This is the end...

This is the end, my only friend, the end...

The Three-Headed Monkey closes; its 60 posts will remain on the Internet until the end of times (or until blogger decides to pull the switch). I will keep writing about video games, the current research project, and whatever is coming after that, but not here. So, it's not really an end, it's more like a change of venue.

I'll invite all of you, people of the Internet, to my new home: danielmuriel.com. Not very original, isn't it? Very functional nonetheless.

Just one last song:

Bye, bye! See you on the other... site.

The construction of a video gaming audience

A sign that video games are becoming central to understand our contemporary cultural forms is their increasing presence in the media. Not only have the specialised magazines on video games grown in numbers - particularly online, but also the traditional press already includes specific sections dedicated to video games. 

Magazines have historically played an important role in the formation of early gaming culture, as it was stated by Kirkpatrick (2012) in his Bourdieusian analysis of UK's video game magazines in the 1980s and 1990s: ‘Through the development of a discourse of game evaluation, gaming acquires independence and begins to define itself as a cultural practice’. When this discourse is broaden and inserted into the general-interest newspapers and media, the specific gaming culture starts to blur its boundaries and to affect larger portions of society, generating multitude of video game-related cultures and practices. Nevertheless, if there is a media on which video games have naturally proliferated, that should be, undoubtedly, the Internet.

YouTube, for instance, is packed with gaming channels. In fact, the YouTube channel that has more subscribers is a gaming related one, which is owned by the user PewDiePie, that is, the Swedish Youtuber personality Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg. Currently, his Let’s Play - and many other things to be honest - focused channel has more than 34 million subscribers.

Ramdurai states on Think with Google that among the top 100 YouTube channels worldwide are more than 20 that are gaming related. He shows more data that demonstrates video games are one of the most important audiovisual apparatuses nowadays: ‘YouTube data shows that six of the top ten most-viewed channels in the U.S. are about gaming’. Video games are a central aspect of today’s YouTube generation.

More relevant is the relatively recent creation of a specific broadcasting platform for video games on the Internet: Twitch. I already wrote about it on this post. It was launched on June 2011 and was purchased by Amazon in August 2014 for $970 million. According to Twitch, they have an average of 60 million visitors per month. Twitch basically consists in people watching other people playing video games. Someone creates a channel, starts playing a video game and broadcasts it live. Then, other people can join the channel and watch him or her playing, while they comment on a chat with other viewers (and the person who is playing, who might make references to those comments) and have the opportunity of following, subscribing (paying) or donating to the broadcaster. Moreover, in December 2014, the biggest digital distribution platform in the world, Steam, launched its own broadcasting service.

All of these examples are suggesting that a video game audience has been created. Not only is there an imagined community (Anderson, 2006) of potential gamers that can be represented as an audience of players in a broad sense, the ones who consume and receive a product, but there is also a very particular audience who explicitly seek to watch others play and know more about video games by becoming knowledgeable in that area. It is, indeed, the construction of a more traditional notion of audience, that is, ‘watching others perform’ (Crawford, 2012: 34).

This undermines, as if it was not already undermined enough, the idea that video games do not have an audience. When Eskelinen and Tronstad affirm that video games are audienceless is because they consider that video games ‘don’t need audiences as an integral part of their “communication” structure’ (2003: 196). This reluctance to admit the existence of video game audiences relies on a strict ergodic - the requirement of nontrivial efforts beyond mere interpretations (2003: 197) - approach to video games, which refuses to conceive them as media or to admit that video games can have some characteristics that have been traditionally associated with media such as television, cinema, music or literature. This approach is ignoring essential aspects of video games that are not ergodic or purely interactive (a problematic notion, why should not we consider interpretation as a kind of interactive action?), like ‘map screens, score or lap-time feedback screens and so on’ (Newman, 2002). Crawford expands this not just to cut-scenes and on-rail video game experiences, classic examples of players as simple spectators, but also to the ‘visual- and audio-scapes present in standard video game play’ (Crawford, 2012: 34). Players watch at least as much as, but probably more than, interact with the game. Even the act of watching could be considered a form of interactivity and, undoubtedly, watching is an indissociable part of playing a video game.

The idea of video games as audienceless has always been weak, but now, there are powerful reasons to affirm that there is a vast and massive audience of video gamers. It is also noteworthy to mention that this video game audience goes beyond the specific, yet large, group of video gamers. According to a Google Consumer Survey  (cited in Ramdurai) fielded in October 2014, only a 37% of a group of people who watched gaming videos on YouTube considered themselves gamers. Video game culture is reaching society as a whole. The fact that video games are starting to occupy a central position in the media, especially those that belong to the so called new information and communication technologies, is another argument to support the idea of the emergence and consolidation of video game culture.

