Digital Games Research Association Research Articles

Ludologia – naukowe badania gier. Przeszłość, teraźniejszość, przyszłość


 
 
 The aim of the article is to present similarities and differences in the approaches to the field of ludol- ogy (also known as games research, game studies) in Poland and abroad, on the basis of an analysis of publications and papers presented at conferences of two representative contemporary academic ludological associations – the Polish Polskie Towarzystwo Badania Gier (Games Research Associa- tion of Poland), and the Digital Games Research Association. The achievements of these societies are comparable because of their similar period of activity. The subject of the analysis is the scope of research declared by both associations, the topics of papers presented at international academic conferences organised by them, and the topics of articles occurring in their publications. For the purposes of the analysis, two crucial categories concerning games of all types have been introduced to enable further study of selected texts: the distinction between digital and non-digital games – the former ones refer to electronic games of all types (requiring electricity and based on electronics), and the latter, to any other kinds of games (in some cases also requiring electricity but not electronics). In the analysis, four main thematic categories of papers and articles have been established: (1) texts concerning research in the sphere of digital games, new technologies, new media and related phenomena; (2) texts concerning research on non-digital games and related phenomena; (3) texts concerning other aspects of games and ludology including research on non-specific kinds of games or, quite contrary, concerning different types of games (digital and non-digital) in a particular approach (e.g. educational aspects), methodology of games research, issues common to all games (e.g. players, gameplay, winning/ losing etc.); (4) reviews, reports, forewords, introductory articles and lectures, texts on outstanding scholars etc. The aim of the quantitative analysis is to show the proportions of research devoted to digital games and other issues concerning games research carried out by Polish and foreign ludologists.
 
 

Introduction to the Special Issue: The Game is the Message, Selected Articles from the 2018 International DIGRA Conference

The 2018 Digital Games Research Association International Conference (DIGRA 2018), The Game is the Message was held at the Campus Luigi Einaudi of Turin University, Italy, 25-28 July 2018. Since it was first held in 2003, the DiGRA International Conference series provides a venue for the presentation and discussion of games-related research from multiple and diverse research disciplines.

Introduction to the Special Issue

The 2017 Digital Games Research Association International Conference (DiGRA 2017) was held in Melbourne, 3-6 July 2017. Swinburne University of Technology, RMIT University and The University of Melbourne joined together to host the conference.The DiGRA International Conference series offers a venue for research from all disciplines to present and discuss games-related research. Founded in 2003, DiGRA is the premiere non-profit international association for academics and professionals who research both digital and analogue games and associated phenomena. Since its beginnings, it has encouraged high-quality research on games, and promotes collaboration and dissemination of work by its members.

Homo Includens: Surveying DiGRA�s Diversity

This article examines which bodies have access to participate in Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) events, and to DiGRA as an organization. It is based on a survey (N=174), among subscribers to the DiGRA 'Gamesnetwork' mailing list. The survey included questions on age, gender, location and career level to gain insight into who is included in the DiGRA community, with further questions on problems and challenges faced by those who have had trouble accessing DiGRA. This paper does not proceed solely by statistical methodology, but draws on feminist theories of embodiment and qualitative methods. Through this diverse methodological approach, the paper analyzes which bodies have difficulties accessing DiGRA�s academic communities and conferences, which practices cause these difficulties, and which policies might be introduced to address these. The survey indicates that young, early-career and women�s bodies are in particularly precarious positions. This situation is perpetuated through various practices of economic and social inaccessibility. Upon reflection, the paper proposes a set of policies to address these practices. We conclude that this survey and its analysis are only a first step to making DiGRA a more diversely inclusive organization.

DiGRA Chapter Diversity

This paper focuses on the perceived value and importance of the regional chapters of Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA). Drawing on a survey conducted among chapter representatives, the viewpoints of nine regional chapter representatives are discussed, particularly from the point of view of how they contribute to better diversity and inclusiveness in such a large international organization. It answers two questions: 'What are the advantages of having regional chapters?' and 'What exactly constitutes �regional� in the context of DiGRA chapters?' In so doing, the paper establishes regional chapters as important junctures in catering for a wide audience beyond those able and interested in participating in annual DiGRA conferences or partaking in other international events.

Introduction

In 2016, for the first time, the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) and the Society for the Advancement of the Science of Digital Games (SASDG) partnered and decided to jointly host an unprecedented gathering of game-related researchers. The result was the largest ever academic conference on games research: the 1st JOINT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF DIGRA AND FDG.

Building Skill in Videogames: A Play of Bodies, Controllers and Game-Guides

In his now-seminal book, Pilgrim in the Microworld (1983), David Sudnow details his process of learning to play the game Breakout on the Atari 2600. Sudnow develops an account of his graduation from a novice (having never played a videogame prior, and middle-aged at time of writing) to being able to fluidly perform the various configurative processes involved in an acclimated Breakout player’s repertoire.

