Digital Journal for Philology
Sonderausgabe
Digitale Kontexte. Literatur und Computerspiel in der Gesellschaft der Gegenwart
Special Issue # 2
Edited by Maren Conrad, Theresa Schmidtke and Martin Stobbe
Digital media constitute a privileged space to address pressing questions for a digital society while defining it in fundamental ways. Under the umbrella term ›digital contexts‹, the special issue engages with these questions theoretically and practically.
Maren
Conrad
Theresa
Schmidtke
Martin
Stobbe
Literatur und Computerspiel in der digitalen Gesellschaft
Martin
Hennig
Problemaufriss zur Erforschung digitaler Medien am Beispiel des Computerspiels
Using game studies as an example, it is the aim of this paper to identify four problem areas of digital media research. These problem areas are then connected to currently underrepresented theoretical, medial and cultural contexts, and a contextualisation of digital media use practices is presented.
Philippe
Wampfler
German literature classes more or less ignore computer games or, more generally speaking, digital literature. This paper identifies the fundamental reasons for this exclusion and proposes a four-step program that seeks to integrate this topic into the teaching plan. Thinking about language and literature in a digital age needs to focus on digital language art — this is the central argument put forward.
Raphael
Stübe
Entscheidungsstatistik in den Computerspielen von ›Telltale Games‹ zwischen Regulierung und Problematisierung von Normalität
Using the »My Choices« statistics, a ›virtual normality‹ in the adventure games of Telltale can be analysed. But what is ›normal‹ in a post-apocalyptic world? The semiotic approach does not only point out a model of ›normal players‹ in The Walking Dead: Season Two, but shows from a functional perspective that the ludic appeal of these games results from unlinking the mechanisms of a flexible normalism.
Rolf F.
Nohr
›Portal‹ and the Rat in a Maze
Games like the Portal series or The Stanley Parable vary principles of gamification and stage the permanent testing of a playing subject as an allegory to the cultural act of playing. The paper interprets this cultural act as a continuation of experimental and ideological conditioning and shows how discourses of control societies are represented.
Tobias
Unterhuber
Das Computerspiel als exemplarische Neuverhandlung gesellschaftlicher Ordnung
Based on the assumption that »the woman« and play/game in modernity make men part of culture without being a part of it themselves, I want to show that videogames have not become a place for the negotiation of equality and emancipation – and thus a place of culture wars – by accident. Quite to the contrary, this is rather based on the games’ specific mediality.
Elias
Kreuzmair
›Twitteratur‹ und das Motiv der Schreibszene in Texten von Renate Bergmann, Florian Meimberg und Jennifer Egan
This paper discusses ›twitterature‹ with regard to the motif of dissociation and tries to avoid the technological determinism of previous studies. The reference of literary texts to Twitter then can be read not just as a marker of innovation but as a part of literary reflections of a recent debate about ›digiphrene‹ subjects.
Ana
Ilic
Zur Poetik und Epistemologie der Drohne in Tom Hillenbrands dystopischem Kriminalroman Drohnenland
The article describes how in Tom Hillenbrand's novel Drohnenland drone technologies lead to new paradigms in crime forensics, which are no longer controlled by humans but by algorithms. Hillenbrand’s novel explores the consequences of these new technologies, especially how they affect the relationship between humans and algorithms, and by doing so, it composes a technology free of human decisions.
kai
Matuszkiewicz
Mediale und personale Narrationen in digitalen Spielen
This essay suggests a differentiation between two different narration types (medial vs. personal narration) in the context of narrative creation in digital games. Using Beyond: Two Souls and Mario Kart 8 as examples, it demonstrates how these types of narration work and concludingly contrasts them.
Adrian
Froschauer
Computerspiele als Gegenstand einer kulturgeschichtlichen Literaturwissenschaft am Beispiel von Amnesia: ›A Machine for Pigs‹ im Kontext von ›fin de siècle‹ und ›décadence‹
The article analyses the horror game Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs according to criteria of cultural-historical informed literary studies. A contextualisation within the historical setting of the fin de siècle shows that London of 1899 is more than mere scenery. Plot, aesthetics and game mechanics rather realise, amongst other things, philosophical and literary ideas of that time.
Johanna
Lindner
Remediationen und Unendlichkeitsversuche des Computerspiels
Narratives arrange our world. At the same time patterns are being constructed to enable better access for the recipient. In cinema, the most well-known pattern is that of the hero’s journey. In this paper the use of the hero’s journey in the game Heavy Rain is examined in an exemplary way.
Tobias
Schwessinger
Eine Begriffsgeschichte der Simulation zwischen Literaturwissenschaft und Ludologie
Simulation is a central term within the ludic theory of a game. The term is mostly defined in contrast to literary studies. By reflecting the history and theory of the term, the paper seeks to reveal a perspective on similarities, which is opposed to the dichotomy-based perspective of Game Studies and literary studies.