ABSTRACT. In the field of critical disability studies, the notion of disability has been relocated from the domains of medicine, social work, and rehabilitation into the very center of contemporary humanities, including media studies. Concepts such as dismodernism (Davis), dishumanism (Godley et al.), dis/media (Oschner) or dismediation (Mills, Sterne in: E. Ellcessor, B. Kirkpatrick eds.) use the disruptive potential of disability to destabilize the commonsense notions of culture, human, or media. I take these ideas as starting points and inspiration to propose the concept of dis/cinema, which takes disability as a rebellious term (Goodley, Runswick-Cole) that provides an opportunity to challenge the seemingly obvious ‘norm’ of film as a medium and cultural, social, and artistic practice. Therefore it opens up new avenues for interpretations of film history and theory. Taking the transition to sound cinema in late 1920s as the outset of my investigation, I question the concept of the sonic normativity of the cinematic experience.

ABSTRACT. Digital games transform our lives; they provide an opportunity to engage with other worlds in a playful way, in many ways similarly to what other forms of audio-visual communication (like movies, paintings or photos) have offered for a longer time. However, learning materials still use rather traditional ways for accompanying media, ranging from static figures and graphs to videos and animations. In this paper, we explore the notion of Playable Concepts: tiny games that are embedded as part of educational material instead of separate and standalone products. We argue that games could be in a similar role as static graphical elements in educational and communicational material, embedded in the text, together with other media formats. We suggest that the design space of Playable Concepts can be framed with five distinct design values: Value of Partiality, Value of Embeddedness, Value of Simplicity and Immediacy, and Value of Reusability.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the philosophical practices of ancient Greece for syptoms of play, namely socratic dialogues, sophism, Aristotle's idea of the perfect life, and thought experiments in an attempt to find connections between rationality and play. And indeed these practices can be identified as playful in ways that challenge Huizinga's and Caillois' definitions of play and games and point to an understanding of play as a mental activity.

ABSTRACT. Departing from typology, how might attending to the ways specific historical and cultural configurations of knowledge and practice uniquely put “play” and “game” to work be generative for game philosophy? This paper discusses how Fluxus artist and professional chemist -- George Brecht – enfolds play into his work. The exposition contextualizes Brecht’s enigmatic approach to game design amid his broader artistic praxis before focusing on his Deck: A Fluxgame (1964). In doing so, the paper seeks to exemplify the importance of treating the ludic artifacts of innovative “thought collectives” like Fluxus not only as compelling formal experiments but also as symptomatic of a situated cultural imaginary (Fleck 1979). Precipitating a paideic mode of play (Caillois 1961), Deck, at first blush, prompts reflection on the limits of emergent gameplay. In light of its initial conditions, however, Deck takes on another character: philosophical exercise.

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates the notion of rhythm in digital gameplay theory and relates it to a twofold conception of rhyhtm as a stable form and changing flow. This is related to the dissonance between player agency and algorithmic control. Lastly the paper turns towards a relation between rhythm and subjectivity.

ABSTRACT. As video games set in classical antiquity continue to be popular, ludic interpretations of the Greek and Roman worlds increasingly gather academic attention. This study examines how ancient mythological characters (gods and heroes) are implemented and characterized in video games. Building on the theory of characterization as it is known within classical and literary studies, as well as on theories of content and character in game studies, this study aims to create a theoretical framework to analyze this ergodic mode of characterization. Throughout the discussion, the framework is employed through application and reference to several antiquity games as brief case studies. This extended abstract was initially submitted in 2020.

ABSTRACT. This article presents a sketch for a methodology for situational analysis of games. Situational analysis is a research practice originating in the social sciences. It is based on grounded theory and inspired by post-modern theory. This article argues that situational analysis is a fruitful approach to game analysis, as it addresses key challenges in game analysis: how to contain the dynamicity, heterogeneity, and composite quality of games, and how to make sense of the analyst’s position. It bypasses the distinction between analysis of games as objects and analysis of what players do and has a distinct focus on the role of materiality. The article will consist of two parts. Part one offers a discussion of current problems in game analysis and the potential of situational analysis. Part two offers a case study of a situational analysis of three play sessions of a selected game.

