverse array of physical and graphical user interfaces (GUIs) with diverse mechanics and logics (Jorgensenn, 2013). As these new interfaces beckon, one might well wonder if we are still phenomenally limited, as Thomas Nagel (1974) once argued, to the 'resources' of our own minds. This chapter proposes that scholarship consider seriously how videogame aesthetics can articulate novel kinds of sense-perception at the edges of ludic and narrative experiences, and in forms distinct from previous scholarship concerned with experiential implications of VR (Helsel and Roth, 1991) or the phenomenology of physical interfaces (Keogh, 2018). Through a post-phenomenological understanding of atmospheres as ‘quasi-objective’ aesthetic objects (Griffero 2017; B hme, 2017) I argue that videogames offer us cyborg access to alien forms of experience, as well as new defamiliarized perspectives on human sensation.

Aesthetic critique Feenberg draws on the insights of social constructivism to argue that the design of technologies is a contentious, disputed and thoroughly political process. Technologies come heavily inscribed with symbolic meanings, including, in capitalist society, the message that they are authoritative and determinate. One of Feenberg's innovations has been to show how these social inscriptions not only construct technology in line with the conceptions of specific social groups but, at the same time, tie artefacts into wider social networks (2010: 76). Enlarging the picture in this way reveals that, as a social process, creating and shaping technologies is not bracketed off from other practices but always closely entwined with them. It also suggests that the symbolic inscription of technical artefacts is a richer process than the mere communication of function to putative users: here too there is a politics, which Feenberg understands in terms of aestheticisation. Feenberg politicises technology design not by reducing the process to purportedly more profound layers of the social formation (which was, perhaps, the old Marxist way of achieving the same thing) but by demonstrating the connection between technology and social power as this is manifest in the technical code. An object is recognisable as technology precisely when and because it bears certain significations that speak of (and to) wider social relations: it is efficient; it is an enhancement to what was done previously; it represents the future; and so on. These things are written into the symbolic aspect of the artefact along with the specific instructions on its operation, concerning which tasks it performs and what problems it solves, on its user interface. These inscriptions make it recognisable as technology and, in so doing, they position it in a wider web of social meanings and values. None of the latter (efficiency, the future) are specific to technology, but in modern society they are integral to its meaning and to prevailing notions of what technology 'is' .

OMG! Lol n00b:)! When gamers, especially of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) like World of Warcraft®, talk to one another they adapt language to their needs, as do all speakers. It is a common misconception that expressions such as smileys, ac-ronyms and neologisms are a deterioration of current language. On the contrary, they can be regarded as instances of creativity, efficiency and in-group markers. Moreover, these expressions help gamers to position themselves in conversations, thus they can be regarded as active inter-action strategies in the gaming discourse. But while communication is of crucial importance to achieve goals and for role-playing in MMORPGs, there are many communicative challenges for gamers, such as high-stress situations, missing paralinguistic cues and intercultural obstacles. By reference to an online-questionnaire, a self-compiled corpus and theories of pragmatics this paper sheds light on interaction strategies used by MMORPG-gamers.

This article addresses the issue of world-building as related to the strategies of delimiting the openness of the gameworld. Specifically, it treats of the role of a borderline that restricts both the range of exploration and the gaming experience. By using tools supplied by cognitive and transmedial narratology and by referring to empirical studies in thermal mapping of explorable game space, Krzysztof M. Maj inquires whether the use of focalization and of the knowledge of the narrative field of view can offer deepened immersive exploratory experi-ences and a greater freedom of choice – aspects crucial for the full enjoyment of a genuinely open world. Maj supports his theses with world-centered analyses of selected video games (Cyberpunk 2077, Skyrim, Total War: Warhammer II, Divinity II: Ego Draconis and others). His goal is to emphasize the most crucial aspects of an open gameworld and, most importantly, to decide what this “open-ness” actually refers to.

Computer games have come a long way in terms of being considered a creative practice, even an art form. Apart from dedicated festivals, also established electronic art institutions have embraced computer games. Previously separate practices of computer games and interactive art (Wilson 2008; Leino 2013) are slowly converging. However, I argue that this has been possible only because a fundamental conflict ‘built in’ to computer games as a “medium” (cf. Sharp 2015), between the artist and the player, has been conveniently overlooked. The game artist wants to
express themselves through their creations, while the player wants a new instrument to play (with). Apart from either side compromising on their interests, there is no reconciliation in sight; hence the “tragedy”.