Bibliography

• Anderson, Benedict (2006). Imagined Communities. New York: Verso.
• Crawford, Garry (2012). Video Gamers. London: Routledge.
• Eskelinen, Markku and Tronstad, Ranghild (2003). ‘Video games and Configurative Performances’, in Wolf, Mark J. and Perron, Bernard (editors). The Video Game Theory Reader. New York: Routledge, 195-220.
• Kirkpatrick, Graeme (2012). “Constitutive Tensions of Gaming’s Field: UK gaming magazines and the formation of gaming culture 1981-1995”, Game Studies, vol. 12, 1.
• Newman, James (2002). “The Myth of the Ergodic Videogame. Some thoughts on player-character relationships in videogames”, Game Studies, vol 2, 1.

[An extended version of this post in Spanish can be found here at Zenhgames]

The normalisation of video gaming

Edited June 2019: as the 2014 ESA report has been removed from their website, I included the closest report available (2015) and changed the data accordingly. Thanks to Anna Gryshko for making me aware of this.

Today, I'm going to back up my hypothesis on the existence of a growing video game culture crunching some numbers that show how the act of video gaming is becoming a normalised activity.

One of the most notable indications that hints there is more than an incipient video game culture is the increasing numbers of people playing video games. It seems that more and more individuals, of different backgrounds, ages and gender, are becoming players (or at least have played once in their lives). Two examples of groups of population that are not usually linked to the generalised representations of video gamers can help me to introduce the debate.

In the first one, Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. consider that the number of 'people who have never played a video game, from first graders to retirees, seem to be inexorably dwindling' (2008: 134). They illustrate their affirmation with a New York Times article in which the author (Schiesel, 2007) explains how video games are being regularly played in compounds for retirees. A generation of people who did not grow up in a world where video games existed - not at least as a cultural relevant phenomenon - is entering in the dynamic of playing video games.

The second example emphasises the fact that women play more video games than men. Historically, research done in the 1980s and 1990s have suggested that women have been marginalised as video gamers (Crawford, 2012: 53), but in the last years it seems to have changed dramatically. The Guardian published the main findings of the research conducted by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) in the UK (Stuart, 2014), where they assert that women account for the 52% of gamers.

These two snapshots of how more people are playing video games regardless of their demographics, convey the idea that video gaming is not a subculture anymore and has become mainstream culture. 

This growing tendency of video game culture sneaking into Western society households seems to be confirmed by more recent surveys. According to the Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry report of 2015 produced by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the most important video game industry association in the United States, the 42% of Americans play video games. In their report they also state that the 51% of American households own a dedicated game console. Other data of interest shows that the average game player is 35 years old, 44% of gamers are women, and 44% of video gamers are over the age of 35.

If we turn now to the data gathered by the UK Interactive Entertainment (Ukie), the principal video game industry association in the UK, it shows similar figures for the British households. In their UK Video Games Fact Sheet of 2014, which draws on various research reports from different sources, Ukie estimates that 55% of the United Kingdom population plays video games. Depending on the source cited, the distribution of male players and female players in the UK varies between 55% males-45% females and 48% males-52% females.

All the data points to the same facts: around half of people in Western countries play video games, the number of women who play games is almost the same as men, and even those who were not socialised in a video game culture have started to play video games. That would be the general portrait of video gamers, which quantitatively corroborates the hypothesis of an existing and growing video game culture. 

However, the brush strokes are so vaguely defined that there is still a great deal of detail missed in that data. Not only do they tend to miss information about who plays what video game on what device - although in fairness some of the reports provide partial data on those issues, but there is also a lack of elaboration on critical aspects of their research. For instance, they define a video gamer as someone who has just played at least once in the last year or in the last six months. This approach quickly overlooks what the implications of that assumption in terms of identity and community construction are. This will be a topic which I will come back to in the future, because it directly affects the controversy about what a video gamer is and who belongs to the community of gamers.

In any case, those are not the only concerns that can be raised against this data. The fact that the ‘original sources are often poorly referenced’ (Crawford, 2012: 51) and that they seem to mix the information from different reports without taking into account the methodological differences between them does not help to figure out how to weight their importance and reliability. Being representatives of the video game industry, these organisations are expected to ‘convey a very particular image of video gaming as normal, social and healthy pursuit’ (Crawford, 2012: 51). In contrast, it can be argued that these organisations seek to accurately represent video gamers because they want to provide the best information for marketing reasons.

