Welcome to Meaningful Play, a podcast where we talk about video games, new or old, light or serious, controversial or inspiring, and everything in between with an academic flair.
In this episode, Sian and Heather get stuck into the influential concept of flow. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s writing and lectures on the flow state have been applied by designers and scholars alike to understand and articulate the unique experiences of play that video games facilitate. We walk through what the concept means and discuss some later research, including Soderman’s Against Flow, that questions the way flow is understood in the wider discipline of game studies.
Jin, S.-A. A. (2012). “Toward integrative models of flow”: Effects of performance, skill, challenge, playfulness, and presence on flow in video games. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56(2), 169–186. https://doi.org/10/gfgxhv
Mansfield, B. E., Oddson, B. E., Turcotte, J., & Couture, R. T. (2012). A possible physiological correlate for mental flow. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 7(4), 327–333. https://doi.org/10/ghp4t6
Soderman, Braxton. (2021). Against flow: Video games and the flowing subject. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Teng, C.-I. (2011). Who are likely to experience flow? Impact of temperament and character on flow. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(6), 863–868. https://doi.org/10/fnqxq4
Happy new year! In this episode Sian and Heather talk about failure in video games. Failure has been an aspect of gameplay that has fascinated many scholars studying video games. We walk through the theories of several scholars, including Jesper Juul, Jane McGonigal, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Ronald Tocci, Christopher Paul, Bonnie Ruberg, and Jack Halberstam, reflecting on their theories in the context of our play of video games in various genres. We think about what the word failure means in the context of gameplay, and moments of failure in gameplay we find joyful and interesting.
Halberstam, Jack. 2011. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Juul, Jesper. 2013. The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games. Playful Thinking. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Ruberg, Bonnie. 2017. ‘Playing to Lose: The Queer Art of Failing at Video Games’. In Gaming Representation: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games, edited by Jennifer Malkowski and TreaAndrea M Russworm, 197–210. Indiana University Press.
Ruberg, Bonnie, Jack Halberstam, and Jesper Juul. 2017. ‘The Arts of Failure: Jack Halberstam in Conversation with Jesper Juul’. In Queer Game Studies, edited by Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw, 201–10. University of Minnesota Press.
Tocci, J 2008, ‘“You Are Dead. Continue?”: Conflicts and Complements in Game Rules and Fiction’, Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 187–201.
Adinolf, S. and Turkay, S. (2018) ‘Toxic Behaviors in Esports Games: Player Perceptions and Coping Strategies’,
Paul, CA 2018, The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games: Why Gaming Culture is the Worst, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
McGonigal, J 2011, Reality is Broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world, The Penguin Press, New York.
Welcome to our last episode of 2022–and what a year it has been! Sian and Heather take it light and breezy and discuss some of their favourite games from this year, titles they loved, titles they spent a lot of time on (hello Genshin Impact …) and those with some interesting mechanics. We catch up on a few titles on the horizon for 2023 that we’re looking forward to and those we’ll be playing during the summer. We wrap with a discussion of festivity in games–moments of light and levity that punctuate the flow of game time with joy and playfulness.
We wish everyone a happy new year and look forward to catching up with you all in 2023!
Happy Halloween! In this episode Sian and Heather catch up on what they’ve been playing and researching lately before moving into a discussion of the gothic, the horrible, and the spooky in video games. We reflect on some different ways of thinking about these genres and their appearances in different video games, discussing scholarship, the sublime, southern gothic and beyond! We close by discussing some of our favourite scary or horrible moments in video games, including moments from Bioshock, Fatal Frame, Elden Ring and of course, The Sims.
Tomkinson, Sian. (2022). “She’s Built Like a Tank”: Player Reaction to Abby Anderson in The Last of Us: Part II. Games and Culture. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120221123210.
Williams, Linda. (1991). Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess. Film Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 4, pp. 2–13. https://doi.org/10.2307/1212758.
Bandai Namco sends a prolific Elden Ring player a sword and God gives you a phone in Pokemon Arceus. This episode, Sian and Heather dive into the idea of generous play. While over the years there has been plenty of discussion on the more negative emotions associated with games and play, there is plenty to be said on how games facilitate experiences of generosity, collaboration and kindness. We discuss interactions in various MMOs, including Destiny 2, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, and Runescape. We also talk about generosity by design, talking about some of the design process behind Journey. We wrap with a discussion on recent NieR: Automata news and the recent hacking of the Neopets database.
References
Blakey, H. (2021). Designing Player Intent through “Playful” Interaction: A Case Study of Techniques in Transistor and Journey. M/C Journal, 24(4). https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2802
Yee, N. (2021, August 5). About one out of three men prefer playing female characters. Rethinking the importance of female protagonists in video games. Quantic Foundry. https://quanticfoundry.com/2021/08/05/character-gender/
In Episode 24 of Meaningful Play, Sian and Heather catch up on some recent research projects before diving into a thinking exercise around the recent discussions on open world games—their MacGuffins, beauty, and all the quirks in between. What is it about this prolific genre (and its mechanics) that is at times so wonderfully compelling and at others critiqued for being tired and repetitive? We talk about spatial design and interaction as well as zeitgeist moments in the popularity of open world games in the last decade. We wrap with a chat about archiving games and the exciting news about Untitled Goose Game (House House) being preserved by some major Australian institutions in acknowledgement of its cultural significance—ensuring it will be accessible to generations of players for enjoyment and study.
