Digital Games
Company
Documents about Digital Games
Play with Me: Exploring the Autobiographical through Digital Games
This paper investigates the potential of digital games as a medium for autobiographical expression, focusing on two game-based artworks by Mary Flanagan: "[domestic]" and, to a lesser extent, "[rootings]".
- The paper analyzes autobiography in digital games through two artworks by media artist Mary Flanagan, primarily the game modification [domestic] (2003), with a shorter look at [rootings].
- [domestic] removes a visible avatar and replaces combat imagery with personal photographs and poetic text about a childhood house fire, leaving the player's identity in contention and producing a shifting subjectivity.
- The paper argues that [domestic] reframes the first-person shooter's rules, which originally address a masculine subject of mastery, so that the player's shooting becomes defensive resistance against trauma and a reclaiming of agency within a feminist autobiographical project.
Profiling Academic Research on Digital Games Using Text Mining Tools
Academic research on digital games, spanning from 1986 to 2006, is a profoundly multidisciplinary field, encompassing over 170 subject categories within the ISI Web of Science.
- The study analyzes 2,136 ISI Web of Science records (1986–2006) on digital games using VantagePoint text mining, with articles making up 81% of records, and maps the field's thematic and geographic evolution.
- Three research areas dominate: Social Sciences, Law & Economics (30%), Health Sciences (29%), and ICT & Mathematics (25%); at the discipline level Computer Science (26%) and Psychology (25%) lead.
- ICT & Mathematics is the fastest-growing area, rising 160% between the 1997–2001 and 2002–2006 periods, and publication volume rose steadily with a pronounced peak after 2003.
The Spontaneous Playfulness of Creativity: Lessons from Interactive Theatre for Digital Games
This paper argues that integrating the theories and practices of improvisational and activist theatre can significantly enhance spontaneous, playful creativity in digital game design.
- The paper argues that improvisational and activist theatre methods can introduce spontaneous, playful creativity into digital game design, shifting developers away from a sole focus on technical topics like facial rendering and AI agents.
- It proposes adapting Uta Hagen's character analysis questions and Stanislavski-inspired "inside out" development to build digital characters from the inside rather than from surface traits.
- It applies Chris Crawford's arithmetic formulation of relationship motivation, along with Keith Johnstone's status-tower and "Lists" exercises, to construct relationship dynamics and generate first-instinct game ideas.
Digital Games for Education: When Meanings Play
"Digital Games for Education: When Meanings Play" explores the intricate relationship between game design and educational outcomes, using the development of "Contagion," a web-based game for 10-15 year olds on contagious diseases, as a case study.
- The authors argue that educational meaning is embedded in every element of a game's design, including character selection, art, narrative, programming, goals, and play itself, not just its subject matter.
- The project Contagion, built in Macromedia Flash for ages 10 to 15, covers four infectious diseases (SARS, West Nile Virus, Avian Flu, and AIDS) and was developed through design-based research at Simon Fraser University and York University.
- The authors found that their initial character art and pronoun choices reproduced gender stereotypes, and they revised toward more ambiguous, "marked" characters.
A Method for Discovering Values in Digital Games
The document outlines a novel methodology, centered on a "Values Cards" tool, designed to help game designers systematically identify, analyze, and integrate human values into digital games.
- Games inevitably embed human values such as equality, justice, generosity, and competition, in their mechanics, representation, and the prior experiences players bring, much as other media do.
- The Values Cards exercise is presented as a practical tool that lets game designers identify and discuss these embedded values, and it is positioned as the first step in the broader Values at Play methodology of discovery, translation, and verification.
- Designers can gain conscious control over the values their games convey by examining both the positive and negative expressions of those values.
The Sponsored Avatar: Examining the Present Reality and Future Possibilities of Advertising in Digital Games
This paper examines the current state and future potential of advertising within digital games, a practice often termed "advergaming."
- Advertising spending is shifting away from traditional television commercials toward placements in entertainment, with one cited beverage company redirecting more than $300 million in annual spending.
- Game-based advertising remained a small share of revenue relative to film and television, with projections of roughly $260 million by 2008, though agencies increasingly seek game placements and some have created dedicated game advertising divisions.
- Players generally accept in-game advertising, mostly because it enhances realism, but they worry that placements may feel incongruous and detract from the experience.
