ABSTRACT. In this paper, we consider narrative puzzles in story-driven video games as distinct design elements of great narrative importance. While many scholars and designers focus on the inner workings and mechanisms of puzzles, we delve deeper into the role that puzzles play in the unfolding and the player’s experience of game plot. Drawing on examples from a variety of games that are rich in narrative puzzles, we present an initial taxonomy of the functions a narrative puzzle can perform for game storytelling and discuss their potential implications. Through the analysis and discussion, the paper aspires to contribute to both game analysis and game design with a new analytical lens as well as description of some potential design patterns that involve narrative puzzles.

ABSTRACT. The unreliable narrator is a popular narrative technique employed by game designers, as seen in games such as Dear Esther and The Stanley Parable. However, much of the academic discussion of unreliable narration in video games has focused on games with an omniscient, personified narrator. Through close readings of Tales from the Borderlands Episode 1 and Doki Doki Literature Club, we examine how video games without an omniscient, personified narrator create unreliable narration. Our findings suggest that in these games the auditory, visual and interactive (gameplay) narrative modes work together to create unreliability by setting up players to doubt the meaning of their in-game actions. This draws attention to the presence of an implied player to whom the unreliable narration is directed, and heightens awareness of the "Game Narrator" through metalepsis. We propose this Game Narrator as the non-personified entity that incorporates all three narrative modes: auditory, visual and interactive.

ABSTRACT. This paper explores the intersection of mechanics and narrative in board games, based on data from a series of semi-structured expert interviews held with a cohort of 25 leading board game designers. The first part of the paper gives a review of currently used conceptual tools related to narrative and argues that an adoption of more precise and nuanced concepts would help board game designers on their quest for richer narratives.

ABSTRACT. The paper discusses a design method for developing interactive storytelling projects based on character-driven stories. Shaped as a three-years design-through research, it was applied on the MSc design studio Name-Removed-for-blind-review, from 2015 to 2017. To open up the issue of the degree of interactiveness and agency that different media allow, we merged knowledge from culture, media and game studies. Aiming at building concepts for contemporary forms of media and transmedia design, each year we experimented the implications of initiating the design activity from a different point: 1) archetypal characters, 2) thick and compelling storyworlds, 3) testimonies shaped as short stories and fragments of memories. We discuss the different tools and processes employed, and the reason why behind their evolution through time. We conclude with a critical analysis of the results obtained, looking at the consequences and potentialities of how this process has been applied in the game design field.

ABSTRACT. Transmedia research has in the past been mainly interested in defining transmedia and examining transmedia franchises that have their starting point in movies and TV-series. However, there are multiple transmedia constellations that have a game as their starting point and this paper concentrates on two of those, Defiance (Trion Worlds, 2013) and Quantum Break (Remedy Entertainment, 2016). The survey data from these two examples were analyzed by using grounded theory-informed approach in order to find out what motivates audiences to consume or avoid game-centric transmedia.

Ten categories related to consuming game-centric transmedia and five categories related to avoiding it emerged from the data. The motivations to consume game-centric transmedia had a strong focus on narrative aspects. The results differ from earlier transmedia audience studies and suggest the need for more game-centric transmedia audience studies, where the core text is a game instead of a television show.

ABSTRACT. This paper focuses on written auto/biographical accounts of digital play, drawing on studies of auto/biography and ‘life writing’ to show how ‘ludobiographies’ can enrich our understanding of videogame history and play’s role in player’s lives, while also furthering auto/biography studies' project of interrogating the humanistic conceptions of subjectivity and identity enshrined in traditional life narratives. It considers a range of texts, from memoirs and autobiographical novels to popular histories and academic criticism, arguing in particular for the importance of ludobiographies in documenting how elucidating how the inhuman timescales of technocapitalism syncopate with those of biography and biology to reformulate subjectivities and identities.

ABSTRACT. Prior work has investigated popular discourses around videogames, arguing that we can see what contemporary culture understands ‘real’ or legitimate games to be by investigating which games, and types of games, are called out as fake or not real. This research extends that work, exploring how YouTubers who regularly make Let’s Play videos are another vital key to defining real games. This research investigates four widely viewed YouTubers who regularly post Let’s Play videos, examining each YouTuber's channel for four months to determine how it is dynamically contributing to game culture and potentially to debates about real games and the legitimation (or not) of particular types of games. This research investigates how prominent figures making such videos talk about games, how they are evaluating them, and which games even make the cut to become objects for discussion and potentially earn the distinction of ‘real’ game, or not.

ABSTRACT. After tracing a brief history of the gradual integration of arcades spaces in the workings of the media mix, this paper will introduce case studies of observations gathered as a part of a field research project conducted between January and April 2016 at the SEGA GIGO Ikebukuro game center in Tokyo. It will demonstrate how—in the spatiality of game center characterized by simultaneity, multiplicity and plurality of trajectories (Massey)—architecture, machine positioning, sound, advertisements and the ludic atmosphere of game centers are mobilized to shape a media-integrated playground where physical actions and symbolic gestures fall within, amongst other things, the Idolish7 media mix system.

ABSTRACT. This presentation traces the genealogy of user-created firmware in the PlayStation Portable homebrew software production scene, correlating its emergence with technological and cultural transitions exemplified through the platformization of information and communication’s technologies and infrastructures (Plantin, Lagoze, Edwards, Sandvig, 2018), and the sociotechnical management of gaming platforms (Montfort & Bogost, 2009). It will begin by describing how the technical milestones that the PSP homebrew scene achieved transformed a mobile gaming platform into a web-enabled communication device. Then, it will describe how Sony tried to get users to update their firmware, so homebrew would be prevented from running, and how this tactic was subverted when user-created firmware emerged from the scene. Finally, it will explain how this history provides a ludic focal point for tracing the entangling of firmware in firmware updates rolled out in various forms, some that are intermittent and optional, and others that are compulsory and forced.

ABSTRACT. The notion of a “game port” appears in both: the popular discourse surrounding video games as well as the academic discourse. As pointed out in the literature, it is notoriously vague and often overlaps with other similar concepts, such as “conversion”. We show that the main reason for the murkiness of the notion of a “game port” is its close connection to the marketing narrative which changed during history. We argue, that despite the problematic nature of the concept of a “game port” it is indispensable in context such as game analysis and game preservation. For this reason, we propose a formal classification of different game versions suitable for future use in these selected contexts.

ABSTRACT. This paper explores some of the ways in which Japanese games were transformed as they crossed national boundaries and entered UK homes. However, rather than focus on the effects of translation or localisation (e.g. O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013), the paper considers the often profound influence of underlying national TV broadcast standards on the aesthetics, experience and materiality of videogames. Examining a range of titles including Sega’s flagship ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ (Sonic Team, Mega Drive, 1991), the paper reveals how compatibility with European PAL TVs meant that the same code ran with graphical distortions and decelerated music and gameplay. By highlighting the strategic forgetting of PAL ‘Sonic’ in re-released collections, the paper concludes by considering the impact for researchers and historians of such an 'unstable' object of study.

ABSTRACT. Following the history of shooting galleries as a playful recreation from target shooting through electro-mechanical and digital arcades and into the "dark ride shooter" form of theme park attraction in order to better understand current designs in theme park interactivity.

