Farming games harvest panopticon: a pragma-semiotic landscape analysis of Hay Day.

This study uses a pragma-semiotic landscape (SL) perspective to scrutinize how farming games (re)shapes the human experience of the social world by means of (re)constructing and (re)configuring the representation, (re)organization, and interpretation of social space. Drawing on technological mediati...

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Publicado en:Digital Scholarship in the Humanities Vol. 40; no. 1; pp. 96 - 121
Autores principales: Falaky, May Samir El, Shazly, Reham El
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Oxford University Press / USA Apr2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      pub: Oxford University Press / USA
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        atl: Farming games harvest panopticon: a pragma-semiotic landscape analysis of Hay Day.
      aug:
        au:
          Falaky, May Samir El
          Shazly, Reham El
        affil: Department of Language and Translation, Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, College of Language and Communication, Cairo 2033, Egypt
      su:
        Agriculture
        Social space
        Judgment (Psychology)
        Self-control
        Internalization (Social psychology)
        Gaze
      sug:
        subj:
          Agriculture
          Social space
          Judgment (Psychology)
          Self-control
          Internalization (Social psychology)
          Gaze
      keyword:
        farming games
        neoliberalism
        panopticon
        pragmatics
        semiotic acts
        semiotic landscape
        speech acts
      ab: This study uses a pragma-semiotic landscape (SL) perspective to scrutinize how farming games (re)shapes the human experience of the social world by means of (re)constructing and (re)configuring the representation, (re)organization, and interpretation of social space. Drawing on technological mediation, where technology actively (co)shapes human–world interactions, this study suggests that farming games, as in the case of Hay Day (HD), train gameplayers into neoliberalism while entertaining a panopticon schema. In doing so, HD trains players to internalize hierarchized surveillance, normalizing judgements, differential distribution, and self-discipline. Drawing on Semiotic Landscape and Speech Act Theory, this study discusses how HD as a farming gamescape represents and enacts a panopticon power economy. The findings suggest that HD semiotic resources index neoliberal governmentality as illocutionary acts, while (re)constructing and partitioning time, social spaces, and practices. HD semiotically embodies the panoptic schema as a spatial experience using three tropes: utility (uninterrupted toil , training / practising , and transforming), docility (space, time, and action segmentation, norms internalization , and hierarchized surveillance), and examination (evaluative gaze , normalizing judgement , and differential distribution) to govern/manage players in a gameplay experience of empowerment and subjectivation. Players are continuously empowered by and subjugated to a procedural system to evaluate their performance and determine their value, while allowing them to gaze and be gazed upon by others to empower and normalize them. This study claims to fill a remarkable lacuna in technology–human interactions in which technological artefacts play a central role in the (re)construction of the social world and practices.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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      custom: © 2019 EADH: The European Association for Digital Humanities.
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      holder: Oxford University Press / USA
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          year: 2025
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