This document discusses games culture and the concept of games as cultural representations. It addresses how games both reflect and can transform culture. Games are considered as cultural texts that can be interpreted. The concept of play culture is introduced, where play enhances social life and early culture had play-like qualities. Different views on games and media are presented, including how games can be seen as art forms through modding, machinima, and independent game development. The concept of the player character is discussed as the representation of player agency in games.

1. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 1
Games Culture
Emma Westecott
Assistant Professor: Game Design, OCAD
ewestecott@faculty.ocad.ca

2. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 2Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 2
What is culture?
• There are many definitions of culture. Most of
them directly or indirectly involve what people
think, what they do, and the material products
they produce. Games culture refers to the
surrounding context of game-play itself.

3. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 3Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 3
The broader picture
• Considering games as culture entails moving
beyond the borders of the magic circle to
consider how games interact with the contexts
that lie outside the game itself.
• When we consider a game as a cultural
representation, we are considering game as a
cultural text, allowing for an interpretative
reading of a game.

4. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 4Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 4
Reflections and transformations
• All games reflect culture, reproducing aspects
of a cultural context.
• Some games also transform culture, affecting
genuine change.
• In addition to understanding that games can
represent and that they are representations
we can frame them as cultural
representations reflecting the meanings of the
contexts of where they are produced and
played.

5. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 5
Conceptual debates
Media Studies
• The effects of technology
are socially determined
• Active audiences
• Interpretation
• Spectatorship
• Representation
• Centralised media
• Consumer
• Work
New Media Studies
• The nature of society is
technologically determined
• Interactive users
• Experience
• Immersion
• Simulation
• Ubiquitous media
• Participant/co-creator
• Play

6. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 6Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 6
Play Culture
“Social life is endowed with supra-biological
forms, in the shape of play, which enhance its
value. It is through this playing that society
expresses its interpretation of life and of the
world. By this we do not mean that play turns
into culture, rather that in its earliest phases
culture has the play character, that it proceeds
in the shape and the mood of play.”
(Huizinga 1955: 46)

7. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 7Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 7
Brian Sutton Smith’s
7 Rhetorics of Play

8. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 8Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 8
Co-creative media & critical play
The old rhetoric of opposition and cooptation
assumed a world where consumers had little
direct power to shape media content and
where there were enormous barriers to entry
into the marketplace, whereas the new digital
environment expands their power to archive,
annotate, appropriate, and re-circulate media
products.
Jenkins, H. 2003

9. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 9Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 9
The Art Of The Game
• Where The Art Is Located?
–Not what games look like but what
game flow offers, the art of the game is
about the player, and provides a
kinesthetic poetry of performance.
• What Type Of Art Are Games?
–Time-based
–Performative

10. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 10Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 10
The Art Of The Game
The game experience results from the collision of game
world; game rules and game play in a given moment in
time. The palette that the game artist holds consists a
toolbox that creates these multiple media moments that
have the potential to emotionally resonate with a future
player. The intent of this form of choreography is to create
a synthesized player experience where the visuals, sound
and interaction converge to immerse the player within the
flow of an emotional moment.

11. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 11Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 11
The Art Of The Game
• Tiffany Holmes has used the term “art game” to
define an interactive work that ‘challenges
cultural stereotypes, offers meaningful social or
historical critique, or tells a story in a novel
manner’ (Holmes, 2003).

12. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 12Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 12
The Art Of The Game
• the lively arts
– digital games are coming out of the
entertainment closet e.g. political,
educational, social applications of form. the
dance between technology and art spawns
multitudes of new form e.g. locative
experiences, convergent media, etc.
– applying the lens of art history e.g. effect of
photography to liberate older forms from
realism, what might drive digital game form
to escape current aesthetic?

13. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 13Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 13
• modding - subverting the rules
Waco Resurrection (2003) http://waco.c-level.cc/

14. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 14Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 14
The Art Of The Game
MODDING - subverting the rule
Waco Resurrection (2003) http://waco.c-level.cc/

15. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 15Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 15
The Art Of The Game
MACHINIMA - recording the engine
Dance Voldo Dance (2002) Chris Brandt
http://www.bainst.com/madness/voldo.html

16. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 16Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 16
The Art Of The Game
INDEPENDENT GAME DEVELOPMENT - building games
with other intentions

17. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 17Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 17
The Art Of The Game
INDEPENDENT GAME DEVELOPMENT - building games
with other intentions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEI9a2nedEs

18. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 18Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 18
Engagement in games is manifest through the player’s representation
of agency. Our main mechanism for engagement in game is through
direct control of our player character, or representation of action in
game. A player character acts out the movements of the player and
marks her progression in game.
The Player Character

19. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 19Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 19
The Player Character

20. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 20Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 20
The Player Character
http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/zero-punctuation-bayonetta/338786

21. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 21Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 21
The Player Character

22. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 22Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 22
GAME ACTOR : Lara Croft
GAME AVATAR :
World of Warcraft Horde
ICON :
LocoRoco
The Player Character

23. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 23Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 23
Mirror’s Edge
The Player Character
1st Person Camera

24. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 24Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 24
Prince of Persia
The Player Character
3rd Person Camera

25. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 25Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 25
“We tried not to give him [Snake] too much
character because we want players to be able to
take on his role. Snake isn’t like a movie star.
He’s not someone you watch, he’s someone
you can step into the shoes of. Playing Snake
gives gamers the chance to be a hero.”
(Kojima, 1998: 43)
The Player Character

26. Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 26Friday, January 30, 2015 Emma Westecott 26
'... The fascination with
puppets… reaches so far
back into human history
that it must be regarded
as a response to a
fundamental need or
needs. It is, clearly, a
projection of the
obsession of human
beings with their own
image… More profoundly,
it reveals a yearning to
play god, to master life.'
(Segel, 1995: 4)
The Player Character as Puppet