The Interplay of Thematic and Ludological Elements in Western-Themed Games

The Wild West has been productized and remediated a number of times over the last hundred of years – and even earlier than that. Computer and video games are a relative newcomer in this string of remediations, distilling the essential elements of the Western even further into archetypal scenes, characters and modes of play. Expanding on our previous works on genres, we study a colorful selection of Western-themed games, 31 in total, with the aim to reveal how a firmly established and codified theme affects gameplay. A well-established theme, such as the Western, manifests itself at very different depths based on the kind of game we are dealing with – at minimum, it acts as an artificial surface that does not affect the gameplay at all. At the other end of the spectrum, the theme affects all the aspects of a game, ranging from its audiovisual presentation to the narrative and the actions available to the player.</div

Genret ja niiden rikkominen pelisuunnittelussa

Tämä lopputyö käsittelee peligenrejä ja niiden rikkomista pelisuunnitelun näkökulmasta. Genret ovat työkalu, jolla pelaajat voivat hahmottaa kokonaisuuksia ja luokitella peljä, ja pelisuunnittelijalle ne tarjoavat kokeiltuja ja hyväksi havaittuja ratkaisumalleja pelien rakennuspalikoiksi. Genrejä täytyy kuitenkin myös osata rikkoa, jotta pelit kehittyisivät ja löytäisivät uusia kohderyhmiä. Innovaatioita syntyy harvoin, jos pysytään tutulla maaperällä

The Interplay of Thematic and Ludological Elements in Western-Themed Games

The Wild West has been productized and remediated a number of times over the last hundred of years – and even earlier than that. Computer and video games are a relative newcomer in this string of remediations, distilling the essential elements of the Western even further into archetypal scenes, characters and modes of play. Expanding on our previous works on genres, we study a colorful selection of Western-themed games, 31 in total, with the aim to reveal how a firmly established and codified theme affects gameplay. A well-established theme, such as the Western, manifests itself at very different depths based on the kind of game we are dealing with – at minimum, it acts as an artificial surface that does not affect the gameplay at all. At the other end of the spectrum, the theme affects all the aspects of a game, ranging from its audiovisual presentation to the narrative and the actions available to the player.Peer reviewe

The Interplay of Thematic and Ludological Elements in Western-Themed Games

The Wild West has been productized and remediated a number of times over the last hundred of years – and even earlier than that. Computer and video games are a relative newcomer in this string of remediations, distilling the essential elements of the Western even further into archetypal scenes, characters and modes of play. Expanding on our previous works on genres, we study a colorful selection of Western-themed games, 31 in total, with the aim to reveal how a firmly established and codified theme affects gameplay. A well-established theme, such as the Western, manifests itself at very different depths based on the kind of game we are dealing with – at minimum, it acts as an artificial surface that does not affect the gameplay at all. At the other end of the spectrum, the theme affects all the aspects of a game, ranging from its audiovisual presentation to the narrative and the actions available to the player.Peer reviewe

Annotation of heterogeneous database content for the semantic web

This paper discusses the problem of annotating semantically interlinked data that is distributed in heterogeneous databases. The proposed solution is a semi-automatic process that enables annotation of database contents with shared ontologies with little adaptation and human intervention. A technical solution to the problem based on semantic web technologies is proposed and its demonstrational implementation is discussed. The process has been applied in creating the content for the semantic portal MUSEUMFINLAND, a deployed Semantic Web application