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Search results for: http://www.digra.org/dl/db/11310.17396.pdf

- 1506 articles or papers

 

Making Sense of Game Aesthetics [Panel Abstracts]

Canossa Alessandro Kirkpatrick Graeme Niedenthal Simon Poremba Cindy
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

In recent years, game studies scholars have brought an expanded conception of aesthetics to bear in the study of digital games. Far from being limited to speaking about the visual presentation of games and graphic styles (with the negative associations of “eye candy”), game aesthetics has become a perspective that allows us to examine the overarching principles and qualities of the gameplay experience. Our aim is to contribute to a fuller picture of what games can hope to become. Although some of us root our work in a consideration of aesthetics as practiced historically, our perspective draws upon a range of critical and creative practices drawn from cultural theory, art history and fine art practice, visual semiotics, psychology and interaction design, We hope to supplement aesthetics’ traditional strengths in discussing the senses, emotion, pleasure and the aesthetic experience, with arguments that allow us to consider embodied play, tangible interfaces, and creative player activity. Game studies is an emerging discipline that draws upon many scholarly practices, but one thing we share is taking pleasure in play. This panel will accordingly seek to demonstrate the breadth, power and relevance of current approaches to game aesthetics by inviting scholars whose work engages aesthetics to examine a single game of their choice in depth. The games we have chosen for analysis are dot.hack, Flower, Hitman and Okami.

 

A Process-oriented pedagogy for collaborative game-based learning [Abstract]

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

The use of games in formal education and beyond demands a pedagogical model that guides technology-enhanced learning. Deriving inspiration from Connectionist and Constructionist epistemologies, a process-oriented methodology was developed for analysing and managing collaborative gamebased learning. Categories of interactions and the major factors that influence them during collaborative gaming were identified. Interactions are categorised at the experiential and metacognitive levels along three dimensions (domain, technology/game and community) and across three pedagogical levels (acquisition, participatory and contributory) characterising novice, experienced and expert learners. This process-oriented pedagogical model attempts to captures the complexity existing in collaborative gaming and thus provides a taxonomic tool for learning and training design.

 

The hybrid identity of player characters: between Facebook and the Sacred book [Abstract]

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

Much of the contemporary debate on identity – and its fragmentation - has been informed by digital media and by its usage by communities. During the ‘90s, the debate has revolved around the notion of nomadic identities that, disembodied from the physical subject, could roam free in the cyberspace. With the deflation of the media objects that supported such paradigm, including Second Life, a trend towards a more unified, coherent individual has emerged - the Facebook model, as it became known. The Facebook model implies a user even more internally coherent than in real life: his or her identity is shared simultaneously by contacts from different social spheres (work, family, new and old friends) all of whom participate and communicate in the same semiotic space. Other signs of this shift are the declining usage of nicknames, often replaced by the users’ actual names. The leading theory to explain such phenomena is that of the critical mass: as long as few and sparse users are connected to the internet, no one would know the user in real life, and as a consequence his or her name would not carry any information for other people. On the other hand, a nickname represents a hook on which users could attach immediately recognisable meanings and ideas about themselves. However, as the mass of digital media users grows, and many of the user’s acquaintances become part of the same network, one’s name becomes a more efficient solution because it brings in play all the semiosis constructed during the user’s lifetime.

 

Bad Games Panel [Abstracts]

Juul Jesper Weise Matthew Begy Jason
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

A video game can be such an utter failure, in terms of basic craft and artistic value, that it is not possible to gain any enjoyment from playing it. Or is it? This panel discusses the possibility of appreciating video games that are otherwise considered "flawed" or "bad". The concepts of paracinema (Sconce) and camp (Sontag) describe ways of appreciating cinema and culture that is otherwise derided as low quality by dominant standard of taste. Using these as starting points, we can begin to understand how also games can be enjoyed or valued precisely because they fail to meet established quality criteria. Paragaming can be seen as the practice of valuing games because they fail to meet game-specific quality criteria like usability, stability, flow, etc. This panel will explore three different aspects of paragaming, touching on the relationship between difficulty and user experience, the way paracinematic language and culture is often appropriated into not only the practice of paragaming, but into game development, and the role of group dynamics in enjoying "bad games". The question of bad games is important to the mission of game studies. By better understanding counter-readings and/or counter-playings of games - the deliberate appropriation of games in ways that are presumed to go against the intentions of the developers - we can better understand the taste cultures that we are already (and perhaps not consciously) immersed in.

