Manchester Game Studies Network (Transcript)

In this episode, we explore some of the research focuses of the Manchester Game Studies Network.

Featuring: Tom Brock on the turn of gambling in digital games and how this has arisen due to the current political economy; Charlotte Gislam, a PhD student researching artificial intelligence, storytelling and video games; and Chloe Germaine-Buckley about her research on horror-themed live action role playing games. We’ll even get to hear how each of our researchers got into this field and some game recommendations from each.

Read along while you listen! Find the full episode transcript below.

Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the RAH! Podcast belong solely to the speaker, and are not necessarily reflective of the views of Manchester Metropolitan University, or the speaker's employer, organization, committee or other group or individual.

Rah! Podcast Episode 05 - Manchester Games Studies Network 

Rah! Opening Jingle 

Matt Foley: Welcome to the Rah podcast at Manchester Metropolitan University. My name is Matt Foley and I'm a lecturer in English here at Manchester Met. The podcast will showcase some of the excellent work being done by our students and staff within the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Manchester Met. We will produce a themed episode each month with topics ranging from around the faculty. Today's episode will explore gaming. Manchester game studies network here at Manchester Met researches both analogue and digital gaming in a variety of disciplines, including computing, education, English, history, Media Studies, psychology, science, communication and sociology. First, in this episode, we will hear from Tom Brock on gambling, loot boxes and digital gaming and how this has arisen due to the current political economy. Next I'll speak to Charlotte Gislam, a PhD student researching artificial intelligence, storytelling and video games. Finally, we'll hear from Chloe Germaine Buckley about her research on horror themed live action role playing games. We’ll even get to hear how each of our researchers got into this field and gain some gaming recommendations from each of them. So stay tuned. You can join the conversation on Twitter by hash tagging #RAH_Podcast.  

Rah! Mini Jingle  

Matt: I'm delighted to be joined by Dr Tom Brock now. He's a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology and involved with the Manchester games studies network. Tom, could you take me through your current research and just tell us what you're working on at the moment in relation to games and particularly in gaming? 

Tom Brock: Sure, I've got a number of dimensions around games that interest me. The first one really is about the embodied dimension of games. So last year, I wrote a paper around video games and craft and how people when they play games can get experiences of craft through the work that their hands actually do as they're connecting with the interface devices of video games, and how this can actually become a space for very rewarding experiences of labour. The other would be around the negative experiences and emotions that people experience when they play video games. So again, last year, I was talking about the kind of the darker dimension to game player called it the apophatic dimension. And that was about how video games are often seen as a very fun experience somewhere that people go to find something enjoyable and pleasurable. And I really wanted to turn that on its head and actually say that if anyone who has ever played a video game for a long period of time knows there can actually be quite sufferable experiences and in some senses, people go there to suffer, whether it's in forms of boredom, through doing the same action repetitively as a part of practice but also in the sense of losing and failure and the misery that follows from that. And I wanted to try to get a sense of what are people taking from that. And what became really interesting for me about that was that as a result of these kind of negative emotions, players were deriving purpose through games. So it wasn't just about this kind of really rational pleasure seeking behaviour. It was also kind of something very deep and inward looking and, you know, almost had kind of a more spiritual dimension to it. 

Matt: And when you are conducting your research you are you surveilling people, observing gamers, can you say a little bit about methodology I guess? 

