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I examine the prevalent construction of the long-lost yet technologically more highly-advanced society in the Mass Effect trilogy and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. First, I situate this construction within its long history, which finds a common touchstone in the myth of Atlantis. Through the lens of Jacques Derrida's hauntology, I consid...
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... (Galloway in Švelch, 2013, p. 194). This encyclopedic containment is reflected in the bestiaries and compendiums that are commonplace in roleplaying and open-world games. In BotW, the Sheikah Slate can be used to take photographs of monsters, plants, people, objects and weapons, which are then added to the Slate's Hyrule Compendium (e.g., fig. 2). This is broader than a bestiary, as it includes more than only monsters and enemies of the player. But it still represents a form of containment of and power over the gameworld: it categorises the world and sorts it into what is useful for and dangerous to the player, what to take advantage of and what to watch out for. The ...
Citations
... Scholars like Dorson [25], Levi-Strauss [54,55], Bronislaw [59], Campbell [18] or Jung and Eliade [34,78] have all contributed to the modern understanding of myth as useful to building and interpreting communities. And while this has later been challenged and reinterpreted in postmodern scholarship [8,36,45,78] (also seen in game studies [27,28,35]), the connection between mythology and ritual and play are still valuable insights for games because of their repetitive, ritual nature. ...
Storytelling has always been a communal activity and video games are no different, yet, work on designing story experiences that emphasize the communal elements of storytelling have typically focused on the creation of stories, not communal interpretation of existing ones. This paper draws on communal storytelling rituals from theater and mythology to explore how games and interactive narrative can utilize narrative through communal interactions. From this, several design patterns can be extrapolated from existing games that create communal storytelling rituals. We use Destiny 2, Final Fantasy XIV, and Elden Ring as primary examples to discuss three narrative design patterns for online communal ritual storytelling. These three design patterns are 1) giving players incomplete information, encouraging repetition, 2) not helping players, encouraging community, and 3) building for player expression, encouraging player-stories. All three patterns utilize aspects of rituals and theater to encourage storytelling of their respective games, through encouraging repetition and communal aspects. Games are often repetitive in nature, and harnessing community to strengthen the narrative through this repetition can be a powerful tool to create engaging narratives for players while still relying on repetitive gameplay loops. Designing for communal ritual play is thus a strong way to utilize the advantages of repetitive games and communal narrative.
... Myth is not a stranger in game studies. Several scholars, including Krzywinska [42,43], Rusch [69], Asimos [2] and several others [3,15,21,22,25,28,86] have applied various aspects of myth to games, such as in the fiction, social contexts, rituals, shared history, and personal stories. ...
Perennial games—ongoing, live games—are a form of games that often seem at odds with storytelling through their temporality, repetition and strange diegesis. This paper proposes a reframing of storytelling in perennial games as myth to alleviate these problems. Two layers of myth are presented, the first as the constructed fictional layer, and the second as the lived experience of the communities and people engaging with the game. This avoids the traditional player/author split, often seen as problematic in perennial games, by not focusing on authorship or control of these layers. Rather, it focuses on what each layer is affecting about the experience, how both authors and audience can engage with each layer, and how these layers affect each other. Three additional problems with perennial storytelling are identified that this reframing as myth helps alleviate. Framing the play of perennial games as myth shows how players are a part of a greater mythological experience in a disenchanted world. It explains the repetitive nature of perennial games as re-enactment and ritual, instead of as a logic-breaking repetition of story events. Furthermore, mythology has an inherently complicated relationship with truth and fiction, and this fits naturally with a similar relationship of perennial games and diegesis. Through this recontextualisation, we can improve understanding of how players are experiencing and engaging with perennial stories with a holistical understanding of their play and development.
KeywordsPerennial gamesMythologyMythRepetitionDiegesisPlay
... Presenting the analysis' objective(s) can be very brief and concise. For example, Ford's (2021) qualitative analysis on the haunting aspect of ancient societies in both the Mass Effect trilogy and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo, 2017) explicitly stated its objective in a separate paragraph, and mentioned some guiding research questions (although they are not explicitly presented as such): ...
... Presenting the analysis' objective(s) can be very brief and concise. For example, Ford's (2021) qualitative analysis on the haunting aspect of ancient societies in both the Mass Effect trilogy and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo, 2017) explicitly stated its objective in a separate paragraph, and mentioned some guiding research questions (although they are not explicitly presented as such): ...
