Presenters: Riccardo Retez and Luca Miranda
Registration Number: 028
Institution: IULM University, Milan, Italy
Abstract: This research investigates the figure of the player as a pathogen agent able to impose a propagating form of homologation within the video game Watch Dogs: Legion (Ubisoft 2020). The study involves the analysis of the role of the player in Watch Dogs: Legion, according to a multiple configuration: as patient zero, parasite, and epidemic agent. Therefore, the role of the player is potentially expressed through his being a starting point of contagion, a parasite that raids and bends the bodies of NPCs (non-player characters) and an epidemic agent—a potentially uncontrolled transmission medium. Rafizadeh, Manavirad and Liberati (2020) state that in video games, players are able to move and progress in the interactive world of the game while watching the avatar from an external point of view. The relation between virtual worlds and players can be highlighted as a form of social and political agency. As Daniel Muriel and Garry Crawford (2018) asserted, video games can provide perspectives on political actions, as well as on the hallmarks of the contemporary. By choosing a specific role, the player expresses political, social, and anthropological attitudes, useful to frame cultural configurations and visual representations through relational models—amidst instances in contemporary texts. Watch Dogs: Legion is set in a totalitarian London of a hypothetical future. Johnson Craig and Tulloch Rowan (2017) stated that the video game landscape is permeated by dystopian settings, where social collapse and totalitarian frames are amongst the favourite scenarios depicted. As stated by Jacob Aron (2020), in the game there is not one or more narratively relevant avatars: the player can impersonate any NPC in the game world. Since this contagion is the fundamental mechanic of the experience, this paper shows how it is not the NPC to represent and be subject to an idea of homologation—a standardized concept in the video game industry—but how it is the player himself who imposes a propagating form of homologation— with his tastes, choices, and political, social and anthropological behaviours. Regarding the game narrative framework, it is possible to state that the totalitarian form implemented in the game design—through narrative and gameplay dynamics—is addressed by the player across an epidemic process and expression. Compared to the video game’s trend to homologate the player to ideologies, constructs, and mechanics of the product, the analysed text proposes an inverse process. The paper argues that as an epidemic agent, the player both generates and fights (as a network) a process of homologation, creating kindred avatars and tackling totalitarianism.
Bio: Riccardo Retez
Riccardo Retez is a PhD student in Visual and Media studies at IULM University, Milan. His research project investigates the behaviour and attitude of the game live streaming spectator through phenomena of social, economic and sexual consumption. He received a Master's Degree in Television, Cinema and New Media at IULM University in 2019 and a Bachelor’s Arts Degree in Graphic Design and Multimedia at the LABA of Florence in 2017. He recently published his first academic book, Machinima vernacolare (Concrete Press 2020) and has also contributed to academic publications in journals (Ludica 2020; Eracle Journal 2021) and volumes (Machinima, The State of Art 2021).
Bio: Luca Miranda
Luca Miranda is an independent researcher and artist that lives and works in Italy. His research is focused on game and visual studies, the relationship between reality and simulation, and the aesthetic potential of the avatar. He experiments with game photography, machinima and visual investigations. In 2020, he received a Master’s Degree in TV, Cinema and New Media at IULM University in Milan and in 2016 a Bachelor’s Degree in Media and Art at the University of Bologna. In 2018, he co-founded Eremo, a Milanese artistic collective, and since 2020 he collaborates as a curator with the Milan Machinima Festival. His first book, Giocare a camminare, will be published in 2021.