An Exploitation Ecosystem Model for Fan-based Labour in the Games Industry


McCutcheon Chris Hitchens Michael McEwan Mitchell
2022 DiGRA ’22 – Proceedings of the 2022 DiGRA International Conference: Bringing Worlds Together

This paper will introduce the Exploitation Ecosystem (ExEc) model, which is based upon the foundational work of Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter (2006), Crane (2013), and Barrientos et al. (2013). The ExEc model organises and synthesizes research in slavery, exploitation, and precarious work into a more focused structure that can be applied to understanding exploitation in affluent modern economies. The model re-categorises the work of previous researchers and integrates them in a holistic approach, represented across two layers in the proposed model. The basic architecture of the model is introduced, revealing three aspects to exploitation: organisational, societal and individual, and is illustrated via examples. The ExEc model is particularly relevant to domains that rely heavily on fan passion and third-party content creators for their success, such as the games industry.

 

Design of a Serious Game for Cybersecurity Ethics Training


Ryan Malcolm McEwan Mitchell Sansare Vedant Formosa Paul Richards Deborah Hitchens Michael
2022 DiGRA ’22 – Proceedings of the 2022 DiGRA International Conference: Bringing Worlds Together

Serious moral games offer a tool for moral development that can help players translate ‘head knowledge’ of ethical principles into habits of everyday practice. In this paper, we present the design process behind one such game: Prescott & Krueger, a serious game for training information technology students in cybersecurity ethics. Our design draws on the Four Component Model of moral intelligence and the Morality Play model for serious moral game design. We reflect on how these models influenced our design process. The Four Component Model proved a useful set of lenses for developing learning outcomes and game narrative and mechanics, however the more prescriptive Morality Play model was more difficult to apply as the development of a sophisticated ‘moral toy’ required modelling both low-level cybersecurity systems and high-level ethical interpretations. We reflect on the broader implications of this problem for serious moral game design.

 

Towards Data-Driven Drama Management: Issues in Data Collection and Annotation


Drachen Anders Hitchens Michael Jhala Arnav Yannakakis Georgios
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

One of the key questions in the design and development of interactive drama is structuring an experience for participants such that an engaging, coherent narrative is presented while enabling a high degree of perceived meaningful interactivity. This paper proposes a new approach to the design of intelligent drama managers (DMs) where DM strategies are learned from a corpus of data collected from pen-and-paper RPG game sessions with expert human game masters. In particular, this paper focuses on the issues relating to the collection and annotation of relevant data from recorded gameplay sessions.

 

Role-Playing Games: The State of Knowledge [Panel Abstracts]


Drachen Anders Copier Marinka Montola Markus Eladhari Mirjam Hitchens Michael Stenros Jaakko
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

Role-playing games form one of the major genres of games and exist across all hardware platforms as well outside of the technology domain in a huge variety of forms and formats. Role-playing oriented research has focused on culture, storytelling, game processes as well as e.g. user interaction, play experience and character design. Today role-playing games research is an established component of game studies. This panel presents a state of the art of the knowledge of role-playing games research covering a great variety of angles and interests, providing an overview of the current hot topics and future research directions within one of the key genres of games.

 

Player-Character Dynamics in Multi-Player Role Playing Games


Tychsen Anders McIlwain Doris Brolund Thea Hitchens Michael
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

This paper presents the results of a comprehensive empirical study of the impact of integrating complex game characters in multi-player Role Playing Games across tabletop and digital formats. Players were provided with characters that had detailed background history, personality and goals. Player and character personality were assessed using the Extended Personal Attributes Questionnaire (EPAQ) and further questionnaires administered to measure player enjoyment and the player-character relationship. Results include a high level of player enjoyment across all formats, a high correlation between enjoyment and player engagement with their character and no correlation between enjoyment and similarity between player and character personality.

 

Cross-format analysis of the gaming experience in multi-player role-playing games


Tychsen Anders Newman Ken Brolund Thea Hitchens Michael
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

Forming one of the major genres of games, Role Playing Games (RPGs) have proven an extremely portable concept, and the games are situated across various cultural and format-related boundaries. The effect of porting RPGs between formats is however a subject of which very little is known. This paper presents results of an empirical study of multi-player RPGs, evaluating how the transference between formats affects the player experience; including the effect of including a human game master in computer-based RPGs. The tabletop format emerges as the consistently most enjoyable experience across a range of formats, even compared to a computer-based RPG directed by a human game master.