The analysis of digital games is a widely used method in the field of game studies and an important instrument to study games and game-related topics. However, existing methodological work showcases a divergency of perspectives on game analyses, hindering the development of clear guidelines on how to actually conduct them. This lack of methodological consensus is fueled further by several complexities when analyzing games, such as the active participation that is required on the part of the researchers. Therefore, the current paper proposes the Digital Game Analysis Protocol (DiGAP), a methodological toolkit that, compared to existing methodological frameworks, provides researchers with sufficient flexibility and adaptability in order to cater to a game analysis’ specific focus and needs. DiGAP’s goal is twofold: to make researchers reflect on the potential impact of their methodological choices on the analysis and interpretation of game content, and to promote the transparent reporting of game analyses in academic manuscripts. Based on previous methodological scholarship, the authors’ prior game analysis experience and brainstorm meetings between members of our interdisciplinary author team, DiGAP consists of 31 items categorized in seven sections: (1) Rationale & objectives, (2) Researcher background, (3) Game selection, (4) Boundaries, (5) Analysis approach, (6) Coding techniques & data extraction and (7) Reporting & transparency. Due to its comprehensive setup and its reflexive nature, DiGAP may be used as a (didactic) checklist to make insights from the field of game studies regarding game analyses accessible to a broader range of research fields (e.g., communication and human-computer interaction). This, in turn, makes it equally valuable for (student) researchers unfamiliar with the method of game analysis as well as more experienced game scholars.
Este artigo tem como objetivo investigar de que forma as paisagens sonoras virtuais de períodos históricos diversos são representadas nos games da franquia Assassin’s Creed (AC), desenvolvidos pela Ubisoft. A franquia, atualmente, conta com 13 games lançados de 2007 a 2023, além de spin-offs (games com enredo próprio, sem relação direta com os principais) e publicações em outras mídias, como livros e histórias em quadrinhos. Esta pesquisa pretende responder a pergunta de como são representadas as paisagens sonoras nos períodos históricos representados nos games da franquia Assassin’s Creed e quais suas possibilidades, limitações e potenciais pedagógicos? Para isso, a metodologia utilizada é a revisão bibliográfica com análise exploratória de 12 dos 13 games da franquia, destacando tanto os eventos históricos que o game apresenta quanto sua acurácia e liberdades criativas tomadas pela equipe de desenvolvedores a partir da comparação com a bibliografia pesquisada. Os resultados sugerem que, devido ao caráter histórico apresentado nos games, estes se tornam potencialmente relevantes para pesquisas de temas diversos associados à área historiográfica, desde cultura e paisagem sonora de períodos anteriores até mesmo possuindo potencial pedagógico para o ensino da disciplina.
This paper will examine a means by which contemporary videogames can recover a Lost Future. Central to this is expanding upon Mark Fisher’s (2022a, 2022b)[1] and Simon Reynolds’ (2012) insights provided around hauntology in the context of popular music. Hauntology begins to provide an answer to the question surrounding the viability of the future, in that nostalgia is instead a symptom of hauntology, a byproduct of media’s increasing unwillingness to escape its past compounded by an inability to imagine a different future. This is where my concept of “Hauntological Form” is significant. It serves two core purposes; the first is to acknowledge contemporary videogames increasing dependence on past form and secondly that this can offer a solution to provide a version of newness, albeit at the cost of novelty. A distinction between newness and novelty is crucial in understanding the extent to which contemporary videogames are beholden to the past as well as what is available to provide something different enough to products that have come before.
[1] Both Capitalist Realism (originally published 2009) and Ghosts of My Life (originally 2014) were republished as second editions in 2022.
https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/cinephile/article/view/199657
This paper discusses the concept of the hero and the role of memory as an object of (re) construction of the world in the narrative of the Nintendo digital game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Through the analysis of how memory is reconstructed in Link and the characters that inhabit Hyrule, memories, historical and social memory, monuments, documents, space, and gameplay within the same digital game are also reconstructed. Testimonial memory, in turn, will help remember and construct the narrative of Link’s personal and social history by reconstructing the story. The personal experience that the player has while interacting with the game through the act of playing can build the metadiscourse between memory and narrative to understand the hero and his journey through the world. In this sense, the importance of the character Link within the game is affirmed, as he is a much more complex subject than a simple archetype within the game mechanics.
