“Feminism” and “social justice” usually go hand-in-hand, and often carry negative connotation, especially in video game communities. Many players, often times male, complain about “feminist social justice warriors” trying to ruin their game play spaces with their ideas, arguing that such people don’t belong. In her article, “Game Studies for Great Justice”, Amanda Phillips defines social justice via quoting Robyn Wiegman: “the phrase “social justice” [can be] a generic figure of the political destination of identity knowledges, knowing that its meaning is precisely what is at stake in the different disciplinary and critical relations that generate identity-based scholarship” (117). Phillips goes on to explain that there are a variety of ways that social justice can be achieved: “[as] a scholar trained in the interpretive humanities, my social justice scholarship on games aims both to recognize the links between real-world structures of power and their diffuse ideological forms in games and to open up new futures through alternative interpretive readings. A sociologist may pursue social justice in game studies by giving voice to marginalized gaming communities. A game designer may pursue social justice by inventing new game mechanics that challenge the dominance of competition and violence in the medium” (117). In broad terms, social justice aims to modify or change certain political fallacies in different forms of media, with video games being the target in this discussion. Those who practice social justice in video games might speak out against offensive portrayals of LGBTQ+ characters, or argue for social equality for female gamers.

This can cause outrage from predominantly straight, cisgendered male player communities that believe that there is nothing wrong with their games, feminist “social justice warriors” are attacking them, and they don’t belong in “their” game play spaces. Such backlash is one of many reasons why feminist hackerspaces have formed globally. Sophie Toupin discusses such spaces in her article titled “Feminist Hackerspaces: The Synthesis of Feminist and Hacker Cultures”, noting that “they do not all identify as women-only — understandings of feminism differ from space to space” (2). While these spaces identify as feminist and made for women to interact with technology and coding in a welcoming space, they do not exclude men or those that don’t identify as women. Feminist and women dominant hackerspaces came about because when public hackerspaces began forming in the early 21st century, “hackerspaces have generally found it difficult to attract and/or retain women, lesbian, gay, trans and queer (LGBTQ) persons, gender non-conformists and people of color, among others” (3), Phillips explains.

In the end, feminism and social justice in games are not outright as bad as some individuals make them out to be, and can hopefully ignite positive change that makes game spaces more open for all types of individuals.

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. 

For these past couple of weeks, music has been a large part of my daily life. I’ve always spent a majority of my time listening to music, but now more than ever I feel that I am listening to it more constantly. While it is more songs created by bands I wanted to look at video game music specifically.

Music within video games can be the thing that transports you to the game world itself. It creates a more immersive world and allows the player to dive into the world. On the other hand, music can also create a sense of nostalgia for people. Listening to the soundtrack of games that one use to play will bring back a pool of memories about the game and different experiences one might have had. For me, most of this comes from the Pokémon series. Gym battle/elite four and champion themes are a classic to me that I can listen to. I can reimagine myself with my team from way back fighting against my opponents. Thinking back on battles that we tough to the point where I reset my game to the save point. I get hyped from the energy and fast tempo of the soundtrack.

While nostalgia for old soundtracks are it’s also important to look at the impact of the music within video games themselves. Within How To Play Video Games, Golding states “Video games often seem to work in similar ways to other media forms: like film, they have main themes and melodies associated with characters and places. But they’re also dramatically different, with music that changes and responds to player action and input: music that, in some ways, is alive in our living rooms.” (82-83) Video games are able to respond to the players choices through sound. If an enemy is coming, scary music to represent that enemy. Once the player enters the boss room, the boss music will start to play. By the very nature of video games being interactive, the sound and music itself is able to interact and respond to the player itself.

These themes that are created for a character is known as a leitmotif. There are many music theory channels on YouTube that go more in depth into what it is. In simple terms it is a piece of music used to represent and idea. Video games can use leitmotif to represent their characters, such as Mario or Link with their iconic themes. Like in film it can help give the player subtle audio cues as to what is going on. This can add more depth to a game, as not only enemies but ideas within the game will have its own audio.

