This document summarizes a presentation on digital games from a media industry perspective, focusing on production, distribution, and cultural aspects. It discusses topics like game production as a playful process, issues in representing diversity in character customization, and how games are transitioning from goods to services. It also examines distribution topics such as games functioning as platforms, crowdfunding campaigns as narratives, and remediation of other media formats. A culturally comparative perspective is provided by examining bootleg games, expressing culture within technological constraints, and performativity in transcultural game production.

1. Folie 1 von 25AP New Media and Game Studies – Utrecht, 01.04.2015
Dr. Stefan Werning (Media Studies, University of Bayreuth)
A media industry perspective on digital games.
Between theory and practice(s)

2. Folie 2 von 25AP New Media and Game Studies – Utrecht, 01.04.2015
Production (Studies)

3. Folie 3 von 25AP New Media and Game Studies – Utrecht, 01.04.2015
Digital games in the context of production studies
• Network structures in digital game
production
• Functions of game jams
for the independent games scene
(Guevara-Villalobos 2011)
• Foucaultian analyses of media
production
– Governmentality: political economy
– Disciplinary power: ‚Managing‘ guests in game
shows (Carpentier 2001)
• An ANT perspective on media
production (Teurlings 2013)
– Technological and economic phenomena as ‚actors‘
Guevara-Villalobos, Orlando. „Cultures of Independent Game
Production: Examining the Relationship between Community and
Labour.“ Think Design Play: The fifth international conference of the
Digital Research Association (DIGRA). 2011. [online].
Teurlings, Jan. "Unblackboxing Production. What Media Studies Can
Learn from Actor-Network Theory." After the Break. Television Theory
Today. Eds. de Valck, Marijke and Jan Teurlings. Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press, 2013. 101-16. Print.

4. Folie 4 von 25AP New Media and Game Studies – Utrecht, 01.04.2015
Digital games in the context of production studies:
The ludic quality of game production
• Game production as an
intrinsically playful
process
• The creation of Half-Life
– The Cabal as a set of ‚rules of play‘
– Self-imposed constraints and
‚remixing‘ challenges
– Design metrics as ‚goals‘
• Game elements within
agile software production
– Innovation games (Buy a feature)
– Planning poker
Birdwell, Ken. "The Cabal: Valve’s Design Process for Creating Half-Life."
Gamasutra. The Art & Business of Making Games (1999). Web.

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A software studies perspective
on digital game technology
• Conceptual bias ‚embedded‘ into
the interface and workflows
– Ready-made code for first-person shooters
• EXAMPLE: Asset marketplaces as
‚aesthetic eco-systems‘
• EXAMPLE: RPG Maker
– Fostered the differentiation and subversion of
Japanese RPGs as a genre
– Use of standardized art assets diverts
attention from audiovisual detail to
procedural rhetoric
• To The Moon, Always Sometimes Monsters

6. Folie 6 von 25AP New Media and Game Studies – Utrecht, 01.04.2015
A software studies perspective
on digital game technology II
• Issues of representing sex and
ethnicity in customizing avatars
– Technological rationales
• Different texture layers
• Parametrized colors for skin, hair, eyes etc.
• Modular meshes
• Brushes drawn onto the texture
– Cultural rationales
• Normalization (e.g. through default
settings)
• Institutionalizes representational
stereotypes in the form of presets
• Suggests an ‚objectifying‘ stance
• Imposes a specific (male) gaze

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A software studies perspective
on digital game technology III
• Institutionalizing new perceptions
of older media formats (Manovich)
• Example: Wwise
– Loops and triggers
– Grouping layers by function
• e.g. percussion or layered strings
– Parametrizable acoustic parameters
• Dynamic equalizing, simulated acoustic space
(e.g. digitally created reverb)

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‚Game pollution‘
• Abundance
– Cf. digital ‚culture of plenitude‘ (Jay D. Bolter)
– Caused by a multiplicity of production tools
and principles like content reuse
• Describes both the ‚symptom‘ and
the corresponding reaction
– Symptom
• Produces cognitive overload and stress
• Leads to a lower overall usage intensity
• Paradox of Choice (Schwartz, 2004)
– Reaction
• ‚Analytical‘ playing style
• Buying/browsing rather than playing
• Partially ‚automating‘ the reception
– Shutting out ‚noise‘
• Implications
– Design challenge for ‚serious games‘
Schwartz, Barry. "The paradox of choice: Why less is more." New York: Ecco
(2004).