ABSTRACT. Existing video game research postulates a rather static concept of personality of video game players. The study at hand uses a more fluid understanding of players’ personality based on the assumptions of the social identity approach. Thereby, we aim to illustrate that the self-concept is a richer approach than the widespread big five taxonomy as an operationalization of players’ personality to explain the motivation to play and video game use. Using structural equation modelling, the results show support for this assumption in two instances. First, we show that the self-concept explains bigger shares of the variance of the motivation to play. Second, we illustrate that the self-concept has the potential to predict video game use in a more holistic fashion. We discuss the contribution of our analyses to the research on players’ personality, the motivation to play, and on video game use, and identify potentially paths for future research.

ABSTRACT. Challenge is a key motivation for videogame play. But what kind of challenge types videogames include, and which of them players prefer? This study aims to answer the above questions by developing a Videogame Challenge (CHA) inventory, a sound measurement for investigating players’ challenge preferences in videogames. Based on a review of literature, we developed a 38-item version of CHA that was included in a social media user survey (N=813). An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) revealed a latent structure of five challenge types: Physical, Analytical, Socio-Emotional, Insight, and Foresight. The utmost aim of this study is to construct and validate notions of videogame challenge preference categories, and discuss how they relate to videogame research in general. Meanwhile, a validated tool for measuring players’ challenge preferences would be valuable for making sense of the gaming phenomenon more broadly, and it would also aid player-centric videogame development and targeted marketing.

ABSTRACT. This article critically examines the co-construction of personae for fictional characters in virtual environments. Expanding upon Gee’s (2003) tripartite notion of identity in virtual worlds, this paper focuses on how virtual identities are created, and who does the creating. Using sociolinguistic methodology, I show how alterations in behavior based on avatar characteristics (The Proteus Effect: Yee and Bailenson 20007) can be used as a window in the virtual identity creation process. Potential contributions to virtual identity from three sources are analyzed: the community, the creators of the virtual environment, and influences from the non-virtual world, concluding that community created knowledge seems to play the most significant role in virtual identity construction. A secondary goal of this paper is finding support for the Proteus Effect in non-laboratory settings.

ABSTRACT. In our presentation we examine the ways players and fans discuss about the sexual orientation of the playable heroes of Overwatch and the sexual orientation of the professional Overwatch esports players. We furthermore analyze what kind of role sexual orientation plays in being a fan of a hero or a player.

ABSTRACT. This panel revisits and contextualizes the concept of playbor (Kücklich 2005), or the capitalization and conflation of play and leisure with work practices within contemporary media industries. It uses case studies (startup culture, dating sims, community management, VR/AR and live-streaming) to explore the limits, horizons and modes of resistance against this increasingly common component of work life.

ABSTRACT. This extended abstract wishes to commence a new line of enquiry by combining military tactics, gamification and urban spatial concepts. Using both line and three-dimensional game typologies, Candy Crush (King 2019) and The Sims Game (Electronic Arts 2019), how would the application of the aforementioned spatial concepts contribute to the understanding of tactical concepts within each game types? Can the application of topographical, relational, proxemics and cruxemics clarify or add to the tactical definitions of games?

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the popular videogame FINAL FANTASY VII (Square: 1997) as a ludic text sitting uneasily between the modern and postmodern. On the one hand, the game’s narrative suggests a postmodern masculine subjectivity beyond modern patriarchal structures, while on the other the game’s posthuman ending betrays doubts about this new order. Simultaneously, the gameplay itself deploys an aesthetic of biopolitics, wherein the player’s role is primarily about keeping their characters alive. That this occurs outside of any real circuits of power suggests that the game is a simulacrum of politics, a point that underscores its position within a larger postmodern imaginary. Finally, this paper suggests that these combined concerns stem from the game’s moment of production, the Japanese 1990s, and that this ludic text ought to be considered within larger Japanese transmedial networks that speak to specific cultural and epistemic debates.

ABSTRACT. This study studied the process of using a video game Minecraft to teach ba-construction in teaching Chinese as a second language. This research aimed to find out whether a video game can provide a more natural situation for students to produce the target ba-construction, what the characteristic of students' learning is through this process. The result showed that all target structures of ba- construction showed up in the research which is triggered in instruction and exposition, especially when responding to“how” questions. This research showed that video games provide more natural problem-solving situations to use the target language, which is absent in classroom teaching. Using video games to facilitate language learning provides students with various things which include experiential, contextual, emergent, and activity-based quality driven experiences, and the quality driven experiences should not be taken away in educational situation.

ABSTRACT. Should all cultures play the same games? Should all cities? This paper establishes a distinct conceptual basis for Serious Games in cities by aligning with localism as a social movement rather than location-based technology.

ABSTRACT. Platformization underlies game platform evolution at a fundamental level, and it orients much of the development of games themselves (Nieborg & Poell, 2018). We argue that the platform underlying Valve's DOTA 2 (2013) has been engineered and continues to be optimised yearly with the ultimate goal of complete player retention. We argue that this process takes avenues of play as labor, and gamblification to produce a cohesive circuit intended to enframe players. Drawing from two years of longitudinal ethnographic and autoethnographic observation, we schematise how iterative design can be visualised and understood in order to reveal design orientation.

ABSTRACT. This paper argues that gaming analytics as sites of platform capitalism, represent an economic and infrastructural shift in Dota2, but also a transformation of the phenomenological experience of playing the game – doing so through the capture and relay of different forms of player data, from various modes of surveillance. To develop my argument, I focus on the case of DotaPlus, and three distinct sites of surveillance: self-surveillance, lateral surveillance and ‘platform surveillance’.

ABSTRACT. Following the creation of the FPA (Fair Play Alliance) in 2018, game developers have begun to collectively focus on making their communities less toxic. With online game communities being infamously toxic, this is a significant undertaking. This research focuses on investigating Blizzard's moderation tactics in Overwatch to combat this toxicity, and how the community responds through forum posts directed at the developers. The demand from players for nuanced approaches to moderation has led to Overwatch containing game-specific moderation tactics not typically present in other online multiplayers, such as being able to stop specific players from appearing in your matches. Community forum posts, Blizzard's response to them and the tactics implemented reveal the range of values at play - within their community, design, and corporate rhetoric. Mapping the input from forums, the developer's response and outcome provides an insight into the dissonant values embedded in these moderation tactics.

ABSTRACT. This paper applies David Beer’s (2016) concept of ‘metric power’ to examples of competitive videogaming to show how gameplay metrics extend neoliberal political formations through the surveillance and control of players’ bodily practices. ‘Metric power’, argues Beer, refers to the affective capacities of systems of measurement and evaluation to shape bodily routines towards competitive self-interest and an acceptance of neoliberal market values. The principle characteristic of neoliberalism is defined as the generalisation of competition as a behaviour norm. I propose that the same is true of playing competitive videogames: that the ‘gameplay metrics’ (El-Nasr et al. 2013) typically used to measure player performance extends norms of competitive self-interest through the surveillance and control of players’ bodily practices. This furthers our understanding of the deeply affective nature of videogame play (Ash, 2013, Ash et al. 2015) and contributes to an ongoing social critique of videogames and capitalism (Kirkpatrick, 2013).