This paper presents and discusses the findings and results of a series of tests carried out by the author in the Danish educational system among pupils and teachers using the game Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) as a case study for investigating the problematic but also fruitful relation between gameplay and fiction, known as ludo-narrative dissonance. In analyzing this dissonance, the paper further discusses the transcendental nature of play (Gadamer), the fact that play seems to play itself, and the delicate way in which the game insists on a meta-ethical theme while at the same time setting up utterly violent game rules and mechanics. As it turns out, this skirmish of fiction versus gameplay is exactly the gravitational point zero of 'ethics' in the stigmatized game of GTA IV and thus a locus for joyful learning.

The goal of the article is to present a new theory of the concept of gameplay, a term everybody uses without ample definitions and with little consistency. The aim is to provide an understanding of gameplay outlining the inherent complexities and convoluted layers of play and game which exist in the playing of a game. The theory is inspired by phenomenology and Martin Heidegger's concept of Dasein. We do not intent to resolve the paradox that games are both objects and activities. Instead, we offer an analytical and methodological guide to the ontology of gameplay resting on an oscillating relationship between a double-layered structure of "here" and "there" in playing and gaming.

This paper outlines a research agenda that addresses the question of how contemporary interactive arts practice can evolve new strategies or ways of facilitating the development of subjective experiences that elicit an embodied, felt sense and awareness of our co-evolution with intelligent systems and digital technologies. Drawing upon and extending a phenomenological model of intentionality, we introduce the concept of the "symbiogenic experience" in relation to interactive or technologically-mediated artworks and discuss early research explorations that exemplify it.

Feenberg's new book, Technosystem: the social life of reason, makes an important intervention in the study of technological systems by showing that instrumental reason requires value judgement at the moment of its realization in this world. It fosters hope that technological development can be redirected towards the fulfilment of human needs through public interventions of nonexperts. However, Feenberg does not sufficiently engage with the political dilemmas that inevitably accompany these interventions as a result of the formal capitalist bias of the technosystem. The books by Bridle and Bucher underline the importance of confronting these dilemmas as they encounter them in various domains and provide possible ways for dealing with them.

Videogames often confront players with frustratingly difficult challenges, fearsome enemies, and tragic stories. As such, they can evoke feelings of failure, sadness, anger, and fear. Although these feelings are usually regarded as undesirable, many players seem to enjoy videogames which cause them. In this paper, I argue that player misery often originates from a fictional or lusory attitude which brackets game events from real-life, making the player’s emotions solely relevant within the game context. As they are part of the game themselves, these negative emotions can be enjoyed and easily relativized, since players can acknowledge that their cause is ‘only a game’. However, there are feelings of misery associated with the playing of videogames which are not caused by either the game’s fiction or challenge. In the last part of this paper, I describe a qualitatively different kind of player misery: one that is caused by elements that are not perceived as part of the game by the player, and is not bracketed from real life by a lusory or fictional attitude.

The subfield of game ontology has seen many models and structural hierarchies, but few that actively build on each other, or even attempt comparisons. This paper introduces a meta-model, which in addition to being an ontological model of its own, also offers a method for comparison between competing or isolated models and concepts. It does so by treating games as mechanisms (Craver 2007) with multiple levels of description, and differentiates between four main layers of the game-mechanism. In the first part of the paper we present the model in detail. In the second part of the paper we show applications of the model - we present how some of the existing approaches to game ontology can be compared within it and how it can be used to describe two case examples: the ancient Egyptian funeral game Senet and the difference between game mechanics and game rules.

Open access version can be found here: http://transmissions.edu.pl/glitched-perception-beyond-the-transparency-and-visibility-of-the-video-game-object/ .

The video game is a complex structure combining different kinds of elements, from objects with a physical representation in the virtual environment, through the game engine, to the interface. Some of them can be further decomposed into even more basic parts, so subtle that the player, being too absorbed in gameplay, does not recognise them. However, all those elements perform an equally important role in building a successful simulation of an engaging digital reality. This can easily be observed in video games with three-dimensional expanded environments, carefully crafted to reinforce and enrich the player's involvement in the game world (Calleja 2011). This involvement is possible because of the phenomenological character of the relation between the player and the game, simultaneously despite and because of its mediatized nature. The player builds her perception of the game reality by exploring its environment. With every step and every interaction with in-game objects, the player broadens her knowledge of the surrounding world (Vella 2013). Thus, by learning how to communicate with the video game environment, the player deepens her presence in the game’s world. As a result of this process, the medium of the video game becomes more transparent, which results in the player’s subjective perception of an illusion of unmediated digital space (Bolter & Grusin 1999).

However, this situation is not a stable one, and a lot of different factors can disturb this kind of connection between the player and the game’s world. One of these factors, which will be the main subject of this presentation, is a glitch. When a glitch occurs, the player becomes very much aware of the presence of the medium. The illusion is broken and the game is no longer “ready-to-hand” (Heideggerian idea of zuhanden) (Heidegger 2008). The intrusive nature of a glitch is a reminder that the video game is a resistant object that no one can truly master. Moreover, the error in the system highlights how (re)mediatized the game experience really is (Menkman 2011). For a moment, the video game medium loses its transparency and reminds the player about its original nature.

