Designing Goals for Online Role-Players

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Montola Markus
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

The increasing popularity of persistent worlds and the predicted rise of pervasive gaming, both having a strong inherent potential for role-playing, stress a classical challenge of persistent world industry: in addition to the regular gamer audience, the role-player audience is growing. Catering to role-players requires re-thinking in the design of game structures and narrative structures. The most fundamental conceptual differences between role-player and regular gamer playing styles regard goals, game worlds and the idea of meaningful play.

 

Playful Play with Games: Linking Level Editing to Learning in Art and Design

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Engeli Maia
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

The title ‘Playful Play with Games’ refers to the possibility of creative involvement with games by altering their structure in a playful way. The focus of this paper is on modifying the first person shooter game Unreal Tournament as a learning process. Modifying the game means to become a creator or writer in addition to a reader and player, but nonetheless with a playful attitude and a good understanding of the game at hand. Understanding the game involves an understanding of the different levels of meaning of the game. Three levels of meaning produced in and around games can be distinguished: Meaningful play, meaning beyond play, and creatively added meaning. Five examples from courses to media management, architecture, and media art students as well as a group of activists illustrate the design of courses that are based on level editing.

 

Kairotopos: A reflection on Greek space/time concepts as design implications in Minecraft

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Lenhart Isaac
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

The game of Minecraft provides an open virtual environment which is somewhere between game and pseudo-game framework (at the current level of development) in which the player is free to explore, investigate and change the world around them. The “virtual environment” of Minecraft naturally involves a description and participation of a spatial and temporal framework in which the player is placed, and presents a unique set of qualities that cross into several categories of Greek notions of the meaning of space and time This paper first describes the historical concepts that the ancient Greeks used for space and time and discusses their links to the concepts of theoretical and technical skills. These concepts are then examined in combination and individually. Finally, this paper describes the mechanics and affordances within the Minecraft environment that are either affected by these spatiotemporal terms or which have impact on the spatiotemporal experiences of the player.

 

Designing Social Behaviour through Play

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Marriott Tanya
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

“All play means something” Johann Huizinga (Huzinga,J, 1949, page 7) In this paper I discuss the strategic and discursive implementation of interactive play in motivating positive social behavior within children and young adults. Central to my discussion is the social role of play and the roles of the players, as described by play theorists Johannes Huzinga (Salen, K et al, 2004, page 465) and Richard Bartle (Salen, K et al, 2004, page 79) Play theory seeks to build meaningful relationships between game participants through the formation of social groups within the play world, referred by Huizinga as the magic circle. In this paper I examine the aspects of social play within the game design of three year-four undergraduate visual communication student projects. I will outline how the students were asked to identify an existing social issue and user group to which they applied the key principles of play methodology in creating a ‘circle of magic’ and motivating factors as a means of instigating social change. In addition my discussion explores the play theories as discussed by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (2004) as instrumental to developing game strategies as frameworks for keeping game users engaged within the social space. I concentrate on how each project encourages player social interaction thus enabling users to customize and manipulate their individual experience, while remaining an active participant within the larger social circle.