One of the topics we talked about this week was the fighting game genre, namely Super Smash Bros. and the way gender is perceived and acted upon in the community. In the study Female Fighters: Perceptions of Femininity in the Super Smash Bros. Community, it aims to determine the perception of femininity, the treatment of female players and the performances of gender within the community. The study found that “with nearly half (46.64%) of the posts analyzed containing [vague feminine positivity], it seemed that there was not an overwhelming amount of negativity within the community’s perception of femininity, nor was there a strong preference for any particular performance of gender” (Adams, 106). It seemed that many of the players within the community seemed to pick their characters based on other reasons like playstyle instead of purely on gender. I believe that this is because of the way Smash Bros. is fundamentally designed. 

One of the biggest appeals of Smash Bros. is the large cast of characters in its roster. Other than mii fighters, there are no original characters in the series. The entire roster of Smash Bros. are all characters from their own respective series created by Nintendo or one of its second-party developers. These beloved characters are already a part of their own popular series and with that comes a higher level of recognizability. New players can pick up a controller and still be able to participate because even if they don’t know all the characters in the game, they can still recognize familiar faces in the roster like Mario, Pikachu, etc. Many players gravitate towards a character simply because they enjoy the series that the character originates from. 

Another conclusion that the study came to was that players seemed to pick their characters based solely on playstyle. “There did not seem to be a particular gender preference in the [tier list] and it seemed to be based on a character’s merits alone… A handful of female characters were near the bottom, but overall they were dispersed fairly evenly, and the presence of three female characters near the top of the list indicates that the community’s perceptions of character viability did not appear to be colored by gender” (Adams, 107). A big difference in Smash Bros. from other traditional fighting games is that Smash Bros. provides a much greater degree of control over character movement than most fighters and as a result, combat is much more free-form. Stages are larger and the camera is pulled further out allowing more options for players to take during play. As a result of this, many characters are given some ranged moves as well as gap-closing melee moves to allow you to still attack opponents if they choose to stay far away. This has given rise to different playstyles and character archetypes. Smash Bros. is ultimately (haha) a competitive arcade fighter with a highly competitive community of players who choose their mains not because of how attractive the character is but because of the player’s playstyle and their relationships with that character.

This week we talked about League of Legends and it’s toxic community. In the article How League of Legends could make the internet a better place, it has stated that “the players who just love to be mean, only account for a very small percentage of the negative behavior… More than 90 percent of the vitriol comes from normal players who occasionally act out while playing.” As a part of the League community for a number of years now, I would say that these statistics were mostly accurate to what I have seen from playing. There was a time where I would play many games of league daily with my friends after school. I would say that we are relatively positive players but on those days when we would have a bad day I found that we were more inclined to start BM’ing during our matches. We would go into matches tilted and underperform because of the circumstances we experienced during the school day and just generally be at a poor mindset. I’ve had some experiences where we would be losing and just give up and start to troll our teammates.

One system that Riot added to combat the toxicity is the Honor System. This was released to the public in 2017 and is a system where players can be rewarded for behaving positively during matches. At the end of the match, every player can choose to give an honor to one person on the team, generally for performing well or being a good sport. Based on the number of honors you receive over time, your honor rank can level up and through that you can get prizes in the form of in-game goodies. Personally I feel like this has worked pretty nicely to lower toxicity as over the years I have noticed less extremely toxic behavior in my solo queue games. However, there are still bad apples that simply don’t care about the honor system and still choose to BM and troll. Although they exist, I have experienced this less and less.

Recently, Riot has added another gamemode that I feel is a good way to combat toxicity. This gamemode is known as Clash. Clash is basically an online tourney that Riot hosts on weekends once or twice a month. Players get to make premade teams of 5 and compete in a highly competitive bracket for big prizes given to the winners. However, one requirement in order to participate in Clash is for the player to have at least a level 2 honor. Not only does it stop the player from joining but if a player doesn’t reach the honor requirement, the whole team cannot participate. Because of its lucrative and highly competitive nature, players are more inclined to behave positively and maintain a high honor level in order to participate when Clash does come around. Not only is this a good way of encouraging positive behavior, it gives something for players to look forward to and work towards.

