Genre, Technology and Embodied Interaction - The Evolution of Digital Game Genres and Motion Gaming - Gregersen

8/3/2019 Genre, Technology and Embodied Interaction - The Evolution of Digital Game Genres and Motion Gaming - Gregersen

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MedieKultur | Journal o media and communication research | ISSN 1901-9726

Article

Published by SMID | Society o Media researchers In Denmark | www.smid.dkThe online version o this text can be ound open access at www.mediekultur.dk

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Technology has been given relatively little attention in genre theory, but this article

argues that material technologies can be important components in genre develop-

ment. The argument is based on a historically inormed analysis o digital games, with

special attention paid to home console video games and recent genre developments

within this domain commonly reerred to as motion gaming.

The main point is that digital game genres imply structured embodied activity. A

constitutive element o digital game mediation is a control interace geared to player

embodiment, and I propose the concept o interaction modes to describe the coupling

o technology and player embodiment and show how this can be integrated with

genre theory. The resulting ramework allows or increased attention to continuity and

change in game and communication genres, material and digital technologies, and the

related interaction modes.

Introduction

When celebrated game designer Shigeru Miyamoto came on stage to introduce the Wii,i.e., Nintendos new video game console, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2006, hiswords were Tennis, anyone? Controls are simple, even your mom can play. He held up asmall, white stick-like object and proceeded to control a simple tennis game by swinging his

Genre, technology and embodied interaction:

The evolution of digital game genres

and motion gaming

Andreas GregersenMedieKultur 2011, 51, 94-109


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arms and hands vigorously while moving around on stage. The Wii and its commercial suc-cess spearheaded a development within digital games now reerred to as motion gamingby the gaming industry, journalists and bloggers. In this article, this term is used to identiy

and discuss a broader trend in gaming towards the physical movement o players and therelated technologies involved. Importantly, Miyamoto did not just introduce a new console,but also a new controller technology, i.e., the Wiimote.

This article uses motion gaming as an entry point to a larger discussion o the rolesplayed by material technology and player embodiment in genre developments within digi-tal games. Genre theory in literary theory, lm and television studies, and rhetoric has muchto oer the scholar o digital media and digital games, but the role o material technolo-gies tends to be underdeveloped in these writings, and this is where I aim to augment theexisting genre theory rameworks. The article seeks both to track genre evolution and todevelop the concept o genre with regards to digital games. In doing so, a tension betweengenerality and specicity must be observed: by abstracting away rom technology onegains the power o broad application, but loses the ability to see where material technolo-gies, in casu controllers, have made important dierences. In addition, technologies maytake generic or highly specic orms.

My argument is represented by three parts. First, existing genre theories, as useul asthey are, do not allow us to grasp an important material aspect o digital games, namelythe control interace. Second, the role o control interaces cannot be properly understoodwithout analysing the interactive eatures o the digital game system and the embodimento the player. I oer a conceptualisation o genre that takes these actors into account with-out giving up the virtues o existing accounts. I do this by both synthesising previous workand by introducing the term interaction modes to cover the embodied provinces o mean-ing entailed in digital game genres. To understand digital game genres and their develop-ment and appeal, we must look not only at the screen, but also at the coupling o interaceand player and the resulting interaction modes. Third, I show how recent developmentswithin the console gaming domain can be ruitully analysed within this ramework. In abrie conclusion, I summarise the results and outline a ew perspectives or urther work.

Genre in literary theory and the cultural industries

Their dierences untold, contemporary genre theory overviews provided by individualssuch as Rimmon-Kenan (2002), Frow (2006), Altman (1999) and Neale (2000) all argue orgenre theories which ocus less on stable taxonomies than on the fuid, situated and peror-mative character o genres. Genre texts may relate to many categories at once and genresare seen as historically mutable and in constant development. Within lm and televisionstudies, the concept o genre has additionally been tied closely to institutional and indu-strial production methods. Film and television are thus seen as industrial enterprises whichseek to minimise risk and maximise prots by using standardised production methods to


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make and market products that belong to specic genres or ormulas (e.g., Altman, 1999;Feuer, 1992; Hesmondhalgh, 2007; Neale, 2000). The result is a play between continuity andchange in genre developments: mostly the old and well-known, but with a sprinkling o the

new and innovative, oten by way o cross-breeding genres.A related reason or such a genre concept is that it allegedly cuts across production,

text and reception: genres and ormats represent a tacit contract between producers andaudience, and the product honors that contract (Feuer, 1992, p. 143). This minimises riskby [suggesting] to audiences the kinds o pleasure they can attain by experiencing theproduct (Hesmondhalgh, 2007, p. 23). Grodal (1997) ocuses explicitly on the emotionalpleasures o genre entertainment as well as on the role o human embodiment, the lattero which will be a major component o the ollowing analysis. The ollowing argument thuspresupposes that audience expectations and embodiment play an important role in theappeal o entertainment, in general, and digital game entertainment, specically. Beoreelaborating on this, I will introduce a genre theory which includes media technologies as acomponent in the genre analysis.