Even if the information selected is biased to stress the most spectacular figures in order to give a certain impression of the product they are trying to sell, it is still a valid information that tells us how video game culture has burst into our contemporary societies. Whether this is caused by the rise of new kinds of video games and platforms (the so called casual games, to be played on browsers, consoles like Nintendo Wii or Ouya, mobile phones and tablets) as it has been suggested by authors like Jesper Juul (2010) or by any other factors, the fact is the normalisation of video games and video gaming in our society is now an unavoidable reality:

Video games are becoming normal (...). The rise of casual games is the end of that small historical anomaly of the 1980s and 1990s when video games were played only by only a small part of the population (Juul, 2010: 20).

This is what Juul considers a casual revolution among the world of video games, which in the last years have reached - and keep reaching - a broader audience. The definitions of hardcore gamers and casual gamers will be deal with in other blog entries in order to explain how identities of video gamers are constructed, but it is important to recognise that the expansion of the universe of video games and video gamers is fundamental to understanding the constitution of video game culture: ‘Video games are fast becoming games for everyone’ (Juul, 2010: 152). And if video games are for everyone, that means they are an essential part of our society and not just a subset of it: 

Certainly some gamers do seem to belong to a culture distinct from mainstream society. The term subculture, however, is too limited to adequately explain the broader world of games and game players that currently exists (Consalvo, 2007: 3).

All in all, the emergence and consolidation of video game culture in contemporary societies may be best reflected, though not solely, by the inexorable growth of different people playing video games regardless of their age, gender or social status. It is one of the most notable characteristics of this video game culture and is an important evidence of its normalisation in today’s world.

Bibliography

• Crawford, Garry (2012). Video Gamers. London: Routledge.
• Consalvo, Mia (2007). Cheating. Gaining Advantage in Videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon; Smith, Jonas H.; Pajares Tosca, Susana (2008). Understanding Video Games. The Essential Introduction. New York: Routledge.
• Entertainment Software Association (2015). Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry
• Juul, Jesper (2010). A Casual Revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Schiesel, Seth (2007). "Video Games Conquer Retirees" in New York Times
• Stuart, Keith (2014). "UK gamers: more women play games than men, report finds" in The Guardian
• UK Interactive Entertainment (2014). UK Video Games Fact Sheet

A definition of video game culture

The fundamental premise on which this research project is based is the idea that there is a growing and already consolidated video game culture, which permeates our contemporary societies to a great extent and makes possible to think in terms of video gamer identities, subjectivities and communities. Obviously, this culture is part of broader social phenomena and transformations, such as the existence of digital culture, neo-liberal political rationalities and many other aspects of reality with regard to patterns of leisure, consumption and production in late capitalism. In any case, video game culture is an addition -  it does not substitute other cultural forms - to other ‘cultures’ and social processes present in today’s world with which it intertwines in complex ways: expert culture, epistemic culture, knowledge society, risk society,  network society and so on.

Let me attempt a practical definition of video game culture: 

Video game culture is the institutionalisation of video game practices, experiences and meanings in contemporary societies, which places video games and video gaming not only in a central position among other cultural products but also traverses everyday life: an increasing number of people play video games and they are starting to be recognised as part of our social imaginary, enabling the construction of identities and communities based on them. 

This definition shares Garry Crawford’s argument by which video gaming should be understood not as a simple isolated leisure activity, but as a 'culture which extends far beyond the sight of a video game machine or screen' (2012: 143). Crawford states that 'video gaming is not just the act of playing a game, but also a source of memories, dreams, conversations, identities, friendships, artwork, storytelling and so much more’ (2012: 143). That is the definition of culture I would like to apply to the universe of video games, understood in a broad sense as “a system of meaning” (Mäyrä, 2008: 13) as well as a set of social practices.

In this sense, the definition of culture I am looking for to describe video games as culture can be situated between the traditional holistic anthropological approach to the notion - almost everything that is produced by humankind - and the more restrictive humanistic one - a particular aspect of a society, usually what is understood as the high forms of culture and within the field of arts. 

In its humanistic sense (the most restrictive), culture can be understood as that which is possessed after the effort made to take care of it. Culture distinguishes those who posses it from those who don’t. For the European elites of the 18th century, culture allowed the distinction between the Western European who have achieved the most remarkable human qualities and those, the poor and illiterate along with the non European, seen as primitive in their scale of progress (Berger, 1995: 15). This conceptualisation of culture is not useful for my research because it is too restrictive and discriminating.

In the turn to the 20th century, this ethnocentric usage of the voice ‘culture’ gave way to the traditional anthropological notion of culture, defined by Tylor - whose influence in the emergence and consolidation of anthropology is beyond doubt - in the following inclusive and universal terms:

Culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society (Tylor, 1871: 1).

