Search results for "pelihahmot"
showing 7 items of 7 documents
Constructing identities in San Andreas : characterizing the protagonists in Grand Theft Auto V
2015
Digitaalisten pelien merkitys on nykyään huomattava taloudellisesti ja kulttuurisesti. Ihmiset käyttävät aikaa ja rahaa digitaalipelien pelaamiseen enemmän kuin koskaan aikaisemmin ja pelaajamäärät kasvavat jatkuvasti. Yksi viime vuosien suurimmista digitaalipeleistä, niin budjetiltaan kuin pelaajamäärältäänkin, on Grand Theft Auto V. Lisäksi GTA V on saanut erinomaiset arvostelut ja peliä pidetäänkin yhtenä parhaana digitaalipelinä kautta aikojen. Erityisesti pelin hahmoja on kehuttu. Edellä mainittujen seikkojen perusteella GTA V -pelin päähahmot, Michael, Franklin ja Trevor, ovat tämän tutkimuksen keskiössä. Tutkimuksessa Grand Theft Auto V -peliä tarkastellaan kulttuurituotteena. Päähah…
“Sexuality does not belong to the game” : Discourses in Overwatch Community and the Privilege of Belonging
2022
Players can experience a sense of belonging to videogames and the transmedial worlds surrounding them. There nevertheless exist ongoing negotiations over who has the right to belong to these spaces. Multiple works addressing related issues have highlighted that white heterosexual men still maintain the position of power in the majority of game communities (e.g., Consalvo, 2012; Paul, 2018). This position can translate into an ease of belonging while others can find themselves struggling for the right to belong. We examine the transmedial world of Overwatch, an online game, as a place of belonging and non-belonging. Since the game’s launch, two characters have been revealed as queer. In cont…
Fictosexuality, Fictoromance, and Fictophilia: A Qualitative Study of Love and Desire for Fictional Characters
2021
Fictosexuality, fictoromance, and fictophilia are terms that have recently become popular in online environments as indicators of strong and lasting feelings of love, infatuation, or desire for one or more fictional characters. This article explores the phenomenon by qualitative thematic analysis of 71 relevant online discussions. Five central themes emerge from the data: (1) fictophilic paradox, (2) fictophilic stigma, (3) fictophilic behaviors, (4) fictophilic asexuality, and (5) fictophilic supernormal stimuli. The findings are further discussed and ultimately compared to the long-term debates on human sexuality in relation to fictional characters in Japanese media psychology. Contexts f…
Playing the Nonhuman : Alien Experiences in Aliens vs. Predator
2020
What is it like to play a nonhuman character? In his classic essay, philosopher Thomas Nagel (1975) argues that we are fundamentally unable to imagine what it is like to be a bat, because our senses and cognition are structured in a way that is uniquely human – whereas bats’ senses and cognition have a uniquely bat-like configuration. In spite of this, media genres from fantasy to science-fiction routinely strive to imagine and show what it could be like to be something other than human. What is more, different media achieve this effect by different means: literature provides textual descriptions, audio-visual media rely on moving images, and comics employ different kinds of multimodal comp…
In Search of Characters Without Signifiers
2022
This essay explores the question whether characters can exist without being signified in any way. If characters can exist trans-medially, independently of a particular form of signification or sign-vehicle, why not exist without any signification at all? What kind of existence would such a character have? And, paradoxically, what would examples look like? While the question at face value might appear logically invalid, I argue that at (or just beyond) the minimalist end of the character-representational spectrum, we find what might be called implied characters, that is, characters that are not in any way given, represented, named, or performed, but can only exist in the minds of their playe…
Player Reception of Change and Stability in Character Mechanics
2022
AbstractChange is a constant element of online games, and Overwatch as well as its playable characters have been through multiple changes since the launch of the game in 2016. In this chapter, we examine the relationships players have with the playable characters of Overwatch and specifically the role that character mechanics have in these relationships. Changes to game characters are a topic of avid discussion in Overwatch communities and evoke articulations of the meaning of game characters for the players.
"I never gave up"
2019
Esports phenomena have grown rapidly in recent years, and so has research on the topic. Some of the research has also addressed esports fandom (see e.g. Taylor 2012). Nevertheless, studies comparing and contrasting how players and fans engage with the game and the esports based on that game are scarce. This study compares and contrasts how players and fans engage with playable game characters and esports players. The paper draws on previous research in fan studies, sports fandom and esports to examine the relationships of players and fans of the videogame Overwatch (Blizzard Entertainment 2016) with the fictional heroes of the game as well as with their favorite professional players in the …