Lastly, I want to talk about remixes and mashups. I’m huge fan of these kinds of work on YouTube, as it gives a new light to an established piece of music. There have been things from transforming older music from 8 bit to a newer style of music. The reverse is true, in taking a song from a current game and turning it into an 8 bit style. Remixes allow users to recreate songs in a new light on the song from a soundtrack. I’ve linked a remix that inspired me to write this piece. This falls under user generated content from what we were talking about in class this week. Others within the community might enjoy a remix over the original as the tempo is more to their liking. Mashups are similar to remixes, though it usually contains a combination of two or more songs combined together to form one song. This can be found more with pop songs though there are some mashups with video game music.

Overall, music is in video games in my opinion. It has so many transformative properties, and one can do so much with it related to video games. Users have created remixes and mashups to express their own creativity. I’ve linked some remixes that I enjoy myself and I would love to hear any music from video games that you guys enjoy.

The argument that “casual gamers aren’t real gamers” has existed ever since the rise of laid back titles targeted towards wider audiences, such as with mobile games, or Facebook games such as “Farmville” or “Candy Crush”. It has even led to harassment from “real” or “hardcore” gamers, who believe that anyone who hasn’t played a 60 hour RPG or clocked hundreds of hours in a first person shooter. To be completely honest, if anyone considers themselves a gamer, then that is okay with me. I don’t care about anyone’s play preferences or what they enjoy playing the most, as long as they enjoy playing video games, they are a gamer in my eyes. To say that some games “Aren’t real games” is baffling to me, as if the game about a guy with a spiky head of hair and an 8 foot long sword is “more hardcore” than the game about doing chores in a town full of cute animals. For example, I will use the subject of my dad. While my dad doesn’t consider himself a gamer, he consumes and enjoys video games from time to time, with some of his favorites being “Mario Kart Wii”, “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2”, and “Clash Royale”. These games are all vastly different from each other, but he still enjoys them either way. He doesn’t consider himself a gamer however, and that’s completely fine. To make the argument that he IS in fact a gamer would seem pointless in his eyes, because he simply doesn’t care that much for games, other than these three games he has connected with in my lifetime. The games were a bonding experience for us, and they will always have a place in my heart, as well as his. This situation can be reversed in many instances, with people considering themselves to be gamers, but are shunned because the games they play aren’t “hardcore” enough. This is usually a sexist argument against women of the community, who are harassed by men who believe “they’re just lying to get attention”. This “gatekeeping” is unfortunately very common in the community, with conversations usually leading to things like “Oh, you’re a gamer? If that’s true, then answer all of my specific trivia questions about gaming.” I still don’t understand this argument, as everyone has different tastes, you can’t expect someone who plays a lot of Nintendo games to know XBox and Microsoft trivia. As a matter of fact, I believe that any game that is considered to be “casual” can be played in a hardcore fashion. Take the speedrunning community for example, taking a game that was never meant to be played in such a way that has been closely studied, broken, and reinvented by a group of dedicated players. From “Super Mario 64” to “Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom”, games are given whole new meaning of “hardcore”. The “casual games” versus “hardcore games” argument has always been a strange subject to me, as being a gamer all comes down to personal opinion. We shouldn’t judge what kind of games people enjoy, we should just be excited that people are engaging in the community in the first place.

When people say videogame platform, what pops into your mind? For many people they might picture a specific console, for others it might be a personal computer. Indeed, for many years, the videogame industry was dominated by console gaming. Most triple A rated game are only available on a console or on your PC. However, mobile gaming is increasingly becoming more popular over the years as accessibility and technology has improved. Heck, I love mobile games I think they’re great. Mobile games are easy to play and can be played everywhere. Despite the rise in popularity, mobile gaming still has not been able to rid itself of the label of “casual.” So what exactly is casual gaming and why are mobile games label as casual?

