UID:
edocfu_9961565771802883
Format:
1 online resource (209 pages) :
,
illustrations
ISBN:
1-5013-4399-8
,
1-5013-1664-8
,
1-5013-1662-1
Content:
Despite the pervasive rhetorics of immersion and embodiment found in industrial and social discourses, playing a video game is an exercise in non-linearity. The pervasiveness of trial and error mechanics, unforgiving game over screens, loading times, minute tweakings of options and settings, should lead us to consider video games as a medium that cannot eschew fragmentation. Every Game is an Island is an analysis and a critique of grey areas, dead ends and extremities found in digital games, an exploration of border zones where play and non-play coexist or compete. Riccardo Fassone describes the complexity of the experience of video game play and brings integral but often overlooked components of the gameplay experience to the fore, in an attempt to problematize a reading of video games as grandiosely immersive, all-encompassing narrative experiences. Through the analysis of closures and endings, limits and borders, and liminal states, this field-advancing study looks at the heart of a medium starting from its periphery
Note:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS -- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS -- INTRODUCTION -- A BOOK ABOUT EXTREMITIES -- Ryu's closure -- Every game is an island and no game is an island -- Against currentness -- STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK -- Three levels and some wordplay -- 1. TWO NON-DEFINITIVE DEFINITIONS -- WHAT IS A VIDEO GAME? -- Doing away with definitions -- Video games change through time -- What I mean by "video game" -- THE EXCEPTIONALITY OF VIDEO GAMES -- Digital exceptionalism -- The inflexible code -- Authoritative video games -- COMPUTER-MEDIATED GAMES -- Interaction? -- State machines and cybertexts -- The cybernetic player -- DESIGNED PROCEDURAL EXPERIENCES -- The project of experience -- Design -- Procedures -- Experience -- 2. GAME METAGAME -- FRAGMENTATION -- Overlooked and underrated -- Player-operated breaks: PAUSE -- Machine-operated breaks: LOADING -- Is this life reality? Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem -- METAGAMING -- Playing outside the game -- The legacy of dice -- Knights of Pen and Paper: role-playing revisited -- IMMERSION -- The utopia of total immersion -- Immersive fallacies -- Immersion, metacommunication, incorporation -- Through the eyes of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay -- HOLISM -- Flow: a scholarly tradition -- Designing for flow? -- Total interface: Uplink -- 4. GAME 〈〉 GAMES -- UNIQUENESS -- In search of the golden cartridge -- Curiosity and A Slow Year Distancing strategies -- A game I will never play Chain World -- EPHEMERALITY -- Reconsidering OSGONS -- Catharsis and procedures -- Review your choices: One Single Life -- MODULARITY -- Opera aperta 2.0 -- Mods and modules: Game engines as branch systems -- The flex of the wrist: Garry's Mod -- SERIALIZATION -- Playing nostalgia -- Xbox Live Arcade: series and -- as archives -- Sub-series, meta-games -- Old new games: Final Fight Double Impact -- 5. CONCLUSIONS -- FROM THE OUTSIDE IN -- Mom's heart -- Games are about ending -- Moving forward -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- LUDOGRAPHY -- FILMOGRAPHY
,
Also issued in print.
Additional Edition:
ISBN 1-5013-1661-3
Additional Edition:
ISBN 1-5013-1663-X
Language:
English
DOI:
10.5040/9781501316647
