Fun and Games
Communication as Play: A Pilot Study on Taiwan’s Line Sticker Agonistics
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ke Chia Chen, Hsiaomei Wu
The prosperity of Taiwan’s line sticker market has elicited an emerging communictive practice termed sticker agonistics, in which line group users enjoy communicating reciprocally with stickers rather than with word texts. How do these sticker lovers reach their chemistry? Using Lyotard’s language games and Huizinga’s perspectives on Homo Ludens as theoretical framework, this study explored the timing, the typology, and the implications of sticker agonistics. Five groups and a total number of thirteen users were interviewed and asked to provide sticker conversation samples for analysis. The findings showed that LINE users played agonistic games at spare time. Each group has developed their own tacit knowledge and formulated special ritual practices. Even if the sticker agonistics was at first for conversation, it turned out game plays, in which users enjoyed the pleasure of instantaneity and surfing. Sticker agonistic users are all Homo Ludens.
It is Simply Scripted - Gamers Practices as a Form of Resistance: An Example of Fifa Ultimate Team
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Piotr Siuda
In media and cultural studies heavy gamers are sometimes treated as subversive consumers, able to resist commercial practices enrolled by developers. Gamers are viewed as not belonging to the passively consuming mass. We can observe a constant tension between gamers and developer studios which try to sell games as if gamers would buy everything that is being served to them. The aim of the paper is to show the resistance of gamers when it comes to micropayment and selling game packs which are supposed to enrich gamers experiences and make the game easier. These packs are much more expensive than the basic game and very often result in a huge disappointments of gamers. The example used in the paper is Fifa Ultimate Team (FUT) – a game developed by EA which is a part of FIFA series. FUT is very often criticized when it comes to micropayment and game mechanics strengthening the need to buy packs. This research demonstrates this by analyzing several online FUT fans communities. By the means of in-depth Interviews, analyzing threads on communities and mechanics of the game, the paper proves that FUT gamers are in a way “opposing” developers. The research is an example of how gamers are appropriating media products for their own purposes – they create their own meanings, transform, and adapt games to their own needs. This has a democratizing effect on game consumers in general.
Proximity in Stories: An Analysis of the Construction and Consumption of Ephemeral Narratives on Instagram and Snapchat
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Laura Santos De Barros
The feeling of proximity was one of the main topics that emerged in a previous study about the construction and consumption of ephemeral narratives in stories. Therefore, this paper discusses how this perception of proximity between users occurs and how it is linked to interactions in the Snapchat and Instagram stories. For this investigation, the procedure consisted in identifying and selecting ten subjects who make intense use of stories using the snowball technique. The subjects then participate in a semi-structured interview. In general terms, the process of narrative construction and consumption in both Snapchat and Instagram stories occurs in an intertwined relationship with the quotidian sphere and five characteristics appear as potentiators of the sensation of proximity between users: the daily character, the ephemerality, the imagery aspect, the dialogical character, and the entertainment.