ABSTRACT. The presentation will analyze common themes in erotic and pornographic fan modifications for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Game Studios 2011) in order to establish their relation with the game itself and its various intertexts. Relying on Michael Riffatere’s concept of intertextual semiotics (Riffaterre 1978, 1985), already applied in mod-oriented research (Majkowski 2016), I will present the most important aesthetic sources of commonly employed erotic imaginary and analyze reasons for employing such themes in relation to Skyrim. This way I will try to answer the question whether fan-made pornography is at least partially dependent on the aesthetics of the game being modded, or there is a general pool of pornographic imaginary commonly shared within the modding community and used regardless of the source game’s specificity

ABSTRACT. Building on computer game studies and philosophy of computer games, we postulate self-referentiality as a recurring feature in the mediality of computer games, i.e. in their hermeneutic and representational aspects and the cultural practices they facilitate. Then, building on media-archaeology and critical theory of computer games, we describe how self-referentiality can provide a critical perspective on the nature of technological play/work in the context of neoliberal information society (e.g. Galloway 2006, Crogan 2018), computational media, the resulting ludo-mix, and possibilities for “transgressive” (Aarseth 2007, Jørgensen & Karlsen 2019) and “authentic” play.

ABSTRACT. The desire to represent material systems in digital games is inherently contradictory: the more material the system, and inherently physical the interface, the more the digital risks becoming reductive and trivializing by comparison. In this paper, we examine crafting systems in games from the perspective of craft scholarship, borrowing terminology and theories from Adamson’s work that defines “craft” (2007). In Thinking Through Craft, Adamson describes real-world craft through the lens of five principles - supplemental, material, skilled, pastoral, and amateur. We find these lenses to be helpful to direct the focus of the role of craft in games and in real-life, highlight the differences, and discuss how this way of considering craft in games opens up new possibilities in the design space.

ABSTRACT. Critical research into games and player labour has shown that player creators remain disempowered despite the impact of their work. On the other hand, player-creators enjoy their work, they freely and in an informed manner consent to working without pay, and they can use their unpaid labour as experience and CV-entries. This paper aims to critically discuss these arguments in the light of a specifically chosen case study. The analysis is informed by expert interviews of player creators and it uses Carpentier’s (2016) analytic framework for participatory processes. This analysis of the power relationship between player creators and game developer is elemental for the discussion around unpaid player labour. In this case the company has enough power to purposefully keep the involvement of players secret which supports the notion of exploitation of free labour. The discussion suggests possible ways forward and connects to the ongoing unionization movement in the industry.

ABSTRACT. Until recently, game studies largely took for granted that games were a masculinized medium, targeted towards boys and men. Although research has begun questioning this expectation, more work is needed to understand what gaming masculinity looks like and how it intersects with other identifications. Gamers often embody a marginalized “geek masculinity”, excluded from hegemonically masculine power, but simultaneously possess a degree of privilege they can leverage against others in toxic ways. Assessing where gamers locate themselves can explicate these contradictory power struggles in new, meaningful ways. Furthermore, the “gamer” stereotype is male, but also white, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied, etc.; we cannot assume all players relate to this stereotype in the same way. Thus, this panel employs an array of methods to study how games’ masculinity mixes with other identities and to challenge and deconstruct normative assumptions about what it means to be masculine in gaming cultures and even game studies.

ABSTRACT. As free-to-play games have increased their economic value, the research interest has increased as well. This article looks at the free-to-play game research conducted so far through a systematic literature review and an explorative analysis of the papers included in the review. The results highlight an excessive focus on behavioral economic studies trying to maximize the player bases and profits of the games, while other aspects, such as meaningful game experiences, cultural and societal implications, or critical review of the phenomena have been left in the marginal. The article suggests four future research agendas to reinforce the lacking areas of free-to-play game research.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines perspectives of professional game developers on the recent rapid growth of, and controversies surrounding, the implementation of loot boxes into digital games. This blurring of gambling and digital play has become a central element of the ludo mix, and here we aim to shed light on what those who create these experiences, not just those who play them, have to say. We recount our initial findings from in-depth interviews with almost thirty professional game developers – from the UK, USA, Canada, Germany, Poland, Singapore and Taiwan. In particular, we highlight four main areas: perceptions of ethics, the nature or question of “gambling” via loot boxes, effects of loot boxes on game development, and respondents’ opinions on their future. As such, we give a voice to game developers who - caught between players and policymakers - have been neglected in loot box discussion to date.

ABSTRACT. This paper presents an ongoing research project, aiming to contribute towards recent efforts to establish a taxonomy of random reward mechanisms in digital games as a basis for further debate. Random reward mechanisms are employed by game developers as a means of monetization and to retain players by introducing chance-based rewards. In the form of so called “loot boxes,” they have become an object of public debate for their supposed structural likeness to gambling and proven highly controversial among players. Our goal is to establish an empirically grounded taxonomy of monetized random reward mechanisms, by comparing how they are implemented in different games on different platforms. In our analysis, we consider the often complex tension between favored design choices of game developers and player preferences.

ABSTRACT. Loot boxes and other in-game monetization techniques have recently attracted interest of the general public and regulatory bodies. The current discussions about both the ethics and legality of in-game monetization are partly rooted in a long-standing opposition of traditional player communities against market convergence between triple-A and free-to-play sectors. The profound integration of monetization and game design is often perceived as a negative trend, which harms the interests of players. While microtransactions are seemingly central to public discussions about games, very little is known about the actual professionals who create them. We are particularly interested in identifying who the people responsible for designing and implementing microtransactions are and how they fit in our understanding of game development teams. The empirical part of this presentation is primarily based on 9 semi-structured exploratory interviews with German game professionals and a content analysis of 91 job descriptions related to monetization.

ABSTRACT. This panel is a series of short, provocative micro-talks of no more than 10 minutes in length that argue for expanding academic research into live streaming into new areas and avenues including studying artists and game developers, how streaming might impact creative critique, and how to consider the bodies of those who stream. The goal is to provide both updates on recent work in live streaming research, but also and more importantly to provide time for discussion and debate amongst those gathered about important areas for researchers to investigate concerning live streaming, including those who engage in the practice, the communities that engage with them, industries that facilitate the practice, transnational and transcultural variations, and business and economic issues unique to streaming.

ABSTRACT. In Video Game Spaces, Michael Nitsche proposes three indicators of ‘placeness’ in video games: identity, self-motivated and self-organised action, and traces of memory. We read this notion of placeness as closely aligned to the understandings of place and site articulated in theatre and performance research as site-specific performance. Here, we articulate the ideas (and analyse the experiences) of placeness and sitedness in Red Dead Redemption 2 through an analytical conversation between performance studies and games design research with a human-computer interaction bias. Through a close-reading of gameplay experiences, we individually experienced over 30 hours of RDR2 gameplay while taking notes, recording, and capturing screenshots. During our individual analyses, we met periodically to compare notes, discuss notable game moments and share analytical insights. At this intersection of game research and performance research, we propose the term gameplace as a means of articulating the affective relationship between place, experience and play.