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Distribution

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Transitioning from goods to services
• Epistemic shift
– Fostered by streaming services, real-time
metrics and upgrades/DLC
– Encourages distinct usage practices
• Comparable to perceptions of
early film ‚as a service‘
– Before standardization through the MPPC
• Comparable to Second Screen
effects on television series
– Live discussions on Twitter
Thompson, Clive. "How Social Media Turns Creative Pursuits into ‘Live’
Performances." Wired Magazine 2012: 35. Print.

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Digital games in the context of distribution studies:
Games as ‚platforms‘
• Digital games are increasingly
turned into socio-technical
systems
– Cf. (Niederer/Van Dijck 2010)
– E.g. tie-in apps or Youtube uploads from
PlayStation3 games
• Paratextual activity
– Games become ‚eco-systems‘ within the
digital attention economy (Herbert A.
Simon)
– ‚Let‘s play‘ videos, walk-throughs, parodies
• Games increasingly act as highly
specific social networks
– Accelerate the fragmentation and functional
differentiation of social networks
Niederer, Sabine and José van Dijck. "Wisdom of the Crowd or Technicity of
Content? Wikipedia as a Sociotechnical System." New Media & Society 12.8 (2010):
1368-87. Print.

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Distribution as a mediatized process: Crowdfunding
• Set between production,
distribution and monetization
• Performativity in Kickstarter
campaigns
• Kickstarter campaigns as
narratives
– Exposition, rising action, climax,
denouement
– Require emplotment (White 1992) of the
production process
• Self-Narrativization and self-historicization
• Create a recognizable and retellable story
White, Hayden. "Historical emplotment and the problem of truth." Probing
the limits of representation 38 (1992).

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Distribution as a mediatized process: Remediation
• Remediating distribution
formats
• Special edition releases
– Acknowledges aesthetic and historical
relevance: cf. the Criterion collection
– ‚Director‘s cut‘
– Bonus features on DVDs
Distelmeyer, Jan. "Spielräume. Videospiele, Kino Und Die Intermediale
Architektur Der Film-Dvd." Spielformen Im Spielfilm. Zur Medienmorphologie des
Kinos nach der Postmoderne. Eds. Leschke, Rainer and Jochen Venus. Bielefeld:
transcript, 2007. 389-416. Print.

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Distribution as a mediatized process: Game bundles
• Bundles epistemically link
games to music, films and e-
books
• Epistemic connection to cereal
„fun packs“
– Cf. (Bogost 2012)
– Marks the games as a „special treat [...]
to be repeated only occasionally“
• Reenact a form of ‘patronage’
– Alters the consumer-producer relation
– Consumers identify with the producer’s
perspectiveBogost, Ian. "What Is a Game Bundle?" Gamasutra. The Art & Business of Making
Games (2012). Web.

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A
Culturally Comparative
Perspective

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Bootlegs as a transitional phenomenon
• Distinct places, practices and
‚cultural‘ specificities
– Chinese bootleg stores in South Africa
– „There was some official PAL support, but it was
negligible and the cool kids imported”
• Symbiosis between formal and
‚informal‘ ecomies
– Create a sustainable and visible community
• Encourage the rise of regional journals, events
and eventually developer networks
– Informal Economies as transitory or ‚third
spaces‘

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Technology in a critical, culturally comparative
perspective on digital games
• Transnational distribution
reaccentuates the question
of cultural specificity
• Technological and economic
constraints on expressing
culture in video games
• Under Ash (Dar al-Fikr, 2001)
– Cf. (Galloway 2004)
– Unforgiving gameplay allegedly
‚signifies‘ social realism
Galloway, Alexander R. "Social Realism in Gaming." Game Studies. The International
Journal of Computer Game Research 4.1 (2004). Print.