Angry Birds, Cut The Rope, and Candy Crush Saga. All three of these titles are mobile games but are mobile games just games you play on a phone? According to Gregory Steirer and Jeremy Barnes in their passage “Angry Birds: Mobile Gaming,” they “identify the four components of mobile gaming: gameplay accessibility, software accessibility, everyday ubiquity, and variable monetization” (Huntemann 217). Looking at the three games I mentioned earlier, they all have those traits. Gameplay accessibility can be defined as the skill/experience needed to play the game. All three games have simple controls and can be played by new and veteran game players. Since mobile games can be found on the app or google play stores, the second component (software accessibility) can be checked off the list. In terms of everyday ubiquity mobile games can be played everywhere. I mean let’s be honest here, who hasn’t played a mobile game while on the toilet? Finally, for variable monetization, all three games are free to play. Angry Birds makes money via in app purchases of game enhancements such as the Mighty Eagle. Cut The Rope and Candy Crush Saga implement an energy system that can be recharged instantly with real life dollars. So mobile games are defined basically as games that are easy to play, can be acquired anywhere, can be played anywhere, and are usually free to play. So why are they labeled “casual”?

Casual games are defined as “games that are easy to learn to play, fit well with a large number of players and work in many different situations” (Huntemann 217). What this means is casual game are games that require little to no skill and can be played whenever. This is one reason why mobile gaming was quickly labeled as casual. Let’s take a mobile game like Angry Birds as an example. Like with many mobile games, the controls in Angry Birds is relatively simple- your pull back the slingshot with your finger and release. Easy right? Well one of the few reasons for these simple control can be due to the technological limitations of a phone. You just can’t have the amount of inputs on a phone like with a console or PC. However, due to its simple mechanic, it takes little to no skill to play the game. Maybe that’s why Angry Birds was downloaded “50 million times, with total play time, according to Rovio, averaging 200 million minutes a day globally” (Huntemann 217).

Sure hardcore games have their appeals but so do casual games and mobile games. We shouldn’t label one as better than the other since they’re actually quite different. So no matter what the game, or what platform you play on, we shouldn’t criticize people for being a casual gamer or a hardcore gamer. At the end of the day, games are just games.

Citation:

Huntemann, N. (2019). How to play video games. NYU Press.

The existence of in-game micro-transactions or the idea of games being Pay to Win is a big topic of discussion amongst those who spend a lot of their time playing games. For the most part—and understandably so—they are looked down on. I think it’s important to note that, as a hobby, gaming can be pretty expensive depending on how invested you are/the amount of games or devices you own. Throwing additional costs onto the base cost just adds onto this to sometimes insane degrees. This might not be such a big deal in games that are either free or fairly inexpensive, but these are not the only games being impacted. It is something which taints games whose prices are much higher, as well. The default price tag of individual AAA games tends to be about 60$, which is already pretty expensive for a lot of people. When these games then incorporate Pay to Win aspects or lock important game-play mechanics/weapons behind the intimidating wall of micro-transactions, an issue is born. Unfortunately, many people are drawn into the trap of micro-transactions to the point where they are spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on upgrades that should arguably be unlockable without a price tag associated—especially since the initial price tag for these games is already pretty high for a lot of people. Without even taking micro-transactions into account, people, including myself, have had to decide which games they are more drawn toward and which games they will either pass on or wait for discounts on due mostly to the dip these purchases inevitably make in bank accounts. These days, I haven’t noticed this practice too much in single-player games. It’s usually online games which are faced with this issue the most.

 While an argument could be made that these micro-transactions are optional (which is true), it must also be understood that buying them typically gives the player a sizeable advantage in terms of winning matches due to the points, weapons or skills they’ve purchased. Because of this, there are people who possess the belief that they must have these upgrades and therefore must increasingly spend money on them. It’s one thing if the items are purely cosmetic and/or don’t impact gameplay, but this typically isn’t the case. The items accessible only through additional purchases are usually painted as a Big Deal. The allure of digital items which would otherwise be unavailable is a drawing factor for those who buy them. Then there are those who claim they don’t make a difference—these are usually the people who don’t win a ton. While this can be disheartening to know, a lot of developers are decreasing their habit of including micro-transactions or designing their games as Pay to Win. That being said, there’s still a long way to go due to the fact that there’s still innumerable developers who’ve done the opposite of decreasing additional prices on top of their base games. I think it would definitely be beneficial to a lot of people if this practice were to die down in time.