The problem with Tylor’s approach to culture is what Geertz points out: it is so eclectic that forces us to take all directions at the same time, what makes the concept impracticable from a theoretical and practical point of view (1973: 4-5). Even though I feel inclined to theorise video game culture in a broad sense, I agree with Mäyrä when applying those kinds of accounts: 

If the concept of culture is taken in this broad and general sense, and applied as such directly into game studies, this can lead into a rather heavy-handed way to conceptualize ‘game culture’. (…) One could also certainly argue that games do not define our existence or place in a society in a way that belonging to a traditional ethnic culture, say Bantu or Inuit culture, defines the way of life and identity for those people. But games and game playing practices do have some significance for those people who are actively engaged with games (Mäyrä 2008: 23).

Mäyrä helps to delimit the notion of culture I want to attach to video games and the group of people who play them. In sum, he is defining culture as a set of shared experiences. If I blend this definition of culture - as shared experiences and meanings - and add other parts like those mentioned by Crawford above - which include certain social practices, I will have as a result the definition of video game culture.

I would not go as further as affirming that video game culture is the most important reality of the present century, but it would be difficult to understand it without its presence. There is no doubt that video game culture is part of and overlaps with other cultures and social processes, but it is still important in order to understand our society and, above all, provides the opportunity to study contemporary identities and social universes of meaning in a strongly framed and bounded way, as if it were an almost perfect sociological laboratory.

Bibliography

• Berger, Bennett M. (1995). An Essay on Culture: Symbolic Structure and Social Structure. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Crawford, Garry (2012). Video Gamers. London: Routledge.
• Geertz, Clifford (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
• Mäyrä, Frans (2008). An Introduction to Game Studies. London: Sage.
• Tylor, Edward B. (1871). Primitive Culture: Researches Into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom. London: John Murray.

[An extended version of this post in Spanish can be found here at Zenhgames]

Touching the heart of video gamers

'What kind of impact would you like to have on the people who play your video games?' This is a question I have been posing lately in my interviews with developers within the video game industry. My aim is to understand what developers, who usually define themselves as gamers, are trying to achieve with their video games in terms of their influence on video gamers. I have found out that there is a similar pattern in their answers, which can be summarised in the following quote:

It's really hard to explain but it's just... if you can touch somebody's heart (...), if you read that last page or you get to the end of the movie or whatever, you just feel like you've really been touched somehow... I guess I just call that, you know, that there is heart in it and that's what I look in for when I'm able to put it into my work.

Actually, this cite does not come from my interviews; it's the answer that Jane Jensen, the famous video game designer and writer, gave to a question I put on Youtube's comments when they were streaming their launch party for the 20th anniversary edition of the video game Gabriel Knight. Here is the video fragment where she expresses her views on the subject (sorry for the quality of the video!):

In any case, it accurately represents most of the answers I've been receiving in my fieldwork. For instance, they speak about having the same impact on people that they had when they were growing up playing games, making  people "emotionally accelerated to play the game", or delivering "powerful emotions" to players. It's all about affecting the individuals who will play their video games in a deep emotional way. At least, two main ideas can be developed from here.

Firstly, video game designers and developers seek to reproduce on others the emotional and meaningful impact they had in the past while they were playing other video games. All of them, without exception, define themselves as being gamers. Video games are a fundamental part of their identity. This means that, intentionally or not, they are participating in the reproduction of the gamer subjectivity, the gamer identity.

Secondly, this approach could be linked to a more general question with regard to the contemporary political rationalities of our time, as it is sustained by Nikolas Rose and other neo-Foucauldian theorists. I'm focusing on a specific consequence of the generalised neo-liberal political rationalities that traverse our today's societies, the ethico-politics:

Ethico-politics reworks the government of souls in the context of the increasing role that culture and consumption mechanisms play in the regulation of forms of life and identity and selftechniques (Rose, 1999: 188).

If ethico-politics are understood as the set of processes and methods through which it is possible "to shape the conduct of human beings by acting upon their sentiments, beliefs, and values" (Rose, 2007: 27), we will find ourselves in an epoch in which, in governmental terms, there is an explicit - though not necessarily intentional - approach to ethical, cultural and identity construction issues (which are not the outcome of other objectives any more: disciplinary - control of passions - or biopolitical - maximisation of the social forces). 

In sum, gamers's identities are  being addressed - whether they succeed or not - by designers within the video game industry in contemporary societies. There are many ways to allude to it: their soul, their emotions, their heart, their identity, their ethos. No matter what term is used, they all want to touch it, shape it, affect it. The debate on what a gamer is or how a gamer identity is constructed is officially open.

