Is Serious Games Design Political? The Competing Logics When using a Game Engine

Edouard Pignot IKON Research Unit

Warwick Business School Coventry, United Kingdom phd11ep@mail.wbs.ac.uk

Abstract— this poster looks at how game engines silently incorporate ideologico-affective features, showing that technology, far from being value-free, is also politically and fantasmatically constructed, and this is especially important in the context of gamification, which involves a new vision of enjoyment and education.

Keywords—game engine, virtual world, ethnography, discourse analysis, Lacan

I. INTRODUCTION

Viewing information technology politically has a long history in technology and organizational studies and has generated various studies on the roles of power and ideology in the design process (e. g. Markus, 1983; Markus & Pfeffer, 1983; Knights & Murray, 1992; Levine & Rossmoore, 1995)

This paper seeks to enrich the politico-affective literature on IT design with both a new theoretical lens and the exploration of a new context through ethnographic studies conducted in serious games studios. My main contribution will be to utilize a discursive approach derived from the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (2006), including political theorists from the Essex School of Discourse Analysis (e. g. Glynos and Howarth, 2008; Laclau & Mouffe, 1985) and philosophers (Butler, 1992; Zizek, 1989; 2006) arguing in this circle. From this perspective, it is not the artefact per se which is central but rather how meaning about the software and identity of the developers, are both constructed during the development process.

Thus, this study will let the designers and the users talk and look at how game engines silently incorporate ideological features, showing that technology, far from being value-free, is also politically constructed, and it’s especially important in the context of gamification, which involves a new vision of education. Serious games design is actually a particularly promising setting to observe as developers have the ambition and capacity to deeply transform education, healthcare and business sectors. To name a few, practices like online learning, project management, real-time simulation or even virtual currencies are concerned with game design (Bray and Konsynski, 2007; Schultze, 2010; Schultze and Orlikowski, 2010 etc.)

II. WHAT IS THE LOGICS APPROACH

In Glynos and Howarth’s framework (2007), social practices are governed by three logics: namely social, political and fantasmatic. The social logic captures what rules, norms and self-understanding inform a practice. The political logic aims at showing how social practices historically come into being or are transformed. Finally, the fantasmatic logic explains why subjects are gripped by a specific practice or regime.

Recently, Panourgias et al. (2013) drawing on ANT theory, have looked more specifically at how affective, cultural and esthetic features are mobilized when developing computer games focusing on the game engine. A Lacanian approach offers new insights by examining the way the subjectivity of designers is absorbed in the technology they are using. Thus, the game engine is understood here as an epistemic object organizing the desire around him (Nicolini, et. al 2011). Its power stems from the lack of completeness that generates energy and emotional investment on the part of the developers (Knorr Cetina, 1999). These early studies invite us to pursue an in-depth account into the affective context in which decisions are made about technology. This empirical study will follow the signifier “game engine” and the discursive process through which Unity3D has become hegemonic for the stakeholders of two serious game studios and then adopted instead of alternative options like Second Life, OpenSim, UDK etc.

III. RESEARCH QUESTIONS

How developers decide on which game engines to use? How developers cope with conflicting opinions, resistance, challenges? Are game engines 'politically' driven? What are the competing logics involved in this decision? What are the strategies and fantasy narratives underpinning these decisions?

IV. APPROACH This study is of exploratory nature and combines ethnographic studies of two serious games studios (one is still ongoing), interviews, visual and documentary analysis (white papers, game engines community forums etc…) For the purpose of the study, I have observed (or am observing) two particular projects (virtual mountain for geologist and a serious game for elderly people to develop confidence in moving out) by attending regular debriefs, code reviews and doing video-observation of the programmers work.

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V. FINDINGS A logics approach is mobilized to study game design as a nexus of social, political and fantasmatic logics. This framework has been used only sporadically in critical management studies (Glynos, 2011; Glynos et al. 2012) and not yet in STS. Its distinctive feature is to foreground the centrality of the affective dimension of practices. A first ethnographic immersion into the gaming community has generated the following results:

The use of a particular programming language and structure of code corresponds to the social logic in the sense that they constitute the rules and grammar organizing a particular regime of scripting. The choice of a game engine represents a moment of dislocation in which a dominant practice of scripting is protected or challenged:

- it was an epiphany because we not thought about it ourselves before that, we were stuck in the mindset of what we’ve done on OpenSim before and suddenly we realized that if we do that it not only freed up the users to do whatever they want, it actually made our lives easier because we don’t have to put these pre-made scenarios, and handle each of them separately, and it was bit scary at the time but it was one of the big decision that we made (programmer)

- The political logic captures the way developers respond to

this dislocation, how they try to cover over the lack, to create the desire for new identification or reactivate an old one, to reconstitute the coherence of the fantasmatic reality (Stavrakakis, 1999) In fact, “different philosophies” co-exist regarding the role of scripting.

- Unity was written for programmers, I think OpenSim and SL are written

more for the artist that builds the models, it was written more for the end-user so they can quickly go into the world and edits that world but in Unity if you want to edit the world it’s very difficult to do (programmer)

What is the fantasy sustaining the grip of the programmers’

regime? The website of the famous software company praises its “democratic ecosystem smashing cost and time”. However, Unity imposes a particular ideological structure, a certain right way to do the job and new pattern of rules of professionalism. Certain users positively identify to this elitist attitude:

- Without sources, I don’t see any interest on UDK, you don’t have the same low level of access as in Unity. Sure, Unreal modders will be happy now. But am not a modder, am a game programmer.

This reveals the conflict between two opposite logics, namely the pre-emptive logic of the modder (the hacker being the most extreme in this logic of emancipation) who enjoys modifying pre-existing environment and the restorative logic of the programmer who doesn’t challenge the status quo but enjoys Unity in the right way:

- They are using Unity to build a livelihood doing what they love: creating games that hook and delight players on any platforms (quote from Unity’s website)

VI. ABOUT US

IKON (the Innovation, Knowledge and Organizational Networks research unit) is a research network based at Warwick Business School. Its members carry out funded research projects on the creation, translation and adoption of organizational and technological innovations, knowledge and practices. IKON studies these processes mainly, albeit not exclusively, in the biomedical and healthcare sectors.

Project Members: Edouard Pignot (WBS), Davide Nicolini (WBS) and Joe Nandhakumar (WBS)

VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY [1] Lacan, J. 1977. Ecrits: A Selection. Trans: Alan Sheridan. London

Tavistock. [2] Laclau, E., C. Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and socialist strategy : towards

a radical democratic politics. Verso, London ; New York. [3] Glynos, J., D.R. Howarth. 2007. Logics of critical explanation in social

and political theory. Routledge, New York, NY. [4] Orlikowski, W.J. 2000. Using technology and constituting structures: A

practice lens for studying technology in organizations. Organization Science 11(4) 404-428.

[5] Panourgias, N. S., Nandhakumar, J., Scarbrough, H. 2013. Entanglements of creative agency ad digital technology: A sociomaterial study of computer game development. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2013.03.010

[6] "Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts", in Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, edited by Wiebe E. Bijker & John Law, MIT Press, USA, 1992, pp. 225–258.

[7] Zizek, S. 1989. The sublime object of ideology. Verso, London

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