Hi again everyone! Welcome to my 3rd, and sadly final, blog! I’ll say all my farewells and thanks at the end, so for now, let’s just dive in!

As we did in my previous blog, let’s remind ourselves of Henry Jenkins, as his work greatly informs my own. In his book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006) discussed participatory narrative and how an audience functions as a participant in a narrative[1], specifically in relation to film and TV. I applied this narrative theory to games in my previous blogs, and put forth the idea that narrative, as it manifests in games, is an ever-changing unpredictable element, that players and spectators influence and change at will as a combined audience. The narrative of multiplayer games is, truly, far more complex than they first appear to be, and to properly discuss them, I need to explain what I define as ‘fluid narrative’. Fluid narrative is a hierarchical structure in which both players and spectators are beholden and subservient to a narrative, but are simultaneously directly responsible for shaping it to their will. Within a fluid narrative, a combined audience is both observing AND creating the narrative they are presently experiencing to varying degrees (players have more direct influence than spectators for example); in turn, this affects their wellbeing as they engage and manipulate something very real and personal to them. A paradoxical (and extremely tricky) definition to be sure, but here’s an example:

The Game

  • Wales are playing Ireland in the Rugby Six Nations
  • A game of rugby lasts for 80 minutes
  • Whoever has the most points at the end of those 80 minutes wins

 

The Players:

  • The Welsh players will directly try to beat the Irish players
  • The Irish players will directly try to beat the Welsh players

 

The Spectators

  • The Welsh supporters (both at home and at the stadium) will cheer for Wales, and boo Ireland
  • The Irish supporters (both at home and at the stadium) will cheer for Ireland, and boo Wales

In this example, there is no predetermined outcome. Of course, you can make predictions based on knowledge, but there is no guarantee that one team will succeed over the other; even if the match is heavily favoured to one team over the other, there is a reason why underdogs are so popular, and why losing to an underdog can sting more than someone on equal footing. My rugby team, for example, was well known for losing 95% of the matches we played – but every so often, we’d win, and it’s fair to say it was embarrassing for most of the teams that lost to us, because we were the worst team in Cornwall for my age group. This is the core of why games with multiple players (multiplayer gaming) has so much time and passion invested into it, because at its core, the ultimate aim of every multiplayer game is to aid a person’s wellbeing. In 2007, Marko Siitonen from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, studied social interaction in regards to online multiplayer gaming for his doctoral thesis on speech communication, and he put forth the following:

“Online multiplayer games enable the formation of lasting relationships.

Online multiplayer games typically encourage interaction between players: some go even as far as demanding it. Collaboration with other players may be a prerequisite for making progress in a game, or a game may be based on competition between players.”[2]

Although Siitonen was discussing online gaming, the same principles of fostering friendships through cooperation apply to all forms of multiplayer gaming, which we will explore as we go on.

So now that we’re on the same page in regard to fluid narrative is and what it aims to do, let’s examine the influences of it. Notably, I don’t say ‘positively influence’ as most multiplayer games (sports, video games, board games etc.) have garnered a (arguably well deserved) reputation for fostering negative and, at times, destructive emotional states. Football (or soccer for any American readers) is renown for its “football hooligan”: an archetype of fan categorised by, practically exclusively, often bigoted white men with a devout love of lager. English football fans have an extremely negative reputation in most of western and central Europe, having earnt it over 40-50 years by being extremely disruptive, obnoxious, drunk, and violent. In a 2019 article for ESBN, Mark Ogden wrote on English hooliganism extensively, but this paragraph stood out to me:

“Outbreaks of trouble when England play abroad… have become a regular occurrence… In March 2018, before a friendly against the Netherlands, bicycles were thrown into Amsterdam canals and tourists on boats were pelted with bottles from bridges as Dutch police detained over 100 English supporters following outbreaks of disorder. Twelve months earlier, in Dortmund, England fans sang about the Second World War and the Royal Air Force “shooting down German bombers” as Lukas Podolski [a German footballer], playing in his final international game, was jeered by the visiting contingent during a friendly against Germany.” [3]

