ECHANGES. Andrei Nae (Bucarest): Procedural Diversity in Video Games

Maison de la recherche, salle 2.44

In recent years, diversity has been a central issue to video games, as both game developers and researchers have been engaging with the question of how to make digital games, a medium that continues to be associated with white, heterosexual cis-masculinity, more inclusive. Under the influence of cultural studies, hegemonic representations of cultural identities have been the object of much academic scrutiny, which has led to an improvement in terms of diversity and inclusion. The number of contemporary video games featuring women or people of colour as protagonists has steadily increased and we have reached a point at which video games now also feature non-demeaning representations of queer people. Despite this positive shift, video games (especially AAA titles) remain a problematic medium from an ethical perspective. The problem lies in the fact that video games are a digital, procedural medium whose rhetoric is shaped first and foremost by immaterial game mechanics. It follows that an ideological critique focused solely on the material representation excludes the analysis of the central means through which video games communicate with players: game mechanics. To address this problem, in my talk I offer a theoretical perspective on ideology in game mechanics and show that gameplay in AAA video games amounts to various forms of domination. Furthermore, I demonstrate that inclusive material representations paradoxically reinforce the ideological effects of domination-oriented game mechanics by presenting procedural exclusion as exclusion.

Dans le cadre du cycle de conférences du CDFA. Modération: Fanny Robles (LERMA)