ABSTRACT. The project presented here aims to analyze myths in games from a double perspective: as an update of a transcendent cultural heritage and as a mythical fabric shaped by ludic rituals and common affordances. This creates a mythology through which our culture negotiates its fears and concerns. Both areas are connected. We aim to show not only the validity of myths even in the most contemporary forms of culture, but also the constant creation of new mythical structures to make meaning from the world.

The relevance of games as a mass medium and as a space of social and cultural conflict is linked to the tradition of the mythical story as a massive and popular abstract structure and, in turn, as a semantic concretion of contemporaneity, where the great values of society are agreed upon, discussed, and fought.

ABSTRACT. Consider a canonical artifact in game research such as The Sims. Our understanding of it might be very different depending on how we approach it. Do we see it as a a game? A simulation of late capitalist society? An authoring tool for creating narratives? A virtual doll house of grown-ups?

Many researchers are aware of the plenitude of available analytical lenses, yet, most of the time, there are only enough resources to pick a single one. At the same time, it seems clear that a combination of lenses - essentially a multi-method approach - will yield additional insights.

With this paper we propose concrete steps towards making multi-method analysis (MMA) more accessible and more widely used.

ABSTRACT. As a latecomer to gaming and yet one of the world’s foremost names in terms of IT expertise, the Indian experience can be baffling to many and the result is that ‘Indian’ culture is often misrepresented in games and there is little awareness of the gaming industry for what game developer Ernest Adams calls ‘the sleeping giant’ of the industry. In considering these, one also has to account for the country’s position in the postcolonial Global South. It is with a view to these, for the first time, at a global games studies forum and certainly at DiGRA, an effort is being made to represent multiple perspectives of the gaming industry and cultures in India in the proposed panel: ‘DiGRA India – Gaming the “Sleeping Giant”.

ABSTRACT. What are some factors that contribute to the success of a game program? The curriculum and how it is taught, the way a program is organized, and understanding game students are all important factors. There is an additional aspect: the role that extra-curricular initiatives and supports play. We report on an interview study where game educators discussed the things their game programs do outside of the classroom to support and help their students. These efforts are grouped into initiatives that contribute towards strengthening a community of learners, those that help students develop their professional identities, efforts for broadening student’s experience, and managing/creating relationships with the game industry. By presenting and collecting these initiatives we can identify possible gaps in a program and encourage a more holistic perspective on higher education focused not only on the curriculum, but also on those things that can happen in between or adjacent to coursework.

ABSTRACT. The Greek game developer’s community is a typical indie community. Small but measurable in size, the Greek community consists of different kind of creative groups among which we can find professional studios, freelancers working together, temporary teams participating in game jams and community events. How Greek game developers understand their place in the global games industry in terms of competition and what constitute the "Greek Video Game" in terms of creativeness, are among my research questions. Semi-structured interviews and archival research was conducted in order to understand the past and the present of video game production in Greece. The current paper shows some preliminary results of an ongoing research

ABSTRACT. A tax incentive policy for digital games production (DGTC) in Ireland (proposed 12 October 2021) has been welcomed by the industry. Multiple conflicting understandings of value underpin the policy discourses surrounding this incentive. The proposal to extend the well-established film tax incentive (Section 481) to the digital games sector highlights the significance of state intervention in the games production sector. This paper identifies and interrogates tensions in the policy discourse at both an Irish and European Union (EU) level. I look to the multiple assumptions around two distinct but related concepts: 1) the cultural aspects of digital games, 2) the potential of the sector to provide ‘good’ employment.

ABSTRACT. To date, there has been almost no research on how German indie game developers deal with the challenge of balancing artistic and economic demands in their everyday work, what working relationship they have with each other and how they define indie games for them. Based on theoretical sampling we interviewed 16 German indie developers from different indie sectors (indie studios, freelancers, hobby developers) using semi structured in-depth interviews. Building on our qualitative data analysis, we can summarize three conclusions.

