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The Rhetoric of Secondary-Authorship in Online Games/Communities
Online games provide a unique media environment in which players can affect and configure not only personal experience but the experience of fellow players. Players have the opportunity to reshape, recontextualize, and remediate a game's message at the level of narrative, gameplay and/or cultural space. This thesis work explores how secondary-authored elements (or artifacts) in online games may be viewed as means of rhetorical communication.
Game producers have long maintained a close participatory relationship to gamers and game cultures, even as mainstream media have struggled to maintain a strict hold on media ownership. Online games, in particular, exist in a networked, public space that supports all manner of discourse. It is only natural that these streams combine in the emergence of player expression through the manipulation of existing games. Online players take up the challenge of creating both permanent and ephemeral artifacts in games and game systems they did not create-- artifacts that are not part of, and often subvert, the initial game design(s). Many of these artifacts are tangible products of rhetorical acts, demonstrating persuasive or compelling arguments. While not all player artifacts are rhetorical, this research will highlight and analyse examples that do demonstrate player agency in creating rhetorical meaning, including game modifications, meta-gaming collectives, player-to-player design tools, and recombinant performance.
Past work examining player-authored components in games has mainly focused on particular types of game modification that exist in individual games (in particular, resistance hacks and patches). This research expands the scope of player-created artifacts to also include systems that run across multiple games, social groups and collectives, and artifacts that extend as well as resist perceived game intent. The goal of this study is to recognize and appreciate how game artifacts may be viewed as rhetorical, promoting meanings with regard to identity, agency, and boundaries.
Rhetorical Analysis as Methodology Why this approach? Games offer a unique format in which the player/audience has some opportunity to control and configure their experience. Interactive game players thrive on a sense of agency— a desire to see the results of their interactions. This desire is amplified in online games, which offer players the opportunity to communicate with a wide audience.
* Hauser, Gerald A. (1986) Introduction to Rhetorical Theory. Prospect Heights, Illinois, Waveland Press. |
Related
Research: Gonzalo Frasca Celia Pearce Espen Aarseth Raph Koster Anne-Marie Schleiner Brody Condon Torill Mortensen For more information or to read the complete thesis proposal, please email: research at multiplayer.ca |
