Digital Media: Sources and Significance

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Critical Analysis

Introduction

This critical analysis examines pages 428–429 of Kozasa, Fukutake, Notsu, Okada, and Niijima’s (2006) conference paper Facial Animation Using Emotional Model, presented at the International Conference on Computer Graphics, Imaging and Visualisation (CGIV). I selected this passage because it presents the core conceptual argument of the paper and directly addresses a recurring problem in game character animation: why visually realistic faces often fail to feel emotionally alive. The authors are researchers working in computer graphics and interactive systems, publishing within an IEEE academic context, and their work sits at the intersection of facial animation, artificial intelligence, and player experience. The selected pages are particularly relevant to my own practice, as they focus less on surface-level visual fidelity and more on how internal emotional processes can drive believable expression.

What the Authors Are Trying to Argue

In the selected passage, Kozasa et al. argue that advances in rendering and modelling technology have not solved a fundamental problem in interactive characters: emotional believability. Although hardware allows increasingly realistic 3D faces, non-player characters (NPCs) often appear lifeless because their expressions and behaviours remain predefined, simple, and externally controlled. The authors identify this disconnect as a major limitation in how facial animation is typically implemented in games and interactive systems.

Their central argument is that facial expression should not be treated as a directly controlled visual output, but as the visible result of an internal emotional process. Traditional systems often manipulate facial parameters directly setting blendshapes or muscle values to create a smile, frown, or neutral face. While precise, this approach can result in mechanical and “switch-like” behaviour, where expressions appear disconnected from the character’s experience or the player’s actions.

To address this, the authors propose introducing an emotional model between interaction and expression. In their framework, interactions with a player update an internal emotional state, and facial expressions emerge as a consequence of that evolving state. Expression is therefore framed as causal rather than declarative: the system does not decide to display a particular emotion, but instead allows emotion to develop over time and influence facial output.

The passage also briefly references the implementation of a “neural network based emotional model unit,” suggesting that this internal state can change dynamically through interaction. However, the authors are careful not to present the neural network itself as the main innovation. Instead, their argument emphasises a conceptual shift in thinking about facial animation: believability comes from emotionally motivated behaviour rather than from increasingly detailed visual control.

Where the Passage Is Strong

One of the strongest aspects of this passage is its reframing of what “realism” means in the context of game characters. At the time of publication, realism in games was often associated primarily with graphical fidelity. Kozasa et al. challenge this assumption by arguing that believability depends just as much on behaviour as on appearance. This insight remains highly relevant, as players form rapid social and emotional judgements based on subtle facial cues such as timing, intensity, and transitions between expressions.

The authors’ emphasis on causality is particularly convincing. By positioning facial expression as the result of an internal emotional process, they align facial animation with how players intuitively understand human behaviour. In real interactions, we do not read faces as isolated poses; we read them as responses to events. The proposed emotional layer allows facial animation to participate in the logic of interaction, functioning as a feedback channel that communicates how an NPC has interpreted the player’s actions.

The passage is also strong in its restraint. Rather than overclaiming, the authors carefully limit their conclusions, stating that experiments suggest expressions can change according to emotional state. This cautious tone increases the credibility of the argument, especially within the constraints of a short conference paper. The focus remains on a workable mechanism rather than a claim to fully replicate human emotional performance.

Another strength is the authors’ consistent attention to player experience. Their motivation is not simply to improve facial animation in isolation, but to make NPCs more engaging to interact with. This situates the technical discussion within the broader context of gameplay and interaction design, reinforcing the relevance of the argument beyond purely graphical concerns.

Where I’m Not Fully Convinced

While the conceptual argument is strong, the passage leaves several important questions unresolved. The most significant limitation is the lack of detail regarding the emotional model itself. “Emotion” can be represented in many ways: as discrete categories, continuous dimensions, appraisal-based variables, or hybrid systems. The passage does not specify which representation is used, how emotional states are updated through interaction, or how those states map to facial movement.

This lack of specificity matters because it determines the expressive range and nuance of the system. Without a clear description, there is a risk that the emotional model simply replaces predefined expressions with predefined emotional states, resulting in a different but still limited form of mechanical behaviour. In other words, the system may shift complexity rather than truly increase believability.

The evidence presented in the passage is also limited. While the authors claim that expressions can change “like the human,” the criteria for this comparison are not explained. There is no discussion of perceptual testing, player studies, or baseline comparisons that would allow readers to evaluate whether the system genuinely improves believability from the player’s perspective. Given that emotional realism is ultimately a perceptual outcome, stronger empirical evaluation would have significantly reinforced the argument.

Another limitation is the focus on the face as the primary carrier of emotion. In interactive contexts, players interpret affect through multiple channels simultaneously, including body posture, gaze, movement, voice, and timing. Although the authors acknowledge NPC “behaviours” as a broader issue, the proposed solution highlighted in this passage centres mainly on facial animation. This can create a potential mismatch: an emotionally expressive face combined with rigid body behaviour or predictable decision-making may actually draw attention to the artificiality of the system rather than reduce it.

These limitations do not undermine the value of the passage, but they suggest that the paper functions more effectively as a design framework than as a fully validated solution to emotional believability in games.