ABSTRACT. In the opening remarks to Video Games Around the World, Mark Wolf (2015) points at the underdevelopment of video games’ national histories and the lack of studies on national gaming cultures. Since 2010, a new surge of “global” and “glocal” game studies has sought to decentralise video game history, seeking to decolonize its ideological western-centric project, shedding a light on its local manifestations (Bjarke Liboriussen and Paul Martin). This paper interrogates the concept of the "national video game" adopting a comparative approach with film studies and particularly borrowing from Andrew Higson's (2000) theorisation of national cinema and its "limited imagination". Using Italy as a case study, I develop an analysis of the three rhetorical dimensions of video game nationality: production (video games as "made in Italy"), textual (video games as participating to Italian-ness) and reception (the consumption of video games in Italy).

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive and empirically grounded taxonomy of monetized random reward mechanisms (RRMs), which we created through an examination of over one hundred free-to-play and paid-to-play games released in the US, Germany, and Japan. RRMs have recently gained increased attention within game studies. However, few attempts have been made to clarify the structure and implementation of RRMs and their cultural and societal influence. We offer an evidence-based classification of RRMs, aiming to contribute to a wide range of related academic research activities and social debates and to facilitate cross-disciplinary discussion. Borrowing from recent literature, we deconstructed the way RRMs are implemented in 108 games. We identified three major strategies and 40 types of implementation. In particular, this taxonomy covers the majority of RRMs implemented in publicly available mobile games worldwide and will play an essential role in facilitating constructive discussions about RRMs.

ABSTRACT. In this extended abstract we borrow components of ceremonial magic design, with centuries of empirical practice of altering normality, consciousness, and sense of self, momentarily or with more lingering effects, with the aim to explore how they can be used to design meaningful, immersive game experiences.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we present an approach to studying the game design process by drawing upon general models of design to support research into the process of game design. Several general models of design exist to consider the processes through which designers work. Many of these fit within a structure of analysis, synthesis and evaluation that was first proposed by Christopher Jones in 1963 and later adapted by Bryan Lawson to account for the messy nature of design and the undertaking of these activities while negotiating between problem and solution. This paper proposes the adaptation of Lawson’s model of design to study the activities of game designers and to potentially find opportunities to improve and refine the process of game design. Specifically, the paper seeks to propose a model for facilitating the study of the game design process as it relates to the individual actions designers take when developing games.

ABSTRACT. Game analytics has been used in game development and game research. However, less work focus on the game publishing side, especially on the new version update evaluation. This paper shows how game analytics can be used to guide game version updates. We innovatively view mobile game publishing as maintaining a fish tank and use our Fish Tank Model (FTM) to evaluate how game version updates improve players’ activation and game revenue. First, we define some key metrics for evaluating mobile game performance based on FTM. Second, we introduce a real game project to develop and apply FTM to the new version update. Third, based on analyzing the changes before and after the game version update, we provide suggestions on how to improve the new version. Finally, we summarize how to use our data-driven model to guide the mobile game new version update evaluation and continue to improve the game content.

ABSTRACT. This paper presents and evaluates a plan for a 2-weeks teaching moment with a series of lectures and a seminar in a Game Design course on advanced level that teaches students to critically examine their design task as game designers. This means that this is a critical intervention that can be used to educate critical makers or reflexive professionals. The center piece of the course is an assignment that asks the students to create a design prototype that is highly problematic from moral and ethical perspectivesthat are discussed in the course literature and lectures. The paper explains in detail the setup of the lectures and seminars and shows the results of a first trial. Any game design education (and potentially even other digital making like IT or Information Systems) that aims at educating reflexive professionals or critical researchers should be able to adapt this teaching moment.

ABSTRACT. Digital Therapeutic (DTx) Games promise to engage users in physical and mental health therapy and thereby provide effective treatment over a period. Games for different kinds of therapies are emerging in recent milieu. However, the promise of engagement and effectiveness of these games can be realized only when there is a balance between the joy and purpose of participating in therapies. Designers today lack specific guidance on designing purposeful games that achieve seamless integration between these two. We propose the use of endogenous design approach to address this problem. In this paper we describe the approach and demonstrate its application through three case studies.

