Lost on a Desert Island: The Sims 2 Castaway as Convergence Text

Abstract

This article looks at a genre of games that most frequently appears on the Nintendo DS and discusses how they use multiple techniques drawn from several different sources to gain popularity. The desert island simulation blends a series of familiar game genres with those of popular television, specifically serial television, to produce a genre that deliberately appeals to non-traditional users (although this definition relies more on preconceptions than actuality, as games continue to develop in scope). This article examines the techniques that these games use, including the shrewd marketing tools of the DS, the ways in which the games borrow from existing games genres, how they draw the player into a narrative web through a reconstruction of player agency, and the linkage with serial television. By specifically examining The Sims 2 Castaway (S2C, 2007), this article discusses how the changing of ludic objectives during these games influences player expectation and how this is increasingly reflected in other texts such as long-haul television series. These developments indicate not only an evolving canon within games but argue for their growing influence elsewhere in cultural production.

Establishing Video Game Genres Using Data-Driven Modeling and Product Databases

“…Klevjer (2005) points out that there is very little research that would generalize on the typical characteristics of game categories in comparison to each other. A look at recent textual and empirical research on video game genres confirms this assertion: The bulk of the studies concentrate on analyzing a single genre (e.g., Black, 2012;Carter, Gibbs, & Harrop, 2014;Chess, 2014;Gillespie & Crouse, 2012;Goetz, 2012;Hitchens, Patrickson, & Young, 2014;Lennon, 2010;MacCallum-Stewart, 2010;Paavilainen, Hamari, Stenros, & Kinnunen, 2013;Patterson, 2014;Thin, Hansen, & McEachen, 2011). Therefore, this body of work has not so far taken on the task of finding ways to assign genre to a large corpus of games but has concentrated on analyzing games typical to each genre more or less in isolation.…”

“…The audience expects the stability of genres to be tempered by innovation, either technical or stylistic (Apperley, 2006). Such innovation can come about in the form of multigenre games that use the conventions of several genres (Harper, 2011) or in the form of new genres that combine elements from existing genres and may attract new consumers to the game market (MacCallum-Stewart, 2010). Moreover, games vary as to how closely they align with a genre definition leading to core and peripheral games in relation to the genre (cf.…”

Digital Seriality: On the Serial Aesthetics and Practice of Digital Games

“…Isolated studies do indeed look at various game series (sometimes under the heading of "convergence" in Jenkins's sense, e.g. Ip 2008, MacCallum-Stewart 2010, but theories of seriality and serialization processes are only tangentially at stake. Interestingly, however, game studies' formative debate over "narratological" and "ludological" approaches to interactive digital gaming already touches upon issues that are of key importance to an understanding of digital seriality -especially as regards the temporal impact of digital technologies on serially unfolding stories (and/or quasi-narrative or nonnarrative events).…”