ABSTRACT. This panel reports on a funded project which aims to translate Japanese-language theory on Game Studies and publish an edited volume, so scholars and students without Japanese language skills can access the materials. Game Studies as a discipline has recently been criticized for taking an Orientalist approach to Japanese videogames and digital media, applying Western theory to the Asian ‘object’ of study without adequately taking the production context into account or properly giving voice to academics from the country of origin (see critiques by Fickle 2020, Hutchinson 2019, Patterson 2020, Patterson and Fickle 2023). Our overall aim is thus to ameliorate perceived inequalities in the discipline of Game Studies, expanding access to Japanese-language scholarship and bringing Japanese perspectives on games to a wider audience.

ABSTRACT. The postwar children's playground was characterized by geometric abstraction, exemplified by structures such as monkey bars, tunnels, and climbing frames. This concept was promoted by designer Aldo Van Eyck as a counterpoint to the utilitarianism of post-war Europe. For Van Eyck, the abstraction of ludic forms could create a temporary zone for free play and improvisation outside the structured forces that shaped the city. A well-placed blanket could transform a climbing frame into a fort, a mountain, or a spaceship under temporary command (Oudenampsen 2013). In contrast, digital creative sandbox games such as Garry’s Mod (Facepunch Studios 2004) and Roblox (Roblox Corporation 2006) operate with a sense of ludic abstraction that is skinned with postmodern Baroque exuberance, creating a radical contrast to the playgrounds of the past. In these Baroque rubble-scapes, players improvise temporary games and contraptions using assets and fragments from innumerable games and pop culture sources. The rubble of digital sandbox games is ontologically homogenized, where a tree, a Lamborghini, and a refrigerator differ only in the affordances defined in their config file. The rubble is also economically enclosed, representing the paradigm of creativity offered to a new generation, where the toybox of popular culture fragments places both player and platform at perpetual risk of copyright infringement orders. As one of the early pioneers of the genre, Garry's Mod begins where the computer game ends. In the resurrected eeriness of Half-Life 2 (Valve Corporation 2004) game objects are scattered like discarded toys, remnants of various computer games that once structured them within a set of clear objectives, level structures, and narrative relationships. The rubble is ontologically homogenised, where a tree, a Lamborghini, and a refrigerator differ only in the affordances defined in their config file. The rubble is also economically enclosed, representing the paradigm of creativity offered to a new generation, where the toybox of popular culture fragments places both player and platform at perpetual risk of game over via copyright infringement orders (Hayes 2008). This panel analogizes digital creative sandbox games to playgrounds to examine how their shift in aesthetics, material context, and structure reveal critical contrasts and counterpoints. Where Van Eyck leveraged the propulsive value of play via abstraction, the digital sandbox confronts the player with aesthetic maximalism, and it is up to the player to find a new sense and logic from the rubble. The five speakers of this panel will examine the generative intellectual and cultural function of the digital sandbox game as an iterative form of sense-making out of what might otherwise be dismissed as a feedback loop of Jamesonian postmodern pastiche. Peter Nelson will examine how the ludic rubble of the digital creative sandbox game transcends the apocalyptic feedback loop of postmodernism, and how the aesthetic, ludic, and sociological structures of the digital playground exert pressure in the world outside the playground. Emma Fraser will examine the design interface of the Roblox Universe and the Roblox Studio as a sandbox entirely defined by the play of active users. Roblox has become a common playground-like space for children aged 9-12 (their key demographic), with almost 70% of their users under 16. In games like Adopt Me or Shark Bite, children roleplay family dynamics or follow the rules of an imaginative game in much the same way that they do in the open space of a regular playground. Fraser will examine the pastiche-style obstacle course of the ‘obby’ genre, designed by players for players, and look for insights into ludic rubble as a means to intercept an active yet fragmentary form of play, which is made sense of through a range of media, cultural practices, and discourses beyond the ‘obby’ itself. Following Fraser, who argues that games are paintings that you can walk into, Clancy Wilmott will examine the aesthetic production of shareable gardens in the post-apocalyptic rubble playground of Cloud Gardens (Noio 2021). Wilmott argues that Cloud Gardens constitutes a post-human remediation of the romantic garden idyll tradition (c.f. Capability Brown) in which the post-industrial is rebuilt into the bucolic. The scenic and picturesque aspects of the game become ever more apparent with the included functions for capturing and downloading three-dimensional GIF “dioramas” to share with friends - in which fragments become frames and follies. Sybille Lammes will then form an analogy between the physical playground and digital creative sandbox games, by first looking into what physical playgrounds are and have become and how much space they leave for rubble. Although (Western) playgrounds have become increasingly utilitarian and ordered since the turn of the 19th century, in the offline world a tension remains between the freedom to play and playground curation. While the first implies space for failure, risk, mess, and rubble, the latter advocates for safe and ordered play. Curated playgrounds emerged as part of modern disciplinary societies (Foucault 2012) and are imbued with notions of education and leisure as integral parts of mechanized, industrialized societies (Adorno and Horkheimer in 1979, 137, Hjorth and Lammes 2023 fc.). Yet outside these curated playgrounds, analog play-grounding has always unfolded in makeshift and impromptu ways that can be less demarcated and more uneven, messy, and tricky (such as raves, night-play, and hut building on construction sites). Lammes will compare digital sandbox games with these physical makeshift playgrounds in terms of what affordances they have to stay with the trouble (Haraway 2016). Finally, Daniel Vella will examine the distinction between the playground and the sandbox as a means to unpack the relationship between the malleability of a playspace and the notion of time, memory, and habitation that this engenders. Specifically, concerning philosophical perspectives on contemporary understandings of time and space (Han 2017; Campagna 2018), he will consider how the mutability of the virtual sandbox of games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons indexes our contemporary attempt to collapse time and space through the unfixed, fluid ontology of the virtual that allows for rapid shifts between multiple possibilities disconnected from historicizing chains of causality.

ABSTRACT. Panel Proposal

Within the past year, the global games industry has faced intense challenges, including decreased growth from pandemic-era highs and overall economic uncertainty. These difficulties have driven companies to restructure and lay off significant numbers of employees (over 6400 as of October 2023; Fragen, 2023; Noor, 2023) and to pioneer new, often controversial payment structures (Carpenter, 2023). Simultaneously, aggrieved employees have increasingly participated in strikes and labor movements, especially over key issues such as wage stagnation, crediting, and the use and governance of generative artificial intelligence in game development (SAG-AFTRA, 2023). In the face of these many upheavals, this panel brings together a global group of game production scholars to discuss how recent events emerge from long-standing industry practices and beliefs, as well as how significant changes are required for the games industry (or more accurately, industries; Keogh, 2023) to build and promote sustainable futures.

ABSTRACT. In Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory with a distinctive perspective on gaming, extensive research has examined the cognitive effects of video games on users (Ortiz-Ortiz, 2018; Rivas-Vélez, 2012). Studies have also looked at how players relate to the avatars they use in games (Ruberté-Maldonado, 2018) and the role of video games in English language learning (Vélez-Agosto & Rivas-Velez, 2015). Research has explored cultural practices in the adult gaming community (Rodríguez-Ramos, 2016) and delved into the experiences of Puerto Rican women gamers (Rivera-Martínez & Ramos-Colon 2022), the Gaymers community (Ruberté-Maldonado, 2020), and the activities of streamers and esports enthusiasts (García, 2022). This presentation will provide a comprehensive overview of video game research in Puerto Rico, from early 21st-century studies to recent research in psychology, neuroscience, sociology, humanities, and communications. It aims to shed light on how video games influence various aspects of Puerto Rican life, reflecting a broad spectrum of topics and insights.

ABSTRACT. The aim of the paper is to employ trifold intentionality theory proposed by Umberto Eco (Eco 1992) combined with Stuart Hall’s encoding-decoding model (Hall 1973, see also Shaw 2017) to scrutinize methods of embedding Polish national culture tropes in digital game material, and ways players with Polish valence (Kłoskowska 1996, see below) identify them and explain their meaning to non-Polish players. The analysis will be based on four games based on books by Henryk Sienkiewicz, Polish novelist and 1095 Nobel Prize in Literature winner: "The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone" (CD Project Red 2015), "Hellish Quart" (Kubold 2022), "Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword" (TaleWorld Entertainment 211) and "Fire And Sword: Spiders", a mini-game inside Observer (Bloober Team 2017).

ABSTRACT. Digital historical games, in their dual role as game and as history, serve as a source for shaping the historical understanding and consciousness of millions. This paper analyzes the diegetic complexity found within the historical title Crusader Kings III and situates it within a wider assemblage of historical play, bridging the gap between close readings of comparable titles and the increasing focus on the complex interactions between games, platforms, and the communities involved. It explores how the genre lineage of Crusader Kings supplies a pair of overlapping diegetic perspectives, each rooted in their own ideological framing, that provide a complex and multifaceted playground for historically-aware engagement, revision, and refutation of medieval historicity itself. The analytical approach applied here has implications not just for public history, but for the wider study of history, digital cultures, and the multimodal gameplay enabled by complex affordances.

ABSTRACT. Extended Abstract - In October 2019, Chile witnessed a massive movement of citizen and working-class protests that unfolded in the streets, media, and social networks to denounce inequalities, life precariousness, exploitation, exclusion, and discrimination against women and indigenous peoples, low wages, and, in general, the negative effects of the neoliberal development model. During these mobilizations, three video games referencing street protests and citizens' demands were developed and circulated: Negromatapacos (Nemoris Games 2019), Primera Línea (IISE EIRL 2019), and Nanopesos (Gormaz 2019). From a cultural studies perspective, the goal of this study is to analyze how the discourse of these video games represented social protest and the demands of mobilized citizens.

ABSTRACT. An extended abstract that deals with the implication of a particular kind of violence towards Latinx communities that is foundational to the construction of the game Cyberpunk 2077 and to aesthetic of the cyberpunk genre at large.

ABSTRACT. Scholars have offered various theoretical accounts to explain the use of video games as a form of stress relief, which has been extensively documented and observed on a variety of occasions.

These theories have typically shared a foundation in the influential coping-as-process concept advanced by Lazarus and Folkman, which posits stress as a regulatory system that motivates the organism to address imbalances between resource demand and availability, as perceived through a two-step appraisal process. Coping, within this framework, can either be problem-focused or emotion-focused.

The latter form of coping has connections to Mood Management Theory , which suggests that individuals select media experiences in part to alleviate "noxious mood states" rather than in pursuit of purely hedonic pleasure . Like coping, selective exposure is thus accounted for in MMT through a regulatory framework. A complementary approach can be found in the Recovery and Resilience in Entertaining Media Use Model, which accounts not only for short-term recovery through the provision of experiences of psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, and control but also for the long-term development of psychological resilience through exposure to media content.

While each of these theoretical approaches yields some insight into the emotional effects of play, this is only half of the process involved when individuals use games to cope with stressful life circumstances. With the exception of some small-scale mental health interventions, players are typically not directed toward gaming experiences that will fulfill particular emotional needs. Instead, they are faced with a dizzying array of options, with tens of thousands of titles on distribution platforms such as Steam, PlayStation Network, and Xbox Live. Let loose in a near-infinite virtual playground, players locate, select, and acquire game content based on their understanding of their needs, preferences, and resources. Unfortunately, these processes—selective exposure and emotional self-regulation—have rarely been studied together in the context of games and rarely from an emic perspective that prioritizes players' internal narratives and modes of understanding over the imposition of predefined academic taxonomies.

