Friday, September 21, 2012

Games and Culture


Video Games and Embodiment by James Paul Gee
Modes of problem solving:

Embodied - involving the body

Affective - involving emotions

Technological - involving tools/technologies

Interactive - involving participation

Sociocultural - involving social and cultural identities and groups
Theory of processing - connectionist view of mental processing that encompasses embodied, affective, technological, interactive, and socioculture.

Gee's article will focus mainly on embodiment.

Previous analogies of the mind:  like a blank slate to be written on, or like a computer making calculations.
Video games, like Half-Life 2, Rise of Nations, Oblivion, World of Warcraft considered "action-and goal orientated simulations of the embodied experience.

Language is connected goal-directed experiences in the material and social world, and are stored in the mind similar to dynamic images joined to the perception of the world and the individual's body, internal state, and feelings.
Human thinking is like modding a game: in real life humans take a situation or event, and play out different outcomes based on the goal or end result.  The actions of the event are influenced by the person's perspective, biasness, or values; and can even play out conflicting values/perspectives to role-play an alterative outcome.
 
Early child play prepares for real life situations in the future.  The games are simulations to build on the experience as the child grows.
Players inhabit the avatar in a game, whose mind and goals become the player.  The player takes on the traits, skills, beliefs within the confines set forth in the game.

Three-way interaction: virtual character - goals - virtual world

Player must use the skills, traits, beliefs of the avatar within the game that is designed for that specific gameplay.  Conversely, players can impose their goals on the avatar, as much as those goals will work in the rules/confines set forth in the game world.
Projective beings - game characters that are "projects" of the player and also the player projects their goals and desires into.

Projective stance:
1. See the world, its people and properties for patterns of actions

2.  The actions realize desires, intentions, and goals for a certain role.

3.  Humans play out the certain role, but bring with them their own specific goals.

Humans take on a role in games, much like in life.
 

There is No Magic Circle by Mia Consalvo

Magic circle - bordered space that is set apart from normal, real life.  Inside the circle there are different rules where the player can experience events not allowed in regular life.
Cheaters count on rule, and others playing by the rules, so he can cheat.
 
A spoilsport wants to ruin the gameplay experience for everyone, ex. driving wrong way in a racing game.
Some cheaters justify their actions, "Everyone cheats/or is cheating," "I cheat only when I am stuck," while others have no problems with the act whatsoever.
 
Cheating displaces the sense of accomplishment, cheapens the gameplay.
Magic circle as they apply to today's games are becoming less separate from life - from researching a game beforehand, watching previews and trailers, video of gameplay.


Two agencies vie for control: the game creator(s) and the players.  The players try to influence/change game, making the magic circle moot (not playing by the rules).
Cheating in WOW: glider mod to automate an avatar's pathfinding, fighting, skinning, looting.  Blizzard considered it cheating.  Justifications: to fast forward an alternate characters, to alleviate tedious gameplay for leveling, or to sell the characters.

The "magic circle" has been broken.
Alternative thinking: keys and frames

Life is a series of events contained in frames.  Keys, or keyings, are meanings of the frames.

Real life is the primary frame, whereas a game is a clone, with each having their respective keyings, or meanings/understandings.
Three frames in regards to game:

the world of commonsense knowledge

the world of game rules

knowledge of fantasy world.

 Players can change from frame to frame quickly, bringing knowledge of real world into gameplay of virtual world.

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