Digital Library Publication Archives

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

- 1506 articles or papers

 

Grow-A-Game: A Tool for Values Conscious Design and Analysis of Digital Games

Belman Jonathan Nissenbaum Helen Flanagan Mary
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This paper discusses a tool developed by the Values at Play (VAP) project to facilitate values-conscious design and analysis of digital games. Our tool, called the Grow-A-Game cards, has been implemented and assessed in numerous advanced and beginner game design courses. Here, we report five case studies of Grow-A-Game exercises, each demonstrating how the cards can be used to produce innovative and interesting values-focused designs and/or guide meaningful exploration of the relationship between values and games.

 

Business Games, Rationality and Control Logistics

Nohr Rolf F
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This paper presentsthe research project “Business Games as Cultural Techniques. Transforming Knowledge and Steering Actions at the Interface between Economy, Computer Sciences and Mediality”.1 The main idea of the project is to reflect a development that is central in the history of the computer as well as games between 1950 and 1970, when both these cultural techniques were at the centre of great and revolutionary changes to the social order. The main result of this rearrangement is today’s understanding of the logic to market economy and steering rationality – but also the idea of serious games or the specific connection of computer and game.

 

A Procedural Critique of Deontological Reasoning

Togelius Julian
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This paper describes a prototype game that learns its rules from the actions and commands of the player. This game can be seen as an implementation and procedural critique of Kant’s categorical imperative, suggesting to the player that (1) the maxim of an action is in general underdetermined by the action and its context, so that an external observer will more often than not get the underlying maxim wrong, and that (2) most ingame actions are morally “wrong” in the sense that they do not contribute to wellbalanced game design. But it can also be seen as an embryo for an authoring tool for game designers, where they can easily and fluidly prototype new game mechanics.

 

Subversive Game Design for Recursive Learning

Mitgutsch Konstantin Weise Matthew
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

How are players' expectations challenged through subverting common design patterns in digital games? The following paper outlines a game design experiment that combines state of the art learning research with game design. The goal of the game project is to explore how subversive design patterns can be created that force the players to rethink their expectations and interpretations. In the developed game Afterland various paradigm shifts subvert common gameplay patterns in order to encourage players to modify their anticipations. This is designed to provoke a corresponding paradigm shift in the players, forcing them to reassess certain expectations and to adopt new mental models, strategies, and goals other than those commonly found in games of this genre. The paper introduces recursive learning as a theoretical foundation for the game design process and offers constructive insight derived from this particular research-based game design project conducted at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab.

 

The game boy’s network. A network analysis of the German digital games industry

Kröger Sonja Domahidi Emese Quandt Thorsten
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This paper aims to map the German digital games industry. Using expert interviews and social network analysis, the current paper focuses on the industry development in Germa-ny, identifying structures of organizational and personal networks in the digital games in-dustry. Following a holistic approach, it is argued that while actors of the standard value chain are key units in the digital games industry, stakeholders who influence the political and social discourse have to be taken into account as well. The results show, that not only console manufactures have an outstanding role in the German digital games industry. Considering in-degree and eigenvector centrality, trade associations (e.g. GAME, BIU) and political organizations (e.g. USK, KJM) are well connected and consequently im-portant actors too.

 

The map as playground: Locationbased games as cartographical practices

Lammes Sybille
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

In this paper I will examine how maps in location-based mobile games are used as surfaces on which players can inscribe their whereabouts and other local information while being on the move. I will look at three different location-based games to which maps are central as a playing surface: RunZombieRun, Paranormal Activity Sanctuary and Own This World. My main argument will be that such cartographical location-based games foreground the fluidity of mapping and emphasise the performative aspects of playing with maps. As such they are not representations used by players for consultation, but as Latourian mediators (Latour 1990, 1993, 2004) they produce new social spaces (Lefebvre 1991). It therefore does not suffice to conceive maps in such games as “mimetic interfaces” (Juul 2009). Instead they should be approached as what I will call navigational interfaces. To understand them as such I will combine perspectives from game-studies with understandings of maps as technological and spatial practices as developed in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Human Geography.

 

Unexpected game calculations in educational wargaming: Design flaw or beneficial to learning?

Frank Anders
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This paper describes situations where learning games are not perceived by the player as being realistic. In educational wargaming this is seen when the game calculates battleoutcomes. Defined as unexpected game calculations, these incidents can cause players to adopt a Gamer Mode attitude, in which players reject the idea that the game accurately portrays warfare. In a study involving cadets playing a commercial strategic wargame as part of their course in war science, unexpected game calculations emerged and resulted in different user responses. Although user responses risked damaging the worth of learning from gaming, this paper argues that these incidents could enhance learning, as the cadets became interested and keen on finding rationales to why and how unexpected calculations occur.

 

Game reward systems: Gaming experiences and social meanings

Wang Hao Sun Chuen-Tsai
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

The authors give an overview of how various video game reward systems provide positive experiences to players, and propose classifications for rewards and reward characteristics for further analysis. We also discuss what reward systems encourage players to do, and describe how they provide fun even before players receive their rewards. Next, we describe how game reward systems can be used to motivate or change behaviors in the physical world. One of our main suggestions is that players can have fun with both rewards and reward mechanisms—enjoying rewards while reacting to the motivation that such rewards provide. Based on relevant psychological theories, we discuss how reward mechanisms foster intrinsic motivation while giving extrinsic rewards. We think that reward systems and mechanisms in modern digital games provide social meaning for players primarily through motivation, enhanced status within gaming societies, and the use of rewards as social tools.

 

Replacing preconceived accounts of digital games with experience of play: When parents went native in GTA IV

Schott Gareth van Vught Jasper
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

Cautionary frameworks continue to dominate evaluations of games within political contexts, obstructing consideration of the specific conditions and experiences offered by particular game texts. This paper challenges this tendency of prior government-instigated research to promote viewpoints that are not textually evaluative or play-derived when reporting on perceptions of games possessed by the public. Instead, it prioritizes Dovey and Kennedy’s (2006) argument that ‘we cannot have recourse solely to [games] textual characteristics; we have to pay particular attention to the moment of its enactment as it is played.’ More concretely, this paper describes research sparked by the NZ Classification Office’s interest in exploring ‘the extent to which the public’s perception of causal links between game playing and various social ills’ might be ‘moderated or even undermined by [knowledge of] how players actually respond to and negotiate their way through the content and characteristics of the medium’ (OFLC 2009, 24). Using in both game-play observation and depth interviews, we concluded that the participants’ preconceptions of Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar Games, 2008) were drastically reevaluated after experience playing the game, shifting attitudes and beliefs as to how games should be regulated.

 

Playing with Data Bases

Böhme Stefan
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

Among the specific forms of rationality that are to be analyzed with regards to games are the control circuit, the simulation and the data base. As different cultural forms of the computer’s conveyed mediality they represent intermediate elements between the calculating, programmable machine and the cultural grammar of its handling as well as its social implementation, between ‘hard’ technology and ‘soft’ utilization, between calculating and meaning. This paper gives an overview about the form of the data base. Ludic culture is closely linked to the data base. Thus the data stored in the data base can be made usable and playable by means of algorithms and rules. In some games, the data base is even in the center of events. The data base is apparent when presenting tables and statistics, but also in the according operations such as searching, filtering or linking. What then does it mean, to “play with data bases”?