Game studies

Do We Need Real-Time Hermeneutics? Structures of Meaning in Games

by Jonne Arjoranta

Think Design Play: The fifth international conference of the Digital Research Association (DIGRA). Hilversum, the Netherlands: DiGRA/Utrecht School of the Arts, September, 2011.

Games differ from most other forms of media by being procedural and interactive. These qualities change how games... more Games differ from most other forms of media by being procedural and interactive. These qualities change how games create and transmit meaning to their players. The concept of “real-time hermeneutics” (Aarseth 2003) is analysed in order to understand how temporality affects the understanding of games. Temporal frames (Zagal and Mateas 2010) are introduced as an alternative way of understanding time in games.

COMPANHIAS DE OUTRO MUNDO: UM BREVE OLHAR SOBRE A SOCIABILIDADE EM RPGS ONLINE.

by Felippe Thomaz

Videogame Content: Game, Text, or Something Else?

by Mia Consalvo

PAGE PROOFS from my chapter in: The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies: Media Effects/Media Psychology, First Edition.
Edited by Angharad N. Valdivia and Erica Scharrer.
© 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

This chapter surveys the most recent scholarly work done on videogame content. It identifies several lines of research... more This chapter surveys the most recent scholarly work done on videogame content. It identifies several lines of research that have emerged in this area, including debates over the best methods for studying game content, representation-based versus gameplay-based approaches, and theoretical foundations for studying games. In addition to providing a broad overview of recent work in such areas, the essay also provides a more detailed account of how such research works, through an examination of the author’s past videogame
studies. These include studies that have examined titles such as The Sims and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, among other examples. These studies demonstrate how theory may and may not be useful in studying games, how methods must be adapted to best scrutinize dynamic content, and the many meanings that can be taken from contemporary games. The essay ends with a discussion of how future research on games should proceed, and the identification of the areas most pressing in terms of investigation.

Knowing, Not Doing: Modalities of Gameplay Expertise in World of Warcraft Addons

by Tamara Peyton

Co-authored with Victoria McArthur, Jennifer Jenson, Nicholas Taylor & Suzanne de Castell for the CHI 2012 conference in Austin, TX, in the alt-CHI stream.

In this paper, we consider the impacts of game addons on conventional notions of game-based expertise in World of... more In this paper, we consider the impacts of game addons on conventional notions of game-based expertise in World of Warcraft, through the analysis of 37 travelogues - a data collection tool designed for use in MMOG research. We adopt a multi-faceted definition of gaming expertise as described by Taylor, Jenson, De Castell and Humphrey [33] and we apply their categorization of expertise modalities to the addons named by our study participants. We find that the most commonly understood expressions of expertise in games (time investment and skill) are less represented in the addons reported by our participants.

“Gioco del Mondo” an Alpine “Hopscotch” Game and the Shaman Flight.

by Gaudenzio Ragazzi

The game called “Gioco del Mondo” (in other parts of Italy, "Campana" and "Settimana",... more The game called “Gioco del Mondo” (in other parts of Italy, "Campana" and "Settimana", "Marelle" in France, "Rayuela” in the Hispanic world, "Hopscotch" in Anglo-Saxon countries)
is among the most popular and played by children at any time and place.
This research analyzes the game starting from its two primary components, in which is preserved the memory of knowledge belonging to the prehistory of western though: the path and the rules.
The path of the game is a representation of the cosmos and its parts are elements of sacred geometry. In the antiquity such geometry is linked to the ritual of orientation of the temple and cities, as images of heaven on earth, to the regions of the sky.
There are two types of tracks (which we call A and B) that correspond to two ways of looking at the cosmos. The path A is built on a center (axis mundi, the point of origin of space and time, indivisible entity, God) and is composed of  the circle (symbol of the sky) and the square (symbol of the earth) divided into four parts by a cross oriented towards the cardinals points.
In path A prevails the vertical dimension. The movement from one frame to another is by repeated jumps on one foot. The jump is a symbol of flight from a cosmic dimension to another. The direction is vertical and upward. the movement from one frame to another is made with repeated jumps on one foot. The jump is a symbol of flight from a cosmic dimension to another. 
The path B, instead of the cross with right angles, has a diagonal cross.
As has been highlighted by the archaeoastronomical research, the diagonals passing through the center indicate the points on the horizon where the sun rises and sets on the day of the solstices.
Path B is crossed with jump alternating on one and two feet, perhaps recalling the steps of an ancient dance, symbolizing the annual journey of the sun in the sky.

