[Commlist] G|A|M|E - Call For Papers N.8 - ‘Would you kindly?’: Claiming Video Game Agency as Interdisciplinary Concept

new Call For Papers for G|A|M|E - Games as Art, Media, Entertainment

Extended Abstract deadline: 19th of July 2019

‘Would you kindly?’: Claiming Video Game Agency as Interdisciplinary Concept
(https://www.gamejournal.it/n-8-2019-would-you-kindly-claiming-video-game-agency-as-interdisciplinary-concept/)

The new issue of G|A|M|E proposes a re-examination of the concept of 
agency in games. We welcome contributions that address the idea of 
agency from a variety of academic perspectives, taking into account its 
interdisciplinary history and application, in order to expand our 
critical understanding of the concept more broadly. We therefore invite 
scholars from all fields to reflect on different notions of agency, not 
only in relation to physical and digital games, but also to other media 
and art forms as they impact on games and game studies. At the end of 
the influential first-person shooter Bioshock (2K Games, 2007), its 
critique of the rhetoric of choice and freedom emerges from the dialogue 
between the protagonist Jack and the visionary despot of Rapture, Andrew 
Rayan. Rayan's seemingly innocent question ‘Would You Kindly?’ conceals 
a cognitive trigger that casts a shadow over the protagonist's actions. 
By shattering the illusion of free will for both character and player, 
the game breaks the fourth wall and confronts the user with the 
question: who is being/has been controlled?

Already central to the fields of Human-Computer Interaction as well as 
that of design (e.g. Sherry Turkle, 1984; Brenda Laurel, 1991), agency 
was redefined more than twenty years ago in Janet Murray's seminal 
volume Hamlet on the Holodeck (1996, p. 123) as ‘the satisfying power to 
take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and 
choices’. To this day, the concept of agency is still prominent in 
scholarly debates on video game and game design: to describe a key 
ontological category that delineates the multiplicity of paths as well 
as the breadth of choices made available by interactive texts; and also 
–closer to Murray’s acceptation– to define a primary category of video 
game aesthetics, a textual effect attached to the pleasure of taking 
meaningful decisions within virtual environments.

On one level, agency informs media objects, texts and devices. Agency 
can be observed in relation to old and new game genres (adventure games 
with branching narratives, interactive movies, sandbox and open-world 
games); degrees of agency are provided by the affordances of VR/AR and 
mixed reality technologies (Oculus, PlayStationVR, HoloLens etc.); forms 
of agency are conceptualised across diverse media and art forms 
(interactive design, experimental film, on- demand TV, experiential 
theatre, museum installations) as well as in physical and digital 
hypertexts (Choose You Own Adventure books); agency is reallocated 
through new modes of distribution and fruition (VoD, streaming platforms 
and digital piracy); and agency is also embedded in sub-cultural 
practices and products (machinima, fan-fiction etc.).

On another level, agency is crucial to debating conceptual categories 
relevant to interactive digital media. Digital artefacts are immersed in 
a cross- and trans-media landscape, in which the interface constantly 
brings into question the relationship between objects, developers and 
users, blurring the boundaries between authors and audiences and 
questioning the sovereignty over these objects on multiple fronts. Here, 
agency provides an opening to explore aesthetic, social and political 
tensions (gender, race, class), and can be used to analyse discourses 
that challenge the role of the spectator/reader/player in relation to 
media object and their creators (art and exhibition, authorship, fandom, 
prosumer culture).

With its eighth issue, G|A|M|E wants to investigate the agency afforded 
by games, software and interfaces, as well as the agency claimed by 
players, users and spectators. Exceeding Murray’s original aesthetic 
understanding of the term, we intend to expand our examination of agency 
within and beyond the virtual borders of game studies. Agency is, in 
fact, a pivotal concept in philosophy, adopted to address relations of 
intentionality and causality between actors and actions (e.g. Anscombe, 
1957; Davidson, 1963); as well as in social sciences, which locate 
agency within material and immaterial networks between human and 
non-human agents (Latour, 2005). In light of the vast interdisciplinary 
history of this concept, we seek contributions that can productively 
inform and renew our understandings of agency in gaming and play, while 
also using game agency to inform larger political, philosophical and 
cultural issues, developing current critical debates in game studies and 
in other disciplines.

Topics may include:

•	agency in game studies
•	agency and gaming technologies (VR, AR, mixed reality)
•	agency and interactivity
•	agency in video game criticism
•	close textual analysis of games in relation to agency
•	player reception and agency: modding, fandom etc.
•	agency in traditional games: board games, sports etc.
•	video game agency and issues of authorship
•	agency as interdisciplinary concept, from games to: arts, social 
sciences, law and philosophy
•	game agency in relation to other cultural forms (experimental film, 
cinema, art, architecture, design)
•	agency and non-linear textuality
•	politics (race, class, sexuality, gender, geopolitics) and video game 
agency
•	agency and media ecologies

Scholars are invited to submit an extended abstract (between 500-1,000 
words excluding references) or full papers by Friday the 19th of July, 
2019 to (editors /at/ gamejournal.it)

Extended Abstract deadline: 19th of July 2019; Notification of 
acceptance: 25th of July 2019

All accepted authors will be asked to submit the full paper by the 15th 
of October 2019. We expect to release this issue in Winter 2019

Editors: Ivan Girina (Brunel University London), Berenike Jung 
(University of Tübingen)


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