CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 6Digital Games and MediaNarrative Theory and AnalysisArtificial Intelligence in Games

It's Not a Game! Rules of Notice and Hermeneutics of Suspicion in Contemporary FMV Games

Open access
van de Ven, Inge·2024·Games and Culture
DOI 10.1177/15554120231161180
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

This article reflects on the resurgence of Full Motion Video (FMV) games, focusing on Her Story (2015), The Infectious Madness of Dr Dekker (2017), Telling Lies (2019), Contradiction (2015), and The Shapeshifting Detective (2018). Such titles have been derided for their lack of interactivity, and indeed afford the player limited agency in terms of concrete actions. They rely on the player's imagination in suturing the images together and in forming an empathetic understanding of the main characters’ actions and motivations. By virtue of this lack, FMV games challenges players’ analytical and hermeneutic abilities and further cognitive patience. An absence of “rules of notice” by which the details in a narrative are hierarchically organized, including editing and other attention-guiding devices, is part of these games’ procedural rhetoric. Priming the player to obtain a vigilant player attitude, such games foreground the mechanics dis/trust in our reception of fictional narrative.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1177/15554120231161180

Cites

34 of 34 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 4

  1. Martín-Núñez M., 2021, Revista L’Atalante, 133
  2. Mateas M., 2008, Electronic Book Review, 02
  3. 10.17265/2159-5313/2016.09.003 · DOI · Paper page
  4. Van den Berg P., 2020, Liegen als zelfverdediging. De Filmkrant

Cited by

Still being checked.

Related

Authors
van de Ven, I.
Affiliations
Culture Studies, Tilburg University Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Tilburg, The Netherlands
ORCID
van de Ven, Inge
Venue
Games and Culture
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2023-03-14
Volume
19
Issue
2
Pages
158-177
ISSN
  • 1555-4120 (ISSN-L)
  • 1555-4139
DOI
10.1177/15554120231161180
OpenAlex
W4324149633
Cited by
6
References
34
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 1
FWCI
2.63
Type
journal article
Language
en
Update notices
correction (2023-10-09)
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Games and Culture (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Research portal (Tilburg University) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
European Commission (894909)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Games and Media
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Narrative Theory and Analysis
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Artificial Intelligence in Games
Keywords
hermeneutics of suspicion, procedural rhetoric, player agency, narrative editing, attention guidance, detective fiction, Her Story, contradiction, interactivity

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review