Exploring Computer Game Play as Performance
Project: Research
Researcher(s)
- Olli Tapio LEINO (Principal Investigator / Project Coordinator)School of Creative Media
- Espen AARSETH (Co-Investigator)
- Jussi Pekka HOLOPAINEN (Co-Investigator)School of Creative Media
- Sebastian MORING (Co-Investigator)
Description
Computer games have established themselves as a form of cultural expression. MoMA has hadcomputer games in its collection since 2013, and a computer game won the Golden Nica award at theArs Electronica festival in 2017. Dedicated galleries and festivals exist. Computer games are studiednot only as technologies to be developed, but also within humanities as involved with meaning.Compared to other media, they are different: they trust their players to make decisions and requireskill. Their specificity has prompted the paradigm of game hermeneutics, – the study of interpretationof computer games – seeking to uncover how works in this new medium create meaning and areinterpreted by players. However, with the popularity of “live-streaming” – people watching otherpeople play games online – fuelled by services like Youtube, Twitch.TV, BiliBili and DoyuTV, it hasbecome obvious that players are not the only ones interpreting games. Since many of the games live-streamedare part of the economy of “electronic sports”, i.e. commercial computer game competitions,the paradigm of sport is commonly used to explain the sense-making involved. However, not only isgameplay meaningful even before the ‘sports’ description is applied, but also encompasses creativeand artistic outcomes. Furthermore, as demonstrated by the online popularity of instances oftransgressive gameplay, it is also evident that despite games’ attempts to tell particular stories, theyare increasingly played in ways which subvert the intentions of the designers and the game as a text:players reclaim games from their designers, appropriate their designed functional worlds, and performin them for the purposes of self-expression. Game hermeneutics has so far focused on understandingthe game as a text from a first-person perspective. It is yet to respond to the challenge of consideringgames as instruments for self-expression to be watched by others, and this phenomenon has so farbeen approached mostly from social science perspectives. We bring expressive gameplay within thescope of humanities by discussing it through the notion of performance. Our goal is twofold. First, we seek to update computer game hermeneutics to be able to account forhow games are consumed nowadays. We seek to understand how ‘being performed on’ challengesthe prevailing game-hermeneutic perspectives, and, what are the conditions of possibility forappreciating gameplay ‘as performance’. We put forth the notion of performance as a game-hermeneuticperspective. Second, we seek to understand how computer games can be involved in aperformance, and what their involvement does to the ways in which the performance can beinterpreted as meaningful. We define gameplay performance in relation to the tradition of performanceart. To facilitate these tasks, we create an empirically grounded typology of gameplay performances,which will be made available to general public. This project is situated at the intersection of gamestudies and performance studies, drawing insights also from philosophy of technology and newmedia. The project follows an iterative research approach making use of methods from humanisticgame studies complemented with ethnographic methods. Enhanced understanding of computergames as spaces for coexistence and artistic expression will benefit the theory of virtualperformances and contribute to more sophisticated forms of artistic and cultural practice in the virtualsphere. As we contribute to an understanding of how games, as media, are used by their audience,we expect our findings to be useful also for scholars in media studies in general, who are interested ingames and game-like online environments.Detail(s)
Project number | 9043622 |
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Grant type | GRF |
Status | Active |
Effective start/end date | 1/01/24 → … |