Event Title
Friday Soapbox Session B
Location
CB1-117
Start Date
3-11-2017 11:15 AM
End Date
3-11-2017 12:15 PM
Description
Surrealist (Video) Games (Eric Murnane) Perhaps one of the biggest strengths of as well as challenges in the digital humanities is its interdisciplinary nature. The numerous sub-fields which have risen from the larger umbrella of DH have flourished due to this lack of constraints. Game studies, for example, developed from a fusion of principles in digital media, literature, and software engineering. However, as the field matures and its corpus of scholarship grows, scholars in the field are increasingly pushed toward a more rigid structure of disciplinarity. In my proposed soapbox talk, I will argue for maintaining a more transdisciplinary framework within the study of games. To demonstrate this, I will discuss the combination of Surrealism and video games as a means of discovery. The two principle points of entry for this talk are Surrealist play and Surrealist design. In both cases, the Surrealist Game, "Exquisite Corpse," will be the method which informs my approach. In the case of Surrealist play, I will discuss my own experience of combining details from unrelated quests in games to gain new understandings of the gameworld to which a player visits. In games with an open play structure, there is often the feeling that once a quest or related string of quests is finished, the player never needs to worry about those events again. This is especially true with the side quest, little diversions that do not affect the overall narrative of the game in any significant way. By bringing the Exquisite Corpse to these games, I will showcase how the player's understanding of interactions can be shifted with the minor adjustment of playing as though these individual micro-narratives are connected. On the other side of this discussion is Surrealist design which brings elements of chance to the design process in order to create moments of surprise and delight in the finished project of a game. I will demonstrate how the Exquisite Corpse can be brought to design decisions in the more traditional sense (through selection and cut-up) as well as how this element can be replicated in the design through the careful addition of randomness in the actual code. Using the Unity Engine, I will showcase examples of how this influences my own work in both the scripting and finished product. At its core, the principles of Surrealist (video) Games demonstrate the ways that a digital humanist is uniquely equipped to address the epistemic. In truth, the possible worlds of digital humanities are limitless, but we can only meaningfully engage with them if we, as a field, continue to do so openly and creatively. Gay Eroticism as Game Mechanic in Cobra Club (Michael Deanda) Jay Poole (2014), in his article, "Queer Representations of Gay Males and Masculinities in the Media" responds to the reiteration of heterosexual models of gender and sexuality in media billed for queer audiences, calling for an intervention that allows for the LGBTQ community to heal from these destructive representations of heteronormativity and broaden the understanding of sexuality and gender identity. In Cobra Club (2015), a game designed by indie developer, Robert Yang, the player, a chubby gay male avatar, takes nude pictures of himself in a virtual bathroom. This game requires the player to be connected to the internet and creates a real-time networked experience of sending out selfies of this fat gay body. After taking pictures, he talks to others on the network using pre-determined selectable lines, inciting more sharing of nude pictures. This game is clearly a critique on idealized male body, especially the presentation of this aesthetic on applications like Scruff and Grindr and provides a site to observe the intervention of heteronormativity in media made for queer audiences. In my study of Cobra I analyze the use of the gaze in-game and compare it to the structure of other gendered media to show how designing for a queer gaze draws from structures of media typically coded male and female but creates a queer amalgamation of the two in order to make commentary about gay bodies and desire. I apply studies on the objectifying gaze and queer masculinities to talk about the presentation of the body in these frames, and complicate this discussion by detailing how the mechanics of the game engage the player with the body that is visually consumed. Through this analysis, I situate gay male bodies as sites of social construction, and through this situation, I argue that Yang's use of a fat gay body his game serves as a way of challenging ideologies in marginalized communities, particularly idealized male beauty. Responding to Adrienne Shaw's (2014) emphasis on creating games with queerness at the core, not as added features or bonus content, I articulate how the game interpellates the player as a queer male character through the ludic and semiotic features of the game. While the player is engaging in the consumption/objectification of a male body, this act is complicated through the way the player is contextualized in the space with a certain male-ness. Understanding the gay male gaze is necessary to explicate it as a force of objectification of others that also establishes a reflexive means of self-policing one's own body through the construction of desire for others. My close reading of this game observes the deployment of male body to create a space for a gay audience that simultaneously challenges players to confront and explore their own social trainings, particularly of the gay male gaze. Engines of Power: Anti-Queer Ontologies in Simulation Software (James Malazita) Game engine software is now widely used as a simulation and assessment tool in military, governmental, and scientific organizations. While humanities