Game Essays as Critical Media and Research Praxis

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de Smale Stephanie
2016 DiGRA/FDG '16 - Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG

The emergence of software programs such as Game Maker, Unity3D, or Twine make it easier and faster to create games. As a result, game scholars and humanities-based theorists who study games have the ability to create games. Game prototyping and critical making is a vital yet understudied practice for digital humanities research. In this paper I explore authoring game essays as part of the scholarly research practice. I argue that these practices are a valuable addition to contemporary humanities research, as they result in the creation of critical media that question games and game culture and the reflexive and situated making practice demystifies the production process. On the one hand, many scholars in the digital humanities are keen to explore the potential of games as educational tools or instruments to collect data, as seen in the explosion of serious games. On the other, a much smaller section of researchers engage with game design as a critical reflexive practice, using critical theory to question, interpret, and deconstruct games as objects within cultural and historical contexts. Drawing from experiences of the Utrecht Game Lab, I engage with game essays as an object and essay creation as a creative critical practice.

 

Citizen Archivists at Play: Game Design for Gathering Metadata for Cultural Heritage Institutions

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Flanagan Mary Punjasthitkul Sukdith Seidman Max Kaufman Geoff Carini Peter
2014 DiGRA '13 - Proceedings of the 2013 DiGRA International Conference: DeFragging Game Studies

In this paper, we detail our design process for the Metadata Games project and discuss a number of design challenges involved in making a “metadata game,” such as incentivizing players to offer accurate information, devising and deploying methods for verifying the accuracy of data, and introducing effective motivations for ensuring high replay potential. We present our “Outlier Design” model for creating effective crowdsourcing applications, and offer the Metadata Games prototype One-Up as an example. This game’s design addresses the challenges of gathering increasingly higher quality metadata while creating a compelling play experience.