ERGODIC VIDEO GAMES AS AGONIST OF MASOCHISM IN GAMERS

Aleksandar Filipović

doi:10.51738/Kpolisa2024.21.1r.63f

Authors

Aleksandar Filipović Faculty of Law for Commerce and Judiciary, Novi Sad https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1097-2079

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51738/Kpolisa2024.21.1r.63f

Keywords:

video game, ergodicity, masochism, satisfaction, pain, sense of accomplishment

Abstract

Throughout their history, even though their purpose and function have essentially remained unchanged, video games have repeatedly changed their essence, from pioneering technical endeavors, through arcade machines, to thoroughly complex modern video games. At a certain stage of their development, video games were very difficult to complete, with one of the main reasons being that for many years games were primarily played on coin-operated arcade machines, so it was in developers' interest for the games to be challenging. However, there is a crucial difference between difficult video games and video games that we call ergodic video games. The essential difference is that ergodic video games (or video games with ergodic elements) require players to adopt a non-trivial approach, i.e., additional effort, skill, and dedication, and since ergodicity drastically changes the difficulty level of the game, it also requires certain character traits from players, in terms of readiness to respond to frustration with persistence rather than giving up, which often borders on a specific type of masochism. Therefore, ergodic video games are colloquially called masocore games, which is a portmanteau of the words "masochism" and "hardcore". This paper aims to explore the causality between ergodic video games and the existence of masochistic character traits in players who play them, as well as how such games, by combining pain and frustration on one side with pleasure and a sense of accomplishment on the other side, provide a gaming experience that is almost impossible to experience by playing classic, non-ergodic video games.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Aarseth, E. (1997). Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Anderton, J. (2016). Cyberbeasts: Substitution and Trivialization of the Non/Human Animal in Home Movies, Memes, and Video Games. In: Screening the Nonhuman: Representations of Animal Others in the Media. Lexington Books.

Bjelajac, Ž. & Jovanović, M. (2013). Pojedini aspekti bezbedonosne kulture na Internetu [Some Aspects of Security Culture on the Internet]. Kultura polisa, 10(21), 99–114

Bjelajac, Ž., & Zirojević, M. (2014). Bezbednosna kultura u eri globalizacije [Security Culture in Era of Globalization]. Kultura polisa, 11(23), 77–99.

Bjelajac, Ž. & Filipović, A. M. (2020). Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) as Paradigm of Lack of Security Culture. Kultura polisa, 17(43), 239–258. Retrieved from http://kpolisa.com/index.php/kp/ article/view/244

Costikyan, G. (2013). Uncertainty in Games. The MIT Press.

Cowan, L. (1982). Masochism: A Jungian View. Spring Publications.

Filipović, A. (2016). Paradigma kulturološkog pozicioniranja video igre [The paradigm of position of video games in the system of culture], Doctoral dissertation, Faculty of Dramatic Arts, University of Arts, Belgrade.

Filipović, A. (2022). Bića i svetovi video igre: Teorijska i kulturološka paradigma [Beings and worlds of video games: Theoretical and cultural paradigm]. Pravni fakultet za privredu i pravosuđe.

Gualeni, S., and Vella, D. (2020). Virtual Existentialism: Meaning and Subjectivity in Virtual Worlds. Palgrave Macmillan.

Juul, J. (2013). The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games. The MIT Press.

Karth, I. (2014). Ergodic Agency: How Play Manifests Understanding. In Engaging with Videogames. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9781848882959_020

Lihačov, D. S. (1972). Poetika stare ruske književnosti [Poetics of the Old Russian Literature]. SKZ. u Filipović, A. (2022). Bića i svetovi video igre: Teorijska i kulturološka paradigma [Beings and worlds of video games: Theoretical and cultural paradigm]. Pravni fakultet za privredu i pravosuđe.

Mitchell, L. (2018). Ludopolitics: Videogames against control. Zero Books.

Newman, J. (2002). The Myth of Ergodic Video Game. Game Studies, 2(1), https://www.gamestudies.org/0102/newman/

Proudfoot, S. (2019) Look at What You’ve Done: Exploring Narrative Displeasure in Video Games. The Popular Culture Studies Journal, 7(2), 158–178.

Serada, A. (2022). Playing Against Players: Dangerous Boundaries of the “Magic Circle”, Topos, (1), 7 – 26. https://doi.org/10.24412/1815-0047-2022-1-7-26

Sicart, M. (2009). The ethics of computer games. The MIT Press.

Stewart, D. (2022). When Representations Become Acts: Gamepad Vibration as Physical Violence, Topos, (1), 148-162, https://doi.org/10.24412/1815-0047-2022-1-148-162

Westerlaken, M. (2017). Self-Fashioning in Action: Zelda’s Breath of the Wild Vegan Run. Proceedings of Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, Kraków.

Тyugashev, E.A. (2018). The Kant’ Doctrine on Rational Beings and Esotericism of Toy, in Game and Toy: Compendium of Scientific Papers, Voronov, V.M, Kotkin, K. Y. (eds), Murmansk Arctic State University, 66-70.