The Influence of Gender on Stress Among Video Game Players

Archival Adventuring

A Three Person Poncho and a Set of Maracas: Designing Ola De La Vida, A Co-Located Social Play Computer Game

Events that bring people together to play video games as a social experience are growing in popularity across the western world. Amongst these events are ‘play parties,’ temporary social play environments which create unique shared play experiences for attendees unlike anything they could experience elsewhere. This paper explores co-located play experience design and proposes that social play games can lead to the formation of temporary play communities. These communities may last for a single gameplay session, for a whole event, or beyond the event. The paper analyses games designed or enhanced by social play contexts and evaluates a social play game, Ola de la Vida. The research findings suggest that social play games can foster community through the design of game play within the game itself, through curation which enhances their social potential, and through design for ‘semi-spectatorship’, which blurs the boundaries between player and spectator thus widening the game’s magic circle.

I Cried to Dream Again: Discovery and Meaning-Making in Walking Simulators

Creative Communities: Shaping Process through Performance and Play

This paper studies the use of play as a method to unlock creativity and innovation within a community of practice (a group of individuals who share a common interest and who see value in interaction to enhance their understanding). An analysis of communities of practice and the value of play informs evaluation of two case studies exploring the development of communities of practice, one within the discipline of videogames and one which bridges performing arts and videogames. The case studies provide qualitative data from which the potential of play as a method to inspire creativity and support the development of a potential community of practice is recognised. Establishing trust, disruption of process through play and reflection are key steps proposed in a ‘context provider’s framework’ for individuals or organisations to utilise in the design of activities to support creative process and innovation within a potential community of practice.

Prank, Troll, Gross and Gore: Performance Issues in Esport Live-Streaming

This article examines the functions of prank performance and troll performance for the aesthetics of personal live-streaming, i.e. the practice of live-streaming one’s personal performance via platforms such as Twitch.tv. The study is based on a close analysis of personal esport live-streamer Ali Larsen, aka Gross Gore, via a 12-month observation period. With help of Goffmanian frame theory the notions of interview frame and play frame are introduced as the basic cognitive tools for organizing personal esport livestream experiences. The study concludes by proposing three factors that are vital for the aesthetics of personal live-streaming in general: (1) the feeling of affecting live-streams, (2) the suspense that derives from expecting something unexpected to happen in livestreams, and (3) the sharing of dramatic developments that occur in live-streams.

The Well-Played MOBA: How DotA 2 and League of Legends use Dramatic Dynamics

This paper will analyse the two most popular games within the MOBA genre, DotA 2 and League of Legends, as performance-designed spaces. By analysing MOBAs as performance and using Marc LeBlanc’s (2006) Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics as an aesthetic framework the aim is to posit a greater understanding of the ways in which e-Sports and MOBAs specifically can be designed in order to create dramatic tension within the increasing variety of available viewing platforms. In this way, this paper helps present new ways to think about how games can be designed/structured in order to be satisfyingly performed and consumed through increasingly diverse viewing methods.

Defragging the Magic Circle: From Experience Design to Reality Design

This paper presents the research results on Augmented Play conducted at the GameLab of the Institute for Postdigital Narratives at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (Germany) from 2010-2012. With digital media, a playful mindset increasingly pervades aspects of everyday life, thereby shaping our understanding of reality. This expanded definition of play is the foundation according to which we analyze, modify, and apply the implicit rules of diverse media formats on Pervasive Games for artistic purposes. Therefore, our interdisciplinary artistic research focuses strongly on the ontological shift from game design as experience design towards the playful construction of facts as artistic strategy, a methodology we call “Reality Design”. Reality Design follows avant-garde practices, intending to merge and reflect upon theoretical and practical dimensions of the subject at hand, allowing for a critical and highly creative approximation to the contemporary value of reality games.

Machinima: digital performance and emergent authorship

This workshop investigates the emergent online dramatic form of "machinima", the co-option of video game engines or off-the-shelf software for dramatic production in a rapidly developing digital performance form. Workshop participants will engage with short examples of popular machinima productions. There will be discussion and demonstration of the machinima production process. The nexus between dramatic conventions, gameplay and traditional video production techniques will be explored. Participants will work with a short piece of a machinima, in the form of a scene created using the Sims 2 game. Participants will improvise, script and perform dialogue to provide meaning for the action. This workshop applies the insights of process drama, a field well developed in educational settings, to the development of machinima. It includes demonstration and participation in dramatic role, focusing on how the conventions of Role Distance and Role Protection apply to this developing field of digital game-based performance.

Uncle Roy all around you: mixing games and theatre on the city streets

We describe Uncle Roy All Around You, a mixture of game and theatre that took place in central London in late May and early June of 2003. Street players, equipped with handheld computers and wireless networking, journeyed through the streets of the city in search of an elusive character called Uncle Roy, while online players journeyed through a parallel 3D model of the city, were able to track their progress and could communicate with them in order to help or hinder them. We describe how Uncle Roy All Around You mixed elements of pre-programmed game content with live performance and behind the scenes orchestration to create a compelling experience, especially for street players. We suggest that finding ways to scale this approach to support larger numbers of participants is an important challenge for future research.