Game in Society

Aller au contenu | Aller au menu | Aller à la recherche

vendredi 16 janvier 2009

How to approach ideology in videogames ?

I read Nate Combs' terranova post wondering about MMO political economy. Are MMO pro-liberal or dirigist ? What are pvp or gvg ideologies? Is Eve on-line democratic?

I did not try here to answer these particular points, but proposed a methodology to study videogames' ideology on a larger scale. Here are some of my PhD's researches thoughts.

Ideology in MMO is quite difficult to define as it is a mix of representation (kingdom, anarchy, etc.) + game goals and rules + practices instituted by players.

Lire la suite...

jeudi 4 décembre 2008

Videogame and speeches. Violence, addiction, regulation

Video games are polymorphic technological objects between audiovisual media, industrial game and computer program.

This technological convergence will be traduced by importation of old speeches from other areas. This profusion of discourses shared by multiple actors tries to define what videogames are in society. Archetypal example, addiction is at the crossroads of speeches on compulsive gaming (gambling), business definitions of addiction to the Internet, and refers to the imagination of drug abuse.

The social and political debates around violence, addiction, economic freedom are based on the speeches accompanying the previous media and games. These speeches are sustained by actors who play on their own and for themselves: some do not care about videogames but will use videogames to exist in the political field, as other will try to produce social demands for curing addiction as so they would offer remedies.

This struggle for definition is a political game that would lead to the social acceptation of their social function. The problematic imposition, as violence and addiction, is a political trick to win the monopole of definition and regulation. The expert who becomes the social and political normative reference would be the one who would regulate them and offer services.

Would videogames suffer from actors strategies and private interests? Who are the competitors, the socializers, the healers? As violence and addiction appear to be a social acceptation of videogames effects, without discussing the genealogy of this conceptions, this special issue n°67 of the French political science review Quaderni, will explore political competition on videogames’ social definition, mainly in USA and Europe. What are at stake are the public policy issues and legislative resolution. This issue should be a political handbook on videogames issues.

Lire la suite...