Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds - Volume 9, Issue 3, 2017

The way people engage and communicate with each other has changed tremendously since the advent of virtual worlds and other online learning and social networking modalities. Technological advances have made it possible for people to interact with each other and environments differently. For researchers interested in these environments and people’s experiences with them, traditional research methods may not capture the nuanced nature of these online interactions. Some researchers continue to use traditional methods to examine participants’ online experiences. However, other researchers have adapted traditional methods to fit the unique nature of online environments. In a similar fashion, this work proposes a way to conduct phenomenological research that is specific to the online environment. The work deals specifically with the way one researcher conducted a study in a virtual world, but these methods can be used in other online environments as well.

This article explores the nature of sensation, perception and proprioception in contemporary digital and mobile culture, as exemplified in digital games. It argues that the application of theories of the phenomenology of perception to digital media and games needs to be extended and adapted to acknowledge and describe the sensing and proprioceptive abilities of technological bodies (both hardware and software) as well as human bodies. The article explores the idea that the embodied ‘feeling’ (proprioception) of virtual physics, particularly gravity, in gameplay experience must be understood as distributed across and through human and non-human sensing bodies. It will take the popular mobile game Angry Birds as a starting point, but will then explore the achievement of distributed proprioception in other games and games hardware more broadly.

What is the relationship between player-controlled movement and animation in game media? How do game worlds respond to the movement of characters through different types of space? This article will draw on concepts such as animation, figuration and vitality to analyse some of the ways that in-game animations and graphical rendering activity are activated by player-controlled movement through three-dimensional game environments. The sudden ‘blinking in’ of environmental features in the distant horizon as the player approaches and more gradual ‘filling in’ of graphical detail in objects such as plants, rocks and shadows close to the player character/camera in games such as Red Dead Redemption and Shadow of the Colossus provide materials for considering how animation might be developed as a concept for describing the connection between player agency and game-world visual activity in the said media. Graphical rendering properties such as draw distance and texture pop-in that are tied to the spatial relationship between a player character/camera and game-world objects will be some of the primary ways this dynamic of movement and animation will be analysed.

Dystopian settings dominate the video game landscape. Social collapse and totalitarian repression are amongst the favourite scenarios depicted in this medium. In this article, we offer a reading of these dystopian visions, not just as an aesthetic choice or gameplay trend, but as reflective of a ‘political unconscious’ latent in these games. These games are products of a very particular set of political, cultural and historic contexts, and embody key contemporary fears and apprehensions. To trace this we focus on how the space of the city has come to be a key signifier and site of dystopian anxiety in these games. Specifically, we look at how the city functions in two video games, Fallout 3 and Mirror’s Edge, to analyse the means and mechanisms through which game spaces manifest political logics. In doing so we ultimately seek to show how video games offer us insight into contemporary political change and order.

Also referred to as ‘jiggle physics’ or ‘breast bounce’, breast physics refer to the animation of a female video game character’s breasts in order for it to seem more realistic or more sexually appealing. To date, many studies have examined the role of women (players, characters and content producers) in video games and have found evidence that women can be underrepresented or presented as highly sexualized. The current study expands on this body of work by examining breast physics, one aspect of video games that lacks attention in the scholarly literature. This study examines discourse in the gaming community via journalistic reports of breast physics in video games. Explicit in these posts are instances in which women are presented for the consumption of others.

Educating in a virtual world

Learning in Virtual Worlds: Research and Applications, Sue Gregory, Mark J. W. Lee, Barney Dalgarno and Belinda Tynan (eds) (2016)

1st ed., Edmonton, Alberta: Athabasca University Press, 319 pp.,

ISBN: 9781771991339, p/bk, $39.95 (CAD)