ABSTRACT. Natural and man-made disasters are recurrent on the planet, causing structural, economic and social damages. More particularly, Caribbean hurricanes originated in the Atlantic annually affect the lives of thousands of people. The damages caused by such events often exceed national coping capacities, requiring the aid of non- governmental organizations (NGOs) to help the impacted population. Due to the stochastic nature of climatic disasters, humanitarian agents must be trained over diversified scenarios to improve their decision-making process, making links between past and new events. In this paper, we present a serious game that simulates Atlantic hurricane seasons and whose objective is to serve as a training tool for humanitarian logistics teams regarding disaster relief actions under time and resource constraints. We describe how the game is played, its features and learning objectives, the game design challenges and deployed solutions.

ABSTRACT. Serious moral games offer a tool for moral development that can help players translate ‘head knowledge’ of ethical principles into habits of everyday practice. In this paper, we present the design process behind one such game: Prescott & Krueger, a serious game for training information technology students in cybersecurity ethics. Our design draws on the Four Component Model of moral intelligence and the Morality Play model for serious moral game design. We reflect on how these models influenced our design process. The Four Component Model proved a useful set of lenses for developing learning outcomes and game narrative and mechanics, however the more prescriptive Morality Play model was more difficult to apply as the development of a sophisticated ‘moral toy’ required modelling both low-level cybersecurity systems and high-level ethical interpretations. We reflect on the broader implications of this problem for serious moral game design.

ABSTRACT. Liveness, as a concept, was a hot topic in theatre studies in the 1990s, before it coalesced into a relatively stable term that addresses the temporality of performances Auslander 1990). Our research project brings together an international team of researchers and designers from different areas – digital games, participatory theatre, dance and live action role-playing. We want to make sense of liveness today, after everything has gone digital, and co-presence and mutuality are being commodified.

ABSTRACT. How do games create meaning? In pursuing this question, proceduralists have formulated a range of theories about the communicative potential of rule-based systems. In this paper, we closely examine and critique a specific aspect of proceduralism as described by Mike Treanor in order to provide insights into a broader array of issues about meaning in games. We suggest that the nature of meaning production is both selective and poly-directional: selective because meaning production relies on context and saliency, and poly-directional because meaning itself can influence subsequent interpretations. We make an initial step in formulating a post-structuralist interpretation of proceduralism influenced by the work of Gilles Deleuze. Within this Deleuzian picture, meaning is conceived as fundamentally unstable and requires constant maintenance.

ABSTRACT. This paper starts with a clarification of the specific use of immersion as the sense of inhabiting a fictional world. I will then consider the ways in which board games afford immersion drawing on the interviews carried out with veteran designers. These interviews also yielded a wealth of data on how these designers sculpt player experience through the tools they have at their disposal. The paper will end with a clear and thorough definition of board game immersion that will hopefully be a clear and specific conceptual tool for both designers and analaysts, and one that sidesteps the vagueness of the concept inherited from digital games and exacerbated in recent papers that aim to create theories of board game immersion.

ABSTRACT. Children’s games have never strictly been ‘children’s’ games and what goes into the commonly, oft-lightly used term, ‘child’s play’ has a close relationship with a lived, socio-cultural context. Netflix’s new TV series, Squid Game, presents an interesting take on children’s games by placing popular Korean children’s games into the frame of a dystopian, survival game which is watched as a live telecast by a group of entertainment-hungry millionaires, finally presented to the Netflix audience in the master-frame of an episodic drama, and, subsequently, replicated and subverted as internet games by fans of the series. This paper is an examination of the six games, including— Pog/Ddakji game, Red Light, Green Light, the Dalgona Challenge, the Tug-of-War, multiple variations of marbles games, the Stepping Stone Bridge game, and finally, the Squid Game itself—played in the series, with specific interest towards the game design, player strategies, arena architecture, subversive gameplay, and participatory culture.

ABSTRACT. Gothic studies and Game studies are beginning to be explored in connection with each other to find various configurations of Gothic elements in the cybertext of games. In this article, I explore various Gothic elements in Bloodborne (From Software, 2015). My methodology incorporates the analysis of the manifestation of Gothicism in the game through the interplay between the figure of the player character, mise-en-scène, and the presence of psychologically affective states pertaining to the experience of playing the game. The role and aspects of player participation, performativity, and in-game mechanics are also examined with respect to the particular function they serve in the realization of the Gothic experience. The presence of Gothic and Lovecraftian tropes, symbolism, and elements of horror within the narrative are also explored.

