Playtime: Videogame Culture and Internet Technology

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Playtime Videogame Culture and Internet
Technology
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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

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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

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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

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Computer games
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Forty years of history
Computer games Videogames Arcade games Console
games
PC games Online games
Spacewar (1962)
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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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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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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)
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• 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

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What Players Want From Play

• Rouse (2001)
• A challenge
• To socialise
• A dynamic solitary experience
• Competition - bragging
• Emotional experience
• Fantasy

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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

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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

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• 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

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• 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

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RealOne Arcade a software browser plug-in for
downloading and managing online games
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• 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

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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
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• 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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Play More
Xboxchampagne
http//www.elspa.com
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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
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Offline Electronic Games

• Arcade games
• Home-console games
• Handhelds
• PC games

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Arcade games
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Home-console games the dominant gaming culture
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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

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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
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The Italian Job (2003)
(1969)
The Italian Job (2001) videogame an example of
the intertextuality of contemporary moving image
media
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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

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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

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Significance of online games?

• Continuities
• What stays the same?
• Differences
• What changes?
• Inevitably, videogames take something old, but
  add something new

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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

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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

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• 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.
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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

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• 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).

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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