Let's Talk About - Games and Culture

Since I introduced Game Studies last week, I thought that I'd continue that discussion with a talk about Games and Culture: a journal of interactive media.

From Their Website - Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media is a new, quarterly international journal that publishes innovative theoretical and empirical research about games and culture within interactive media. The journal serves as a premiere outlet for ground-breaking work in the field of game studies.

Of primary importance will be bridging the gap between games studies scholarship in the United States and in Europe.

One of the primary goals of the journal is to foster dialogue among the academic, design, development, and research communities that will influence both game design and research about games within various public contexts. A second goal is to examine how gaming and interactive media are being used outside of entertainment, including in education, for the purposes of training, for military simulation, and for political action.

A Few Thoughts of My Own -  Last week I said that gaming journals were a fantastic way for gamers and people interested in games to connect with a more mature audience.  In existence since 2006, I think G&C continues this promotion of gaming as a valid academic interest.  Like Game Studies, this journal addresses a series of issues which vary in their accessibility to the "general public."  Unlike Game Studies, however, it feels like one need not possess a prior fascination with gaming in order to enjoy most of the articles published.  One should, however probably have an interest in philosophy, religion, or the humanities.

Unfortunately for us, only abstracts are available online without a paid subscription.   I generally want to cover things that you can access for free on the internet.  I felt that this needed mentioning though for one main reason.  While its paid status is unfortunate for the causal viewer, the price of its subscription is on par with other scholarly journals I have seen in other academic disciplines.  In that sense it is good to see a gaming journal taken seriously enough that it can demand subscription prices on par with so called "serious subjects".  It says a great deal about the status with which some people hold the subject, and hints at good things for gaming's future within academia.

Individual, Yearly Subscription (print and e-mail) - $116.00

Individual, Single Issue (print) - $25.00

Keeping in mind that I only have access to their abstracts, I have listed a number of article titles below which caught my interest so that you can get a taste of what is being published.

Current Issue - January 2011; volume 6, issue 1

 Anthropology and Video Games 

Past Article of Interest

Productive Play: Game Culture From the Bottom Up

- Celia Pearce 

Blood Scythes, Festivals, Quests, and Backstories: World Creation and Rhetorics of Myth in World of Warcraft

- Tanya Krzywinska

Strategic Simulations and Our Past: The Bias of Computer Games in the Presentation of History

- Kevin Schut

I Play Therefore I Am: Sid Meier's Civilization, Turn-Based Strategy Games and the Cogito

- Gerald A. Voorhees

When the Game Is Not Enough: Motivations and Practices Among Computer Game Modding

Culture

- Olli Sotamaa

Digital Games and Escapism

- Gordon Calleja

Let's Talk About - GOG.com

Check out their interview with Adventure Classic Gaming here. 

Anyone who knows me even a little bit is well aware of my love for the Good Old Games website.  An extension of CDProjekt (another company that you will never hear me say a negative thing about), GOG.com shares its parent company's passion for DRM free games.  It is one of those rare companies that I actually believe when they say "we are gamers too."  With excellent customer service, an ever growing selection of quality classics, lovely bonus content for each game, a DRM-free business model, assured compatibility with Windows XP/Vista/7, low prices that stay constant world wide, and weekly sales to boot; Good Old Games provides a quality service you will rarely find anywhere else.  Like their parent company, GOG actually listens to their customers and actively uses their feedback to shape the site/service.  



</gratuitous_praise> 


Image: GOG

DA:O - Making Decisions

Yup.  This sure looks like a hospice to me.