Genre and media technologies

Yates and Orlikowski (1992) dene genre as a typied communicative action invoked inresponse to a recurrent situation (p. 301)1 and such genres are characterized by similarsubstance and orm (Ibid.), where one aspect o orm is the communication medium.The authors also, however, distinguish between the physical means o communications(media) and the typied communicative action (genre) (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992, pp.310-11), and taken together these ormulations highlight a slight weakness in the consis-tency o the ramework, viz. the tendency to confate genre and medium. On the one hand,genres are dened partly by similarities o orm, one subdimension o which is medium the medium is thus understood aspart othe genre. On the other hand, media are to bedistinguished rom genres, the latter o which are understood as typied communicativeactions. A reasonable reconstruction o the argument is that genre, once dened as typiedactions, does not belong to specic media, but rather can move between media. Yates andOrlikowski themselves oer the ollowing observation: Though a genres orm may at onepoint include the medium, that genre may also expand into other media (1992, p. 319).This quote hints at the kind o situation I want to substantiate here with regards to digitalgames. Some genres seem constituted by specic technologies, others less so. Such relationswill change over time and, importantly, technologies may also expand into other existinggenres as part o such processes.

Later developments by the two authors introduce the related concepts ogenre systemsand genre repertoires, whichcover mutually related genres and the set o genres routinelyenacted by a particular community(Orlikowski & Yates, 1994, p. 546). In the cultural indus-tries, such genre systems can be identied at several levels, both at the level o industry


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sector, such as lm, television, music and games, as well as within these sectors, where somemajor genres may include several subgenres.

I will later show how changes in digital game genre systems have included changes in

situation, purpose, and material and ormal aspects o digital game technologies accompa-nied by changes in player repertoires. Additionally, the tension between material media andgenre should neither be disregarded nor subjected to exorcism. This is partly a matter oequally valid perspectives, since the same object may be analysed ruitully with or withoutattention to material technology. My primary aim here is to contribute to the ormer othese perspectives, and the necessity o such a perspective will vary: I will argue that techno-logy is integral to certain game genres while it can be seen as somewhat external to others.In other words, while some game genre denitions cut across aspects o technology, certaingames even i generic at some level may be tied very closely to specic technologies.

In the ollowing sections I will discuss interactivity as an important eature o digitalgames and argue that digital game genre theory, even when ocusing on interactivity, stillhas a blind spot when it comes to the specic material aspects o interactivity.

Digital games and interactivity

Digital games, in this context, reer to arcade video games, home console video games, andgames played on programmable personal computers; the terminology computer and videogames is sometimes used to reer to all three domains at once, but I will use the shorterterm digital games to reer to the superset o these categories. One o the most promi-nent debates within the fedgling community o digital game scholars ocused not on theircommon digital nature, but on other ideas o shared lineage, namely whether digital gameswere narratives or games (the so-called narratology vs. ludology debate). Although it hasbecome somewhat de rigueurto denounce this debate as both polemical and sterile, thediscussion and its implications are still important. Discussions o overall and undamentalcategorisation allow scholars to subsequently apply an established genre repertoire o aca-demic theories and related analytical models to an empirical domain. Narratology and ludo-logy both tend to abstract away rom the technological basis o the medium and the presentapproach seeks to rectiy these abstractions while preserving the contributions o both nar-ratology and game studies. We can thus ocus on interactivity, technology and embodimentand still acknowledge that digital games may share many traits with narratives and games.

