Michał Kłosiński
(Faculty of Philology, University of Silesia, Katowice)
Abstract:
The paper will focus on presenting an analysis and interpretation of World of Warships videogame in the spirit of hermeneutics. Utilizing the notion of retrotopia, it will depict how this convergent and multimodal game constructs its gameplay and representations (assets) by offering players a playful and nostalgic return to the times of war-focused ship development of national navies from the end of XIX until the mid XX century. World of Warships features a complex and multilayered gameplay economy which is an essential element of the game’s progression and award system. Players earn credits, experience, coal, steel on top of being able to buy premium ships for real money and premium in-game currency – the dubloons. The idea of the game is for the players to work through various technological trees to research and purchase playable replicas of historical vessels which can be utilized in battles against other players or AI. My analysis and interpretation will focus on the problem of utilization of technology to recreate, with archivist scrutiny and historical accuracy both the ships that existed, and the ones which the developers bring to life from declassified military concepts and projects. The question here is twofold: how does virtual technology serve our nostalgia as a tool of creating retrotopian war-machine mythology; and, how the gameplay economy model fortifies and constructs a desire for this nostalgic mythology? The paper will utilize the works of Jean Baudrillard, Zygmunt Bauman, Roland Barthes, Fredric Jameson, Bernard Stiegler, as well as relate to the author’s own works on the hermeneutic of video games.
Michał Kłosiński, assistant professor at The Faculty of Philology, University of Silesia. An active member of Utopian Studies Society and The Society for Utopian Studies. During his doctoral studies he participated in the Paris Program in Critical Theory. He published various articles on Polish literature, literary theory and video games in: „International Journal of Baudrillard Studies”, „Pamiętnik Literacki”, “Teksty Drugie”, „Wielogłos”, „Śwat i Słowo”. He is the author of: Świat pęknięty. O poemach naiwnych Czesława Miłosza [Broken World. On „World. Naive poem” by Czeslav Milosz] (Warsaw 2013), Ratunkiem jest tylko poezja Baudrillard – Teoria – Literatura [Only poetry can save us. Baudrillard – Theory – Literature] (Warsaw 2015) and Hermeneutyka gier wideo. Interpretacja immersja, utopia [Hermeneutics of video games. Interpretation, immersion, utopia] (Warsaw 2018). He also co-edited (With Ksenia Olkusz and Krzysztof M. Maj) More After More. Essays Commemorating the Five-Hundredth Anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia (Krakow 2016) and Ekonomiczne teorie literatury (with Paweł Tomczok) [Economic theories of literature] (Katowice 2016). His current hermeneutical and post-phenomenological research can be placed at the intersection of literary theory, game studies and utopian studies.