The document presents an exploratory frame analysis of different modes of video gaming. It discusses how "gaming" can be framed as a leisurely activity or an instrumental task through keyings. The method involved interviews with 19 participants who game both leisurely and instrumentally. Results identified multiple forms of leisurely gaming centered around types of enjoyment (relaxing, socializing, engrossing etc.) and instrumental gaming centered around goals (reviewing, analyzing, training etc.). Instrumental play is seen as a keying that frames gaming as a controlled, work-like task rather than voluntary play. The frame analysis accounts for informal games and the lack of one single video gaming frame.
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Exploring Gaming Modes Through Frame Analysis
1. disambiguating playan exploratory analysis of gaming modes
Sebastian Deterding
MAGIC Lab, Rochester Institute of Technology
DiGRA 2013, Atlanta, August 27, 2013
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10. The challenge of instrumental play
• Instrumental play has features (folk-theoretically)
associated with work, not play nor games Taylor 2006; Yee
2006; Malaby 2007; Nardi 2009
• Often involuntary, inautonomous, exotelic
• Often serious, predefined, non-negotiable
consequence
• Often negative emotions
• Often repetitive, pre-organised, effortful
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11. Jesper Juul
»According to Roger Caillois, the professional player or
athlete is working rather than playing. This quickly becomes
counterintuitive since a contest such as a marathon may
include professional athletes as well as amateurs who are
running “for the fun of it.” This logically means that the
marathon is or is not a game at the same time. A better
explanation is that even professional players are playing a
game, but that in this specific game session, the consequences
have been negotiated to be financial and career-
determining.«
half-real (2005: 62)
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18. A frame is »the definition of a situation«:
»principles of organization which govern
events ... and our subjective involvement
in them.«
Erving Goffman
frame analysis (1986: 8, 10-11)
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19. Basic tenets of frame analysis
• Frames are people’s socially co-oriented and reproduced
»organising principles« for types of situations
• They organise both covert experience and overt
behaviour
• Frames do so materially (how situation X is), and
epistemically (how people perceive, conceive, identify,
expect X), and normatively (how people demand/sanction
X ought to be)
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20. gaming frame
Total mesh of actors, objects, processes reproducing-changing the reoccurrence of similar types of situations over space & time
framing as »gaming«
Process of constituting a situation
as being »gaming« game objects/settings
Stabilise affordances relative to
dispositions
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the gaming frame
frame understanding
Current understanding of
situation as »gaming«
gaming dispositions
Enable understanding, perception,
enactment relative to objects
28. modes of leisurely gaming
relaxing socialising engrossing hardcore competitive
Motivational
relevancy
Relaxation Relatedness Engrossment Competence Achievement
Telicity Very low Low Medium High Very high
Absorption Very low Low Very high High Very high
Arousal Very low Medium-high Medium High Very high
Gameworthiness Very low Low Medium High Very high
Harmony Very low/absent Very high Low/absent Very low/absent Very low
Typical
contexture
Mostly singleplayer F2F Multiplayer Mostly singleplayer Mostly singleplayer Multiplayer
Typical genres
Social & casual
games
Party & board
games
RPG, adventure,
TBS, simulation
Shooter, RTS,
action, MMORPG
Combat, sports,
shooters, RTS
Typical devices Mobile, tablet, PC Console, PC PC, console Console, PC PC, console
Typical settings
Transit, recreation
spots, home
Private or shared
room at home
Private room at
home
Private room at
home
Private room at
home
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Cf. Strong 1979
29. instrumental gaming
• Again, multiple forms of instrumental gaming:
reviewing, analysing, training, tournament
• Participants reported instrumental gaming to be
»not playing«, used emic terms to distinguish them
• Experience of instrumental gaming is very different
• But: Behaviour and material configurations are
highly similar to leisurely gaming
‣ Instrumental play is a keying: a re-framing
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30. Keyings are »conventions by which a
given activity, ... meaningful in terms of
some primary framework, is transformed
into something patterned on this activity
but seen by the participants to be
something quite else.«
Erving Goffman
frame analysis (1986: 43-44)
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32. Johan Huizinga
»First and foremost,
all play is a voluntary
activity.«
homo ludens (1938/1950: 7)
Cf. Caillois 2001, Suits 2005, Pellegrini 2009, Burghardt 2005
33. controlled motivation
• Instrumental gaming gives rise to experience of
controlled motivationDeci & Ryan 2012
• Occurs when current needs mismatch situational
givens and salient controlling motivations keep
individual from changing or leaving
• Leisurely gaming typically allows freedom to change
or leave the situation: Taken-for-granted absence of
controlling motivation is part of game enjoyment
• Events framed as »play« feel »work-like« if
experienced as controlled motivated, events framed
as work feel »like play« if autonomously motivated
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35. summary
• Frame analysis distinguishing »games« as objects from
»gaming« as situational framing accounts for
• Informal games: Situational actor-object relation affords gaming, but actors
constitute it with objects
• Instrumental play: A keying of gaming as instrumental task
• The is no one video gaming frame, but leisurely modes of
gaming around types of enjoyment and instrumental
keyings around types of instrumental goals
• Leisurely gaming is enjoyable partially because it provides
the autonomy to reconfigure or leave the situation
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