This week one of the topics that we talked about was user generated content and one of the main examples we used was Minecraft. As it stands, Minecraft is one of the biggest and well known games in the world right now spawning endless content from its massive fanbase. The content is not limited to creations in-game either. “Countless online video channels offer advanced building tutorials, tours, and explanations of expert creations. Meanwhile, other video series forgo discussions of construction technique in favor of using Minecraft as a virtual stage for the performance of ongoing stories. Such is the centrality of UGC to Minecraft’s very existence that it might be more accurate to think of it not as a game about “placing blocks” but as a platform for storytelling and game-making” (Newman, 278). Newman also speaks about how Minecraft is different from other games with an emphasis on creativity and community creation like Super Mario Maker and Little Big Planet. He states that unlike these games, Minecraft doesn’t ship with premade levels and challenges. Instead, “it is a game where, without the creative labor of making, there is nothing to play. Playing is making. Playing is content generation” (Newman, 279). In Minecraft, when you start your very first game, you are literally thrown into a completely new generated world with nothing but freedom to do and build whatever you want. That is the main appeal to the game that has kept it popular for so long. This has resulted in communities being made where like-minded people can come together and create. “When the members of these subcultures are connected in some way – perhaps through events that they attend off-line or through playing and discussing games online – they can be called a community” (Ruberg, 119).

Personally, I have had a long history with the game, discovering it in 2010 when I was in middle school right around when they introduced the survival gamemode. I was a part of a creative server that a group of friends had made at the time where we would create whatever we wanted and just play Minecraft together. Eventually, word got around the school and kids from other classes who played Minecraft wanted to join the server and it sort of became a community within our school. One of the fondest memories I have with the game is during this time where a bunch of us would get together every night and build random things together, our greatest creation being a giant wool pig shooting lasers out of its eyes into our spleef arena (I wish I had pictures it was amazing trust me). Interacting with others and being a part of a community was definitely what made the game for me. It allowed me to connect with others who liked the same things I did and make friends with kids I’ve never met before, some even being in different grades. The community aspect is a big part of any game and is one of the main reasons that some players look for when playing a game. 

Casual gaming gets a bad rap within gaming culture to the point where gamers would use “casual” as an insult or trash talk. In this context, calling someone a casual is saying that they are unskilled in the game or just simply not as good. In reality, a casual game is just a game that’s targeted at a wider, mass market audience, as opposed to a certain niche audience. “Casual games tend to have more positive fictions featuring no or cartoonish violence, require little previous knowledge of games, allow players to play in short bursts and practise excessive positive reinforcement of success” (Eklund, 16). Countless times, I have seen players trash talking to each other by calling each other casuals and that they should just stick to the less competitive game modes in the online competitive games that I play. This type of behaviour stems from wanting to show off the time and dedication some players put into games and could potentially discourage newcomers when they get outclassed by these players who have obviously been playing the game for a much longer time. To this degree I would agree that there is an exclusive club of “hardcore” gamers present in many online competitive and skill-based games. 

Casual gamers are often associated with female gamers because of the nature of the casual game genre. “The term ‘casual’ is furthermore often used to describe a playstyle and this way of playing, with less time investment and dedication is often, both from the game community and industry, connected to female gamers” (Eklund, 18). Because of this stigma, female gamers face scrutiny in bigger competitive gaming cultures and are discouraged from playing at their best. This is evident from the lack of female professional players in many eSports leagues across all genres of competitive play. In an online article, it’s said that the number of women working in any role in esports or playing esports is estimated to be about 5% or 1 in 20 (womeningames.org).  

Ultimately, I believe that the reason behind these problems is the refusal to accept that people can choose to like whatever they want and that these choices don’t necessarily dictate what group of “gamer” you get put into. One of the beauty of games is that there are so many different and diverse genres. You aren’t bound to one genre and are free to play whatever types of games you want. After a sweaty session of “hardcore” gaming in Escape from Tarkov, I choose to wind down in Animal Crossing to water my plants and talk to my villagers. Does this mean I’m casual now? Choosing to like a genre that has more casual elements doesn’t make you less of a gamer. After all, gamers are gamers because we choose to spend our time engaging in this medium. 