Bibliography

• Rose, Nikolas (1999). Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Rose, Nikolas (2007). The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

[An extended version of this post in Spanish can be found here at Deus Ex Machina]

An unintended breaching experiment: violating the terms of Polygon's community

Have you ever heard or read about the ethnomethodologists' breaching experiments? One of the fathers of ethnomethodology, Harold Garfinkel, defines a breaching experiment as follows:

...a procedure would need to modify the objective structure of the familiar, known-in-common environment by rendering the background expectancies inoperative. Specifically, this modification would consist of subjecting a person to a breach of the background expectancies of everyday life while (a) making it difficult for the person to interpret his situation as a game, an experiment, a deception, a play, s.e., as something other than the one known according to the attitude of everyday life as a matter of enforceable morality and action, (b) making it necessary that he reconstruct the "natural facts" but giving him insufficient time to manage the reconstruction with respect to required mastery of practical circumstances for which he must call upon his knowledge of the "natural facts" and (c) requiring that he manage the reconstruction of the natural facts by himself and without consensual validation (1967: 54).

Basically, a breaching experiment is a way to expose the structure of what we consider as common and familiar, which is taken for granted most of the time, by breaching people's expectations - what is expected from us - in a given situation. Well, the other day I conducted a breaching experiment without pretending it. It must be my inner sociologist, who is always working (what an annoying guy!).

From time to time, I usually try to promote my blog entries using different social networks and Internet sites such us Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Reddit, and specialised forums. The reason I do this is because I want to share my thoughts and research progress with society (I know it sounds impersonal and inaccurate, but it's an easy way to refer to all of you, people) in a non-(at least not too much)-academic fashion. Furthermore, I want your participation and feedback to help me, help us all, to understand this emergent video gaming culture. My intention is not to attract visitors to my blog just to be admired: I know it's cranky, flawed and full of failed promises. The blog is not that good. But it's not that bad either. In any case, my intention is to draw some attention to the blog in order to receive feedback, to feel my work can reach someone beyond the enclosed academic community.

However, one day, I misbehave in the eyes of Polygon's moderators. Polygon is a well-known online magazine on video games and has these forums where you can socialise with the community(-ies) of gamers. I decided to use the forums to reach some of these gamers, asking them about diaries (like my Diaries from The Forest) as a way to approach how video gamers produce knowledge about video games. I also think I posted something in relation to my Flash Sociological Reviews, again, looking for video gamers reviews and comments on video games. Without pretending it, I was breaching the "background expectancies" of this particular everyday life situation: according to Polygon, I was shamelessly promoting my own personal blog and that's something I shouldn't have done. I was betraying the community:

I'm a spammer. All the things I posted (a couple of posts) went, in their own words, to the bin. Nonetheless, the most interesting part of my banning statement is this: "Given your account registration time frame and the content of your posts, we do not believe that you are here to participate in the community and are instead here to advertise to get more views from our readership". I wanted to participate in the community, but I ended up accused of the contrary. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not writing this to exonerate myself from this situation. I honestly believe I deserve the ban. There are some rules when it comes to participating on a forum. It's common sense; we all know how bad are seen those who just post their links and don't offer any other interaction. But until you don't tear the fabric of that 'known-in-common', you don't face the consequences and start to see what those guidelines that rule the social interactions inside a specific place - virtual or not - are made of. As always has been, we must behave in a specific way to be part of a community.

One last thing. They say that I must acknowledge my banned status by pressing the button below the ban communication. I haven't pressed the button yet. Thus, every time I access Polygon when I'm logged in, that message pops up in front of my screen. I'm kind of afraid of acknowledging my "banned status". If I explained my real (good) intentions to them, would they lift the punishment? What will happen once I press the button? Will I bear the stigma of spammer forever? Why is it necessary to acknowledge my banned status if I'm already banned for all intents and purposes? I think there are more taken for granted rules to breach in order to have a quick, maybe painful, look inside all these common-senseness.

Bibliography
Garfinkel, Harold (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Why is it never a cheese sandwich? On the lock-and-key logic

I'm in the middle of some stuff related to securing the funding for next year - I´ll tell you about this at another time - but I wouldn't like to leave the blog without a new entry for too long. I invite you to check the following video (WARNING: Some spoilers about the video game Penumbra: The Black Plague):

What I want to point out here are the remarks made by Clarence on certain logic in video games (around 1:47). Clarence, one of the best NPCs in the history of video games, makes a very good point: why is it always a key, a note, a swipe card? Why not a cheese sandwich? I know there are probably some games out there in which you can collect cheese sandwiches and whatnot. But let's face it: how many games have you played in which keys and notes are used as a main mechanic, as a way to make the story advance and deliver their narrative? Countless, right? 

Jason Johnson from Kill Screen magazine quoted one of the comments made by Tim Schafer in an interview on Adventure Gamers, and he concluded that, probably mistakenly, Schafer was told by his backers (and he would agree) he should not innovate and get back to the classic lock-and-key puzzles. Honestly, that's almost the whole history of video games: locked doors and keys to open it. You can substitute the door with any other impediment - physical or other - and the key with any other object - material or intangible - that helps to overcome that obstacle. 