It is a common assertion that digital technologies are interactive, and digital games areoten reerred to as interactive entertainment.2 Interactivity, however, is both deemed cen-tral to a whole eld o studies (so-called new media) and almost invariably introduced asproblematic, ill-dened, or not dened at all, as in, e.g., Heeter (2000), Jensen (1999) andKiousis (2002).3 However, together with McMillan (2006), these writings provide severaluseul points and reerences or analysis. Kiousis (2002) argues that media interactivity can beinvestigated rom three interrelated perspectives: the technology, the nature o the exchange


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and the users perception. The ocus here will be on technology. Heeter (1989) argues thatinteractive technologies can be analysed with respect to complexity o choice, user eort,responsiveness, monitoring o inormation use, ease o adding inormation and acilitation

o interpersonal communication. It has been argued that the most important aspect onew media is their acilitation o mediated interpersonal communication (see Baym, 2010)and I will return to this point; but the majority o the discussion here will ocus on the rstour aspects as an analysis o user-to-system interactivity (McMillan, 2006): digital gamesmay thus be individuated in terms ocomplexity, user eort, responsiveness and user moni-toring. (Steuer, 1995) argues that certain kinds o interactive technologies are designed tooster a eeling otelepresence, a sense o being there. He also distinguishes between vivid-ness and interactivity, where both are relevant here. Vividness depends on sensory breadthand depth, whereas interactivity depends upon speed, range o choices and mapping o useractions. Both vividness and interactivity infuence the experience o telepresence. Addition-ally, Steuer points out that interaction should be seen as meaningulrom the perspectiveo the interactor, a point central to the work o both Laurel (1993) and later Salen and Zim-merman (2004) in their analyses o game interaction.

A key point mostly ignored or let implicit in some o the work on interactive technolo-gies is that all o the aorementioned aspects o interactive technologies are interrelated,and together describe not just dimensions o media but rather media relationships all othe dimensions have ties to the embodied skills o the user and the way the system reactsto the exercise o those skills. Gaming is an exercise in skills and attainment o goals, andsome o the genre theories related specically to digital games thus tie genre to purposeand goals.

Digital game genres: Purpose and goals

Wols (2001) proposal or a digital game genre ramework is premised on the types o inter-activity demanded by the game structure, i.e., what the player is supposed to do to succeed.The result is a set o categories more detailed and sometimes quite dierent rom genresused by the game industry, game press and popular websites,4 but it includes most o thesemajor game genres such as sports, adventure, platorm, combat, racing, strategyand shooter etc., and oers many examples. A related but more recent example o digi-tal game genre analysis is oered by Egeneldt-Nielsen, Smith, and Tosca (2008), who alsobase game genres on a games criteria or success (p. 41) resulting in our overall genres,namelyAction,Adventure, Strategyand Process-orientedgames. This genre system abstractsaway rom dierences o material and digital technology and is based squarely on purpose,understood as the success criteria inherent in the design structure. The system does notinclude subgenres such as those used by the industry press, e.g., platorm or racing games.

When combined, these two perspectives allow or a reasonably ne-grained and cross-cutting analysis o established game genres and ormulas; e.g., a combat or racing game may


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veer towards action or strategy. The identication o the particular kinds o interactivityseen in games is also compatible with the more general eatures o interactive technologiesoutlined above, e.g., action and strategy imply dierent kinds o complexity and cognitive

eort to achieve success, and the game system monitors and reacts to player actions in di-erent ways. In addition, such a genre ramework allows or combination with establishedgenre categories such as western, sci- or antasy, all o which are relevant or classiyingproducts within the major game genres o action, adventure and strategy. What is missing,however, is a theorisation o how material technology enters this mix o interactivity, overallsuccess criteria and established genres. My argument is that material interaces can playa substantial role in game genre developments: specically, the innovation, evolution andconsolidation o interace technologies and their connections to game genres have been akey distinguishing eature o the recent motion game phenomenon but interace evolu-tion is also a strong undercurrent which runs through the history o digital games.

In the ollowing sections o the article, I will bring together the perspectives o the previ-ous sections. First, I will show how these can be used to analyse the history and continuedevolution o digital games and the material technology involved. Second, I will augment theramework urther by showing how material technology and game interactivity may be tiedto player embodiment.

Arcade and home: Situation and technology

Newmans (2004) discussion o arcade games and home platorms identies location andcontextas relevant parameters in digital game analysis and this can be elaborated with thecomponents o genre already laid out initially, namelypurpose, social situation and the mate-rial structure o technology. Even i they ostensibly involve the same game title and the samegenre, such as platorm or racing, arcade and home console games may be dierentiated bythese actors. Arcade versions thus have an overall and generally acknowledged purpose ocontinual payment o small amounts o money to gain access to playing games in a shortamount o time in a public venue with a possibility or spectators. In the case o consoles,one pays a comparatively larger sum o money once to buy hardware and games or privateownership and subsequent unlimited consumption in the home, with a resulting audiencerestricted to the private sphere. The latter crucially involves buying both console hardwareand individual games.

