Play Everywhere: Can We Play (in) Auschwitz?

Ergodic Characterization: A Methodological Framework For Analyzing Games Set In Classical Antiquity

Classification of Gameplay Interaction in Digital Cultural Heritage

Digital heritage has matured over the past twenty years and now calls are being made for interactive experiences that augment digital representation with digital performance. The paper considers sources for such a performance: be it documented sources, contemporary cultures, or gameplay from other entertainment game genres. It considers the needs of various stakeholders: the archaeologist, the historian, the game designer and the target audience and suggests thematically consistent multiple gameplay options that serve the different needs while reusing game assets and characters. This aims to contribute to the collaboration with the DiGRA community on serious cultural heritage game development, focusing on the player as performer, rather than just as an observer.

Can the Subaltern Game Design? An Exploratory Study About Creating a Decolonial Ludology Framework Through Ludonarratives

In this paper we describe the framework we created to understand the communication process in gaming experiences and that we have used to elaborate an educational process for future game designers or teachers. This educational process uses ludonarratives as an object of both game research and production. Considering that contemporary Cultural Studies admits the possibility of a Decolonial Pedagogy, can we entertain the possibility of building a Decolonial Ludology through ludonarratives? We aim to identify some of the Eurocentric foundations in game design in order to look for Decolonial alternatives that improve diversity and, if possible, make these alternatives also seductive. We describe four actions in our exploratory research to this goal.

The Implied Designer and the Experience of Gameworlds

As artefacts, gameworlds are designed and developed to fulfil certain functional and creative objectives. Players infer these purposes and aspirations from various aspects of their engagement with games. Based on their socio-cultural background, their sensitivities, gameplay preferences, and game literacy, they construct a subjective interpretation of the intentions of the creators of the game. In analogy to Wayne C. Booth’s notion of the implied author, we will call the figure to which players ascribe those intentions ‘the implied designer’. In this paper, we introduce the notion of the implied (game) designer and present an initial account of the way players ascribe meaning to gameworlds and act within them based on what they perceive to be the intentions of the designer of the game.

Game Creation, Monetisation Models, and Ethical Concerns

This paper explores the relationship between monetisation models, game design and ethical considerations from the perspective of three different small-scale Norwegian game companies. Interviews with game designers and CEOs form the empirical basis of the analysis. The analysis shows that their notion of the market situation differs and that concepts like quality and ethical responsibility vary greatly between the companies. A concern they all share is that the computer game market is becoming increasingly difficult to monetise and that using models like loot boxes seem more relevant now than before.

From Cultural Sustainability to Culture of Sustainability: Preservation of Games in the Context of Digital Materiality

In this paper, we set out to explore some of the most prevalent questions regarding cultural sustainability in the context of preservation of digital games. Since the 1980s, the concept of sustainable development has been successively expanded to incorporate not only environmental and economic aspects but also the social and cultural, as well as relating to values such as human rights and broadly understood equality (Stylianou- Lambert et al. 2014). We would like to examine what kind of issues and considerations should be taken into account while developing a holistic approach to game preservation that also supports a culture of sustainability focused on broadly understood game heritage. What kind of unique challenges do game cultures and ludic artefacts present in this context? In our paper, we will look at a national case study of Finland where innovative and progressive approaches are currently being developed.

Reality Inspired Games: Expanding the Lens of Games’ Claims to Authenticity

This paper considers the potentials of contemporary games staking claims to realism through documentary and journalistic techniques as part of a wide-ranging cultural and technological phenomenon– ‘Reality Inspired Games’ or RIGs (Maurin, 2018). We argue that RIGs employ design techniques and strategies of legitimation that are valuable to the reactive development cycles in the indie sector, whilst also being beneficial for academic research and development. Through examining traditional documentary and the concept of Bruzzi’s performative documentary (2006) we highlight how this concept may allow developers to negotiate performativity and authenticity in their videogames. We discuss examples of such games in the realm of indie productions, such as That Dragon, Cancer (2016), This War of Mine (2014), and My Child Lebensborn (2018) and Bury Me, My Love (2017). All of which represent new ground for game design, documentary and journalistic techniques that have influenced our work on the MacMillan project.

Boal on a Boat – Teaching Critical Game Making

This paper presents and evaluates a plan for a 2-weeks teaching moment with a series of lectures and a seminar in a Game Design course on advanced level that teaches students to critically examine their design task as game designers. This means that this is a critical intervention that can be used to educate critical makers or reflexive professionals. The center piece of the course is an assignment that asks the students to create a design prototype that is highly problematic from moral and ethical perspectives that are discussed in the course literature and lectures. The paper explains in detail the setup of the lectures and seminars and shows the results of a first trial. Any game design education (and potentially even other digital making like IT or Information Systems) that aims at educating reflexive professionals or critical researchers should be able to adapt this teaching moment.

Procedural Content Generation, Player Agency, and Playfulness in Survival- Crafting Game Astroneer

The explosive and still very much soaring success of Minecraft (Persson 2011) accelerated the proliferation of sandbox games based on the mechanics of exploration, crafting, building, and ultimately, survival. Hit titles Space Engineers (Keen Software House 2013) or Subnautica (Unknown Worlds 2018) afford gameplay that is, in many ways, less constricted than in other avatar-based genres, such as action-adventures or first-person shooters. In fact, notions of freedom and creative play are often associated with such design, which evoke questions about agency. This paper interrogates the implications survival-crafting games’ design has for player agency. As part of a larger project looking at agency in a variety of avatar-based genres, this paper draws on previous scholarship framing player action as an affordance of game design (Juul 2005; Salen and Zimmermann 2004; Sicart 2008), and conceptualizes agency as the possibility space for player action as expressed through avatar action that manifests in multiple dimensions (cf. Calleja 2011).