 

Bridging Gaming and Designing: Two Sites of Informal Design Learning [Abstract]

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

In recent years, games and learning researchers have increasingly become interested in the "affinity spaces" (Gee, 2004) around popular videogames, identifying them as instructional spaces (Squire and Giovanetto, 2008) and contexts in which sophisticated reasoning practices are enacted (Steinkuehler and Duncan, 2008). However, the motivation for participation in these communities as well as the goals of the participants have only rarely come under scrutiny (Duncan and Gee, 2008). How does the notion of "design" (e.g., New London Group, 1996; Kafai, 1995; Hayes and Games, 2008) help to explain the ways that players are increasingly engaged in productive, informal communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991) around commercial videogames? In this presentation, I propose to elaborate the development of a "designer identity" among gamers by focusing on activities within two of these spaces -- the official forums for the massively-multiplayer game World of Warcraft (WoW), and the design activities around a popular "YouTube for Flash games," Kongregate.com.

 

Simulating a Quasi-Simulation: A framework for using Multi Agent Simulation Techniques for studying MMORPGs

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

The use of computer simulation techniques for the study of social phenomena, or Social Simulation, is a relatively new field (Gibert & Troitzch, 2005). By using Multi Agent Simulation (MAS) techniques, among others, social scientists are able to explore “what if” scenarios of emergent behaviors in complex social systems. However, the Social Simulation method faces many challenges : a) human subjectivity; there is no computer, mathematical model nor software powerful and exhaustive enough to replicate subjective aspects like love, free will, etc; b) pervasive contingency; even if we can simulate the interaction of a great number of variables and environmental factors, a computational simulation will never attain the level of complexity that actual human social phenomena has and c) validation; is it not always easy to extract from the real world the kind of research results needed to validate social simulation models. In the other hand, Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) share many characteristics with MAS models. MMORPGs resemble in many ways the social complexities of the real world, they are also coded through a programming language and they are also based on a hardware/software platform … but they feature one thing that MAS models don’t: real human beings participate on them, instead of mere AI based agents. Therefore MMORPGs are quasi-simulations that offer unprecedented opportunities for studying complex social phenomena. Since it is humans and not only AI NPCs who play them, the “human subjectivity” problem can be bypassed. Their “sandbox” nature minimizes the “pervasive contingency” problem. Moreover, the wide arrange of data gathering possibilities they offer (see for example Ducheneaut et al, 2004, Williams et al 2008a) empower researchers to obtain appropriate results for computer model validation purposes. In this sense, Gee (2004) and Burke (2005) call for the need of bridging complex systems simulation techniques with MMORPGs studies, and in this paper I intend to further the discussion of the kind framework that is needed for such enterprise. The importance of this theme for the Game Studies discipline is put into perspective by a relatively recent but landmark event on MMORPG Research : Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), has allowed a group of researchers to collect and analyze virtual world data on a unprecedented scale from the Everquest II MMORPG ( Terranova Blog, 2008). This event triggered the discussion of a necessary conceptual framework for the understanding of the extent a virtual world can simulate the real world. In other words, it is necessary to create a conceptual intervention in order to be able to use data from virtual worlds as a means for understanding the real world. Williams (2008b) posited the “mapping principle” as an initial approach to tackle this issue. On this paper I discuss the implications of the “mapping principle” and argue that the relationship between real worlds and their virtual counterparts can be traced back to Baudrillard’s (1983) seminal conceptions of “hiperreality”. I further elaborate William’s postulates and widen their focus in order to include the “hiperreal” category; proposing an alternative framework for understanding the relationship between the virtual and the real on MMORPGS. As an illustration on how to use this framework, I present a practical example of the usage of a MAS technique for understanding an MMORPG and the “real” social phenomena that happen within them. The example consists on creating a multi agent model of social identity (re)production in the World of Warcraft (WoW) MMORPG, based on Salazar’s (2006) theoretical model on social identity. The computational model reproduces many of WoW’s environment, social processes and migration patterns and it intends to show how can meaningful insights of WoW’s social landscape be extracted. To conclude, the paper gives several pointers on how to use the presented framework as well as the key issues that still need to be addressed and discussed in order to bridge Social Simulation methodologies, MMORPG Studies and virtual world data analysis.