Following MMT, selective exposure to game content in times of stress or negative mood is presumed to be a motivated process. Part of this process necessarily involves the self-appraisal of the individual, both in terms of their situation and emotional state. Moreover, this process involves an appraisal of media content preceding any exposure. This element of the coping process also ties into the motivational orientation of players, given that individuals are informed predictions about particular affordances of a piece of game content when they choose to play it.

An example of this thought process might be as follows: A college student is experiencing stress around an upcoming exam. They know that the exam will be challenging and do not feel sufficiently prepared. In addition to the physiological components of stress, they experience ego depletion, perceiving themselves as incompetent and not in control of their circumstances. Consciously or subconsciously recognizing this deficiency, the student seeks a gaming experience that will give them a sense of mastery. Drawing on past experiences, they assess that they are most likely to achieve this by playing a game with exploration, puzzle solving, platforming, and challenging combat elements. Correlating these requirements with expectations formed through exposure to paratext, they decide to purchase and play Hollow Knight in search of a play experience that will support their emotional needs in this situational context.

Therefore, a series of interviews has been undertaken to explore the emic perception of game-based coping as a motivated process.

These interviews are being conducted with a purposive sample of individuals who play video games regularly—but who may or may not self-identify as "gamers" —and who are, or have recently experienced stressful life circumstances. While the study is not yet complete, the target sample size is between 20 and 30 interviewees, based on established trends and best practices in qualitative methodology for grounded theory studies in cognate fields such as health, public policy, and information systems research.

The semi-structured interviews focus on respondents' emotional state before and after play sessions, their motivational orientation towards gameplay experiences, their emotional needs, and their perception and appraisal of game content.

Interviews typically last between 30 and 60 minutes and are recorded—either with a voice recorder when conducted in person or using the record functionality of the videoconference software used to conduct the interview remotely—and subsequently transcribed. Transcripts are subsequently analyzed through thematic coding, taking a grounded theory approach , and coding responses inductively based on emergent categories.

This ongoing research program of targeted user interviews offers a window into the cognitive processes that underlie player behavior when evaluating and engaging with game content under conditions of stress—a critical component to understanding how video games are used in practice to support coping, emotional regulation, recovery, and psychological resilience. In addition to guiding the refinement of the R2EM theoretical model, which is still in development, the results of this study will have more general implications for media psychologists, games scholars, and industry professionals interested in promoting players' emotional well-being.

ABSTRACT. This study introduces a taxonomy for categorizing participants based on Self-determination theory in Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). The taxonomy emerges from a meticulous analysis of player motivations and behaviors within a self-designed ARG project. By scrutinizing game website logs, chat group interactions, and employing a player motivation questionnaire, this mixed-method exploration sheds light on player behaviors and motivations, based on dimensions of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Through this inquiry, major player typologies within ARGs are revealed, as well as motivational drivers. This research contributes to a nuanced comprehension of the unique realm of ARGs, offering insights valuable to both designers and scholars. By enhancing our understanding of ARG dynamics, this study provides a foundational resource for future design endeavors and scholarly pursuits in the realm of alternate reality gaming.

ABSTRACT. This extended abstract investigates how the rules of the game are negotiated in favour of the dominant player. We expand our definition of gamesplaining and rule lawyering from the perspective of the dominant player by reflecting on how they interpret and manage the game rules, social rules, and gaming rules of a gaming episode. We draw on the work of Dashiell (2020) and use Hughes’s typology of rules (1995) to discuss how the interfering player moulds the game to their own interpretations and expectations. We are concerned with the study of how we play because it reveals how dominant players determine what happens at the game table and how behaviours of gamesplaining and rule lawyering shape the way we play together.

ABSTRACT. This paper reports on a pilot project which brought together educators, researchers, media literacy advocates, and students for a series of workshops in Brazil exploring how analogue games - board games, card games, and RPGs - can be deployed for media literacy education. Outcomes offered specific insights into what games can add to processes and practices of discussion around complex issues like fake news, the value of articulating existing expertise in new forms, and how ideas from academia, and specifically Game Studies, around applied research and impact can be aligned effectively with the objectives of international development initiatives. This paper will be of interest to researchers focusing on serious games, games in education outside universities, and media literacy of all kinds, including games literacy.

ABSTRACT. The recent history of digital newsgames has been relatively well-documented through academic literature (Bogost, 2020) across a variety of lenses (Gómez-García and de la Hera Conde-Pumpido, 2023). From this and earlier literature newsgames are unique not only for their focus on the contemporary, but also for their ephemeral nature (Sicart, 2009). Much of this is a product not only of relatively small budgets, but also of the perceived disposability of such games. Newsgames, it seems, are produced in much the way that older print news was - with an eye on low-cost production and assumed expiration over propensity for archiving and longevity. Digital newsgame materiality, if it can be called such, is much like newsprint, designed for scale and quick dissemination over archival qualities. This of course complicates game studies in the domain. Using a data set of 101 newsgames maintained by the research team as an archive of such designs, this work reflects on the generalizable observations from maintaining the collection. The collection offers a unique snapshot of newsgames, across categories as diverse as politics (27%), business (13%), war (9%), science (8%), sports (5%) and others. Notably for archiving, only 27% have been identified as allowing contemporary, public play as of 2023. With a mean age of only 7 years old, or an average release year of 2016, the evident rate of lost access to these games is suboptimal. While perhaps not surprising for all digital games, the relationship of this group to both the longstanding news industries and academic institutions one might expect better archiving rates. In some cases, such games are no longer available to play within a year of their release (Junior and Brooks, 2020) . Drawing from a three-year project to archive newsgames to support future designers, developers and game researchers, this work aims to help provide context and analysis on the lesson learned in such work. It iterates on prior work aiming to archive newsgames (James, 2017) and document their evolution (Grace and Huang, 2020). While archiving remains a challenge across all digital media, and particularly in digital games, this research highlights observations and opportunities related to archiving newsgames. Newsgames offer a unique case study in their presumed ephemeral value, their often-wide dissemination, typically short play experiences and retrospective value. This research examines each of these characteristics to offer insight into a plausible future for archiving games. To further understand the nature of archiving newsgames, the work provides several case studies in outliers that are rarely or never discussed in the academic literature on the topic. This includes games like Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill (Realtime Associates, 2018) and the New York Times Think Military Strike Could Stop North Korea? Try It and See (2018). Both experiences lack a single reference in the academic literature despite being early ventures into newsgames. However, Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill is well documented in fan spaces and crowdsource spaces, while lacking academic acknowledgement. The New York Times playful interactive was covered by news sources, but not in peer-reviewed publications which aim to list influential newsgames. Such omissions in the academic record demonstrate a gap between what game studies researchers are examining and what is commonly available. By examining such games and adopting some new research approaches, this work aims to highlight the selection biases relevant in newsgames research that might also help reveal such bias in other domains. We found that such biases roughly orbit common demographic and technographic groups. It is more common, for example, for English language and Spanish language newsgames to appear in academic literature than other languages. This language bias could be the result of English Language focused academic publications, the languages of the people earliest to identify, teach and implement newsgames, the product of algorithmic preferences for content, the researchers own limited perspective or other issues. Similarly, we noted affordability, availability and distribution scale as likely blind spots in the news games literature and potential other games analysis. In short, if a game is free to play, available through a common technology (e.g., playable on the web) and widely disseminated (e.g., not the product of a small game jam) it was far more likely to be documented and documented frequently. Simply put games that were not free or low cost, games that were not widely available on contemporary platforms when the research was confused, or that were distributed in limited geographic and technographics communities (e.g., widely to their local community, but not widely to a global community) were more likely missing from the record of news games history. As a Nintendo Entertainment System ROM, Socks the Cat, for example does not have many of these traits. Arizona Justice, a game focused on the regional politics of the United States’ 14th most populous state, may have suffered from similar reasons of omission as it was initially released as Windows executable and later as a HTML 5 web game. Identifying these attributes is particularly important as researchers undertake socio-political analysis on newsgames in domains on regional politics. This work is not meant as a critique of prior research, but instead offers an opportunity to interpret historical understanding of games from these considerations and reflecting on the second such archive maintained by this research team. The work argues for the value of archiving such work to prevent loss of history, design precedents and lessons learned. In its simplest, the researchers observe that any archive, included community reporting (e.g., wiki documents) , automated archiving (e.g., archive.org), clearinghouses (e.g., play.google.com, newgorunds.com ), well-played documentation, playthroughs, and development diaries help provide a wider perspective on this game type. It also highlights the need for retro-adaptive software tools, like Ruffle which makes Flash games playable over the web. Such solutions make legacy software experiences available to future players and ease the experience of primary source archiving and research possible without maintaining legacy hardware and software. In archiving communities this is of course ripe for debate, as emulation is not always as accurate as original content. It is assumed that researchers and practitioners in domains like newsgames, social impact games, and art games, will benefit from these observations and reflections particularly given that much of the work responds to specific moments in history and is often similarly ephemeral.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the shifting state of gaming media with the goal of highlighting the increased tensions and precarity faced by workers in the field. Drawing on nearly a dozen interviews conducted with independent gaming media creators as part of an ongoing analysis of gaming podcasts, the paper proposes that the current issues the industry faces are representative of a similar shift in focus to the one undergone with the advent of the internet; where games media became the domain of online websites rather than gaming magazines. In this case, gaming media seems to be shifting focus from existing online institutions to prioritizing the work of smaller independent creators and outlets with a focus on personalities in their content. To explain this change, I will draw on Silvio Larusso's idea of the entreprecariat, arguing that it is the increasingly uncertain and unsustainable work conditions workers in the field face which leads them to attempt independence, as the decline in work conditions makes the potential issues with independence seem more appealing than their alternative. By doing so I will highlight the importance of continued analysis of alternative gaming media sources such as streaming or podcasting in a context alongside - and not disconnected from - these more traditional gaming media sources. It is only by analyzing them together can we hope to gain a complete understanding of the current state of the industry.

ABSTRACT. This extended abstract explores how the digital and physical playgrounds remediate each other. Is it possible for a digital playground to translate into the physical playground? In asking this question, the paper will explore the history of playgrounds, the changes in the concept and the effect of such a translation.

ABSTRACT. Alenda Chang argues all forms of mass media transmit "tacit ecological lessons”, but games and their interactivity can transform “abstract information and otherwise distant threats of ecological calamity” into “operable form”. One way they do this is by placing players in control of nonhuman characters, forcing us to embody and actively navigate an environment through their perspectives. David OReilly’s Everything, a simulative game, intensifies this, allowing players to traverse a procedurally generated universe through the perspectives of literally everything that exists in the game. In my paper, I carry out an ecocritical analysis of Everything, focusing on its narrative, mechanical, and visual rhetoric, to evaluate how it might confer a sense of who we are as an interconnected ecological entity. I employ methods from literary criticism and game studies to interrogate how the game evokes and navigates the dualities of simulation & realism, anthropocentrism & agency, and anthropomorphism & ecopedagogy.

ABSTRACT. The paper offers a sustained close reading of three pieces of interactive fiction/political simulation games (the digital games Hidden Agenda (1988) and Suzerain (2020) and one gamebook, NERnia krónikái (2023)) about the negotiations of the political landscape following the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Reading it through the lens of Foucault's concept of governmentality, I analyse choice structures, investigating how the fragile political situation present in the games offer the players the opportunity to perform state capture through schmoozing with people and make decisions consistent with the "illiberal playbook" (Pirro and Stanley 2022) by forging, bending and breaking democratic policies in the pursuit of autocratic power.

