Consumo e modificação : o modding em Skyrim como processo midiático

Abstract

In this paper, we seek to understand how the phenomenon of modding ‘mediatizes’ the consumption of digital games. Using The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and a few of its thousands of mods as objects of analysis, we observe how the modding practice affects the game in its materiality and processes of signification, the ways the game is used, and its relations with the ‘extra-game’. Firstly, we examine the mods and their direct impact on the game, based on the seven layers of digital games proposed by Konzack (2002), which allow us to observe the game from specific layers, such as hardware and code, to broader layers, such as the socio-culture that surrounds it. The mods observed were chosen based on an observation of the categories used in the distribution platforms, which reference both the functionality and the application of these modifications. Next, we observe modding in terms of how the practice differs from the ‘standard’ ways of use for digital games. This analysis is based on Certeau’s (1998) perspective on consumption, which understands consumption as the ways in which the consumer appropriates the product, as well as the product as a site of struggle between the materialization of strategies and tactical consumption. Finally, we examine the communities of people and objects that form around and in function of modding, based on the analysis concepts of mediatization, figurations, and collectivities by Couldry and Hepp (2017), allowing us to understand modding and the social phenomena surrounding it within a context of deep mediatization. This analysis is conducted based on the sharing of purposes and meanings among the members of these collectivities, as well as the observation of the spaces of communication used by them. From the elements analysed in this dissertation, we conclude that modding, both as a phenomenon and as a practice, occurs within practical dualities and disputes of meaning. It is both the result of consumption tactics that revolve around strategic materiality and a method for continuing or creating new materialized strategies. It is socially shared and defined, grounded in material and social practices, as well as in platforms that encompass these types of appropriations. It can be materially disruptive, and is necessarily contextualized in a tangle of mediatized media and behaviours, becoming both a mediatized practice and a mediatizing object.