With the Landsmeet almost upon us, Perra's tale is gradually coming to an end ... for now (I'll come back and play Awakening after a bit).  You know something I've noticed about about Dragon Age: Origins now that I'm nearing the end of my third full playthough,  is that this game revolves a great deal around the idea of life's value.  I appreciate that this game takes at least partial advantage of its "Mature" rating to provide something besides the usual blood and sex developers feel so obligated to dispense.  Dragon Age really wrestles at times with the issue of morality and asks you to draw the line between what your character is willing to do for their cause, and what they simply won't do at all.  Sure it's easy to be a "good" guy or a "bad" guy, but this game wants you to think about the lengths you will go to in order to reach your goals.  Do you kill the enemy?  Do you let them get away and leave them to wreck havoc another day?  Do you take advantage of offers that will solve your problems and save you from having to fight?  Can you justify taking your enemy's life when they are the tool of destruction, but not the cause of it?  This observation does not necessarily have a great deal to do with today's entry, but I figured that it was certainly worth mentioning.   

This goes without saying, but here there be spoilers.
Continue reading at your own risk.

Let's Talk About - The Great Gender Conundrum

Decisions Decisions

The week's end has arrived, but Perra has yet to report back on her most recent activities.  She is supposedly in the middle of a quest, but with my carrier pigeons unanswered I do not know for certain.  I think Shale may have destroyed the poor birds before Perra managed to retrieve my letters.  Either way, there is nothing that can be done about it until late Sunday night so check back then for an update on her adventures.*

In the absence of news to share, I figured that this would be a perfect time to discuss a question that always must go answered when starting a new RPG.  What gender will your new character be?  Some games like CDProjektRED's The Witcher (2007) or Black Isle Studio's famed Planescape:Torment (1999) make this easy.*  You play as a visually predesigned male character.  Other games like Troika Games' Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura (2001) naturally lend themselves to the use of a male avatar unless you want to be burdened by what is considered to be socially acceptable conduct for a lady.  (Granted one can suspect that assuming a Alexia Tarabotti-esque identity might clear part of the whole demure lady issue up for you.  Apparently being soulless and beating people up with your parasol tends to have that effect.)  Most cRPGs released within the past five years, however, give you a choice between playing a man or a woman.  It is here that the dilemma starts.  I usually utilize the following three questions when making my decision.  I also consider other things like goals, motivations, class, past, etc during character creation but those do not usually affect whether my new character is male or female.

1. What is the game's time period and/or setting?

As mentioned before with Arcanum, the time period of a game can be very important to what gender you want to play.  Arcanum for example is a steampunk game and therefore takes place sometime during the late Victorian Era.  Most games, however, are rarely so specific. For example, most sword & sorcery games into a very vague, faux Medieval/Rennaisancian period.  The time period dictates the social rule within which the characters will live, and the way that the character reacts to those rules defines how others will react.  One should keep in mind here that often the reaction of NPCs must be dictated by the gamer themselves (i.e. it's all in your head) since most developers have a long and glorious tradition of transforming their NPCs into cookie cutter, feelingless beings.  Bethesda, I'm looking at you.  If you plan on playing a female character who breaks the rules of society (say a rambunctious, war hammer wielding upper class woman who runs about the countryside in a fur bikini when she, by all rights, should be at home in a high-necked dress caring for her spoiled rich babies) and are bothered by the fact that the NPCs do not display horror at your actions, then you should probably reconsider the choice of character's gender and/or mode of conduct.  I generally find that if you do not wish to deal with social strictures at all, then you're best bet is to chose a male character.

With most western RPGs, I find it generally acceptable to assume that the society is largely patriarchal in nature.  Even games like Dragon Age: Origins, whose Renaissance-esqe Fereldian noble class takes no issue with warrior women, still operates under the tradition of men being the head of the house.  When I played as a female human noble, her father had no issue with her chopping up baddies with her sword.  When he was about to leave for war, however, he wanted to leave my character and her mother to hold down the fort.  This is neither a good thing or a bad thing, but it means that if that was going to bother me as a player to no end, then I should have played either another origin story or changed my character's gender.  (For the record I tried playing a male human noble, but was completely put off by the fact that his father called him "pup."  That character didn't even make it out of the origin tale.)

