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Play

- 41 articles or papers

 

The Game Frame: Systemizing a Goffmanian Approach to Video Game Theory [Extended Abstract]

Deterding Sebastian
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper offers a review, explication and defense of Erving Goffman’s Frame Analysis (1974) as a valid contemporary sociological theory of play, games, and video games. To this end, it provides an introduction the frame analytic conception of play, games and video games. It demonstrates that this account provides an explanatory (rather than merely descriptive) model for the sociality of the game/non-game boundary or ‘magic circle’, as well as phenomena that trouble said boundary, like pervasive games or ARGs. To substantiate the timeliness of a frame analytic approach to games, the paper compares it to and partially takes issue with practice theory, specifically Thomas Malaby‘s recent “new approach to games”. The conclusion summarizes the key characteristics, advantages and limitations of a frame analytic account of video games.

 

Evolution and Digital Game Studies

Easterly Douglas Carnegie Dale Harper David
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

While a great variety of fields are addressed in the discussions concerning digital game studies, the natural sciences are rarely among them. We do see references to evolution and biology when we look at new directions in the technical structuring of games such as 비트코인 카지노, as genetic programming bestows artificial characters with a greater impression of intelligence; but this domain is not discussed in the critical dissemination of player behaviour. If evolution and biology are valuable references for generating artificial intelligences within a digital game, perhaps it is time we consider the significance of such forces for the players engaging the game. As sociobiology pioneer Robert Trivers reminds us: “Natural selection has built us, and it is natural selection we must understand if we are to comprehend our own identities.” Why are the cognitive tools we have inherited for thriving in the Pleistocene era so good at engaging, and being drawn to achieving goals in the fictional pixilated world of digital games? This paper will argue that evolution can play an important role in digital game studies by offering a functionalist explanation to topics such as behaviour, gender, learning, development, and prediction under uncertainty. In building this case, we will examine the history of play research and discuss its dual-lineage: one largely informed by evolutionary biology, and another that is more concerned with play as a cultural artifact. From there, we will consider the potential for Evolutionary Psychology (EP) as a valuable interlocutor for digital game studies. In particular, this field’s approach to addressing judgement under uncertainty lends astonishing insight into how core features of digital gameplay may indeed be triggering innate behaviour. In conclusion, we will present our own experiments being conducted at Victoria University of Wellington, which will provide an example of how Evolutionary Psychology may inform research conducted in digital game studies.

 

From Simulation to Imitation: New Controllers, New Forms of Play

Jenson Jennifer Castell Suzanne de
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

In this paper, we briefly outline some of the early research in the field of digital games and education that attempted to answer the question of what and how people learn from playing games. We then turn to the recent revolution in gameplay controllers (from the classic controller to the touch screen, Wii wand, plastic guitars, microphones, minitennis racquets and plastic drums) to argue that gameplay has only just undergone a significant epistemological shift, one that no longer sees gameplay as the simulation of actions on a screen, but instead enables imitation as the central element of gameplay, perhaps effectively for the first time giving players access to a form of play-based learning relegated to the very young. This radical modification of the way games are played, from simulation to imitation, has already attracted new audiences: in Japan, female players exceed male players on the handheld Nintendo DS, in the U.S. and in Canada and elsewhere seniors’ homes are purchasing the Nintendo Wii (with its suite of sports and fitness games) to encourage residents to exercise, and since December 2007, when Rock Band deftly beat out Guitar Hero as everyone’s favourite game in which players form a band and play using a “guitar”, drums and a microphone as controllers. It has never been so obvious that playing games is not a “solo” act: the player is both acting and acted upon by the technology, and his/her play is very much situated within a broader network of actions, actors and activities which are community-based and supported. The question of what and how players are learning in games has been at the forefront of research on education and gameplay in the last several years when we began to ask what and how people learned from playing commercial entertainment-oriented digital games. Long viewed as artifacts of an “unpopular culture,” particularly by educators and educational theorists, commercial videogames are now recognized as highly effective learning environments where player (as learner) agency is paramount, and where the acquisition of knowledge and competency is infused in engaging and pleasurable play, not a prescribed task (de Castell and Jenson, 2003, 2005; Gee 2003, 2005; Prensky, 2006; Squire, 2002). As such, the primary argument for the paper will be to examine new controllers not as simulative experiences, but as technologies of imitation that support players’ embodied competence, rather than players’ ability to simulate such competence. This hitherto neglected distinction appears to lie at the heart of ubiquitous claims for the power of learning through game-based simulations, and propose that framing inquiry in the terms of what are distinctively meant and offered by simulation and imitation to be a critical conceptual tool for developing theories and practices of digital game-based learning. Whose conflation is at the heart of ubiquitous claims for the power of learning through game-based simulations.

