Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2011

The regulation of video games in the United Kingdom has come under the authority of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) since the 1980s, but the system was extended in 2010 and a new authority will take over from them in due course. This article considers the history of this regulatory system, arguing that the limitations of the Video Recordings Act (VRA) (the governing statute) and the assumptions made by legislators are a result of the gulf between legal and academic understandings of games. Furthermore, the range of games now played, such as casual downloadable games and applications on smartphones and mobile devices, means that the dividing line between regulated and unregulated may be based on history instead of necessity. The author draws upon legal decisions, regulatory statements, and general and specialist press reports, alongside the academic literature on games from the humanities and the social sciences, arguing that an alternative form of legal control could be informed by advances in the academic and cultural understanding of video games.

This article looks at the ‘culture of cheating’ within a specific virtual gaming world, Neopets. It argues that this ‘culture of cheating’, informed by a neo-liberal capitalist discourse, has been embedded in the structure of the world. Thus, Neopets promotes an image of wealth as accumulation and as an expression of individual will and effort. Cheating becomes an instrument for personal achievement in a world where access to resources has been designed as unequal. In the case discussed here, socialization within this world may be interpreted as offering users an experience of neo-liberal capitalism that renders inequality as a ‘natural’ consequence of individual choices. What remains hidden is precisely the interweaving of social processes and technical design in constructing this neo-liberal capitalist experience of the world in the first place.

The aim of this article is to investigate how food in the sense of organic and synthetic, domestic and political energy supply systems is represented in a selection of gendered (Desperate Housewives and Quake 4) and agendered (The Sims 2) video games. The games were chosen on the basis of their representations of gendered space and, closely related to it, of food and other energy supply systems. I propose a spectrum between the feminized private sphere and the masculinized public sphere (cf. Habermas 1989). The society simulation Desperate Housewives is discussed as an extreme example of the former and juxtaposed to first person shooter (FPS) Quake 4, a radical example of the latter. The Sims 2, which takes an agendered approach to both spheres, is examined as a compromise between both polar opposites. Unlike many other video game genres, such as adventures, role-playing games and society and civilization simulations, FPSs tend to delete semiotically the basic human need for organic nutrition. Instead, they typically feature abstract, synthetic energy supply systems, which are integrated in the circular structure of physical rejuvenation and exhaustion. Quake 4 has been selected for this food-semiotic study as it displays the human body as processable, technologically modifiable matter for alien consumption and reincarnation – as a neo-Frankensteinian, infinitely recyclable repository of animate yet simultaneously disembodied substitutes, accessories or supplements used to form cyborgian hybrids for the sustenance of Gothic war machines. My theoretical discussion centres around relevant aspects of food cultural and semiotic theory, as well as the ludological implications of the essentially anti- Cartesian discourse of transcendence and the theory of the double-situatedness of the gaming body.

This article surveys various differing approaches to religious simulation in gaming and interactive art, and reports on the design of a specific faith-based game from the designer’s perspective. It looks in-depth at one of a series of short experimental video games that explore the use of game mechanics to simulate various aspects of religious faith. A number of serious and casual games have been produced over the years by companies catering to religious audiences. These often merely add religious themes to mechanics appropriated from popular games. An example of this would be Cougar Interactive’s Zoo Race (2007), which thinly drapes the narrative of Noah’s Ark over a racing game. Although there are a small number of independent games that have begun to approach religious and spiritual ritual, such as Ian Bogost’s Guru Meditation (2009a), most religious games do not attempt to simulate the internal cognitive processes of faith. This article argues that there are opportunities that these games are missing in creating original gameplay that adds to a deeper understanding of their subject matter. The author demonstrates the idea that games, which through their rules have shown that they can provoke emotion and reflection in the player, can also simulate certain processes of faith.

FUN AND INFAMY IN A COMIC BOOK WORLD inFamous, Sucker Punch Productions (2009), Foster City, CA: Sony Computer Entertainment America, $26.99 (USD) THE COLLISION OF MEDIA: SURVIVAL HORROR AND GENRE STUDIES Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play, Bernard Perron (ed.) (2009), Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., 310 pp., ISBN: 978-0-786-44197-6, Paperback, $35.00 (USD)

EDITOR’S NOTE A MOVIESTORM IS BREWING: HARDY CAPO’S AND CHAT NOIR STUDIOS’ MACHINIMA PRODUCTIONS LOWE RUNO’S ACTION FLICK PART ONE, RESCUE AND PERDITION CLOSING REMARKS FROM THE MACHINIMA REVIEW EDITOR: THE CONNE RIVER MACHINIMA PROJECT