Group items tagged

Thinking of gaming as an immersive, and aesthetic experience.

Following the article above I found another interesting article directly linked to gaming aesthetics and their introduction to the short film genre with the use of in-game footage (the festival was last year): http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/16/other-places-andy-kelly The Videos are worth a watch. Other articles on wired.co.uk are also worth a look. EDIT: http://www.otherplaces.co.uk/ ----> For a longer list of short beautiful videos consisting of ingame footage.

Anita Sarkeesian reports about the insults, threats of death and rape she is getting for *planning* a series about the representation of women in video games. The video focuses on the women owned game studio Silicon Sisters and the blogger of the harassment collecting website Fat, Ugly or Slutty too.

Thanks for the link Luise. Yes, this is the case that came to mind for me when you mentioned sexism and harrassment amongst gamers. I was particularly shocked by the "game" that one lad created in which users could beat Sarkeesian's face bloody. When called on this he seemed unable to see the violence inherent in the act.

Short documentary on the rise of professional competitive gaming. Comments by MIT anthropologist TL Taylor.

Not sure if this article necessarily belongs in digital anthropology but it's an intriguing way of getting around the banking sector by using a type of virtual commodity, the pre-ordered game.

A nice commentary on the nature of online discussions, especially dealing with matters of gender and sexism.

On FeministFrequency I found a video from a person who motivates other 'dudes' to speak out against sexist bullying on the web. It's just what came to my mind when I thought about how to change this discussion culture mentioned in the comic. http://vimeo.com/44117178

Thanks Luise. The video is interesting, though I have to say I found the editing a bit annoying, but that's not really the point. I think what he's saying there really relates to issues raised in the Dibbel article, and also connects with some of the things that Postill says in the article for this week's discussion. This is all about establishing the "rules of the game" for internet sociality, which is of course a lot about how to define and deal with anti-social behaviour. The category of "troll" has emerged to categorise a particular form of online a-sociality, but what exactly a troll is still seems pretty unclear to me, and the debate is raging about how to deal with them. Dibbel's "Mr Bungle" is a classic description of a troll -- probably from before the concept of a troll was very widespread -- and his article is precisely about how an online "community" suddenly found itself in the position of having to determine specific rules of socialising, including sanctions for those who break them. In Postill, he is also critical of concepts like "community", which are very idealised and hide the specific processes which characterise the development of particular modes of sociality. He argues that we have to have an openminded approach as scholars which matches the "frontier-like" character of these exchanges. I.e. these are people in the process of establishing the social. They haven't simply inherited it from their elders. I read into the discussion that followed the video and it's also instructive because there are some quite thoughtful comments on precisely these issues of establishing normativity online.