The home console market is currently divided by three hardware companies, i.e., Micro-sot, Sony and Nintendo, all o which also publish game sotware or their own consolesystems. This market has the structure o an oligopoly and sees widespread use o series,ormulas and sequels to minimise risk (or overviews, see Egeneldt-Nielsen et. al, 2008;Newman, 2004). All console platorms structure the situation o home gaming in particularways since once consumers have committed to a specic home system, they need to buythe game products or that particular system as there is no interoperability, 5 i.e., Nintendo


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games can only be played on Nintendo hardware etc. This means that every console has agenre system o its own, including fagship exclusive titles and small dierences in lineupand emphasis.6 This also, crucially, means that interace devices included in the system setup

may be proprietary as well.

Material media: Interace and control

Interace devices are the parts o media technologies that allow human users to exchangeinormation with media systems. In most digital games, physical actions o users aremapped (Norman, 2002; Steuer, 1995) to audiovisual representations: players manipulatethe interaces to jump, shoot or drive etc. in the world o the game. Newman points to thedierences ound in custom cabinets and interace technologies (2002, p. 14) which havebeen an important part o arcade history (Kent, 2001). In Newmans words, this is a dier-ence in the level o physicality o interaces, where arcade games have traditionally oeredinterace technologies that are comparatively more complex and involving than thoseseen in home consoles, which have oten used standardised controllers.7 It is let implicitin Newmans argument that such complex interaces very oten model real world mate-rial tools or technologies such as weapons and/or vehicles; the history o arcade machinesis replete with guns, submarine periscopes, airplane cockpits and race car interiors. All othese arcade games can be said to simulate specic real-world scenarios o technologicallyassisted action. They are thus a mixture o digital and material simulation technologies and this mix o digital and material runs through the history o all interactive entertainmentup to present developments.

All game interaces are closely tailored to human actors, i.e., physical embodiment just like any other technology which is intended or human interaction. As such, it isundamentally and importantly correct when Newman says that video games are a ormo embodied experience (Newman, 2002, quoted in Newman, 2004, p. 27), but it shouldadditionally be asserted that all human experience is undamentally embodied. Not onlydoes our common physical embodiment infuence the ways we think (see Gallagher 2005;Lako, 1987; Lako & Johnson, 1980), but we experience the world as acting physical bodies.Material interaces, their aordances or physical actions, and the mappings rom physicalaction to representation are usually given short shrit in genre analyses. But, the combina-tion o our common physical embodiment and generic physical interaces leads to genericstructures o action, or what I call interaction modes.

Interaction modes: The structured coupling o player and system

Frow (2006) argues that genres presuppose and invoke implicit knowledge which is organ-ised schematically, a point congruent with other cognitive approaches to narrative andgenre (e.g., Bordwell, 1985; Grodal, 1997). This has obvious parallels with the tacit contract


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mentioned previously: genre audiences know what to expect rom genre products, in termso orm, content and expected gratications. Frow reers to Alred Schutz concept o niteprovinces o meaning to describe the overall set o such genre-specic schemas, but he

also acknowledges that Schutz denes these provinces as experiential rather than repre-sentational (2006, p. 87).8 A shit in ocus rom mental representation to active embodiedexperience enables us to restate genres as not only representational provinces o meaning,but, in addition, embodied provinces o meaning as action. Genre not only implies structuredknowledge, but structures o embodied action: we know genres and we know what to dowith genres.

A given digital game genre can be seen as such a province o meaning as action. Follow-ing this, the interaction mode identiesgeneric structures ophysical activity when interactingwith the total game system. Players need to move their bodies in specic ways to aect thegame system and interaction modes are thus integral to dening games as nite provinceso embodied interaction. It ollows that an interaction mode is, emphatically, not the sameas a game genre,as that concept is described above, since it does not pick out genericityat the level o racing, action, real-time strategy or science-ction, but rather adds anecessary dimension o embodied experience to such generic descriptions.

It is possible to urther integrate Orlikowski and Yates idea o genre repertoire withinteraction modes since the overall set o embodied skills or interacting with technologyis a crucial part o thegenre repertoire o agents in a given community: gamers know theirgames, genres and the requisite success criteria, and they also know specic interaces andthe requisite interaction modes.

