The videogame industry is often criticised about its working conditions and has been accused of treating its developers poorly. According to the 2014 Developer Satisfaction Survey (DSS) of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), 32% believed that there is a negative perception of the game industry. When asked why, working conditions was the top response. Continue Reading
As game critics and scholars have noted, the past decade has seen a remarkable number of critically acclaimed big-budget video games featuring paternal protagonists (Brice, 2013; Joho, 2014; Voorhees, 2016). Games journalist Stephen Totilo (2010) has celebrated what he calls the “daddening” of video games as a maturation of the industry. On the other hand, some game critics have critiqued what they label as the “dadification” of video games as simply another means for developers to valorize violent male agency (Brice, 2013; Joho, 2014). This trend has been noted in titles such as BioShock 2 (2K Marin 2010), Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream 2010), Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego 2010), The Walking Dead: Season One (Telltale Games 2012), Dishonored (Arkane Studios 2012), BioShock Infinite (Irrational Games 2013), The Last of Us (Naughty Dog 2013), and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (CD Projekt Red 2015), among others. Continue Reading
The word “cheater” exists to define someone responsible for breaking a set of rules. Ordinarily, people use it to refer to transgressing the rules of a game, the expectations of a romantic relationship, or someone otherwise getting ahead, getting recognition, or achieving something with far less effort than it was supposed to require. Such situations seem obvious — it is clear that you should not look at someone else’s test paper or download a piece of software that boosts the strength of your video-game character – and thereby place blame solely upon the individual. But is cheating always that simple? Continue Reading
Football Manager (FM) is a videogame belonging to the sports management genre. When games media talks about football videogames, they more often than not mention FIFA, Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) and FM alongside one another (De la Porte, 2014; Wilson, 2015). They are–after all–the best sellers in their category, and at first sight, they seem to have much in common. Yet, although FIFA and PES are both sports video games and are actually competitors, they are confused or lumped together with FM, a game that not only belongs to another genre, but also to another culture. Continue Reading
EA Mobile’s SimCity BuildIt, released for iOS and Android in 2014, is the newest entry in the historic SimCity franchise. With forty million players worldwide, SimCity BuildIt is also the most played SimCity game ever released (Lazarides, 2015). Its expansive international community seems, at first, to procedurally deliver on the promises of free market globalization, achieving an equitable marketplace in which anyone, anywhere can participate. While playing SimCity BuildIt, I have traded goods with players who speak Arabic, French, Japanese, and Russian (though we have never exchanged a word). Continue Reading
Sam Tjahjono resides in Denton, Texas, with his fiancée and their newborn daughter. He studied rhetoric at the University of North Texas and is excited by games that communicate powerful stories in subtle, unique ways. Developed by CD Projekt Red… Continue Reading
Unfortunately, Walter Ong, S.J., an important rhetorical scholar, died on 12 August 2003, slightly more than one year before the 23 November 2004 initial release of Blizzard Entertainment’s MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW). Thus, we will never know whether Father Ong would have rolled a holy paladin or a discipline priest. Despite this, orality-literacy theory, of which he was one of the primary architects, can illuminate the player experience of WoW just as much as it shed light on the Homeric and other oral-traditional epics to which it was originally applied. The connection is through similarities in how audiences encounter what scholars refer to as “tradition” and players as “lore”. In this essay, I will show that the mechanisms by which players encounter lore in games follows a narrative and experiential pattern similar to how audiences encountered traditional mythology in oral societies, a subject on which Walter Ong did pioneering work. For the purposes of this essay, references to World of Warcraft are to Patch 6.2.3 of the Warlords of Draenor expansion. Much of this analysis would apply to similar game universes, but given the sheer size of its subscriber base and traction in popular culture, WoW is a useful example. Continue Reading