Immersive Gameplay

This collection of all-new essays approaches the topic of immersion as a product of social and media relations. Examining the premises and aesthetics of live-action and tabletop role-playing games, reality television, social media apps and first-person shooters, the essays take both game rules and the media discourse that games produce as serious objects of study. Scholars of social psychology, sociology, role-playing theory, game studies, and television studies all examine games and game-like environments like reality shows as interdependent sites of social friction and power negotiation. The ten essays articulate the importance of game rules in analyses of media products, and demonstrate methods that allow game rules to be seen in action during the process of play.

Evan Torner is assistant professor of German studies at the University of Cincinnati, where he also serves as undergraduate director of German studies and the director of the UC game lab. He is co-founder and an editor of the journal Analog Game Studies. His fields of expertise include East German genre cinema, German film history, critical race theory, science fiction, role-playing game studies, Nordic larp, cultural criticism, electronic music and second-language pedagogy.

William J. White, an associate professor of communication arts & sciences at Penn State Altoona, teaches speech and mass media courses. His research interests include communication theory, the rhetoric of science, science fiction and games as participatory culture. He lives in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania.

Edited by Evan Torner and William J. White

Foreword by Zach Waggoner

Sarah Lynne Bowman

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 230
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2012
pISBN: 978-0-7864-6834-8
eISBN: 978-0-7864-9237-4
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      vi
Foreword by Zach Waggoner      1
Introduction
Evan Torner and William J. White      3

PART 1 : MIND BREACHES ROLE-PLAYING
First Person Audience and the Art of Painful Role-Playing
Markus Montola and Jussi Holopainen      13
Jungian Theory and Immersion in Role-Playing Games
Sarah Lynne Bowman      31
Circles and Frames: The Games Social Scientists Play
Nathan Hook      52

PART 2 : ROLE-PLAYING BREACHES REALITY
Role-Playing Communities, Cultures of Play and the Discourse of Immersion
William J. White, J. Tuomas Harviainen and Emily Care Boss      71
Gary Alan Fine Revisited: RPG Research in the 21st Century
Katherine Castiello Jones      87
The Agentic Imagination: Tabletop Role-Playing Games as a Cultural Tool
Todd Nicholas Fuist      108

PART 3 : REALITY BREACHES MEDIA
Kid Nation: Television, Systemic Violence and Game Design
Evan Torner      127
Survivor Meets the Hero’s Journey: Connecting Mythic Structures to Reality Television
Erik Dulick      147
A Game About Killing: Role-Playing in the Liminal Spaces of Social Network Games
Eric Newsom      168
Deleting Memory Space: The Gaming of History and the Absence of the Holocaust
M.-Niclas Heckner      184

Works Cited      201
About the Contributors      215
Index      217