ABSTRACT. This essay explores how Pentiment employs research achievements in microhistory and game design to create an authentic portrayal of daily life in sixteenth-century central Europe, providing players with an immersive experience. The analysis covers an examination of historical research and game theories relevant to the game, highlighting three key aspects through which Pentiment effectively portrays the complexities of individuals’ lives: the nuanced dialogues and fonts assigned to characters, the diverse cuisine options that reflect social status, and the depiction of unpredictable living conditions. In the context of this theory, the essay argues that historical games have the potential to evoke players’ emotional responses. Moreover, this study aims to propose a design framework for the worldwide DiGRA readership. This framework promotes the utilisation of microhistory to enhance historical game design and research.

ABSTRACT. 1964 was a pivotal year for game studies or it might have been. Deep in the heart of post-war working-class East London, a group of avant-guard artists, activists and scholars led by the theatre-maker Joan Littlewood had conceived of a massive project to build what they called The Fun Palace. Designed by Cedric Price, the Fun Palace was to be the ultimate playground; a giant community learning centre/entertainment complex encouraging the self-determination of leisure and education by the working class in the face of increasingly corporatized spaces of leisure and consumption (perhaps best represented by Disney). The Fun Palace epitomized 1960’s ideals about play, creativity and critical consciousness.

An early promotional pamphlet penned by Littlewood reads, “Choose what you want to do – or watch someone else doing it. Learn how to handle tools, paint, babies, machinery, or just listen to your favourite tune. Dance, talk or be lifted up to where you can see how other people make things work. Sit out over space with a drink and tune in to what is happening elsewhere in the city. Try starting a riot or beginning a painting – or just lie back and stare at the sky.” (Littlewood and Price 1964)

While the project was never realized as intended. Price’s sketches and drawings have become the stuff of architectural legend. Already seen as an iconoclastic architect, Price emphasized the open, adaptive temporariness of the space (Matthews 2006) and cybernetics pioneer Gordon Pask joined the team to help design elements of what has since become one of the first examples of cybernetic architecture (Haque 2007). While many of the architectural ideas have lived on in structures such as the Pompidou Centre (which was based on Price’s sketches) as well as early cybernetic arts (including Nicolas Negroponte’s work which became the basis of the MIT Media Lab), these legacies have been denuded of Littlewood’s performative socialist utopian politics (Bonet-Miro 2021).

So much that matters to game studies appears at this flashpoint in 1964 which is the year that the project reached its zenith before breaking into smaller subprojects with far less visibility. What work is the rubric of play doing for Littlewood, Price and Pask? How is play articulated as simultaneously agential, spatial, technical, and political? How does play become intertwined with technology in this project? These are some of the questions driving our project which is simultaneously historical, theoretical, and ludic. We want to go back to this moment in the 1960s to think critically about human-machine interaction in the context of leisure that the modern video games industry was born from. Play in/with the Fun Palace was essentially about social play with technology (Pickering 2010).

Methodologically we decided to go at this in a way that only game studies scholars would dream of. We decided to try and build the unrealized Fun Palace in modded Minecraft. Using our methodology of allegorical play (citation omitted for review) we constructed a project in three phases. The first involved research in the Cedric Price archive at the Canadian Centre for Architecture and a detailed study of the historical development of the fun palace project in the context of transformations in post-war leisure culture in London. In the second phase, we created a Java 1.18.2 modded Minecraft map of Mill Meads, East London and created an interpretation of the Fun Palace structure to scale using the archival sketches. Finally, we designed and hosted a 64-day public survival multiplayer (SMP) server featuring a custom modpack and bespoke mods in which players would “finish” the Fun Palace by building interpretations of the activities alluded to in the archive. Crucially, all this was done in survival mode as a live game. The point was to play Minecraft in/with the Fun Palace not to simply reproduce the architecture.

Over the course of the project then we learn something about the Fun Palace, something about Minecraft, and something about play and politics in game studies. This paper will unfold those lessons using examples from the project in each of the three phases. In the process we will introduce the Fun Palace to the game studies community and suggest pathways for further research in the cultural historical contexts of play.

Our conclusion is that since the Fun Palace has been relegated to the domain of speculative architecture it is only through its active, material, and indeed, allegorical enactment that we can begin to grasp the potentials and the pitfalls of the radical politics that informed the project in the 60’s. Moreover, since Minecraft itself bears the trace of the Fun Palace we may see what, if any, aspects of avant-guard socialist utopian design might be useful in our contemporary moment.

REFERENCES Bonet-Miro, Ana. 2021. Architecture, Media and Archives: the Fun Palace of Joan Littlewood and Cedric Price as a Cultural Project. Doctoral dissertation, University of Edinburgh. Haque, Usman. 2007. The Architectural Relevance of Gordon Pask. Architectural Design 77, 4: 54–61. Littlewood, Joan and Price, Cedric. 1964. ‘Draft Section for the Fun Palace Promotional Brochure’, DR:1995:0188:525:001:004, Cedric Price Archive, CCA Mathews, Stanley. 2006. The Fun Palace as virtual architecture. Journal of Architectural Education 59, 3: 39–48. Pickering, Andrew. 2010. The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future. University of Chicago Press.

ABSTRACT. To fill in the research gap on how the memory dynamics translate and transmit in video game localization, within a representative Chinese realist game framework based on Chinese Parents (2018), we ask two questions: (1) How do video games carry memories; (2) How do these memories impact the recipient through language conversions by game localization? This study aims to elucidate the interconnection of transcultural memory and game localization, thereby shedding new insights into this novel and underexplored domain.

ABSTRACT. In this I paper I draw on the tradition of ‘symptomatic reading’ outlined by Louis Althusser (2020) and later developed by Fredric Jameson in the notion of a text’s ‘political unconscious’ (2002). ‘Symptomatic reading’ is Althusser’s definition of his own reading of Marx where the interpretive reading ‘divulges the undivulged event in the text it reads, and in the same movement relates it to a different text, present as a necessary absence in the first’ (2016:8). For Jameson (2002), ‘the political unconscious’ entails the symptoms either latent or manifest in a given ‘text’ and their significance for a reading with a particular intention behind it. On this basis, I posit that games possess narrativity (Aarseth, 2012) in the sense that ludic works conform or otherwise engage with literariness albeit in game form. Foley (2019:90-91) provides a list of frequently invoked criteria for what constitutes literariness, in this case treated as synonymous to narrativity, including: fictionality; depth; showing, not telling; universality; extension of experience; exploration of the inner self; etc. In such a framework, I propose the notion of the ludic unconscious, in which both gameplay mechanics and narrative sensibilities converge. From this position, I propose a symptomatic reading of videogames that seeks to divulge the abovementioned ‘undivulged event.’ Moreover, games tend to offer a specifically action-based (Galloway, 2006) fictional representation of the world, which offers an intriguing challenge to the Althusserian definition of ideology as ‘an imaginary relation of individuals to their real conditions of existence’ (2020:36). This approach seeks to build on existing work on the study of video games’ ideological aspect (Keever, 2022). To do this, I propose the examination of a specific game series—Watch Dogs. It is one of the most successful game series developed by Ubisoft, a leading video game company with a net worth of over $3 billion. Despite Ubisoft’s claims that its video games are purely fictional and not political (Webster, 2019), hacking, vigilantism and corporations are the key elements of the Watch Dogs series. Its latest installation – Watch Dogs: Legion (2020) – is set in post-Brexit near-future London. In this context, the claims of making ‘mature’ rather than political games ring hollow. Current work on the Watch Dogs series is currently limited and an in-depth engagement with its politics appears to be missing. This paper aims to fill that gap by exploring the ways in which the digitization of everyday life is rendered ubiquitous in the series and its political dimensions. This analysis will be conducted with continued reference to the centrality ‘undivulged events’ of everyday life as making up the game’s political, that is to say, ludic unconscious. My approach is threefold: first, I will explore the position of the Watch Dogs games in the military-industrial complex and its surveillance apparatus; second, I will examine Watch Dogs’ representation of political and social issues such as race and crime control; third and finally, I will inspect the general themes of ‘realistic’ dystopia and resistance. With regards to the game’s ties to the military, I seek to engage with Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter who have aptly pointed out that the medium of video games ‘is increasingly revealing itself as a school for labor, an instrument of rulership, and a laboratory for the fantasies of advanced techno-capital’ (2009: xix). Video games are widely considered ‘an active medium’ (Galloway, 2006: 83) that involves a player’s physical input and invites multisensory experience. However, solely focusing on a perspective that sees ‘the primary phenomenological reality of games [as] that of action’ (Galloway, 2006: 83) is likely to be limited in its ability to engage with political reality, since ‘political reflection [tends to be] eclipsed by high-intensity action’ (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, 2009: 194). This is especially significant in the Watch Dogs series as the player is both afforded and made to participate in the deployment of and resistance to a variety of surveillance apparatuses. As it has been pointed out (Whitson and Simon, 2014), the game series illustrates well the known position that the USA’s National Security Agency has on the use of video games—they can be both a tool for and a threat to national security. As such, the game is an apt example for the application of the notion of the ludic unconscious, thereby understanding how the ideological and political dimensions of the game manifest in both narrative and ludic ways.

ABSTRACT. This extended abstract presents the research inquiries and methodology of an ongoing research project dedicated to the concept of videogame noise. First, it contextualizes the theoretical disparity existing between game studies and fields of the humanities in relation to the study of noise. Subsequently, it elaborates on the media archaeological method utilized to mitigate this disparity and develop the essential analytical tools and body of work required for the elaboration of a noise-centric theoretical framework.

ABSTRACT. This paper reports work addressing the research question “could a Bechdel-like test be an indication of how women are represented in video games?” through developing such a test for video games: the Indicative Representation of Women In Games (IRWiG) test. We describe its development process: a multidisciplinary approach combining a literature review with the development and application of ontologies representing the constructional elements of games that relate to portrayal of women. The IRWiG test was evaluated through a public evaluation survey and an internally-conducted games analysis. The test proposes four criteria for analysing a female character: her character development, appearance, abilities and relevant stereotypes, and the skippability of content in which she is active. An overall agreement rate of 74% was found between between users' opinions of how a woman is represented in a game, and the application of the IRWiG test.

ABSTRACT. INTRODUCTION

Even as they become ubiquitous in everyday life, virtual meeting (VM) platforms (e.g., Zoom, Microsoft Teams) are fraught with user complaints ranging from technical issues like lagging video to “Zoom Fatigue” from long periods on camera (Bailenson 2021). By rushing to scale software distribution after COVID-19 lockdowns, providers fixated on design norms favoring efficiency and formality, even though online encounters may require casual or playful design strategies. Therefore, this work-in-progress focuses on developing a VM social meeting platform built upon values-based game design principles to create a more equitable online “playground” that represents a wider variety of user needs.

LITERATURE REVIEW

A growing body of work highlights how contemporary videoconferencing software takes a mental and social toll on users. While these platforms provide flexibility and efficiency (Lindeblad et al. 2016), users experience exhaustion, reduced collective intelligence (Tomprou et al. 2021), diminished productivity (Okabe-Miyamoto et al. 2021), and gender inequity (George et al. 2022). Many reactions stem from specific features—i.e., maneuvering cameras, incorporating a “self-view” into interfaces, and backchanneling in chats (Wiederhold 2020)—that induce Zoom fatigue and are exacerbated by designers disregarding gender or racial bias concerns (Ma et al. 2022). Although only one of many factors (e.g., Lee et al. 2022), design choices result in the least powerful enduring increased stress and loneliness (Shockley et al. 2021).