Tom: It's different depending on the kind of theoretical framework I'm taking. With craft angle, that's kind of got a more ethnographic or an auto ethnographic in some cases, which you know, often involves looking at particular games, looking, observing what people are doing with their hands, what I'm doing with my hands, what other people Players are doing with their hands. So that's kind of what a digital ethnography is, as I would put it, or did, you know and almost a digital anthropology. With the other project that I'm doing at the moment, which is probably more typically social scientific is around gambling and games. And that's looking at what people are doing in terms of when we're when they're playing games are they experiencing or having gambling experiences. And this has an awful lot to do with what's called loot boxes, which is basically where people make a micro purchase within a game and they open up what's effectively a treasure chest and they have a random opportunity to receive some rewards that are typically aesthetic that they can wear fashionable items and so forth. What interests me about that and what we actually did for the research was we started to interview games developers. So we did some qualitative research around what games developers thought about these loot boxes. And this involved about three months of speaking to games developers in Canada about what their motivations and perspectives were about loot boxes, because within the games industry, you have lots of different artistic takes on all The industry itself as you can imagine, there's a, you know, very big commercial drive as much as there is an independent drive as well. But what we were noticing, really, and what came out of some of those interviews, which we found interesting we've published in a report was about, actually, there seems to be an awful overlap in terms of the economy of games and gambling. And actually, it seems that a lot of games developers are turning to gambling as a potential strategy for funding the future development of their games in the paper, which is called the gambling turn, where we're kind of looking at well, what does this mean for the future of the industry? And what does it mean for the future of gambling regulation, as well. 

Matt: Is there something about gaming that could potentially makes it a more addictive pursuit? 

Tom: Well, I think we have to be careful with that language addiction, partly because it has a sociological history around moral panics, but also has a very strong psychological literature. I think that in some senses, the World Health Organisation, a number of other international organisations have made the decision for us by classifying video games as, or classifying gaming disorder. And so it's clear where those organisations feel these issues lie that there can be dangers there. But developers, I think, and often senses are just trying to make fun, pleasurable, entertaining experiences. The challenge really comes is that they're existing in a political economy that's really uncertain, fragmented, and unstable. And so it's not surprising really, that we're seeing developers and designers try to innovate within the industry to find new ways of monetizing their, monetizing playtime and gambling. Unfortunately, it's just it's just one of those ways. 

Matt: One of the things you’re particularly interested in, as you said earlier on is the idea of craft and and gaming and the physicality. 

Tom: Yes,  

Matt: of gaming is that is that becoming more and more studied with the rise of virtual reality? The potential for for home systems to be more immersive? 

Tom: I would certainly hope so there's you know, I would say that the blurring between, you know, the world as it were becomes much more apparent when you put a VR headset on and people are watching you lose yourself effectively within these spaces. But now with VR, it's also changing how we can work and we can craft and we can do art. You know, Tilt Brush is probably, you know, a good example of a piece of software that comes to mind in VR where you can effectively paint and create and sculpture and make within virtual reality. So, you know, these programmes are really shifting or transforming or elaborating on how we make sense of the interface between the material and the digital.  

Matt: And what else changes really is also the curriculum I’d imagine. That kind of a lightening pace when you're working within game studies to make the curriculum relevant both in terms of skills for instance, but also in terms of the kind of games they will be encountering them themselves? And how do you engage your students with your research or any innovative ways that you do that?  

Tom: Well, they do. I mean, they get to get to play, they have to play a lot. And I run a course around kind of future societies and the role the game and play has within them. And on that course they do, they get to experience the full HTC Vive setup. So, you know, they get to use the haptic controllers, and they get to play games like super hot VR, but also experience things like Tilt Brush and Google Earth in VR, which I mean, you know, is, again, is an incredible experience because you can make sense of urban density just by standing on top of, you know, the Empire State Building or something like that is a great thing. I think about digital technologies or playful digital technologies as a learning space as a learning tool is that you can really enjoy interact and engage with your students and what you bring to that, you know, is something novel and exciting and playful. 

Matt: So Tom, do you have any recommendations for games that your students can can get into?  

Tom: Oh, yeah, it really depends kind of, I think, you know, what, what type of genre people are interested if you want good stories, and good narratives to lose yourself in and I would always say, again, like the last of us, or Red Dead Redemption or Red Dead Redemption 2, Grand Theft Auto, these are good. These are games with good narratives, I would say. If you want to lose yourself in a philosophical journey, then there is a game called Journey, which is actually one of my favourite games. That has a very core philosophical premise at its heart. If you're interested in in more competitive games, then you know it really has to be Counter Strike or League of Legends or Defence against Ancient Ancients 2 which is this is what these are the big eSports titles today. One way of saying it maybe is that if you want to earn millions of pounds playing video games professionally, then you should probably be playing League of Legends, Defence against the Ancients 2, or Counter Strike. 

