Britta Neitzel

31 P
 erforming Games: Intermediality and
Videogames
Abstract: This article examines the intermedial relations between videogames and
other performative art- and media-forms. The relations are established by the ludic
as a tertium comparationis, which shows itself less in material characteristics or in
commonly used sign systems but in performance practices. Similar to narration that
relates through narrative various media, the ludic is considered to relate various ludic
media. To demonstrate this, the article considers single player and group perfor-
mances in videogames and relates them to performances in sports, in dance, and in
the theatre. Joint topics are the mediatisation of these performances and the role of
the body that is connected with the question of “liveness”.

Key Terms: Performance, avatar, Let’s Plays, Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing
Games (MMORPGs), liveness

1 I ntroduction
Finding the right place for an article on videogames in a handbook on intermedi-
ality is not an easy undertaking. Cinema has already been termed an integrative
medium with relations to nearly all previous media (Paech 1993, 3), and this is even
more applicable to videogames. Videogames are not thinkable anymore outside of
relation to literary themes, to (simple) structures of narration (interactive storytell-
ing) or transformations of classical narrative patterns, to themes, visual patterns
(“virtual camera”) or methods of the production of films, references to painting, or
musical dramaturgy. These topics have been examined in game studies. Thus, there
are studies on the narrativity of videogames (↗23 Narratives across Media and the
Outlines of a Media-conscious Narratology), their audiovisual composition (e.g. Järv-
inen 2002), their relations to film or literature (e.g. King and Krzywinska 2002), and
their participatory characteristics (e.g. Raessens 2005). These different approaches
illustrate that videogames are highly differentiated media that cannot be treated as
one homogenous object. As different as videogames are with respect to these modes
of production or presentation, there are two qualities that all of them share. One is
their “dependency on the computer as a material support” (Ryan 2006, 181) and the
other one is the fact that videogames are not solely watched, read or listened to. They
are played. Videogames are performative objects. As performative objects, they relate
to other performative objects or performative art forms. Videogames have references
 31 Performing Games: Intermediality and Videogames 585

to non-digital games, to sports and, last but not least, to performance and theatre.
The latter relations pertain to practices of showing something, to performance, to
acting – to playing in a broad sense. Without playing, videogames are unthinkable:
There is no game without play. Hence, this article will focus on the intermediality of
the performative aspects of videogames.

2 I ntermediality
Having limited the field of inquiry so far, there are still some theoretical considera-
tions to be taken up. They encompass the concept of intermediality used here, as well
as the concepts of performativity and performance. Without being able to describe the
discussion of the concept (or rather, concepts) of intermediality entirely (↗0 Introduc-
tion), I will limit myself to some introductory and cursory remarks. In intermediality
studies, it is common ground that precisely separated media do not exist (cf. e.g. Ell-
eström 2010; Müller 2007; Schröter 2007). Against such a background in which mon-
omedia or media monads refer to each other and create an internal dimension, the
question of how intermediality should be conceptualised arises anew. The answers to
this question depend on the scholarly tradition and/or the intention of the respond-
ents. Elleström (2010), for example, starts from the very beginning with a definition
of media. This approach, which he describes as bottom-up, introduces four modali-
ties that belong to every medium. These are the material modality – the material a
medium works with, like the human body or sound waves for example; the sensorial
modality, concerned with the human senses that are addressed – seeing, hearing,
feeling, tasting, smelling; the spatiotemporal modality – different uses of time and
space; and the semiotic modality – the type of signs a medium uses (symbolic, iconic,
indexical). According to Elleström, all media can be compared using these modalities.
Furthermore, he discriminates basic media from qualified media: “What I propose
to call basic media, are defined by the four modalities whereas qualified media are
defined by the four modalities and the two qualifying aspects. All qualified media are
based on one or more basic media.” (Elleström 2010, 35) Basic media are, for example,
“auditory texts” (e.g. spoken words), “organized non-verbal sound” (e.g. music),
“visual text” (e.g. written words) or non-organised non-verbal sound (e.g. noise).
This is unfortunately the level at which this model becomes normative: Who decides
what a basic medium is and how to differentiate them? Is a birdcall, for example, an
organised or a non-organised sound? Qualified media are media that are qualified as
specific media, by the operational qualifying aspect, which encompasses “the aes-
thetic and communicative characteristics” (Elleström 2010, 25) of media and/or the
contextual qualifying aspect, which encompasses “the origin, delimitation and use of
media in specific historical, cultural and social circumstances” (Elleström 2010, 24).
Elleström considers such qualifying aspects to be interactive and to be conventional.
586 Britta Neitzel

