From Saviour to Colonial Perpetrator

Manipulating Player Empathy in Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill: Origins

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12538136
AutoresAndrei Nae (0000-0003-3011-4597, Twitter (United States), autor de correspondencia)
Año2022
Volumen28
Número2
Páginas179-194
Fecha de publicación2022-04-03
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaParallax (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1353-4645 • E-ISSN: 1460-700X
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13534645.2023.2184949
OpenAlexW4380075565
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas27

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size AcknowledgementsThis work was supported by a grant of the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research, CNCS - UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P1-1.1-PD-2019-0898, within PNCDI III.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsAndrei NaeAndrei Nae is Lecturer in Game Studies and English Literature at the University of Bucharest. He is the manager and principal investigator of the research project ‘Colonial Discourse in Video Games’ financed by the Executive Unit for Financing Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation (UEFISCDI) and the author of Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis in Survival Horror Video Games (Routledge, 2021). Email: [email protected] Nae, Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis, 41.2 Ibid., 3.3 Taylor, “Gothic Bloodlines,” 49.4 Kirkland, “Masculinity in Video Games;” Nae, Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis, 41.5 Nae, Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis, 216–217.6 See Crogan, Gameplay Mode.7 Bogost, Persuasive Games, 7–8.8 Ibid., ix.9 I use the concept ‘procedural representation’ to refer to aural, visual, and/or kinaesthetic representations that are generated by the game engine during gameplay as a result of the game rules and player input.10 Nae, Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis, 12–13.11 Anable, Playing with Feelings, xiv.12 Järvinen, Understanding Video Games, 86.13 Ibid., 87–89.14 Frome, “Eight Ways,” 833, “Interactive Works,” 12–14; “Representation, Reality, and Emotions,” 18–20.15 Apter, “Phenomenological Frames,” 28; Frome, “Interactive Works,” 5–6.16 Frome, “Interactive Works,” 6–7.17 See Ibid., 12.18 Frome, “Representation, Reality, and Emotions,” 18. Frome borrows these concepts from Tan, “Emotion.”19 Lankoski, “Player Character Engagement,” 298–299.20 Ibid., 300.21 Lankoski, “Computer Games and Emotions,” 47.22 Ibid.; Lankoski, “Player Character Engagement,” 295.23 See Ang, “Rules, Gameplay, and Narrative;” Juul, “On Absent Carrot Sticks.”24 Lankoski, “Player Character Engagement,” 302.25 Ibid., 303.26 There are, of course, some video games where players are expected to control the villain. See, for example, Hitman:Codename 47 where the protagonist is a contract killer.27 From this point onward, I will be using the term ‘survival horror’ to refer to ‘classical survival horror’.28 For a schematic account of empathic engagement in Silent Hill 3, see Lankoski, “Player Character Engagement,” 300–305.29 Nae, Immersion, Narrative, and Gender, 41.30 Isbister, How Games Move Us, 4.31 Ekman and Lankoski, “Hair-Raising Entertainment,” 192-197; Nae, Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis, 60–67.32 Ekman and Lankoski, “Hair-Raising Entertainment,” 196; Perron, “Survival Horror,” 125.33 Narrativisation is the process of assigning diegetic meaning to elements that appear to be incongruous with the storyworld. Fludernik, Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology, 25.34 Nae, Immersion, Narrative, and Gender, 42.35 Witheford and de Peuter, Games of Empire; Mukherjee, Videogames and Postcolonialism; Meinel (ed.), Video Games and Spatiality in American Studies.36 See Mukherjee, Videogames and Postcolonialism.37 Galloway, Gaming, 79–84. See also King and Leonard, “Wargames.”38 Nae, Horror Video Games, 25–28.39 Mukherjee, “Playing Subaltern,” 5. See also Mukherjee, “The Playing Fields of Empire.”40 Nae, “From Male to Colonial Gaze.”41 Shaw, “Playing War,” 796.42 Kirkland, “Survival Horrality.” Kirkland, “Gothic Videogames,” 119.43 See chapter 5 in Dumas, The Monstrous-Feminine and chapters 5 and 6 in Nae, Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis.44 See also Niedenthal, “Patterns of Obscurity,” 175.45 Pötzsch and Hammar, “Playing Perpetrators,” 345.46 Ibid.47 Smethurst and Craps, “Playing with Trauma,” 9.48 See Kirkland, “Masculinity in Video Games.” See also Part II in Nae, Immersion, Narrative, and Gender.49 The book is accessible to players only after the game has already been finished once.50 Team Silent, Silent Hill 2 (Tokyo: Konami, 2001).51 For a comprehensive study of English settle colonialism in North American, see Anderson, Ethnic Cleansing.52 Shakespeare, The Tempest, 3.2.141–149.53 Players with no knowledge of The Tempest can also get past the stage level, but have to go by trial and error in setting up the right props and background.54 See, inter alia, Barker and Hume, “Nymphs and Reapers;” Fuchs, “Conquering Islands;” Griffiths, “‘This Island’s mine’;” Skura, “Discourse and the Individual;” Willis, “Shakespeare’s Tempest.”55 See Flagstad, “‘Making this Place Paradise’.”

Art · Empathy · Feeling · Immersion (mathematics · Literature · Media studies · Multimedia · Narrative · Sociology · Video game · Visual arts · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Mathematics · Narrative Theory and Analysis · Psychology · Social Psychology