Videogame Agency as a Bio-costs Contract

Abstract

This paper presents a novel descriptive model for agency in videogames as communication. Literature pertaining to interactive works including videogames has identified the need to overcome dyadic perspectives of communication in such works. Research specifically to do with agency has called for agency to no longer be confused with freedom of action, for an integrated perspective of the player and the system, and for that relationship to be viewed as a conversation. The transactional model in this paper achieves this by proposing a nested hierarchy of levels of communication that operate as an implicit contract, negotiated between the system and the player, where the object of the transaction is bio-costs, effected through the signalling of the attainability of understandings. The paper describes research antecedents, a research agenda, the basis for the model, the model itself, examples of how the model can be used to describe videogame designs, and future research.

Game Design as an Autonomous Research Subject

“…Game design work in an original game becomes an exercise in finding a new way of presenting particular tradeoffs to the player. Our approach is furthermore compatible with the model in Neves et al [37] of the activity of play as an implicit contract for negotiating bio-costs between the design of the game's system and the player. We now present the principle as a foundation for game design literacy that we argue is more compatible with methodology and widespread adoption for methodology.…”

“…The "packaged" definition of "game" should be compatible with the meaningful definition attained by game studies, that games cannot be considered either as system or as player, but that every game is a particular player-system relationship, as argued by Stenros and Waern [36]. This definition of games is compatible with work on agency as a quality of game designs, including models oriented toward design work [37].…”

“…Again, this is relevant for methodological development in game design, but the lively debate on game definitions is aimed at studying games, including their design, rather than systematizing how to design original games. Neves et al [37] propose a cybernetic model for understanding agency in games as communication that necessitates joint consideration of system and player, following certain re-definitions of the concept of agency in games.…”

Uncovering literacy practices in the game Total War: Shogun 2 with a contract-agency model

“…For showcasing the Contract Agency Model, we present a summary of the model's overall functioning as proposed in its seminal paper (Neves et al, 2018). This will help clarify how the model adapts conversation theory and bio-costs to agency in Total War: Shogun 2 -the commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) videogame we use for the showcasetogether with three implicit conditions agreed upon by player and system in the model.…”

“…By contrast, a 'direct' literacy would deal with whether a videogame is meaningful as a game, and could help the evaluation of videogames as texts alongside the 'indirect' literacies. We aim to contribute towards a more 'direct' literacy for videogames by showing what this kind of literacy looks like, and how the Contract Agency Model proposed by Neves et al (2018) can deliver on this kind of literacy, by uncovering literacy practices in videogames' own terms -specifically by using as an example the videogame title Total War: Shogun 2 (The Creative Assembly, 2011).…”