Even if his model contains some problems, it makes perfectly clear that the term
‘medium’ is often used for different things. For example, a text and a book are both
considered to be media. In Elleström’s terms the text would be a basic medium while
the book would be a qualified medium that is based on the basic medium text.
In considering some problematic fields of more recent intermediality studies,
Irina Rajewsky identifies two fundamentally different interests with respect to inter-
mediality. On the one hand, these were studies concerned with general questions of
mediality or media analysis, and on the other hand, there are approaches that aim at
a concrete analysis of medial works or performances (cf. Rajewsky 2007, 47–48). While
the former locate their tradition in media studies, the latter find their tradition in the
arts. In this chapter, I will concentrate on questions of mediality or media analysis
when comparing videogames, the theatre and performances, by discussing the roles
of the avatar and of the spectator in videogames. But I will refer to specific games as
examples of intermedial relations that, in most cases, hold true for other games.
Rajewsky (2007) refers to Bolter and Grusin (2000) when she finds that in media
studies intermediality is regarded as a basic requirement for understanding media.
This may be clarified with Schröter (2007), who notices – with a reference to Saus-
sure – that the position from which one medium is regarded must take into account
the network of surrounding media which defines what is considered a medium. Or
to refer to Elleström again: The qualifying aspects decide what is considered to be a
certain medium, and these aspects are dependent on all media. Rajewsky basically
shares the assumption of a general intermediality. But in citing Bolter and Grusin, she
remarks that if “all mediation is remediation” (Rajewsky 2007, 50) the concept would
encompass the whole of mediality and would oversee differences in the techniques
of intermedial references (cf. Rajewsky 2007, 51). Therefore, Rajewsky proposes three
subcategories:
a) media transformation (Medienwechsel), in which a media product (e.g. a novel) is
transformed into another medium (e.g. a film);
b) intermedial references, in which one distinct medium refers to another;
c) media combination (Medienkombination), in which (formerly) distinct media are
combined in one medium. Or, as Georgi puts it, media combination is “the combi-
nation of at least two conventionally distinct media, which are materially present
with their respective sign systems and thus form constitutive parts of the result-
ing work of art” (Georgi 2014, 30).

These subcategories are of differing importance with respect to videogames and espe-
cially as regards my focus in this article. The first category – media transformation –
refers to the intermediality of specific works or performances and does not deliver
very fruitful outcomes in an inquiry into the intermediality of videogames in general,
since today, in popular media, it is difficult or sometimes even impossible to decide
what came first. Often, movies and videogames are synchronously produced. This
was the case with James Cameron’s Avatar (both, the film and the videogame, were
 31 Performing Games: Intermediality and Videogames 587

released in December 2009) or Peter Jackson’s King Kong (Nov. and Dec. 2005), to
name only two. Other products, for example the Star Wars movies – animated and live
action –, the Star Wars television series, videogames, comics, novels, action figures,
puzzles, board games, Lego-series, conventions, YouTube videos, T-shirts, mugs and
bedclothes, form a whole universe. Some of the relations between these products may
be captured by the term ‘transmedia storytelling’ (cf. Jenkins 2011), but usually they
are termed ‘transmedia worlds’ (cf. Wolf 2013).
Intermedial references (the second subcategory) form the network of transmedia
worlds. These worlds are held together and enlarged by constant references across
media boundaries. Of course, such references occur outside of transmedia worlds,
too. Rajewsky, for example, addresses the musicalisation of literature. In relation to
the subject of this article, such transfers could be called ludification (in the sense of
playfulness, as e.g. Joost Raessens uses the term, cf. Raessens 2006). An example for
the ludification of a film, that is the transfer of ludic elements into a film, is the film
Run Lola Run. This film adopts a typical element of games, namely, that a player has
several lives, and uses it for its narration. The film narrates its plot three times with
slight variations: The main character, Lola, tries to raise a lot of money for her lover;
twice she dies trying, the third time she succeeds. To make this gamelike narration
possible, further elements of games have to be adopted. First of all, there are rules
that provide for the unchanged external conditions for the player (in the film: Lola)
in every match of a game, and by this enable the possibility of repetition typical of
games. By these three elements – three lives, unchanged conditions (rules) and rep-
etition – the film establishes the reference to games. Tykwer additionally establishes
a strong reference to videogames in that Lola does not walk but runs – characters in
videogames usually run. Meanwhile, it is current practice for films to use this narra-
tive pattern (a multiform story according to Murray 1998, 30).
In the face of the last example, i.e. the adoption of certain elements that belong
to games and connote ‘gameness’, the question arises if Schröter’s (1998, 2007) cat-
egory of transmedial reference has to be put alongside intermedial references, or if it
could be considered to be a subcategory of Rajewsky’s intermedial references, which
in itself remains relatively non-specific. Schröter considers transmedial reference as a
relation of media via a third element, a tertium comparationis, and uses narration as
an example. As a tertium comparationis, narration can be used to compare media that
narrate, or as an organising structure that is realised in various media. In this article,
I will adopt this thought and consider the ludic as a tertium comparationis as well.
The ludic can be realised by certain components like rules and repetitions, like roles,
masks and avatars, like play and performance. Playing a role or wearing a mask, for
example, cannot be considered behaviours that belong to a certain medium; they are
characteristics of the ludic that are realised in certain situations, contexts or media –
always with a certain materiality and significance that is dependent on the respective
situation, context and medium.
588 Britta Neitzel

Examples from the third subcategory, media combination, also seem to be inter-
esting for the analysis of the intermediality of videogames because they are complex
media in the same sense that film and theatre are complex media, multimedia or
hypermedia. Videogames as qualified media comprise music, moving (animated)
images, written and spoken language, text, sound, and gestures; they operate with
filmic means (‘virtual camera’, editing), narration and of course ludic elements. This
subcategory will be used to describe the intermedial relations between specific vide-
ogames and other medial works.