ABSTRACT. Extended abstract describing a multimodal play framework for analyzing RPGs and VR storytelling experiences. The SGRplay (Screenplay, Gameplay, Roleplay) framework was used in my game studies courses to classify the narrative, competitive, and performative features in RPGs. Contributions include survey questions that were designed to isolate player character affordances from scripted storyline and gaming challenges. My performatology approach to avatar spectacle in RPGs draws from the figurative arts of acting, puppetry, and animation, which have been underutilized in other tri-partite frameworks in game studies.

ABSTRACT. This abstract reads Control (Remedy Entertainment, 2019) through cultural-historical and new materialist lenses as a game concerned with the strangeness of 'things' (Brown, 2001). Textual analysis unpacks the historical-ontological resonances of concrete as an agentic, ambivalent material omnipresent in the Brutalist iconography of Control. This abstract outlines analysis that might redress the relative lack of scholarship on Remedy's work, contributing to nonhuman turn and representational Game Studies.

ABSTRACT. This paper analyzes two big budget, AAA games as pilgrimages. Both games are concerned with what kind of future humans can forge by wandering around a vast world in the aftermath of a massive biological and cultural extinction. Both games answer that desperate question ambiguously, ending on a mix of hope, despair, and only one certainty: that the wandering continues.

ABSTRACT. In this panel, we will explore the present, past, and possible futures of gaming cultures to consider the role of celebrities and celebrity studies in interdisciplinary game studies. The state of contemporary streaming and esports illustrates the importance of furthering understanding of the intersections of gaming and celebrity. However, celebrity has impacted games and game culture in numerous other ways, including celebrity endorsement, celebrity game designers, and celebrity critics. This panel will illustrate the intersection of games and celebrity, and game studies and celebrity studies through three short papers, followed by a brief response from an appointed respondent, after which we will open the panel to a general discussion.

ABSTRACT. Understanding streaming platforms as capable of supporting and promoting new languages, trends, and online consumption practices, this article relates game media itself to cultural phenomena and social processes around play-watch activities in game streams on Twitch.tv. Analyzing the materiality (structure, affordances, socio-technical and economic aspects) of the leading platform in the live streaming market, we carry out a preliminary understanding of how these digital territories influence and harbor experiences of watching and playing games. Addressing the tools and uses of Twitch.tv, we present concepts that help us understand practices within the community that transcend watching and modify gaming – the sociability in participatory communities of play (Hamilton et al. 2014), the co-creation in multiplayer entertainment (Shear 2019), and the interactivity and agency in crossplay –, as well as the role of the industry and its neoliberal agenda on shaping game spectatorship and domesticating subversive conducts in the game of watching.

ABSTRACT. The main aim of this study is to examine the role of time modes and platform choices for today’s creators of commented gameplay, their content production, and audience management.

ABSTRACT. New storytelling mediums are available to users through the digital technology present in modern mobile phones, presenting opportunities for increased personalisation and self-directed play. Many immersive experiences were unavailable during the COVID pandemic, highlighting a demand for experiences that could be used closer to home. Map Story 3 is an immersive AR story app, designed to be used anywhere, with locations brought closer in-line with a story, by overlaying interactive virtual content on top of a user’s surroundings. A user study was conducted using two versions of Map Story 3, to investigate the differences between virtual movement in an AR location-based immersive experience, and actual movement involving walking between locations. The walking version scored significantly higher in relation to the majority of the immersion measures collected, suggesting the version where the user remained stationary currently offers significant barriers to immersion, when the objects were not displayed against congruous surroundings.