I started the second paragraph off with the qualifier "most", because this rule of course does not always apply.  With space games I still tend to apply the patriarchal filter since my characters probably originate from some vaguely Western European country like England.  With games like Morrowind, however, you find yourself plopped down in a foreign society with completely different social values. (I am aware of the fact that this blog continually mentions Morrowind, but is quite possibly the best RPG ever so I find no shame in doing so.)  In Morrowind your character is already at the bottom of the Vvardenfellian social ladder since you play an Outlander.  As the player you can either choose to abide by Vvardenfell's social norms off the bat (though I can't imagine why you would do so) or utilize the norms of your home country.  The glory of games which place you in a completely foreign land is the fact that one generally finds themselves temporarily freed from social norms altogether.  Your character has a new chance to separate themselves from their (in your head) past, and fashion a new one for themselves.  In Morrowind your character arrives in Vvardenfell as a convict (or in Oblivion begins the game in a prison cell), so the odds that you character has already tried breaking with the norm before are probably pretty high.  The gender which you play at this point is left more to your own whims.  Since you exist, to a great deal, outside of society, you have the freedom of fashioning your own rules.  No matter what you choose, there will be House or faction to suit your new lifestyle.  You can also exist outside of organized society altogether should the fancy strike you.

2. What are my character's values?  What is their approach to life? 

A character's values does not necessarily dictate what their gender will be by itself.  After all, both men and women can be traditionalist, highly religious, conservative, or law abiding.  They can also be manipulative, freewheeling, generally apathetic, etc etc etc.  I find though, that the values of one's character become important to the great gender debate when one combines them with the game's time and place.  This is a bit redundant since we just touched on time and place, but I can't stress enough how important it is for me to consider the setting within which my character will live.  For example, it is fantastic if you wish to break the mold a bit and play a demure, pacifist male character or a gun-toting, mealy mouthed female.  If you can't deal with the fact that those roles are not accepted in the land where your character will reside though, then you should probably consider changing your avatar's gender.  Doing so will generally allow you to keep the back story/personality that you've constructed intact while simply swapping out your character's genetic make-up.  Thankfully, situations like this seem to be less and less of an issue with the advent of grey morality games, since they provide a wide range of dialogue options that suit just about every personality or value set out there.  Well you know ... within reason of course.

3. Are there any significant (read negative) stat differences that will make playing a female character more effort than it is worth?

This is not always an issue with me, because difference do not always exist.  Some games, like those in the KOTOR series (2003 & 2005), do not seem to differentiate between the two genders.  Others actually work in the female character's favor since women may receive a boost in dexterity, constitution, or whatever constitutes as a pain threshold.  This of course is usually accompanied by a decrease in strength, but that is okay with me.  I appreciate the token (very token) efforts that the developers make to add a tiny dash of realism to character creation. Sometimes female characters receive skill boosts in areas that men do not, but then that must of course be true the other way around as well with men benefiting in areas that women do not.  Most games do a fairly decent job of compensating for a reduction in one attribute by boosting another.  As a result, I cannot think of a game that I've played to date that possesses broken female stats.  This does not mean, however, that one should not double check the beginning stats to make sure that the female character will be playable.

At one point in time I played predominantly male characters since that is what I had grown up with.  Things have changed though as the choice to play as a woman has become more and more common in cRPGs.  I still do not mind playing men at all, but if given the choice I will generally run through the above thought process, and then pick a female avatar.  This is largely due to the fact that it is easier for me to get into a woman's head space.  (A discussion with a number of my male friends sometime back was a bit of a shocker since told me that they generally preferred playing with female avatars as well.  I had just assumed that they would role-play male characters more often.  That will teach me to make assumptions.)  I will admit here  that there is one exception to my preference for female characters.  That exception is (take a guess) the Elder Scrolls series.  I generally play with a male avatar about 80% of the time in both Morrowind and Oblivion combined.  I do not know why this is, but it might have something to do with my comfort level in their environments.  That's probably over analyzing it a bit though.

*This delay is of course in no way related to, or the direct result of, my recent discovery of Zero Punctuation's back catalogue.

*Fable: The Lost Chapters (2005) also requires you to play as a guy, but I no longer find that game to be enjoyable since the PC controls are so extremely broken and counter intuitive.  Just don't get me started on that.

