Systems at Play: The Construction of International Systems in Social Impact Games

This thesis explores how game makers conceive of and navigate the intersection between digital systems and real world systems by asking, how can social impact game designers shape procedural rhetoric to effectively address complex real world systems with digital systems? By examining three game case studies, I reach four significant findings regarding player agency, subversive play, design approaches to scale, and game difficulty in regards to systems fluency

"Moments to Talk About": Designing for the Eudaimonic Gameplay Experience

This thesis investigates the mixed-affect emotional experience of playing videogames. Its contribution is by way of a set of grounded theories that help us understand the game players' mixed-affect emotional experience, and that support analysts and designers in seeking to broaden and deepen emotional engagement in videogames. This was the product of three studies: First — An analysis of magazine reviews for a selection of videogames suggested there were two kinds of challenge being presented. Functional challenge — the commonly accepted notion of challenge, where dexterity and skill with the controls or strategy is used to overcome challenges, and emotional challenge — where resolution of tension within the narrative, emotional exploration of ambiguities within the diegesis, or identification with characters is overcome with cognitive and affective effort. Second — further investigation into the notion of emotional challenge become a reflection on the nature and definition of agency. A new theory of agency was constructed — comprising of Interpretive, Actual, Mechanical, and Fictional Agency. Interpretive Fictional Agency was highlighted as particularly important in facilitating a mixed-affect gameplay experience. Third — further interviews led to a core concept of `emotional exploration' — an analogy that is useful in helping explain how to design for emotional challenge, why players would be interested in seeking it out, and how the mixed-affect emotional experience is constituted during gameplay. These three theories are integrated and the mixed-affect emotional experience of interest resulting from gameplay is defined as the ‘Eudaimonic Gameplay Experience’. It is hoped that this will help developers and researchers better understand how to analyse and design single-player videogames that increase the chances for a deep, reflective and more varied emotional experience to take place, and take advantage of the latent expressive and artistic potential that still remains under-explored in videogames

Performance Through an Avatar: Exploring Affect and Ideology Through Narrative in Videogames

Videogames are a major source of popular cultural narratives surpassing even Hollywood films. Videogames, however, cast the player as the active agent within the narrative as opposed to film, television, and traditional theatre where the separation between performer and audience is clearly demarcated. This dissertation investigates the affective potential of videogames realized through the relationship of the player and the avatar within the game world. Specifically, I look at the avatar as an affective conduit for the player, how the feedback between the player and avatar creates a cybernetic relationship, how this relationship changes the player, and how this change potentially augments the players interpretation of realityvirtual and otherwise. It is through this changed (and augmented) interpretation of reality that socio/political ideological meaningsintentional or notmay be absorbed by the player. Ethnographic research conducted with six volunteer participants combined with my own autoethnographic research into several recent popular videogames is intersected with theories of affect, embodiment, and ideology. My findings suggest that experience with the virtual realities of game worlds is one step removed from actual experience. Since videogames are composed of representations, the ideological positions embedded within those representations are not simply presented and understood like traditional theatre, film, and television, but are embodied by the player through the avatar as (nearly direct) experience. Theatre, film, and television have rich critical histories and this study of the players performance through the avatar as an affective conduit and receiver/transmitter of ideology joins the growing critical body of work regarding the newer storytelling medium of videogames

Playing with the dead:transmedia narratives and the Walking Dead games

This chapter discusses the theory and practice of transmedia narratives within the storyworld created by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard’s comics series The Walking Dead. It examines key aspects from the comics series and AMC’s adaptive television franchise to consider how both have been utilized and adapted for games. Particular focus will be paid to Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead, Gamagio’s The Walking Dead Assault and Terminal Reality’s The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct. The chapter explains the core concepts of transmedia narratives as they relate to The Walking Dead, places the games in the context of both the comics and television franchise, examines the significance of commercial and grassroot extensions and considers the role gaming and interactive narratives have within rich storyworlds. In examining The Walking Dead as a transmedia property, the authors demonstrate how vast narratives are adopted, modified and transformed in contemporary popular culture

The Art of Adaptation in Film and Video Games

This Special Issue of Arts explores the art and practice of adaptation in several different mediums with a focus on film and video games. The topics covered include experimental game design, narrative design, film and trauma, games adapted from literature, video game cinema, film and the pandemic, film and the environment, film and immigration, and film and culture