Jeu et fiction dans un jeu de cartes à collectionner : le cas de Magic : l’Assemblée

by Pierre Cuvelier

Publié dans le numéro 2 de la revue en ligne "Strenae" (Recherches sur les livres et objets culturels de l'enfance) en juin 2011.
Article développant et prolongeant des problématiques abordées dans mon mémoire de master 1 mené à l'université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense sous la direction de Charles Delattre en 2006-2007.

ENGLISH : "Game and Fiction in a Collectible Card Game: the example of Magic: the Gathering". Paper published in the online review "Strenae" #2, June 2011 (a publication devoted to books and cultural objects destined to children and youth).
This paper develops and deepens several points I first studied in my first master's thesis in the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense with Charles Delattre as supervisor.

Le genre du jeu de cartes à collectionner apparaît en 1993 avec Magic : l’Assemblée de Richard Garfield. Si la plupart... more Le genre du jeu de cartes à collectionner apparaît en 1993 avec Magic : l’Assemblée de Richard Garfield. Si la plupart des émules de Magic sont des jeux dérivés d’univers de licence comme Pokémon, Magic se fondait sur un univers de fantasy inédit, enrichi par des extensions successives, et dont les cartes restent le principal vecteur. Je me propose ici de réfléchir sur les rapports qui se nouent entre le jeu et la fiction dans Magic, et d’examiner les contraintes, le fonctionnement et les principaux procédés fictionnels propres à ce support singulier.
Magic fait partie des jeux à composante fictionnelle forte, dont les règles comportent un caractère mimétique certain, bien que limité. Les différents éléments d’une même carte et les cartes entre elles fonctionnent comme des fragments qui se combinent pour pointer vers une réalité fictive qui, bien que conçue par l’éditeur sur le modèle des univers de licence à forte cohérence (notamment les récentes fictions transmédiatiques), laisse à rêver aux joueurs par les blancs et les ambiguïtés inhérentes à cette articulation entre jeu et fiction. Les tâtonnements de l’éditeur au fil des extensions sont riches d’enseignements sur les possibilités et les limites d’un tel support, où la fiction narrative linéaire doit laisser place, à petite échelle, à une fiction plus structurelle, prenant la forme d’environnements mis en tension plutôt que de narrations linéaires.

The Knowledge game - Motivating Knowledge Sharing

by Antonio Barroso

INAC 2011

Based on the iterated “prisoner’s dilemma”, a game was developed with a three-fold purpose. It should serve as... more Based on the iterated “prisoner’s dilemma”, a game was developed with a three-fold purpose. It should serve as demonstration tool for: (a) the importance of sharing knowledge to both the individual and to the organization; (b) the fact that unselfish and cooperative behavior achieves higher payoffs in the long run; (c) a testing laboratory for organizational rewards policies.

Agent based modeling is used and a number of built in strategies, covering a variety of mixings of typical behaviors, is provided. It also allows the user to play with other players or with built in agents, in a “tick” interaction fashion. More interesting is for the user just to define the number of “knowledge workers”, choose how many of each existing strategy profiles and let them play until a stochastic stable behavior is achieved. In addition to the setup of the initial conditions and payoff rules, the speed of simulation can be changed during the run. The user has a lot of game control buttons and levers to enable him to test innumerous what-if questions. Run time graphs are displayed with the most important variables, but also output files can be generated with those and other variables for further analysis.

A initial phase of tests, encompassing proof of concept and some application tests, has been done confirming the game potential as a demonstration tool and also to test policies. On the other hand, for testing policies more effectively, the future implementation of intelligent agents coupled with fitness selection of the players population seems to be a very key lever.

Swalwell The Early Micro User FINAL

by Melanie Swalwell

A mathematical model of the Mafia game

by Piotr Migdal

Mafia (also called Werewolf) is a party game. The participants are divided into two competing groups: citizens and a... more Mafia (also called Werewolf) is a party game. The participants are divided into two competing groups: citizens and a mafia. The objective is to eliminate the opponent group. The game consists of two consecutive phases (day and night) and a certain set of actions (e.g. lynching during day). The mafia members have additional powers (knowing each other, killing during night) whereas the citizens are more numerous.