Let's Visit - Game Studies

From Their Website - Our Mission [is to] explore the rich cultural genre of games; to give scholars a peer-reviewed forum for their ideas and theories; to provide an academic channel for the ongoing discussions on games and gaming.

Game Studies is a cross disciplinary journal dedicated to games research, web-published several times a year at www.gamestudies.org.

Our primary focus is aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games, but any previously unpublished article focused on games and gaming is welcome. Proposed articles should be jargon-free, and should attempt to shed new light on games, rather than simply use games as metaphor or illustration of some other theory or phenomenon.

A Few Thoughts of My Own -  The number of peer reviewed journals focused on the world of gaming and gaming culture has been [very] gradually increasing since the early 2000s.  I think this is a wonderful thing.  You know just as well as I that there is far more to these virtual worlds than pixels, avatars, and a sleep-deprived geek behind the keyboard. (Granted there is truth to the the sleep-deprived geek stereotype since I, for one, fit that bill perfectly.  This, however, is not my point.)  The "general public" does not always see beyond the stereotypes, and sometimes I wonder if that is partially our fault.   How can we expect the public to take gamers seriously, when we don't bother to address mature audiences (in the sense of over 18) in way that is relatable?  The average, educated adult is probably loath to sift through message boards or game driven sites for information.  They might, however, be willing to read articles about gaming that draw connections between the virtual and physical worlds.  Critically thinking about what we play and actively engaging in an informative dialogue about our experiences are two ways that we can positively present our pastime to an audience willing to listen.  This is where websites like Game Studies come in.  The presence of these e-journals reinforces the idea that gaming is a serious (yet very enjoyable) business.  Below are links to their most recent issue, and a couple of other articles I found to be of interest (and plan to go back and read in more detail later).

Current Issue - volume 11 issue 1, February 2011 

Special Issue - Game Reward Systems 

Past Articles of Interest  

The Character of Difference: Procedurality, Rhetoric, and Roleplaying Games

-Gerald Voorhees

Moral Decision Making in Fallout

-Marcus Schulzke

Novices, Gamers, and Scholars: Exploring the Challenges of Teaching About Games

-José P. Zagal and Amy Bruckman

Myths, Monsters and Markets: Ethos, Identification, and the Video Game Adaptations of The Lord of the Rings

-Mark Rowell Wallin

On the Role of the Die: A brief ludologic study of pen-and-paper roleplaying games and their rules

-Joris Dormans  

Image - Game Studies

DA:O - Emotions Run High

Why hello there glowy door.

With Orzammar completed and her allies gathered, Perra has begun the last leg of Dragon Age: Origins.  Granted, the last leg is probably another fifteen hours or so (I've never timed it) but it is the last leg nonetheless.  My apologies for taking so long to post this, but I had forgotten how many events occurred in succession at this point in the game, and thus had issues finding a good stopping point.  There were also a number of side stories (of which I'm not covering here) that needed tying up as well.  This was a particularly interesting portion in the game for me since I've only gotten this far with a human noble before.  Where Perra's past lies in Orzammar, the human noble's resides here in Denerim with Arl Howe.  As a result, a number of the conversations were very different, and Perra's reactions were different as well.  I'll throw a bit on that down below since it probably bears mentioning.  

It goes without saying, but the following text is full of spoilers.
Continue reading at your own risk.

DA:O - A Dwarven King

Well folks the moment is here, and Perra's visit home to Orzammar has finally reached its end.  Personally I'm thrilled because the Deep Roads seems to go on forever, but Perra is likewise relieved.  This visit home has been nothing like she anticipated it would be, and she's been forced to make a number of decisions that she wishes she had never even needed to consider.  From murdering a childhood friend to crowning a king, describing her time in Orzammar as a roller coaster ride would be an understatement.  With the Anvil of the Void behind them, Perra and the rest of her party are happy to finally exchange the stone halls of her home city for the open skies of Ferelden.  

It goes without saying, but the rest of this post is full of spoilers.  
Continue reading at your own risk.