Being a stereotypical
‘tweenager’ (a few years back now) was caught up in The Sims revolution that swept through the Gen Y’ers of Mebourne.
After being shown the
ropes of zombie fighting, car racing, and James Bond-esque type video games by
my big brother, The Sims for me meant
that I could participate in the gaming world without blowing someone’s guts
out, or any sort of fighting for that matter.
Image From: http://th06.deviantart.net/fs71/300W/i/2010/341/6/d/zombie_part_2_by_devl29-d34gbf2.jpg
My Brother on the other
hand, had no interest in The Sims whatsoever,
instead found more enjoyment in his action-filled, zombie fighting, and
street-racing games. At the time, completely disgusted at the thought of
killing people, I often wondered how he could find such pleasure in games with
such negative connotations.
According to Stuart Hall’s
Encoding/Decoding Model (Hall, 1973),
there are three different types of reading strategies used by an audience in
order to interpret texts.
The first one involves the
consumer to take a Dominant/Hegemonic approach. This occurs whereby the
consumer absorbs the meaning of the text exactly as it is written to be decoded.
The second, occurs when
the observer is willing to accept the leading message intended by the creator.
However, instead of receiving the meanings as literally is the dominant
approach; the consumer applies question and modification to the meanings, understanding
them in relation to their own experiences and beliefs. This is referred to as a
Negotiated Approach (Hall, 1973).
Thirdly, consumers may
also take an oppositional position when interpreting the meanings of a given
text or media. This involves decoding of the dominant messages; for the sake of
the consumers own interpretation.
In regards to my
experiences with video games, with time, I began to take an oppositional
position in regards to the zombie games, as it was harder to accept as ‘real
life’ than The Sims. As I could
relate real life experiences that The Sims represented, I was more willing to take a dominant approach, and therefore
experienced greater pleasure.
References
Hall, S. 1973,
Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse. Birmingham [England: Centre
for Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, 1973. 507-17 (available: HYPERLINK "http://visualstudies.buffalo.edu/coursenotes/art250/250A/_assets/_readings/encoding_decoding_hall.pdf"http://visualstudies.buffalo.edu/coursenotes/art250/250A/_assets/_readings/encoding_decoding_hall.pdf )
Hi Kathryn,
ReplyDeleteI do know the not a lot of girls play video games out there when we (Gen Y) were kids, but nowadays actually nearly half of video gamers are female. I like how you used your own experiences of playing 'The Sims' to help illustrate and pinpoint your argument even stronger as it really helps. I do understand that boys are generally the ones to want more action-fueled, zombie-fighting and street racing games. But there are lots of video game genres out there. Even some where girls will like too. You used the scholarly references well and images. Interesting read overall! Thanks.
Cheers,
Rio