What Is a Game?: Essays on the Nature of Videogames

What is a videogame? What makes a videogame "good"? If a game is supposed to be fun, can it be fun without a good story? If another is supposed to be an accurate simulation, does it still need to be entertaining? With the ever-expanding explosion of new videogames and new developments in the gaming world, questions about videogame criticism are becoming more complex. The differing definitions that players and critics use to decide what a game is and what makes a game successful, often lead to different ideas of how games succeed or fail.

This collection of new essays puts on display the variety and ambiguity of videogames. Each essay is a work of game criticism that takes a different approach to defining the game and analyzing it. Through analysis and critical methods, these essays discuss whether a game is defined by its rules, its narrative, its technology, or by the activity of playing it, and the tensions between these definitions. With essays on Overwatch, Dark Souls 3, Far Cry 4, Farmville and more, this collection attempts to show the complex changes, challenges and advances to game criticism in the era of videogames.

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What Is a Game?: Essays on the Nature of Videogames

What is a videogame? What makes a videogame "good"? If a game is supposed to be fun, can it be fun without a good story? If another is supposed to be an accurate simulation, does it still need to be entertaining? With the ever-expanding explosion of new videogames and new developments in the gaming world, questions about videogame criticism are becoming more complex. The differing definitions that players and critics use to decide what a game is and what makes a game successful, often lead to different ideas of how games succeed or fail.

This collection of new essays puts on display the variety and ambiguity of videogames. Each essay is a work of game criticism that takes a different approach to defining the game and analyzing it. Through analysis and critical methods, these essays discuss whether a game is defined by its rules, its narrative, its technology, or by the activity of playing it, and the tensions between these definitions. With essays on Overwatch, Dark Souls 3, Far Cry 4, Farmville and more, this collection attempts to show the complex changes, challenges and advances to game criticism in the era of videogames.

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What Is a Game?: Essays on the Nature of Videogames

What Is a Game?: Essays on the Nature of Videogames

What Is a Game?: Essays on the Nature of Videogames

What Is a Game?: Essays on the Nature of Videogames

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Overview

What is a videogame? What makes a videogame "good"? If a game is supposed to be fun, can it be fun without a good story? If another is supposed to be an accurate simulation, does it still need to be entertaining? With the ever-expanding explosion of new videogames and new developments in the gaming world, questions about videogame criticism are becoming more complex. The differing definitions that players and critics use to decide what a game is and what makes a game successful, often lead to different ideas of how games succeed or fail.

This collection of new essays puts on display the variety and ambiguity of videogames. Each essay is a work of game criticism that takes a different approach to defining the game and analyzing it. Through analysis and critical methods, these essays discuss whether a game is defined by its rules, its narrative, its technology, or by the activity of playing it, and the tensions between these definitions. With essays on Overwatch, Dark Souls 3, Far Cry 4, Farmville and more, this collection attempts to show the complex changes, challenges and advances to game criticism in the era of videogames.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781476668376
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date: 02/28/2020
Series: Studies in Gaming
Pages: 291
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.58(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Gaines S. Hubbell is an assistant professor of English and writing program administrator at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. His work focuses on the history of rhetoric and methods of game criticism. Series editor Matthew Wilhelm Kapell teaches American studies, anthropology, and writing at Pace University in New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Defining Games in the Process of Criticism Gaines S. Hubbell 1

Games as Text

Experiential Rhetoric: Game Design as Persuasion Jason Hawreliak 19

Post-Procedural Composition(s): Writing Gameplay Criticism Kyle M. Bohunicky 35

An Educational Critique of Blizzards Overwatch Joseph R. Fanfarelli 50

Using Procedural Rhetoric to Analyze a Persuasive Health Game: Re-Mission Emily Kuzneski Johnson Rudy McDaniel 70

Texts and Turnabouts: Analyzing the Words of Ace Attorney Robyn Hope 85

Imagining the World Differently: Hohokum and the Evolution of Digital Games Raven A. Pfister 103

Games as Activity

Lighting the Bonfire: The Role of Online Fan Community Discourse and Collaboration in Dark Souls 3 Alexander Jenkins 131

(Re)framing Public Performativity: The Expanding Social Game of Photos, Sharing and Queer Identity via Gone Home Jordan Youngblood 147

Exploring Literary Merit of Mainstream Videogames Through Gaming Literacy Theory April M. Sanders 168

Games as Technology

Playing Like a Girl: The Ludic Representation of Gender in Videogames Bryan J. Carr 189

Cultivating Play: Analyzing the Neoliberal Sub(ob)jects in Farm Ville 2 Alexis Pulos 210

Wii Play the Game Like U: Gameplay-Oriented Analysis and Games Criticism On/Off the Screen Sky LaRell Anderson 226

Blockbusters and Button-Mashers: Analyzing Cinematic References in Game Reviews as a Means of Convergence Theo Plothe 245

"Choices have consequences," Except When They Don't: The Illusion of Player Agency in Far Cry 4 Matthew Wysocki 261

Conclusion: Exploring the Ambiguity of Games Gaines S. Hubbell 270

About the Contributors 277

Index 281

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