Such problems relate to software expectations; Bergmann et al. (2023) suggest that videoconferencing fatigue stems from designers’ assumptions about how users balance work tasks and socializing. However, contemporary use has led to demands for “worker-centered” platforms recognizing imbalances in design (Zhang et al. 2022) and integration of playful features (like user-created reaction icons) to promote equitable communication (Cho et al. 2021). Collectively, research calls for the reassessment of VM applications to facilitate a wider variety of synchronous meeting activities and stakeholders.

Games as Virtual Meetings

Games and virtual worlds satisfy the need for more holistic modes of VM designs. Massive Multiplayer Online Games like World of Warcraft and environments like Second Life have long been used for various meetings—with scholarship noting the casual, social, and other ways by which players build affinity through distinct features such as avatars, common activities (e.g., Davis and Boellstorff 2016), and the exchange of goods. They also became sites for more workplace interaction during pandemic quarantines, as covered in the popular press (Foxman 2022) and advocated for by academics (Kleiman et al. 2020). Furthermore, social gaming components like avatars and virtual objects engender higher levels of reciprocity and trust (Torro and Pirkkalainen 2023). Games and principles associated with them may provide vital lessons to reconfigure the features related to VM dissatisfaction, leading to the following questions:

RQ1: How can play/game features be effectively integrated into virtual meetings?

RQ2: How can play/game features address underrepresented values in virtual meetings?

METHODS AND FUTURE WORK

To answer these questions, we are developing a working VM prototype that incorporates explicitly playful features into its design and seeks to remedy gaps in equity and accessibility. The platform is currently constructed using the Unity game engine and built into the social VR/gaming platform VRChat, which offers a useful ecosystem for playful interaction (Torro and Pirkkalainen 2023). It also allows for a multimodal experience, enabling users to interact via computer and HMDs alike.

To do this, we take a values-based design approach (e.g., Flanagan and Nissenbaum 2014), which allows for technological design that functionally resonates with user values (Friedman et al. 2013) and is explicitly deployed to make more equitable (Dillahunt et al. 2017) and inclusive (Walsh et al. 2013) products. To produce the platform, we incorporate key tenets of values-based design strategies involving discovery, translation, and verification (Flanagan et al. 2008). For our discovery phase, we set out to identify how values we brought to the design process regarding equity and inclusion, as well as the usefulness of play as an intervention in virtual workspaces, might be integrated with regular VM users and developers, including virtual worlds and games. Therefore, before design began, we conducted interviews with developers (N = 40) and more general surveys of VM users (N = 2448). Building on insights from these studies, we have started moving to the translation phase, which we are operationalizing and implementing through an iterative process where researchers and a development team consistently build and test VM features in response to identified values found during discovery. We formally use documentation from the development team and notes from weekly meetings with researchers to audit the process and deepen our understanding of the dynamics of integrating play into the platform. Finally, to verify our findings, we will meet with design partners, development teams, general users, and educators via focus groups to playtest the prototype and ascertain whether the discovered values are well represented within the software.

Development is ongoing; interviews and surveys have identified that play is particularly useful for creating a casual and comfortable meeting environment. Additionally, specific play features alleviate communication and representation concerns. For instance, the use of avatars can provide a means of obviating Zoom fatigue, and the addition of gestures within VM spaces can offer alternate ways of engaging with coworkers without verbal interruptions. Our work is currently in the implementation stage, where we lean heavily into fostering playful elements to further allow for creativity and entertainment compared to traditional meeting spaces; this includes making a more fanciful virtual world with video game-inspired regions to make meetings more interesting and a suite of objects including dice, fidget spinners, and 3D artist tools to permit varied forms of personal expression. Much of this process involves counterbalancing technical requirements and limiting more grandiose ideas because of issues surrounding expediency and intellectual property. By the time of the conference, we will have tested the effectiveness of these interventions via focus groups and ultimately begin to see how the values we bring to software development are utilized in this virtual playground.

ABSTRACT. Loot boxes are products inside video games that may be bought by players with real-world money to obtain random rewards (Drummond and Sauer 2018). Loot boxes are widely implemented in contemporary video games across the world: the most recent findings suggest that about 80% of the highest-grossing mobile games sell loot boxes, including many games deemed to be suitable for young children (Zendle et al. 2020). In the UK, the Gambling Commission reported in 2022 that 24% of 11- to 16-year-olds purchased loot boxes with real-world money (UK Gambling Commission 2022). Concerns have been raised about the potential harms of loot boxes, given their gambling-like nature. A positive correlation between loot box spending and problem gambling has been consistently replicated (Zendle and Cairns 2018; Spicer et al. 2022; Garea et al. 2021), and recent longitudinal studies have suggested that young people who purchased loot boxes were more likely to engage in traditional gambling and spend more money on it six months later (Brooks and Clark 2022; González-Cabrera et al. 2023). In the UK, advertising regulation (which enforces EU consumer protection law) requires that any advertising for a video game must disclose whether it contains generic in-game purchases (i.e., of any type, including loot boxes) and whether it contains loot boxes specifically (Committee of Advertising Practice and Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice 2021, 10–11). This is because the presence of in-game purchases and that of loot boxes are material information that a consumer needs to decide whether or not to engage with a video game (by purchasing a copy of the software or downloading it). Following a study identifying that many popular video games failed to label their games as containing loot boxes on their store listing pages and thus disclose their presence (Xiao 2023), two complaints were made to the ASA for alleged breaches of UK advertising rules. The ASA has since upheld these two complaints and declared the relevant advertising illegal. The present study sought to examine the situation on social media by considering what percentage of adverts were illegal and how many impressions these ads received. This was done through qualitative analysis of the ads libraries provided by Meta (https://www.facebook.com/ads/library) and TikTok (https://library.tiktok.com/ads/). Specifically, on the Meta platform, the most recent adverts for popular games known to contain loot boxes were checked. On the TikTok platform, because it was possible to sort the library and identify the ads that were watched the most number of times, the most popular ads relating to video games were examined. The research methodology was preregistered, but a link cannot be shared because of the anonymised review process. As to the results, amongst 188 adverts for popular games shown on Meta platforms detailed in Table 1, only 21 adverts (11.2%) disclosed the presence of in-game purchases and merely 13 adverts (6.9%) disclosed the presence of loot boxes. At a game level, amongst 63 games, only 10 games (15.9%) made in-game purchase disclosures in at least one advert and only six games (9.5%) made loot box disclosures in at least one advert.

[Table 1]

Amongst the 130 of the most watched TikTok ads relating to games that contained in-game purchases listed in Table 2, only 9 ads disclosed their presence (7.0%). Amongst the 100 ads relating to games that contained loot boxes, only 7 ads disclosed their presence (7.0%). At a game level, amongst 40 individual titles containing in-game purchases whose ads were studied, only 4 games disclosed their presence (10.0%), and amongst 19 titles with loot boxes, only 3 games disclosed their presence (15.8%).

[Table 2]

Based on ‘An estimate of the number of unique users who have seen the ad at least once’ provided by TikTok, it was possible to calculate the number of impressions received by ads relating to games with in-game purchases and loot boxes (depending on whether they were compliant or non-compliant with disclosure requirements). These are presented in Table 3. In summary, only 10.2% of impressions of ads for games with loot boxes were of compliant ads, whilst 89.8% of impressions were of illegal ads.

[Table 3]

As to conclusions, the present study found that the vast majority of video game ads on social media platforms failed to disclose that the game the were advertising offered in-game purchases and loot boxes in particular. Companies need to better understand their legal obligations when advertising loot boxes offering loot boxes. Players and parents need additionally protection. As this remains a work-in-progress, during the presentation at DiGRA further reflections on the results will be shared, including how the adverts also broke other advertising rules, such as failing to accurately depict gameplay or by objectifying women.

ABSTRACT. This comparative ethnography (Abramson & Gong 2020) examines the shifts in professional game industry events before, during, and after COVID-19 lockdowns. The annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) epitomises the professional networking landscape of the game industry, which historically has been dominated by alcohol-fueled social events and white men aged 18-35 (IGDA 2021). These spaces, often coded as male-centric, present significant barriers to inclusion and exacerbate issues of safety and comfort, particularly for women and minority groups. As the industry moves towards resuming in-person events post-COVID, this research compares two ethnographers’ fieldnotes attending in-person, online, and hybrid game industry events to examine how such gatherings can be reimagined to foster inclusivity and safety in the future.

ABSTRACT. As videogames grow in complexity, they have become part of a tradition of exploring cross-class differences in culture. This essay explores three such games that offer players an experience of “class tourism” by placing them into different socioeconomic positions. The games analyzed are I Get This Call Every Day, Little Red Lie, and Invisible Fist. To do this analysis the essay draws from Nakamura’s concept of identity tourism as well as prior research on games and other media as empathy machines to explore their affordances and constraints. The essay also points to gameplay complexities such as agency and gamer mode that challenge the ability of a game to allow players to successfully ‘experience the life’ of the characters portrayed. Our findings push back against some common points of praise for videogames and instead challenges researchers to reconsider the potential of games as ‘empathy machines.’

ABSTRACT. In my presentation I aim to analyze the representation of religion as an institution in Baldur's Gate III by Larian Studios. I approach it not as an isolated case, but as an example of the extensive tradition of representing religion in computer role-playing games. Specifically, my research question revolves around examining whether the abundance of religiously-inspired game mechanics, imagery, setting elements, and narratives provide affordances for players to embody a religious character.

My preliminary hypothesis suggests that using BGIII in such a way is theoretically possible, but constitutes an oppositional, not preferred, decoding of the game (Hall 1991). The lack of affordances for embodying a believer despite numerous religiously-themed elements, in turn, could contribute to the Othering of religious believers in the real-world, especially those from regions with secularization histories different from those of the global North, thus perpetuating colonial stereotypes.

Role-playing games, such as BGIII, are often analyzed for their potential for identity play – the playful exploration, experimentation, and construction of one's identity (e. g. Cooper 2016). This practice is best understood as a particular instance of the use of ironic imagination – an ability to, at once, accept the rules of the world different from the primary one, and accept the constructed, imagined nature (Saler 2012: 46). While these considerations may apply to various video game genres, RPGs stand out due to their emphasis on assuming specific roles, rich detailed game worlds, and a diverse array of mechanics allowing players to customize their characters extensively, spanning appearance, abilities, social position, sexual orientation et cetera. This makes RPGs particularly pertinent in discussions surrounding games and the exploration of identities.

This, in turn, led to the discussion of games and religion. CRPGs are typical examples of what Stig Hjarvard called “a banal religion”: representations of de-contextualized and non-intentional religious meanings (Hjarvard 2012). Even before Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar in 1985 built the entire narrative around the clearly religiously-inspired hero’s journey, clerics, gods and demons were ubiquitous in CRPG. The presence of religion in role-playing games only increased with the passage of time, with Baldur’s Gate III being just the latest in a long series of projects full of religious conflicts, NPCs and character options.

