Failed Failures: The Critique of the Game of Thrones Video Game

Agata Waszkiewicz

Abstract


In this research paper the Game of Thrones video game is juxtaposed with the original book and TV series in order to investigate the differences in failures experienced by the characters, primarily in the context of its fairness. J. Juul's book from 2013 serves as a main source of theoretical framework. It is argued that by misinforming the player about their influence on the plot, the game causes the player to develop learned helplessness, which, in turn, causes a lack of interest and lowered enjoyment.


Keywords


Game of Thrones, failure, learnt helplessness, attribution theory, coping mechanisms

Full Text:

PDF

References


A Wolf Among Us. 2013–2014. San Rafael: Telltale Games. Playstation 4.

Bodine, Ann. 1975. “Androcentrism in Prescriptive Grammar: Singular ‘They’, Sex-Indefinite ‘He’, and ‘He or She’.” Language in Society 4 (2), 129–146.

Cheng, P., Waiting for Something to Happen: Narratives, Interactivity and Agency and the Video Game Cut-scene. In Procs. Digital Games Research Conference (DIGRA), Citeseer, (2007), 15–24.

Dark Souls. 2011. Tokyo: FromSoftware. Playstation 4.

Demon’s Souls. 2009. Tokyo: FromSoftware. Playstation 3.

Diener, Carol I., and Carol S. Dweck. 1980. “An Analysis of Learned Helplessness: II. The Processing of Success.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39 (5), 940–952.

Game of Thrones. 2011–. Created by Benioff David and Daniel Brett Weiss. New York City: HBO.

Game of Thrones. 2014. San Rafael: Telltale Games. Playstation 4.

Guardians of the Galaxy. 2017. San Rafael: Telltale Games. Playstation 4.

Halberstam, Jack.2011. The queer art of failure. Durham: Duke University Press.

Harold H. Kelley, and John L. Michela. 1980. “Attribution theory and research” Ann. Rev. Psychol 31, 457–501.

Juul, Jesper. 2013. The art of failure: An essay on the pain of playing video games, MIT press.

Larson, J.R. 1977. „Evidence for a self-serving bias in the attribution of causality”. Journal of

Personality. 45 (3): 430–441. doi:10.1111/j.1467–6494.1977.tb00162.x.

Martin, George R. R. 1996. Game of Thrones. New York: Bantam Spectra.

Martin, George R. R. 2011. A Dance of the Dragons. New York: Bantam Spectra.

Mikulincer, M. 1989. “Causal attriution, coping strategies, and learned helplessness.” Cognitive Therapy and Research 13 (6): 565–582.

Przybylski, A. K., Deci, E. L., Rigby, C. S., & Ryan, R. M. (2014). „Competence-impeding electronic games and players’ aggressive feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 106(3), 441–457. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0034820

Ruberg, Bonnie. 2017. “The Arts of Failure. Jack Halberstam in Conversation with Jesper Juul.” In Queer Game Studies, eds. Ruberg, Bonnie and Adrienne Shaw, 201–210. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ruberg, Bonnie. 2017b. “Playing to Lose: The Queer Art of Failing at Video Games.” In Gaming Representation. Race, Gender and Sexuality in Video Games, eds. Malkowski, Jennifer and Treaandrea M. Russworm, 197–211. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Schröter, Felix. “The Game of Game of Thrones: George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and Its Video Game Adaptations.” Media Convergence and Transmedial Worlds (Part 3)

Medienkonvergenz und transmediale Welten (Teil 3). Special issue IMAGE 22 (2015), 65–82.

Smuts, A. 2007. “The Paradox of Painful Art.” Journal of Aesthetic Education, 41 (3), 59–76.

Seligman, M. E. P. (1972). „Learned helplessness”. Annual Review of Medicine. 23 (1), 407–412. doi:10.1146/annurev.me.23.020172.002203.

Tales from Borderlands. 2013–2014. San Rafael: Telltatel Games. Playstation 4.

Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection. 2015. Santa Monica: Naughty Dog. Playstation 4.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/nh.2018.3.137
Date of publication: 2018-08-17 08:52:23
Date of submission: 2018-01-05 15:06:55


Statistics


Total abstract view - 990
Downloads (from 2020-06-17) - PDF - 0

Indicators



Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2018 Agata Waszkiewicz

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.