Let’s Play with Research Methodologies

Sonja C Sapach 1 Comment

What is the most effective way to formally incorporate my game play experiences into my highly personalized research plan? How can I study not only the games that I am playing, but my own reactions to those games? How can I do justice to my genuine experiences and reactions without having to break my immersion during gameplay to take field notes? How can I convince my interdisciplinary (and strictly disciplinary) peers and supervisors that my game play experiences, and game play related memories, can be studied following a formal research methodology? Continue Reading →

Embodying the Story

Haptic Narrative in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Bradley Markle 1 Comment

Famed German board-game designer Wolfgang Kramer suggests in his essay “What is a Game?” that a game, video or otherwise, “always has components or rules.” He goes on to say that “[t]he components are the hardware, the rules are the software. Both define the game. Both can exist independently from each other, but separately are not a game.” If we accept Kramer’s thesis, then the need for further discourse as it pertains to the physical devices – i.e. the components used to play a video game – becomes apparent. Continue Reading →

“The World Could Always Use More Heroes”

Why Overwatch Matters

Benjamin J. Villarreal 2 Comments

Earlier this year, I presented my dissertation research in the Game Studies area of the Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association conference; the community among these interdisciplinary scholars was so great that I ended up sticking around for almost every panel on games for the rest of the weekend. And I was struck by a common theme: Blizzard Entertainment’s team-based first-person shooter Overwatch (2016) came up in almost every one! Continue Reading →

Happy Fifth Birthday, First Person Scholar!

Rob Parker

You don’t often hear from me, but I’m the Managing Editor for First Person Scholar. I’ve been involved in this site in some capacity or another almost from the very beginning. In 2012, FPS meetings grew out of the semi-regular Games Institute meetings at the University of Waterloo, and I’ve had the privilege of watching the site grow from those humble beginnings to the middle-state powerhouse it is today. Whether I was involved as a contributor, a fan, or an editor, First Person Scholar has been a near constant presence in my life for five years. Continue Reading →

First Person Podcast Episode 23

Surveilling Stealth Action Games

Jason Lajoie, Betsy Brey, Chris Lawrence, Will Fast, and Pierson Browne

What makes a stealth action game? Among the titles discussed in this podcast, including (and predominantly) the Metal Gear Solid series, Assassin’s Creed, Hitman, Splinter Cell, Batman: Arkham Asylum and, to some extent, Horizon Zero Dawn, a distinction was placed between stealth as a procedural mechanic baked into all aspects of the game design and stealth as an additional option afforded to players. Continue Reading →

Documentation, Periodization, Regionalization, and Marginalization

Four Challenges for Video Game Historiography

Dominic Arsenault

As I understand it, and as others before me summarized it (Lowood & Guins 2014, XIII-XV), history is the study of the past through documents, and historiography is the study of the craft of history – the methods used by historians to write their histories. Historians often conduct their work in two phases: studying the documents to retrace the facts, and then organizing these facts and events into a narrative to infuse them with meaning. Continue Reading →

We Gotta Get Out of This Place (If it’s the Last Thing We Ever Do)

Horizons of Expectation in The Room Three

Will Fast

If there’s one trait of videogame series about which I’ve always been certain, it’s that sequels in a series are essentially the same game as the original but with a different story. Though the odd sequel is truly innovative, more often than not, the key principles of gameplay in a sequel will be roughly the same as in its precursors. Whether I’m playing Halo or Halo 5, I will always massacre aliens; whether I’m playing Assassin’s Creed or Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, I will eventually leap from a height to stab a Templar in the head; and whether I am playing Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune or Uncharted: A Thief’s End, I will inevitably end up hurling my controller through the drywall when I die during a mission involving riding a jet-ski or a boat for the forty-fifth time in ten minutes. Continue Reading →