This could make CRPGs an interesting venue for religious identity play, and it may indeed happen in cases of various games, as shown by Lars de Wildt. However, upon analyzing the Baldur’s Gate III as a protostory (Koenitz et al 2018) providing affordances (Linderoth 2011; Shaw 2017) for different in-game actions, as well as their interpretations, intended to create a particular narrative, we would easily notice that it does not provide any easy discernible possibility to consistently assume the role of a religious character. Corresponding options are simply non-present among narrative affordances, or framed as mistakes and lapses in moral judgment.

The lack of affordances for playing as a believer in BGIII stems from the fact that the game does not attempt to simulate (Frasca 2003) religion, as to create a system whose behavior would resemble a simulated institution, or does so only to land a critique. Most of the time, it relies on visual and narrative elements to encode a religion-ness, a myth (Barthes 1991) of religion.

In order to emphasize this discrepancy, we could compare the behavior of game elements resonating with religion with understanding of religion among modern scholars, for example, using the definition provided by Meyer and Moors yields insights. They define religion as a set of practices aimed at mediating the transcendental, spiritual, or supernatural to make them accessible for believers (Meyera and Moors 2006: 6). While this definition might carry flaws due to its overreliance on Western concepts like transcendental and supernatural, which may not seamlessly apply to non-Western traditions, it remains applicable to the major and influential religions of today. Notably, it also aligns with other established understanding of religions, such as those put forth by Ninian Smart (1996:9) and Jean Waardenburg (2016: 26), emphasizing the mediating nature of religion.

However, precisely this mediating nature of religion is either excluded or implicitly critiqued in Baldur’s Gate III. Many elements which may cause a resonance (Apperley 2010:21) with an idea of religion, do not mediate anything at all. In other cases, mediated objects and entities are not truly transcendental, with game implying that they are accessible by other, non-religious means. Finally, in some cases the act of mediation a transcendental or supernatural is included, but framed as a morally undesirable, often to the point of precluding the player entirely from participating in it, even if the player is willing to create an “evil” character.

One might thought, that games might struggle to simulate attempts at connecting with the transcendental at all, but RPGs like Disco Elysium, Black Book, and Cyberpunk 2077 offer affordances for simulating religious behavior as outlined by Meyer and Moors. However, the dominant trend in representing religion within the genre — especially in fantasy RPGs, whether party-based or not, with the exception of Dragon Age series — is similar to BGIII. This raises an intriguing question about the underlying ideological constructs making this approach appealing to game designers and players alike. I hypothesize that this tendency aligns with a distinctly Western form of secularism (Taylor 2007), one that games such as Baldur’s Gate III implicitly reinforce.

ABSTRACT. With the spatial turn in cultural studies of the 80s and 90s, the idea of (historical) narratives embedded in spaces gained traction. This spatial turn is also relevant for video games because they both build previously inexistent spaces and transform real-life spaces. However, the embodied implications, or possibilities, in the form of cultural affordances in these video game environments have not been adequately addressed. In this paper, we engage in a close reading guided by critical stances based on the portrayal of cultural, historical, and spatial identities in three games (Sleeping Dogs, A Summer’s End, and Oblige) set in Hong Kong. With the analysis results, we outline how different contents that reflect different identities cooperate in affording specific actions or reactions in the player. This is the first step towards constructing a framework to effectively analyze and design urban experiences through the medium of video games.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines challenges, such as lack of participation, encountered with ludic interventions within a project focused on public urban play. It presents three interventions and contemplates whether these interventions failed or whether their outcomes signal a sensitive nature of play and a reluctance among participants to disclose these activities.

ABSTRACT. This paper analyzes the design of five contemporary playgrounds in the city of Copenhagen, Denmark, to understand what cultural- and biopolitical values and concerns are reflected in the design of equipment and spaces for play, and how the design aims to govern and shape both play and players. The analysis points to three central tendencies in the playground design: First, that the design stages play as a spectacle that works to evoke notions of creativity, leisure and liveliness that become associated with the city. Second, that the playgrounds works towards producing a sense of place that reflects local and national identities. Third, that the mere availability of child-friendly sites for play, as well as the design of individual equipment aim to intervene in the lives of bodies of users by privileging and staging equipment that nudges players to activate their entire bodies.

ABSTRACT. The objective of this study is to analyze the relationship between the ways in which Super Smash Bros. Ultimate players engage in their daily lives, both in public and private spaces in Santiago, Chile, and the meritocratic discourse. The methodology consisted of participant-observer ethnography and ethnographic interviews conducted in public and private spaces in the city of Santiago, Chile.

ABSTRACT. In the past decade the physical game industry, including board games and role playing games, has been booming, with Europe holding the largest share in the global market (Gitnux, 2023). Understanding the engagement of players during physical games thus holds significant value for game designers, researchers, educators, and others who are invested in better understanding player behavior. Given the complexity and dynamic nature of physical games, evaluating player engagement during play is difficult; the subjective nature of assessments and the indirect nature of observations presents many challenges. It would therefore be extremely beneficial to utilize methods that rely on objective and automatic measures of engagement. Previous work has pointed to the potential of using psychophysiological states as an estimator of the degree to which physical games engage players (Simoes et al. 2023; Yannakakis et al. 2007). These results of this work has significant impact on game-design, play-testing, and game and psychological research that aims to evaluate engagement during social play. In this methodological case study, we used galvanic skin response (GSR), a reliable measure of arousal from the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, and facial expression analysis, a reliable measure of facial emotions, within a group of players during play of the game One Night Ultimate Werewolf. During play, two groups of adult participants (N = 18; n = 3 per group; data collection ongoing) were randomly assigned different roles with the objective to ‘bluff’ and fool other players and to identity and eliminate the werewolf in the group. Figure 1 shows the game and equipment setup. GSR was attached to the non-dominant hand of all players, and a webcam placed on the table in front of each player recorded facial expression data (iMotions software). The data from all players were simultaneously collected and subsequently analyzed during two 30 minute sessions (5 games each). Preliminary analyses showed that an increase in GSR responses, measured by peaks, peaks per minute, and peak amplitude, were related to distinct moments of gameplay: (a) revealing the player’s role, (b) lying/bluffing, (c) getting accused, and (d) voting who to eliminate. Figure 2 demonstrates an example where player B was first accused of being the werewolf, then bluffed, and then was voted to be eliminated. The GSR data for player B revealed significant peaks during each engaging moment, and during the group voting, all three player’s showed synchrony in peaks of arousal (see Figure 3). Facial expression analysis revealed which emotion was expressed, with joy and fear being the most common. We also observed emotional synchrony occurring between players, with facial expressions matching at time-locked intervals. Emotional expressions were also related to increases in arousal, as measure by GSR. Together, this study demonstrates the promise of using discrete and objective measures of psychophysiological responses to measure engagement during play of physical games. While GSR can provide an indication of general emotional arousal, it cannot reveal the what kind of emotion was experience. Facial expression analysis, however, can reveal the positive or negative emotions when paired with GSR data. The capacity to measure and synchronize multiple players simultaneously also provides critical insights into player social interactions, a key design component of physical games. This study is the first of its kind to combine multiple psychophysiological measurements of emotional arousal and facial emotion expression in players during physical play. For designers who aim to increase social engagement, measuring automatic psychophysiological responses provides an objective way to evaluate emotional responses to the game and to other players. For researchers in the field of game studies, psychology, and other related fields, this study demonstrates a valuable method for analyses and the potential for further research questions. The findings demonstrate a promising potential for novel methods to assess physical games, including board games and role-playing games, where understanding player engagement may central to the design or research question.

ABSTRACT. INTRODUCTION Immersion, defined as the sense of being in an alternate space distinct from reality, constitutes an important part of the gameplay experience in role-playing games (RPGs) (Hutchings and Giardino 2016). To engender such immersion, RPGs need to invite players to enter into a virtual world in the first place (Bollmer and Suddarth 2022), and this process is often completed in the starting areas of the games. In the Chinese game industry, the starting area of a role-playing game is typically termed a “beginner village” or “newbie village” (Li et al. 2008), even if the area is depicted as a post-modern metropolis. Under this circumstance, the usage of this term in gaming forums and journalism often disconnects with the actual scenario of the game, which prompts several inquiries: when and how did the concept of beginner village start to gain popularity within the Chinese gaming community? What connotations does this concept contain? More importantly, what design patterns are revealed through this concept? METHODS To answer these questions, I conducted a discourse analysis of Chinese game journalism relevant to beginner villages because this method provides a cross-time context that reflects “the production, distribution, and consumption of texts” within the game culture (Fairclough 1992, 226). Specifically, I searched for articles with the term “beginner village” in the title across three popular Chinese game journalism outlets, Gamersky, Sina, and Youxia, as well as in an academic database Cnki. The inclusion criterion stipulated that eligible articles must allocate a majority of their discussion to subjects related to beginner villages. As a result, 39 articles were collected, with publication dates ranging from 2002 to 2021. As for the analysis process, my approach stems from a previous game journalism research paradigm (Anderson and Schrier 2022), and starts by sorting the articles into categories according to their themes. Correspondingly, five categories were identified: game preview (n=17), game walkthrough (n=12), game reviews (n=5), players (n=2), and discussion beyond games (n=3). This categorization process then allows me to synthesize the discourse on beginner villages and make clear the recurrent and emergent topics therein. DISCUSSION This section includes two observations: (1) Although early Chinese RPGs before 2000 are often considered to be extensively influenced by Japanese games (Pepe 2021), the concept of beginner village did not emerge until the rise of massive online multiplayer role-playing games (MMORPGs) in China at the beginning of the 21st century. Articles about beginner villages from this time mostly fall into the category of game walkthrough, providing information about quests, choices, and characters in the starting areas of MMORPGs. These articles convey a dual message for understanding beginner villages. On the one hand, since early Chinese MMORPGs are commonly rooted in historical backgrounds, the discourse surrounding beginner villages in these games also frequently used the term to indicate historical and low-tech settings. On the other hand, the discourse also often described beginner villages as bustling hubs full of online players, implying that beginner villages only exist when shared by a large player community. In this sense, the concept of beginner village, at its inception, can be understood as a virtual space that is historical, undeveloped, and social. These features of beginner villages then serve to detach players from reality and immerse them in the game world. (2) With the development of the Chinese game industry, the concept of beginner village has also continuously evolved. Since the 2010s, game journalism has also started referring to the starting areas in single-player RPGs as beginner villages. Correspondingly, the focus of the concept of beginner village has also shifted from the village to the beginner, emphasizing a player image that contrasts with a skilled one. This shift demonstrates that Chinese players’ imagination of RPGs was no longer confined to history and sociality as the game market continued to expand and became more diverse. Moreover, according to the articles obtained from Cnki, the term “beginner village” has been used in multiple contexts and fields unrelated to games since 2015, which also sheds light on the increasing influence of the Chinese RPG culture. CONCLUSION In this study, I examined the concept of beginner village in Chinese RPGs through a discourse analysis of 39 articles from game journalism between 2002 and 2021. The concept is recognized as embodying the Chinese gaming community’s subconscious imagination of RPGs and paralleling the growth of Chinese RPGs from historical and social contexts to more diverse settings. Therefore, demystifying this concept can facilitate a more nuanced comprehension of the development of Chinese RPGs and the evolving perceptions within the Chinese gaming community.

