In:Media as Procedures of Communication
Edited by Martin Luginbühl and Jan Georg Schneider
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 348] 2024
► pp. 246–289
Chapter 10Digital play as procedures
Social, technological, and ludic practices in the innovative VR multiplayer co-location game Spacecraft — A New Way Home
Published online: 21 November 2024
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.348.10kat
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.348.10kat
Abstract
This article aims to analyse the participants’ multimodal interaction in the innovative technology
of Spacecraft: A New Way Home, a co-located multiplayer VR game designed as a master’s thesis
artefact at the Zurich University of the Arts in the discipline of Game Design. Using fine-grained sequential
analyses, three practices are investigated in particular: first, practices that rely heavily on social rules,
providing security and guidance in the unknown virtual space; second, practices that are based on the technological
rules of VR, expressed in terms of a certain kind of digital — here, VR — literacy; third, practices that are imposed
by the game itself as a rule-based artefact, coining the general frame of the game in which digital play occurs. This
amalgamation of the three practices can be understood as a fundamental framework by which to comprehend digital play
procedures in general.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Digital play as an everyday activity
- 3.Innovative VR gameplay: Spacecraft — A New Way Home
- 4.EMCA informed approaches to digital games
- 5.Analysis of Spacecraft — A New Way Home
- 5.1Method and data
- 5.2Analysis: Three examples
- Example 1: Re-greeting and noticing in the virtual environment
- Example 2. Giving a “thumbs up” in VR
- Example 3. “No target” — Co-located branched activities
- 6.Conclusion: Digital games as procedures
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