Liminality, Embodiment and Metamorphosis: Applying The Transformative Power of Ceremonial Magic to Mixed Reality Games Design

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Dima Mariza Saridaki Maria
2022 DiGRA ’22 – Proceedings of the 2022 DiGRA International Conference: Bringing Worlds Together

In this extended abstract we borrow components of ceremonial magic design, with centuries of empirical practice of altering normality, consciousness, and sense of self, momentarily or with more lingering effects, with the aim to explore how they can be used to design meaningful, immersive game experiences.

 

Gamification of Terror: Power Games as Liminal Spaces

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Fizek Sonia Dippel Anne
2020 DiGRA ’20 – Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere

 

Deployment mechanics in analog and digital strategic games: A historical and theoretical framework

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Fassone Riccardo Alonge Giaime Gualeni Stefano
2020 DiGRA ’20 – Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere

This paper presents a historical and theoretical analysis of deployment in analog and digital military-themed strategic games. Deployment can be described as the phase in which players place their forces on the board or in the simulated world of a digital game, thus making them active. We argue that approaching a genre via a close reading of one of the genre’s constituting phases may help us discuss wider historical and theoretical issues regarding these games. More specifically, we use deployment metonymically to discuss the modifications in game design and gameplay that military-themed games underwent with their digitization. Furthermore, we discuss deployment within the framework of en-roling, that is the act of assuming a role in a specific context, including a simulated digital or analog ludic environment.

 

What Happens when a Cyberworld Ends? The case of There.com

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Márquez Israel V.
2014 DiGRA '13 - Proceedings of the 2013 DiGRA International Conference: DeFragging Game Studies

This paper is the first in a series presenting findings from a wider ethnography study of players from There.com and what they did when this virtual world closed on March 9th, 2010. Studies of online games and virtual worlds (or cyberworlds, as I prefer to call them) tend to focus in player activities during the time these spaces are open, assuming them as timeless places. But what happens when a cyberworld ends? How do players react to its closure and what they do next? Only a few scholars have investigated such critical events (Pearce 2009; Papargyris and Poulymenakou 2009; Consalvo and Begy 2012) and their findings suggest a determination by players to keep playing together after the closure. Players do not simply disperse and stop playing when a cyberworld ends but they actively work to form groups and relocate their activities elsewhere. I followed the movement of There.com players —or “thereians”, as they refer to themselves— across various cyberworlds, social networks, and forums after There.com closed. They actively worked to keep together gathering in forums, creating Facebook groups, uploading videos on YouTube, and travelling to other cyberworlds such as Second Life, Onverse, Kaneva, Twinity, etc., trying to translate their play identities and activities in these new spaces. In this paper I will focus on the player responses to the There.com closure and what they did after the end of the world.