Conclusion

Overall, the selected passage from Kozasa et al. is effective because it articulates a clear and influential design principle: facial animation becomes believable when it is driven by internal emotional processes rather than direct visual control. This conceptual shift is the primary reason I selected this text. While the technical and empirical details are limited, the argument remains valuable as a way of thinking about character animation in interactive contexts. For my own practice, the paper reinforces the importance of motivation, causality, and temporal development in facial expression, encouraging me to design animation systems where emotion evolves over time rather than being applied as a static visual effect.

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Reader

1.

Bernhaupt, R., Boldt, A., Mirlacher, T., Wilfinger, D. and Tscheligi, M. (2007) ‘Using emotion in games: emotional flowers’, Proceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, pp. 41–48. https://doi.org/10.1145/1255047.1255056

Bernhaupt et al. treat emotion as something a game can run on, not just something players feel afterwards.

Their prototype Emotional Flowers uses players’ facial expressions as input, so emotional states directly shape how a virtual flower grows and behaves in a shared multiplayer setting. The part I keep coming back to is the feedback loop: it’s not only “win/lose” or “fun/frustration,” but a shifting emotional interaction that can produce social and competitive dynamics during play.

I picked this because it frames emotion as a design material you can prototype and iterate, not only measure at the end. The evaluation is still interpretation-heavy and leans on self-report, but it gives me a practical way to think about systems where emotion actively steers the experience.

2.

de Araujo, D.P. and Hildebrand, H.R. (2019) ‘Gameotics: a game analysis method based on semiotics’, in International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 14–22. Available at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-23570-3_2

de Araujo and Hildebrand introduce Gameotics as a semiotics-based method for analysing how games produce meaning through interaction.

Using Peirce’s framework, they connect “signs” to concrete game elements interface, mechanics, and narrative arguing that meaning is not just sitting in visuals or story text. It builds over time through what players do, notice, and learn from repeated action, rather than through static representation.

I chose this because it gives me a structured tool for analysis: it helps me justify interpretations instead of staying at surface description. It can feel abstract without practice, but as a checklist it’s genuinely useful for reading visuals, rules, and interaction together when I’m writing for the module.

3.

El-Nasr, M.S. (2005) Intelligent lighting for game environments. Available at: https://summit.sfu.ca/item/596

El-Nasr argues that lighting shouldn’t be treated as a final “polish pass” in games, but as a system that can carry mood, pacing, and storytelling.

The paper introduces the Expressive Lighting Engine (ELE), designed to adapt lighting dynamically to events, rhythm, and player movement. The key idea is that lighting is communicative: it can guide attention, reinforce atmosphere, and support progression while still feeling integrated into the world.

Even though it’s nearly twenty years old, I kept it because the conceptual shift still lands. It pushes me to think of lighting as authored experience (planned states and transitions), not just static aesthetics. The technical detail is heavy, but the takeaway is clear: lighting can be part of the game’s expressive logic, not just a visibility tool.

4.

Kozasa, C., Fukutake, H., Notsu, H., Okada, Y. and Niijima, K. (2006) ‘Facial animation using emotional model’, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Graphics, Imaging and Visualisation (CGIV’06). IEEE, pp. 428–433. Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1663828

Kozasa et al. propose a facial animation approach where expressions come from an internal emotional model, rather than being triggered as fixed poses.

Emotion is treated as a changing state influenced by events, then translated into facial movement over time. That matters because it allows expressions to evolve gradually, which can feel more believable in interactive contexts where characters react across a sequence of moments.

I included this because it frames “emotional realism” at a system level instead of relying on higher fidelity visuals. The paper doesn’t go far into player-based evaluation, but it gives a strong causal way of thinking: state → expression → change over time. It also highlights a gap I care about how players actually interpret these expressions which is something I want to keep in view in my own practice.

5.

Kudláč, M. (2019) ‘Transmedia storytelling: The many faces of video games, fluid narratives and winding seriality’, in Body and Text: Cultural Transformations in New Media Environments. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 191–203. Available at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-25189-5_13

Kudláč argues that games aren’t secondary add-ons in transmedia storytelling they can be central spaces where story worlds expand.

He focuses on how seriality shifts in convergence culture, where narratives spread across platforms and accumulate into a shared “supertext.” The chapter separates older models of seriality from newer transmedia systems shaped by technological and economic change, which helps explain why stories feel more fluid and less linear across franchises today.

What I got from this is mainly audience perspective: players often arrive with prior knowledge from other media, and that changes expectations around continuity and entry points. It’s theory-led, but it gives me useful language for thinking about worldbuilding across connected narrative spaces, not just inside one game.

6.

Lindley, C.A. (2005) ‘Story and narrative structures in computer games’, in Bushoff, B. (ed.) Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Games and Intelligent Toys. Available at: https://www.math.vu.nl/~eliens/create/local/story/sagasnetLindleyReprint.pdf

Lindley’s main claim is that game narrative emerges from the relationship between simulation rules, gameplay activity, and authored structure.

He introduces different time-scales to explain how these layers coexist: the moment-to-moment rule system, the patterns of play, and the higher-level framing that makes events feel like “story.” I also like his reframing of the “gameplay versus narrative” debate less as a broken form, more as a mismatch in player preferences (watching story, performing play, or seeking immersion).

I kept this because it clarifies why game stories can feel fragmented but still meaningful. It works like a design guide too: decide what kind of story experience you want to support, then align mechanics and structure around that, rather than forcing a single model of narrative.

7.

Roberts, J.M., Arth, M.J. and Bush, R.R. (1959) ‘Games in culture’, American Anthropologist, 61(4), pp. 597–605. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/667148

Roberts, Arth and Bush treat games as cultural practices that reflect how societies organise values, rules, and social relationships.