Sources: 

Eklund, Lina. Who are the casual gamers? Gender tropes and tokenism in game culture.
Women in Esports. http://www.womeningames.org/women-in-esports/

Nostalgia is the longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. Many gamers seek to play games from their childhood to relive the experience of playing and to reminisce about simpler times. It is the reason why you would want to hook up an older console to your television and replay that poorly designed movie licensed game again (Chicken Little on PS2 is unironically one of my favorite games growing up). In John Vanderhoef’s Nostalgia, he defines nostalgia as “[the] wishes to recover the lost paradise of the past and reconstruct it in the present. In its zealous efforts, restorative nostalgia is uncritical of past mistakes or failures and instead relies on romanticizing and recreating, brick by brick, the monuments and moments lost to time.” It is this restorative nostalgia that causes players to keep coming back for more. Players experiencing restorative nostalgia views the games through a lens that doesn’t let them see the faults and problems that could potentially be present in the game. The game could have poor game design but it will always be good to them because they have fond memories of playing it in their past. 

One of the more recent moments where I experienced restorative nostalgia was earlier in February playing the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX demo. This new Pokemon game is a remake of the 2005 video games Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red and Blue Rescue Team. I had played Red Rescue Team on the GameBoy Advance when it first came out and had incredibly fond moments with it growing up. Sitting down and playing the demo of the 2020 remake, I experienced restorative nostalgia head on. Starting up the game, I was inadvertently taken back to my childhood for a brief moment. In the intro cinematic before the menu, I was shown a brief overhead shot of the main poke-town hub that looked exactly like it did in 2007 when I played it. The music is just as it used to be except remastered with a more modern arrangement which set the tone for the rest of the game. All the Pokemon NPCs were present in beautiful 3D models and the activities you could do were streamlined for the modern day audience. 

Playing with nostalgia goggles definitely heightened my experience with the new remake of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. Afterall, it was exactly as I remembered it when I was young. Although I genuinely enjoyed my experience, my nostalgia did not allow me to see faults in the game. Outside of the narrative and memorable characters, truthfully, the gameplay loop is somewhat repetitive. While exploring dungeons, the main part of gameplay, you are placed in randomly generated dungeon rooms full of enemy Pokemon with one set of stairs that allow progression to the next level. The turn-based combat encounters can be concluded quickly when fighting weaker Pokemon by just mashing the A button and having your character do it’s most powerful move against it. This leads to moments where you are just speeding through the dungeon trying to find the staircase that leads you to the next floor to complete the dungeon. This becomes tedious in later stages of the game where you could be exploring dungeons with up to 99 floors in them.

Earlier this week, we talked about video game controllers and how they have influenced the player experience throughout gaming history. The controller is probably the most important aspect to a game since it is the device that allows players to interact with and play the game. In David O’Grady’s NES D-Pad essay, he states that “video game controllers are the tactile, in-hand hardware component of an interface, which in computing combines hardware and software with audiovisual representations to establish an interactive relationship between humans and machines” (HTPVG, 270). Controllers give you the ability to control a character on the screen which in turn, also helps develop a connection between the character and player. O’Grady gives the example of playing Mario in Super Mario Bros (1985) where he talks about player investment in Mario’s quest to save Princess Toadstool. Player input directly controls everything that Mario does whether it be running, jumping, or shooting fireballs. In this sense the player isn’t playing as Mario but they are Mario. When you fall into a pit or run into a goomba, you don’t go “Mario died”, you say “I just died and lost a life”. The player directly controls every action so every shortcoming or victory is because of the player’s input. “The controller, then, not only has the potential to recede experientially into screen objects and actions during video gameplay but also to forge a level of identification that turns the avatar into a heightened, even superpowered, extension of the self.” (HTPVG, 274) This is one reason why people play video games: to see the player character get stronger and succeed because the character is an extension of the self. 

