Gameplay Journal Entry #1

Helen Kennedy’s and Jon Dovey’s meaning of technicity in their book, “Game Cultures: Computer as New Media,” is the relationship between a person’s identity and technological experience. The idea of the hacker and cyborg technicity stuck out to me throughout the reading. Cyborg is generally seen as the opposite of the hacker. Kennedy’s and Dovey’s book, states, “Scratch the surface and the hacker emerges as an idealized white, male subject… She offered the cyborg as a new metaphor for subjectivity which could potentially avoid the problematic binaries of nature/culture, male/female (1991a, 1997)” (Kennedy and Dovey 67–68). The technicities the game “Valorant” affords relate more towards the cyborg technicities. The cultural norms that “Valorant” demonstrates is the inclusion of different characters in gender, race, and ethnicity. There aren’t just white male characters. Each character in the game have a different background story with different game abilities. The abilities adds to a specific type of play style for each character and players choose who to play based off of the play style they want.

The player perceptions and sensations that the game produces through interfaces and controls are the enemy whereabouts through the game map and sounds. For example, when a player is running, nearby players will be able to hear the footsteps of others. With the hearing sensation, a player’s perception could be that there is an enemy nearby. “Valorant” also disciplines players in movement. The shooting mechanics are more realistic, for example, running while shooting decreases accuracy. In order for players to have good shooting accuracy, they will either need to crouch or stop moving. As the player improves, they will automatically crouch or stop moving when they start shooting due to game discipline.

Valorant Lets Play Video by Dvalin on YouTube:

Sources:

“Chapter 4: Networks of Technicity.” Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media, by Jon Dovey and Helen W. Kennedy, Open Univ. Press, 2006.

Dvalin. “Valorant Tutorial Gameplay | First 10 Minutes of Valorant Closed Beta Playthrough.” YouTube, commentary by Dvalin, 18 Apr. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJttIB2etwA.