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Search results for: http://www.digra.org/dl/db/07311.02554.pdf

- 1506 articles or papers

 

Gameplay Rhetoric: A Study of the Construction of Satirical and Associational Meaning in Short Computer Games for the WWW

Madsen Helene Johansson Troels Degn
2002 Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings

This paper maps out the construction of non-narrative rhetorical meaning in short computer games. Setting off from the recent emergence of short satirical computer games on the World Wide Web, it observes that at least some computer games do have potentials as a medium of artistic expression; that regardless of the possible narrative powers of computer games. Drawing on Leonard Feinberg's categories of satire and George Lakoff's theory of metaphor, the article describes the basic rhetorical mechanisms of satire and association in computer games and suggests that satire and especially allegorical association in this context appear as two sides of a common theme: the call for immortality and the mastery of computer games.

 

Narrating machines and interactive matrices: a semiotic common ground for game studies

Ferri Gabriele
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

Between playing a game and enjoying a narration there is a semiotic and semantic common ground: interpretation and meaning-making. A semiotic methodology to describe situated gaming practices will be presented in three phases. At first, the intuitive concept of "meaning" will be discussed and substituted by the generative semiotic notion of "content". Then the structuralist semiotic notion of "text" will be criticized and substituted by the the concept of "interactive matrix" and "game-text", referring also to Rastier's differential semantics, Peirce's diagrams and other recent proposals in semantics of perception. Situated gaming practices will be the focal point of the last part of this paper, showing how these practices and the game-text mutually influence and modify each other during interpretation and meaning-making.

 

More Than A Craze: Photographs of New Zealand’s early digital games scene

Swalwell Melanie
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

"More Than A Craze" is an online exhibition consisting of 46 photographs of New Zealand's early digital games scene, in the 1980s. The exhibition includes the work of some of New Zealand's best known documentary photographers – Ans Westra, Christopher Matthews, Robin Morrison – with images from the archives of Wellington's Evening Post and Auckland's Fairfax newspapers. These photographers captured images of games, gamers and gameplay in the moment when these were novel. These images are significant in that they offer insights into the early days of digital games. They are an important primary source material for researchers interested in the history of play and interactive entertainment. The exhibition has been curated by Melanie Swalwell and Janet Bayly. It is an online exhibition, hosted by Mahara Gallery, Waikanae (http://www.maharagallery.org.nz). It is one of the outcomes of Swalwell's research into the history of digital games in New Zealand, in the 1980s.

 

Three Shadowed Dimensions of Feminine Presence in Video Games

Cosima Rughiniș Răzvan Rughiniș Toma Elisabeta
2016 DiGRA/FDG '16 - Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG

Representations of femininity in video games and other media are often discussed with reference to the most popular games, their protagonists and their sexist predicament. This framing leaves in shadow other dimensions. We aim to identify some of them and to open a broader horizon for examining and designing femininity and gender in games. To this end we look into games with creative portrayals of feminine characters, diverging from the action-woman trope: The Walking Dead, The Path, and 80 Days. We talk in dialogue with scholars, but also with a digital crowd-critique movement for films and games, loosely centered on instruments such as the Bechdel-Wallace test and the TV Tropes.org wiki. We argue that the central analytical dimension of female character strength should be accompanied by three new axes, in order to examine feminine presence across ages, in the background fictive world created by the game, and in network edges of interaction.

 

The Cheating Assemblage in MMORPGs: Toward a sociotechnical description of cheating

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

This paper theoretically and empirically explores cheating in MMORPGs. This paper conceptualises cheating in MMORPGs as a sociotechnical practice which draws upon a non-linear assemblage of human actors and non-human artefacts, in which the practice of cheating is the result or the outcome of an assemblage. We draw upon the assemblage conceptualizations proposed in [16] and [8] and on empirical data taken from a pilot study we have conducted during the period September-November 2008 and from an ethnography we are conducting in the MMORPG Tibia (http://www.tibia.com) since January 2009. This game in particular was chosen because CipSoft, the company that develops the game, launched an anticheating campaign at the beginning of 2009.

