Abstract
This chapter discusses the medial conditions that produce, reproduce, and fortify the (supposed) difference between ability and disability with regard to digital games. Departing from a broader frame and by grounding his arguments on critical disability studies, discourse theory, and media theory, Ledder analyzes the relation between dis/ability and gaming as an effect of discursive constructions. His understanding of discourse encompasses the social, material and praxeological aspects of any discursive formation. As a heuristic tool, Ledder suggests four interconnected analytical dimensions that not only produce but reinforce hegemonic structures and power relations. Conditions of media production (e.g. the actual workforce, diversity campaigns, game development software, anti-discrimination laws, and funding regulations), game content (gameplay/narrative), game usage, and game form (game infrastructures).
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Notes
- 1.
The approach developed by Günzel et al. (2009) is not sufficient to define the mediality of digital games, as is shown further.
- 2.
In this chapter, the term ‘dis/ability’ is used like the terms ‘race’ or ‘gender’. ‘Dis/ability’ is used as the genus with ‘disabled’ and ‘non-disabled’ as two of many possible values. In regard to the currently over eight billion individuals on this planet, with all their physical, mental, and cognitive variations, there exist many more expressions that fall under the term ‘dis/ability’. The example of the apostle Paul already is challenging, because in the first century CE—Paul’s lifetime—there did not exist an umbrella term like ‘disability’ in the Greek language. When we use the quote as an example of the mediality of dis/ability, we have to point out that this is a specific construction of deafness in the first century in Early Christian texts. Some people from the Deaf community denounce the label of ‘being disabled’ because in their perception deafness does not constitute a disability, but is just one aspect of their linguistic minority (cf. Ladd, 2003, p. 15). This chapter emphasizes that such different approaches to dis/ability have to be taken into account if we analyze the mediality of dis/ability.
- 3.
- 4.
This does not mean that the site of production and the site of usage are independent from each other. On the contrary, the production of contemporary popular culture relies heavily on interactions with the fandom. These modes of interaction, however, will be discussed later in regard to the participation within the production process.
- 5.
Brown and Moberly (2021, pp. 58–63) also emphasize that the level of participation in Twitch as a streamer depends on one’s economical background and also correlates with race and gender. While Brown and Moberly do not examine dis/ability, Johnson (2018) analyzes the relationship between chronic illness and twitch. One point he emphasizes is the audience’s expectation that streamers broadcast for a long period of time. This can be an impossible challenge for chronically ill people. Additionally, as Wittel (2016) argues, all these streamers don’t have “the means of distribution and the means of online storage of media content” (Wittel, 2016, p. 25). Platforms like Twitch or YouTube are owned and controlled by large corporations. Therefore, the concept of participatory culture should not be overstated.
- 6.
See also the interview with Sandra Uhling in this book.
- 7.
It should be noted that the unemployment rate is foremost a problem within capitalist societies. In a society that does not put value on one’s productivity, unemployment might be less of a problem (cf. Grover & Piggott, 2015).
- 8.
Hirschberg and Papadopoulos (2016) argue that the UN CRPD might be used as “an instrument to find a balance between inalienable human rights and ableist normativity” (p. 13). The ratifying states have a legal obligation to counteract discriminatory practices on the labor market. Two instruments of the UN CRPD might be especially useful: using accessibility as a structural principle in all different fields of society and actually implementing the concept of reasonable accommodation in stated-wide measures. It is to be investigated if one can apply corresponding actions to specific branches like the gaming industry.
- 9.
As is shown in a Game Developer’s Conference talk by programmers Tara Voelker and Brannon Zahand (2018), the “Inspiration Wall” consists of individual pictures of disabled people who were invited to the lab. They are shown in their joyfulness while playing with the technologies the lab offers. As Voelker puts it: “All they wanna do is game—and we want to help them game” (8th min.). All of this, however, evokes a feeling of charity, and not of a right to participate, and at the same time situates the disabled gamers in a childish position. While the association between games and children is common, in the context of ableist power relations such a depiction becomes complex: After all, disabled people are often infantilized; presented as passive and always-depending objects of care, who cannot make intelligent decisions on their own (cf. Watson et al., 2004). In this historical situation, describing people with disabilities as “all they wanna do is game” in reference to “Inspiration Wall” might take part in further stereotyping.
- 10.
This chapter follows the Foucaultian differentiation between “enunciation” (énonciation) and “statement” (énoncé) (Foucault, 2014, p. 65). The term ‘enunciation’ signifies a singular event at a specific time and place. An enunciation is only intelligible due to the specific historical situation in which it is uttered. For example, playing the character called Joker in Mass Effect 2 (BioWare, 2010) means to play a character who is constructed as impaired and whose vulnerability is based on his impairment—especially in contrast to the also playable character Shepard, who is not constructed as vulnerable, but as a heroic, autonomous subject (cf. Ledder, 2022). The term ‘statement’, however, signifies the compressed meaning of contents within a—always historically specific—discourse. Not only in Mass Effect 2, an impaired character is constructed as vulnerable, but we also find the statement ‘impaired people are vulnerable’, for example, in the conceptions of philosophers of the Enlightenment (cf. Shildrick, 2002). In these discourses, the ‘unimpaired’, autonomous subject is constructed as ‘invulnerable’—a concept that negates the interdependency of humans (cf. Ledder, 2021). To identify the statements of a discourse, we therefore have to examine the enunciations (cf. Angermuller, 2014, pp. 11–15). Yet, every enunciation may shift the meaning a bit, because the historical situation has changed. The process of generating meaning is never absolutely fixed, but always historically contingent.
- 11.
Ledder (2022), however, shows that in Mass Effect 2 an upgrade for weapon, armor, or the ship and a technological intervention into the protagonist’s body are equalized on the level of game mechanics. In all these cases the player just has to pay money and minerals to upgrade the ship—or the character Shepard. All in all, “Shepard […], a hybrid of metal and flesh, a ‘cyborg’, is a character that presents body modifications purely as human enhancement technologies; with his or her body constructed as an object that can be manipulated at will” (Ledder, 2022, p. 59).
- 12.
- 13.
See also the chapter by Axell Boué in this book.
- 14.
See also the interview with Sandra Uhlig and the chapter by Axell Boué in this book.
- 15.
The game The Last of Us Part II delivers a comprehensive glossary of all the audio cues that are used in the game. If in doubt of the action on screen, the player might pause the gameplay and search in the glossary for the audio cues. This feature should enable players to play the game only by sound and without any visual information.
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Ledder, S. (2024). The Mediality of Dis/Ability: Producing ‘Disability’ and ‘Ability’ in the Realm of Digital Games. In: Spöhrer, M., Ochsner, B. (eds) Disability and Video Games. Palgrave Games in Context. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34374-2_8
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