Matt: Okay, Dr. Tom Brock, thank you very much for joining us. I shall take note of that list. 

Tom: Cheers, bye. 

Rah! Mini Jingle 

Matt: I'm delighted to be joined by Charlotte Gislam, who's a PhD student and her first year and who's working with Dr. Paul Wake, on a PhD that explores artificial intelligence, game studies, and spatial theory. Charlotte, can you just say a little bit about what you're working on at the moment? 

Charlotte Gislam: Yes, of course. Thank you very much for having me. Currently, I am working on how artificial intelligence can be used as a tool to understand how storytelling is used in games and in digital games in particular. To do this, I use a kind of spatial angle at the moment. So I'm looking at how artificial intelligence can use path finding, or can create the world itself? And how that then will affect how players experience the narrative. 

Matt: That sounds really fascinating. And what types of games or titles are you, are you looking at in terms of, what are your primary texts for the study? 

Charlotte: It's very up in the air at the moment, I'll be honest, but at the moment, I've been looking at Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild and God of War, the most recent 2018 title is one I'm really interested in looking at, as well as roguelikes, which are games which procedurally generate themselves. Erm, so Enter the Gungeon and, and also the Binding of Isaac. 

Matt: And how did you become interested in gaming? Is it just something that you've grown up with and you suddenly realise that it can be studied at university or what was your way into studying it in particular? 

Charlotte: Basically, exactly that I'll be honest, I've always played games from a very young age. My mum got me a Gameboy Colour and a PlayStation One and I just adored playing things there. I kind of fell out of love with it maybe during my high school time, I don't think gaming was as cool back then for me, so I kind of abandoned it a little bit. But when I came into university, I bought an Xbox 360 and just started playing through games there. And it was when I went into my master's year that I realised, actually it could be studied, which was incredibly exciting. And I started to mould my MA year into actually being specifically about games. And that's what's brought me here today really. 

Matt: And did you find yourself discovering new games as you were studying? Or was it games that were familiar to you already? 

Charlotte: There have been new games being introduced to me and a lot of more experimental games and made in labs specifically looking at the artificial intelligence and games like Facade and which uses an artificial intelligence neural network to procedurally generate the actual words themselves. 

Matt: That sounds really exciting. And one of the things that we try to do on the Rah podcast is to think about our audience who are interested in gaming but hadn't really thought about perhaps studying it at university or maybe are looking for some tips to get into, what kind of games, particularly computer games, would you recommend for people that are just getting into gaming? 

Charlotte: To study I mean, there's, there's such a vast array. I mean, you could study any of the games that you whatever you love, and whatever you're passionate about, there's something to say about them. Because there are essentially, I personally have been really getting involved in Undertale. And I think that's quite an open and accessible game for a lot of people to play. And it's got a very interesting storyline and which is what interests me the most, so I think I would start people there, and then maybe move towards if it was my own personal recommendations to RPGs especially things like Dragon Age Inquisition or something like Mass Effect, I think, is a really good way of coming into games, especially if you're not very used to them because there's a less of an emphasis maybe on gameplay and combat and more on the actual story being told. 

Matt: Great and at Manchester Met that has a research network or the Manchester games studies network. Have you been involved in that at all? Or been to any events in recent months that you thought really worthwhile? 

Charlotte: Yes, I have actually, there's some absolutely fantastic events that go on with the Games and Research Network. We most recently, I was taught by John Lean, who was talking about his own research. He's at a very different stage from where I am and so it was very exciting to see somebody who works in the same kind of areas I do, and actually completing and finishing and what's that, what that's like. 

Matt: Seeing that full journey almost happen for somebody else in terms of the PFC England play through the process. And one of the things that as you're doing the PhD that you explore is also also putting on events yourself and I know that you're involved on the committee for the forthcoming symposium Absent Presences which is being put on by our PhD research students, and can you say something about your involvement with that project, and how that's been going so far? 

