Video game genres and discourse communities
Project under the supervision of Bernard Perron, Dominic Arsenault and Carl Therrien.
As we set out to compile a representative corpus of the most significant works in five major video game genres (first-person shooters, adventure games, role-playing games, platform games, and strategy games) in order to develop a history and theory of these genres, we were confronted with the disparity between the different corpora. Why, for example, were we prepared to exclude fan-made YouTube rankings from the outset, simply because they did not meet our rigorous criteria? Who were we, as video game researchers, to determine the canons of a particular genre?
As part of this research project, we addressed methodological and epistemological issues. We focused our study on four major “discursive communities”: fans and players, industry workers, critics and journalists, and academics. Our goal was to reflect on the discursive and interpretive strategies of each of these communities. We analyzed the use of different “communicative genres” (rankings, opinion pieces, essays, audiovisual reviews, etc.) to better show how these genres structure (consciously and sometimes unconsciously) the way in which members of a community share the same conception of a video game genre and, by extension, select the works that characterize it. We sought to define the modes of production, articulation, and dissemination of the discursive practices that delimit individuals’ imaginary conceptions of video game genres.
Ultimately, this research project aimed to advocate for open-mindedness, as it remains imperative to take into account the perspectives of different communities in order to understand the processes of crystallization of video game genres.
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant (SSHRC): “Video Game History as a Challenge to Video Game Theory: A Study of the Formal Aspects and Reception of Video Game Genres” (2013-2017)
Research Assistants
- Pierre-Marc Côté (2013-2015)
- Simon Dor (2013-2018)
- Mikaël Julien (2013-2016)
- Maxwell Landry-Martineau(2013-2015)
- Hugo Montembeault (2013-2018)
- Andréane Morin-Simard (2013-2018)
- Pascale Thériault (2015-2018)