A good controller is one that makes sense for a lack of a better term. The controller shape should be ergonomic and button inputs should all be easily within reach of your thumbs or index fingers. You should be able to access all of them without having to reposition your hands. An example of a poorly designed controller would be Nintendo’s N64 controller. With it’s forked design, players have to change hand positioning entirely in order to get access to the analog stick and d-pad. O’Grady referenced graphical user interface pioneers Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg in his essay when talking about good design where they said controllers and interfaces should be akin to playing a musical instrument; “with practice and mastery, the keys and strings of an instrument “disappear” and become an expressive, artistic extension of the brain and body of the musician” (HTPVG, 270). Good video game controllers should be designed in such a way that the player could easily operate it without having to give it too much thought. Once mastered, the player can fully experience the video game for what it is without having to struggle with learning the buttons and disrupting the flow of gameplay just to check where a certain button or trigger is. Nowadays, modern controllers mostly consist of a streamlined button layout with directional input on the left side of the controller and action input on the right side. 

The avatar represents the player’s character in a game. It is who they play or who they choose to play. In single player games, the avatar is the protagonist of the game, whether it be a character that the developers made or one that you created yourself. In multiplayer online games, the avatar is one that you choose from a variety of avatars or in MMORPGs, one that you made yourself to represent you. When it comes to character creation, most games lack the diverse choices seen in real life. One big issue is the lack in variety of body types for characters in MMORPGs. More often than not, body types in some of these games range from lean to muscular for males and petite to voluptuous for females and as a result, limits players from creating a character exactly to their visions. Not only does this cause many characters to look very similar in body type to each other, but it becomes harder for some players to be fully invested with their online avatars which might hinder their experience. 

Having more complex character creation systems is important for players because it lets them create the type of character they want to create and be more attached to said character. In Shaw’s He Could Be a Bunny Rabbit for All I Care!, she writes that “players put something of themselves into choices they make in games. Investment in the character was not, however, always synonymous with identification. In fact, sometimes identification named the relation between an interviewee and the game or between an interviewee and the type of objects or beings in a given game” (Shaw, 136). Players don’t necessarily have to identify with a character but avatar creation creates an investment in the avatar by the player. 

In this section of the chapter, Shaw talks about the different contexts that shapes the choices of the players during character creation. Some players choose to make their characters look themselves to be represented in the game, some players made avatars completely unlike them and based them off of other people or an idea. Personally, when I make a character to play games it varies based on what type of game it is. When I play MMORPGs with my friends, I like to create interesting characters from scratch that look nothing like me. I build a backstory and scenarios for my character based on the game’s settings and lore. However, when I play single player RPGs I found myself often making avatars that somewhat resembles what I would look like in that game’s universe. Usually when I do not have the option of creating a character that looks like me, I like to give the character glasses if the game allows it as it helps me identify with the character as a glasses wearer myself.

I have played many games of varying narratives throughout my life. I have played games with a huge cast of characters and settings with intricate plots as well as games with no traditional stories where they just drop you into the game and allow you to start playing. However, as games become more and more complex over the years, the narratives to these games also becomes more important.

To me, narratives in games are an integral part of a game. The narrative in games consists of the plot, setting, characters, music, and gameplay. It establishes the atmosphere and overall impression of a game and allows players to feel like they are a part of the story. It gives the player context on the situation that the game puts them in and reasons for the player to keep playing the game. It’s what I personally look forward to when playing a new game. Who am I playing as? What are my goals and how can I achieve them? What is the setting like and what can I do in it? Etc. Having this information allows me to understand why my character is in whatever situation the game puts me in and fully immerses me into the story that they are telling. 

Even in games where the “story” isn’t particularly clear, the stories can be made up by the players themselves as they play. An example I can think of would be the online multiplayer PvP survival game Rust. In the game, you spawn into this island literally naked with one goal: to survive. There is a big emphasis on base building and being the strongest entity (having the most resources/weapons/people) in the server before the weekly wipes where it resets the map and everyone starts with nothing again. Playing Rust, you will encounter other players who are most likely going to kill you for no reason, or raid your base when you aren’t around to protect it. This gives players the opportunity to create stories through their gameplay. You log back on into the game only to find your base in shambles with a sign from the culprit taunting you for getting raided. Now instead of just simply surviving, you’re trying to find the player responsible, where their base is located, and build up your resources again slowly in order to take revenge. Even with no real story, games like Rust gives chances for players to make their own which is what makes the game interesting and one of the reasons as to why the player base continues to grow and play the game.

