Noel Brett

Emergent Narratives (ENs) provide a rich tool for uncovering untold tales when we play video games. They are stories that are not embedded by the game’s author, instead arising from the game’s mechanics (Adams, 2013). This enables the game to create new events for the player to experience, generated from the player’s choices (Louchart et al 2008). ENs, therefore, are...

Utilizing a relational framework that follows Coleman’s Becoming of Bodies (Coleman 2008) and Radical Relationality (Powell 2013), Brett’s talk examines elements of problematic design surrounding two virtual worlds: World of Warcraft (Blizzard 2004) and VRChat (VRChat Inc. 2017). Expanding previous work on the erasure of queer bugs in WoW (Brett 2018), Brett works to map how the production, maintenance, or...

In game studies research on avatars has generally focused either upon identity or theories of multiple selves. Identification theories tend to focus on whether human players relate their offline selves to the image of their online character. A two dimensional relationship between avatar and player. In contrast, the latter expresses that the self is often fragmented by the affordances of...

The question ‘are videogames causing violence?’ is an infamously difficult to answer. This question assumes a dualist framework in which individuals and bits of culture exist as separate, discrete objects that interact independently from each other (Elias 1978; Depelteau 2013; Powell 2013). Particularly, thinking about the interactions between humans, technology and culture in a way that discusses the effects of...

This Diversity Working Group workshop will promote current and emerging research on diversity in game studies, including but not limited to race, gender, sexuality, class, caste, disability, nationality, decoloniality, and other related topics. Workshop presenters will share their work with an audience of colleagues and experts, and participants will discuss current trends and network to better support diverse work in...

Noel Brett shows how the shared agency between humans and video game technologies can mobilize far-right violence through intentionally or unintentionally placed affordances.

With live streaming rising in popularity, many people stream the creation of 3D avatars However, many of these avatars end up following a similar output: a hyper-feminized anime girl. Why is this? What are the social and technological processes constructing these avatars? To answer these questions, I propose that human (streamer and audience) and non-human (streaming platform and 3D modeling...

For many queer players, World of Warcraft has served as a digital platform to enact queer gameplay. Game mechanics, social play, and avatar models provide possibilities for playing queer. For example, the masculine female Orcs have allowed many queer women to not only play with female masculinity, but to go unnoticed by straight male players (Sundén 2009).

In this chapter, I develop the critical framework of moments of political gameplay using an approach informed by radical relationism, microethnography, and performativity, in order to produce detailed readings of how video games and their players reproduce (far-right) political action. I form this concept through two qualitative case studies from two seemingly different games: Angry Goy II (AG2), a game...

This presentation examines the temporal becomings of violence through hate as a game design feature by reviewing how features within game design, and their social placement, act as a mobilizing device of far-right action in digital forms. Particularly, this presentation will provide a preliminary discussion centered around games where hate is a vital part of game progression, followed by a...

Utilizing a theoretical framework that follows Coleman’s Becoming of Bodies, this talk examines elements of problematic design surrounding two digital platforms: World of Warcraft and VRChat. Through an understanding of avatar bodies as continuously becoming, digital scholarship can more holistically work to uncover how hateful rhetoric materializes upon the practices of user bodies through relations between the online communities these...

In this blogpost, I attempt to define the feelings that impress binary gender expectations in place with the concept of hetero-comfortability from my ongoing ethnographic work in VRChat. Hetero-comfortability is a process of recognition, where feelings of familiarity — historically established through hetero-conditioning — creates impressions that allows one to find comfort in the continuing appearance of hetero-signifiers. As Sara...

The interfaces of digital worlds have resonance on the lived body of the participant — whether by the creation of avatars, or the desire for certain avatar customization. To move through and interact with game worlds is a physical, multi-sensorial experience. if we limit ourselves to an understanding of a body which ends at the skin — what are we...

We are interested in a systematic understanding the effect of visual scaling — changing the size of the screen, while holding other factors constants — on gameplay. Through examples, we illustrate the effects that arise. We investigate scaling up as well as down, and find that the effects are quite different. We give a first classification of the underlying causes...

Historically, social spaces have created limited avenues for the performance of queerness. There are notable exceptions for online spheres (ex: Tumblr, Overwatch); however, other online virtual spaces such as VRChat continue to subdue cues for queerness. Primarily, this can be observed through behaviours asserted by users that work to cultivate a territory through transphobic articulations, designating a hierarchy of queerness...

In queering gameplay, cues of sexuality concentrate the possibilities of action communicated by (avatar) design. However, many games such as Blizzard’s World of Warcraft (Blizzard 2004) ensure the erasure of queerness by “correcting” threats on heteronormative gameplay – updating the queer bugs which permit the player to embody queerness. Centering a discussion of gaming as an embodied experience through avatar...

For many digital games, a player is able to construct their digital identity with an avatar. Digital games often prescribe character customization interfaces (CCIs) which allow the player to create or customize their avatar. Yet, the range of possibilities given to a player is restricted by the design choices placed by the game’s interface, ultimately limiting the “possibilities a certain...