How can this logic of the lock-and-key puzzles influence on our daily life? If we, the gamers, are used to this kind of logic, do we see everything as a space full of locked doors which we must open? What kind of impact can have these mechanics on video gamers and the social worlds that are around them? Do they discipline us in some ways, in how we experience reality? In what do developers think when they create these commonplaces? Is this logic unique to video games or can be generalised?  

Think, monkeys, think!

PS: After writing this entry I came across this fabulous post [in Spanish] on a very particular puzzle in Monkey Island, the one in which Guybrush is tossed into the sea to let him sleep with the fishes. Here is a screenshot as a gentle reminder:

What Miguel R. Fervenza from Indiefence points out is why the puzzle works with veteran adventurers: because it plays with the mechanical way of thinking of gamers. At first, we try to reach one of those sharp objects we see around us (we think it's obvious, just cut the rope!). Once we notice we can't take any of them, we focus on our inventory, trying any combination that comes to our minds. We even yearn to find the solution from those guys who seem to be desperate to get rid of their knife. But the answer is much simpler: we just have to take the damn idol and walk away from the bottom of the ocean... Well, this is the kind of logic that, we, as gamers, have been cultivating along the years. That's the reason some games and designers, knowing it, mock us cruelly.

[An extended version of this post in Spanish can be found here at Deus Ex Machina]

Classified: How I got funding for my research (the interview)

As an honest exercise in transparency, as well as a part of the project's history, I will write about the presentation I made during the interview to obtain funding for my research. In this kind of application processes, the jury barely give you five minutes to show them why your research is important and why they should recommend your project to be funded. Thus, you must be convincing and compelling in a very concise way. I organised my presentation in three parts: the main topic, why we should study that subject, and how I plan to carry out that research. The interview was conducted in Spanish, that's why this can be considered a rough translation of the presentation. The important thing here is to see if you agree with the research premises.

Main topic

In the last three decades social theorists have largely discussed the crisis of modernity and its institutions, which implies the assumption that the modern models for social meaning and identity construction have faded away. Taking those diagnoses into account, it is possible to conclude that modern identities have, if not disappeared, at least been de-centred: we witness then the emergence of new kinds of identities and new ways of constructing social universes of meaning.

Therefore, the main aim of this project is to study the contemporary identities (subjectivities) and the processes through which they are produced in an specific case: the identity of the video gamer and the social worlds where they dwell as part of a digital culture. This encompasses the virtual, networks, and an economy of consumption, leisure, social practices and discourses linked to the logic of the digital.

Why? (justification)

Firstly, because one of the defining characteristics attributed to contemporary societies is the existence of a noticeable digital culture, which makes the study of the universe of video games a plausible approach in order to understand that reality. 

Secondly, because the video game industry is a growing cultural industry (economically surpassing those of music, film, performing arts...) and its tendency is to become hegemonic. Statistics tell us that video games are played in the 70 per cent of households, of which 40 per cent are women, 25 per cent are 50 years old or more, and the average age of gamers is 35 (I took this data from the last years ESA reports).  

Thirdly, because video game exhibitions and museums, along with conferences, festivals and all sorts of events on video games, have proliferated in the last years. In the same sense, multitude of courses, masters, and grades focused on the development and design of video games have emerged in the sector of education. Not only have the specialised magazines on video games increased in size, but also the traditional press already includes sections dedicated to video games. A video game culture is being established and consolidated, which makes it socially relevant (video games become part of the mainstream, and their colonisation of other areas is obvious: serious games, gammification). 

Finally, because it's a purely contemporary reality. If I seek to study the emergence of identities and subjectivities in the contemporaneity, the universe of video games is an excellent field to carry out that research. The phenomenon of video games is only relevant since the 1980s. From there onwards, its growth has been almost exponential, especially in the last decade, with the so called casual revolution and the expansion of video gaming to mobile devices, social networks and the Internet.  

How? (tools to achieve the main objective)

Two dimensions of analysis:

On the one hand, the expert dimension. Unlike other cultural products, video games require an active individual to interact with them as a sine qua non condition. For these reasons, the developers who design and produce video games have always implicit and explicit ideas about what kind of person will play with their games and how those games will influence them, the possibilities that will be made available to them and the conditions that will be imposed on them.

On the other hand, the social dimension. Video gamers do not receive the expertly-designed object in a manner that is devoid of criticism, but interact with it, forming social worlds with specific meanings, whilst also interacting with other identities and subjective and collective constructions in their environment.

All in all, I seek to undertake a line of research on the construction of identities and subjectivities in the contemporary society, centred in the context of a digital culture and, more precisely, in the field of video games.

