Browsing by Subject "Game studies"
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Item Medium of modulation: the contradictory configurations of power in video games(2016-05) Fong, Byron Tuck; Scott, Suzanne, 1979-; Mallapragada, MadhaviVideo games have formal structural properties that create tensions between simplicity and complexity, transparency and obfuscation, systems of power and individual empowerment. This thesis investigates these tensions in two directions of inquiry: 1) video games as software and 2) video games as assemblages within media ecologies. One dives into video games’ code. The other challenges video games’ boundaries to understand how they intertwine with other media systems. These two perspectives complement each other to expose the contradictions of power within video games as a medium. Drawing on Wendy Chun and Alexander Galloway, this thesis uses software studies to investigate how the properties of software condition video games’ ludological structures. A theoretical approach to video games’ existence as software exposes that they are not media objects with clearly defined, static boundaries. Instead, a video game is an assemblage of many component parts and interacting systems. Using Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s understanding of assemblages, I argue that video games are constituted not only of the software contained within the game’s executable code; they are always-already interacting with other media systems, which in turn become component parts of the game. Matthew Fuller’s theorization of media ecologies provides a framework for conceptualizing video games as software-based assemblages within intersecting media ecologies. Player-encoders, a term I develop in the thesis, are a site where both perspectives visibly intersect. Player-encoders are players who create paratextual media to complement existing video games. They decode games’ structures, and then re-encode this knowledge into paratexts that other players can utilize. By encoding new media objects through the process of decoding existing games, player-encoders expose the tensions between powerful systems and individual empowerment. Video games as software, as assemblages in ecologies, and as affected by player-encoded paratexts, reveals them to be unstable media objects modulating within contradictory configurations of power.Item To build the impossible : narratology and ludology in the BioShock trilogy(2015-05) Reblin, Elizabeth Anne; Strover, Sharon; Blood, JohnIn 2007, Irrational Games released the steampunk first-person shooter BioShock. Months after the game's release, Clint Hocking wrote a blog post entitled "Ludonarrative Dissonance in BioShock." The essay brought the debate between narratology and ludology in game studies from the realm of academics, theorists, and developers, to the average gamer. No longer were players and critics analyzing a game based on just its gameplay and/or aesthetics. Now there was the pre-conceived notion that video games should aim to have its narratives element reflect the ludological components as well. The primary objective of this thesis is to explore the relationship between the narratological and ludological components in the BioShock trilogy that went into creating its unique experience as a player-driven narrative. I will be performing three case studies, comparing and contrasting BioShock, BioShock 2, and BioShock Infinite in regards to ludonarrative synchronicity. Rather than using Hocking's term, "ludonarrative dissonance," which is loaded with negative connotation, I will analyze the games based on their attempt to reach "ludonarrative synchronicity." This term of my own signifies moments when the narratological elements of a game converge with the ludological elements in a harmonious fashion. Unlike Hocking’s word choice, ludonarrative synchronicity does not seek to find fault in a game from the outset. The strength of analyzing the BioShock trilogy in depth, rather than focusing on a group of separate, unrelated titles, is two-fold. First, BioShock's creator Ken Levine's stated goal was to build a game in which the players were not an observer of narrative, but a participant. The other advantage of having three related games to analyze is that it allows for multiple points of comparison and correlation that appear in all three games. I will detail specific narratological and ludological aspects of each game for those who have not played them, followed by an examination of three key points of comparison between the three games where the intersection of narratology and ludology are prominent within the entire trilogy. Those three key points, not necessarily exclusive of one another, are theme, level design, and immersion.