The Creative and Reflexive Realms of Gamaturgy

This article introduces the synergy between theatre, games, and social activism that I have coined “Gamaturgy.” Gamaturgy, in both the creative and reflexive realms, as I describe them, is derived from theatrical dramaturgy and provides new ideas for creating and critically analyzing serious videogames, especially social issue games. First, I sketch out the formative dramaturgical influences from Augusto Boal’s Forum Theatre, Paulo Friere's transitive pedagogy, and Victor Turner's concepts of the liminoid and social justice. I then expand this unique way of play-making into the realm of creative gamaturgy as a way of creating experiential interactions and constructing meanings in the design and creation of serious videogames. As for the aim of finding a new form of thematic analysis for videogames, I use my original case study The Pipeline Pinball Energy Thrill Ride Game to demonstrate a method of recovering meanings from games through the implementation of reflexive gamaturgy

In The Game : An Exploration of the Concept of Immersion in Video-Games and its Usage in Game Design

This thesis outlines a research project whose aim was to develop a design taxonomy for the creation of immersion in video-games. These guidelines can then be used in-sync with different stages in video-game design and development to ensure an immersive experience. Integral to this is the \u27suspension of disbelief\u27 the end user experiences when fully immersed in a video-game (Holland, 2002; Mediacollage.com, 2006). A review of the literature has identified the major contributing theory to the concept of immersion as flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991). Flow embodies cognitive elements of involvement such as concentration on a task, completing a challenge, having control over the environment and so on. This cognitive flow is also integrated with affective components such as the loss of self consciousness and sense of \u27oneness\u27 with the environment. A model of immersion has been proposed that embraces the cognitive aspects of flow through the gameplay elements that have been integrated as well as the affective dimension of identification which can be achieved through the integration of narrative elements. Immersive gameplay is framed within the nature of the challenges the user faces. These vary, such as the psychomotor challenges inherent in platform games and shooters through cognitive challenges of quizzes and tutorials through to social challenges such as multiplayer online environments. The criteria for cognitive flow embrace but also extend on traditional theories of motivation. Concepts such as challenge and control (Astleitner & Weisner, 2004) combine with the relevance and confidence inherent in Keller\u27s ARCS theory of motivation (Rezabek, 1994) to describe the contingent aspects of gameplay. An understanding of these within the context of game goals, challenges, rules, boundaries and feedback can assist designers in applying appropriate criteria to ensure deep cognitive engagement on the part of the end user. Playing a game, however, is also an emotional and aesthetic experience. The term \u27emotioneering\u27 (Freeman, 2003) has been used to describe the ways in which designers create a sense of involvement with the game. These include traditional motivational constructs such as curiosity/attention, satisfaction and fantasy, and can be disaggregated to a range of criteria that may be used to guide the development of the affective aspects of gaming including player enacted narrative and role·play, the affective and the range of \u27interesting\u27 and \u27deepening\u27 techniques that can add emotional depth and complexity to the game world (Freeman, 2003) through visual and narrative design elements. The criteria developed from the immersion model are proposed as a lens to assist designers in understanding this state-of-mind. These criteria have been applied through the analysis of the use of existing games in a study on undergraduate students in game design and culture to ascertain their validity, and with the goal of providing guidelines for the future design of entertainment as well as serious games

The Informal Learning of History with Digital Games

Digital games that represent history, i.e. ‘historical games’, are a fundamental way that players can engage with the past. Their focus on historical representations, narratives and processes means educators are using them in formal educational practice. Surprisingly, there is little empirical research on the educational outcomes from the use of historical games in formal contexts, and the specific ways they can increase a learner’s historical awareness and understanding. Existing research on historical game engagements outside of these formal contexts is even scarcer. There has been very little study of whether, what, and how players informally learn through historical games, and their informal learning activities in relation to them. This thesis presents two empirical studies that begin to address this imbalance, exploring player perceptions of historical games as a medium for informal historical learning. The first, an online survey completed by 621 respondents, compared audience and player perceptions of fictive historical film, television series, and games. This situated historical games within the wider media landscape of fictional representations of the past in visual culture, and how they are comparably perceived as media for informal historical learning. The second, more extensive study adopted an ethnographic approach, narrowing the focus of the first by exploring players’ informal learning experiences with historical games that specifically represent classical antiquity. It identified the historical knowledge outcomes particularly associated with historical game use, also examining player’s learning practices with the games that move beyond the game experience (e.g. information seeking, modding, after-action report writing, forum use, and LetsPlay videos). This research thus offers a greater and more comprehensive understanding of informal learning with, and in relation to historical games, highlighting the interplay between these various informal engagements and activities, and how these relationships can influence, determine, or affect player understandings of both the past, and the present