3 Basic Attributes of Performances and the Theatre

Richard Schechner basically describes performances as “showing doing” (Schechner
2013, 28), which means that activities are exhibited in one way or another. This basic
description implies that performances have at least two parties: one that encom-
passes the actors or exhibitors who show their deeds, and another that encompasses
the spectators who watch the show. Schechner distinguishes eight kinds of perfor-
mance. Performance may take place in: 1) everyday life, such as cooking, socializing,
and “just living”; 2) the arts; 3) sports and other popular entertainments; 4) business;
5) technology; 6) sex; 7) ritual – sacred or secular; 8) play (Schechner 2013, 31).

In business, sports, and sex, ‘to perform’ is to do something up to a standard – to succeed, to

excel. In the arts, ‘to perform’ is to put on a show, a play, a dance, a concert. In everyday life, ‘to
perform’ is to show off, to go to extremes, to underline an action for those who are watching. In
the twenty-first century, people as never before live by means of performance. (Schechner 2013,
28)

Apart from his strange (and probably gendered) conception of sex, these characteris-
tics of performance can all be found in videogames.
Performances and theatre have similarities and overlaps. Theatre is surely a kind
of performance, but has a special form. Classical theatre takes place in a venue that
is especially designed for performances and separates the actors from the audience:
While the performance of the actors takes place on a stage, the audience is located
in the auditorium. Furthermore, performances in the theatre are usually based upon
a written play and the actors play a well-defined role. Actors in non-theatrical per-
formances may play a role as well, though probably, especially in every-day perfor-
mances, it may not be as well-defined a role as in the theatre. Actors in the theatre
usually wear costumes, in non-theatrical performances they only sometimes wear
costumes. In the theatre as well as in performances, sometimes masks come into
use – for example in the ancient Greek theatre and some ritualised performances.
Playhouses, costumes, roles and masks are ‘discretionary clauses’. To qualify
performances and theatre as distinct media, to make them qualified media in Ell-
 31 Performing Games: Intermediality and Videogames 589

eström’s words, other attributes are used. ‘Showing doing’ – the exhibition of actions
for an audience – is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition. The showing must
additionally be done live. Performers, the performance and the audience have to be
co-present. They have to be at the same place at the same time. From the beginning
of theatre studies on bodily co-presence, liveness was the qualifying attribute for both
theatre and performance (cf. Otto 2013, 51–67). An advocate of this view is Erika Fis-
cher-Lichte, who states:

Max Herrmann demonstrated that the specific mediality of performance consists of the bodily
co-presence of actors and spectators. Performance, then, requires two groups of people, one
acting and the other observing, to gather at the same time and place for a given period of shared
livetime. Their encounter – interactive and confrontational – produces the event of the perfor-
mance. (Fischer-Lichte 2008, 38)

Conjoined with the attribute of liveness are notions of uniqueness, unpredictability,

and ephemerality, the last of which is strongly connected with presence and disap-
pearance (for a discussion of these attributes cf. Georgi 2014, 110–160).
Thus, paradoxically, what makes theatre and performances qualified media is
the absence of mediatisation. But, as Philipp Auslander (1999) has shown and Ulf
Otto (2013) has later reinforced, the enunciation of an absence of mediatisation only
makes sense in the face of mediatisation. “[H]istorically”, Auslander (1999, 51) states,
“the live is actually an effect of mediatization, not the other way around. […] Prior to
the advent of those technologies (e.g., sound recording and motion pictures), there
was no such thing as ‘live’ performance, for that category has meaning only to an
opposing possibility”. Or, using Derrida’s (1967) deconstructive thought: For the first
to become the first, it is indispensable that there is a second. Without the media,
everything would be ‘live’ so that ‘live’ would not be a distinguishing characteristic.
Liveness itself is only thinkable in a network of intermediality.

4 Actors and Spectators in Videogames

This section examines the relations between theatre, performance and videogames,
as well as the questions whether and how actors and spectators, liveness, and
‘showing doing’ are to be found in videogames. For a videogame it is evident that
actors – people who play – are necessary, but it is less evident that there are specta-
tors, too. In the early 1990s, Brenda Laurel already used the metaphor of the theatre
in her book Computers as Theatre to explain human-computer interaction. She starts
with the thesis that the “interesting potential [of a computer] lay not in its ability to
perform calculations but in its capacity to represent action in which humans could
participate” (Laurel 1993, 1). Laurel considers the actions of a user as “an indispensa-
ble ingredient of the representation, since it is only through a person’s actions that all
590 Britta Neitzel