Online trolling has been present for years and has been seen in chat rooms, forums, and nearly all massive multiplayer online games. Hiding behind the anonymity of the internet, some people feel at liberty to purposely upset or mess with other people for a joke or for their own enjoyment. Although there are different types of trolls, sometimes trolling comes with malicious intent that can negatively impact someone in their real life. Suddenly, you’re being harassed by people you’ve seen on the internet whom you’ve never even met before as was the case with Zoe Quinn and GamerGate. 

One thing I found particularly interesting from this week’s readings was from the Under the Bridge where they talked about the triggers of trolling. As it turns out, “being trolled first was the single most popular reason to begin trolling… Trolling appears to breed trolling, with the behaviour seemingly becoming a social contagion among gamers” (Cook et al, 3325). After reading this, I realized how true this was and recalled how often these situations would arise where I found myself witnessing or participating in while gaming online. 

One of the few online multiplayer games I play relatively often is Riot Game’s League of Legends (LoL). To me, LoL is the most fun when it is competitive and everyone is trying their hardest to win, utilizing strategy and communication to take objectives and win fights. There exists a competitive solo/duo ranked queue where you (and a friend) can queue up for a game where you can earn or lose competitive points. As I see it, ranked is both the most fun and the most toxic gamemode you can play in LoL. As an example of the social trolling trigger talked about in Under the Bridge article, in many games players slip up early into the match and other players start to complain in chat about their performance which results in arguments with each other in chat. Eventually, team morale plummets, players start intentionally dying to the enemies, and occasionally, there are rage quits. Because one player decided to troll and  make a comment on another’s performance, it caused the other player to react by snapping back with another comment which spiraled into both players physical trolling by intentionally feeding and creating discord in the team dynamic which ultimately cost the game. 

Trolling can be a rampant problem that a lot of people don’t know how to deal with. Good resources like The Center for Solution of Violence that we saw in class this week among others can be used for victims and trolls alike. I personally learned through using the site just how easily someone can find information about you online that was put there by social media and other applications and websites without your knowledge. Taking extra precautions to protect your identity online is definitely a must if you spend a lot of time on the internet. 

Existing behind every game is a magic circle. In games and digital media, the magic circle is the space where the rules of reality are suspended in place for the rules of the game world. We typically enter a magic circle when we play a game for the first time or log back into a game that we frequently play. The voluntary choice of picking up the game and playing it means that we are willing to drop the rules of reality that we are familiar with and choose to believe in the rules that are present in the virtual game or a real life sport. 

Magic circles in sports can be seen in virtually any sport. In volleyball, the main goal is to get the volleyball over the net and into the opposing team’s side. Realistically, the ball is just a ball. You probably wouldn’t use it for anything else. But while you are actively playing, it is the most important item to you. It’s how you score points. You need to have the ball touch the ground on your opponent’s side while also preventing the ball from touching the ground on your side. Players dive and jump to keep the ball in the air for as long as possible. This is because you agreed to the rules of volleyball and entered the magic circle. 

The magic circle takes a big part of video games in maintaining engagement and appeal to its audience. Magic circles are often found in the introductory sequences to help establish what the players will be seeing in the game’s world. I will give an example with one of the more recent games I have played: Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2). RDR2 is a narrative driven open world action adventure game with a focus on historical accuracy and realism. RDR2 begins in 1899 in the American Southwest with your protagonist: Arthur Morgan on the run from the police authorities with his gang of outlaws in the snowy northern states of the game’s setting. They talk about dreams of evading the police, running away to the West and how they need money to achieve all this. The player character, Arthur Morgan, is a hardened cowboy who cares about nothing other than the valuable ties he shares with his gang. Through this intro, the game’s magic circle has established that you play as an outlaw at the end of the wild west era in a world that is slowly embracing technology and industrialism as he fights to find a way for his gang to leave and find a way to live the life they choose to live. The rules in RDR2’s magic circle are more specific since they focus on a single character and take into account the games setting in defining the rules. Committing crimes results in your character being wanted and often being chased by bounty hunters. Act like a criminal and you will be treated as one. As a result, I found myself playing the game and making choices as Arthur’s character would, often thinking about how Arthur would respond to situations based on his ideals and flaws. An example would be how because the rules of the magic circle focused on realism, I was discouraged to solve problems guns blazing like in other action or western movies.