Most people you speak to in the UK are, at the very least, aware that football hooliganism exists. But for many, the scale of their damage goes unseen because, as mentioned, a large portion of this anti-social behaviour occurs outside of the UK. What is interesting to me is that hooliganism actually seems to have a positive effect on the wellbeing for those that engage in it. In that same ESBN article Ogden interviewed Tony Conniford, the Football Association’s (FA) Head of Team and Corporate Security. He declared:

“Monday to Friday, you could be most insignificant person on the planet, but when you come together, nobody cares what job you do, who you’re married to, how many kids you have, how much money you have, you are one of the lads. Being in a group makes them feel like they are part of something… They suddenly see themselves almost like soldiers, because they think they are representing the country” [4]

I think this points to the phenomena colloquially referred to as “football tribalism” when football fans rally behind a team / club / country that they feel embodies them. The phrase “birds of a feather flock together” is used to put into plain terms the concept of homophily, the attraction to similarity[5], which informs many of the core aspects of tribalism seen throughout history, and in football: a concentration of people with similar ideals, similar interests, similar body types, similar modes of self-expression, and similar love of one team over another. It is therefore, no wonder that those who engage in hooliganism find comfort and joy in their anti-social behaviour because those people who engage in it with them, give them a place of comfort and safety. As it seems like a vast majority of hooligans are men, it may point towards the sense of male homosocial bonds that men experience towards each other. A term coined by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, it defines a relationship between men that is co-dependant, neither sexual nor romantic, and is often characterised by a hatred of homosexuality, femininity, and the objectification of women[6]. Sedgwick’s findings, alongside the observations made by both Ogden and Conniford, highlight to me the potentially harmful positive influence hooliganism has on its participants: by rewarding their anti-social behaviour with friends and a sense of comradery and brotherhood, they are encouraged to repeatedly engage in said behaviour and, if it deepens the homosocial bonds they seek, tout the same values and opinions as those around them. As discussed in my second blog, this is an example of B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning[7], where a pleasing stimuli (in this case a man’s homosocial bonds) is given in order to refine a behaviour – though the refining in this case is that of anti-social behaviour, it does indicate that the wellbeing of these men is nurtured through these acts, even if others are harmed in the process.

All that said, it would be grossly unfair of me to claim that sports are wholly negative. You need only look at the players on any sports team to understand that the companionship they experience together, as well as observing how tribalism can have a positive affect on the average fan. Looking at the England Women’s 2022 Euro’s win, it was a practically ubiquitous sense of celebration across the entire country because, not only did England win a major footballing event since the 1966 men’s World Cup[8], but it was England Women’s; many high-profile people in the UK applauded the Lionesses’ victory in 2022 as a watershed moment for, not just women’s football, but women’s sport as a whole; England Men’s captain Harry Kane tweeted “”Absolutely unreal scenes at Wembley!! Massive congrats to the amazing Lionesses!! Ella Toone, take a bow for that finish too”[9]. 87,192 people crammed into Wembley stadium, a UEFA tournament record[10], to watch as England’s Women’s team make history. Whilst football hooliganism may be a terrible stain on both England, its fans, and indeed the sport itself, it does not negate the overwhelming love and support that the Lionesses’ inspired, and continue to inspire, among fans of the sport across the nation.

Pivoting over to online gaming, whilst a direct translation of the tribalism football hooligans embody doesn’t quite exist when compared to online gaming, traits of it certainly do cross over: anger at one’s team when they play badly, or the opposition when they play well; violence (usually directed at the equipment one is using the play games on); bigotry / use of slurs, and the overall promotion of anti-social behaviour. I’ve included one linked example below of several Twitch streamers (a live-streaming site), all playing multiplayer games, which you are welcome to watch at your own discretion; all clips contain some form of violent expression, including forms of minor self-harm, so do be advised.

Although the examples I’ve shown you are all public, there are far more extreme cases of “gamer rage” (a rather tame expression for what is ultimately extremely violent spikes of aggression) which occur in real time as multiplayer games are played. Most of these situations go undocumented, but they do happen. If you have read my previous blog, in which I mostly praise video games as works of narrative art, you may initially (and perhaps reasonably) assume I am arguing against myself, to which I would disagree. The examples I have shown to you above are synonymous with the unrecorded acts of anti-social behaviour which is associated with sports (i.e. football hooliganism), but instead directed towards video games. The reason I have shown you these examples, is to demonstrate the power that the narrative of competition has, and what affects it has on people, specifically their wellbeing.