dimensions of the representation can be manifest” (Laurel 1993, 2). According to [this,
…] she conceptualises the interface of a computer as the context for action in which
the user and the computer are agents. Interfaces both enable and represent actions.
They become the arena for the performance of some task in which both humans and
computers have a role. Thus, interface design should concern itself with “represent-
ing whole actions with multiple agents” (Laurel 1993, 7).
According to Laurel, theatrical design and interface design are aimed at creat-
ing representations of worlds. Just like theatrical scene designers, interface designers
create representations of objects and environments that provide a context for action.
Laurel refuses the notion of an interface as something between a user and a computer.
she prefers to consider the interface as a stage on which the actions of different actors
take place. To give an example: This stage, provided by the computer, may be a soccer
field, on which two digital soccer teams play against each other. The actions of the
players, both those who are generated and controlled by the computer (non-player
characters or NPCs) and the players that are generated by the computer but controlled
by a user, take place on the soccer field or stage. In Laurel’s terms: The spectators,
who are definitely part of the situation in the theatre but excluded from the happen-
ings on the stage, disappear and become actors. Unfortunately, she does not explain
how a spectator can become an actor, how this transformation can become possible.
“[T]he representation is all there is” (Laurel 1993, 17) is her only statement.
Game studies work on the explanation for this transformation. In videogames,
such transformation is conducted insofar as the player of a game is ‘duplicated’. A
player of a videogame plays the game by moving a cursor, a crosshairs, a hand, an
avatar, or any other symbol generated by the programme. Krämer (2000) calls this
symbol the semiotic or databody of a player, which is necessary for interacting with
the digital environment. While the player corporeally remains outside the digital
game world (in Laurel’s terms, the stage), her semiotic body replaces her in this world
(or on the stage, respectively). Since the semiotic body is generated according to the
rules and the fiction of the game, it perfectly fits on the stage. The player manipulates
this body, and with its help the game world, and watches the outcome of her manip-
ulations. In that way s/he is her own spectator, so that playing a videogame can be
considered a kind of self-observation (cf. Neitzel 2005, 230).
Game studies literature discusses the relationship between a player and her semi-
otic body, especially in the form of an avatar, in various ways. Some scholars con-
sider the avatar to be a representation of the player, others argue that the player is
the avatar or becomes her avatar in the course of the game, and still others claim that
the avatar is conceptualised as a fictional figure. Alison McMahan describes avatars
as “textual or graphic representations of users that include a character designed to fit
into the fictional environment in question, complete with a set of personality traits,
skills, and health status” (McMahan 2003, 74, emphasis mine). Thus, the avatar has
a double functionality: For one, it is a representation of the player, but it is also a
fictional figure of the game-world. Contrary to McMahan, Fullop (in Frasca 2001)
 31 Performing Games: Intermediality and Videogames 591

describes the avatar as a play-instance with which the player merges. This means
there exists an identity, or at least a short-circuit, in the relation between avatar and
player. Fullop additionally states that the avatar is nothing but a cursor. As Klevjer
(2006) highlights, this “cursor-theory” (I suggest calling it “tool-theory”) emphasises
the instrumental function of the avatar, that serves as a tool for the player, enabling
her to act in the fictional game world (cf. also Neitzel 2004). Although this is surely
the case, an avatar is more than a cursor. While a cursor is nothing more than the
display of the position for the next input, an avatar is at least a bundle of capacities
and capabilities (cf. Newman 2002; Neitzel 2004). It can jump, run, shoot, sometimes
speak or cast spells, etc. But it still remains the very position from where the player
can act in the fictional game world. It marks the ‘point-of-action’, as I have called it
(cf. Neitzel 2000, 2004, 2007).
Apart from its instrumental functions, an avatar is also part of the fiction. Its
appearance, its name, and probably its backstory belong to the fictional world of the
game. As part of the game world and especially as hero in a game’s underlying narra-
tive, the avatar gives sense to the particular actions it carries out. Max Weber (1980, 1)
distinguishes behaviour from action in respect to their senses. Action is meaningful
when it is aimed at something else, when it connects an initial condition with a target.
In Luhmann’s (1971, 26) terms, sense is always a construction of a reasonable social
or psychic system. Thus, while the avatar as a fictional figure can give sense to the
diegetic game actions, a cursor cannot, because it can hardly be considered a psychic
system.
It is exactly this integration in the fictional world that renders the notion of
avatars as representations of users problematic. A figure that belongs to a fictional
environment cannot represent a player who does not belong to that environment.
This is the problem that Laurel (1993, 16–17) refers to when she states that just putting
an audience on a theatre stage would cause confusion. But there is of course a relation
between the player and the avatar. A player is dependent on the avatar to carry out
actions in the fiction. In some games, the player can even determine some attributes
of the avatar. Yet, to call this a representation of the player would stretch the term
too far. In multiplayer games, an avatar can be called a representative of a player in
the sense that it stands in for the player and other players encounter her by meeting
the avatar. Klevjer calls it a “vicarious body” that “gives the player a subject-position
within a simulated environment” (Klevjer 2006, 10).
To summarise, many discourses and aspects of a game meet in the figure of the
avatar: the instrumental (it is a tool that enables actions in the game’s diegesis); the
fictional (it is part of the game’s diegesis); and the social (it is the representative of a
player). As a tool, the avatar positions the player in the fictional world. As a fictional
figure, the avatar enables the player to play (with) a role. As a representative of the
player, it is comparable to a mask. For upcoming studies of intermediality, it would be
reasonable to further examine and compare the functions of roles in the theatre and
592 Britta Neitzel

in videogames, as well as the functions of masks, avatars and user-profiles in social

media.