The analysis will focus on how the moment of the glitch, as a manifestation of the pure agency of the video game, influences not only the relation between the player and the game but also the player’s perception of the video game object. What is especially interesting from this perspective is how the non-anthropocentric nature of this relation is revealed in the moment of the glitch. Due to this phenomenon, the game gains an advantage over the player, who is forced to change her perception of the game environment. As a result of a glitch, dormant affordances resurface from the video game environment. Even if they have not been designed by the developers, they still produce new content that the player may give meaning to. This process will be illustrated by a case analysis of specific glitches that break the illusion of a life-like digital world but at the same time do not significantly influence the main game system or any of its mechanics. Among the analysed cases, there will be such well-documented examples of glitches as Manimals (Red Dead Redemption), The Suicidal Photographer (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas), MissingNo. (Pokémon Red and Blue) and others that are related to the animated or human-like in-game objects.

Games
GRAND THEFT AUTO: SAN ANDREAS. Rockstar North, PC, 2004.
POKÉMON RED AND BLUE. Game Freak, Game Boy, 1996.
RED DEAD REDEMPTION. Rockstar San Diego, PlayStation 3, 2010.


References
Bolter, J. D., & Grusin, R. A. (1999). Remediation: Understanding new media. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Calleja, G. (2011). In-game: From immersion to incorporation. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Consalvo, Mia. 2007. Cheating. Gaining advantage in videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Heidegger, M. (2008). Bycie i czas [Being and Time]. Warszawa: Wydaw. Naukowe PWN.
Meades, A. F. (2015). Understanding counterplay in video games. New York : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Menkman, R. (2011). The glitch moment(um). Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.
Newman, J. (2005). Playing (with) Videogames. “Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies”,  11(1), 48-67.
Olsen, B. (2013). W obronie rzeczy: Archeologia i ontologia przedmiotów [In Defense of Things. Archeology and the Ontology of Objects]. Warszawa : Instytut Badań Literackich PAN Wydawnictwo
Švelch, J. (2014). Comedy of Contingency: Making Physical Humour in Video Game Spaces. “International Journal of Communication”, 8(0), 23.
Švelch, J. (2015). Negotiating the Glitch. Identifying and Using Glitches in Video Games with Microtransactions [in:] New Perspectives in Games Studies: Proceedings of the Central and Eastern European Game Studies Conference Brno 2014, Tomas Bartek, Jan Miskov, Jaroslavv Svelch (eds.), Brno: Masaryk University.
Vella, D. (2013). The Wanderer in the Wilderness: Being in the virtual landscape in Minecraft and Proteus, Proceedings of The Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, Bergen 2013.

Despite the increasing convergence of digital, physical, and immaterial dimensions of game characters, little attention has been paid to the role of materiality in how gamers connect with the characters they play. This study evaluated potential differences in character identification and interaction in a gaming context affording various character materialities: the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Multimethod analysis of online survey data (N ¼ 1,135) reveals that character identification and interaction dimensions were invariant across primary character-representation mode (figurine, physical image, digital image, written, and imagined); however, post-hoc analysis suggests that multimaterial assemblages and social factors are key in how character representations are linked to character relations. Following, we argue that game characters may be more appropriately understood as subjective experiences rather than varying according to a given digital or physical manifestation.

This paper aims to investigate the nature of aesthetic experience, focusing on the interplay between emotions and cognition. We shall establish a link between a phenomenological account of emotions and a pragmatist, anti-dogmatic view on aesthetics, such as that defended by John Dewey. Although pragmatism and phenomenology have historically emerged as separate traditions, they might mutually share resources to achieve an exhaustive description of aesthetic experience. Both traditions conceive aesthetics as a “philosophy of experience”, and they agree on the decisive role emotional intentionality plays in the constitution of any aesthetic experience.

https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/itinera/issue/view/1287/showToc

In this paper, I discuss the elements of the avatarial game body. Using Don Ihde’s philosophy of technology, in addition with Richard Shusterman’s concept of somaesthetics, I break the avatar down into basic parts. I consider these parts through Shusterman’s understanding of the soma and Ihde’s postphenomenological discussions of human-technology relationships to devise somaster fiction. Somaster fiction, as I argue, is a convergence between the player’s real-life body and a computer game experience, presented through avatarial onscreen bodies in games such as the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and invisible non-avatarial agency, discussed in games like The Novelist and This War of Mine.
This paper incorporates each of Ihde and Shusterman’s main ideas about the body, which coalesce during the gameplay experience to enable players to become masters of an avatarial body and virtual topographical space. Somaster fiction discusses the different human-technology relationships that occur during gameplay and how a player is extended into the game world via controllers and avatars. This paper also touches on what a body is in accordance with Ihde and Shusterman, and how these concepts of bodyhood are reverberated within the game world.

