Presentation for the "Cognition and Digitisation: Joint Futures in the Humanities?" workshop as part of the Cognitive Futures in the Humanities 2016 conference.

1. Playing with Digital Meaning:
Video Games, Narrative, Cognition
Cody Mejeur
Department of English
Michigan State University
mejeurco@msu.edu
@cmejeur

2. My Work
 New/Digital Media and
Narrative
 Video games, Narrative and
Play
 Digital Humanities
 Cognition
 Narratology vs Ludology
 Lingering Issues
 Separating Narrative and
Play portions of games
Game Narrative
Personal
Narrative
Collective
Narrative
Determined
Narrative
Authorial Source: PlayersAuthorial
Source:
Developers

3. Challenging the Narrative/Play Divide
 Theory?
 Jenkins, Ryan, Walsh, Prince
 Degrees of Narrativity,
Embedded/Emergent/Experiential Narrative
 Social Scientific Methods?
 Interview players
 Forums research
 Problem of sample sizes-is this inevitable?
 Cognitive Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience?

4. Cognitive Solutions?
 Allow one to find evidence for theories of
player/audience reception and interaction
 Problem: Science “saving” the Humanities?
 Benefit: Let’s us “call bullshit”
 Allows a helpful generalizing, how humans
*generally* engage with narrative meaning
 Problem: Are we eschewing neurodiversity? Enforcing
or reifying neurotypicality? Is our work in cognition,
narrative, etc., inherently exclusionary?
 Need to recognize, acknowledge, work within
limitations
 “A Cloud of Witnesses”-Seek other types of evidence

5. Designing a fMRI experiment
 Test distinction/relationship between
narrative and play
 Problem: Controls, Isolating
“Narrative”
 Choice: Use First Person games
(shooters, exploration, etc.)
 Mirror/Mimic Player
POV/Consciousness
 Avoid character entanglements
 Question of interface
 Alexander Galloway–what
assumptions are built into the
interface?
 What are the cognitive
implications of the interface?

6. Steps to Experiment
 Screening Questionnaire
 Control for experience, predisposition toward or
against narrative
 fMRI Play
 MRI compatible controller
 Eye-tracking, video recording
 Play segments of three games: Halo, Half-Life 2,
Bioshock. Similar play, different narrative
configurations.
 Post Scanner Questionnaire and Oral Interview
 Modified Game Experience Questionnaire, Eindhoven
University of Technology

7. Role of Digital/Digital Humanities
 Method and Praxis for Cognitive Humanities
Questions
 Data-driven
 Building archives
 Tools for organizing/cleaning data
 Topic Modeling
 Statistical Analysis
 Other Methods for Analysis
 E.g.: Manovich’s ImagePlot
 Mapping out player playthroughs, visualizing what player
does and how they think

8. An Example of ImagePlot

9. What does Cognitive give DH?
 What do our DH tools
*mean*?
 How do we make
meaning with our tools?
 Give DH one type of
argument
 DH *as* cognition
 Our tools construct our
reality
 Steven Jones and
“evergence”
• The Emergence of the
Digital Humanities

10. Final Suggestions/Questions
 Scientific tools and methodologies, specifically
neuroscience and perhaps DH, cannot and
should not be viewed as ultimate validation,
objectivity, or “truth"
 can’t be reductive
 Not that the humanities need to become more
scientific. Rather, they need to focus on praxis
interrelated to theory and criticism.
 What I’ve mentioned here isn’t the only or even the
best way to do that. It is *a* way to do that.
 The digital and the cognitive are becoming
increasingly interrelated. Why limit our perspectives
and ability to talk about these issues?

11. Works Cited
 Galloway, Alexander R. The Interface Effect.
Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA: Polity, 2012. Print.
 Jones, Steven E. The Emergence of the Digital
Humanities. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print.
 Scheinfeldt, Tom. “Why Digital Humanities Is
‘Nice’”. In Debates in the Digital Humanities. Ed.
Matthew Gold. University of Minnesota Press,
2012. Print.