They classify games into broad types physical skill, strategy, and chance and connect these to larger cultural patterns like cooperation, competition, and rule systems. The argument isn’t that games are “just fun,” but that they can express and rehearse social order through what they reward and how they structure interaction.

I chose it because it gives a foundational anthropological lens for reading games as cultural artefacts. It obviously predates digital games, so I have to translate the ideas carefully for online play and virtual systems. Still, it pushes me to ask the right questions: what behaviours does a game reward, and what kind of social world do its rules assume is normal?

8.

Tiwari, I., Solankar, D. and Khande, R. (2023) ‘Virtual and augmented realms: the evolution of video games with VR and AR technology’, Vidhyayana – An International Multidisciplinary Peer-Reviewed E-Journal, 8(si7), pp. 545–561. Available at: http://www.vidhyayanaejournal.org/index.php/journal/article/view/842

Tiwari et al. give a broad overview of how VR and AR have reshaped game experience, focusing on immersion as something grounded in embodied interaction.

They emphasise spatial presence, responsiveness, and the feeling of moving “with” a system, rather than treating realism as purely visual fidelity. In their framing, experiential realism comes from how players act in space how quickly the world answers back and how natural control feels.

I included this partly to balance older theory with a more recent technology-focused source. It reads mainly as a survey, and it doesn’t go deep on issues like accessibility, cost, or fatigue, which I think matter a lot. Still, it works well as contextual grounding when I’m discussing XR as a shift in player experience and design priorities.

9.

Vindigni, G. (2023) ‘Decoding cultural affinity in video games: An examination of narrative expression, visual aesthetics, and interactive design in the digital era’, Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 10(6), pp. 290–305. DOI: 10.14738/assrj.106.14911. https://journals.scholarpublishing.org/index.php/ASSRJ/article/view/14911

Vindigni argues that “cultural affinity” in games comes from the combined effect of narrative, visual aesthetics, and gameplay systems.

Rather than treating games as neutral entertainment, the paper frames them as cultural texts shaped by social values and ideological assumptions. What matters isn’t only what a game shows, but what it normalises through interaction what it rewards, what it makes feel natural, and what it asks players to do repeatedly.

I kept it because the lens is useful, even if the discussion stays broad and isn’t strongly backed by detailed case studies. For my module work, it gives me a clean way to connect mechanics and aesthetics to cultural meaning. It helps me read a game as a system of values, not just a story or a style.

10.

Wages, R., Grünvogel, S.M. and Grützmacher, B. (2004) ‘How realistic is realism? Considerations on the aesthetics of computer games’, in International Conference on Entertainment Computing. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 216–225. Available at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-28643-1_28

Wages et al. challenge the assumption that higher graphical detail automatically produces realism in games.

They frame realism as an aesthetic and experiential strategy shaped by perception, interaction, and player expectation not just technical accuracy. That opens the door for stylisation and selective design choices, where “believable” can come from coherence and play experience rather than from total visual imitation.

I chose this because it supports how I think about realism as a design choice, not an endpoint on a tech ladder. The paper is theory-heavy and doesn’t have much player testing, so I treat it more as a conceptual tool than empirical proof. Still, it helps me critique “progress” narratives and justify deliberate stylisation when it serves the experience.

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Lighting as a Strategy of Experiential Realism in Video Games

Sources and Significance – Blog 10

This post looks at lighting as one of the quietest (but strongest) tools games use to build experiential realism the sense that a world feels believable, even when it isn’t trying to copy reality exactly.

Realism in games is usually discussed as graphical fidelity: sharper textures, higher polygon counts, better reflections. But a lot of “realness” comes from something less measurable: how a space lands emotionally, how safe or exposed you feel in it, and how confidently you can read it as you move. Lighting sits right in the middle of that. It shapes atmosphere and tone, but it also structures perception what you notice first, what you ignore, and where your body wants to go next.

Naturalistic Lighting and Emotional Restraint

In The Last of Us Part II, lighting often feels deliberately ordinary. Overcast skies, washed-out daylight, and dim interiors create a grounded mood that matches the game’s emotional restraint. The light rarely performs for the player; it behaves like the kind of light you’d expect in a real place. That “quiet” approach becomes expressive in its own way. Shadows and low visibility slow you down, make you scan rooms more carefully, and turn simple movement into a tense decision especially when darkness limits your certainty about what’s ahead.

Dynamic Lighting and Time

In Red Dead Redemption 2, experiential realism comes through the way lighting evolves with time and weather, so the world never feels visually “fixed.” Morning and dusk shift the warmth of the scene, fog flattens the horizon and shortens your view, and late-day light can make the landscape feel weightier and more dramatic without the game having to trigger a cutscene. The effect isn’t only about how pretty it looks it’s about pacing. Because the light changes steadily, you feel the day moving on, and that subtly affects your decisions: whether you keep riding, take cover, slow down, or rethink distance and routes in the open world.

Minimal Lighting and Controlled Atmosphere

Inside goes the opposite way: the lighting is minimal, controlled, and stylised, yet the emotional reality feels intensely believable. The game uses silhouettes, hard contrast, and limited color to guide attention and communicate power. Spotlit areas feel surveilled; darkness feels like both cover and threat. Even without naturalism, the lighting teaches the player how to read danger. You start reacting to light almost instinctively moving towards brief safety, avoiding exposure, and staying alert when the image narrows into shadow.