 

Play: A Procrustean Probe

Tyler Tom
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

The brigand Procrustes dispatched his victims by stretching or trimming their bodies in order that they be made to fit his bed. Considered as a scientific theory, McLuhan’s four “laws of media” risk violating research in a dangerously Procrustean manner. Conceived as an exploratory probe, however, his “tetrad” can provide illuminating insights into the social and psychological effects of individual technologies. Applied to digital games, the tetrad reveals the particular ways in which this distinctive cultural form enhances diverse modes of play, obsolesces traditional television viewing, retrieves lost means of participation, and reverses into pervasive and persistent play. The tetrad helps us to situate play within the broader technological and cultural environment.

 

Women and Productivity [Abstracts]

Wirman Hanna Chess Shira Albrechtslund Anne-Mette Enevold Jessica
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

The following abstracts: Playing, Dashing, and Working: Simulated Productive Play in the Dash games Shira Chess Gender Stories: Identity Construction in an Online Gaming Community Anne-Mette Albrechtslund: Playing Productive: Pragmatic Uses of Gaming Jessica Enevold The Silent Work of The Sims 2 Bedroom(s) Hanna Wirman

 

The Making of Nordic Larp: Documenting a Tradition of Ephemeral Co-Creative Play

Stenros Jaakko Montola Markus
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

Research and documentation of live action role-playing games, or larps, must tackle problems of ephemerality, subjectivity, first person audience and co-creation, as well as the underlying question of what larps are. In this paper these challenges are outlined and solutions to handling them are proposed. This is done through the prism of producing a picture-heavy art book on Nordic larp. The paper also discussed the problems of writing about game cultures as an insider and makes a case for addressing normative choices in game descriptions head on.

 

Processing Play; Perceptions of Persuasion

Svahn Mattias
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This is a theoretical position paper exploring a projecting of the paradigm of dual process modeling of perception onto the perception of “play”. In this process, a model is proposed that sheds new light on the understanding of how “play” is understood, perceived and processed by the player. The paper concludes with a discussion on what implications the model can have on play analysis, game design and the understanding of persuasion through play, a.k.a. persuasive gaming, serious gaming, advergaming etc.

 

Growing Complex Games

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

Do computer simulation games display emergent behavior? Are they models of complex systems or ‘life’ systems? This paper aims to explore and investigate how games studies can use complexity models and emergent behavior to critical analyzes the computer simulation game. (God Games, Real-Time Strategy Games, and City Building Genre) The developments in and from the natural sciences (Complexity, Emergence, Self-Organization, Non-Linear Dynamic Systems) are important intellectual tools that can aid in the development of this discipline. Computer simulation games have a similar strategy to games like Go or Chess; even though they may have fixed rules they can display unpredictable patterns of play (emergent behavior). This approach is in contrast to current models that are being deployed within the field of games studies. The introduction of complexity and emergence into game studies can allow for computer simulation games not to be dismissed but to be explored and explained, as complex games, rather than just simply simulations.

 

The things we learned on Liberty Island: designing games to help people become competent game players

Oliver Martin Pelletier Caroline
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

The relationship between games and learning has, predominantly, either treated games as potential educational content or only considered the social contexts of learning from games at a general level. A methodology has been developed that permits the detailed analysis of how people learn from particular instances of game play. This is used to study two approaches to playing Deus Ex, one involving the training level and one neglecting this. The study reveals what players learnt, the playing strategies they developed, the way in which these strategies evolved and also how previous experience was transferred to this new context. Conclusions are drawn about the value of training levels and the importance of designing games in a way that recognizes previous gaming experience. The study also has implications for defining game genres, for decisions about the inclusion of design features such as quick saves and for the design of AI scripts.

 

Game, Motivation, and Effective Learning: An Integrated Model for Educational Game Design

Paras Brad Bizzocchi Jim
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

As new technologies enable increasingly sophisticated game experiences, the potential for the integration of games and learning becomes ever more significant. Motivation has long been considered as an important step in learning. Researchers suggest Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory as a method for understanding and implementing motivation. This bears significance since games foster play, which produces a state of flow, which increases motivation, which supports the learning process. However, this relationship is not as straightforward as it first seems. Research also shows that reflection is an important part of the learning process and while in the state of flow, players rarely reflect on the learning that is taking place. This paper explains how games can act as effective learning environments by integrating reflection into the process of play, producing an endogenous learning experience that is intrinsically motivating.