ABSTRACT. In this paper I will give an account, as a practitioner, of my continued experiments with using the content of computer games as the impetus and the material for poetry, with particular emphasis on the use of characters. It is my contention that this practice can be viewed not only as an extension of playing the game, but as a form of literary ‘modding’ – altering the meaning and import of the game content for both other players and non-player readers. Conceived of in this way, these poems make up a category of poem-game interplay that I call ‘intertextual mutation’, following Anne-Marie Schleiner’s concept of ludic mutation.

ABSTRACT. How sound shapes our experience of place through mobile, locative and audio technologies in public settings is an expanding study in recent discourse and practice. However only limited attention has been given to this relationship in pervasive games. In response, this extended abstract introduces YomeciLand (Nguyen 2019 - ongoing), a prototype designed for an experimental location-based mobile game deployed in Melbourne, Australia that explores found sound and listening in relationship to gameplay.

ABSTRACT. Musical leitmotifs are underacknowledged in English-language game studies. When they are mentioned, it is usually only in passing (e.g. Colins, 2008; Pidkameny, 2008; Jørgensen, 2009). This is surprising given the prevalence and impact of leitmotifs in story-heavy games—particularly Japanese-style role-playing games (JRPGs). Since (ludo)musicology and film studies offer mostly inaccessible, ill-fitting, or anachronistic accounts of “Wagnerian” leitmotif (e.g. Gorbman, 1987; Biancorosso, 2013; Adorno, 2005), I advance a contemporary understanding of the term that is tailored to digital games and accessible to non-musicians. I identify and formalise nine narrational–affective functions of leitmotif, plus one cross-media application. Examples from JRPG-like series (Zelda, Final Fantasy, Undertale) scaffold analysis.

ABSTRACT. A new role for local government is emerging to appropriate and remix games for city streets. This study investigates how several major cities in the United States created entirely new activities for players to embed the game in city-specific events, beginning in 2017. This study identifies early trade-offs in city tactics, especially in terms of sharing power to negotiate the content layer with the game company and with local residents, borrowing from models of the appropriation of technology.

ABSTRACT. Fantasy sports games exist for over 50 years and are popular in North America and in European countries. In Brazil, the sports fans only recently took interest in those games with Cartola FC, an online fantasy soccer game. This study aims to investigate the Brazilian players’ behavior and consumption in Cartola FC through a qualitative approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and the discussion was supported by Game Studies and consumer behavior theoretical approaches. The results pointed to the game boundaries’ permeability, where the actions performed by the players occur mainly outside of it. Although Cartola FC is an online game, the social ties with local friends and work colleagues are reinforced and, as in previous researches carried on in other countries, the act of playing deepened the players’ relationship with the sport. It was also found an expressive informal market of League betting, created to transgress the Brazilian legislation.

ABSTRACT. Taking as a starting point the French concept of “artistic détournement” and its application in the context of video games, this paper aims to study creative remix practices that use video games as materials or as matrices to produce derivative works. Precisely, the research examines a diversified range of productions whose common feature is to be created from video games (mods, machinimas, let’s play videos…) in order to question the relationships between the notions of play, détournement and transmedia. Where is the boundary between play and détournement? Can we describe as “playful” these remix practices that overflow the frame of the game and extend themselves to other media (machinima or let's play, for instance, are playful practices aimed at the production of videos)? By crossing rhetoric and theories of play, this paper will try to answer these questions.

ABSTRACT. Layering technology, space, and play, locative and pervasive games recall diverse histories and are connected to myriad ideologies. These game types have been evoked in reference to the revolutionary acts of the Situationists; the immersive theatre of Blast Theory; the contemporary trend for Smart Cities; and the global popularity of Pokémon Go. Having moved from the margins to the mainstream, these experiences are now ubiquitous. Play has become a standard feature of city spaces and the scope of possibilities in so-called Playable Cities spans radical, utopian, corporate and pessimistic discourses. Common to each of these experiences are questions around how public space should be used, how is space differently experienced by a diversity of individuals, and what existing uses or understandings of place are reinforced or upset by locative play. Given these concerns, how might scholarship and practice of these game types productively move forward?

ABSTRACT. We observe opportunities for authorial affordances in hybrid, app-enabled boardgame, and explore them through observing how  designers take on the para-textual challenge of adapting fully digital games and IP into non-digital games. These adaptive processes have lessons for the emergent hybrid class of boardgames for designers and scholars interested in boardgames, digital games and the ludo-mix.

ABSTRACT. We present 17 design guidelines for hybrid board games. Hybrid board games combine physical and digital elements to introduce new kind of game experiences. These guidelines are the result of an iterative process of workshopping with industry experts and academic researchers, supported by survey data and developer interviews. They are presented as starting points for hybrid board game design and aim to help the designers to avoid common pitfalls and evaluate different trade-offs.

ABSTRACT. Focusing on Super Mario games produced or licensed by Nintendo from the 1990s to 2017 (including Mario is Missing, Super Mario 64, Super Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart 8, and Mario & Rabbids), in which Mario’s Italianness emerges clearly as a branding and design character choice, this research looks at the progressive creative investment in the character to investigate the creative and commercial motivations behind Mario’s representations.

Looking at ‘occidentalist’ strategies (Miyake, 2010) and stereotyping (Lotardo 2011) as ways to enter a global economy of signs with recognizable tropes (Volcic/Andrejevich, 2011), the paper investigates the influences of cultural exchanges (Holliday, 2001), media like film (Gundle, 2018) (Tricarico, 2014) and popular music (Molossi, 1999), and practices such as tourism on the representations of Mario. At the same time, it highlights elements of current game character development that hint to prospective cross-media branding opportunities for the franchise.

ABSTRACT. This paper aims to highlight the challenges of media mix (Steinberg, 2012) in the field of video game translation, and more specifically, the implications of the use of fictional newspapers and magazines for translational strategies.

ABSTRACT. This extended abstract describes a study of the prehistory of the field of game studies, an examination of how early researchers used the term ‘game’ and how they framed their objects of study before game studies came together as a field. Perhaps surprisingly, none of the humanistic pre-1997 pioneers of what we today call game studies privileged the term ‘game’ in their early works. This lack of conceptual work and reflection (with the notable but mostly ignored exception of Mary Ann Buckles) gave rise to the turbulence of the early days of the field proper, and this paper’s main contribution is to provide a corrective to today’s largely anecdotal understanding of that period.

ABSTRACT. This article analyses how game studies scholars make use of videogames in their research. Examining articles from the field’s two main journals, we identify the currently-invisible canon of games most frequently cited in game scholarship. The article thus provides an empirical basis for understanding which games are overlooked in research and also provides a list of games that it is important to be familiar with in order to understand existing work. We build upon previous literature in this area by adopting a more thorough content analysis of articles and by analyzing how the canon has changed over time. Our results partly support existing research, but we show that the canon is far more varied than previously suggested and demonstrate ways that it has changed over time. These findings are discussed in relation to several research and teaching issues facing game studies as it develops.