Whilst the idea of tribalism isn’t present to the extremes it is in football, the concept of intrinsic and extrinsic value absolutely is. As a reminder, intrinsic value is value placed on playing a game “in itself” and an extrinsic value is anything beyond that[11]. In the case of multiplayer games, the intrinsic value usually comes from the enjoyment gained from the gameplay or characters; the extrinsic value, however, is almost exactly derived from the competitive nature of online gaming; the idea of ‘proving you’re the best’ is encouraged in online gaming, with the most blatant thing being the names of tiers of skill: Overwatch, a popular competitive first-person-shooter, has the following names for its primary 8 skill tiers:

Overwatch’s primary 8 Skill Divisions – Blizzard

Overwatch’s primary 8 Skill Divisions – Blizzard

As shown the names get progressively more grand, and the icons match that progression, with each tier getting a more complex design, added glows, and even stars – even the progression into colours that don’t naturally occur as often such as green, pink and indigo, creates a sense of prestige. It’s only natural that players want to continuously improve, and so tie their sense of self-worth to said progression, therefore, when they lose, or feel that the game was unfairly stacked against them, their wellbeing is negatively affected.

To contrast this, let’s step away from the sphere of sports, and into the realm of tabletop gaming, specifically Dungeons and Dragons (D&D / DnD). DnD is what is known as a tabletop role-playing-game (TTRPG) and is comprised of 1 Dungeon Master (DM) and X number of regular players; the DM is responsible for a lot, but their key responsibilities are: creating the game world, the on-going development of an overarching story, creating non-player side characters and creating encounters with enemies. The role of regular players is far more streamlined: create a character you know inside and out, that fits in with the world that you are playing in. We’ll delve more into how these roles affect one’s wellbeing in a multiplayer environment shortly. Whilst most multiplayer games are characterised by the narrative structure of competition, DnD is, whilst occasionally competitive, is much better identified with the idea of companionship. Defined by Oxford Languages as “a feeling of fellowship or friendship” with a given example of “the love and companionship of marriage”[14] you may wonder I have elected to bestow such an evocative word to what is, ultimately, a game whose primary gameplay methods are throwing dice and simple mathematics. In short, D&D is a game that forges friendships; but how does it do that?

‘Dungeons and Dragons’, despite its namesake, does not need to contain neither dungeons, nor dragons – that is simply the name of the game rules that the players and DM choose to abide by and is able to contain anything they wish, and be set whenever or wherever they wish. As mentioned, it is the DM’s job to create the game world, and the players’ jobs to know their characters; to ensure that their characters work within the parameters of the world, players and DMs collaborate extensively on character creation, ensuring that both the player and DM are able to make extensive use of their character’s backstory, and how they can be effectively weaved into the wider narrative. And all this occurs before the game / story begins. Even here, at these initial stages, the seeds of companionship are already being sown; a good relationship is being built between the DM and their players, and it is in these early stages, that excitement and anticipation drives the enthusiastic character creation process. The players are given tangible agency over even their most basic contributions to the story they will directly affect: the act of existing. As mentioned in my 2nd blog, the degree of control that audiences are offered by differing mediums directly corresponds to how their wellbeing is affected – if an audience member (or player in the case of DnD) is afforded greater narrative participation (be that in a grander sense for the main plot, or for smaller intimate moments between players) then their wellbeing will be more positively affected. At its core DnD seeks to create friendships and joyful moments between players, something that prominent DM in the online DnD community, Alyssa Visscher goes into a lot of depth into with their blog post on the DnD Beyond community page, with an entire subsection titled “Playing an Evil Character While Respecting Other Players”[15].