5 P
 erformances in Videogames

5.1 Single and Group Performances in Games

Whichever form the avatar may have, the player can always watch it from outside. The
avatar is a tool and a character in one, so that a kind of self-observation can take place.
The player becomes her own spectator. This is the basic alignment of videogames.
It can be described with the help of Plessner’s (1975 [1928]) differentiation between
having a body and being a body. A player has a body in the form of her avatar, but is a
body in front of the computer monitor.
Because of and with the help of this alignment a player can rehearse her game.
The audiovisual displays of the computer give her feedback about the quality of her
actions. Like dancers or actors who can rehearse in front of a mirror, a videogame
player can rehearse with the help of the screen and the speakers. Krämer (1995,
229) has indicated the similarities of mirror images and virtual images. According
to Krämer, a mirror creates a second place for the object in front of the mirror and
thereby enables a person to see herself with the eyes of others, as “virtuality […] rests
on illusory positionings that enable a spectator to receive sensations that are impossi-
ble to receive from the place in which her physical body is factually located” (Krämer
1995, 229, translation mine). These actions in videogames can be described as restored
behaviour (cf. Schechner 2013, 29), as action that people train or rehearse for, which
are not being executed for the first time.
On the one hand, the rehearsal can serve a player’s own performance, which will
improve and could possibly get quantified and displayed as a highscore. On the other
hand, it can be a preparation for joint playing. In addition to the audiovisual feed-
back, most videogames further support the rehearsal of or for a performance. Many
games have introductory or training levels in which players learn the basic move-
ments necessary for playing the game. A tangible example of the invitation to train is
the training dummies that are placed in the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online
Role Playing Game) World of Warcraft (WoW) in the military quarters of the capital
cities of the game’s factions. Integrated in the game’s narration of the eternal fight
between the Alliance and the Horde, training with the dummies in the capitals again
articulates the double function of the avatar. The player simultaneously trains for her
own performance in the game while the fictional figure trains for her fight against the
opposing faction.
The trained movements can be presented by the player in single combats (either
against NPCs or against the avatars of other players) or in-group performances. An
 31 Performing Games: Intermediality and Videogames 593

example for a single combat is the so-called duel to which a player can challenge
another (even of her own faction). Players can duel nearly everywhere in the game
world, but duels are often carried out in front of the gates of the capitals (the cities
themselves are ‘safe’ zones). Here, at the gates, many players’ characters pass by, can
be challenged or watch the duels. Sometimes the gates of Stormwind or Orgrimmar
resemble a circus, with one duel after the other, characters watching or joining. Again,
the duels themselves can be regarded as training for the player vs. player (PvP) battles
in which groups of players from the opposing factions fight each other. These battles
demand skills that cannot be trained for with the dummies, but demand experience
from fights with other players.
Apart from the PvP battles, the abilities of a player are also presented in group
combats against computer-generated enemies (Player vs. Environment – PvE) – in
dungeons or raids. Here, five or more players play together to beat exceptionally strong
enemies. Untrained players or untrained groups usually lose these fights in the first
attempts. A dungeon will not be completed victoriously until the group has acquired
the ability to act in concert and is acquainted with the enemies and their abilities as
well as the spatial circumstances. In the words of David Seamon (1980), the battles
in these dungeons can be called “place ballets”. These are actions that can be carried
out in a routinised and – so to speak – preconscious fashion due to frequent rehearsal
at a certain place. The sequences of actions are standardised to achieve the best possi-
ble outcome under time pressure. Like a theatre performance that has been practised
repeatedly, they differ only in nuances from former performances; the sequences in
the dungeons only differ minimally when carried out by practised groups.

5.2 T
 ransmissions of Live Performances: Guides, E-Sports and
Let’s Plays

Like theatre or everyday performances, these live performances in videogames can be

recorded – often with tools already implemented in the game – and displayed again.
Recorded performances of PvE dungeons for example are sometimes used as dungeon
guides to help unexperienced players gather information about a certain dungeon.
The guides use different symbolic codes (in Elleström’s terms, basic media). Some
appear in the form of written text (e.g. www.icy-veins.com/wow/raid-guides), others
in the form of a video recording of a dungeon performance with spoken commentary
(e.g. hordeguides.de). The first form can be considered a textual instruction on how to
act. Thus, they belong to the family of repair instructions or cooking recipes in books
(or meanwhile, on the internet). The latter form is comparable with video instructions
for a certain dance. The guides are published on YouTube or on the websites of the
guilds that have performed in the dungeon. Aside from their function as guides, the
videos also exhibit the mastery of the group that has performed in the dungeon. On
YouTube, one finds diverse videos of bossfights or final battles that do not raise the
594 Britta Neitzel