ABSTRACT. Video games have become the prototypical contemporary medium of communication for many people in 21st-century Latin America, the form of media they most frequently access and to which they dedicate the most time and effort. Despite the many distinctions among video games in terms of the geography of their development, the political perspectives depicted in their virtual worlds, the business models of their publishers and their sources of financing, taken as a whole, this medium clearly exercises enormous cultural influence and has an immense impact on society in all parts of Latin America today.

Despite the popularity of video games across Latin America, we still have relatively little data regarding the habits, features and particularities of the regional population of video game players, which is the central focus of this study. The evolution of play practices along with video game development, marketing and distribution models across Latin America reflect the ways regional practices in under-examined areas make essential contributions a truly “global” understanding of games and game culture. Building on a body of research on regional game studies as a sub-discipline (Liboriussen and Martin, Mandiber, Shaw, Stokes, Wolf) as well as research focusing specifically on games and technology in Latin America (Burbano, Chan, Medina et al, Penix-Tadsen), this study will bring together new insights and offer key takeaways regarding the demographics and habits of Latin American players, as well as the many obstacles that stand in the way of a holistic understanding of player populations in under-examined regions.

This study begins with a detailed review of the available studies, statistics and data published by a multitude of state, academic and private sources that help give shape to this account of the practices and characteristics of Latin American players. Then, it focuses on the various stumbling blocks still standing in the way of a precise calculation of the typical profile of the region’s players—if such a thing is possible—and argues that the partial vision that we have been able to compile to date has not proven capable of offering a true comprehension of the diversity of Latin America’s player demographics. Overcoming these obstacles—from the very mechanisms of measurement to the fluctuating definitions of “game” and “gamer”—will ultimately allow us to better understand the complicated and ongoing process of tracing the demographics of video game players in Latin America and other under-examined regions.

Understanding the demographics of players across the extremely diverse and vast region of Latin America—along with the difficulties of tracing such data with any real accuracy—lays bare the limitations in the overall framing of “global” game culture in game studies scholarship, as well as the importance of deeper research into the game cultures of under-examined regions. By turning a careful analytical eye to the available data on Latin American regional players, this study aims to provide an analytical framework for understanding how both gaming practices and the analysis of gaming cultures are evolving in diverse regions across the global south and around the world in the 21st century.

Works Cited

Burbano, Andrés. Different Engines: Media Technologies From Latin America. Taylor & Francis, 2023.

Chan, Anita Say. Networking Peripheries: Technological Futures and the Myth of Digital Universalism. MIT Press, 2013.

Liboriussen, Bjarke and Paul Martin. “Regional Game Studies.” Game Studies 16.1 (October 2016).

Mandiberg, Stephen. “Video Games Have Never Been Global: Resituating Video Game Localization History.” In Melanie Swalwell (Ed.), Game History and the Local (pp. 177-198). Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.

Medina, Eden, Ivan da Costa Marques and Christina Holmes (eds.). Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America. MIT Press, 2014.

Penix-Tadsen, Phillip. Cultural Code: Video Games and Latin America. MIT Press, 2016. Schleiner, A. (2020). Transnational Play: Piracy, Urban Art, and Mobile Games. Amsterdam University Press.

Shaw, Adrienne. “What is Video Game Culture? Cultural Studies and Game Studies.” Games and Culture 5, no. 4 (2010): 403-424.

Stokes, Benjamin. Locally Played: Real-World Games for Stronger Places and Communities. MIT Press, 2020.

Wolf, Mark J. P., ed. Video Games Around the World. MIT Press, 2015.

ABSTRACT. This talk examines game development in Indonesia, a locale that has yet to receive much attention from game scholars, as an entry point to reconceptualize region as a framework to study game production culture from the vantage point of the Global South.

ABSTRACT. We present an overview of the beginnings of tabletop role-playing game (TRPG) play in Chile in mid 90s. Prior to this, TRPGs were mostly played by small groups in isolation from each other. This changed in the 1990s when TRPGs suddenly entered the public eye and saw an increase in popularity and visibility. We discuss particularities of the context that supported their avid acceptance and dissemination. The nascent Chilean TRPG scene consisted of a motivated, organized, and community-oriented generation of university-aged youth who partnered with supportive local government and institutional organizations to organize and host wide-ranging TRPG events in order to disseminate and share TRPGs as a hobby and form of entertainment. We also comment on some particularities of the Chilean context including the lack of a moral panic and strong institutional support. By discussing and understanding the early history of TRPGs in Chile we can provide insights into a local culture of play whose differences and similarities with others can help us better understand the medium.

ABSTRACT. Invoking the analogy of playgrounds as sites of potential inclusionary and exclusionary practices, this paper explores the impact of whiteness on knowledge production in European game studies. It argues that games scholarship, like all academic knowledge making, is inherently racialized, and that Euro-style whiteness, as a local socio-political condition, influences the ways in which knowledge about play and games has been produced in Europe. This has led to the construction of epistemic ’playgrounds of whiteness’ which perpetuate of racial biases, particularly through the superimposition of Orientalist binaries to game phenomena and the invocation of 'civilization' as a term that has established European white experiences as the norm in play theory to the detriment of racial minorities. The paper also discusses recent critiques of the Eurocentric nature of game studies, which raise the question of how the Eurocentric whiteness of game studies epistemologies potentially translates into instances of epistemic violence. It suggests that developing answers to questions such as (1) What is considered ‘ideal’ knowledge about games and play? and (2) Who is implied as the ‘ideal’ knower of games and play? can be a constructive first step in a longer process of working towards epistemic resistance in European game studies.

ABSTRACT. This extended abstract sets out to explore the enduring appeal of game environments which are narratively contextualized as forbidden spaces, positioning the player as an intruder who risks punishment from a higher authority or more powerful entity. As well as using examples of mainstream video game titles, I will draw on my own practical research in designing both digital and non-digital games which situate the player in such spaces.

ABSTRACT. Esports popularity has exploded in modern times. The safety of its participants, many of them children, is under threat from incidents of crime and deviance. This article examines crime and deviance in the esports playground from the lens of Routine Activities Theory, a criminological theory that emphasizes the importance of guardianship in reducing crime. Guardianship in esports is weak, and therefore according to this theory crime and deviance are likely to occur. In order to better protect the esports playground, guardianship must be improved. This article contributes to a better understanding of the digital playground of esports by applying a theoretical framework from criminology to games and play phenomena. The criminal justice perspective in play phenomena is almost nonexistent, and as such this article establishes a necessary foundation for future research and exploration.

ABSTRACT. The business of independent game development is now well understood to be highly precarious and risky (Whitson 2019; Keogh 2019). The rapid growth of distribution and development platforms have dramatically grown the number of developers working in a self-funded and entrepreneurial way in the hope of one day having the financial success that will bring with it some amount of future sustainability (Whitson et al. 2021). But at the same time, the chances of success deteriorate as more and more studios strive to have their game stand out from the crowd. In 2022, on Valve’s Steam platform alone, one game was released every 50 minutes (Statista 2022).

A complex ecosystem of publishers, marketers, and investors have inevitably grown around the independent development ecosystem to both support and take advantage of this growing pool of aspirational gamemaking labour. Unlike traditional publishing models, such actors rarely fully or even partially fund the production of new titles from conception. Rather, they jump aboard to support titles that have already been extensively produced and informally marketed that they believe will provide the best chance of return and which they believe best align with the publisher’s own existing brand. Felan Parker (2021, 137), for instance, has examined how Annapurna draws together works that “taken together… signify authenticity as a form of distinction.” Elsewhere, John Vanderhoef (2020, 18) has detailed the “antiestablishment neoliberalism” of indie publisher Devolver Digital.

However, the political economic role of this broader network of independent game financing has yet to be thoroughly theorised beyond such specific case studies. This paper makes a preliminary contribution in this space by examining one particularly interesting trend that has yet to receive significant scholarly attention: that of indie game developers themselves becoming publishers or investors after their own developed games are commercially successful. Companies such as Superhot, Landfall, and Kitfox each began life as a typical independent game studio themselves, producing their own games, before eventually turning into an organization that publishes or otherwise funds other developers’ projects. That so many indie developers themselves make the transition from production to publishing suggests a broader phenomenon demanding closer attention.

To understand this trend within the broader context of indie game financing, this paper scrutinizes it through Karl Marx’s articulation of the circuits of capital outlined in Volume II of Capital (1885). Marx details three circuits that define the flow and accumulation of capital, each of which provides a different perspective on the same circular flows. The circuit that is the most “characteristic” of capital is the flow of money capital, represented as

M – C .. P .. C’ – M’

In short: the industrial capitalist begins with a certain quantity of money (M). They use this money to purchase the commodities (C) necessary for the production process (that is, means of production and labour power). The production process (P) then occurs, in which surplus value is created through the labourer’s capacity over and above the amount of time paid for in their wages. At the end of this process, a greater value of commodities exists in the produced commodities than was initially thrown into production (C’). At last, this greater quantity of commodities is sold on the market at its value to return a greater quantity of money than the capitalist initially started with (M’) to then start the whole process again at this new higher amount.

Marx shows that the smooth progression of this circuit encounters all sorts of interruptions and devaluations, such as the unavailability of means of production or labour-power, the inability to find a buyer for the created commodities, or innovations in the production process rendering already produced commodities less valuable. Most crucially, the capitalist requires a certain amount of money on hand to start the process at all: that required to purchase C continuously until the first lot of invested capital finally returns as M’—a process which could take a considerable length of time. This need for a constant availability of new money capital to inject even as the already injected money capital only returns inconsistently to be reinvested, ultimately leads to the investment of the credit system, where “money capitalists” (i.e. those capitalists with a spare money hoarded) are able to effectively sell their own money as a commodity to the industrialist capitalist in exchange for more money in return (that is, interest). As Marx tells it, the industrial capitalist (that is, the capitalist directly invested in the production process), ultimately strives to become a money capitalist that, rather than taking on all the risks and complications of the production process itself, would rather have enough money capital on hand to sell to the industrial capitalist in exchange for a fraction of the produced surplus value (interest). That is, they desire to reduce the complexity of M – C .. P .. C’ – M’ to simple M – M’: selling money for the return of more money.

Such a situation perfectly describes the case of indie game developers becoming financers after a successful hit. After accruing sufficient money from their own success in the production circuit, instead of reinvesting in a second game, the indie game developer-cum-financer is able to remove themselves from this risky process of game production to instead profit from others taking on board the risks of independent game production by becoming and money capitalist that provides the funds for the M-M’ circuit.

The new financers rarely frame it in such cynical terms. Instead, as Superhot say of their fund, they simply wish to “give other foolhardy, upstart indies a helping hand now” (Superhot 2023). The transition of successful indie developer to money capitalist ultimately falls within a broader trend of value extraction from the “intensely in/formalised” (Keogh 2023) developers that underpin videogame production where the financial risks associated with making games are offset onto the developers, rather than the investors. At the same time, this value extraction and risk offsetting is presented in a celebratory fashion as one of democratic empowerment rather than a subsumption into a circuit of value extraction.

This paper ultimately combines Marx’s theory of the circuits of capital with discursive research on how indie developers-cum-financers present themselves publicly to theorise the broader role of money capital in independent game production. The case of commercially successful game developers themselves escaping the circuit of videogame production and its inherent risks provides an ideal case study through which to understand how developers become positioned as subordinate to the broader mechanisms of capital creation that drive industrialised videogame production, despite being the creators of its value.