ABSTRACT. VRChat is a popular social vr application with a strong user base and countless virtual worlds to explore and avatars to "wear". The breadth and popularity of this social VR game, and the forms of interaction that it allows, makes it a fascinating case study for investigating the effects of VR experiences in the creation and communication of online identities. In this study we focus on a specific phenomenon, which enshrines several nodal points in the evolution of VR experiences: virtual mirrors. Fiery debates between players reveal polarised responses to playful uses of virtual mirrors. We use a body of discussions from VRChat Reddit community to look into such discourses, practices and positions. Due to the rhetorics adopted we chose to contextualise our findings within Internet Culture, highlighting how the novelty of the medium explodes some of the contradictions of this media ideology and challenging and reshaping online identity.

ABSTRACT. The aim of the current study was to study and understand changes in digital gaming in response to the early COVID-19 pandemic and the related restrictions. A sample of 146 gamers from the US, Europe, and India participated in an online survey probing their gaming both quantitatively and qualitatively during the period of two months preceding any COVID-19 restrictions and during the first months of coronavirus restrictions. An increase in weekly gaming times was reported during the pandemic in overall gaming, online gaming, co-located gaming, gaming alone, and gaming on computers, consoles, and mobiles. The genres played significantly more included (action) adventures, role-playing games (RPGs), shooters, and puzzle/board/card/tabletop games. Qualitatively, the results suggested that much of the increased gaming during the pandemic was related to different forms of healthy escapism, for example, managing boredom and loneliness, coping from stress, seeking mental distraction, and fulfilling the need for social connectedness.

ABSTRACT. This paper tries to examine the status of the Czech female game journalists stating that their experience combines stereotypes and issues concerning both female players and female members of the game industry.

ABSTRACT. This paper aims to extend the auteur theory—usually dominated by male gaming developers—by including female commercial game designers, usually omitted from the authorial discourse until the #GamerGate controversy. Using Espen Aarseth’s criteria for making a game auteur and Astrid Ensslin’s functional ludostylistics, the author examines selected works by Muriel Tramis. The results allow for distinguishing four characteristic features of Tramis’s games. These are criticism of racism and colonialism, subversion of pornography, sophisticated puzzles, and authorial signatures. Furthermore, the research results allow strengthening the female developers’ position in the game field.

ABSTRACT. This paper presents findings and observations collected while researching the nascent labour union Game Workers Unite UK (GWU UK). GWU UK was officially founded in January 2019 and is the first official national branch of the global group Game Workers Unite. GWU UK presents itself as ‘a worker-led, democratic organisation that represents and advocates for UK game workers' rights’ (GWU UK 2019). The investigator has participated at the regional meetings of the union in the London area in 2018 and 2019, and engaged with 5 key members of the board throughout the same period by carrying a series of unstructured interviews. The paper argues that one of the major novelties of the organization consists in the techniques provided to guarantee the opacity of the worker’s identity, from the moment they join the union and during negotiations with employers.

ABSTRACT. Video game voice acting does not rank among the core roles of video game production, yet actors in leading roles sometimes achieve wide recognition despite their contingent employment. In this paper, we explore the role of voice actors in the video game culture using the specific case of the recasting of the video game series Life Is Strange, which was caused by the 2016 to 2017 SAG-AFTRA strike against video game companies. Our qualitative empirical analysis of journalistic coverage (including interviews with voice actors), promotional materials, press releases, and player discussions reconstructs the events of the game’s production and investigates the reception of the recasting with regard to actor-character identification and to labor conditions of voice actors. We find that voice actors, whose status is partly dependent on the popularity of their characters, attempt to rise “above the line” by engaging in relational labor.

ABSTRACT. This extended abstract elaborates on Magical Mirrors and I - a mirror-based learning and gaming medium. It aims at propagating a sense of self-awareness in toddlers and preschoolers through digital "laughing mirrors". The extended abstract covers an introduction that establishes the possibilities that mirrors hold in enhancing player engagement and experience and bridges it with child play and learning. Following this is an elaboration on Magical Mirrors and I and how this medium helps in achieving an engaging learning experience for the aimed stakeholder group. To test the effectiveness of the game with preschoolers and toddlers, a user evaluation has also been elaborated upon. The paper is concluded with insights and discussion on mirrors as an interactive gaming modality for children.

