An Ecosystem Framework for the Meta in Esport Games

This paper examines the evolving landscape of modern digital games, emphasizing their nature as live services that continually evolve and adapt. In addition to engaging with the core gameplay, players and other stakeholders actively participate in various game-related experiences, such as tournaments and streaming. This interplay forms a vibrant and intricate ecosystem, facilitating the construction and dissemination of knowledge about the game. Such knowledge flow, accompanied by resulting behavioral changes, gives rise to the concept of a video game meta. Within the competitive gaming context, the meta represents the strategic and tactical knowledge that goes beyond the fundamental mechanics of the game, enabling players to gain a competitive advantage. We present a review of the state-of-the-art of knowledge for game metas and propose a novel model for the meta knowledge structure and propagation that accounts for this ecosystem, based on a review of the academic literature and practical examples. By exploring the dynamics of knowledge exchange and its influence on gameplay, the review presented here sheds light on the intricate relationship between game evolution, player engagement, and the associated emergence of game meta

Making data playable: A game co-creation method to promote creative data literacy

This article explores how making data playable, i.e. developing exploratory co-creation techniques that use elements of play and games to interpret small to mid-sized datasets beyond the current focus on visual evidence, can help a) promote creative data literacy in higher education, and b) expand existing definitions of data literacy. The article briefly investigates playful characteristics in existing data practices, and discusses how this perspective compares to existing frameworks that define data literacy. In a second step, we present a Discursive Game Design technique to promote creative data literacy. The article reports on findings from a sample workshop, during which students explored how modifying small, hybrid games based on real-world datasets can alter players’ interpretation of the data, but also their perception of how the games operate as epistemic objects within data analysis. Finally, we formulate recommendations on how to adapt the technique to different educational settings

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

From Mt. Moriah to Mom’s Basement: Playing The Binding of Isaac Video Game through the Reception History of the Aqedah

In 2011, Edmund McMillen released The Binding of Isaac (TBOI) video game that retells the story of Abraham’s attempt to sacrifice Isaac on Mt. Moriah. However, the game departs significantly from the biblical account in various ways, such as placing the retelling in a modern setting and switching the parental figure from father to mother. Contemporary scholars have sought to understand The Binding of Isaac primarily through the context and intentions of the game’s creator. In contrast, my thesis analyzes TBOI through the lens of the Aqedah’s reception history. Finally, this thesis shows that TBOI represents another example of the Aqedah’s reception albeit within an unorthodox medium, that both reflects and draws on elements of the broader history of interpretation and demonstrates itself capable of holding multiple viewpoints at the same time. Thus, I show how TBOI functions as a midrash generator whose narratological and ludological elements encourage and accelerate reinterpretations of the game as it is played. To do so, the first half of the project surveys a sampling of the Aqedah’s reception history (chapter 2) and describes TBOI’s ludological elements within the broader field of game studies (chapter 3). I begin the second half of my thesis where I analyze TBOI in light of the Aqedah’s reception history and show how it both resonates with and critiques other interpreters (chapter 4). Finally, I analyze TBOI’s function as a midrash generator that prompts ongoing reinterpretations (chapter 5). This project adopts an interdisciplinary approach using TBOI as a case study for integrating reception history and game studies. This project provides a precedent for exploring both how a reception history approach could be applied to other retellings of religious stories in the video game medium, and a starting point for further development of midrash generation as a concept

Persona Play in Videogame Livestreaming: An Ethnography of Performance on Twitch

Twitch.tv (‘Twitch’) is a livestreaming platform known for the live broadcasting (‘streaming’) of videogame-related content. It is also the most popular livestreaming platform in most countries. Drawing upon over one thousand hours of ethnographic observation across twenty-one Twitch channels, and six months of part-time streaming, this thesis investigates how streaming persona is constructed and performed on Twitch. Streaming persona, the thesis posits, is to be differentiated from more straightforward readings of streamer identity as performance. This thesis instead shows that streaming persona is constructed and performed collectively by both human and nonhuman actors in a Twitch stream. It does this by intervening in five core areas of interdisciplinary concern. The first of these explores new ways of understanding perceptions of authenticity that are constructed and denied as a result of streamer decisions, including an analysis of ways that gendered streamer performances affect perceptions of authenticity. Secondly, this thesis presents a new perspective on the conflicting and negotiated agencies of different stream actors during a stream, including games and the Twitch platform as nonhuman actors. The third core area of interest extends existing scholarship on moderation and governance by investigating boundary-work as a playful activity performed by multiple stream actors, including focused examinations of boundary-work associated with game-centric practices, such as spoiling content, and toxic behaviours. Fourthly, this thesis presents a highly novel exploration of how time on Twitch is arranged and experienced differently by different stream actors and the associated temporal politics of the platform. And fifthly, it intervenes in existing research on both games and Twitch by examining (digital) games as stream actors that perform alongside the streamer, spectators, and platform, thereby presenting new ways to understand games, game play, and why streaming and spectating game play are compelling activities. The concept of streaming persona allows for an exploration of how social identities are constructed and performed through and with the Twitch platform and its users. As such, it provides novel insights into the sociality, culture, politics, and economics of Twitch