Lighting as Navigation

Across all three examples, lighting also works as a navigation system. Instead of relying on heavy HUD markers, games often use brightness, contrast, and directionality to pull you toward paths and points of interest. A doorway glows slightly warmer than the surrounding wall. A corridor is framed by a strip of light. An object catches a highlight at just the right angle. It feels subtle, but it mirrors how we orient ourselves in real spaces by following perceptual cues rather than explicit instructions.

Selective Construction of Realism

What’s interesting is that these lighting choices are highly designed while often appearing “natural.” For me, that’s what experiential realism really comes down to. It’s not about copying reality perfectly; it’s about choosing the right details to make a scene feel credible right now. Lighting sits in that sweet spot between artistic control and “natural” believability. It nudges you toward what matters without looking like a signpost, and it sets the emotional tone without screaming “this is an effect.

Conclusion

Lighting is one of the main ways games build experiential realism. Through naturalistic scenes, shifting day-and-weather systems, or tightly controlled minimal lighting, it changes how we read space and how we respond to it emotionally. Light directs attention, sets tension and mood, and supports immersion without always needing obvious UI guidance. Across different genres and visual styles, it makes the point that realism in games isn’t only about what looks accurate it’s about what feels convincing while you’re playing.

References

Arnheim, R. (1938) Film as Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gibson, J.J. (1979) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Naughty Dog (2020) The Last of Us Part II [Video game]. Sony Interactive Entertainment. Rockstar Games (2018) Red Dead Redemption 2 [Video game]. Rockstar Games. Playdead (2016) Inside [Video game]. Playdead. thelastofushd (n.d.) The Last of Us Part II – The Landscape from The Last of Us Part II [Video]. YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/dU7zfHMnKG4?si=L8r-lnp2aQDPh8qN Rockstar Games (2017) Red Dead Redemption 2: Official Trailer #2 [Video]. YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/F63h3v9QV7w?si=R8qlNZZwpIr_XGBt

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Virtual Reality and Embodied Immersion in Beat Saber

Sources and Significance – Blog 9

Short Read

This post looks at how Beat Saber shows what VR is good at: immersion built through the body, rhythm, and sensation, not through photoreal visuals.

Beat Saber is a VR rhythm game where your body isn’t just “controlling” the experience it is the experience. Instead of trying to mimic a believable real-world place, the game leans into abstraction: neon space, clean geometry, loud colour, and constant motion. What makes it immersive is not environmental realism, but the feeling of being physically synced to a system that responds instantly to you. In that sense, it’s a useful example for thinking about VR as embodied media rather than a higher-resolution screen.

VR and Embodied Interaction

One of the clearest strengths of Beat Saber is that the player’s body becomes the main interface. You’re slicing blocks with two sabers, reacting to direction arrows, shifting your weight, and dodging obstacles in real time. Timing and spatial awareness are not optional skills they’re the core mechanic. There’s very little narrative scaffolding, but you still feel “in” the experience because your actions map directly onto what happens in the world. This fits VR theories that prioritise presence and embodiment: you don’t just watch an event, you perform it through movement.

Affect and Rhythm

The game also operates strongly at the level of affect. The mix of music, colour flashes, haptics, and repeated motion creates an immediate intensity excitement, pressure, flow often before you even label it as an emotion. That’s why the experience can feel physical first and interpretive second. The rhythm structure turns play into a feedback loop: the track sets a pulse, your body follows it, and the system confirms it through sound and visual response. When you hit the timing, it feels almost automatic, like your attention has dropped into the beat.

Immersion Without Realism

Beat Saber pushes against the idea that VR immersion needs realistic graphics. Its world is minimal and stylised, but that doesn’t weaken immersion it actually helps it. Less visual clutter means more focus on movement, pattern recognition, and timing. The immersion comes from coherence: your perception matches your action, and your action produces immediate feedback. Once you’re locked into the rhythm, the technology fades into the background, not because the world looks “real,” but because your body accepts the rules and stays engaged.

Interaction and Control

Unlike story-driven VR pieces, Beat Saber foregrounds interaction over narrative. Agency is constant: every second you’re making micro-decisions with your hands, posture, and attention. This connects with the tension discussed in Session 10 around interaction and immersion. Here, interaction doesn’t interrupt immersion it maintains it. Control feels direct and intuitive, and the more natural the control feels, the less you notice the interface as an interface.

Conclusion

Beat Saber shows how VR can generate strong immersion through embodiment and affect rather than visual realism or narrative complexity. By centring the player’s body and using rhythm as the organising structure, it reframes immersion as something felt and performed a lived experience created through movement, timing, and feedback.

References

Bolter, J.D. and Grusin, R. (1999) Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ryan, M.-L. (2003) ‘Narrative as Virtual Reality’, Narrative, 11(1), pp. 1–15. Gregg, M. and Seigworth, G.J. (2010) The Affect Theory Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Beat Games (2019) Beat Saber [Video game]. Beat Games. Release Trailer | Beat Saber – Official Gameplay Trailer [Video]. YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/vL39Sg2AqWg?si=SdDhYyj-GgWe-Oe_ LSToast (2020) Beat Saber Mixed Reality Gameplay [Video]. YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/WVueKYbwZrs?si=RVYEenzRUhByqwUC

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Affect, Emotion, and Embodied Experience in Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

Sources and Significance – Blog 8

This post looks at how Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice creates an embodied emotional experience through affective design, focusing on sensation, immersion, and player perception rather than narrative alone.

