Task 1 (Intro To Research)

	Agon (conflict)	Alea (chance)	Mimicry	Ilinx (vertigo)
Agon (conflict)			Star Citizen	Dark Souls 3
Alea (chance)	Overwatch
Mimicry		Final Fantasy XIV		Resident Evil VII
Ilinx (vertigo)

With the games I have chosen, there were a few games that fit multiple categories. Because of that, I decided to redesign the grid to accommodate this. As with all forms of categorisation, there is rarely a system that perfectly defines each piece of media – many things are often a combination of the two. With my chosen games, a few incorporate multiple aspects of each category.

Star Citizen is an in-development MMO set in the future, where the player is a pilot in a world where spaceflight is as common as driving a car. However, the game has a natural aspect of Player vs Player (PvP) within it, where you may freely attack other players for your own gain. This would class it as being in the section of Conflict – however, the game also focuses on being immersive, and making the player feel like they’re part of the world. This would fit into Mimicry as a category.

Dark Souls 3 is a modern RPG game known well for its difficulty. In the game, you’re tasked with going throughout the world defeating various monsters that each have different ways of attacking, and are easily able to kill you. Due to its difficulty, the game often angers and frustrates the player, and the game is infamous for causing such a reaction. I would consider this kind of reaction a part of Ilinx, as the definition of it is ‘to momentarily destroy the stability of perception and inflict a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind’.

Overwatch, while primarily being a PvP game, also has a heavy influence of chance through the inclusion of Loot Boxes. This is integral to the game, and is a large source of revenue for the owning company. The game has various cosmetic items that the players can use and acquire, but only through the use of Loot Boxes. These boxes are inherently about chance and random percentages, so that would shift the game towards Alea.

Final Fantasy XIV is an MMORPG that I have adored for years, and while at first glance the game may all be about Mimicry, Chance is a core part of the games systems, especially when it comes to the player’s progression. Upon defeating a ‘Primal’ (A difficult boss usually fought in teams of 8), the players can obtain items dropped by the boss. The items received are completely random, and are often required to gain better equipment. While the game does have alternative methods of obtaining these items, the most notable way is easily the dropping of these items.

Resident Evil VII is a horror game where you play as Ethan Winters, a young man in search of his wife whom had gone missing a few years ago. With this in mind, it easily puts the game into the section of Mimicry – however, due to it being a horror game by nature (and this horror side of things being the main appeal of the game), this would put the game in the category of Ilinx first and foremost. With this focus on storytelling and horror, it would put the game in both categories.