The Lambent Reactive: Exploring the Audiovisual Kinesthetic Playform


Keating Noah H.
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

In this paper, design scenarios made possible by the use of an interactive illuminated floor as the basis of an audiovisual environment are presented. By interfacing a network of pressure sensitive, light-emitting tiles with a 5.1 channel speaker system and requisite audio software, many avenues for collaborative expression emerge, as do heretofore unexplored modes of multiplayer music and dance gaming. By giving users light and sound cues that both guide and respond to their movement, a rich environment is created that playfully integrates the auditory, the visual, and the kinesthetic into a unified interactive experience.

 

Temporal Frames: A Unifying Framework for the Analysis of Game Temporality


Zagal José P. Mateas Michael
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

This article introduces the notion of temporal frames as a tool for the formal analysis of the temporality of games. A temporal frame is a set of events, along with the temporality induced by the relationships between those events. We discuss four common temporal frames: real-world time (events taking place in the physical world), gameworld time (events within the represented gameworld, including events associated with gameplay actions), coordination time (events that coordinate the actions of players and agents), and fictive time (applying socio-cultural labels to events, as well as narrated event sequences). We use frames to analyze the real-time/turn-based distinction as well as various temporal anomalies. These discussions illustrate how temporal frames are useful for gaining a more nuanced understanding of temporal phenomena in games.

 

Peep-boxes to Pixels: An Alternative History of Video Game Space


Sharp Philip
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

“Peep-boxes to Pixels” offers an alternative cross-section of gaming history. Focusing on the dichotomous profiles of the video game arcade in the US and in Japan, the paper traces various cultural and technological planes as they scroll amongst each other in forming the collective zone we call an arcade today. This metaphor I extend by appropriating into my discourse a term that video games appropriated from astronomy: parallax. Of particular interest in this alternative history are the Dutch peep-boxes which, when introduced to Japan and given a pay-per-play cost, can be thought of as protoarcade games. However, these objects are generally mentioned in regards to a history of cinema. Why not a history of games? Certainly, peep-boxes, pointillism, penny arcades, pinball machines, pachinko and the pixels of Pac-man begin to interrelate as parallax once one weaves together the pedigree of their respective spaces. This paper asks a lot of questions. What does the respawning of fetishistic game historians leave behind? What cultural remnants have been blasted right past? What framework(s) made their debut in Japan so successful, and why should or shouldn't we be surprised that the Japanese arcade scene is so much more informed and vibrant than ours? (It is.) In looking at a history somewhat glitched and incongruent with the common offerings, I hope a more cosmopolitan cerebration may produce more interesting game content and more compelling places to play. The future of play may lie in the past.

 

Designing a Game to Model Consumer Misbehavior


Drennan Penny Keeffe Dominique A. Russell-Bennett Rebekah Drennan Judy C.
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

Traditionally, computer games have been used for entertainment and more recently, education. However, the potential for games to be used in other contexts is now becoming an area of interest for researchers. We propose that games can be used in areas such as social behavior research, particularly in the area of consumer misbehavior. Using game design that supports research problems and provides an affective, engaging experience for players who participate in the research allows for the exploration of problems that have previously been difficult to address for social behavior researchers.

 

Understanding Pervasive Games through Gameplay Design Patterns


Björk Staffan Peitz Johan
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

This paper reports on a cluster analysis of pervasive games through a bottom-up approach based upon 120 game examples. The basis for the clustering algorithm relies on the identification of pervasive gameplay design patterns for each game from a set of 75 possible patterns. The resulting hierarchy presents a view of the design space of pervasive games, and details of clusters and novel gameplay features are described. The paper concludes with a view over how the clusters relate to existing genres and models of pervasive games.

 

Mapping Time in Video Games


Nitsche Michael
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

Video games can position players in a specific time and space. This paper will argue that the experiences of both are closely interdependent. As a consequence, we need to re-evaluate our models of time in video games. The discussion will exemplify the suggested interdependencies of temporal and spatial experience. The result is a playercentered perspective towards time in game spaces.

 

Ghastly multiplication: Fatal Frame II and the Videogame Uncanny


Hoeger Laura Huber William
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

Through a close-play and close reading of the game Fatal Frame II, we identify the uniquely game-based aspects of the uncanny in a horror game. Subsequently, we engage in an interpretation of the game which centers on a psychoanalytic model of the avatar and theories of the twin.

 

Human, all too non-Human: Coop AI and the Conversation of Action


Simon Bart
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

This paper considers the cultural sociological questions that might begin to be asked when players understand themselves to be cooperating rather than competing with the computer when they play digital games. Coop play with game AI in games like Call of Duty provides the basis for understanding human relationships with computers and machines in a way that may differ from the cultural historical antagonism embodied in a game like computer chess. This investigation also opens the doors for the analysis of emergent play in human-computer interaction.

 

People, Places, and Play: A research framework for digital game experience in a socio-spatial context


de Kort Yvonne A. W. IJsselsteijn Wijnand A. Gajadhar Brian J.
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

Electronic games frequently give rise to engaging and meaningful social interactions, both over the internet and in the real and tangible world of the gamer. This is the focus of the present paper, which explores digital gaming as a situated experience, shaped by socio-spatial contingencies. In particular we discuss how co-players, audience, and their spatial organization shape play and player experience. We present a framework describing social processes underlying situated social play experience and how these are shaped by the game’s socio-spatial context. The core of this framework describes various 'sociality characteristics', and discusses these both in terms of co-located and mediated social game settings.

 

The Contextual Game Experience: On the Socio-Cultural Contexts for Meaning in Digital Play


Mäyrä Frans
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

The experiences game players and other people have around digital games are not limited to the intensive, immersive ways of playing them. Therefore the earlier SCI model of gameplay experiences is not sufficient to cover the full range of game experiences. In this paper a more comprehensive model is presented by describing the multiple contextual layers that surround and underlie every encounter with digital play and games.