Split-Screen : Videogame History through Local Multiplayer Design

By looking at videogame production through a two-vector model of design – a practice determined by the interplay between economic and technological evolution – we argue that shared screen play, as both collaboration and competition, originally functioned as a desirable pattern in videogame design, but has since become problematic due to industry transformations. This is introduced as an example of what we call design vestigiality: momentary loss of a design pattern’s contextual function due to techno-economical evolution

Adventures of Ludom: a Videogame Geneontology

Within the last few decades, the videogame has become an important media, economic, and cultural phenomenon. Along with the phenomenon’s proliferation the aspects that constitute its identity have become more and more challenging to determine, however. The persistent surfacing of novel ludic forms continues to expand the conceptual range of ‘games’ and ‘videogames,’ which has already lead to anxious generalizations within academic as well as popular discourses. Such generalizations make it increasingly difficult to comprehend how the instances of this phenomenon actually work, which in turn generates pragmatic problems: the lack of an applicable identification of the videogame hinders its study, play, and everyday conceptualization. To counteract these problems this dissertation establishes a geneontological research methodology that enables the identification of the videogame in relation to its cultural surroundings. Videogames are theorized as ‘games,’ ‘puzzles,’ ‘stories,’ and ‘aesthetic artifacts’ (or ‘artworks’), which produces a geneontological sequence of the videogame as a singular species of culture, Artefactum ludus ludus, or ludom for short. According to this sequence, the videogame’s position as a ‘game’ in the historicized evolution of culture is mainly metaphorical, while at the same time its artifactuality, dynamic system structure, time-critical strategic input requirements and aporetically rhematic aesthetics allow it to be discovered as a conceptually stable but empirically transient uniexistential phenomenon that currently thrivesbut may soon die out.Videopeli on kasvanut edellisten vuosikymmenten aikana tärkeäksi ilmiöksi niin median, talouden, kuin kulttuurinkin näkökulmasta. Kasvun myötä ilmiön itsensä määrittäminen on kuitenkin muuttunut yhä haastavammaksi: uudet leikin ja pelaamisen muodot venyttävät jatkuvasti ’pelin’ ja ’videopelin’ käsitteitä, mikä on jo nyt johtanut kivuliaisiin yleistyksiin sekä akateemisessa että populaarissa kielenkäytössä. Kyseisten yleistysten seurauksena ne asioiden joukot, joihin ’pelit’ ja ’videopelit’ tänä päivänä viittaavat, ovat hämärtyneet äärimmäisen epäselväksi. Tämä hämärtyminen on tuonut mukanaan lukuisia käytännön ongelmia, jotka nousevat esiin ilmiöitä koskevassa tutkimuksessa, kulutuksessa, kuin myös journalistisessa käsittelyssä. Edesauttaakseen näiden ongelmien ratkaisua luettavanasi oleva väitöskirja esittelee lajiontologisen tutkimusmetodologian, joka mahdollistaa videopelin tunnistamisen suhteessa sitä ympäröiviin ja sitä muistuttaviin kulttuuri-ilmiöihin. Lajiontologista tutkimusmetodologiaa hyödyntäen väitöskirja ottaa tehtäväkseen tarkastella videopelin suhdetta neljään sitä ympäröivään tai muistuttavaan kulttuuri-ilmiöön: ’peleihin’, ’puzzleihin’, ’tarinoihin’, ja ’esteettisiin artefakteihin’ (ns. ’taideteoksiin’). Tarkastelut tuottavat videopeli-ilmiötä selittäviä aspekteja, joiden avulla sille rakennetaan alustava taksonominen identiteetti itsenäisenä kulttuurisena lajina (Artefactum ludus ludus, lyhyesti ludom). Löydetyt aspektit ja niiden mukainen taksonominen identiteetti puoltavat näkemystä siitä, että videopelin historiallinen asema ’pelinä’ on lähinnä metaforinen. Videopelin esineellisyys, dynaaminen systeemirakenne, aika-kriittiset strategiset manipulointivaatimukset sekä (aporeettisesti) remaattinen estetiikka tuntuvat sen sijaan muodostavan vankan pohjan käsitteellisesti vakaalle mutta vain hetkellisesti menestyvälle kulttuurilajityypille, joka parhaillaan kukoistaamutta saattaa pian kuolla pois.Siirretty Doriast

Split-Screen: Videogame History through Local Multiplayer Design

By looking at videogame production through a two-vector model of design – a practice determined by the interplay between economic and technological evolution – we argue that shared screen play, as both collaboration and competition, originally functioned as a desirable pattern in videogame design, but has since become problematic due to industry transformations. This is introduced as an example of what we call design vestigiality: momentary loss of a design pattern’s contextual function due to techno-economical evolution.peerReviewe

Power Play : Regulatory Frameworks of Esports in Asia and Europe

© 2020 Authors & Digital Games Research Association DiGRA. Personal and educational classroom use of this paper is allowed, commercial use requires specific permission from the author.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Characters Without Signifiers

This essay explores the question whether characters can exist without being signified in any way. If characters can exist trans-medially, independently of a particular form of signification or sign-vehicle, why not exist without any signification at all? What kind of existence would such a character have? And, paradoxically, what would examples look like? While the question at face value might appear logically invalid, I argue that at (or just beyond) the minimalist end of the character-representational spectrum, we find what might be called implied characters, that is, characters that are not in any way given, represented, named, or performed, but can only exist in the minds of their players during play, as a formal slot without physical, structural, communicational, or mental properties.peerReviewe

Transparency of peer review: a semi-structured interview study with chief editors from social sciences and humanities

Background Open peer review practices are increasing in medicine and life sciences, but in social sciences and humanities (SSH) they are still rare. We aimed to map out how editors of respected SSH journals perceive open peer review, how they balance policy, ethics, and pragmatism in the review processes they oversee, and how they view their own power in the process. Methods We conducted 12 pre-registered semi-structured interviews with editors of respected SSH journals. Interviews consisted of 21 questions and lasted an average of 67 min. Interviews were transcribed, descriptively coded, and organized into code families. Results SSH editors saw anonymized peer review benefits to outweigh those of open peer review. They considered anonymized peer review the “gold standard” that authors and editors are expected to follow to respect institutional policies; moreover, anonymized review was also perceived as ethically superior due to the protection it provides, and more pragmatic due to eased seeking of reviewers. Finally, editors acknowledged their power in the publication process and reported strategies for keeping their work as unbiased as possible. Conclusions Editors of SSH journals preferred the benefits of anonymized peer review over open peer and acknowledged the power they hold in the publication process during which authors are almost completely disclosed to editorial bodies. We recommend journals to communicate the transparency elements of their manuscript review processes by listing all bodies who contributed to the decision on every review stage.peerReviewe