Digital Library Publication Archives

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

 

Do We Need Real-Time Hermeneutics? Structures of Meaning in Games

Arjoranta Jonne
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

Games differ from most other forms of media by being procedural and interactive. These qualities change how games create and transmit meaning to their players. The concept of “real-time hermeneutics” (Aarseth 2003) is analysed in order to understand how temporality affects the understanding of games. Temporal frames (Zagal and Mateas 2010) are introduced as an alternative way of understanding time in games.

 

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.

 

The Aiming Game: Using a Game with Biofeedback for Training in Emotion Regulation

Cederholm Henrik Hilborn Olle Lindley Craig Sennersten Charlotte Eriksson Jeanette
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This paper discusses the development of the Aiming Game, a serious game intended to be used as a tool for training emotion regulation. The game is part of an intervention package designed to support hypnosis training online of financial investors in becoming aware of their emotional states as well as providing them with a toolbox which can be used for training to counteract cognitive biases which may interfere with their trading activities. The paper discusses how such a game can be implemented as well as how it can be effectively evaluated. The evaluation is mostly focused on the effectiveness of the induction of emotional arousal by the game, which is supported by standardized game design methods and patterns.

 

The Poetics of Game Design, Rhetoric and the Independent Game

Grace Lindsay D
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This paper approaches the question about games as art from a fundamentally different perspective. Instead of asking questions of visual aesthetics and pursuing analogies to film or commercial arts, it demonstrates an even clearer analogy to poetic forms. Allying common practices in independent games in particular, this paper serves as an illustrative demonstration of the poetics of game design, emphasizing the poetic properties of independent game designs. It frames game design in terms of the rhetorical devices used to create an experience. Such framing is useful to independent game designers, developers of persuasive and critical gameplay, and archivists seeking an effective way to catalog digital games that is driven by structure instead of subject or play mechanic.

 

Computer history and the movement of business simulations

Wiemer Serjoscha
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

In this paper, I explore some aspects of the rise of early business games in the post-war period after the Second World War. For a game to become truth-apt in a scientific sense and able to guide actions in a pragmatic sense it needs coupling to the computer and its technical-mechanical calculatory competence as well as certain types of rationality assigned to it culturally. Regarding this interconnection of games and rationality with the medium computer, three different ways of using computers can be described: First, the idea of the computer functions operationally in administration. With the aid of the computer, many of the corporate management’s tasks are to be realized in a more rational and less mistake prone way. Secondly, the computer appears simulatorily in this context, by calculating and presenting complex management operations. Following the idea of the cybernetic control circuit, the computer as dream constellation promises understanding and manipulability of complex systemic interdependencies. Third, the constellation of the computer acts as a stochastic and probabilistic tool, as a decision making aid in possible situations and for the consequences of future decisions. In early business simulations, the company, modeled as a game, is examined and evaluated with the aid of the computer. Thus, the business game serves as a meta-reflection of processes, decisions like resorting to services such as small business health and safety advice from Avensure, strategies and planning within the company (1). The interconnections of rationality and the mediality of computing machines are complex and run parallelly on several levels, as historically the computer not only changes the functionality of a business operationally as an element of rationalization in order to increase efficiency for example in administrative procedures (scientific management), but at the same time is also used on the level of long-term planning, analysis, decision making as well as in schooling and training (decision making).

 

Video Games, Walking the Fine Line between Art and Entertainment

Folkerts Jef
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This paper is partly a response to the ongoing debate in the game world about whether games can be art, and partly an excerpt from my Ph.D. research. I aim to offer some insights in the cognitive experiences gamers have while playing - hopefully useful to both designers and scholars. I will argue that an art experience is a particular kind of cognitive experience, namely a distinctive type of imagination. The essence of an art experience is the mental representation of a signification process, a sort of mirrored representation that is also known as mimesis. I hope to demonstrate that it is a universal feature of art to mirror life, or more accurately, a deliberate view on it. And that what constitutes art is not defined by the properties of an artefact, but by our experience of it, by our mental actions. Along the same line I maintain that the boundaries between what we usually label entertainment and what art can not be as sharply defined as we generally assume. The main arguments in the aforementioned debate concern affective features, perceivable aesthetic qualities (as opposed to artistic properties), and the uniqueness of a game. I will set out explaining why most expert assumptions seem not discriminating enough to distinguish an art experience from an entertainment experience. Next I present some theoretical perspectives on both kinds of experiences, after which I will explain how they are being mixed and intertwined in everyday practice. Some gameplay examples should finally illustrate this inevitably condensed theoretical framework, drawn from my more detailed and elaborated dissertation on signification, imagination and mimesis in games.

 

Understanding the Contribution of Biometrics to Games User Research

Mirza-babaei Pejman Long Sebastian Foley Emma
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

Utilising biometric data has become an increasingly active area in the video games user research community, and a number of academic papers have been published introducing various biometric based analysis techniques in video games research. This paper aims to quantify the value of biometric methods as an addition to traditional observation-based user research methodologies, and their respective contributions to the production of formative feedback during the development of video games. Our results show that observation-based techniques can expose the majority of issues relating to usability, however the biometrics-based approach enabled researchers to discover latent issues in related to players’ feelings, immersion and gameplay experience and, in certain categories of issue, reveal up to 63% more issues than observation alone.