We propose a simple mathematical model of the game, which is essentially a pure death process with discrete time. We find the closed-form solutions for the mafia winning-chance w(n,m) as well as for the evolution of the game. Moreover, we investigate the discrete properties of results, as well as their continuous-time approximations.

It turns out that a relatively small number of the mafia members, i.e. proportional to the square root of the total number of players, gives equal winning-chance for both groups. Furthermore, the game strongly depends on the parity of the total number of players.

Towards the Preservation of Local Computer Game Software: Challenges, Strategies, Reflections

by Melanie Swalwell

in “Towards the Preservation of Local Computer Game Software: Challenges, strategies, reflections”, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, (special issue on cultural memory and digital preservation, ed. Will Straw and Jessica Santone), vol. 15, no. 3, Aug 2009, pp. 263-279.

New Zealand’s digital game history includes a significant quantity of locally written software titles from the 1980s.... more New Zealand’s digital game history includes a significant quantity of locally written software titles from the 1980s. Currently, few people are aware of this, no institutional collections exist, and institutional preservation efforts are directed elsewhere. This context prompted the assembly of a multidisciplinary team of researchers to bring legal, technical, and media-historical expertise to bear on these titles’ preservation. This article briefly introduces the game preservation landscape, before outlining the case for the preservation of local game software. It reports on the challenges faced in a pilot study to preserve locally written game software for the Sega SC3000 computer. The initial plan – to secure licence agreements that would, in turn, enable technical preservation – gave way as a more complex intertwining of the legal and technical emerged. Navigating these challenges required a change of strategy: from emulation to translation. Translation – from BASIC to Java – is an elegant solution, in the circumstances. As well as recounting the project’s practical realization, this article considers the fidelity of the conserved digital game to its ‘original’.

"Middleton's Imagination"

by Douglas Bruster

Published in _The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton_, ed. Gary Taylor and Trish Thomas Henley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 518-34.

Often seen as a "realistic" observer of urban life, Thomas Middleton possessed a striking imagination. To... more Often seen as a "realistic" observer of urban life, Thomas Middleton possessed a striking imagination. To understand his works, we need to set aside the model of creativity we associate with Shakespeare. For "Middleton saw the world less as a stage than a game. His game board owes many of its sharp divisions and vicious perils to Calvinistic convictions about humanity's basic corruption" (from the Conclusion).

Space and place as expressive categories in videogames

by Paul Martin

Phd thesis on spatial aesthetics in games. Supervisors: Tanya Krzywinska and Geoff King.

This thesis sets out to explore some of the ways in which videogames use space as a means of expression. This... more This thesis sets out to explore some of the ways in which videogames use space as a means of expression. This expression takes place in two registers: representation and embodiment. Representation is understood as a form of expression in which messages and ideas are communicated. Embodiment is understood as a form of expression in which the player is encouraged to take up a particular position in relation to the game. This distinction between representation and embodiment is useful analytically but the thesis attempts to synthesise these modes in order to account for the experience of playing videogames, where representation and embodiment are constantly happening and constantly influencing and shaping each other. Several methods are developed to analyse games in a way that brings these two modes to the fore. The thesis attempts to arrive at a number of spatial aesthetics of videogames by adapting methods from game studies, literary criticism, phenomenology, onomastics (the study of names), cartographic theory, choreography and architectural and urban formation analysis.

Life of a Machine: Re-thinking the New Console Experience

by Tero Karppi

2010 Sotamaa O. & Karppi, T. (eds.) Games as Services - Final Report. http://tampub.uta.fi/tulos.php?tiedot=360

Leadership behind the Screen

by Patrick Prax

Co-creative interface development in MMORPGs - the case of World of Warcraft add-ons

by Patrick Prax

This article argues that the innovation in the interface design of the MMORPG World of Warcraft is to a substantial... more This article argues that the innovation in the interface design of the MMORPG World of Warcraft is to a substantial part originating in the user-created interface modifications called add-ons. This is shown in an analysis of the connection of the development in interface design to the creation of interface modification add-ons by players. The analysis is informed by interviews with specialists in the community of add-on programmers and focuses on the content and functionality of the add-ons mapped against the respective standard interface elements including an explanation of the problem they solve for the player and a measure of the similarity between them. The article also gives an outlook on the influence of these interface-modifications on the actual practice of game play as well as on game design and interface design by the game producer.