Whilst not demonstrable evidence of what I’ve put forth, I do have anecdotal experience of my time playing DnD. In my first campaign of what was eventually 11 players, I was frequently forgotten and rarely had anything to do aside from the occasional combat encounter. This should surprise no one, as an author trying to juggle 11 well rounded characters, each with their own struggles is hard enough, let alone a DM trying to do that, as well as cater to the needs of real people who are investing their time into something that (in my case) they don’t like. This experience greatly put me off of DnD, as I felt that nothing I did or say, had any impact on what the characters around me did, nor felt the story change as a result of my actions. January this year though, I decided I’d try it out again. This time, as a DM and not as a player. I asked 3 of my closest friends, all of which adore DnD, to be my players. Over the course of a couple weeks I helped everyone craft their characters, create a world I felt was rich and deep with lore, until eventually we sat down and played three 6 hours sessions in 10 days; by the end of each session, my friends were engaged, enthralled and utterly driven to find out where I was taking them next. For all of us, playing DnD together, I felt, has reignited not just our love for a game we share, but our love for each other as well. I would urge any reluctant DnD players to try and reach out to an experienced DM, who will respect your identity, and boundaries, and give it a go. If you happen to live near a Geek Retreat, or any hobby gaming shop, they’re generally able to point you in the right direction, and maybe even run their own events! If that’s not for you then Wayfarer’s League[16], an online community of TTRPG lovers, runs a lot of both in-person and online events that can help you dip your toes into it! Their website link is in the footnotes below!

So, on that happy note, this is where I leave you! It has been a pleasure being able to write these blogs for the Centre of Arts and Wellbeing! I’ve learnt a lot about my writing process, and myself, through these blogs. Being able to rationalise, explain, and demonstrably show that games, things most precious to me, are able to positively affect the wellbeing of their participants has been rewarding in a way I cannot describe! I’d like to give special thanks to Jess Moriarty for giving me the opportunity to do my creative residency with the Centre. I now have official bragging rights to say: I’m officially published and immensely proud of it! Yay!!! 😊

 

 

[1]   Jenkins, Henry – Convergence Culture (2006), introduction pg 3: Not all participants are created

equal. Corporations—and even individuals within corporate media—

still exert greater power than any individual consumer or even the

aggregate of consumers

[2] Provided by Science Daily. University of Jyvaeskylae. “How Does Online Gaming Affect Social Interactions?.” www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070915110957.html  (accessed April 30, 2024).

[3] Ogden, Mark – What’s the trouble with England’s travelling football fans? (19/10/2019) accessed via https://www.espn.com.au/football/story/_/id/37577500/why-do-some-three-lions-fans-cause-such-trouble-away-home

[4] Ogden, Mark – What’s the trouble with England’s travelling football fans? (19/10/2019) accessed via https://www.espn.com.au/football/story/_/id/37577500/why-do-some-three-lions-fans-cause-such-trouble-away-home

[5] Ferguson, Niall – The False Prophecy of Hyperconnection. Foreign Affairs. (15/08/2017) “At the same time, birds of a feather flock together. Because of the phenomenon known as “homophily,” or attraction to similarity, social networks tend to form clusters of nodes with similar properties or attitudes.”

[6] Yaeger, Patricia S. – Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. 100 (5): 1139–1144

[7]https://www.simplypsychology.org/positive-reinforcement.html

The concept of positive reinforcement is associated with the work of behaviourist psychologist B. F. Skinner. As part of his work during the 1930s and 1940s, Skinner considered ways in which behaviour could be changed by treating someone differently based on what they did. This theory is known as operant conditioning.

[8] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/62370131 “It is England’s first major tournament success since the 1966 men’s World Cup.”

[9] https://twitter.com/HKane/status/1553813689261752323

[10] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/62373333 “On a day when 87,192 packed Wembley, an all-time Uefa tournament record, coach Sarina Wiegman and her players made themselves legends.”

[11]   Zimmerman, Michael J. and Ben Bradley, “Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/value-intrinsic-extrinsic/

[12]https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/62404611#:~:text=Premier%20League%20players%20will%20stop%20the%20pre-match%20anti-racism,Floyd%20in%20the%20United%20States%20in%20May%202020.

[13] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/sports/football/george-floyd-kaepernick-kneeling-nfl-protests.html

[14] https://www.bing.com/search?q=definition+of+companionship&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&ghc=1&lq=0&pq=definition+of+companionshi&sc=17-26&sk=&cvid=299F8CBF49454F6A94097D05DE20C222&ghsh=0&ghacc=0&ghpl=

[15] https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1341-embracing-villainy-how-to-play-an-evil-character#playing-evil-character

[16] https://wayfarersleague.com/

 

 

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