ABSTRACT. This extended abstract proposes a preliminary study designed around a web-based geographic discovery game called GeoGuessr (Wallen et. al., 2013). The study aims to highlight the ways in which meaning emerges through and as a part of a player’s entangled intra-relating (Barad, 2007) towards worlds they inhabit. Intra-active gameplay is of significance as it allows for the development of a mutually constitutive relationship with worlds explored as opposed to isolated binary coproductions (Singha, 2021) between player/game.

ABSTRACT. Escape from the Castle is a digital escape game designed for a financial museum. The game is designed with puzzles, each closely linked to a theme of financial education and money saving strategies. Using the game, we conducted a neuroscientific study with 118 students (11-14 aged), invited to the Museum to play the game. We divided them into two groups: a group in collaborative mode and a group in individual mode. In addition, we did a survey and we collected neuroscientific data about pupil dilation by eye-tracking. As a result, the collaborative group scored on average almost double the score of the students who played individually. Furthermore, at each following gaming session with a little different version of the game (ver. 1.2) the score increased, and the game resolution time decreased, demonstrating a higher understanding of the game mechanics and consequently also of the topics covered.

ABSTRACT. Live streaming, in which players broadcast their gameplay to an online audience, is an important area of contemporary video game culture. While all mediums are shaped by expressions of gender and sexuality, the specific affordances of streaming raise important questions about the relationships between sexuality, gender, and gaming technologies. This panel explores four cultural phenomena that stand at these intersections. Johanna Brewer explains how LGBTQ speedrunners produce their own queer and transgender identities through streaming. Amanda Cullen looks at the anti-feminist discourse deployed to discriminate against women streamers. Dan Lark considers video game live streaming as a form of intimate, affective labor that domesticates technologies of broadcast and play. Finally, Bo Ruberg articulates the parallels between live streaming and “camming,” a form of online sex work.

ABSTRACT. The core problem of this paper is that of endings in collective formation/participation. At the intersection of change, collective formation and popular culture, I bring together two media franchises to establish the blueprint of new foundations upon which to conceive collective engagement. In this paper, I argue that Nier: Automata builds on the concept of Stand Alone Complex that characterizes the multimedial entanglements of the Ghost in the Shell franchise to give rise to a new operative logic for collective engagement beyond endings I call Automata Complex. I begin by establishing the concept of Stand Alone Complex. I then spend a moment to consider the work of Hardt and Negri and application to critically discuss videogames. Finally, I turn to Nier: Automata’s multilayered structure of endings to formulate an alternative logic of collective engagement beyond endings I refer to as the Automata Complex.

ABSTRACT. Slapstick comedy is a key part of the Crash Bandicoot franchise. This chapter will explore how slapstick humour is used in the Crash Bandicoot franchise to mitigate and ameliorate the sense of failure that players may feel in avatar death. This argument is developed through a discussion of two games within the franchise: Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy (Vicarious Visions, 2017) and Crash Tag Team Racing (Radical Entertainment, 2005). The discussion of failure in these two games builds on Juul’s (2013) prior work on failure in games, to illustrate the role that humour can play in maintaining players’ interest in cyclical gameplay that is designed to be played in ways which include repetition and failure.

ABSTRACT. The announcement and subsequent silence on the release of Pokémon Sleep, a mobile game utilising the Pokémon Go Plus+ wearable to incorporate the tracking of sleep patterns in gameplay, raises questions about the intensive gamification of daily life. This article highlights this issue within broader discourses at the intersection of sleep technologies and sleep health by locating it within critical datafication literature and popular reception on the Pokémon Sleep hashtag on Twitter.

ABSTRACT. Though casual games, by name, have been subject to theoretical study for more than a decade, this panel points to how casual games are a constantly evolving field, marked by conflicts about status, audiences, and evolving business models. In particular it tackles underexplored types (social casino), new industry labels (hypercasual), controversial business practices (loot boxes) and new ways to categorize such games (gateway drug).

This panel features four short presentations based on the topics above, followed by a shared discussion.