On the one hand, game genres as dened above allow or cutting across technology bypicking out categories such as racing games and shooters across consoles, arcade and PCplatorms. So, even i individual games are not cross-platorm, they will oten participate incross-platorm genres. On the other hand, interace devices and their requisite interactionmodes may be very important to the appeal o certain products. Such interaces may bespecic and/or proprietary to both arcade versions and console systems in various combi-nations, a tendency that runs through digital game history. Early targeting games availableboth in arcade and home versions used light guns pointed at the display; this genre wasmore or less dened by the combination o the physical gun accessory, its particular sensingtechnology, and the resulting aordances or a specic interaction mode, namely aiming.An arcade game likeAter Burner, a combat aircrat action game, was ported to home con-soles, but the arcade version included a large cockpit with hydraulics.9 The more recentmusic instrument interaces, pioneered by the Beatmania arcade games, saw a period obrie but huge popularity in their home versions, i.e., the Guitar Hero and Rock Bandran-chises.10 And interaces and interaction modes may be so idiosyncratic that they challengegenericity outright: a Nintendo console game such as Donkey Conga is obviously a rhythmgame, but at the same time one o a kind it comes with a pair o actual congas serving asinterace.


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Motion gaming has developed within this space o the generic and the specic withregard to interaces and interaction modes: motion games are not just designed or a specicconsole platorm, but are designed or a specic input device and thus come with particu-

lar interaction modes implied. The next sections describe how the recent motion gamingdevelopments within the home console system domain involve changes in technology andimplied interaction modes and thus in genre systems and player repertoires. I will start byintroducing the console that put motion gaming on the game map: the Nintendo Wii.

Gaming in motion: The Wii

The Nintendo Wii console was launched in 2006 as a bundled package o console hardware,the new Wiimote controller and sotware designed specically or this new control inter-ace. This ensured that the video game system unctioned as an integrated congurationo compatible arteacts as is customary with all consoles. But this gaming system impliedchanges in the overall recurrent situation oplaying video games in a private setting. TheWii and especially its Wiimote are structured or, but also structures, certain embodied useso the system, i.e., it is a component in interaction mode developments and thus in genredevelopments. People had to amiliarise themselves with this new interaction mode and itsspecic demands, such as upright posture and high-intensity wider reaching movements.The generic unction o the Wiimote is that o controller,11 but at launch time this instan-tiation was highly novel. At the same time it was to serve as a generic input device romthereon. I will now look at how this mix o the specic and the general the idiosyncraticand the regularly occurring had an impact on gaming situation, interaction genres, tradi-tional game genres and their development. Or, to put it dierently: in what respects did theWii and its Wiimote controller make a dierence in existing genres?

The computational power and structure o the Wii console itsel did not change muchwhen compared to previous generations o consoles including its own immediate predeces-sor, Nintendos Gamecube. Nintendo did not ollow the lead o rivals Sony and Microsotwhich were both committed to the development o system architectures that allowed oran increase in computational power and, as a result, the output o high denition audiovi-sual content. In Steuers terms, Microsot and Sony had opted or an increase in depth andbreadth o the video and audio signals, a console launch strategy that had become wellentrenched at that time (see Newman, 2004). They also pursued a hardware convergencestrategy, especially Sony, whose Playstation 3 was marketed on its multimedia capabilitiesand Blu-ray disc playback.12

Nintendo, in contrast, innovated on the level o input technologyin a move that detlytargeted a blind spot in the then-current video game system setups and their aordances.Instead o going or increased immersion and/or telepresence aorded by increases in com-putational power and audiovisual spectacle, Nintendo (arguably) sought to create bothincreases and dierences in kinds o immersion by reconfguring the relationship between the


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user actions and the actions represented on-screen; the most important aspect was increasedisomorphism between the two (see Gregersen & Grodal, 2009). What you did, the avatar onscreen did. This strategy more or less upended the console market and possibly expanded it.

The Wii thus introduced a new conguration o game technology which allowed thecomputer game system to register user activity and respond to thisin a dierent way thanprevious consoles. But, this also meant that the novel Wiimote had to be coupled to gamesotware that utilised the new controller in a meaningul way. The established overall genresystems o the previous console generations was thus subjected to potential changes less pressing and nudging, more actual swinging, stabbing and turning. Reviews o severalgames pointed towards problems with integration o the new technology, but Nintendohad made sure that the most rudimentary o genre systems was in place at launch: buying aWii entailed the simultaneous acquisition o console hardware, the new controller and thegame sotware WiiSports.