Compare what I've just written with my other entry in which I introduce my research project. There are probably a lot of similarities. Both of them are part of the (pre)history of the research project. I like to keep track of these documents and actions because it allows me to realise how mutable the activity of researching is. In the future I would like to highlight the differences between what I thought about the subject at the beginning of the process and what I think in every stage. Actually, re-reading this entry makes me understand how much I've changed some of my previous assumptions. But as I said, that will be a task for the future.

The magic rectangle of Twitch and the rear windows to what goes beyond the act of gaming

In the last post I launched an hypothesis on the magic circle theory, an important issue within games studies. I basically said that what makes possible the magic circle as a bounded experience is the same thing that traverses it and, up to certain extent, breaks it. This entry will approach that subject using an emerging phenomenon: Twitch. 

If you happen not to know anything about Twitch, just visit the site and wander around its several channels. Basically, it's just people broadcasting their gameplay while they're speaking about what's happening on the screen or any other issue that might be, or not, completely unrelated to it. There's a chat where viewers are able to speak their minds to the broadcaster or other people on the chat. These players can be followed by thousands, hundreds or just a few guys. Some of the most popular gamers (and that doesn't mean to be necessarily followed by too many) have set up ways in which people can make donations to their 'cause' or subscribe to their channels for a monthly amount of money. On this kind of 'professional gaming', see my former entry on how video gaming is becoming a serious thing. 

Somehow Twitch manages to confirm the existence of the magic circle in the most unexpected way: using a rectangle. How is that? On the screen, we can watch the actual gameplay of the player in the shape of a big rectangle. We can even go fullscreen. It's marvellous, the self-content reality of the video game accessible from all around the world. You can see and feel it as a finite experience. You are able to focus exclusively on the gameplay. An open window that perfectly frames the magic circle. But, wait, that's not the only window on the screen. There are more. The rear ones.

What can we see through those rear windows? Precisely what happens during the act of playing. Or at least a tiny but significant part of it. We are invited to peep at the gamer's face and context of play. We are able to see how they look like, hearing the tone of their voices, how they express themselves, how they are dressed, what their room's colour is, if there are other people or animals next to them and so on. We even are in the position to start judging them: Are they tidy and clean people? Do they care about their appearance? Are they ugly, handsome, attractive, disgusting...? Do they have an exciting life or is it more likely to be sad and dull? No matter what our assumptions are, the important thing is the fact that we have the possibility of witnessing what is beyond the magic rectangle of the gameplay thanks to another 'magic rectangle' (or square, depending on the gamer's cam configuration). If the bigger rectangle may be described as the main window to the magic circle of gaming, the smaller one can be regarded as the rear window to what happens around and beyond the very act of gaming. I could have said that is a window to what happens off the screen, but in fact we are watching it on our own screens, so it would have not been completely correct. And what happens when you sneak a glance at that rear window? You observe the mundane ordinariness of everyday life. Let's have a look.

In this case, while she is playing and broadcasting her gameplay through Twitch, she's also having a casual conversation with the people on the chat and with unknown (for us) people using her mobile phone. The chat is another rear window opened to those who are watching the broadcast. That obviously goes beyond what is just happening in the game itself. Who knows what else they are doing at their homes while watching her on Twitch (watching TV, browsing the Internet, reading a book, speaking with their friends or family, having a drink...). At times, or maybe often, the gameplay is the less important thing in the process. It's amazing how frequently they 'speak' about topics completely alien to the games played. Windows to everyday life issues. There's nothing extraordinary in it. No magnificent worlds of fantasy and promising adventures. The magic of the circle (or rectangle, it doesn't matter) is broken.

Therefore, this is an example of part of the different things that might happen beyond the act of playing a video game. An example of the limited scope of the magic circle theory and its drawbacks. Nevertheless, and according to the other part of my hypothesis, the superimposed collage of different windows in and out the gameplay are making more evident and explicit the boundaries of the magic circle-rectangle. It is highlighting the weirdness among the ordinary of everyday life. Gaming is odd and mundane at the same time. Again, what is breaking the experience of the isolated magic circle, is helping to make it possible at the same time. Of course this must be confirmed by more empirical evidence but I will keep this line of thought for a while.

The magic circle: a hypothesis

The magic circle is a subject which I will keep coming back to several times in this blog. Its definition is well known among game studies companions and I won't dig deep in the matter. However, the magic circle being a key notion in game studies main debates, I will briefly summarise what I think are its most important features (take this as a very simple outline of the theory, almost a caricature):

• The act of play sets boundaries to every game. This means that the experience of playing a video game is bounded, perfectly framed.
• The game has its own well delimited space-time. The magic circle is where the game takes place. You enter in and get out of it. You're in the game or not.
• As no liminality seems to be possible, the reality of the game is self-contained and bound to rules. Rules that only apply to that particular game and make sense inside the magic circle (or at least they have a particular meaning that is not necessarily shared when they're invoked outside). 
• Obviously the experience of play is not completely detached from the social context in which takes place, but the magic circle works as if it were an exception or interruption in the general norms and rules that govern the regular social relationships.