Affective Design in Games

Hellblade treats emotion as something you feel physically, not just something the story tells you to understand. Instead of leaning on exposition, it uses sound, movement, camera distance, and control to generate intensity. That connects to a wider shift in media studies away from representation as the main focus, and toward how media produces sensation, atmosphere, and bodily response.

Affect and Emotion

A key distinction in this session is between emotion and affect. Emotions are feelings we can usually name fear, sadness, anger while affect refers to pre-conscious sensations like tension, unease, and discomfort (Gregg and Seigworth, 2010). Hellblade hits you at that affective level first. Before I can clearly label what I’m experiencing, the game builds pressure through whispering voices, warped audio, and moments where vision and certainty are limited. The point isn’t immediate “meaning”; it’s intensity.

Sound and Sensory Pressure

Sound design is the engine of that intensity. Binaural audio makes voices feel uncomfortably close, as if they’re inside your head rather than in the environment. Those voices don’t just deliver narrative information they interfere with play. They create doubt, urgency, and fear, pulling your attention and shaping how you behave. It’s a strong reminder that affect in games can function as a force that directs action, not just a layer of representation.

Embodiment and Discomfort

The game also uses the body to create discomfort. The camera stays tight to Senua, narrowing your field of vision and making spaces feel claustrophobic. Combat is slow and heavy, producing fatigue instead of empowerment. These choices make experience itself part of the meaning: realism and emotional truth come from what it feels like to move through the world, not from visual accuracy or clean narrative clarity.

Ethics of Emotional Engagement

Hellblade also raises an ethical question about affective design. By putting the player in a vulnerable position, it invites empathy, but it also manages attention through discomfort. Ash argues that games organise affect to guide player responses, turning emotion into a form of engagement and control (Ash, 2015). In Hellblade, that organisation pulls you closer to Senua while also asking you to endure the experience rather than escape it.

Conclusion

Overall, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice shows how games can operate as powerful affective systems. Through sound, embodiment, and sensory pressure, it produces emotion that is often felt before it’s understood. It’s a clear example of how contemporary games can move beyond representation and engage players at the level of affect, making feeling central to meaning and experience.

References

Ash, J. (2015) The Interface Envelope: Gaming, Technology, Power. London: Bloomsbury. Gregg, M. and Seigworth, G.J. (2010) The Affect Theory Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Spinoza, B. (1996) Ethics. London: Penguin. Ninja Theory (2017) Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice [Video game]. Ninja Theory.

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Gender, Power, and Representation in Assassin’s Creed Origins

Sources and Significance – Blog 7

This post looks at how Assassin’s Creed Origins represents gender and power, and how those choices shape identity and agency inside its historical world.

Representation and Power in Games

Games don’t just “show” characters; they organise power through design. Who gets to act, who gets framed as important, and who gets play time all matter. Character models, narrative roles, and mechanics quietly teach players what authority looks like and who is allowed to have it. Assassin’s Creed Origins works as a useful case because it tries to balance historical authenticity with modern ideas about representation, which creates visible tensions.

Bayek, Masculinity, and Authority

Bayek is written as a protector first. As a Medjay, his identity is built around strength, duty, and guarding others, which leans into familiar masculine codes of authority. But the game doesn’t keep him purely stoic. His grief and vulnerability come through repeatedly, and that emotional weight becomes part of how the player reads his actions. Rather than masculinity being presented as dominance alone, it becomes tied to responsibility and loss, which gives his character more texture than the usual “unbreakable hero” model.

Aya and Female Agency

Aya is not treated as a decorative side character. She drives political action, makes strategic decisions, and moves through the world with competence and purpose. Importantly, she often acts independently of Bayek, which stops her from being reduced to support or motivation. At the same time, the game’s structure still limits her. Compared to Bayek, she has less sustained playable presence, and that imbalance matters because agency in games isn’t only narrative it’s also mechanical. Even when Aya is powerful in story terms, the player spends less time being her.

Gender, History, and Representation

The historical setting complicates everything. A game can aim for authenticity, but the past is already shaped by patriarchal systems, so “accuracy” can end up reproducing gendered restrictions. Origins seems aware of this tension. Many women operate inside social limits, but the narrative includes moments where those limits are resisted, negotiated, or strategically used. This links to Hall’s argument that representation doesn’t simply mirror reality; it actively produces meaning through selection and framing (Hall, 1989).

Power, Visibility, and the Gaze

Compared to earlier mainstream titles, Origins feels more restrained in how it frames bodies. Female characters are less often presented as spectacle and more often as actors within the plot. That shift pushes against the familiar “male gaze” dynamic Mulvey describes, where women are positioned mainly to be looked at (Mulvey, 1975). Aya, in particular, is framed through capability and consequence rather than display, which changes how power is visualised.

Conclusion

Assassin’s Creed Origins shows that mainstream games can represent gender and power in more layered ways, even while working inside historical and genre constraints. Bayek offers a masculinity shaped by vulnerability as well as strength, and Aya introduces political agency that isn’t simply secondary. The uneven playability between them, though, reminds me that representation in games happens through mechanics and screen time as much as through character writing.

