Mark R. Johnson

Gamification: What it is, and how to fight it

‘Gamification’ is understood as the application of game systems – competition, rewards, quantifying player/user behaviour – into non-game domains, such as work, productivity and fitness. Such practices are deeply problematic as they represent the capture of ‘play’ in the pursuit of neoliberal rationalization and the managerial optimization of working life and labour. However, applying games and play to social life is also central to the Situationist International, as a form of resistance against the regularity and standardization of everyday behaviour. In this article, the authors distinguish between two types of gamification: first, ‘gamification-from-above’, involving the optimization and rationalizing of work practices by management; and second, ‘gamification-from-below’, a form of active resistance against control at work. Drawing on Autonomism and Situationism, the authors argue that it is possible to transform non-games into games as resistance, rather than transferring game elements out of playful contexts and into managerial ones. Since the original ‘gamification’ term is now lost, the authors develop the alternative conception as a practice that supports workers, rather than one used to adapt behaviour to capital. The article concludes with a renewed call for this ‘gamification-from-below’, which is an ideal form of resistance against gamification-from-above and its capture of play in pursuit of work.

Fighting games and Go: exploring the aesthetics of play in professional gaming

This paper examines the varied cultural meanings of computer game play in competitive and professional computer gaming and live-streaming. To do so it riffs off Andrew Feenberg’s 1994 work exploring the changing meanings of the ancient board game of Go in mid-century Japan. We argue that whereas Go saw a de-aestheticization with the growth of newspaper reporting and a new breed of ‘westernized’ player, the rise of professionalized computer gameplay has upset this trend, causing a re-aestheticization of professional game competition as a result of the many informal elements that contribute to the successes, and public perceptions, of professional players. In doing so we open up the consideration of the aesthetics of broadcasted gameplay, how they reflect back upon the players and the game, and locate this shift historically and culturally within the last two decades of computer games as a creative industry, entertainment industry, a media form, and as an embodied practice.

The Anticipated Futures of Space Tourism

Abstract This paper examines the development of the ‘space tourism’ industry, a concept which primarily denotes the development of space technology for recreational or leisure purposes. It will first theoretically locate space tourism with relevant streams of the mobilities literature, primarily research on aeromobilities and tourism mobilities. It will then summarise existing literature on space tourism, focusing especially on the different models of space tourism that have been proposed and the subtle but important differences between them. The analysis then explores the perceptions of feasibility of space tourism from those within the space sector, the anticipated changes to living these forms of space tourism would bring with them, and the comparisons with existing forms of mobility that are drawn by many in the space sector when attempting to ‘sell’ the value and potential of space tourism. In the final part of the paper, we explore many of the implicit assumptions held by this nascent industry, the uncertain position of the passenger within these conceptions of future space tourism, and identify avenues for future research into this emerging form of mobility.

‘It’s like the gold rush’: the lives and careers of professional video game streamers on Twitch.tv

ABSTRACT This paper explores the lives and careers of video game live broadcasters, especially those who gain their primary real-world income through this practice. We introduce the dominant market leader – the platform Twitch.tv – and outline its immensely rapid growth and the communities of millions of broadcasters, and tens of millions of viewers, it now boasts. Drawing on original interview data with professional and aspiring-professional game broadcasters (‘streamers’), we examine the pasts, presents, and anticipated futures of streamers: how professional streamers began streaming, the everyday labour practices of streaming, and their concerns and hopes about the future of their chosen career. Through these examinations we explore the sociotechnical entanglements – digital intimacy, celebrity, content creation, and video games – that exemplify this new media form. Live streaming is an online practice expanding in both production and consumption at immense speed, and Twitch and its streamers appear to be at the forefront of that revolution.

Bullet Hell: The Globalized Growth of Danmaku Games and the Digital Culture of High Scores and World Records

Johnson examines “bullet hell” or “danmaku” games and unpicks their relationships to Eastern and Western gaming cultures and competitive and non-competitive gamers. He first traces the genre’s history and its subsequent spread from Japan into the West, before focusing on the extraordinarily high levels of reflex and eyesight required to play them at the highest level. The chapter then examines several interrelated issues: the epistemological uncertainty surrounding the concept of world records in a community without any centralized database of information, the newly globalized culture of high scores and why less-skilled players choose to play games with such an extreme reflex requirement. It concludes by summarizing the present state of the genre and the place of danmaku in the broader world of gaming.

Casual Games Before Casual Games: Historicizing Paper Puzzle Games in an Era of Digital Play:

This article examines “paper puzzle games”—crosswords, Sudoku, Kakuro, word searches, and so forth—in order to historicize and contextualize “casual games,” complicate our notions of “casual” play, and open up paper puzzle games to game studies consideration for the first time. The article begins by identifying the dearth of literature on paper puzzle games and offers an initial examination of these games through the lens of casual games, play, and players. It focuses on six traits in casual game design: appealing themes, ease of access, ease of learning, minimal required expertise, fast rewards, and temporal flexibility. It demonstrates that—from a perspective of mechanics, demographics, and contexts of play—paper puzzle games are excellent examples of casual games and therefore important to fully study. It also shows the complexity of paper puzzles as a topic in their own right, opening them up for future examination.

The Use of ASCII Graphics in Roguelikes Aesthetic Nostalgia and Semiotic Difference

This article explores the semiotics of the “roguelike” genre. Most roguelikes reject contemporary advances in graphical technology and instead present their worlds, items, and creatures as American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) characters. This article first considers why this unusual graphical style has endured over time and argues that it is an aesthetic construction of nostalgia that positions roguelikes within a clear history of gameplay philosophies that challenge the prevailing contemporary assumptions of role-playing games. It second notes that the semantic code for understanding the ASCII characters in each and every roguelike is different and explores the construction of these codes, how players decode them, and the potential difficulties in such decodings. The article then combines these to explore how such visuals represent potential new ground in the study of game semiotics.