ABSTRACT. The first scientific monographs dedicated to play and games are already older than the century. Meanwhile, ludology (as an academic discipline or field) has been around for decades and computer games have been studied increasingly in universities since the 1980s. Today, thousands of studies have been published via numerous channels with great variation in readership and citation. This study provides an analysis of the latter; namely, an investigation of the most cited studies within the field and their implications. As a method, we exerted a wide systematic search in the databases Google Scholar, CiteSeer, and Microsoft Academic and compiled a list of the most cited publications itemized in the database in question. We drew the line of recorded citations at 2000, i.e. studies that were cited 2000 or more times were compiled into a list. This list included 35 publications, which were analyzed.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we make an overview to the current retro gaming research and also illuminate its connections to media mix or ludo mix, at least from two different perspectives: how the retro gaming research have observed different game versions and by-products of games as part of retro gaming cultures as well as how retro gaming has been recognized in more general research literature of popular cultural products? We also study, what games have typically been mentioned in retro gaming research literature. What has been mainly missing so far in the retro gaming research and how critical has the research been? The paper creates synthesis on one multidisciplinary game studies area as well as helps to reveal connections between game studies and other fields of popular cultural and media studies. In addition, the paper will suggest new avenues for the retro gaming research.

ABSTRACT. In this study, we focus on the “marginal” spectating phenomenon of game live streaming. We identified critical non-gaming factors to bring game streaming from the margin of analysis to center, revealed a larger context in which game streaming is embedded, and discussed its implications. We collected in-depth interviews with game stream viewers and game streaming-related forum posts for examination. We found that game streaming should not be viewed as only a game-related phenomenon or an extended gameplay practice, but also as a form of cross-media entertainment involving multiple desires for media consumption: sometimes as a stage performance, sometimes as a corner for social interaction, sometimes as a form of entertainment similar to hosted single-person variety shows or reality television. Consumers move among multiple streaming activities that serve different media functions to find various sources of pleasure. Their identities change according to personal time restrictions and social situations.

ABSTRACT. This study leverages multiple tools to investigate affective messaging on Twitch. By collecting data for a month from thousands of Twitch channels, this study is able to thoroughly analyze the presence of affective disposition theory (ADT) and user-figure relationships. Affect messages are compared between gameplay and non-gameplay streams, entertainment and expertise streams, and viewer and streamer-directed. Identifying variation in affect messaging patterns will provide game developers, streamers, and researchers a strong foundation for recognizing viewer anomalies.

ABSTRACT. This paper explores the growing importance of live streaming to the games industry. We explore three cases: streaming newly released games and the attendant role of streaming in informing consumer choice; the visibility and added lifespan that streaming is affording to independent games; and the live streaming of the creation of games, shedding light on the games industry and subverting ordinarily expensive or competitive game-design courses and employment paths. To do so, we draw on empirical data from offline and online fieldwork, including 100 qualitative interviews with professional live-streamers, offline ethnography at live-streaming events, and online ethnography and observation of Twitch streams. The article concludes that live streaming is a major new force in the games industry, creating new links between developers and influencers and shifting our expectations of game play and game design, and is consequently a platform whose major structural effects are only now beginning to be understood.

ABSTRACT. The introduction of the Regulations of Mobile Game Contents (移动游戏内容规范) in 2016 ushered in a new upsurge in related research on China’s game policies. Because China’s game policies are unlike the practices seen in film, network and media policies and are based on different ideas, game policies differ from the policy system and go beyond network, film and cultural policies. Based on a summary of current game policy research, this paper notes that past research has mainly focused on several issues, including the number and overall scope of China’s game policies, the relationship between the market and game policies, the role of the Chinese government in the development and enforcement of the game market and the social impact of China’s game policies. However, research has not yet made a breakthrough in several issues, such as investigating the role of game players in the establishment or execution of game policies, the practical value of game policies and the success and failure of China’s game policies. In addition, this paper also identifiesirrationalities in past game policy research and points out the potential for China’s game policies to provide legislation and enforcement experience, thus offering the possibility that China’s game policies can be aligned with foreign game policies.

ABSTRACT.  

 World Health Organization(WHO), in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), gave the following definition for the Gaming disorder:  “A pattern of gaming behavior (“digital-gaming” or “video-gaming”) characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities […]”(WHO, 2018)  However, the long-standing debate about whether electronic gaming could be addictive enough to be considered pathologic is still unsettled. Many researchers continuously criticize the framing problem of ‘addiction’ and the lack of academic consensus regarding the diagnosis. (Bean et al., 2017; Aarseth et al., 2017).  As related discourse is heavily based on the results of various related academic research, This research intended to comprehend the trends and composition by reviewing the overall discourse of the academic field and by re-classifying scattered discussions into a series of criteria. Specifically, this meta-analysis reviewed the literature on Internet Gaming Disorder in journal articles published between 2013 and mid-2018, from the time American Psychiatric Association (APA) included Internet Gaming Disorder under the section of Conditions for Further Study up to present. As a digital game can be dealt with in various contexts such as technological, cultural, physical, social, and economic, the scope of the comprehensive study included various perspectives in various research fields. 

ABSTRACT. The current narrative in criminology is that drawing behavioural parallels between groups observed in virtual markets and groups within illicit markets is hampered by the lack of legal frameworks. Without frameworks, it is a struggle to distinguish normative behaviour from deviant behaviour. However, this paper argues that virtual worlds have an extensive set of formal and informal social controls that approximate the legal and social regulations placed on illicit markets in the real world. Both the virtual market and illicit markets are punctuated by their use of violence as a tool in the ongoing absence of legal regulation. Therefore, that if the criminological narrative can be adapted to recognise the parallels between the two markets, then the opportunity exists to study the behavior of individuals and groups in a controlled and well-observed setting. This will provide insights into the structures and relationships between illicit market groups in the real world.

ABSTRACT. In this conference presentation for DiGRA 2019, I will discuss the various tactics videogame hackers have developed to share their ostensibly illicit projects, using the A Link to the Past Randomizer as the primary case study. A popular ROM hack of the 1991 Super NES videogame The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the Randomizer transforms what was once a linear console adventure into a competitive, randomized, tournament game made popular through communities on Twitch and Discord. Referring to research interviews that I have conducted with members of the development team, I will elaborate on how the decentralizing of game ownership and the creation of an in-browser patching application has allowed the Randomizer to flourish, despite its potential violation of intellectual property law. These tactics highlight broader tensions between media companies and consumers, who undermine corporate strategies of control in order to acquire, alter, and share videogames.

ABSTRACT. Though competitive computer gaming, often known as esports, is largely constructed around commercial games, it has simultaneously had a long history as a grassroots driven activity deeply tied to the work of third party organizations and structures. This panel asks: What are the histories of third party esports associations and what are the current emerging roles and practices of the non-profit esports association in particular?

ABSTRACT. In this presentation I will explore the concept of Karen Barad's intra-actions to the study of digital game play. It is my claim that using this conceptual lens as a means of framing digital game play would show how both the video game object and the player transform each other, not only to determine their own ontic borders, but also co-create meanings.