Motion gaming and established game genres

With regards to established game genres understood as previously presented, Wii Sportsincluded our airly primitive action sports games, i.e., Wii Tennis, Wii Boxing, Wii Base-ball and Wii Bowling. The Wiimote and Wii Sports thus exempliy how specic aspects otechnology may be said to serve a constant unction, namely that o input. The particularnature o this input technology, however, enabled genre developments within the estab-lished genre o action sports games in terms o overall purpose and thematic content andstructure. I one shits the perspective and prioritises the actions o the embodied player, i.e.,the interaction mode, the Wiimote provided a major development o both the sports genreand, potentially, the overall genre o action: players now got to experience higher intensi-ties in their body movements and the audiovisual eedback provided a richer isomorphismbetween embodied and represented actions with potential but certainly not guaranteed eects on the experience o agency and virtual body ownership.13

These physical movements were all taken rom prototypical activities known romeveryday mediated lie. A key component o the new interaction modes and the resultinggenre repertoire o players, namely its motor activity structures, was thus recruited rom arepertoire o previously existing but not necessarily game-related motor activities: thegames were, above all, simple motor action simulations.

Another related development was Nintendos establishments o stylised, customisableavatars called Miis which were cross-game entities. As such, increased ownership othe represented virtual bodies was technologically scaolded by allowing users to amilia-rise themselves with a partly customised and consistent virtual sel-presentation across theconsoles genre system. An additional and important part o these genre developmentswas a revision o a particular idea about games, namely that they should be challengingand involve special skills: Wii Sports was, initially at least, trivially easy. This ollows an overall


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trend in digital games towards so-called casual gaming, i.e., games which do not demandbig investments in terms o time or skills. But the ease o access-aspect o casual gamingcuts across several genres and platorms, and while casual gaming was certainly part o Nin-

tendos strategy, the Wiimotes specic impact was due to the act that players now could(and in many instances had to) perorm physical actions in ront o the screen (or discus-sion see also Juhl, 2010).

This combination o novel interace, avatar integration and casualness ran counter todominant and previously successul strategies employed by Microsot and Sony in the over-all console domain. Key games related to those platorms had traditionally been the quasi-realist audiovisual action spectacle o games series such as Gran Turismo, Grand Thet Autoand Halo. Nintendo took a dierent route by launching their new technology with a smallsuite o games which were very simple in terms o both representation and the actionsrequired in order to meet the challenge and the total genre system ormed around therecurrent situation o home gaming changed slightly as a result. All o the actors men-tioned above were to play some role in the responses o Sony and Microsot to Nintendosmarket grab. The innovative nature o the Wiimote and its dominant interaction mode oswinging and hitting would gradually be replaced by a larger class o related interactionmodes identied at a higher level o abstraction: the overall category o motion gaming.

At this point, however, one might ask whether motion gaming is a genre in itsel. This ispart o a well-known and thorny issue in genre studies, namely where the concept genre isproperly applied in terms o hierarchy and level o abstraction (see Miller, 1984, and Yates& Orlikowski, 1992, or some o the positions available). I nd a pragmatic and processualstandpoint as advocated by Yates and Orlikowski most useul: questions o genre and sub-genres cannot be settled once and or all, but rather allow us to pose interesting questionsin particular contexts at specic points in time. I do not see motion gaming as a genre inand o itsel, but rather as a phenomenon that ties in with genre developments, since physi-cal embodiment, interaces and the resulting interaction modes have had and still haveimportant connections to the evolution o game genres.

Motion gaming developments:Genre diversifcation, convergence and interpersonal communication

Microsot and Sony soon ollowed Nintendos lead by developing and launching their ownmotion control devices. Nintendo had or their part continued with their enlarging o thegame console market with their tness-oriented Wii Fitbalance board, but both in orderto preempt attacks within the more traditional gaming audience and to ollow up theirprevious hit, they released Wii Sports Resort in 2009. This game came with a Wii MotionPlus hardware add-on or the original Wiimote, which was marketed as a more precise andresponsive motion input controller. In both cases the combination o hardware and sot-ware was used to sell a complete experience, but in the latter instance, the category and


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success o previous motion gaming technology, its tailored game sotware, and the previousemphasis on social game situations was invoked by Nintendo itsel on the box:

The ollow-up to Wii Sports invites you to challenge riends and amily in a host o newgames like Archery, Basketball and Swordplay, and then take to the ocean around the island

to enjoy un lled water sports. Take your Wii Remote to the next level and discover all-new

ways to play with Wii motion plus (Nintendo, 2009).