and Science and Technology Studies scholarship has long examined how political problems are understood "with and through" a host of texts and technologies, there is little work investigating how computational media frame political action through gaming and simulation platforms, and how queer ontologies and subjectivities are impacted via their translation into these platforms. Queer Digital Humanities projects are being developed by a host of persons and institutions; however, the specific ways in which game engines—the software environments that underpin digital game design—enact practices of "being in the world" can serve to undermine the radical potential of these projects. Through a "Critical Platform Studies" analysis, this talk will trace the design of BioShock Infinite, a triple-A commercial game with queer aspirations that was developed using the Unreal Engine. I will show how these queer aspirations were compromised due in part to Unreal's historical ties with the military-entertainment complex and the taxonomic nature of object-oriented programming embedded within new media and game development software. "Comments Must Contribute": How r/NoSleep's Community Guidelines Foster Interactions in their Fictions (Emily Hensley) In 1984, Anthony J. Niesz and Norman N. Holland, described 'electronic novels' as "[admitting] totally free-form fictions" wherein "the original author simply starts out the story, and then anyone who wishes can add" (126). Today, these "free-form fictions" certainly still exist, some with even more focus on interactivity which allows for simultaneous interaction. For instance, in the subreddit r/NoSleep, users can post original horror stories that may or may not be "true" and receive feedback in the form of comments from readers. In subreddits, moderators create community guidelines for what type of interaction is acceptable in their subreddits, and r/NoSleep commenters are encouraged to comment on every story as though it is true, while original story writers must comment on their stories only "in character" as the main characters of their stories. Due in part to their nature as digitally published horror stories, many of the original posts on r/NoSleep do not contain the traditional, resolute endings some readers may expect of their fiction. The participation and interactivity some online communities encourage is responsible for their community's development and preservation. An examination of the subreddit r/NoSleep provides insight into the interactivity that takes place within interactive fiction in which users are more likely to represent a character in the fiction. Interactive fiction which encourages users to take on this character role and takes place online never really has to "end" when given a platform that supports this potentially endless writing. Therefore, fiction that is made interactive through community participation online does not necessarily provide the kind of "end," or closure, that readers/consumers are assumed to seek in their consumption of traditional, less interactive media. This "end" is further complicated by the interactivity which asks that the reader take on a role within the fiction as a character rather than outside of the fiction as a narrator/operator. Therefore, because commenters must treat the stories as true and "must contribute to the discussion" according to the subreddit's guidelines, this presentation will focus on how the participation and interactivity encouraged by r/NoSleep community guidelines and the lack of traditional, resolute endings within the community's stories, fosters community development as it invites users to place themselves within this community and its stories. Roleplaying the Mythos but not the Lovecraft: A Visual Analysis of the Cthulhu Mythos in Horror Roleplaying Games (James Cosper, Brigid Brockway and Barbara Martinson) Howard Phillips Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos is a foundational aspect in roleplaying games. Lovecraft's writing is a formative part of the fantasy and horror genres, widely referenced in literature and pop culture. His stories depict existential fears, extra-dimensional terrors, and madness. Tabletop roleplaying games (RPGs) are collaborative storytelling games typically played by teens and adults. Roleplaying games are rooted in fantasy, and the first RPG, Dungeons and Dragons, referenced Lovecraft in early publications. Lovecraft holds a complicated position as one of fantasy's principal writers who was also racist. Lovecraft's stories and racial views have affected writers of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries including World Fantasy Award Best Novel winners Nnedi Okorafor and China Miéville. Literature is the basis for roleplaying games. This analysis examines how gender and race are depicted in games based on the writings of Lovecraft. Similarly, it describes how the appearances of the games change over the course of thirty years. The illustrators have interpreted the world created by Lovecraft without incorporating his racial bias. The authors often explicitly reject his views. However, there is little positive representation of women and minorities portrayed in the games. CthulhuTech is striking because it introduces a fantasy space-faring alien race that suggested the African slave diaspora."
Friday Soapbox Session B
CB1-117
Presentation include:
- Surrealist (Video) Games (Eric Murnane)
- Gay Eroticism as Game Mechanic in Cobra Club (Michael Deanda)
- Engines of Power: Anti-Queer Ontologies in Simulation Software (James Malazita)
- "Comments Must Contribute": How r/NoSleep's Community Guidelines Foster Interactions in their Fictions (Emily Hensley)
- Roleplaying the Mythos but not the Lovecraft: A Visual Analysis of the Cthulhu Mythos in Horror Roleplaying Games (James Cosper, Brigid Brockway and Barbara Martinson)