ABSTRACT. The representation of complex interactive fictional worlds in videogames very often suffers from technical malfunctions or so-called glitches, which can thoroughly shape the fictional experience of the player. From the perspective of the philosophy of fiction, glitches can be seen as distortions of the intentional communication between fiction-makers (the game’s developers) and fiction-consumers (players), some of which are a miscommunication of what is fictional, while others communicate new, unanticipated fictional content. In this paper, we examine the relationship between glitches and fictionality. More specifically, we distinguish and analyze three glitch-types, detail the fictional relevance of these types, and discuss possible strategies for dealing with these cases of fictional inconsistency.

ABSTRACT. Game fictionalism can be understood as the claim that at least some games utilize fictions to provide the material and formal settings for games and gameplay. The thesis of game fictionalism has at least two discernible forms. Gameworld fictionalism is the claim that the worlds depicted in games, where they exist, are fictional. The world of Tamriel, like Tolkien’s Middle Earth, is a fictional world: it does not really exist but rather is an imaginative creation that is the setting for The Elder Scrolls series of videogames. A second position, radical game fictionalism, is one that draws on the philosophical concept of fictionalism to make a claim about the social ontology of games. Radical game fictionalism is a much more ambitious thesis than gameworld fictionalism, because while it makes claims about the ontological status of the apparent worlds of games, it also may pertain to games without obvious fictional worlds.

ABSTRACT. Interactive digital experiences are understood as disclosing possibilities of being that can extend beyond the actual. The ways in which those experiences prompt their audiences to interactively apply and repurpose their cognitive faculties are constrained by the technical possibilities of the digital medium. This entails that the transformative activities invited and upheld by the computer depend on the functional affordances of digital technology as well as on the specific ways in which it errs and malfunctions.

In this paper, I discuss non-catastrophic computer malfunctions (i.e. glitches) as potentially introducing aspects of surprise, ambiguity, and humor in the interactive experience of a virtual world. Computer glitches can also be intentionally designed to be a constitutive part of a virtual world and triggered deliberately; these types of glitches are used as expressive tools that can stimulate critical thought and make us suspicious of the stability and the validity of our world-views.

ABSTRACT. Niantic Inc. released Pokémon Go, a mobile and free-to-play game, in 2016 for iOS and Android phones. After the game’s release players quickly became frustrated due to the server’s frequent crashes and their inability to log in to the game consistently. The tone and content of player conversations about the game began to turn from excitement and eagerness to frustration to open letters to Niantic Inc. about players intention to quit. This research detailed in this paper was motivated by a desire to uncover former players’ motivations for posting “I quit” messages to online venues that are not monitored by Niantic. By interviewing players directly about their reasons for posting such messages, this ongoing research seeks to add much needed knowledge to why players quit, a demographic that remains underexplored in game scholarship to date.

ABSTRACT. This paper considers play as an archival practice and its impact on the future histories of videogames and digital culture. Drawing upon De Kosnik’s notion of ‘rogue archives’ (2016), this paper demonstrates how certain play activities generate archival materials and how noncanonical works and/as practices shape our digital culture memory.

ABSTRACT. The paper will explore the reception of AI in Alien: Isolation based on qualitative analysis of forum discussions. It describes player theories about the Alien's behavior and their evaluations of the AI. It shows that these evaluations differ based on whether the player puts emphasis on simulation, or experience. Please read more in the extended abstract.

ABSTRACT. Horror game consumption has evolved new forms in recent years, including game streaming and eye-tracking-embedded VR games. In this study we use physiological response data to analyze player’s attention and immersion patterns during the critical suspense stage in horror gaming.

ABSTRACT. This panel presents a range of contemporary approaches to studying the ongoing convergence between video games, digital gambling, and other new monetization methods. In today's gaming environment, familiar economic capital mixes with gaming capital based on in-game social exchanges and performance, representing a central part of the contemporary ludo mix. With visible and impactful contemporary controversies, and growing legal and regulatory interest, this is a vital moment to consider the evolving roles of gambling in digital games. Given interest in this area from many disciplinary fields and scholars, this panel is designed to rapidly highlight a number of approaches to tackling these emerging questions, especially valuable in such a new and not-yet-formalised area of game studies. It should lay a foundation for the future study, and will bring together and generate conversations between diverse scholars - both in the panel, and attending the panel - with interests in this area.

ABSTRACT. This paper reviews experiences of game workshop facilitators in culturally mixed settings, based on interviews with the Game Girl Workshop (GGW), a Denmark-based feminist activist initiative which has conducted multiple workshops for young women and teenagers in different cultural settings. The aim is to shed light on tacit knowledges and collective assumptions existing around participatory design, especially in intercultural contexts. The paper is structured in three parts. The first part describes the methodology and study design, including the choice for narratives interviews and thematic analysis. The second part introduces three thematic categories - self-expression, teamwork, and tangible achievement - which emerged as central aspects of the GGW's collective self-narrative. The third part discusses some problems and challenges facilitators highlighted in regard to these themes in the context of culturally mixed settings. Finally, these findings are discussed in regard to the current state of contemporary game activism

ABSTRACT. Gamejams have been identified as useful informal learning spaces for creativity, innovation and inclusion (Ryan et al. 2015), and as potential pathways into the software, IT, and games industries. This paper presents the findings of a three-year research project exploring informal education game events and inclusion. This project firstly surveyed and observed gamejams in three different cities, finding that they predominantly attracted young male programmers. We identified a range of implicit and explicit barriers excluding people from participating. The project then organised six ‘beginner friendly and female friendly’ game development workshops in two different locations. While our workshops attracted diverse participants, the pre-scripted codes of our locations and tools provided a range of unanticipated barriers. We propose that informal education events are where social and cultural codes meet code/spaces (Kitchin and Dodge, 2011, Pelletier and Johnstone, 2018). In this paper we examine how these codes influence creativity, pedagogy, and inclusion.

ABSTRACT. In this paper we present a qualitative research methodology for conducting scholarly player studies, derived from independent game developer practices. Within the field of game design research, approaches to studying designs are often adapted from formal, standardized player-testing techniques. These often focus on measuring player experience so a design may be evaluated. While such methods provide a useful basis for conducting iterative design studies, these present limitations for researchers seeking to interrogate design approaches that fall outside of conventional assessment models or gameplay paradigms. We discuss these issues through a methodological lens, in the study of WORLD4, a game designed for experiences of ambiguity. Through a two-stage player experience study we reveal methodological considerations and highlight disciplinary questions. In doing so we present a contextually aware, time and resource conscious method for conducting remote player studies, useful for game design researchers working outside of labs or investigating alternate design spaces.

ABSTRACT. Game educators have an obligation to teach students to be critical about not only games, but also their broader role in society and students’ own responsibilities toward social justice. In game curricula around the world, this is often achieved through the offering of one or more courses dedicated to the social implications of games, which place games in their broader societal context. In this paper, I describe three efforts at integrating social justice into game design and technology courses, rather than siloing this material into dedicated game studies courses: a) a games and social justice course, b) a game artificial intelligence course, and c) a novel interface design course. Having designed and taught each of these three courses, at different levels of the curriculum but to a similar population of technically-focused students in undergraduate game programs, this paper offers my reflections upon the successes and failures of each approach.