Charlotte: Yes. So, erm, we started organising this event just before Christmas, and we've had quite a few meetings, I've been involved in helping coming up with a call for papers, the call of papers has gone out. And we are now waiting for abstracts to arrive. And so really really good. 

Matt: It seems to be getting a great reaction on online and on social media as your as you've been advertising. 

Charlotte: Yes, it's been really really amazing to see how positive the Gothic community as well as others have received it actually, yes. 

Matt: And is there anything and any games that use a Gothic aesthetic that you're that you're interested then yourself? 

Charlotte: 100% Yes, I really do love a good Gothic game. Bloodborne is probably one of the most well-known currently that's on ps4, but also things like, ah, Darkest Dungeon. The Binding of Isaac is as I was saying before, it's going to be a very good game for my own research. So it's fantastic to bring that Gothic thread into my own work. 

Matt: And when you're looking around for theories of how to read games as I mean is there a growing body of literature out there already that you can you can draw from and work from. And who are kind of the important figures in the field for you when you're just sort of conceptualising your project at the moment? 

Charlotte: It is a very early, an emerging field. So there isn't maybe as much of a depth of researchers you would find in other areas. There's a particular researcher at the moment and called Kate Compton, who actually as of yesterday, of the recording of this podcast, at least, erm, just passed her viva and her work is on artificial intelligence and bots. And that has been really, really helpful for me to work through and I would recommend anybody looking her up actually, because I think she's absolutely fantastic. 

Matt: Is there something quite quite innovative then about thinking about artificial intelligence in, in this field are the spatial theories that you're interested, I’m just interested in what you think it's kind of fresh about the work? 

Charlotte: Yes, erm, artificial intelligence does tend to be used as a theoretical framework or as something to study in terms of the computer sciences. And we do tend to see it used more on that side of academics than on the arts and humanities, which I do think is a shame and it is very innovative to actually look at artificial intelligence in terms of how it's used within storytelling and any kind of aspect really to do with the humanities. I think there's a real call currently in AI studies to involve the arts and humanities. 

Matt: If that's what people want in artificial intelligence studies are are looking forward to you find that the arts and humanities are, are ready yet to be kind of receptive to these more interdisciplinary ideas or more scientific ideas? 

Charlotte: I do find at MMU. Definitely. MMU have got a great community which have accepted my strange mesh of both AI and arts and humanities and a bit of science and a bit of everything all together. It's a great place for Interdisciplinary Studies. I do find on occasion, you do, erm, turn up to events and explain what you do what I do. And the person will immediately assume that I am from the computer science department. And they want to talk to me about programming and coding. And I don't necessarily have quite as a strong background in that area, as I do in arts and humanities. And so that can sometimes cause a few essentially language barriers between the arts and between the sciences. 

Matt: So that's something that you'll be working on over the next three or four years, I guess, is the kind of interdisciplinary literacy that you need to move inbetween those different fields and where and where they intersect. 

Charlotte: Yes, that is going to be a big part of it as well and in a way also training others to be able to accept the sciences and the arts mingling. 

Matt: How did you get involved with the game studies network? I mean, can you tell people who are listening perhaps how they can make contact with with you guys and how they can get involved in the network? 

Charlotte: Yes, of course. Erm, there is a website if you just Google Manchester games network, you should be able to find that very easily. John Lien runs the postgraduate network essentially. And they run events every so often. I originally when I first got involved in network was when I was at Lancaster University during my MA year. And I came up to MMU and spent a day just chatting with people essentially in one of their postgraduate kind of events. And I thought that was really, really helpful for me to develop as a game studies and a scholar. 

Matt: I'm sure the networks will begin to grow and grow, particularly since it involves walk across faculties. I'm sure it's just getting started. And it's going to keep going and move from strength to strength. 

Charlotte: Yes, I really do think so. Yeah. 