The magic circle theory has been equally praised and criticised. Some have completely refused it while others have accepted it almost without criticism. Most academics have probably taken pieces of it and have developed it in different directions (either closer to its negation or its appraisal). Although I stand closer to those who criticise it fiercely, I would like to launch a hypothesis that could explain its resilience and partially accept it. Let me elaborate the hypothesis a little.

On the one hand, it is almost absurd to consider that any activity, experience or interaction happens in some sort of social void. Even if we consider that games and the act of play are bound to special (social) rules, it would be almost equally absurd to think that doesn't apply to the rest of social interactions: a wedding, a lecture in a classroom, a visit to our doctor, a meeting with friends, standing in a queue in the supermarket and so on. The reality is full of mediations. Everything is mediated by the actions of other actors (human or not). In a way, there is no thing which doesn't depend on other things. There can't be a magic circle independent from the social reality where it dwells. In fact, it's part of that social reality, shaping it and being shaped by it. 

On the other hand, we still experience some activities, like video gaming, as being enclosed, attached to their particular rules, meanings and interactions. A finite experience. One in which people put all their senses. How often do we hear video gamers saying how they lose all sense of time when they're playing and how they feel the immersive experience of gaming as though they were in another world? Should we ignore and discard these discourses and experiences? But if there are an almost infinite number of events that happen before, after and during gaming, interactions that are not related to the game itself (though they might help to make it work), how can we sustain the magic circle theory? And if we get rid of the magic circle, how can we explain the common experience of video gamers of being immersed in a particular world almost detached from the rest of their social context?

And here it goes the hypothesis. In my opinion, we should not think about the magic circle as a starting point but as what needs to be explained: how the experience of being in a magic circle detached from the rest of the social reality emerges, even if we know there is no social interaction - formal or not - that can exist on its own. Furthermore, my hypothesis states that what 'breaks' the magic circle is precisely what helps to construct its boundaries. It sounds paradoxical, but it makes sense. Keep an eye on future posts and you'll see. I promise.

An introduction to the research project

As you already know (you read the About section, did you?) this blog owes its existence to a video game research project at which I've been working during the last months. In fact, there is an explicit mention to this in the project: 'A website will be set up, a personal blog to which some of the ideas and results arising from the project will be transferred, in a less academic form, for informative purpose'. I wrote 'for informative purpose', but I hope it's for far more than that. I'll try to use it as a tool for reflection, a device to shape the incipient ideas which I bump into during my research. I would also like to consider the blog as an space and a reference for discussion (but that's up to you, guys!).

Obviously, I will be writing about other things more or less related to the project (video gaming culture in general, broader sociological issues, and who knows what else), but I've thought that I should shed some light on the blog's main concern. The project is summarised as follows:

The aim of the project is to research the processes that generate subjectivity in video gamers, based on a study of two areas: the expert design of the video game and the interaction established by the gamers with that product and the social setting in which they exist. 

In a social context in which the video game is highlighted as one of the major cultural industries (surpassing music, films or the performing arts in economic terms), very few sociological studies exist with respect to the processes that intervene in creating a video gamer and its relationship with contemporary subjectivities and the social universes of meaning where it dwells. Whereas most academic and general studies have focused on the video game as a cultural product, this project aims to study the models used to generate the video gamer in social terms, without forgetting the expert processes that give rise to the video game as an object.

Using a mainly qualitative method, the study will be targeted at two fields: firstly that involving the experts responsible for designing and producing the video games which takes into account the persons who will use them, thus promoting and conditioning subjectivities, and secondly, the social context in which gamers receive and interact with that product designed by experts and specialists, developing their own responses to the object and building their subjectivity with respect to the video game and in relation to other gamers and the rest of their social environment. The identity of the video gamer and the social worlds that emerge around them will be created through the combination of these two areas, reformulated as dimensions of analysis.

This can give you a general sense of the project. However, there are some things that I've already changed in these first four months of my research. Now I'd rather refer to 'the processes that generate a video game culture' than to the original 'the processes that generate subjectivity in video gamers'. I also think that the idea of "video gamers' subjectivity" is best understood as "video gamers' identity" or "identity of video gamers" (even though identity is one of those problematic notions). In any case, it's a fair hint of the project. I will expand on the project in future entries. Don't get lost and stay tuned!