Playing With Non-Humans: Digital Games as Techno-Cultural Form
Seth Giddings's "Playing With Non-Humans: Digital Games as Techno-Cultural Form" argues that game studies needs a serious debate about the digitality of digital games.
- Seth Giddings argues that game studies needs a serious debate about the digitality of digital games, holding that understanding gameplay requires recognising non-human technological agency rather than treating technologies as merely socially constructed.
- Drawing on Science and Technology Studies and Actor-Network Theory, the work critiques the social constructivist and textual models dominant in media studies, contending that technologies exert material effects that cannot be reduced to their social consumption and that humans and non-humans form symmetrical networks.
- Using the strategy game Advance Wars 2 as its primary case study, the work proposes conceptualising gameplay as a cybernetic circuit rather than an extended cyborg body, shifting attention from games as passive texts to the active role of software systems.
The Localization of Digital Games: A Case Study in China
This paper investigates the complexities of digital game localization, specifically focusing on the Chinese market.
- Game localization is more complex than general software localization because games function simultaneously as commercial and cultural products.
- The authors propose a three-dimensional model comprising the In-Game Environment (storyline, gameplay, engagement, interface), the External Environment (social, political, legal, ideological factors), and the Users, who link the two.
- The central contention is that all three dimensions should be considered throughout the entire game design process rather than treated as a late-stage adjustment.
Digital Games: A Motivational Perspective
This literature review explores the motivational differences and similarities between commercial and educational digital games, aiming to inform the design of more effective learning tools.
- Commercial digital games have grown steadily while educational games remain marginal, and the review argues that understanding the motivational differences between the two can help designers combine their strengths to build more effective learning tools.
- The review grounds its analysis in three frameworks: Mitchell's situational interest model (CATCH versus HOLD), intrinsic motivation theory (challenge, fantasy, curiosity, control), and self-determination theory (competence, autonomy, relatedness).
- Lepper and Cordova's arithmetic game experiments found that personalized fantasy and player choice improved intrinsic motivation, time on task, and learning, with personalized fantasy producing the strongest results.
History of Digital Games in Turkey
This study provides a historical overview and current status of digital games and the game industry in Turkey, covering the period from the late 1980s to 2005.
- Turkish players' habits and play durations parallel global averages, but domestic game development has been extremely limited and poorly documented.
- Digital games reached Turkey in the early 1980s via arcade-style "Atari Salonu" halls, which prompted a 1985 regulatory response requiring local permits.
- Turkish home game development passed through three phases: an amateur 1980s period built on the Commodore 64 and magazine-published source code, a semi-professional 1990s period centered on Amiga and PC groups like Siliconworx and Compuphiliacs, and a professional stage from 2000 onward.
Feel It, Don't Think: The Significance of Affect in the Study of Digital Games
The document, "Feel It, Don't Think: The Significance of Affect in the Study of Digital Games," argues that traditional game studies methodologies, which prioritize visual, narrative, and semiotic elements, fail to adequately account for the embodied, multisensory, and physiological dimensions of gameplay.
- Shinkle argues that game studies focused on visual, narrative, and semiotic content overlook the embodied, physiological 'feel' of gameplay, which she calls affect: a multisensory, temporally delocalized experience that operates partly outside linear time and conscious choice.
- The paper distinguishes affect from emotion and presents itself as a preliminary theoretical examination rather than an empirical study, drawing on Massumi, Grodal, Aarseth, and Poole.
- Sega's rave-inspired Rez is cited as an example whose appeal lies in a trance-like synchronicity between player and environment rather than in level completion.
Issues and Approaches in Artificial Intelligence Middleware Development for Digital Games and Entertainment Products
The document examines the challenges and solutions in developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) middleware for digital games and entertainment products.
- AI has shifted from a secondary concern to a priority in game development, yet developers still rely on a narrow set of techniques and lack flexible, reusable tooling.
- Dedicated AI middleware, a software layer that supplies agent behavior and decision-making services to game engines, is presented as the likely next step for improving game AI and freeing developers for creative work.
- Dominant practice relies on finite state machines, hierarchical and fuzzy state machines, A pathfinding, steering behaviors, decision trees, and rule-based systems, each trading off speed, expressiveness, and predictability.