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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2014

“Where is Life?" Comitment and Micro-interactions in Videogames

Résumé

This contribution presents a research work in progress based on the analysis of video recordings of people playing at videogames. The screen and the players are both recorded, and then the two video records are synchronised. This methodology allows observing precisely the immersive potential of videogame practices, according to the socio-spatial contexts in which they take place. The results of such analysis show that the videogame experience is not only immersive or intensive, but also actually characterised by the superposition of discontinuities: immersion/perturbation, connection/disconnection, pleasure/boredom etc. Thus, the limits between what is real and what is not, between what is play and what is not, are not given a priori, and are not the same according to the contexts of play. There are several interests of such work. Firstly, it allows putting in perspective the place given to the images in the analysis of videogame practices, and to focus on what we could name, in the continuity of Raymond Bellour’s works on the body of the spectator in a movie theatre, ‘videogame bodies.’ Secondly, such research allows taking account of spatial and social micro-interactions which occur during a videogame session, particularly between the videogame spaces and the players. Lastly, it gives us a glimpse of the ordinary life of a group of players engaged in a collective activity, in a context of leisure and friendship. The whole study shows that the limits between what is real and what is virtual are due less to the technological performances of more and more powerful videogame machines, allowing the player to be dived into always more immersive and realistic universes, than to the way the player is engaged in a videogame. Immersion in a videogame is not reducible to a unique formula, and the circumstances of videogame practices should be observed to be understood.
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Dates et versions

hal-01094804 , version 1 (13-12-2014)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-01094804 , version 1

Citer

Hovig ter Minassian, Isabel Colón de Carvajal, Manuel Boutet, Mathieu Triclot. “Where is Life?" Comitment and Micro-interactions in Videogames. Dawn Stobbart; Monica Evans. Engaging with videogames: play, theory and practice, Inter-Disciplinary Press, pp.53-63, 2014, 978-1-84888-295-9. ⟨hal-01094804⟩
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