References

Hall, S. (1989) ‘Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation’, Framework, 36, pp. 68–81. Mulvey, L. (1975) ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen, 16(3), pp. 6–18. Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble. London: Routledge. Ubisoft (2017) Assassin’s Creed Origins [Video game]. Ubisoft

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Representation and Ways of Seeing in Games

Sources and Significance – Blog 6

This post looks at how video games shape “ways of seeing” through representation, and how visual culture feeds into identity, power, and player perception.

Games as Visual Systems

Games aren’t only entertainment. They’re visual systems that train us to notice certain things and ignore others. Character design, camera perspective, environments, and narrative framing all work together to produce a particular viewpoint. Because of that, representation in games is never neutral. It carries cultural assumptions about what is normal, desirable, heroic, or marginal.

Ways of Seeing and Cultural Meaning

Berger’s point is that seeing is learned, not natural images come loaded with habits and power relations (Berger, 1972). Games make this even sharper because we don’t just look at images; we inhabit them. Who gets to be the protagonist, how bodies are shaped, what clothing signals, and how the camera frames characters all contribute to which identities get centred and which get pushed to the edges. Gender, race, and sexuality are not only “included” or “excluded” they’re shaped through how the game asks the player to look.

Representation and Power

A lot of mainstream games have historically repeated a narrow visual norm: white, male, heterosexual protagonists treated as default. Over time, repetition turns into expectation. It begins to feel “natural” that some identities lead and others support, appear as stereotypes, or disappear entirely. Hall argues that representation doesn’t simply mirror identity; it produces meaning about identity (Hall, 1989). So when certain portrayals dominate, they don’t just reflect culture they reinforce the power relations inside it.

Player Identification

How the game frames characters also shapes who the player is encouraged to identify with. Camera angles, control systems, and narrative attention pull the player into some viewpoints while keeping others distant. Identification can be affirming especially when a player recognises themselves in a character treated with depth and agency but it can also be alienating when representation is tokenistic, exaggerated, or missing.

Challenging Dominant Visual Norms

More recent games have started to challenge older “defaults” by widening representation and offering different perspectives. But inclusion isn’t automatically progress. It matters how characters are framed, what roles they occupy, and whether they have real agency rather than being present as decoration. A useful question isn’t only “who is visible?” but “who is allowed to act, change the world, and be taken seriously inside the narrative?”

Conclusion

Representation and ways of seeing in games shape how identities are understood and felt. Using visual culture theory makes it harder to treat games as neutral images: they are systems of meaning that organise perception, normalise certain identities, and encode power. Once you start noticing how games teach you to look, it becomes easier to question what they make seem natural and what they leave out.

References

Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin. Hall, S. (1989) ‘Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation’, Framework, 36, pp. 68–81. Manovich, L. (2018) AI Aesthetics. Moscow: Strelka Press. GLAAD (2024) Where We Are on TV. New York: GLAAD. Naughty Dog (2020) The Last of Us Part II [Video game]. Sony Interactive Entertainment.

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Signs, Meaning, and Control in Inside

Sources and Significance – Blog 5

This post looks at how Inside builds meaning almost entirely through visual and spatial signs, showing how semiotics can be used to read video games.

Inside communicates with very little overt explanation. There’s no dialogue, no written exposition, and the narrative is never “told” in a straightforward way. Instead, meaning comes from what you see, hear, and do: image, movement, sound, timing, and the way the world reacts to you. That makes it a strong case for thinking about games as semiotic systems networks of signs that guide interpretation rather than deliver information directly (Chandler, 2017).

Visual Signs and Meaning

From a semiotic perspective, almost everything in Inside can be read as a sign. Saussure describes the sign as a relationship between a signifier (the form) and a signified (the concept) (Saussure, 1983). A simple example is the boy’s red shirt. Denotatively, it’s just clothing. Connotatively, it becomes a signal of vulnerability and exposure. Against the game’s grey, industrial palette, the red stands out like a target. It marks the boy as “out of place,” and that visual difference feeds into the sense that he is being watched, hunted, or controlled.

Indexical Signs and Environmental Storytelling

The game also relies heavily on indexical signs clues that point to causes and forces beyond what’s visible (Peirce, 1931–1958). Machinery noise, sudden searchlights, guards responding to small movements, and bodies drifting in water all imply systems operating off-screen. The world feels governed by rules you weren’t told, but you begin to learn them through consequences. That’s what makes the environment feel readable: it isn’t neutral scenery, it’s a chain of signals that trains you to anticipate threat and adjust behaviour.

Symbolic Signs and Power Structures

Other recurring elements function symbolically, where meaning comes from shared cultural associations rather than direct resemblance (Chandler, 2017). Uniforms, surveillance devices, fenced corridors, laboratory imagery, and controlled crowds quickly evoke authority and conformity. You don’t need a character to explain “this is oppression” because the symbols are already loaded. Inside leans on that cultural shorthand to communicate power relations with almost no text.

Myth and Ideology

Barthes’ idea of myth helps push the reading further. Myth is where ideology starts to feel natural where constructed meanings present themselves as common sense (Barthes, 1972). On the surface, Inside is a boy moving through hostile spaces. Underneath, the repeated signs of surveillance, obedience, and institutional control encourage an ideological reading about systems that manage bodies and behaviour. The important part is that it doesn’t announce this as a message; it lets it settle through repeated visual logic and player experience.

Conclusion

Inside shows how games can operate as dense semiotic systems. Through visual contrast, indexical clues, and symbolic imagery, it builds meaning without relying on dialogue or exposition. What the player “understands” emerges through cultural knowledge, observation, and interaction by learning to read the world as a designed pattern of signs rather than as a backdrop for story.