claim to be guides. These videos, usually with music added, only show the achieve-
ment of the guilds or teams. Guilds which are able to master a dungeon or a raid first,
or very early on, often enjoy a great reputation among the members of the community.
Especially ambitious and skilled players are organised into so-called e-sports
leagues, or they play at e-sports tournaments. Organised like other sports events,
players compete against others in different classes and different sports (that is,
games). The World Cyber Games (WCG), which took place annually from 2000 until
2013, was the largest such tournament in recent years. The WCG aimed at being the
Olympic Games of e-sports, with between 170 and 800 players from 40 countries
upwards participating in the finals (“World Cyber Games”). Yet there are also a lot
of smaller events. The developer and publisher Blizzard for example organises the
yearly Blizzcon. During the convention, several tournaments in different games take
place. They can be watched on location at the Blizzcon and interested audiences can
also buy a virtual ticket to follow the discussions and the matches of the conven-
tion via livestream on the internet. The presentation of the matches (not only of the
Blizzcon tournaments) resembles the broadcast of a football match. Usually, two com-
mentators, sitting behind a desk on which two monitors are placed, start the trans-
mission with the verbal analysis of the teams and their expected tactics. After this
introduction, the match begins. The audience sees the visual display of the match
with information on the progress of the two teams (the teams only see their own pro-
gress) and hear the commentary on the actions. When the matches begin, the verbal
comments depart from a television broadcast and start to resemble a radio broadcast.
The commentators talk at enormous speed with excitement in their voices.
As with the videogame industry in general, e-sports have become a huge busi-
ness, with sponsoring from the soft- and hardware industry, internet channels for live
streaming (e.g. www.twitch.tv) and professional organisers and players. Thus, they
do not significantly differ from other professional sports. Also in respect to the live
transmissions, there are resemblances to other live events: Spectators can attend in a
sports arena and/or view the audiovisual live transmission.
Another form of the presentation of videogame performances are the so-called
let’s plays. Since approximately 2010, players record their game performances, add
a commentary and display them on YouTube. In the ensuing time, this has become
a famous genre of internet videos (on October 10th 2014, the search term “let’s play”
provided over 24 million entries on Google). In let’s plays, the spectators see the game
screen, hear the commentary, and in most cases they see another small window that
shows the player in a close up commenting on her gameplay. In this alignment, the
player is not only her own spectator, as in the basic alignment of videogames, but also
her own commentator.
The aim of this form of exhibition is not to provide a guide for other players or
to show an especially good performance, but to put the game-experience on display.
This becomes apparent by the many let’s plays that display the first match of a game.
The commentary of these let’s plays often poses questions an unexperienced player
 31 Performing Games: Intermediality and Videogames 595

might ask. Also, emotions – joy after a successful move, fear in a certain situation –
as they may come up in playing a game are (most of the time hyperbolically) shown
in let’s plays (cf. KingAnonymous187). Let’s plays reveal and highlight elements of a
game that usually only pass by. They are a highly self-referential genre that aims at
exhibiting the performative nature of videogames. But they highlight and comment
on not only the performance of players, but also the performance of the computer and
computer-generated characters. Some creators of let’s plays have themselves created
a large fan base and become internet stars.
With the concentration on the performance in and of videogames, let’s plays differ
from machinima, “the making of animated movies in real time through the use of
computer game technology” (Lowood 2005, 10). These videos, created with the game
engines, transform the game into a narration, a comic situation, a lyrical impression,
and many other forms. One of the oldest, most successful and entertaining is the Red
vs. Blue series based on the Halo games, which has, in the meantime, also become
available on Blu-ray Disk. While machinima can be considered to be videos about
possible happenings in a game’s diegesis, let’s plays are videos about possible ways
of playing the game.

5.3 Performances in Public Spaces

There are two sorts of performances that – related to videogames – take place in
public spaces: for one in the public space of MMORPGs (here I will again draw on
the example WoW), for the other in public spaces in the city. As a first example for
public performances in WoW, the duels in front of the city gates have already been
mentioned. The capital cities of WoW are home to various shops, quest givers for daily
quests, transport infrastructure, banks and – most importantly – the auction houses.
Thus, many players visit the cities regularly. They are places in the game’s world where
players stay if they do not have quests to complete or dungeons to master, but wait for
an invitation to a dungeon or just hang around and socialise. In the early evenings,
when many players are online, the cities are frequented or – sometimes – crowded.
The cities are places for, as Schechner calls it, performances in everyday life. Here,
where many others are around, players or guilds can ‘show off’: Some players may
be kissing each other – ‘kissing’ is done by clicking on another character and type
“/kiss”, the other players then can read “x blows a kiss to y” in the chat window –,
some tell jokes (“/joke”) or dance (“/dance”) or they strut around with arms flicking
imitating the clucking of a chicken (“/chicken”). Guilds may show off by gathering in
front of a bank, everyone sitting on an impressive mount. In these performances the
role-playing as well as the social aspects of the game come to the fore. In the form of
their avatars, and masked by their avatars, players can overact, play a certain role or
just behave unusually more easily than without an avatar.
596 Britta Neitzel

