Video Games as Culture Quotes

“Video games convey some aspects of the experiences they are recreating, but video game experiences are not, themselves, the experiences recreated. The relationship that is established between the player and those realities expressed in a video game is therefore not defined in terms of correspondence but of connection, emergence, or (re)enactment. It is in this complex connection between video games, players, and social reality that the game experience reflects and transforms ‘real life’ experiences. The videoludification of society progresses inexorably.”
― Daniel Muriel, Video Games as Culture

“At a sociopolitical level, video game culture shows us that agency is part of both emancipatory and alienating practices. The notion of agency is strongly influenced by the hegemonic political rationalities of neoliberalism, as we saw in the way that video game culture fosters the idea of free, active, and powerful individuals who are held responsible for their own actions and self-government (this is reflected in wider society in those individuals who are responsible for their own safety, well-being, and education). However, precisely using the same forces that power neoliberalism as a hegemonic set of rationalities, video game culture also shows us that agency can be articulated in more collaborative and participatory ways.”
― Daniel Muriel, Video Games as Culture

“But, above all, this widely extended video game culture that affects society as a whole can be summarized in the ongoing process of videoludification of society, through which several aspects of contemporary society are being (video)gamified. Video games and their culture are, accordingly, the beta test version of the society to come.”
― Daniel Muriel, Video Games as Culture

“René Magritte, a Belgian surrealist painter, is the author of the popular painting La Trahison des Images (‘The Treachery of Images’), which depicts a pipe. Below the pipe, Magritte wrote the following sentence: ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ (‘This is not a pipe’). What Magritte seems to be trying to convey is that this in not a pipe, but rather a painting of a pipe; the word ‘pipe’ is not a pipe either. The x on the map does not (usually) refer to a real x on the ground, and even if it does, the x on the map is not the x on the ground. It is a re-presentation. And this re-presentation is not what is re-presented, the signifier is not the signified, and the map is not the territory. …However, if it is possible to affirm within a video game that ‘this is not a video game’, it is because video games are also representations of reality (or experiences of reality as we saw in Chapter 4), and that affirmation allows the game to refer to ‘real life’ as the opposite to a game, a fantasy, or a fiction.”
― Daniel Muriel, Video Games as Culture

“We see that empathy and identification processes are mainly describing experiences that are through video games, connecting us to the reality that surrounds us. Instead of the immersive, absorbing experiences of those who play video games as a form of escapism, we see how video games are also capable of other kinds of mediations: they transform our everyday life experiences in ways that multiply, instead of severing, our links to society.”
― Daniel Muriel, Video Games as Culture

“Relatability alludes to the possibility (and easiness) of understanding someone or something, and by doing so, it facilitates the emergence of connections with those situations, even if these are completely alien to them. This opens the opportunity to give people other perspectives, without forcing them, even temporarily, to occupy those positions without question, resistance, or critical distance.”
― Daniel Muriel, Video Games as Culture

“This implies that video games are, unlike philosophical thought experiments that only occur as imagined scenarios, ‘counterfactual narratives that test the player’ in an interactive scenario. Video games offer opportunities to engage in the most varied situations and approach different questions such as perception, personal identity, free will, and ethics. Video games then help connect us with multiple realities and experiences.”
― Daniel Muriel, Video Games as Culture

“This, then, is neoliberalism par excellence, which casts players as powerful subjects, who are able to control the outcome of their actions in ways they could only imagine in their daily lives. As Oliva, Pérez-Latorre, and Besalú (2016: 12) argue, paratexts around video game culture (such as the text on case video game boxes) urge the player ‘to “choose”,”collect”, “manage” and “win”, defining what we should expect of a good game or a good player experience’. Video games create an environment (rhetorical but also material) where players’ agency is inflated and promotes a sense of achievement and empowerment. In a more or less explicit way, video games facilitate the notion that players, if they are accomplished enough or try hard enough are able to succeed and triumph.”
― Daniel Muriel, Video Games as Culture