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Games Culture
Emma Westecott
Assistant Professor: Game Design, OCAD
ewestecott@faculty.ocad.ca

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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)

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Brian Sutton Smith’s
7 Rhetorics of Play

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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

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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

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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.

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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).

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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?

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• modding - subverting the rules
Waco Resurrection (2003) http://waco.c-level.cc/

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The Art Of The Game
MODDING - subverting the rule
Waco Resurrection (2003) http://waco.c-level.cc/

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The Art Of The Game
MACHINIMA - recording the engine
Dance Voldo Dance (2002) Chris Brandt
http://www.bainst.com/madness/voldo.html

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The Art Of The Game
INDEPENDENT GAME DEVELOPMENT - building games
with other intentions

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The Art Of The Game
INDEPENDENT GAME DEVELOPMENT - building games
with other intentions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEI9a2nedEs

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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

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The Player Character

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The Player Character
http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/zero-punctuation-bayonetta/338786

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The Player Character

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GAME ACTOR : Lara Croft
GAME AVATAR :
World of Warcraft Horde
ICON :
LocoRoco
The Player Character

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Mirror’s Edge
The Player Character
1st Person Camera

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Prince of Persia
The Player Character
3rd Person Camera

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“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

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'... 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