 

Diversity of Play

Fuchs Mathias Palmer Karen Ensslin Astrid Krzywinska Tanya Rautzenberg Markus
2015 DiGRA Books

Based on the keynote lectures held at DiGRA2015, the publication "Diversity of Play" provides a critical view on the current state of digital games from theoretical, artistic, and practical perspectives. With an interview with Karen Palmer and essays by Astrid Ensslin, Mathias Fuchs, Tanya Krzywinska, and Markus Rautzenberg, Diversity of Play explores the uncanny in games, the power of “unnatural” narratives, and the exceptions and uncertainties of digital ludic environments. See also: http://meson.press/books/diversity-of-play/

 

Gambling is in My Genes: Correlations between Personality Traits with Biological Basis and Digital Entertainment Choice

Park Byungho
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

Online gaming sites like https://www.pikakasinotsuomi.com/ offer loads of bonuses to new players looking to join the site as well as daily promotions to keep things fresh and interesting for recurring players. Online gambling is one of the fastest growing areas in the digital entertainment industry. Slot gambling bets from a trusted site like batman138 with very abundant profits have always been the target of bettors every day. Due to the amount of traffic online casino slots in the USA receive many online casinos are able to offer better deals, bargains, and cool perks for their players. Gambling provides players with an intensely exciting experience and scholars see this as a primary cause of its attractiveness, and may play a role in the process of addiction. Finding a way to identify those more likely to gamble or check the satta king chart could be a first step towards discovering those who may be more likely to use certain genres of video games. This study used a sample of 93 college students to investigate whether personality traits believed to have their roots in biological differences can be used to predict one’s preference for gambling online. Results showed that Zuckerman’s Sensation Seeking Scale [27] and Lang’s Motivation Activation Measure [16] both had significant correlation with pathological online gambling symptoms based on DSM-IV [1] modified for online gambling, while only the Motivation Activation Measure significantly correlated with individual’s online gambling experience at sites like bonusetu.com. Implications of the findings for both the industry and health professionals are discussed.

 

From Rule-Breaking to ROM-Hacking: Theorizing the Computer Game-as-Commodity

Jordan Will
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

This paper develops a theory of the game as a commodity form by looking at the unique practices of console hackers and videogame emulation comment gagner au keno communities. This theory argues for the necessity of understanding a game's system of rules in relation to the material conditions and constraints of the media within which it is constructed and distributed. After deriving the computer game-as-commodity from a combination of institutional and material restrictions and protections on the free-play of the execution of game rules, I provide an account of emulation and ROM-hacking communities as a cultural critique and playful resistance of such commodification within the rigid legal and technological infrastructures of autonomous, executable, and copyrighted machine code. Rather than asking whether videogame emulation is “right or wrong” in the abstract, I examine the legal, economic, and aesthetic implications of emulation practices, asking what the efforts of the emulation and ROM-hacking community have to contribute to the study of console videogames. Finally, I argue that analyzing and embracing the efforts of a variety of practices within the emulation and ROM-hacking communities is helpful and essential to both mapping past struggles and tracing future paradigms of the computer game's contradictory status as a commodity to be consumed and an algorithm to be uncovered.

 

Pricing models and Motivations for MMO play

Nojima Miho
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

The purpose of this study is to investigate and conceptualize the relationship between pricing models and motivations for MMO play. After the review of previous studies, we conduct an empirical research in the Japanese MMO industry to find determinants of pricing models. As a result, we found that (1) relationship between monthly fixed fee, continuous play (play period) and social motivation, (2) relationship between per-item billing, relatively short play period and high immersion.

 

MMOs as Practices

Reynolds Ren
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

This paper examines those acts that occur within MMOs and are chiefly given meaning by the context of an MMO, and asks whether they fall under MacIntyre’s definition of a Practice. The paper argues that many MMO acts are best understood as occupying a nexus between the purely social and the purely ludic. That is, acts occur in the context of a rich and nuanced set of traditions and practices, in which acts can attain a level of excellence and other acts can be understood as negative. Given this acts, in MMOs can meet MacIntyre’s definition of Practice, thus we have a framework in which to morally evaluate acts such as Ganking and Ninja Looting. However, this is just a framework, as a matter of practical ethics we need to then examine the factors and particular context that surrounds a given act, such as the MMO, whether there was a prevailing guild, whether it occurred during a raid with well-understood rules, etc. But what this paper suggests we do have to hand is at least one theoretical argument with a practical application for the ethical basis of some acts that occur within the context of MMOs.