Matt: Well, it's been great talking to you, Charlotte, thank you so much for your time. 

Charlotte: No, thank you for having me. Thank you. 

Rah! Mini Jingle 

Matt: Well, I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Chloe Germaine Buckley who’s a lecturer in English and Film at Manchester Met. Chloe you're really interested and excited by games. Can you see a little bit about how your research engages with gaming and games? 

Chloe Germaine Buckley: Yeah, so as you said, I, my main area of research is in sort of literature and culture. But I'm a keen analogue gamer in my non-professional life. So I play a lot of role playing games. And I've started to develop some research around that, particularly where games intersect with the Gothic and with horror. And I've developed two pieces of research around horror themed live action role playing games, thinking about how live action role playing games, transforms spaces, people's experience of spaces, and how they make their participants enter into strange relationships with objects and props. And so I've been I've been working on that most recently. 

Matt: So game studies is quite a broad church and you're particularly interested in an analogue gaming and RPG. And so can you say a little bit about analogue gaming and tell us like, what are the parameters for that field of study and how you, and your particular interest in it?  

Chloe: Yeah, so the the Manchester game studies Research Network here at Man Mett includes people who research both analogue and digital games. On most of the publications you'll read out there in the kind of this nascent area of game studies that focus on video games we’re quite unique at Man Met because we're, a lot of us are interested in pen and paper role playing games, board games, and live action role playing games. That's what we mean by analogue. So something like playing Dungeons and Dragons around a tabletop and rolling dice, or playing a physical board game with with pieces and, you know, a paper rulebook and and a cardboard board, or the kind of thing that I've been researching, which is live action role playing where you are physically, kind of enacting a game, almost like a kind of freeform theatre with no script kind of situation with sort of game rules. That's that's another form of analogue gaming. We've seen a massive resurgence of interest in analogue forms of gaming in the past, I would say sort of 10 to 15 years. Despite, you know, the popularity of video games, lots and lots of people are into collecting ball games into play and pen and paper role playing games. And something like the UK board games Expo, for example. It's a kind of national annual event where people interested in board games and role playing games get together. About sort of 10 years ago, it was a reasonably small-ish convention based at the Hilton Hotel in Birmingham. Now, it has two full halls of the NEC in Birmingham and the and the Hilton hotel. So just the growth of something like that shows how people are really, really interested in these sort of old fashioned forms of gaming. 

Matt: And there seems to be as you say an increasing demand for these types of games and you've run some yourself and sort of parallel to your own research, for example, Gothic Manchester six last year, can you say a little bit about how you got the library involved with that and the theme of that particular RPG. 

Chloe: Yeah, I'm involved in an academic research association called the Gothic Association and we held an annual conference for the last few years I've kind of had this little dream where I would run a scary live action role playing game for conference attendees. I got a friend of mine involved who's a consultant and business consultant who uses role playing in her consultancy work. She's a founder of a company called Seriously Learned. She's very cool. And we we got together put our heads together and we concocted a horror themed live action role playing game for the conference attendees. And it was partly based on our research we've done together on how games transform our experience of spaces in strange kind of ways. And we we got the library to lend us the space called Special Collections, it’s on the top floor of the library and there's usually a kind of exhibition up there that sort of changes every few months and then they hold all their sort of rare and delicate books up there as well. So we said to them, you know, can we take over the space for a couple of hours and turn it into this game, this terrifying, scary game? So the premise of the game was that one of the exhibitions in the special collection was from the Miskatonic University in North America. And we invited our conference attendees to come and view this special collection of items. And then once they were there, all sorts of scary and horrible things started happening to them. And that was the game and they were in the game world. And it was a really interesting thing to do because there was all sorts of parameters about how we could use the space, all sorts of strange kind of incongruities about you know, what was real and what wasn't real. And when star players were in the game that was very blurry about what in the space was real and what wasn't real. And I found that really interesting. And it's just a good laugh as well. 

Matt: Are these the RPGs you know, developing along alongside technology so how you play and who you play with, is there, is there ways that technology such as apps, for example, are shaping games themselves? 

