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FCJManager

FCJManager has written 7 posts for The Fibreculture Journal : 08
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FCJ-053 Pervasive Gaming: Formats, Rules and Space

By ⋅ November 7, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Bo Kampmann Walther University of Southern Denmark Introduction Computer games that move beyond the static screen and into the real, social and tangible world, as well as those that rely on massive networked, virtual spaces are becoming increasingly wide-spread. In Human PacMan the player collects virtual bits of cheese in a real, physical space (see Figure 1). Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix (2005) is a home version of the popular arcade game, in which the players follow dance instructions on the screen with their feet on touch-sensitive tiles. Breakout for Two (Mueller, Agamanolis and Picard, 2002) is a physical interface the size of a large wall that allows two players to play a soccer-like game together, communicating via a body-size videoconference. Both players are kicking a real ball, targeting virtual bricks, similar to the old arcade game Breakout, and aiming to break out to the other side, i.e., to the other […]

FCJ-052 Playing at being mobile: Gaming and cute culture in South Korea

By ⋅ November 6, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Larissa Hjorth RMIT University Globally, South Korea has become a bit of a fetish in the (global) games culture phenomenon. Games are a serious business saturating everyday life and many South Koreans prefer their PCs (with online multiplayer games) to TV (Cho 2005). Seoul is an exemplary model of the ubiquity of gaming culture; highlighting that games and the attendant social spaces and cultural knowledges can be part of everyday lifestyles, rather than a mere leisure activity of a subcultural group. With over 20,000 game rooms (known as ‘PC bangs’) scattered across Seoul, three TV channels dedicated to gaming, and pro-league players (professionals that can earn over US$2 million annually) treated as celebrity royalty, South Korea’s prolific designing, production and playing of games seems almost a dream come true for anyone remotely interested in gaming culture. Almost. As a place where gaming is an integral part of social spaces and […]

FCJ-051 Mods, Nay! Tournaments, Yay! – The Appropriation of Contemporary Game Culture by the U.S. Military

By ⋅ November 5, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

David B. Nieborg University of Amsterdam United States (U.S.) Army recruiting did not seem to be a problem after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. However, the ongoing war on terror calls for more soldiers and thus more recruits. Operation Iraqi Freedom in particular has put heavy strains on the available manpower of the Army. A significant part of the U.S. war machine is tied down in the cities of Iraq, requiring a steady flow of fresh manpower and material. The Bush administration has made it clear that it expects the war on terror will be a decade-long battle against a shadowy enemy (Gordon and Trainor, 2006). At the same time, government officials such as U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pointed out that the war on terror is also a war on ideas’. According to him, it is a war to spread freedom and liberty, values appropriated by and associated […]

FCJ-050 Cameras, Radios, and Butterflies: the Influence and Importance of Fan Networks for Game Studies

By ⋅ November 4, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Laurie N. Taylor University of Florida Collecting and Interpreting: Walkthroughs, CliffsNotes, & IMDB As a new medium, video games can be analyzed under some of the similar rubrics of other media. However, because of the fundamental differences between video games and older media, including the requirement of skilled user action, alterations to this categorization prove necessary. The study of games has been approached from many aspects, including the study of narrative in games and the study of game play. Both of these aspects complement each other and additional studies, such as studies of video game audiences, further complement game studies as an emerging field. Because video games require skilled user interaction, studying games requires game play. Game play in turn necessitates that players and students studying video games use additional resources to play particular games, and especially to complete particular games or to explore the games as texts to even […]

FCJ-049 Negotiating Intra-Asian Games Networks: On Cultural Proximity, East Asian Games Design, and Chinese Farmers

By ⋅ November 3, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Dean Chan Edith Cowan University The East Asian online games boom started in South Korea in the late 1990s. Following unqualified domestic success, South Korean games were subsequently exported to other regional markets throughout East and South East Asia. During this time, game development companies specialising in online games for the Asian market also emerged in China and Japan. This essay proposes that one of the key features in this networked gaming context is the relationship between the adaptation of regional East Asian aesthetic and narrative forms in game content, and the parallel growth in more regionally-focused marketing and distribution initiatives. East Asian online games design and marketing play to notions of perceived cultural proximity within the region. By encompassing these considerations, this essay aims to offer a contextual analysis of intra-Asian games networks in terms of production processes and related emergent concerns. How have these online games networks evolved? […]

FCJ-048 Land of a Couple of Dances: Global and Local Influences on Freestyle Play in Dance Dance Revolution

By ⋅ November 2, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Gillian “Gus” Andrews – Columbia University As a few scholars of media have begun to note, Actor-Network Theory is uniquely suited to unite the disparate models of the social role of media presented throughout the past century. Where some social constructivist scholars worry that Marshall McLuhans work attributes too much agency to media products themselves, ANT welcomes this idea and suggests we look at how human power is in fact invested in and extended through these products, as Joost Van Loon and Matthew Fuller have detailed in their work (Fuller, 2005; Van Loon, 2005). Where a Chomskyan or Bagdikianian view assumes that media monopolies and other hegemonies retain all power in determining the interpretation of a message, ANT keeps the construction of these hegemonies power in perspective while at the same time considering the repurposing of their messages by fans which is described by audience studies scholars (Hills, 2002; Jenkins, […]

Issue 08 – Gaming Networks

By ⋅ November 1, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

‘It is increasingly difficult to think of cultural formations as distinct entities because of our awareness of the increased interconnectedness of our communication systems’, writes Tiziana Terranova in her 2004 book Network Cultures, and nowhere is this felt more acutely than in the domain of computer games. Phenomena such as Pokémon, which sweep the entire planet, employ a multitude of media channels to plant their memes in the brains of millions, and erect merchandising empires of unprecedented magnitude, are only the most visible symptoms of this development. Massively multi-player online games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft bind players together in social networks that span the globe, and extend well beyond the realm of the virtual. In part, this is because gaming has become an increasingly online phenomenon, and technological developments bear witness to this fact: for the new generation of game consoles, including Xbox 360, Wii, and PlayStation 3, […]