ABSTRACT. The main case study in this project is the privatisation of all YouTube videos across the Machinima network which took place in January 2019, followed by the official closure of the company a couple of weeks after. This paper aims to use virtual ethnographic practices collect and compare the reactions and ways in which both fans and content creators deal with the loss of a large part of online gaming culture, and the resulting collective and social memory of Machinima and the networked public culture it was a part of.

ABSTRACT. This extended abstract presents an overview on the aims and methods of the ongoing project “Gamified Audiovisual Performance and Performance Practice” (GAPPP). It illustrates recent findings by examples from the project. One fundamental research objective is to investigate audience perception of audiovisual performances comprising game elements with methods from social sciences, game studies and ludomusicology. Insights are gained through qualitative data of interviews, focus groups and questionnaires the audience of lab performances. Additionally, the focus of attention of the audience is researched at various situations in the complex situation of a gamified audiovisual performance. Therefore, a tablet device was developed to measure audience feedback in real-time at lab performances.

ABSTRACT. Sharing gameplay videos online has become a common practice. In case of virtual reality (VR) games, these videos are typically in the traditional rectangular format, consisting of a real-world view showing the player’s actions and a virtual-world view showing what the player sees in the VR game. Watching such videos can be considered a process of observational learning—when the viewers of these videos become players, they may perform better and have a better experience in the game. This study explores this potential chain of indirect effects of watching VR gameplay videos. The result of a laboratory experiment shows that watching VR gameplay videos indirectly enhances various aspects of players’ experience including immersion, flow, competency, and positive affect, via its effect on observational learning and, thereafter, game performance. The theoretical and practical implications of these effects have also been discussed.

ABSTRACT. Taking Saltybet.com as its primary case study, this paper concerns a central question that reframes spectatorship by examining artificial intelligence (AI) – what is the appeal of ‘AI spectatorship’? In order to tackle this question, a multidisciplinary approach is used to discuss issues relating to AI, games, play, spectatorship, the relationship between animal rights and the rights of AI, comedy, media convergence and media studies. This paper identifies several factors that specifically relate to how AI players are perceived by, and as appealing to, a spectator audience. It is argued that AI are primarily enjoyable to watch because of their perceived buffoonery, that they act in ways that are perceived as being ridiculously unexpected, extreme or novel. There is a great deal of anthropomorphisation happening during spectatorship but also narrativisation during and after play which are argued to be a large part of the appeal of spectating AI players.

ABSTRACT. Ludonarrative aspects have not been the focus of video game studies. During the foundational phase of the discipline, the focus was placed on game mechanics and on understanding what distinguishes games from earlier forms like the movie or the novel. In recent years, however, the growing field of narrative-focused games, have alerted us to the possibilities of narrative expressions that embrace the affordances and unique possibilities of digital interactivity. In other words – these games do not attempt to interactivize print literature or the movie, but instead explore a different and so far largely unexplored space of interactive narrative. This development needs to be reflected in video game teaching. Yet, so far, narrative has been a step child in games education. Most game design degree programs feature only a single course on the topic. Our approach instead is to offer a minor concentration within a game design program.

ABSTRACT. This talk proposes to examine the political and aesthetic significance of the bottom-up process by which computer game players obtain knowledge about the game’s processes, and which they use to create a mental map of the game as a system of rules and causal processes.

ABSTRACT. The alterations in the game’s mechanics have the potential to create the most meaning for players, and we have not studied the implications of this nearly enough. In this paper, we use Florence, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and Descent: Freespace - The Great War as case studies to offer a new lens to analyze how changes in systems generate meaning. Through these case studies we show that subtle changes in game mechanics and alterations to the control schemes can create meaning. Furthermore we show that using mechanics as exposition makes it difficult to ignore important narrative moments. This led us to the creation of a set of questions that we believe will aid in the design process of games and provide more tools for analysis and critique.

ABSTRACT. Combining a network analysis (Belliger and Krieger 2014) of the use of capture in the construction of “real” experience in immersive music performance games, with a new materialist rhetorical analysis (Gries 2015) of how captured media is mobilized for reality effects, this work aims to unpack the differences between claims of authentic and actual player experiences as assembled through design and play.

ABSTRACT. This paper applies the concept of “musicking”, introduced by musicologist Christopher Small, to the analysis of digital games (Small, 1998). Digital games are considered for their cybernetic qualities (Aarseth & Calleja, 2015) as objects that can be traversed and reconfigured by means of ergodic effort (Aarseth, 1997).

The intersection of ergodic effort and musicking practices manifested in digital games generates a new musicking form: ergodic musicking.

Ergodic musicking is defined as a form of ergodic effort, in which the non-trivial act of traversing the media text involves degrees of musical participation. At the same time, ergodic musicking is also a form of musicking, in which participation in a musical performance involves the exertion of ergodic efforts.

ABSTRACT. This paper will explore the concept of dark tourism as applied to video games, and how a study of auditory experience can enhance that. The main case study will be the game The Town of Light, which is set in a virtual recreation of an asylum in Volterra, Italy. Though the game has been lauded for sensitively dealing with mental illness rather than following horror game conventions, it still employs many audio conventions of the genre. Through the lens of archaeoacoustics, the use of sound in The Town of Light will be explored through spatial context to demonstrate that it does not constitute a homogenous digital dark tourist site.

ABSTRACT. A mod of a remake of a mod, Drodo Studio’s Auto Chess is a digital calvinball that mashes up game genres to create something unexpected: a metagame that remixes the meanings and mechanics of Dota 2 to reveal new forms of play. One of the most popular videogames of 2019, Auto Chess is currently outperforming its direct competitor, Richard Garfield and Valve’s digital card game Artifact. This talk will frame the emergence of Auto Chess and Artifact in relation to the longer history of metagaming. Considering “most of any given game's meta-game is beyond the reach of the game designer, for it emerges from play communities and their larger social worlds” (Salen Tekinbaş and Zimmerman 2004), the near-simultaneous release of Artifact and Auto Chess serves as a perverse object lesson in how fickle the metagame can be and signals a broader shift in the geopolitical metagame between Valve and China.

ABSTRACT. In recent years, the real and game worlds are increasingly interacting to each other, through developments and diffusion of various attempts such as gamification. This is at least partially because the real world is not such pleasurable as games - in somewhat dirty words, "sit (game) is real." This comes from a quote of the main character in a Japanese manga "The World God Only Knows." In usual performance measurement of gamification, they measure how much game elements improved the real-world things; but in this study, the author tries the other way around. The author proposes "SIR" index, namely, an index that measures how much the real world is a sit-game. In this extended abstract, the author analyzes twitter data to explore what this expression actually means, and also discusses why such an index is needed.

ABSTRACT. Many online game players are developing strong psychological attachments with the avatars they use for gameplay. Player-avatar relationships can affect gaming experiences in terms of enjoyment, immersion, and virtual character identity, among other factors. For this study we tested various propositions regarding the effects of game design features on player-avatar relationships, and the effects of those relationships on decorative virtual item consumption motivation. Participants recruited from 15 online game forums were asked to complete two questionnaires on these topics. Our results indicate significant correlations between player-avatar relationships and both game design features (e.g., death penalties and pet systems) and decorative item consumption motivation. Our results offer insights into how game designers can, to some extent, manage player-avatar relationships by fine-tuning design features, perhaps facilitating marketing objectives in the process.

