Rock Stars & Plastic Guitars: Designing & Playing with Captured Experiences in Music Videogames

---

Boudreau Kelly Poremba Cindy
2019 DiGRA '19 - Abstract Proceedings of the 2019 DiGRA International Conference: Game, Play and the Emerging Ludo-Mix

 

Patches of Peace: Tiny Signs of Agency in Digital Games

---

Poremba Cindy
2003 DiGRA '03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up

One of the more interesting and distinct aspects of digital games is the proliferation of player produced artifacts. The reworking of original game materials is an integral part of game culture that cannot be ignored in the study of these games. This paper explores player authorship in digital games through the rhetoric of select peace-themed game modifications.

 

Making Sense of Game Aesthetics [Panel Abstracts]

---

Canossa Alessandro Kirkpatrick Graeme Niedenthal Simon Poremba Cindy
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

In recent years, game studies scholars have brought an expanded conception of aesthetics to bear in the study of digital games. Far from being limited to speaking about the visual presentation of games and graphic styles (with the negative associations of “eye candy”), game aesthetics has become a perspective that allows us to examine the overarching principles and qualities of the gameplay experience. Our aim is to contribute to a fuller picture of what games can hope to become. Although some of us root our work in a consideration of aesthetics as practiced historically, our perspective draws upon a range of critical and creative practices drawn from cultural theory, art history and fine art practice, visual semiotics, psychology and interaction design, We hope to supplement aesthetics’ traditional strengths in discussing the senses, emotion, pleasure and the aesthetic experience, with arguments that allow us to consider embodied play, tangible interfaces, and creative player activity. Game studies is an emerging discipline that draws upon many scholarly practices, but one thing we share is taking pleasure in play. This panel will accordingly seek to demonstrate the breadth, power and relevance of current approaches to game aesthetics by inviting scholars whose work engages aesthetics to examine a single game of their choice in depth. The games we have chosen for analysis are dot.hack, Flower, Hitman and Okami.

 

Critical Potential on the Brink of the Magic Circle

---

Poremba Cindy
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

This paper explores the problem space of forbidden games: games not only on the border of games and reality, but explicitly referencing the double-coded nature of that boundary—in other words, games that use their status as “only a game” as a strategic gesture. It asks three key questions: what does it mean to be a forbidden or “brink” game, what is the function of these works, and, perhaps most importantly, to what extent do they have critical potential. To answer these questions, a methodological approach is drawn from functional systems theory, as read primarily through the work of Niklas Luhmann. Through this approach, I demonstrate the importance of these games in relation to the separation of games and reality, and suggest the strength of such works lies in their ability to both observe and critique everyday life.

 

Play with me: Exploring the autobiographical through digital games

---

Poremba Cindy
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

This paper uses two game-based artworks by Mary Flanagan (primarily [domestic] and to a lesser extent [rootings]), to examine autobiography in the form of digital games. Specifically, it explores the ways in which these games construct/represent subjectivity, how they negotiate agency (both within the work and within the realm of cultural production), and how the game form structures selfnarrative. This is framed in relation to theoretical work from both autobiography and game studies.