ABSTRACT. Video games need to provide unproductive spaces for play. However, the industrial nature of their development makes profitability a necessity, which materialises through monetisation methods such as Real-money trading (RMT), which allows players to earn economic income through transactions with in-game items. This paper examines, through a literature review, several paradigmatic case studies involving this form of monetisation, allowing us to map the evolution of RMT from a marginal practice to a full-fledged monetisation model and revealing an instrumentalised use of game items to promote their trading, systematically leading to the emergence of practices associated with labour between players. Our findings show that under the influence of RMT, play becomes a productive activity that transforms playgrounds into ‘workgrounds’.

ABSTRACT. Videogames excel at (re)creating hypercapitalist systems, operating on both a representational and procedural level (Bogost, 2007; Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, 2009). Despite their seemingly harmless aesthetics, the same holds true for cozy games: they depict, replicate, and engage with capitalism in diverse ways and to different extents. Games with resource management as a central mechanic often epitomize neoliberal ideology and a romanticized notion of work-as-play (Bogost 2011), frequently centering on rural fantasies (NYU Game Center, 2020). Tom Nook in Animal Crossing: New Horizons has gained widespread recognition as a "capitalistic villain" (Vossen, 2020). Similarly, despite the best intentions of its creator, Stardew Valley (ConcernedApe, 2016) can be interpreted as drawing players into a gameplay loop that oversimplifies our connection with and responsibility for natural resources, as well as the complexities of platonic and romantic relationships (Crowley, 2023). Recent years have seen a proliferation of indie meta-games, that is, self-aware and self-reflexive games that trigger medium-awareness in the player (Krampe 2022). Cozy games, many of which are indie, are also increasingly inviting players to reflect on issues of medium, genre, and gaming culture. For example, Fin in Bear and Breakfast (Gummy Cat 2022) is a parodic take on an agent of a holiday let chain, ceaselessly urging the player to maximize profit with a bed and breakfast enterprise, with dialogue lines like “We are freely able to exploit a common resource to their benefit and our profit!”, thereby parodying the extractivist mechanics of many cozy games This paper looks closer at another example, Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (Snoozy Kazoo 2021) to argue that cozy farming/adventure games can be a uniquely expressive playground that invite players to reflect on the relationship between games and capitalism, especially when they create humor through metareference. Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a cozy adventure game about avoiding paying property tax. It features a corrupt vegetable government, which is a tongue in cheek subversion of a meat-dominated Western diet. Turnip Boy is a sort of cozy roguelike, or indeed Zelda-lite, as besides small intertextual nods like the titular character’s name recalling Animal Crossing: New Horizon’s high-value tradeable, it engages in intertextual dialogue with the Legend of Zelda franchise in its level design (top-down open world and dungeons), quest design (village elder “Old Man Lemon” as quest giver, the classic RPG cycle of go here, collect this, return); and weapons (“Soil Sword” and bombs). Beyond this, the game also raises medium awareness in the player in multiple ways. For example, upon completing an early task, the player is rewarded with a “Trophy” with the inscription “Reward the player so they stay engaged!”. There is fourth-wall-breaking in an encounter with a non-player character guarding entry to a dungeon who says “Come back later when you…’beat the game’?”. But it isn’t just genre and medium that these metaludic (Ensslin 2014) instances draw critical attention to, it is also gaming culture. We have an I.R.S. agent called “Chad”, or a quest giver called “slayQueen32” who introduces herself as “the biggest forkfight player in Veggieville”, urges the player to “check out her streams”, and who guards entry to a dungeon and is only willing to step aside if the player character gets her a “Tier 3 sub”. Besides a Fortnite nod, the joke is that the sub is not a subscription but a sandwich that needs to be bought from a vendor outside of the area. Through textual analysis of the game this paper argues that Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion’s metareferentiality thematizes and problematizes aesthetic features like game mechanics, level design, and art typically found in role-playing and cozy games, such as resource gathering and management, dungeons, fetch quests, and setting in a natural verdant environment. It also gestures more broadly at its own ontological status as a game by breaking the fourth wall and utilizing intertextual references to other games of the same genre. And it thematizes broader socio-cultural phenomena connected to games but which are outside of the game text, such as the “Chad” meme and streaming culture. Moreover, this metareferentiality and its occurrence within, and juxtaposition with, coziness enhances the game’s comedic effect. Van de Mosselaer locates comedy in the duality of the player’s subjectivity: there is an incongruity when we play games, our subjectivity is split in two. One that is immersed in the gameworld playing the game, and one that reflects on the game world externally. She argues that comedic is “an attitude of distanced and dispassionate reflection towards an incongruity” (Van de Mosselaer 2022: 35). I argue that coziness enhances the comedy whereby the metareference to other games and exaggeration of extractivism and capitalist gain is funny because the sharpness of its wit is in contrast with the overall cozy atmosphere of the game. The player is able to reflect and appreciate the humor because the lack of time critical challenges enable the time and space to be comfortable, therefore more attentive. REFERENCES Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bogost, I. (2011). How to Do Things with Videogames. Minneapolis, MIN: University of Minnesota Press. Concerned Ape (2016). Stardew Valley [PC]. Concerned Ape. Crowley, S. (2023). Playing Farmer: At the Intersections of Neo-Liberal Capitalism and Ecocriticism in Stardew Valley. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 15(1), 21–37. https://doi.org/10.1386/jgvw_00069_1 Dyer-Witheford N., de Peuter G. (2009). Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games. Minneapolis, MIN: University of Minnesota Press. Gummy Cat (2022) Bear and Breakfast. [Nintendo Switch] Armor Games. Krampe, T. (2023) Rewriting rules, changing worlds: Diegetic and ludic forms of metareference in The Magic Circle. Frontiers of Narrative Studies 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2023-2010 Nintendo (2020) Animal Crossing: New Horizons. [Nintendo Switch]. Nintendo. NYU Game Center (2020). Naomi Clark: Why Tom Nook Symbolizes Village Debt in 18th Century Japan. YouTube. Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgEnbXPZX4s (accessed on July 12, 2023). Snoozy Kazoo (2021) Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion. [Nintendo Switch]. Graffiti Games. Van de Mosselaer, N. (2022). Comedy and the Dual Position of the Player. In Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone, Tomasz Z. Majkowski & Jaroslav Švelch (Eds.). Video Games and Comedy. Palgrave Macmillan. Vossen, E. (2020). Tom Nook, Capitalist or Comrade? On Nook Discourse and the Millennial Housing Crisis. Loading…The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association 13(22), 109–134.

ABSTRACT. There is a documented difference in the gender makeup between gaming and esports, suggesting existence of additional barriers to enter competitive space for women (Taylor, 2012). This study examines the role of harassment or trash-talk in esports, which significantly affects women gamers. Furthermore, focuses on the psychological and social identity factors that influence the adoption of coping strategies while playing online video games. We classify these strategies into two categories– avoidance strategies that work to dodge or minimize harassment and participatory strategies that directly engage harassment– to investigate the circumstances under which a player might turn to one approach over another. The study examines the role of reporting tools as a predictor, influencing these strategies. Targeted population are female gamers and the study will distribute online survey.

ABSTRACT. This research illuminates four significant shifts in Chinese female-oriented indie games, underscoring a movement toward narrative autonomy, feminist ideologies, and player engagement. These trends redefine player agency and herald a broader cultural shift within the gaming community, celebrating the evolution of this empowerment playground and its rich, nuanced contributions to the feminist expression in the indie game landscape.

ABSTRACT. In the contemporary digital era, video games have evolved beyond mere entertainment platforms to become significant spaces for social and cultural interaction. These virtual spaces, which have given rise to multifaceted digital communities, not only offer opportunities for collaboration and collective learning but also present emerging challenges related to toxic and unsportsmanlike behaviors. An example of this is the findings from the 2019 study conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on social interactions and experiences of video game players in the United States, which indicates that nearly three-quarters (74%) of online multiplayer game players in the United States have experienced some form of harassment during gameplay, with over half (53%) experiencing harassment in the form of hate, extremism, bullying, or threats. Furthermore, 38% of players have been harassed online due to their race, religion, skill, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Additionally, 62% of players feel that video game companies are not doing enough to combat harassment on their platforms.

This presentation aims to introduce a theoretical framework designed to comprehend the complexity and origins of toxicity within the realm of video game communities. This theoretical framework focuses on unraveling the underlying dynamics that foster negative behaviors and how these are intrinsically linked to the structures, mechanics, and narratives of video games. It is acknowledged that while some games may act as catalysts for harassment and defamation attitudes, others, due to their design and specific approach, promote prosocial and constructive interactions among players. To effectively illustrate this theoretical framework, we will employ the analysis of paradigmatic cases that exemplify the various dimensions and facets of toxicity in the world of video games. These cases will serve not only as specific examples but also as analytical tools to deepen our understanding of toxicity in video games and the communities surrounding them. These dimensions provide us with a greater understanding of toxicity in video games:

Firstly, the video game itself is a fundamental dimension for analyzing a community. As previously theorized, the features of a game can influence the actions of individual players and, in plural, the entire player community.

Secondly, the video game industry is significant. It is essential to understand that video games are not abstract concepts lacking context in the tangible reality but are products generated by a specific industry known as the video game industry. This industry has a structure and organizational culture that shapes the direction of video games and, consequently, influences player behavior. Moreover, decisions made during the development of video games play a significant role in shaping the features that will subsequently influence community behavior. Thirdly, the community itself plays a crucial role. It is the people who make up the community who establish its idiosyncrasies and, therefore, can promote different types of behaviors. In this regard, it is important to highlight the influence of so-called "influencers" or "streamers," who are semi-professional users with a substantial following on social media platforms and exert significant influence over their followers, many of whom are part of one or more communities.

Additionally, these three dimensions feed into each other. The existence of a player community is intrinsically linked to the presence of a video game around which such a community is formed. However, as mentioned earlier, this video game exists thanks to an entire industry dedicated to its development. Furthermore, it is important to note that today's players often become tomorrow's developers, creating a continuous cycle in the dynamics of the video game industry.

This interconnectedness among the player community, the video game development industry, and the process of shaping new developers results in the constant transmission and maintenance of established patterns in this domain. The evolution and stability of these patterns are driven by the feedback loop among the three dimensions, as players influence game design and trends, while the industry adapts to the demands and preferences of the community. In turn, players who become developers bring with them their experiences and knowledge gained as part of the player community, contributing to the continuity of established patterns in the video game development process.