You can access q_dork’s collection of free games at: q_dork.itch.io
References
Barkman, C. (2021). “There’s no point in saving anymore”: Diegesis and Interactional Metalepsis in Pony Island and Doki Doki Literature Club. Journal of Games Criticism, 5(1), 22.
Ngai. (2020). Theory of the gimmick: aesthetic judgment and capitalist form. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674245365
In episode 23 of Meaningful Play, Sian and Heather get stuck into a discussion on difficulty in video games—a subject that has resurfaced in significance with the release of FromSoftware’s latest title Elden Ring. While touching on some of the rich scholarship around community behaviour and polarisation in relation to difficulty, the discussion branches out to consider game difficulty in its broader sense and makes the distinction between accessibility and difficulty. They consider how time factors into assessments of difficulty, recent changes in how difficulty is represented, how different player typologies influence perceptions of difficulty, and the narrative function of difficulty in some games.
Key games:
Final Fantasy, Nier Automata, Persona 5, Pyre, Cyberpunk 2077, Genshin Impact
Hanford, N.A., 2018. At the Intersection of Difficulty and Masculinity: Crafting the Play Ethic, in: Taylor, N., Voorhees, G. (Eds.), Masculinities in Play. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 149–164. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90581-5_9
Juul, J 2010, Casual Revolution Reinventing Video Games and Their Players, MIT Press, Cambridge.
Kivijärvi, M., & Katila, S. (2021). Becoming a Gamer: Performative Construction of Gendered Gamer Identities. Games and Culture, 15554120211042260. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120211042260.
Paul, CA 2018, The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games: Why Gaming Culture is the Worst, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
In Episode 22 of Meaningful Play, Sian, Heather and Jordana discuss one of the most controversial topics in the realm of videogames – NFTs! In discussing NFTs, they attempt to define and understand NFTs and how they can be used in relation to videogames as a distinct medium.
*Apologies for the audio quality – due to COVID-19 we were not able to record with our usual equipment*. In Episode 21, Jordana, Sian, and Heather discuss what games they have been playing recently, and consider what makes their favourite boss battles so memorable.
Key Games Discussed:
Blacksad: Under the Skin, Blasphemous, Final Fantasy XIV, Genshin Impact, Phasmaphobia.
In the twentieth episode of Meaningful Play, Sian and Jordana welcome a special guest, Heather Blakey(!), a PhD candidate focused on games and aesthetics. Together, they discuss the concept of environmental storytelling (or “embedded narratives” as termed by scholar Henry Jenkins), sharing some of their favourite or notable games that have successfully implemented environmental objects as key narrative builders.
Games:
Animal Crossing, Bioshock (series), Convenience Store, Cyberpunk 2077, Destiny 2, Final Fantasy XIV, Hades, Life is Strange, Mass Effect Andromeda, Phasmophobia, The Last of Us Part II, The Sims 2, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Blood and Wine (DLC).
References:
Barbet, R., & Koch, M. (2016, March 14-18). “Life is Strange” Case Study: Using Interactive Storytelling and Game Design to Tackle Real-World Problems [Conference presentation]. Game Developers Conference 2016. San Francisco, California. https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023468/-Life-is-Strange-Case
Goins, E. (2018, December 5-8). Structuring Digital Game Stories. In R. Rouse, H. Koenitz & M. Haahr (Eds.), Interactive Storytelling: 11th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (pp. 265–269). Dublin, Ireland. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04028-4_27
Nguyen, C. T. (2020). Games: Agency As Art. Oxford University Press.
Martens, S. (2021). The responsibilities in Red Dead Redemption 2: An analysis of playful learning through environmental storytelling in a videogame. Bachelor’s Thesis. Utrecht University. Available at: https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/402055
Nielsen, T. L., Rafferty, E. I., Schoenau-Fog, H. S., & Palamas, G. (2020, November 3-6). Embedded Narratives in Procedurally Generated Environments [paper presentation]. In A. Bosser, D. Millard & C. Hargood (Eds.), Interactive Storytelling: 13th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (pp. 30-43). Bournemouth, UK. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62516-0_3
Vredenberg, B. (2017). Signposting, Mise-en-Scene, and Environmental Storytelling: Understanding signposting as part of the embedded narrative in environmental storytelling [Master’s thesis, Utrecht University]. Utrecht University Repository. https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/352414
Shibolet, T. (2019). Towards a Framework for Embodied Narrativity: An enactive study of narrative phenomenology, through the lens of interactive digital media [Master’s thesis, Utrecht University]. Utrecht University Repository. https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/381437
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