Chloe: Yeah, there's a tendency now for hybrid board games to emerge. So some of our old horror board game favourites, you can now get in sort of hybrid form where you have an app that runs part of the game for you. An academic here at Man Met Paul Wake has written about these kinds of games and how they sort of play, he says they play you, you know that you have this strange relationship with the game in which it has these underlying mechanics of these things going on in the game, and you're playing it but the game is sort of playing you in this unnerving sort of way. And one of the ways and that's being managed now with technology is, there's an app that's doing some of those mechanics for you. Gamers are kind of in two minds about this. On the one hand, we sort of like the old fashioned having to do all the mechanics ourselves. But on the other hand, some people really love the apps. For role playing games, technologies allow people to sort of play online and although technology is kind of enabling, making some of that easier taking away some of the sort of more onerous bits of analogue gaming, people still love the objects themselves, the games themselves you know that lots of people spend lots of time and effort painting their miniatures, you know, we like to get the nice big box full of all the parts. So it's I don't think that digital gaming will replace analogue gaming.  

Matt: I'm sure our listeners would love to know what you would recommend to students who are just sort of discovering this the board game world, or RPG world. 

Chloe: Well, gateway games, something that's really great, actually, for a reasonably quick immersive horror game, something like Pandemic where you are trying to fight to stop the spread of diseases is a really nice version of that called Pandemic Cthulhu, which uses the mythos of the Lovecraft stories I mentioned earlier. 

Matt: Do you know of any societies in Manchester or the Northwest? 

Chloe: There's one at the University. At Man Met uni. And there's a there's a kind of Manchester gaming society as well that’s, sort of, just a wide network of people. 

Matt: And in terms of the the future going forward thinking about, you know, trends and scholarship. Do you see where the field is moving and the future and being being a literature scholar or someone interested in culture, is this kind of interdisciplinary approach to gaming really coming to the fore at the moment? 

Chloe: Yeah, definitely. I mean, game studies is all is kind of emerged from interdisciplinary multidisciplinary practices. You know you've got people who are coming at it from games design, you've got people coming at it from the humanities and from the arts and theatre, so it's always been interdisciplinary. What I think is an emerging trend certainly is an interest in that crossover between horror and games. We've got a scholar coming to Man Met to talk about horror and video games. There's also a kind of interest in how games might intersects with sort of ecological or kind of environmental concerns as well, sort of what the ethical work is that games might do. So there's all sorts of interest in how games might change the way we think, or change our attitudes. Games aren't just a kind of cultural product, something for entertainment, but that they might have something ethical, philosophical, political, even to offer. We've got a student who's working on the kind of ethics of death in games at the moment, a PhD student. So loads of really interesting stuff on the on the ethics of games coming up. 

Matt: And if someone says, okay, cool, you've got three months off, you can you can write a game, you can come up with a narrative for a game. I mean, what what would be your kind of dream game that you would you'd create yourself? 

Chloe: Oh, that's a really difficult question to answer. I do write games. Actually, I write role playing tabletop role playing scenarios, and live action role playing games. I've got one in the pipeline that I'm working on at the moment. Actually, that's a live action role playing game sets. And just after the end of the Second World War in Eastern Europe, I don't wanna say too much about that. We're going to run that sometime in 2020. So I don't actually have a year off to write a game but I am going to spend the next year writing that game. So that is What's happening? 

Matt: Dr Chloe Germaine Buckley, thank you very much for your time.  

Chloe: Thank you. 

Rah! Mini Jingle 

Matt: Lots of fascinating stuff there. Thank you so much for listening. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter for future podcast updates. You can find us at @mmu_rah. For more information on the Manchester game studies network, and all the research and events we discussed in this episode. Please go to the Rah website for full details. Tune back in soon! 

Rah Ending Jingle 

Matt: This episode of the Rah podcast was produced by Lucy Simpson, edited by Charlie Fyfe-Williams, presented by me, Matt Foley, and mixed by Julian Holloway.