Apart from these everyday performances, WoW has a long tradition of in-game
protests. The oldest one is supposedly the gnome’s walk. In 2005, only a few months
after the game went online, players of the warrior class created level-one gnomes and
walked into Ironforge, one of the capital cities of WoW, to protest against changes
in the design of their class that had affected the gameplay. In WoW the players are
able to undress their game characters; thus, there were not only hundreds of gnomes
walking into Ironforge, but they were all (nearly) naked (cf. Foton 2005; Andrews
2014). The protest march had a double aesthetic quality. Not only did the players
choose the gnomes as means of protest, they also decided to undress, and because of
this masquerade the demonstration became an art form.
But WoW players do not only protest for the quality of the game. As a digital envi-
ronment that is frequently visited by more than 10 million people from all over the
world, WoW has also been used for political demonstrations from outside the world of
warcraft. In 2009, the PETA organisation called on WoW’s Northrend to demonstrate
against seal slaughter in Canada (cf. Huling 2009; Can 2009). Not without wit, this
demonstration was supposed to take place in the area where an in-game organisation
called D.E.H.T.A (Druids for the Ethical and Humane Treatment of Animals) fights the
big game hunter and author of The Green Hills of Stranglethorn, Hemet Nesingwary,
and his friends.
These performances – the everyday performances, the in-game protests for better
gameplay, and the political demonstrations – can be considered to have a live char-
acter. They take place and can be attended in WoW on a certain server at a certain
in-game location at a certain point in time. People who are not there at that time with
their semiotic bodies can only get notice of the events through ‘the media’: YouTube
videos, blogs, newspapers, news on television, or (text)books. For example, there is
no video of the PETA demonstration accessible on the internet (albeit there are many
videos that positively, negatively or satirically refer to the demonstration), so that no
one except a participant or a spectator of the live event knows if this demonstration
actually took place.
Georgi states that liveness is dependent on “[physical] co-presence and being
alive though threatened by death and disappearance” (2012, 104). She further acts on
the assumption that videogames simulate co-presence and only “create the illusion
of being an active participant in an alternative reality” (Georgi 2014, 167). I do not
want to neglect the differences between theatre and performances in videogames, but
Georgi’s assumptions create a gap that is far too big and overlooks the ability of play,
including that in videogames, to establish presence.
As a material modality, physical co-presence belongs to theatre and performance,
it is not a qualifying aspect for videogames. Yet in tournaments, playing together
on a console, PC or mobile device, in a LAN or a location-based game, the players
of videogames are physically co-present. And even in these situations of gameplay
there is a difference as regards both theatre and live performance: It is a co-presence
among players and not a co-presence among actors and audience that is instantiated.
 31 Performing Games: Intermediality and Videogames 597

But do the other games simulate co-presence and only create an illusion of partici-
pation? The two assumptions belong together. Videogames do not simulate physical
co-presence. Every player sitting at her desk is well aware that it is not her physical
body in the game’s diegesis, even if the physical body is involved in and defined by
playing the game (cf. Krämer 2002, 59). Bodies in the diegesis of a videogame are
signs for physical bodies that have their own in-game physicality and are by no means
threatened by death (on the contrary, they are immortal). As many let’s plays show,
players have an awareness that the in-game bodies are just digital signs. But this does
not mean that multiplayer videogames do not create a co-presence. Players of these
games actualise a virtual reality by their performances and only in the moment of
their performances; they do not participate in an alternative reality. Virtual realities
are defined as possibilities that can be actualised by the activities of users (cf. Münker
1997, 2000). A game (every game, not just a videogame) provides these possibilities
that are transformed into actualities during play. Presence (Gegenwärtigkeit), con-
nected with unpredictability, is a qualifying aspect of play (cf. Scheuerl 1999 [1954],
47). In conjunction with its repeatability, it even aims at an expansion of presence (cf.
Neitzel 2000, 44–45). Even without bodily involvement videogames take place live.
In what remains, I will consider performances in videogames that do not take
place in virtual but in material locations and take the so-called location based games
as example. The oldest videogame (or one of the oldest videogames) that was played
in the streets has been named Pac Manhattan. In 2004, a group of players trans-
formed the arcade game PacMan into a physical version. Some players were dressed
as ghosts and one as PacMac, and they used the streets of Manhattan as a playground,
while others acted as ‘controllers’, connected with the players in the streets via mobile
phones (cf. Pacmanhattan). The basic alignment of videogames – the integration of
actor and spectator in the person of the player – is unravelled in this game. A player
in the streets merely acts in the fictional game world (that overlays the material city),
but s/he needs the controller’s gaze from outside to provide an overview necessary for
orientation in the game world.
Today, location based games are played with smartphones that are equipped with
a GPS function to locate the position of the player or the phone. I will concentrate on
the example of Ingress here. The game was created by the Google subsidiary Niantic
Labs and uses a modification of the Google map as one of its two playgrounds. While
the usual signs for landmarks on a map are erased – the Ingress map has a black back-
ground with only the streets, official footpaths, rivers and lakes visible – this map
displays ‘portals’ through which ‘exotic matter’ streams onto earth. The task for the
players is to conquer the portals for their own faction (the enlightened or the resist-
ance) in order to either promote the influence of the ‘exotic matter’ or to obstruct it.
Captured portals are colour-coded (green for the enlightened, blue for the resistance)
and can be linked with other portals of the same colour. If a player links three portals
with each other, s/he establishes a field and captures ‘mind units’.
598 Britta Neitzel