Familiars-manipulating social networks with mobile gaming

by Francesco Collovà

Control in the Gaymer Experience: Biopower, Sexuality, and _Persona 4_

by Evan W. Lauteria

Presentation Abstract only; paper under revision.

In 2006, Alexander Galloway made the claim that, unlike their cinema and film counterparts, “video games don’t attempt... more In 2006, Alexander Galloway made the claim that, unlike their cinema and film counterparts, “video games don’t attempt to hide informatic control; they flaunt it” (90). Galloway opened up the potential for interpretive work addressing Deleuze’s (1992) societies of control and the rise of global informatic control that takes quite seriously the algorithms and simulation capacity of the video game medium. While some scholars (Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2009; Higgin, 2009; Rush, 2011) have picked up this interest in informatic control linked to global capitalism, such work has not yet examined the connection between Foucault’s (1990 [1978]) bio-power and Deleuze’s control, a connection Galloway describes in his earlier work on Protocol (2004). This paper is an attempt to grapple with this area of analysis, addressing the link between biopower and control through an analysis of the video game medium’s algorithms and capacity for simulation. Acknowledging that in the bio-political era, “power spoke of sexuality and to sexuality” (Foucault, 1990 [1978]:269), I turn to Persona 4 (Atlus, 2008) as a case study of biopower, control, and sexuality in games to highlight the bio-political workings of the game’s algorithms and simulations. In offering what Galloway (2006) might term an “allegorithmic” reading of the game, I parse out the heteronormative meanings deployed through the game’s algorithms and simulations to unveil the ways in which biopower is exerted through processes of interactive play with the game.

Monstrous Textuality: Game Fiction between Postmodernism and Structuralism

by Tamer Thabet

Book review: How to do things with videogames (Ian Bogost, 2011)

by Daniel Allington

Published in Journal of Interactive Media in Education, March 2012

In a widely-tweeted blog post, Ian Bogost recently railed against the tendency within media studies towards what is... more In a widely-tweeted blog post, Ian Bogost recently railed against the tendency within media studies towards what is sometimes called 'aca-fandom': the manufacture of academic publications that do little more than express the author's personal taste in television programmes, videogames, and other mass media products. "There are plenty of fans of The Wire and Mad Men and Halo and World of Warcraft", Bogost wrote, "but we scholars... have a special obligation to explain something new about the works we discuss" (Bogost, 2010). Bogost characterised aca-fans as television fans or hardcore gamers lucky enough to make a living out of their sub-cultural investments; the price of this good fortune, he argued, is a responsibility to write from the position of a scholar, rather than that of a gamer or fan. It was a well-judged argument, but one that inevitably suggests a benchmark against which to judge Bogost's own works. Does How to Do Things with Videogames fulfil its scholarly obligations? To me, at least, it seems that the answer is both yes and no.

Criticism and Control: Gameplay in the Space of Possibility

by Gerald Voorhees

Accepted for publication in the anthology Issues of Control: Reading and Playing Video Games, edited by Matthew Wysocki and forthcoming from McFarland.

There is a problem in the study of digital games, a problem that Ian Bogost has on multiple occasions called the... more There is a problem in the study of digital games, a problem that Ian Bogost has on multiple occasions called the “game/player problem.” According to Bogost, the problem is that critical game studies focus on games and social-scientific game studies focus on players, but in this chapter I rethink the “game/player problem” as one arising from disparate critical approaches and the notions of control that underwrite them. I argue that the real game/player problem is that the most prominent modes of game studies either center the game at the expense of the player or the player at the expense of the game – just as the narratology and ludology debate presented the false dilemma of either story or game. In other words, at issue is not determining whether the player or the game lies at the heart of the field, but rather that most game scholarship is premised upon the assumption that either one or the other concept must define the discipline. As an alternative, I put forward the notion that the meaning and significance of games is controlled by neither players nor games but rather lies in the gameplay enacted where player and game interface.