ABSTRACT. Playfulness is a rapidly growing and critical point of study in several fields. Despite widespread interest in the concept, there remain numerous theoretical conflicts about how playfulness is connected to games. The Playful Life Project offers an empirical phenomenological analysis of 114 playful experiences gathered from 75 english-speaking participants from six different continents and 40 different nationalities to address the question of how games are present in playful experiences. By analyzing 52 experiences with playful games, two critical factors emerge: playful relationships and playful motivation. These two factors empirically support and conflict with several theories of playful games and inspire additional questions for future work.

ABSTRACT. The Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) genre of game can integrate with a player’s sense of self, and often reinforces continued play to an extent which leads to a heightened experience of enjoyment and purpose due to certain elements of psychological flow which activate for players during gaming periods. While many MMORPG’s currently exist for consumption by new and long-time players, Final Fantasy XIV Online (FFXIV) currently boasts one of the most well-supported and expanding games offered for players interested in this style of game. Understanding various psychological responses for individuals playing a game of this kind could provide actionable insights for the development of further positive impacts in games pertaining to the use of player personality, gameplay motivations, and flow. Results from this study will add to the ongoing global discussion concerning healthy connection within gameplay and using games as a mechanism for self-reflection and personal development.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we look at how we can inform the design of computational tools for game masters (GMs) of tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) using qualitative interviews. We interview GMs about their process in preparing for and running a beginner TTRPG module, Lost Mine of Phandelver, and present to them a prototype of a computational GM assistant that has some features that GMs might useful, such as consolidating information for easier reference, serving as a brainstorming tool for GMs, and helping GMs keep track of what has happened in the game world. From these interviews, we collected insights into how GMs would run this module and what features could be improved in our digital prototype. We also compare the results of these interviews to online advice for GMing the module. We use these insights to speculate about possible design directions for further development of a GM computational assistant.

ABSTRACT. This panel aims to add to an understanding of varying strategies for expressive game-making and will take a close look at arts-led research approaches. The intent of this is to further map the multiple practices emerging in various contexts of experimental game development. This topic is of interest to game studies more generally as a way to understand what an arts-led approach can contribute to an understanding of this type of game-making.

We bring together practitioners, artists, and researchers in expressive game making to offer a range of approaches that illustrate novel possibilities for research creation through game-making. Game-making, whether approached as art, design, or experiment, invariably generates new knowledge about the technology, methods, techniques and expressive capacity of games more generally. But how is this knowledge identified, transferred, acknowledged, and built upon?

ABSTRACT. This research seeks to explore learning processes when playing digital computer games. More specifically, it seeks to explore if and how established constructivist learning theory may serve as an analytical frame of observing and discussing learning processes. I analyse a series of Twitch streamers’ and YouTubers’ ‘blind playthroughs’ for potential learning processes in their act of playing digital computer games. The theoretical frame for determining what constitutes a learning process is derived from Transformative Learning Theory, which also serves as a frame for understanding the context of the processes. I use the expanded work of Knud Illeris’ comprehensive learning theory, which serves as the basis for analysis. Games Studies literature is incorporated into this frame in order to discuss and further qualify it towards the complex nature of learning and games.

ABSTRACT. People with disabilities are often denied the opportunity to obtain a vocational qualification. There is a lack of an appropriate infrastructure for an inclusive education system and recognized degrees. Therefore, didactic methods for inclusive learning situations are needed. This paper describes the user-centered development and evaluation of a serious game for inclusive vocational training in kitchen professions. The theoretical teaching content in the module “hygiene” is taught to people with and without cognitive impairments using a gamified learning application. The prototype was evaluated with 22 participants when used in an inclusive teaching setting with a mixed-methods design. The learning application caused an increase in motivation and the knowledge quiz achieved good results across all target groups (trainee cooks, trainees as kitchen assistants, employees of the sheltered workshop). The results from questioning, learning quiz, observation, and video analysis form design guidelines for future digital, interactive teaching methods for inclusive vocational education.

ABSTRACT. By highlighting the lack of accessibility in digital space as a whole, and the focus on visual first experiences, we aim to create new, user friendly mechanisms for interaction using research through design for general use.

Exploring alternative methods of sensory interaction in digital space, creating a non-visual, audio-only game, attempting to refine the control mechanisms and mechanical gameplay systems, rather than focusing on story, as previous successful titles may have, in an attempt to increase accessibility in digital space, and games.