Four more weeks until the end of the semester! I hope everyone is hanging in there! Since Dr.Cody mentioned that it was okay for us to write about our progress on our projects so far, this is what this week’s blog is all about.

The whole online process has been stressful, but I was finally able to work on my Creative Project last weekend. My idea was to use the Ren’Py visual novel maker to create a dating simulator. It wasn’t hard to understand the basics of how to use Ren’Py because they had a clear tutorial of how things worked, but the web page it linked to was out of date and hard to follow. I ended up following a lot of YouTube videos to see how the program itself worked together. A great thing about this program is that it uses Python to create the basis of a visual novel game, but the user themselves do not need to learn how to code.

Now, I already had a plot and an idea of what my characters would look like, but one problem that bothered me was the art consistency. It’s not hard to find someone to commission, but I’m a broke college student trying to get by. So I spent the first day of the working process trying to find free characters and scenes that would fit my story. After a very very long time I decided to look around for programs that would allow me to create my own visual novel characters. The closest I came to doing that was using mobile apps where you can create your own avatar.

Then I worked on the dialogue. I realized it was kind of impossible to have a complete story, so I opted to have at least three chapters with the last chapter being a cliff hanger. I wanted to recreate the notion that if you wanted to see the rest, you would have to pay for the next part of the game (I know that’s really shitty but that’s what a lot of otome games do). I’m not a creative person either, but I didn’t want my story to follow otome games completely with their cringe and weak main character. As I wrote and edited everything out multiple times, I found the story going a bit differently than what I planned (guess I’ll have to wait for the next progress presentation to get some opinions).

So far I’ve only completed Chapter One, which is the introduction to everything. I’m going to be working on Chapter Two and hopefully finish Chapter Three next week so I can start on the Research Project. I decided to split both so that I can at least finish one project (I have 3 other coding projects and 1 writing project due for other classes so I have to distribute all the work stress fully). I really wanted to start on the Research Project, which talks about how game mechanics affect the way a player thinks. I’m going to be focusing on League of Legends since all my friends talk about it and I’m interested how this game could amass such worldwide attention.

In my final project I am making a board game that speaks on RNG. This prior week I have worked to relate this more to the class then just a piece on RNG. RNG has been a large part of every game since the dawn of PONG and it is interesting to see how it affects the gamer and how they play games, but that is not enough to relate this to the class. I need to dive deeper into the communities created through RNG and the relationships between individuals RNG creates.
Well one big aspect of the board game we are creating is the random movement that strongly creates an obstacle to pass. While the movement is RNG the player can still manipulate these numbers through ability cards received during the game. There has always been a divide between players on whether RNG belongs in games to begin with and I want the game we are making to continue this discussion. So in order to create this discussion we want to add abilities to the game that may seem rather unfair if the player is able to roll the right RNG. For example on ability may be “If a player were to fall you may roll a dice. If your roll is x-y then you do not fall and instead choose another player to fall instead” This ability not only causes the player to save themselves but could cause harm to another player. the losing player would call this ability broken or annoying but it worked to save the other player so they would work to argue for it. I want these arguments to be prevalent during the game on whether an ability of RNG is welcome in the game

Casual gaming and casual gamers has often been an activity looked upon by self-proclaimed “hardcore”gamers and many similar individuals among the gaming community. Many of these games viewed as “casual” games usually do not contain the same amount of competition or stakes present in games that are considered non-casual. For many, the term of casual games can be used to encompass entire platforms or genres of games without consideration of the diversity of games within that genre or platform. I also know many other games from perceived “casual” platforms and genres where the stakes present within the game can be just as high as games from more “hardcore” platforms.

I remember at one point that I became interested in a single-player mobile card game (that was not Hearthstone) that had good artistic design and interesting strategy. From my point of view, the amount of thought that goes into playing this game would not be considered “casual.” However, I have been asked by others why I waste my time on such a game. Their negative perception of the game turns out to be stemmed from the fact that the game was a mobile game. I find it interesting that Hearthstone is a similar game that can be played on a mobile platform, but a game like that is not looked down upon in comparison to various other card games available in mobile app stores. I feel that the game coming from Blizzard, a large game company known for many other “hardcore” games may be a factor in this. 

