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Playtime: Videogame Culture and Internet Technology

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Title: Playtime: Videogame Culture and Internet Technology


1
Playtime Videogame Culture and Internet
Technology
2
How Games are Made
b/w
  • Difficult to generalise, but
  • Lionheads Black and White
  • 3D Studio Max
  • Photoshop
  • Artificial Intelligence programming
  • Non-linear narrative scripting
  • Soundscape - audio tools
  • See http//www.gameonweb.co.uk/education/
    video.html

3
Making Online Games
  • Again, difficult to generalise, but
  • They tend to be made using general Web
    development technologies
  • Flash, Director, Shockwave
  • DHTML, Java
  • Server-side scripting and databases

4
http//www.parkpower.com
Viral marketing bragging, invitation to compete
via email Intertextuality with arcade games 15-2
5 year old male target audience
Scripting and database creates a top 100 player
list Programmed in Director, some Flash animation
s
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Online Gaming
  • Internet gaming various types of traditional
    games (board or card games), gambling
  • Downloaded software or Java applets
  • Online multi-player gaming extensions of
    existing videogames or exclusive online games
    Internet accessible game servers and powerful PCs
    and fast, reliable connections draws on the
    technology of traditional videogame design
  • As individuals, or in teams or clans

9
Computer games
10
Forty years of history
Computer games Videogames Arcade games Console
games
PC games Online games
Spacewar (1962)
11
Game On
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Online Resources
  • Game Culture http//www.game-culture.com/
  • Game Research http//www.game-research.com/default
    .asp
  • Game Studies http//www.gamestudies.org/
  • Ludology http//ludology.org

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18
Game Culture and Cultural Studies
  • Game culture is just people playing games
  • Gaming is part of everyday life, a meaningful
    activity
  • Also an area of academic interest
  • People thinking about people just playing games
  • The Web becomes an object of study and a site of
    publication for not just academic writing, but
    for all kinds of videogame culture (fandom,
    corporate, review, magazine, gender politics, and
    so on)

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20
What are the Attractions of Videogames?
Poole(2000)  Aesthetic art, audiovisual pleasur
e and experience, made distinctive by interactive
play one obvious measurable effect you get
better at playing games.  All videogames involve
thinking, participation in the paradigm created
by the worlds that have their own logic and
audiovisual experiences, plus physical
involvement tactile success not total
immersion or submission to the illusionistically
real  The purpose of a videogame, then, is neve
r to simulate real life, but to offer the gift of
play (p.77)
21
  • Online Play
  • Might have a number of different contexts
  • Such as the focused, but, brief, casual
    distraction of playing pool at Yahoo!
  • Or the longer term, dedicated and regular
    investment of time and money with a
    subscription-based massively multiplayer online
    role playing game (MMPORG) such as Sonys
    Everquest

22
What Players Want From Play
  • Rouse (2001)
  • A challenge
  • To socialise
  • A dynamic solitary experience
  • Competition - bragging
  • Emotional experience
  • Fantasy

23
What Do Players Expect From Play?
  • Consistent worlds
  • Understandable boundaries
  • Reasonable solutions
  • Direction
  • Incremental tasks
  • Immersion
  • Failure
  • Fair chance
  • Not too much repetition
  • No dead ends
  • To do, not watch

24
Play
  • The basis of all games, electronic and
    non-electronic is play
  • Play has a long history in many different
    contexts
  • Skill, chance, distraction, filling time, being
    (anti-) social, learning, exploring, testing,
    repeating, interacting
  • Play is a universal, cross-cultural activity
    continuous across technological developments

25
  • Play is a space in which meanings are
    constructed through participation within a shared
    and structured place, a place ritually demarcated
    as being distinct from, and other than, the
    ordinariness of everyday life, a place of modest
    security and trust, in which players can safely
    leave real life and engage in an activity that is
    meaningful in its rule governed excess
    (Silverstone, 1999, p.60).
  • This theoretical play space is actually not
    divorced from real life, games are part of the
    real world, and as such they have social
    significance

26
  • Social significance of play
  • Videogames are commodities that have use value
    for a number of imperatives of production
    (profit, competition, audiences), particularly in
    relation to the development of the Internet as a
    potential new medium (Soffair, 2002)
  • As players and products of culture, we bring
    ourselves into the rule-bound structures of the
    world of play, the play space is as much a
    social space as any of those taken up during
    other activities

27
RealOne Arcade a software browser plug-in for
downloading and managing online games
28
  • RealOne Arcade
  • Mixture of free and pay-for-play games
  • Provides an online entertainment destination
    seeking to attract subscribers and expose players
    to advertisers
  • Like RealNetworks RealOne Player, the Arcade is
    an invasive piece of software that tries to
    become the default media player on your hard
    drive and become a digital hub for online and
    offline audivisual content, in competition to
    other web-based technology entertainment sites
    such as Shockwave.com