Sonys Move controller rom 2010 combined Wii Remote-like motion sensors and a stan-dard web camera (the Playstation Eye), the latter o which has a precursor in Sonys ownEye Toy camera or Playstation 2, which allowed users to control on-screen actions with-out manipulating a physical controller. Sonys launch shows how many dierent genres ogames may be crossbred with motion technology e.g., sports, light gun-like targeting andcasual party games but a typication o recurrent action had already established itsel tothe extent that the act o launching a motion gaming control device should include a suiteo sports games tailored to the interace. Sonys oering in this domain, called Sports Cham-pions, tried to leverage Sonys position as a deliverer o non-casual, complex and challenginggaming experiences as evidenced rom their box blurb:

Compete in a series o ultra-realistic events that demand accuracy, ability and skill just like

real sport. Your movement is the key to success in each event; so just how good can you

get? Perect real lie sporting techniques grip your bow, reach or an arrow, take aim, pull

back and let fy. Use one or two Playstation Move motion controllers to play Beach Vol-leyball, Disc Gol, Gladiator Duel, Archery, Table tennis and Bocce. Challenge your riends

to multiplayer matches and work up a sweat to prove youre the greatest champion o all.

See your winning scores on the online leaderboards and upload victory poses to Facebook

(Sony, 2010).

The range o sports oered here is tied to both the proprietary controller and to socialantagonism and the exercise o skills. Also worth noting is the use o ultra-realistic: suchdiscourse o realist immediacy (Bolter & Grusin, 2000) is employed extensively by thegaming industry, and in this case it is applied to mundane and low-intensity sports, suchas Bocce, as well as the anachronistic, ctionalised, and high-intensity combat o GladiatorDuel. Both games eature isomorphic motor control, but are otherwise very dierent interms o both semantic content and player success criteria, i.e., domestic low-key leisure vs.antastic and brute physical antagonism. Note also the direct ties rom the agonistic struc-ture to Sonys own proprietary SNS-like Playstation Network (riends and leaderboards)and the integration with the dominating third-party player in the area o SNS, i.e., Facebook.One chie dierence rom Microsot and Nintendo, however, is the lack o cross-game cus-tomised avatars.

Microsots Kinect technology rom 2010 was marketed with the tagline You are thecontroller. In contrast to the other two oerings (but just like the original Eyetoy, only


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more complex), the Kinect is a camera-based interace which eatures no physical control-ler parts. The bundled game Kinect Adventures combine racing genres and primitive sportsgenres with possibilities or sharing pictures and sel-created motion capture animation o

living sculptures. Kinect Sports delivers the obligatory sports package complete with avatarintegration, and one o the most successul launch games was Dance Central, a dance gamethat arguably allowed or the most complex player gesture registration seen in digital gamesto date.14

The Kinect sensor technology also shows how certain combinations o material anddigital media may interact with genre not just understood as game genres, but also com-munication genres, as described by Orlikowski and Yates. The games using person-to-avatargesture mapping allow or in-game expressivity, but the recently launched15 product,AvatarKinect, aims to hybridise game and communication genres even urther.Avatar Kinectusesthe motion capture capabilities o the Kinect sensor to acilitate interpersonal communica-tion in the orm o chat between avatars with acial animations which are mapped romthe users real acial musculature to stylised animated avatar behaviour. This is an instanceo synchronous group communication (in one-to-one and many-to-many orms), wellknown rom computer-mediated chat applications, a sizable niche o which is avatar-based(see, e.g., Taylor, 2002).Avatar Kinectseeks to augment this experience with an increase inbreadth and depth o interpersonal communication cues. It also orges yet another linkto the dimension o sel-presentation inherent in the Xbox live avatar system, which alsomeans that the added dimension o body isomorphism coupled to interpersonal commu-nication may in turn oster even greater ownership o the avatar sel-representation acrosssituations.

Conclusion

I hope to have shown that technology has played an important role in digital game genredevelopments and that the concept o interaction modes is a helpul addition to exist-ing game genre theory rameworks, especially in the context o technologies such as theWiimote controller and the Kinect sensor. One outstanding issue is the question o com-patibility and similarity between dierent interaction modes and resulting genre develop-ments. Schutz original proposal dened the embodied provinces o meaning as nite andthus to some extent incompatible with each other; they mark o dierent ways o engagingreality, so to speak. This point can still be acknowledged while advocating a soter versiono the thesis: there is indeed something nite and identiable in these control technologiesand their interaction modes, but at the same time there are compatibilities across genreswhen dened at other levels, as just shown with the sports genre and dance genres. In addi-tion, an action shooter such as Killzone 3 can be played with a standard controller or witha rife-shaped Move accessory the same game sotware thus comes with two dierentinteraction modes.