ABSTRACT. This paper extends, and critiques, the notion of “posthuman empathy” in videogames to question what happens when the non-human other is not only non-humanoid, but is based on a companion species (Haraway 2003)? This project will therefore extend research into posthumanism and animal-avatar relations in videogames. In the videogame Stray (BlueTwelve Studio), the player takes the avatar’s form as a cat, navigating a postapocalyptic landscape filled with a variety of antagonists including drones and bacteria. Within the first ten minutes of gameplay, you, a stray cat, get separated from your fellow cats. As a player, I was immediately distressed by this loss and was concerned for “Stray”’s welfare. Braidotti (2013, 190) argues that “an enlarged sense of inter-connection between self and others” can remove “the obstacle of self-centred individualism”. Videogames offer contemporary playgrounds for exploring this inter-connection. However, what is the significance of the anthropomorphising of animals in our empathy for them from a posthuman perspective? Is anthropomorphism – imbuing human-like qualities on non-human others – actually a humanist endeavour? Does a game really challenge anthropocentrism if we are looking at a cat-avatar as ourselves, or as human-like? So called “empathy games” have been critiqued in recent years for their claims that playing a videogame can allow one to “experience the feelings of others—with a focus on those who are seen as diverse or disadvantaged” (Ruberg 2020, 2). As Ruberg states, the problem with “the rhetoric of empathy is that it promotes the appropriation of affect”. Hammar (2020) highlights the problems inherent between promoting empathy on the one hand, yet turning it into a commodified encounter with the “exotic” other in situations involving race, on the other. Elsewhere, Pozo (2018) has raised doubts about the effectiveness of “empathy games” in shedding light on the experiences of individuals within the queer community. Rather than engaging with the problematic rhetoric around empathy as commodification of affect between “self” and “other” from a human to human perspective, this paper will instead draw on “posthuman empathy” – a form of empathy that occurs across biological and technological divides, and where neither entity takes prominence (Author and Co-author 2019, Author 2023). Posthuman empathy emerges from the intra-action (per Barad 2007) between two (or more) components, and where goals and affects are shared. This is both cognitive and embodied and includes visceral feelings wherein the gamer's body reacts to perceived threats, or touches to the avatar. Previously, I have explored this phenomenon through a humanoid avatar, whilst claiming that posthuman empathy is still possible across non-humanoid “others” (Author 2023). Arguably, through anthropomorphism we value “others” only through identifying or projecting humanity onto them in order to make them worthy of care. As Braidotti (2013, 79) states, anthropomorphising animals “confirms the binary distinction human/animal by benevolently extending the hegemonic category, the human, towards the others” and also “denies the specificity of animals altogether”. What, then, are the limits of “posthuman empathy”? This research employs an autoethnographic approach, building off my previous use of posthuman autoethnographies that trouble the self-other divide and write about the experiences of the “I” from a multiple and entangled perspective (Author 2020, Author 2022, Author 2023) as well as previous autoethnographic and reflexive work in game studies (Giddings and Kennedy 2008; Sundén 2012; Borchard 2015). Delving into the world of Stray I explore the avatar-gamer through animal-human hybridity, and consider how the game draws on Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) ideas of “becoming-animal”. Here I draw on previous studies that have considered becoming-animal in videogames, through, for example, becoming-werewolf (Bianchi 2016), becoming-octopus (Bianchi 2017), and even becoming-Mario (Cremin 2016). I question how posthuman a becoming-animal experience can be if it relies on the primacy of the human and human emotions for affective exploitation. Ultimately, my findings demonstrate the tensions and power dynamics that are always at play within posthumanism and posthuman relations, even in videogames that disrupt both human-machine and human-animal entanglements.

REFERENCES Author and Co-author. 2019. Author. 2020. Author. 2022. Author. 2023. Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. London: Duke University Press. Bianchi, M. 2016. “Claws and Controllers: Werewolves and Lycanthropy in Digital Games.” Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural, 2, 127-145. Bianchi, M. 2017. “Inklings and Tentacled Things: Grasping at Kinship through Video Games.” Ecozon (a): European Journal of Literature, Culture, and Environment, 8 (2), 136-150. BlueTwelve Studio. 2022. Stray. Online Game. BlueTwelve Studio. Borchard, K. 2015. “Super Columbine Massacre RPG! and Grand Theft Autoethnography.” Cultural Studies? Critical Methodologies 15 (6), 446-454. Braidotti, R. 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Cremin, C. 2016. “Molecular Mario: The Becoming-Animal of Video Game Compositions.” Games and Culture, 11 (4), 441-458. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Massumi, B., Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Giddings, S and Kennedy, H. 2008. “Little Jesuses and *@#?-off Robots: On Cybernetics, Aesthetics, and Not Being Very Good at Lego Star Wars”. In The Pleasures of Computer Gaming: Essays on Cultural History, Theory and Aesthetics edited by M. Swalwell and J. Wilson, 13-32. London: MacFarland and Co. Hammar, E. 2020. “Playing Virtual Jim Crow in Mafia III - Prosthetic Memory Via Historical Digital Games and the Limits of Mass Culture.” Game Studies 20 (1). http://gamestudies.org/2001/articles/hammar Haraway, D. 2003. The Companion Species Manifesto. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press. Pozo, T. 2018. “Queer Games After Empathy: Feminism and Haptic Game Design Aesthetics from Consent to Cuteness to the Radically Soft.” Game Studies 18 (3). http://gamestudies.org/1803/articles/pozo Ruberg, B. 2020. “Empathy and Its Alternatives: Deconstructing the Rhetoric of “Empathy””, Video Games, Communication, Culture and Critique, 13 (1), 54-71. https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcz044 Sundén, J. 2012. “Desires at Play: On Closeness and Epistemological Uncertainty.” Games and Culture, 7 (2), 164-184.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this article is to explore the role of Indigenous digital game creation at the time dramatic environmental and ecological changes. Our study focuses on the river-human relations of Sámi people in the Ohcejohka (Utsjoki) area , Northern Fennoscandia, which has recently faced a radical decline in salmon stock. We analyze the creation of two little digital games made in Finnish Sápmi in 2023 – The Story of the Rainbow Salmon (Laiti 2023a) and The Rainbow Salmon Talks With Fish (Laiti 2023b) – by employing a decolonial and Indigenous autoethnographic approach. The results showed that the two games discussed did not only become makeshift playgrounds for expressing luossamoraš (salmon grief), but also involved creative grief towards survivance in a larger environmental, cultural, and political context and the sustainability situation faced by the Sámi on the River Deatnu. The game creation goes beyond expression, and is also about reciprocal relations of beings, both humans and more-than-humans.

ABSTRACT. The representation of the animal ‘in itself’ rather than Othered poses problems for game design (Janski, 2016; Chang, 2019) and media more broadly (Derrida, 2008; Agamben, 2003), a problematic that the growing field of Green/Eco Game Studies urges us to reckon with (Tyler, 2022; Op de Beke et al., Forthcoming). I propose, however, that constrained ‘playgrounds’ can provide indirect means of affective and speculative relation to the nonhuman which might overcome barriers posed by difference (Haraway 2008; Hayward 2012; Seller 2020). This extended abstract explores this in the context of ‘captivity’ as a mechanic and aesthetic in games and the affective space this creates for animal and player.

This planned work employs textual analysis (Mayra, 2008), Animal Studies and Affect Studies approaches to explore how videogame adaptation Jurassic World: Evolution (Frontier 2018) mediates Jurassic World’s (2015) affects of bored, anxious captivity, in an era of normalised risk and repeated crisis management (Beck 1992; Bhattacharyya 2015). In its reception, the game has been critiqued as repetitious and boring (Freeman 2018; Stapleton 2018); dinosaurs take naps more frequently than fighting; escapes are routinised and repetitious; and the player is demanded to balance a small set of parameters to meet minimum thresholds of reptile happiness and their own. In its simple and slow systems that expose us to the dinosaur after the moment of wonder or shock, the game realises the observation of Jurassic World’s protagonist concerning the saturation of culture with these once extraordinary animals: “No one’s impressed by a dinosaur anymore” (Jurassic World, 2015). If the cinematic dinosaur signals the growing mundanity of ‘terrible lizards,’ I argue that Evolution explores boredom through systems of quotidian park maintenance where the speculative animal might meet the player through shared chains of affective constraint. As W.J.T. Mitchell asks of the dinosaur’s ambivalent symbolism of power and extinction, allure and obsolescence, “Are we to scream or to yawn?” (1998:69).

ABSTRACT. This study developed and tested a conceptual model for character bleed, focusing on how personality design for D&D characters affects the player over an extended period through a longitudinal experiment. A new measurement for character bleed was developed and tested for this purpose. Results show that playing a character close to your own personality leads to more character bleed-in than character bleed-out, and playing a character whose personality you wish to have or playing a character whose personality is opposite to your own equally leads to bleed-in and bleed-out. The results also show that when players play a character that has an opposite personality to their own, they experience more bleed-out than when they play a character close to their own personality. Continuing, the study provides helpful insights and further directions for future research to discover how RPGs like D&D and character creation can be leveraged to improve one’s well-being.

ABSTRACT. The manuscript is an Extended Abstract.

This paper will outline research investigating how game developers can utilise online reviews to inform their development processes and, in particular, what useful information for developers can be extracted from large data sets of player reviews using Machine learning techniques. Before exploring game developers’ specific information requirements, the paper summarises previous work identifying information useful in general software development. To advance our knowledge of the definition of helpful information in the video game industry and the possibility of embedding online reviews into game development, we conducted semi-structured interviews with video game companies to explore their perceptions of online game reviews and topic discovery using machine learning techniques. The aim here is twofold: to advance the understanding of ‘helpful information’ as applicable to the video game industry and explore the potential for incorporating the analysis of online reviews into game development processes.

ABSTRACT. Game design allows users to express themselves and their ideas, but what happens if these ideas are false, misleading, or harmful? Research on misinformation has primarily focused on social digital spaces yet games and their design offer potential as signaling tools to build up targetable audiences and communities. This paper focuses on the game design platform Scratch, exploring how user communities formed ideologically driven “studios” that debate misinformation themes. Expanding from a larger research project on misinformation within videogames, this work shows how design and community practice on Scratch engages users in ideological divides.

ABSTRACT. In this presentation, I aim to show how an alternative approach to higher game design education, utilizing experimental input and public spaces, aims to enable students to design playful experiences rather than just game content.

ABSTRACT. This paper presents an in-progress qualitative research project looking into leadership in digital spaces. It consists of long form interviews of individuals who took positions of leadership in digital contexts, focusing specifically on those identifying as women or persons of color. It analyzes how their experiences in leading their digital games led to the development of leadership skills and job opportunities offline.

ABSTRACT. Cosplay is a trend that originated in Japan and is becoming increasingly popular in Austria. The word cosplay is a combination of the words "costume" and "play". Cosplayers dress up as characters from different media, such as films, TV series, comics, manga or video games. The costumes are usually very elaborate and creatively designed, often with a large part of the costume made by the cosplayer themselves. Cosplayers meet at conventions and events to show off their costumes. The community can be characterised by openness, tolerance, diversity and inclusion. (see e.g. Yang 2022, Akademie der Kulturellen Bildung 2019, Birnbaum 2019)

Cosplay is therefore a very complex and creative hobby that develops practical skills such as sewing, crafting, painting, stage make-up and photography. Social skills can also be promoted through community interaction and hobby requires problem-solving, time and money management skills. In addition, cosplay can contribute to body positivity and the exploration of one's own identity. (see. e.g. Lome 2016, Hirsh 2021, Seregina and Weijo 2017, Joice 2022)

Despite this potential, there are hardly any projects in Austria - or anywhere else in the world - that bring cosplay practices into the classroom. The research project CosTechPlay (ongoing from September 2023 until August 2025) aims to fill this gap by developing an innovative, interdisciplinary teaching concept that combines technical and textile work, making and upcycling, and develops students' skills in the areas of creativity, technology, problem solving, communication and self-expression. Career guidance activities will focus on identifying and nurturing talent in the professional field of production technologies. A gender sensitive and inclusive approach aims to contribute to body positivity and breaking gender stereotypes. The teaching concept is being developed from the three project partners, in close collaboration with five partner schools in Austria. The schools cover a wide age range from 8 to 18 years. All methods will be tested and iteratively developed in the schools, supported by experienced cosplayers who will also act as role models throughout the project.

In the extended abstract, the planned project phases of CosTechPlay are described.