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Playfulness in game production
• Player typologies
(Tuunanen and Hamari, 2012)
– Killer, Achiever, Explorer, Socializer (Bartle)
• Unearthed: Trail of Ibn Battuta
– The ‚achiever‘ mentality
• One of the first games for the PlayStation 3
developed using Unity 3D
• Pushing technical and administrative
boundaries
• Demonstrating competitiveness in terms of
technological and design ‚standards‘
– The ‚explorer‘ mentality
• Mapping out and adapting the Uncharted
franchise
• Industrial auteur theory
– Cf. (Caldwell 2008) on film production
– Implies a sense of ‘agency’
Tuunanen, Janne, and Juho Hamari. "Meta-synthesis of player typologies."
Proceedings of Nordic Digra 2012 Conference: Games in Culture and Society,
Tampere, Finland. 2012.
Caldwell, John Thornton. Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical
Practice in Film and Television. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Print.

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Performativity in transcultural game production
• Technological appropriation
– Unlicensed use of the CryEngine for
Special Force 2 by the Hezbollah
– Early Indian filmmakers using British
equipment to re-tell their own history
and mythology
• ‘Activist’ potential of
crowdfunding campaigns
– Kickstarter campaign for 1979
Revolution
• "I think everybody has a revolutionary
inside them...”
• Developer was marked as a spy in Iran
• Pledge tiers use the same semantics

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‚New media‘ formats as a
form of cultural expression
• Cultural self-assertion
– Raja Harishchandra (1913)
– Ashoka (2003, discontinued)
• Political and cultural
instrumentalization
– US-Army funding program for ‚patriotic‘
movies such as Pearl Harbor
– Special Force (2003)
– Egypt Game Jam

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Outlook

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A historically comparative perspective
on the digital games industry
• Interplay between academics,
reflective practitioners and an
increasingly self-conscious press
• Exchange of metaphors
– Film
• »Sculpture in motion« (Vachel Lindsay, author)
• »Music of light« (Abel Gance, director)
• »Painting in movement« (Leopold Survage, painter)
• »Architecture in movement« (Élie Faure, art
historian)
– Games
• „Chemistry of game design“ (Daniel Cook)
• „Narrative architecture“ (Henry Jenkins)
• „Petri nets“ (Natkin/Vega)
• Passage (2007) and Gravitation (2008)
as ‚Kuleshov experiments‘ for games?

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Independent game production as
‚collective simulation‘
• Simulation through feedback loops
– Production
– Feedback
– Contextualization
– Remaking
• Defining through constant variation
– Sophie Houlden, The Linear RPG
– Modding and genre mash-ups
• Dependent on production and
distribution modalities
– Archiving and forking (Git Hub)
– Online communities (Gamejolt)
– Game jams used for making sense of new
technologies such as Oculus Rift and the Ouya

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Media industry awareness
• Economic differentiation, particularly
within the digital games industry
– Users increasingly interpret and ‚understand‘ digital
media content as a ‚product‘
• In a second step, some users already
practically apply that knowledge
– Theorycrafting
– Selling user-generated content
• ‚Economic literacy‘ trickles down into
new media use in general

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Outlook: Economic literacy
• Runs across several categories of
„digital literacies“
– Language-based
– Information-based
– Connections-based
– (Re-)design-based
• Remaking, remixing
• Examples
– Improvised economies in early MMORPGs
– Economic game design (F2P, DLC etc.)
– Immaterial economies such as gift
economies
• ‘Economic literacy’
– Applies both to ‘reading’ and ‘writing’
– Using marketplace dynamics as ‚rule
systems‘ to address real-world problems
Hockly, Nicky. "Digital literacies." ELT journal 66.1 (2012): 108-112.
Dobson, Teresa, and John Willinsky. "Digital literacy." The Cambridge
handbook of literacy (2009): 286-312.