What We Know About Games

This article proposes a reflexive approach on the scientific production in the field of game studies in recent years. It relies on a sociology of science perspective to answer the question: What are game studies really about? Relying on scientometric and lexicometric tools, we analyze the metadata and content of a corpus of articles from the journals Games Studies and Games & Culture and of Digital Games Research Association ( DiGRA) proceedings. We show that published researches have been studying only a limited set of game genres and that they especially focus on online games. We then expose the different ways game studies are talking about games through a topic model analysis of our corpus. We test two hypotheses to explain the concentration of research on singular objects: path dependence and trading zone. We describe integrative properties of the focus on common objects but stress also the scientific limits met by this tendency.

Introduction

One of the aims of the Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association (ToDiGRA) is to collect the best received work presented at the DiGRA conferences. This special issue collects some of the highlights from the 2015 edition of the DiGRA conference held in Lüneburg, Germany(May 14-17). The conference theme of “Diversity of play: Games – Cultures – Identities” invited submissions that reflected upon the diversityof games and gaming and this compilation features some of the bestwork on that. As usual, the invited keynote speeches are not an integral part of the Transactions. We did however publish the keynotes in a separate open access publication that you might want to read in parallel with the peer-reviewed articles in this issue. You can find the booklet with the title “Diversity of Play” (ed Mathias Fuchs) published by meson press in Lüneburg available for free download at: http://meson.press/books/diversity-of-play/

Introduction

The Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association (ToDiGRA) collects some of the finest work presented at the DiGRA conferences. This issue continues in that tradition, and further acknowledges the breadth and variety of the scholarly work presented at the 2014 edition of the DiGRA conference held in Snowbird, Utah (August 3-6).

Introduction: What ‘is’ Australian Game Studies?

This special issue of the Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association Journal represent approaches by contemporary Australian scholars in the study of digital games. They responded to the provocation ‘What is Game Studies in Australia?’ the topic of the inaugural conference of the Digital Games Research Association Australia (DiGRAA). This event, held on 17th of June 2014, was a meeting of academic researchers, critics, designers, developers, and artists focused on developing a discussion of what game studies ‘is’ in Australia. The conference focused special attentiveness both to diversity and any particular regional issues that delegates chose to address. These articles illustrate the breadth and variety of approaches which were discussed.

Digital Games Research: A Survey Study on an Emerging Field and Its Prevalent Debates

Digital games have become a popular form of media entertainment. However, it remains unclear whether a canon of accepted knowledge and research practices has emerged that may define an independent field of research. This study is a collaborative effort to analyze the outlines of digital games research (DGR) through a survey among the membership of 3 institutionalized structures focusing on the study of digital games (International Communication Association Game Studies Interest Group, European Communication Research and Education Association Temporary Working Group DGR, and Digital Games Research Association). The study reveals relatively homogeneous viewpoints among games researchers, even regarding controversial aspects of digital games. It mirrors the mainstream scholarly views on contentious issues of a recently emerged field within communication studies.

Accidental, Assisted, Automated: An Emerging Repertoire of Infant Mobile Media Techniques

Accidental, Assisted, Automated: An Emerging Repertoire of Infant Mobile Media Techniques

Introduction

The Digital Games Research Association - DiGRA - celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2011. Espen Aarseth declared 2001 as the “year one of computer game studies as an emerging, viable, international, academic field” (Aarseth 2001). As of this writing, the DIGRA conference has been organized five times and DiGRA is now taking the next step, to publish its own journal.

Consumers, crime and the downloading of music

Dr Rutter is a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the School for Mass Communication Research, Catholic University of Leuven, where his research is focused primarily on community and the piracy of digital content. He was the inaugural vice‐president of the international Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA).

The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Strategies (review)

