Meaning in motion: A kinesemiotic approach to videogame analysis in Street Fighter V
By: Arianna Maiorani and Jason Hawreliak
ARTICLE INFO: Volume: 10 Issue: 01:Summer 2024 ISSN: 2459-2943 DOI: 10.18680/hss.2024.0007 Pages: 117-139 Lic.: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 |
KEYWORDS: Multimodality Kinesemiotics Gender representation Game studies Fighting games |
ABSTRACT
Videogames are a semiotically rich medium, capable of utilizing virtually all modes of human expression (Ensslin 2012; Hawreliak 2018). Furthermore, they rely heavily on visual signification practices and have historically been the leading driver of advances in graphical technologies. This makes them ideal objects of study when examining animation trends, techniques, and representational practices. In this paper, we propose a novel methodological approach to
analyzing animation in videogames, drawing on principles of Multimodality (Kress and van Leeuwen 2021; Jewitt 2009; Bateman, Wildfeuer, and Hiippala 2017) and Kinesemiotics (Maiorani 2021). As a variegated research area that focuses on communication across media, Multimodality provides a rich theoretical background, especially in the domain of Kinesemiotics, which focuses on movement-based communication in natural, hybrid, and digital environments. Drawing on the Functional Grammar of Dance (Maiorani 2017, 2021; Maiorani and Liu 2022) and its implementation in manual and digital annotation, the area of Kinesemiotics has expanded beyond the study of dance discourse and towards performance analysis in general, thus proving a flexible and adaptable approach. This method has considerable potential for systematically analyzing choreographed movements performed by characters in videogame environments. To demonstrate the value of this approach, we present a systematic analysis of movement in the popular fighting game Street Fighter V: Championship Edition (Capcom 2020), focusing on how gender-based stereotypes are coded in character movements. By comparing the same movements between female and male characters (e.g., a kick), we demonstrate how the game encodes gender norms through animation, i.e., how a move is conveyed as ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine.’ We conclude the paper by examining how representations on-screen are influenced by animation practices themselves, including motion capture direction. This research presents a novel methodological approach for investigating animation generally and has the potential to illuminate unconscious bias in the animation industry.
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