References

Barthes, R. (1972) Mythologies. London: Jonathan Cape. Chandler, D. (2017) Semiotics: The Basics. London: Routledge. Peirce, C.S. (1931–1958) Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Saussure, F. de (1983) Course in General Linguistics. London: Duckworth. Playdead (2016) Inside [Video game]. Playdead.

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Realism in The Last of Us Part II

Sources and Significance – Blog 4

This post looks at how The Last of Us Part II builds realism through experience, emotion, and player involvement, rather than depending on visual accuracy alone.

Realism Beyond Visual Detail

People often talk about the game’s graphical detail, but the realism that sticks with me comes from how it feels to play. The design leans on pacing, interaction, and emotional weight, so believability is produced through presence rather than through photorealism. In that sense, realism isn’t a single aesthetic goal; it’s a set of strategies that make a world and its actions feel grounded.

Experiential Realism and Player Embodiment

A big part of this is experiential realism. Combat feels heavy and uncomfortable, and it demands slow, deliberate choices. Violence isn’t staged as heroic or stylish; it’s tiring and often followed by quiet. Those pauses matter because they stop the player from skating over consequences. You’re not only witnessing brutality you’re carrying out actions and then sitting in the aftermath, which makes realism operate through the body, not just through representation.

Believability and Emotional Restraint

The game also avoids spectacle in its emotional tone. Characters react in ways that feel shaped by trauma and fear, not by neat dramatic beats. Long silences, minimal dialogue, and restrained music give space for reflection instead of constantly pushing emotion at the player. That restraint suggests realism can be psychological and affective more about emotional truth than factual accuracy.

Simulation and Player Responsibility

If I think in terms of representation versus simulation, Part II sits closer to simulation. Film can show violence at a distance, but the game places you inside it. You have to move, act, choose, and survive, then deal with what follows. That participation creates a kind of responsibility that passive viewing can’t replicate, and it’s one of the clearest ways the game produces realism.

Discomfort as a Realist Strategy

Finally, discomfort is used deliberately. The game often refuses clean rewards or heroic closure, which challenges the idea that immersion should always be pleasurable. Instead, realism becomes confrontational: the player is kept inside morally messy situations long enough for them to register emotionally.

Conclusion

Overall, The Last of Us Part II shows how realism in games can come from experiential design, emotional restraint, and simulation. Visual detail matters, but the deeper realism is produced through interaction and affect through what the player has to do, endure, and sit with showing how contemporary games can redefine what “real” even means.

References

Bazin, A. (1967) What Is Cinema? Berkeley: University of California Press. Bolter, J.D. and Grusin, R. (1999) Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ehrlich, N. (2021) Animating Truth: Documentary and Visual Culture in the 21st Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Naughty Dog (2020) The Last of Us Part II [Video game]. Sony Interactive Entertainment.

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Intertextuality, Transmedia and Worldbuilding in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Sources and Significance – Blog 3

This post looks at how The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt builds its world through intertextuality drawing on literature, folklore, and existing media texts so the game feels like part of a much larger story ecosystem.

Intertextual Foundations

The Witcher 3 doesn’t really play like a sealed, self-contained narrative. It sits inside a wider network of texts: Sapkowski’s novels, Slavic folklore, and familiar fantasy conventions, while also adding new storylines that push the universe forward. Kristeva’s idea of intertextuality helps here, because it frames texts as made through transformation and overlap rather than isolated authorship (Kristeva, 1980). The game is constantly in dialogue with other material, even when it’s telling “new” stories.

Myth, Folklore, and Reinterpretation

A lot of the worldbuilding works by taking folk figures and re-situating them in ethically messy contexts. Creatures like noonwraiths and leshens don’t read as simple monsters to defeat; they’re tied to human choices, trauma, and local histories. That shift matters because it turns folklore into social commentary. Instead of repeating myths as decorative flavour, the game uses them to complicate blame and responsibility, so the supernatural often feels like an afterimage of something human.

Transmedia Worldbuilding

The series also makes sense through transmedia. Jenkins describes transmedia storytelling as spreading a fictional world across multiple media, where each medium contributes something different to the whole (Jenkins, 2007). With The Witcher, the books, games, and screen adaptations don’t simply retell the same plot; they expand the world through new angles, timelines, and emphasis. The Witcher 3 works as a major node in that network less a straight adaptation and more an extension that becomes part of what “counts” as the universe.

Player Interpretation and Moral Complexity

Narratively, the game avoids clean fantasy binaries. Questlines like the Bloody Baron echo familiar themes family, power, guilt but refuse easy closure. That openness ties to Barthes’ argument that meaning isn’t locked by the author; it’s produced through interpretation (Barthes, 1967). Because player choices lead to different outcomes, the game invites multiple ethical readings of the same situation. The meaning isn’t delivered as a final statement; it’s assembled through decisions and consequences.

Intertextuality also shows up in the smaller details: in-game books, letters, rumours, and environmental cues. These fragments make the world feel bigger than the main questline and encourage the player to piece together context rather than receive it whole. That’s where the depth comes from the sense that the world continues beyond what you directly witness, and that knowledge is something you build through attention.

Conclusion

Overall, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt shows how intertextuality and transmedia can work together in games. By drawing from existing literary and cultural material while adding new narratives to a wider franchise ecosystem, it creates a layered world where meaning comes from connection, reinterpretation, and player participation not from a single authoritative source.

