Designing Sugaropolis:digital games as a medium for conveying transnational narratives

In this paper, the authors present a case study of ‘Sugaropolis’: a two-year practice-based project that involved interdisciplinary co-design and stakeholder evaluation of two digital game prototypes. Drawing on the diverse expertise of the research team (game design and development, human geography, and transnational narratives), the paper aims to contribute to debates about the use of digital games as a medium for representing the past. With an emphasis on design-as-research, we consider how digital games can be (co-)designed to communicate complex histories and geographies in which people, objects, and resources are connected through space and time

Developing the Developers: Education, Creativity and the Gaming Habitus

EXTENDED ABSTRACT This abstract presents preliminary findings of a research project examining the contested meaning of creativity within digital games higher education. Using the concept of habitus as 'embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history ' (Bourdieu, 1992:56), our research focused upon the recovery and remembering of the socialization processes which develop a potentially distinctive 'gaming habitus' in the form of the intellectual, cultural and experiential sources which both students and staff draw upon in pursuit of their educational goals. Empirical research has been conducted focusing on the case study of a University in Scotland, renowned for delivering world class digital games education. We conducted an online survey aimed at 1 st and 4 th year students on four games degrees. Ninety-one respondents completed the survey. The aim was to build a profile of games students at the University. The survey was followed-up with three focus groups which included members of the University Games Development Society, and two Independent Game Companies which employ current and former students of the University. The academic Leaders of each degree were also interviewed. Themes explored included: formative gaming experiences; concepts of creativity; teamwork; games curriculum; career and gender issues. Our research reveals a series of creative tensions in games education, of which students and staff show awareness, and employ novel and intelligent solutions to negotiate and resolve. Tension 1: Art versus Commerce. A creative tension exists between a university subject area which prepares students to be ready for employment in the creative industries, and the concomitant imperative to facilitate creativity amongst students in artistic and explorative senses. Games students need to gain a high degree of technical knowledg

Deployment mechanics in analog and digital strategic games : a historical and theoretical framework

This paper presents a historical and theoretical analysis of deployment in analog and digital military-themed strategic games. Deployment can be described as the phase in which players place their forces on the board or in the simulated world of a digital game, thus making them active. We argue that approaching a genre via a close reading of one of the genre’s constituting phases may help us discuss wider historical and theoretical issues regarding these games. More specifically, we use deployment metonymically to discuss the modifications in game design and gameplay that military-themed games underwent with their digitization. Furthermore, we discuss deployment within the framework of en-roling, that is the act of assuming a role in a specific context, including a simulated digital or analog ludic environment.peer-reviewe

CURATING THE ARCADE: STRATEGIES FOR THE EXHIBITION OF VIDEOGAMES

Videogames can be found in a diversity of museums as tools for engagement, mediation, and interpretation, but their relatively recent inclusion as collection objects in institutions such as the MoMA and the V&A raises tensions between the medium and the exhibition spaces. This paper aims to present an overview of the strategies employed in the exhibition of videogames, and to suggest curatorial methodologies that can be adapted in order to effectively introduce videogames into spaces dedicated to the exhibition of art. Curators are currently at a stage of experimentation in the field of videogames in museums, a time of both challenges and opportunities to study, develop and test new practices. More than providing a comprehensive guide to the history of videogames exhibitions, the intention of this paper is to devise suggestions for curatorial strategies and models for consideration and testing, and future work will determine their potential advantages and disadvantages.Videogames; exhibition; museum; art history; curatoria

Igre sa svrhom

Industrija videoigara ubrzanim tempom razvija se u najveću zabavnu industriju na planeti. Sukladno tome, nastaje i cijeli niz metoda i ideja kako mehanike igara iskoristiti u različite korisne svrhe. Zadnjih desetak godina razvija se pristup o kojem ćemo govoriti u ovom radu- Games with a purpose, odnosno igre sa svrhom. Ovaj specifičan tip korisnih igara pokušava pronaći načine kako kompleksne probleme podijeliti u manje, jednostavnije zadatke, te onda oko tih zadataka konstruirati igre, kako bi ih voljni pojedinci obavljali, ne u zamjenu za novčanu naknadu, već u zamjenu za zabavu. Unutar rada pokušati ćemo definirati gdje se igre sa svrhom nalaze u odnosu sa drugim, sličnim pojmovima, analizirati njihove osnovne elemente i oblike, zatim predstaviti niz konkretnih primjera igara sa svrhom, te se na kraju osvrnuti na neke nedostatke ovakvog pristupa

“We don’t sell blocks” exploring Minecraft’s commissioning market

In recent years, we have experienced the proliferation of videogames that have, as their main mode of play, the creation of in-game content. Even though existing literature has looked into various characteristics of these games, one of their aspects that warrants further exploration is the monetisation practices that can emerge in their context. Through our ongoing ethnographic study, we became aware of a vivid commissioning market in Minecraft’s creative community. Our findings point out the 3 main actors that constitute this market: the clients, who own Minecraft servers; the contractors, who handle the clients’ orders of Minecraft maps; and the builders, who are responsible for the creation of said maps. Furthermore, our work has revealed that the commodity at play is not the in-game content, as one would expect, but the service of creating this content. These findings suggest that commissioning in Minecraft – a well-organised process, initiated and sustained solely by the members of the game’s community – plays a crucial role in the game’s current structure. Moreover, they challenge the belief that content generation in gaming settings is free-labour that is exploited by the developers of those games

Playing at a Distance

An essential exploration of video game aesthetic that decenters the human player and challenges what it means to play. Do we play video games or do video games play us? Is nonhuman play a mere paradox or the future of gaming? And what do video games have to do with quantum theory? In Playing at a Distance, Sonia Fizek engages with these and many more daunting questions, forging new ways to think and talk about games and play that decenter the human player and explore a variety of play formats and practices that require surprisingly little human action. Idling in clicker games, wandering in walking simulators, automating gameplay with bots, or simply watching games rather than playing them—Fizek shows how these seemingly marginal cases are central to understanding how we play in the digital age. Introducing the concept of distance, Fizek reorients our view of computer-mediated play. To “play at a distance,” she says, is to delegate the immediate action to the machine and to become participants in an algorithmic spectacle. Distance as a media aesthetic framework enables the reader to come to terms with the ambiguity and aesthetic diversity of play. Drawing on concepts from philosophy, media theory, and posthumanism, as well as cultural and film studies, Playing at a Distance invites a wider understanding of what digital games and gaming are in all their diverse experiences and forms. In challenging the common perception of video games as inherently interactive, the book contributes to our understanding of the computer's influence on practices of play—and prods us to think more broadly about what it means to play

The intellectual structure of game research

This article maps out the main areas of game research through an analysis of co-citation and keyword co-occurrence patterns in 24,128 game research documents between 1966 and 2016. The keyword analysis identifies 4 communities: Education/Culture, Technology, Effects and Medical. Co-citation analysis identifies 5 communities: Education, Humanities/Social Science, Computer Science, Communications, and Health. Burst analysis of keywords reveals when key research themes emerged across the period. Key findings are: the main division in game research is between Communications and Health on the one hand and Education, Humanities/Social Science and Computer Science on the other; design is an important bridge between different communities; and there exists a gap in research on the game industry. The research is a broad overview and future research that targets specific communities to tease out more specific patterns is recommended, as is research targeting non-English language sources