29
Sites such as Shockwave.com are the gaming
equivalents of commercial television because they
provide content that delivers audiences to
advertisers, giving casual users any opportunity
to spend time playing while being exposed to
adverts and sponsorship
30
  • In contrast, MMPORG sites such as Everquest
    require a more dedicated player who might have to
    buy a product on CD and then commit to a monthly
    subscription
  • This is an extension of the traditional
    relationship between the player and their
    videogame
  • A shift from the stored game on disk to a remote
    server
  • The game becomes like the always on of
    television it becomes time based media
    (Soffair, 2002, p.5), and offers rewards
  • The use of database technology allows the
    possibility of character creation and evolution
  • The social aspects are enhanced by bringing
    together people separated by time and distance
    using computer-mediated communication

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32
Play More
Xboxchampagne
http//www.elspa.com
33
Electronic play is following a similar
development to recorded music it is becoming
personal and mobile, but with the added
functionality of multi-player connectivity
34
Offline Electronic Games
  • Arcade games
  • Home-console games
  • Handhelds
  • PC games

35
Arcade games
36
Home-console games the dominant gaming culture
37
Console culture
  • Consoles
  • Established the key economic basis of the
    videogame industry software and hardware
  • Lead the challenge against cinema as the leading
    audiovisual entertainment medium
  • Generic and intertextual forms

38
Texts - Genres
Shoot-em-ups Racing games   Platform games Fi
ghting games (beat-em-ups)   God games   Real-t
ime strategy games Sports games   Role-playing
games Puzzle games, and so on
39
The Italian Job (2003)
(1969)
The Italian Job (2001) videogame an example of
the intertextuality of contemporary moving image
media
40
Playing Contexts
  • Alone against the machine
  • In company against the machine or each other
  • Online
  • Alone playing with or against other people, or
    with or against the machine

41
Online Games
  • Web games
  • Advertainment brand awareness, marketing
    through play
  • Internet (network) games
  • Emulations
  • Extensions of offline electronic games
  • Electronic versions of non-electronic games

42
Significance of online games?
  • Continuities
  • What stays the same?
  • Differences
  • What changes?
  • Inevitably, videogames take something old, but
    add something new

43
Continuities
  • Still play
  • Digital culture online and offline games share
    a technological heritage
  • The Web makes videogames its content (such as
    simulation or emulation)
  • Online games build on the codes and conventions
    of videogames
  • Intertextuality between media

44
Differences
  • Short span distraction on demand
  • More play
  • Expansion of social play beyond the limits of
    geography, time and friendship
  • Widening participation - electronic gaming moves
    beyond traditional console or PC gaming culture
  • Shift from large game development houses to small
    new media companies
  • The increasing commodification of play and the
    wider integration of game aesthetics

45
  • Free games
  • Not just players/consumers, but producers of games

Ferry Halims Orisinal.com site provides a series
of quaint and witty Flash games that gives users
a free space in which to play and at the same
time promote his skills.
46
The New Intertextual Commodity (Marshall, 2002)
  • Advertainment sponsored games
  • Intertextual commodities linked across media
  • In ascendancy is a new subjectivity that is
    derived from the transformative agency of games
    and the playful development of the Web user. To
    comprehend this change, play and kids culture
    have moved to centre stage for the various
    industries, not so much to produce for children,
    but to glean insights that can be used to market
    to this mutated adult audience

47
  • In effect, the various entertainment industries
    are setting the stage for adult play by providing
    patterns across media forms and by converging
    those patterns through technology (Marshall,
    2002, p.80).

48
Reading
  • De Maria, R and Wilson J. (2002) High Score! The
    Illustrated History of Electronic Games, Osborne
    McGraw-Hill.
  • Darley, A. (2000) Visual Digital Culturesurface
    play and spectacle in new media genres, London
    and New York, Routledge.
  • King, L. (Ed.) (2002) Game On The History and
    Culture of Video Games, Laurence King
    Publishing.
  • Marshall, P.D. (2002) The New Intertextual
    Commodity, in Harries, D. (Ed.) The New Media
    Book, London, BFI.
  • Poole, S. (2000) Trigger Happy the inner life of
    videogames, London Fourth Estate.
  • Rouse, R. (2001) Game Design Theory and
    Practice, Plano, Texas, Wordware.
  • Silverstone, R. (1999) Why Study the Media?,
    London, Sage.
  • Soffair, O. (2003) Videogame Culture and Internet
    Technology, Unpublished Essay available at
    httpwww.eng.dmu.ac.uk/amclay/mult3020.html
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