References

Barthes, R. (1967) ‘The Death of the Author’, Aspen, 5–6. Kristeva, J. (1980) Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. New York: Columbia University Press. Jenkins, H. (2007) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. CD Projekt Red (2015) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt [Video game]. CD Projekt Red.

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Tools, Immersion, and Medium Specificity in Red Dead Redemption 2

Sources and Significance – Blog 2

This post looks at how Red Dead Redemption 2 uses game-specific tools to create immersion, and how that connects to debates around medium specificity

Immersion Through Interaction

Red Dead Redemption 2 is often called “cinematic,” but what makes it stick isn’t spectacle on its own. The game’s impact comes from interaction: the steady pacing, the dense environments, the soundscape, and the way player agency is threaded into everyday moments. That makes it a good case for thinking about medium specificity the idea that each medium has its own strengths and should lean into what it can do uniquely well (Lessing, 1766; Arnheim, 1938).

Medium Specificity in Games

If medium specificity matters, then games shouldn’t just imitate film language. They should use what film can’t: participation, time, and presence. In RDR2, narrative meaning often arrives through routine rather than constant cutscenes. Riding for long stretches, setting up camp, cleaning weapons, hunting, and simply watching the world change all become part of the story experience. These actions slow the player down and make the world feel inhabited. A film could show these moments, but it wouldn’t produce the same effect because the player’s involvement the choice to do them, to stay with them is the point.

The Game as a Total Work of Art

The game also fits the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk, a “total work of art” where multiple elements combine into one unified experience (Wagner, 1849). Visual realism, ambient sound, performance capture, music, and environmental storytelling all reinforce each other. But unlike opera or theatre, RDR2 requires participation. Immersion isn’t just received; it’s co-produced through action and attention.

At the same time, the game exposes a tension between immersion and control. The open world feels free, but the main story remains largely fixed, which creates friction between player agency and narrative direction. It echoes the lecture concern that immersive media can guide and manage the audience, even while offering the feeling of freedom.

Conclusion

Overall, Red Dead Redemption 2 shows how games create meaning through medium-specific design. Its immersion comes from interaction, pacing, and lived-in routine, suggesting that the strongest “cinematic” moments in games often happen when the game stops trying to be film and commits to what only games can do.

References

Arnheim, R. (1938) Film as Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lessing, G.E. (1766) Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. London: J. Ridley. Wagner, R. (1849) The Artwork of the Future. Leipzig: Otto Wigand. Manovich, L. (2001) The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bollmer, G. and Suddarth, A. (2022) ‘Embodied parallelism and immersion in virtual reality gaming’, Convergence, 28(2), pp. 579–594. Rockstar Games (2018) Red Dead Redemption 2 [Video game]. Rockstar Games.

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Stories & Narrative in God of War Ragnarök

Sources and Significance Bog 1

This post looks at an emotional scene from God of War Ragnarök and how its storytelling engages the player.

In God of War Ragnarök, there is a scene where Atreus’ wolf Fenrir dies… , that scene literally hits different. I picked this scene because it’s not about fighting or boss battles it’s just pure emotion. You can actually feel what Atreus is going through, and the game doesn’t rush it. It’s slow, painful, and honestly one of the realest moments in the whole game.

If we look at this scene using Todorov’s (1971) narrative structure, it follows a clear progression. The equilibrium is Atreus caring for Fenrir in a calm, intimate setting. The disruption occurs when Fenrir suddenly collapses. The recognition is visible as Atreus realises he cannot save him. The resolution comes when Atreus accepts this and comforts Fenrir in his final moments. This leads to a new equilibrium, where the emotional loss becomes part of Atreus’ character development.

The scene also makes strong use of binary oppositions as described by Lévi-Strauss (1963). Binary oppositions are opposing concepts that help structure meaning within narratives. In this scene, life vs death and innocence vs reality are particularly clear. Atreus represents emotional openness and hope, while the inevitability of death introduces harsh reality. Another important opposition is control vs helplessness. Although Atreus wants to change fate, he is confronted with the limits of his power.

What makes the scene even more powerful is how the game makes you stay in the moment. No clicks , no fighting just you, Atreus, and Fenrir. The breat slows, the music drops, and you genuinely feel like you’re right there. It doesn’t feel like a cutscene it feels personal.

This scene reminds you that Ragnarök isn’t just gods and battles. It’s about loss, growth, and those moments that stay with you long after the story moves on. That’s what makes it unforgettable.

The Short Read

In God of War Ragnarök, the scene where Atreus’ wolf Fenrir dies is one of the most emotionally powerful moments in the game. I chose this scene because it avoids action and focuses completely on emotion. The moment is slow and quiet, allowing the player to truly feel Atreus’ pain and understand his emotional state. This makes the scene feel real and deeply personal.

References

Bordwell, D. and Thompson, K. (1993) Film Art: An Introduction. London: McGraw-Hill. Todorov, T. (1971) ‘The two principles of narrative’, Diacritics, 1(1), pp. 37–44. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1963) Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Juul, J. (2001) ‘Games telling stories? A brief note on games and narratives’, Game Studies, 1(1). Available at: http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/ (Accessed: Day Month Year). Aarseth, E. (2004) ‘Genre trouble: Narrativism and the art of simulation’, in Wardrip-Fruin, N. and Harrigan, P. (eds.) First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 45–55.