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A nal and particularly important question is how these motion control interaces andrelated developments within digital games may impact the larger eld o mediated commu-nication. Each gaming console system has by now integrated applications associated with

important genres rom computer-mediated communication: all three gaming platormsnow include eatures well known rom social network sites, such as riends and messagingsystems, and the potential impact o control devices must thus be understood both in rela-tion to the gaming console system but also to communication platorms and genres whichare not exclusive to games. In this regard, the Kinect controller especially merits sustainedattention in the coming years. Although its early game uses saw a kind o sot technologi-cal determinism (Pool, 1983) in its limited uses as a game controller, Microsots strategywith regards to availability o Kinect Sotware Development Kits together with the innova-tions o a Kinect-centred PC hacking community (see kinecthacks.net or some impressiveexamples) have already demonstrated how the combination o industrial strategy, o-the-shel technology and enthusiast users may lead to genre developments completely outsidethe realm o original market orientation: the Kinect, or similar technologies, may becomea component in many kinds o interactivity, both user-to-system and user-to-user (seeMcMillan, 2006).

In summary, genre theory should be able to take on board the concept o interactionmodes to identiy salient patterns o generic physical interaction as an important part ogenre understood as embodied provinces o meaning. Technology and the connectionsto our physical embodiment can be key components in both game and communicationgenre developments. Thus, genres may move and cross-breed across media technologies,but technologies and embodiment may also matter in genre. Genres evolve, and so shouldgenre theory.

Acknowledgements

Support or this research was provided by the Carlsberg Foundation. The author would liketo thank Jason Gendler, Thomas Wiben Jensen, Rasmus Kjrgaard Rasmussen, the editorsand the anonymous reviewers or helpul comments on earlier drats o this article.

Notes

1. The theory is an elaboration o Carolyn Millers (1984) seminal work on rhetorical genres.

2. See Newman (2004, p. 7) or the cultural implications o this and other related labels.

3. Jensen (1999) argues or a distinction between person-to-person interaction and interactivity under-

stood as a person interacting with technology. While this distinction is important, there is little con-

sensus on restricting interactivity to only the latter McMillan (2006), or instance, distinguishes


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between user-to-user and user-to-system interactivity; also, both o these can maniest themselves in

the same situation.

4. See also Newman (2004) or an overview o industry game genres.

5. All console manuacturers have exploited the strategy o securing console exclusive games (see, Egen-

eldt-Nielsen et al., 2008, p. 90). Even when users turn to sotware piracy, they are still locked into that

particular system o technology.

6. For instance, Gran Turismo (Sony) vs. Forza Motorsport(Microsot) and Killzone (Sony) vs. Halo (Micro-

sot).

7. So have arcade games, the most widespread being a setup o one joystick and a set o buttons.

8. Schutz is a major inspiration to Miller, who subsequently grounds the work o Yates and Orlikowski,

and Frow.

9. After Burnerwas available in both cockpit and non-cockpit arcade versions, see http://www.arcade-

museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=6821. Accessed September 21, 2011.

10. Rock Band 3 is compatible with actual MIDI drums as interace a drumming game with an ultra-

realistic interaction mode.11. Including its specic sensor technology, which is excluded here in the interest o brevity.

12. Previous console launches promising increases in such actors had to some extent become generic, a

set o typied actions in response to recurrent situations on the level o corporate strategy. See Dovey

and Kennedy (2006) on upgrade culture.

13. See Gregersen and Grodal (2009) or more on action isomorphism, agency, and ownership o bodies

and actions.

14. The more dicult levels in Dance Centralshow that motion gaming should certainly not be directly

equated with the absence o challenge.

15. Fall 2011.

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Andreas Gregersen

Assistant Proessor, PhD

Film and Media Studies Section,

Department o Media, Cognition and Communication

University o Copenhagen, Denmark

[email protected]
mailto:agr%40hum.ku.dk?subject=mailto:agr%40hum.ku.dk?subject=

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Genre, Technology and Embodied Interaction - The Evolution of Digital Game Genres and Motion Gaming - Gregersen