Abstract
This study investigates the pedagogical possibility of games’ affective and representational references to technodeviance as play that is suspended in time and place and the possible narrative and coded forms that this process could take. I am informed by postcolonial theorists of play such as Stuart Hall and Gayatri Spivak, in order to discuss play as ‘planetary’ and suspended. A narrative adventure game, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, will inform my exploration as a case study here. The game follows a lone skeletal traveler in the Great Depression-era US, as they travel through the country looking for odd jobs and commission to gather stories, which they use as currency for more stories with drifters/character archetypes. It is a running commentary on collective storytelling and folklore, playing against contemporary, easy commodifications of storytelling, its mouth-to-mouth transformation as the world experiences the era of mechanical reproduction, and the ludic difficulty of story gathering. The game leaves an achievement perpetually unattainable, a design choice, which along with the prolonged ‘dead’ times between stories and repetitive design, infuriated players.
Presenters
Dora KourkoulouStudent, PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Video games, Techno-deviance, Public pedagogies, Affect, Play