 

Demystifying guilds: MMORPG-playing and norms

Verhagen Harko Johansson Magnus
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

One of the most influential gaming trends today, MassivelyMulti Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG), poses newquestions about the interaction between the players in thegame. Previous work has introduced concepts such ascommunity, commons, and social dilemma to analyzesituations where individual choices may result in sub-optimal global results. We propose to use the concept ofnorms instead.Modelling the players and groups of players in these gamesas normative systems with the possibility to create normsand sanction norm violations, we can analyze the differentkind of norms that may deal with the trade-off betweenindividuals, groups, and society at large.We argue that our model adds complexity where we findearlier concepts lacking some descriptive or overstretchingwhen trying to analyze the balance between individualplayers and the game playing society.

 

Keeping It Reel: Is Machinima A Form Of Art?

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

The grumpy gamers amongst us are still smarting over the important, challenging and frustrating questions made famous by Roger Ebert and Steven Spielberg; whether games could be classed as artworks, as capable of raising nobler emotions, or whether as works of art they could even be uttered in the same breath as cinema or literature. And if games cannot be art, how could machinima stake claims to being a form of art? Not only will I suggest the hackneyed question “but is it art” or “could it be seen as art” is important, I will suggest why this question is of particular interest and relevance to machinima.

 

Levels of Complexity: Cultural Diversity, Politics and Digital Games [Abstract]

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

In Europe in the recent past public interest and cultural arguments have been used to achieve exceptions for cultural products from free trade agreements and have led to the development of funding programmes at national and European level to support the production and distribution of certain types of media products. This has been given added impetus by a shift in cultural policy towards ‘cultural diversity’, epitomised by UNESCO’s Declaration of Cultural Diversity. Under pressure from the growth of the Canadian, South Korean and Chinese game development industries policy makers and industry associations in many European countries are starting to consider the cultural role of digital games and funding game production. This trend is epitomized by the French tax credit system for games production and the establishment of funding schemes in France, the UK, Germany and Scandinavia. This paper explores the issue of cultural diversity and digital games and assesses the degree to which you can take a concept, which has a strong legacy in traditional media and national policy regimes, and use it in the context of digital games. The paper starts by assessing the methodological, conceptual and historical issues raised for scholars and policy makers who wish to examine cultural diversity and digital media in the context of global production networks, transnational audiences and user generated content. This is followed by an analysis of secondary data (etc. reports, statistics) in relation to the flow and cultural diversity of digital game production, content and players. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the analysis for cultural policies which tend to focus and operate at the national level.

 

The Construction of Ludic Space

Adams Ernest
2003 DiGRA '03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up

Most modern graphics-based computer games entertain the player in part by presenting him or her with a simulated space, an imaginary two- or threedimensional region whose visual appearance is mapped onto the twodimensional surface of the video screen. The player observes this space and sometimes virtually explores or moves through it in the course of playing the game. As an imaginary space, it is necessarily constructed by human beings, and therefore may be thought of as the product of architectural design processes. In this paper I discuss the psychosensory limitations of perceiving ludic space compared with real-world architectural space, and the primary and secondary functions of ludic space. The primary function is to support the gameplay by providing a context for challenges, and I discuss how this occurs; secondarily, the space informs and entertains in its own right by a variety of means: Familiarity, Allusion, Novelty, Atmosphere, and others, which I illustrate by example.