By the acts of the players, the formerly black map is covered with green and blue
portals and fields during the course of the game. In addition to this visual and digital
side of the game, there is a material one. The digital portals on the map are linked to
objects in the physical world (artworks in public spaces, special places, pubs, etc.).
To be able to capture a portal or create a link, players have to approach these objects
bodily with the GPS, confirming their position. In so doing, they save the world in
the game’s diegesis. For creating links and fields in Ingress players walk around a
block several times, they go back and forth, they stand in front of a church or another
noticeable building for quite some time pressing on their smartphones. This is not
a ‘normal’ behaviour but an in-game performance in public. Or, as a player has put
it: “Walking around looking weird with my device, with a cool reason to do so” (Lui
2013). Passers-by do not have to be astonished, but they could be. This might even be
more likely when a group of people, all equipped with smartphones, behaves like this.
Apart from gatherings of local Ingress players, this is the case in the events organised
by Niantic, which can only be won if players play and walk together.
The game Ingress does not stand alone. It is accompanied by a background story
told in a video on the ingress.com website, the weekly Ingress Report that spins this
story further, introduces new game features, and reports on players’ (agents’) activ-
ities. The report is displayed on YouTube and sent to players by email. Additionally,
players get emails when a portal they own is attacked, and three e-books on the game
are available. Ingress is a cross-media product.
Yet Ingress is just one example for location based games, which in turn include
just one of many forms of performances in videogames that exist. To conclude, what all
of them have in common is the coupling of presence and unpredictability, a coupling
that informs the notion of performance in videogames. This coupling is of importance
irrespective of the number of players or the particular localities (in virtual or physical
space) involved – and it demonstrates the importance of the ludic as a connector not
only of different agents in this process, but also, ultimately, different media.

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Schröter, Jens. “Das ur-intermediale Netzwerk und die (Neu-)Erfindung des Mediums im (digitalen)
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Routledge, 2013.

6.2 F urther Reading

Ackermann, Judith. “Masken und Maskierungsstrategien – Identität und Identifikation im Netz.”
Social Media: Theorie und Praxis digitaler Sozialität. Ed. Caja Thimm and Marios Anastasiadis.
Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang, 2011. 59–84.
Bay-Cheng, Sarah, Chiel Kattenbelt, Andy Lavender, and Robin Nelson, eds. Mapping Intermediality
in Performance. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010.
Chapple, Freda, and Chiel Kattenbelt. Intermediality in Theatre and Performance. Amsterdam and
New York: Rodopi, 2006.
Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday, 1959.
Nitsche, Michael. “Performance.” The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies. Ed. Mark J. P.
Wolf and Bernard Perron. London and New York: Routledge, 2014. 388–395.
Widrich, Mechthild. “Geschichtete Präsenz und zeitgenössische Performance: Marina Abramovićs
The Artist is Present.” Authentizität und Wiederholung: Künstlerische und kulturelle
Manifestation eines Paradoxes. Ed. Uta Daur. Bielefeld: transcript, 2013. 147–166.

6.3 Games, Films, Internet Videos

Avatar. Dir. James Cameron. Narr. James Cameron. Twentieth Century Fox. 2009.
Halo Series. Developer: Bungie, Ensemble Studios, 343 Industries, Microsoft. Publisher: Microsoft.
2001–2013.
Ingress. Developer: Niantic Labs. Publisher: Google. 2013–.
Ingress Report. 25 Sept. 2014. www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPIWrOvHogg/. (15 Feb. 2015).
KingAnonymous187: Gronkh erschreckt sich beim Cry of Fear spielen – BEST OF. 29 Jan. 2013. www.
youtube.com/watch?v=tzXXl_01yoY/. (14 Oct. 2014).
King Kong. Dir. Peter Jackson. Narr. Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson. Universal Pictures.
2005.
PacMan. Developer: Namco. Publisher: Namco, Midway. 1980.
Pacmanhattan. Pacmanhattan Team. pacmanhattan.com. 2004. (15 Feb. 2015).
Red vs. Blue. Dir. Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Gavin Free, Miles Luna. Narr. Burnie Burns, Matt
Hullum, Miles Luna, Monty Oum, Eddy Rivas. Rooster Teeth. 2003–.
Run Lola Run. Dir. Tom Tykwer. Narr. Tom Tykwer. X-Filme. 1998. [German original Lola rennt].
World of Warcraft. Developer: Blizzard. Publisher: Blizzard. 2004–.