Reviewed by: The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Strategies Nina B. Huntemann The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Strategies by Steven E. Jones. Routledge 2008. $95.00 hardcover; $29.95 paper. 198 pages In the inaugural issue of Game Studies, editor-in-chief Espen Aarseth argued that the scholarly investigation of computer games should strive to exist as an “independent academic sector,” developing in related fields (he specifically named Media Studies, Sociology, and English), but ultimately free from the reductive tendency of sub-field status.1 Eight years later a handful of graduate programs in game studies are attracting students interested in focusing their degrees, and the Digital Games Research Association (DIGRA), a professional organization of academics formed in 2003, has hosted three successful international conferences devoted to games. Despite these developments, game studies remains a discipline without a room of its own. The majority of scholars attending DIGRA conferences are from other fields and vary widely in the theory and methodology they bring to the academic study of games. Likewise, these scholars infiltrate the annual conferences of their long-established disciplines to present work that may share theoretical foundations with their colleagues, but they explore an unfamiliar object of study. This interdisciplinary bounty is building a body of work that may or may not succeed in fulfilling Aarseth’s dream; in the meantime the cross-disciplinary knowledge exchange is enriching the ground for whatever takes root. Click for larger view View full resolution The Meaning of Video Games does not help mark territory that may be clearly called “game studies”; quite the opposite. Steven Jones, professor of English at Loyola University Chicago, expands the possibility of how games might be understood within and between a network of cultural phenomena that includes television dramas, science fiction, gift books, Shakespeare plays, improvisational theater, and more. At the core of this contextualization is the assumption that, along with [End Page 145] these recognizable cultural artifacts, video games are meaningful, and their meanings are created, circulated, debated, and manipulated in relation to “larger cultural and social meanings.”2 The first assumption Jones dispenses with quickly is the view that any textual study of video games will necessarily focus solely on narrative. He does not privilege the story of the game (plot, dialogue, character development) over the playing of the game (rules, devices, player choices). In this way Jones is neither a narratologist nor ludologist, and, following a brief recounting of the narratology versus ludology debate, he rejects the characterization of each by the other as unproductively simplistic. Instead, Jones proposes a “different kind” of textual analysis that retains a close reading of the story offered in the game through traditional elements like backstory and cut scenes, while simultaneously considering the procedures of game play, such as the interface and underlying code. Furthermore, Jones expands the game “text” to include pre-release marketing campaigns, production and design notes, online fan chat, trailers, reviews, spin-off books, player-created game modifications, official and unofficial web-sites—everything that might constitute “that cloud of extra media objects swirling around the game.”3 He binds this cloud of game-related material with French literary theorist Gérard Genette’s concept of the paratext: elements around and outside the main text that guide how audiences receive it. His purpose is to create “complex reception histories” which begin to capture the construction of the meaning(s) of games.4 Jones illustrates the dense relationship between paratext and text well in his reading of The Lost Experience, an alternative reality game created to promote the third season of the television program Lost. The unexpected but significant result of his analysis reveals how the core text of the Lost phenomenon is not necessarily located in the television episodes, the game, or the websites. In effect, these all serve as paratextual elements to each other at different times, depending on where and when viewers, players, or readers encounter them. This move situates the player, in the case of video games, in an active position, able to perform in and influence the vast “possibility space” of games.5 Player agency is extended in Jones’s exploration of Façade...

Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (review)

Reviewed by: Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds Sheila C. Murphy Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds by Jesper Juul. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press 2005. $36.00 hardcover. 225 pages In 2002, eager to expand my teaching on digital media to a new area, I embarked upon creating an undergraduate course on the culture and form of video games. At the time, I found myself groping for critical, humanistic, academic texts that took video games seriously. There were only a few to be found—most notably Mark J. P. Wolf ’s The Medium of the Video Game and Henry Jenkins and Justine Cassell’s anthology From Barbie® to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Instead of a wide range of academic work on gaming, I found a plethora of journalistic accounts and popular texts on video game play and history—coffee-table books that could accompany the retro Atari t-shirts my students bought at Urban Outfitters. I consequently looked to other places for new media writing on interactivity, comparative accounts that looked at games and movies, and work from literary and critical theory on narrative and play. I faced my first class—forty-two eager young men and three brave young women, all of whom were deeply passionate about video and computer games—and together we tried to have some rigorous fun understanding how video games are an interactive medium, aesthetic form, and cultural force. Click for larger view View full resolution Today my version of that course bears only a passing resemblance to its first incarnation, thanks in large part to the rapid emergence [End Page 142] and development of video game studies as a viable academic field. One can now study video game design and theory at a handful of top universities, and academics interested in teaching or researching video games can join in the collegial conviviality of video game scholars at conferences dedicated to the subject, engage online through communities like those found at gamelogy.org and digra.org (the Digital Games Research Association), or access peer-reviewed scholarship on video and computer games via the online journal Game Studies ( www.gamestudies.org ). Universities even have begun to develop video game archives so students can access hard-to-find titles and key works from the early history of video games. Likewise, the students of video games have changed a bit too—today I find my students are as likely to be aspiring screen-writers who want to write for games as they are to be fanboys whose first language is Nintendo. This nascent field (or sub-field) of video game studies has emerged only recently out of media studies, philosophy, critical theory, and new media design. Most of the credit for the rise of the field of video game studies goes to scholars like Jesper Juul, as well as Ian Bogost, Alexander Galloway, and Steven E. Jones. One thing that sets Juul’s Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds apart from much of the other work on video games, however, is his resolute commitment to discussing the merits and failures of video games as symbolic systems and experiences on their own terms and according to their own logics, rather than relying too much upon comparisons to other media. Juul is an expert at this strategy—he isolates the essential “gameness” of games (how games are structured by rules)—and places that quality in conversation with what games represent and how gamers interact with both those rules and representations. While such an approach might seem too essentializing to some, it is exactly what the new field of video game studies needs at this moment, and it picks up on conversations about such crucial qualities as game time, space, and narrative initiated in The Medium of the Video Game.1 In order to teach and talk about video games, we must first have a set of common terms and an understanding of what it is that makes video games a unique medium. Consider the early Atari game Pong (1973), which Juul discusses in great detail. The rules of Pong are incredibly simple and stated at...