Este artigo procura discutir as práticas de consumo no jogo digital League of Legends (LoL) a partir de um olhar baseado nos estudos do campo da comunicação e da cultura material. O objetivo é compreender a relação entre objetos e jogadores-sujeitos-consumidores. Para tanto, procuramos analisar a trajetória social e cultural dessas mercadorias nas experiências simbólicas em LoL. Nessa perspectiva, e fazendo uso de método etnográfico, são apresentados relatos e observações do consumo de objetos em LoL por jogadores das cidades de Belém (PA), Diadema (SP) e Osasco (SP). Os resultados apontam para a existência de uma complexa teia de significados interconectados responsáveis por (de)codificar os objetos e transformar aglomerados de pixels em experiências de comunicação, consumo e cultura material.

There is a rich history in early critical theory of attempting to harness the power of aesthetic imagination for the purposes of political liberation. Both Adorno and Marcuse pursue this project in different ways. But it has not yet been linked concretely enough to the philosophy of technology. In advanced technological societies, technologies often aid in and embody certain political structures of domination. This has led some theorists to equate technology itself with domination, by way of a technical rationality that is supposedly devoid of any moral, political, or aesthetic content. In his recent work in the philosophy and politics of technology, Andrew Feenberg challenges this thesis, pointing out that the reduction of technologies to their function is a theoretical abstraction rather than a historical fact. As such, it can be understood as a technological fetishism (analogous to commodity fetishism) which conceals rather than clarifies the political character of concrete technologies. 1 Once technologies are seen as socially constructed and mediated, the design and social organization of technology becomes a normative issue. That is, one can then ask, as Feenberg does, how technologies ought to be constructed in order to best serve the interests of a democratic society. It is not my intention to challenge this program of democratizing technology. Rather I would like to draw out and examine a particular aspect or "initiative" within it. Technologies, as concrete objects infused with political content, are especially appropriate for bringing aesthetic elements into the everyday lives of their users. In the first place this is merely the discouraging insight that aesthetically pleasing design is an important feature of commodities in consumption-driven societies. But aesthetic aspects of technologies can resist as well as support the status quo, and further, I will argue, aesthetic initiatives are a vital component of resistance to technocratic (i.e. undemocratic) organizations of technology, since the power of these technological regimes is partly symbolic. The phenomenon of customization and personalization of technologies, although already coopted in a variety of ways, is a testament to such resistance. I begin then, by specifying the conventional method of understanding technological domination: the differentiation thesis. I then show how this understanding of technological development fails to grasp the reality of technologies as they are embodied in social contexts. From the concept of an embodied technology, I demonstrate, through an analysis of customization, that aesthetic imagination plays an important role in politicizing technologies, and enrolling these technologies themselves in the project of resisting the general phenomenon of technological domination. This helps to understand what it might mean to translate the insights of early critical theory into a contemporary critical praxis.

The main ambition of the book is to sketch the existential aesthetics that explore the situatedness of the individual towards a single player digital game with avatar. The book focuses on games falling within the category of independent or art games, and builds upon an assumption drawn from existentialism; where the individual facing the world is the central philosophical concern. In this theoretical horizon, a situation can become meaningful only from the point of view of the particular being.

The main ambition of the book is to sketch the existential aesthetics that explore the situatedness of the individual towards a single player digital game with avatar. The book focuses on games falling within the category of independent or art games, and builds upon an assumption drawn from existentialism; where the individual facing the world is the central philosophical concern. In this theoretical horizon, a situation can become meaningful only from the point of view of the particular being.

According to the vast majority of game scholars, freedom is very important for games,
relatively both to the dynamics which constitute their syntax properties and to the contents
which give a framework to their semantics. But which is the type of freedom involved in
games? Early computer games provided a freedom based on movement and interaction (ontic
freedom). The notion of movement has been deeply grounded upon that of spatiality: the
exploration of computer gaming spatiality is enacted by players through the interaction with a
system of affordances, which in any case must be conceived by the very same players within a
fictional context confining their behaviours in a state of psychological and ontological
quarantine. Understanding the roles of fiction and interaction in defining the structure of
games leads to discover that but the technical development of the representation of real time
movement has created the possibility of implementing also a type of freedom based on choice
and fiction (deontic freedom). In any case, almost all computer games provide just a negative
freedom, i.e. a freedom from external constraints, whereas only few computer games provide
a positive freedom based on social engagement.