This is an effect that I see happening in the opposite manner in games from platforms that are considered hardcore. For example, indie games that feature gameplay that are not competitive, stakes-heavy, or require great time investment do not receive as much criticism for being “casual” when developed for a platform like PC. In class, we played Stardew Valley, a game that has received praise and in my experience, very little would call the game “casual.” I think it is interesting that mobile games developed by small developers are looked down upon as casual while the opposite is true for games of more “hardcore” platforms that are also developed by small developers. This is not even considering the fact that browser games are largely ignored by the gaming community due to its perception of being a casual platform, while a large majority of games developed in that platform are from indie developers. There is a clear double standard here in regards to how the gaming community views indie games and games made by smaller companies.

Casual gaming has also often been seen as a stereotypically female activity (Eklund, 5). This probably stems from sexist societal views of women who are better off spending time on domestic activities, and that they are better suited to games that do not lend as much time investment as “hardcore” games. I think this adds to the negative perception towards “casual” games, as many gamers are embroiled in a male-dominated culture that is often sexist. Back to the discussion of the double standard of attitudes towards indie games, I think this is also present when it comes to developers. Most indie games that receive praise from the gaming community are usually male-led projects. 

Sources:Eklund, Lina. “Who Are the Casual Gamers? Gender Tropes and Tokenism in Game Culture.” Social, Casual and Mobile Games : The Changing Gaming Landscape, 2015, doi:10.5040/9781501310591.ch-002.

This week in class we discussed more about Casual, Social and Mobile Games. The article we read from Tama Leaver and Michele Willson titled “Social networks, casual games and mobile devices: The shifting contexts of gamers and gaming” talked about the changes in the gaming landscape and the growing popularity of casual, mobile and social games. For the sake of this post I will be using the term “Casual Games” as an overarching term for social and mobiles games.

The article states ” What is undeniable is that social, casual and mobile games in all of their forms are being adopted by increasing numbers or the population.” With casual games rising in popularity, it poses the question once again of whether or not those who play casual games is classified as an actual gamer. If you search the definition of “Gamer” it will actually tell you that a gamer is defined as “a person who plays video games or participates in role-playing games.” The thing that caught my eye when I Googled the word “Gamer” is that they defined a gamer as someone who takes part in role-playing games. This would mean that anyone who plays a game that allows them to immerse themselves into the story would be a gamer. Now, do I think this is a good way to classify whether someone is a gamer or not? Yes? No? I don’t know… I go back and forth on this a lot. If going by the “role-playing games” definition casual game players may or may not be gamers. Those who play games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing would count as gamers since those games really allows each player to immerse themselves into the story and feel as if they actually are living on that farm or that island and building up their town as if it’s real life. On the other hand, those who play mobile games like Candy Crush or Angry Birds wouldn’t really be gamers because those games aren’t really role-playing games. At the forefront of everything, this looks like a pretty decent way to define whether someone is a gamer or not. But then what about social games like “Farmville” that kinda falls under “role-playing games” but those who play games like Farmville don’t play enough to really immerse themselves into the game. Are the gamers? Something I like about this “role-playing” gamer standpoint is that it takes platform out of the question and looks at it from a game standpoint alone. With the gaming landscape changing so rapidly, this allows us to look at this question from a game standpoint strictly instead of taking the platform it is on into account.

Something else to consider is what counts as a video game? Mobile games currently are seen as their own entity. They’re games but they’re not really seen as a video game and that goes hand in hand with the question of “Who is a gamer.” Mobile games still are not seen as part of the video game world so those who play those games also are not seen as a gamer. We need to first decide what we classify as a video game and from there, we can better define who really is a gamer. How I see it, is that there are two different classification of games, “Video Games” and “Games.” “Video Games” are those role-playing games we discussed and “games” are those social and mobile games that allow to pick up and play anywhere you go. The gaming community may never agree on who classifies as a gamer or what games classifies as a video game, but what we can agree on is that the world of gaming is changing and growing as we know it.