WRT: Writer Response Theory

Communication Studies seems to be heading in the direction of hardware and software along the lines of software and console studies. Once recent study calls for more “advanced” games. Unfortunately, “advanced” seems best measured in pixels rather than story units. And so continues the negotiations between hard and soft sciences and the humanities.

In the latest Journal of Communication (September 2007), James D. Ivory and Sriram Kalyanaraman publish their investigation of “The Effects of Technological Advancement and Violent Content in Video Games on Players’ Feelings of Presence, Involvement, Physiological Arousal and Aggression.” Their interesting and timely study confirms their hypothesis that advancements in technology will increase qualitative and biological indicators of immersion (skin conductivity) [eerily similar to the test for Replicants].

According to the authors, theirs is one of the first studies of video game reception to take technological advancement into account. Here we may be witnessing some of the first incursions of hardware and software studies in empirical communication research.

Specifically, the video games seemed to create a greater sense of presence “without varying the interface system at all” (547). Of course, the game console is the “interface” here, a determining factor in the study.

What is advancement?

Well, Ivory and Kalyanaraman offer one example, drawing upon (Schneider, lang, Shin, and Bradley 2004):

advances in game technology, such as whether a game is accompanied by a narrative storyline.

Needless to say, my heart-rate began to surge and my skin grow clammy at the thought of an empirical study on the effects of increased narrative in games on a sense of “presence.”

Their test games:

Violent Games: Zombie Raid (1995) (review), House of the Dead 2 (2001).

Although the latter features increased use of voice actors and more branching game play, the authors emphasize merely that “the newer game’s presentation is notably more advanced.” My pulse beginning to weaken and my skin growing cold, I read “presentation” as “visual interface,” but perhaps that was because I so hoped they would stress something else.

Nonviolent Games: Diamonds 3D (1996) and Arkout (2003).

And my heart-rate returns to my resting rhythm.

[Notably, the text-based IF Breakout 1991 was not included in the study.]

In the genre where story or character might have been more fundamental, here story does not seem to be a factor at all. (But then I remember that experimental film about the dot and the line). Moreover, when the players were asked how much they game made them feel like they were really “there,” the place was a three dimensional world of balls and diamonds. We might ask what does it mean to render that world more realistically?

Violence and Progress Narratives
Do “more advanced games” lead to increased violence?

The research did not find significant effects on the violence, which somewhat contradicts my own experience with very violent experiences with a virtual “rocks, paper, scissors” (using hands) and a more advanced “rocks, paper, scissors,” (using actual rocks, paper, and scissors).

In both these cases, increased visual detail seems to be the dominant criterion for “advancement.” Although the authors end the article with a note about the subjectivity involved (examining “what is meant by better” when reflecting on games) they do not pursue at length the question of what is meant by “advancement,” admittedly as part of their quest to keep most variables constant for their study. In their discussions of practical implications, however, they do seem to champion greater “sophistication” (549).

Such practical testing concerns demonstrate some of the challenges of the social science examinations of hardware and software studies. At the same time, they return us to the fundamental questions of what it means for games to advance, what it takes for games to immerse, and what significance signs of physiological arousal hold for our examinations.

The relationship between the humanistic, the scientific, and the social examinations of media have always been a bit uneasy, as the questions and methods of one often become encroaching zombie hordes to the others. Or perhaps the better image is of three children playing. Two kids are tying a third kid to a tree for asking too many questions. The first kid keeps polling, “Are you gonna stop asking questions?” The second one, on the other hand, is at least content in the knowledge that she has bought sufficient rope.

* The authors site several similar studies on other media by Bracken 2005, Detenber et al. 1998, Lombard et al. 2000 and Reeves et al. 1999.