ABSTRACT. Critically thinking the Chinese proverb of ‘Excessive Indulgence of Playing Saps Ambitions(wan wu sang zhi)’ is help to understanding the consumer roles played by the ‘only child’ in the culture industry of digital games in the context of sub-culture, and to insight the cultural conflicts hidden in the circumstances of domestic consumption, between two generations. Narrative inquiry serves as the main qualitative methods of this research,which is to study the experience and explain the meanings of this sub-cultural consumption. It is discovered in ongoing research that ‘wan wu sang zhi’ represents fourfold meanings and the ‘only children’ attempt to make their consumption practice of digital-game peripheral products as a new form of resistance to the patriarchal-symbolic order.

ABSTRACT. We are a group of international researchers who have worked on the topic of ludic boredom on a number of occasions (Apperley 2018; Fizek 2018; Lammes 2017, 2018; Leino 2018; Majkowski 2018; Möring 2014, 2018). The latest result of our ongoing work is a manifesto for ludic boredom which we offer to present in the form of a performative reading and thereby triggering a discussion on the topic with the audience. We believe that ludic boredom is a timely topic worthwhile to be discussed in the context of the DiGRA 2019 conference at least three reasons: 1. Boredom is a phenomenon that can be intrinsic to play and games, but remains under-theorised; 2. Cultural, societal, economic and technological developments can be interpreted through the lens of ludic boredom; 3. It caters well to the topic of the conference, that is ludo-mix, since ludic boredom is a transmedial phenomenon.

ABSTRACT. This panel explores how regionalization and localization produce complex networks of meaning that inform the cultural impact of games both as individual texts and products of a global industry. As recent scholarship has highlighted, game studies has predominantly (and uncritically) focused on games through white, Western experiences and contexts, and there is a pressing need for scholarship to engage with non-Western and marginalized perspectives. By looking at diverse topics such as audience expectations of subtitle and dubbing practices, cultural mimicry in transnational co-productions, amateur adaptations and translations of computer games, and the creation of collective narratives across cultures, we can highlight how a game’s transnational formation sets the stage for different cultural perspectives to speak to and influence each other. Ultimately, this panel will contribute to understanding how gaming’s already deeply political nature becomes further emphasized as these texts cross cultural and national borders.

ABSTRACT. This paper discusses how the sandbox game EVE Online’s brand imprints feelings of personal empowerment, social connection, and collective enterprise from interactions within, to interactions about the game. By creating a resonance between the feedback processes in and around the game, players experience a sense of contiguity between their perceived influence within virtual worlds and over its development. EVE’s promotional, representational, and procedural rhetoric (Bogost 2007) addressed players as subjects with the agency to shape worlds, impact populations, and make history through their virtual endeavors. EVE’s community management also promised players some co-creative influence (Banks 2013) over the development of technically encoded rules, as an extension of their agency within the game. This paper argues that while EVE’s procedural rhetoric and co-creative game development evoke democratic world-shaping and rule-making respectively, both fall short of what media scholars consider participation.

ABSTRACT. The “PC bang” concept has accompanied games research since the early 2000s, especially in studies of Asian gaming cultures. Regardless of the word’s wide-ranging implication that is somewhat comparable to those of Western “internet cafés,” the PC bang has always been characterized by its relation to gaming in general and online gaming in particular. Meanwhile, as gaming spaces, PC bangs have been found to operate simultaneously as third places that contribute essentially to young people’s social interactions and relationships. In the present Seoul-based ethnographic study, we add to those earlier scrutinies by providing a look at the changes and modifications of contemporary PC bang culture in South Korea: along with the proliferation of technologies that enable and support mixed media consumption, the modern PC bang is often also a movie theater, concert hall, restaurant, and an online lounge with other types of mediated relaxation.

ABSTRACT. The eSports industry is highly volatile and in the midst of exponential growth; however, it becomes evident that a common understanding influences the eSports industry. The focus is on a value integration toward the audience and doing business around this audience. This focus is observed in the creation of the business model network that enables any stakeholder to have a thriving business model within the network. The case of Overwatch is an example of an existing business model network, however, at the same time an example of a potential failing business model network.

ABSTRACT. Mere days before Christmas 2018 Blizzard Entertainment informed the community that they would cease producing the competitive esports league of their game Heroes of the Storm (Blizzard Entertainment; 2015) (hereafter HotS). This announcement caught many in the community by surprise and effectively “fired” hundreds of competitive players, casters, couches, and team managers that had been expecting the continuation of the league and the stable income it provided to the scene. However, this case does open up the possibility to critically examine the interaction of esports as an entertainment commodity and marketing campaign with esport as competitive and community-organized sports. This research project asks: In what ways does the production of esports as a commodity interact with its role as sports and participatory culture?

ABSTRACT. Drawing on fan studies, promotional studies and cult studies, this paper seeks to reappraise the iconic David Lynch adverts made for Playstation 2 during its European launch in 2000. Using textual analysis and Edward Soja's concept of 'critical thirding', we seek to assess to what extent such adverts represent a genuinely counter cultural space or whether Sony is merely utilising subcultural capital to discursively construct a new audience demographic.

ABSTRACT. We live in the age of personalized services. In order to create personalized services, one must first understand how customers such as players are both similar and different from each other. Furthermore, these similarities and differences must be communicated in a comprehensible way. In this latter task, “persona” has emerged as an important tool. In market research, personas are described as fictive yet concrete representations of specific target groups, identified based on common and shared behavioral characteristics. However, “persona” was not first introduced as a market research concept but instead as an anthropological and psychological one. The objective of this study is to discuss the differences between these two seemingly distant understandings of “persona” in the case of player research. As a result, it is proposed that a synthesis between these two understandings is both possible and desirable.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between prior gaming experience and consciousness of computer programming or social views on information. To evaluate this relationship, a questionnaire survey was conducted on high school students in Japan in 2016. As a result, the relationships between prior gaming experience and consciousness of computer programming or “Importance of understanding the mechanisms of computers” were shown. Besides, in the group playing the games usually, the average values of most items were significantly higher than those in the group which does not usually play the games. And there was also no significant difference between the higher group (over 2 hours a day) and the lower group (less than 2 hours a day). Based on the results, it is suggested that the use of game topics is effective for promoting consciousness of computer programming and social views on information in programming education.

ABSTRACT. The social outcomes of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) have been subject to numerous studies in the past. In these games identification processes and virtual identities are present, yet most research measures game involvement solely through play frequency. This study proposes that time is an insufficient measure, and instead positively relates individual identification to in-game social connections among adult, German MMORPG players. This is done through mixing pre-existing theories, and scales; measuring Player Identification (van Looy et al. 2012), as well as online social capital (Williams 2006). The results from our study indicate that player identification positively predicts gaming social capital, a dedicated form of online social capital dedicated to gaming contexts, while time (measured by game experience) did not moderate this correlation. Hence, this study finds strong evidence for the insufficiency of time as game involvement measure, and the positive correlation between identification and social outcomes in MMORPGs.