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Documents
Environmental Storytelling and Active Spectatorship in Walking Simulators and Exploration Theatre
Environmental storytelling in exploration-based immersive theatre and walking simulators is the subject of this study, which argues that both forms place the surrounding environment at the centre of narrative meaning and offer participants exploratory freedom without the power to alter the story's events.
- Environmental storytelling in exploration-based immersive theatre and walking simulators places the surrounding environment at the centre of narrative meaning, while giving participants freedom to explore but no power to change the story's events.
- The study frames audiences and players as "active spectators": their agency is confined to interpreting spaces, traces, and atmosphere rather than intervening in the narrative.
- The analysis identifies two main environmental strategies: indexical storytelling, where objects and arrangements act as cause-and-effect clues inviting participants to reconstruct past events, and atmospheric storytelling, where mood and sensory qualities convey meaning affectively.
VAFUG: A Model for Designing Educational Activities Grounded in Game Studies and Aesthetics
The paper introduces VAFUG, an analytical model designed to help educators examine commercial video games and build learning activities around their expressive and affective qualities.
- VAFUG is an analytical model for educators to examine commercial video games, organized into three components (Visual and Auditory Environment, Fictional Universe, and Core Gameplay), each paired with two indicators.
- The model was developed through Design-Based Research and is aimed at teachers who are not Game Studies specialists, generating guiding questions for student dialogue on socioemotional and civic competences.
- VAFUG targets independent commercial games not originally designed for education and is positioned as complementary to existing serious-game frameworks such as LM-GM.
Italian Teachers’ Attitudes and Competence According to the Acceptance Game-Based Learning Questionnaire
A survey of 2,752 Italian teachers examined which factors predict attitudes toward game-based learning (GBL), measured with the Acceptance of Game-Based Learning (AGBL) questionnaire.
- School level is the only meaningful demographic predictor of Italian teachers' attitudes toward game-based learning: preschool teachers reported significantly more positive attitudes than teachers at any secondary school type (p < .001), while differences among secondary school types were negligible.
- Demographic variables together explained only about 2 percent of the variance in attitudes toward game-based learning (R² = 0.019), with no significant association for age or years of teaching experience (p = 0.414 for experience).
- The authors attribute the preschool advantage to the constructivist flexibility of early childhood education versus the assessment-driven rigidity of secondary schooling, along with technological disparities across school levels.
The Terrible Victims: "Female Ghosts" as a Cultural Symbol in Chinese Indie Video Games
This paper examines the symbolic function of female ghosts in the horror puzzle genre of Chinese indie video games, arguing that these spectral figures give expression to anxieties about gender, memory, and justice that are difficult to voice openly.
- The paper argues female ghosts in Chinese indie horror puzzle games act as "terrible victims" who reclaim narrative space and ethical agency, expressing anxieties about gender, memory, and justice that are hard to voice openly.
- Analysis of four titles (Detention 2017, Blind Village 2022, Laughing to Die 2024, Firework 2021) identifies two archetypes, the wrathful avenger and the empathetic helper, each shaped by regional context.
- In Detention, the ghost serves as an ethical witness to Taiwan's White Terror, prompting civic reflection on guilt and remembrance, whereas Blind Village presents a vengeful folk-derived spirit reflecting anger over gender injustice and institutional failure in mainland settings.
Backyard Survival: Ecology of Killer Insects and Violent Nature in Grounded (2022)
This article, a conference paper from the DiGRA 2025 proceedings, examines how insect non-playable characters and the survival genre in the open-world game Grounded (Obsidian Entertainment, 2022) challenge the division between nature and culture.
- The paper argues that Grounded (Obsidian Entertainment, 2022) portrays nature as violent, unfamiliar, and dangerous, which can prompt players to reconsider the benign view of nature found in traditional ecological thinking.
- Three ludonarrative features drive this representation: the monstrous scale and behavior of insect NPCs, the intimate proximity of natural and human worlds in the backyard setting, and disasters caused when players act as god-like manipulators of the environment.
- The author contends these features can cultivate respect for nature through fear of a more powerful existence, interpreted through Haraway's Cthulhucene, Morton's dark ecology, and Braidotti's posthumanism.
The Ludum Platform: Exploring the Impact of Game Design on Prosocial Behavior in Children's Digital Play
This study examines how perceived personal risk shapes resource sharing among children in a custom-built digital game, The Ludum Detector, which is part of the broader Ludum Platform project.
- Children share fewer resources in a digital game as their personal risk rises: in a 46-child study of 8-year-olds, sharing differed significantly between high-risk and low-risk conditions (p = .015) and between medium-risk and low-risk conditions (p = .002).
- The authors conclude that children prioritize personal security, and that resource sufficiency is a strong contextual driver of prosocial decisions in digital settings.
- No significant differences in sharing emerged between boys and girls, suggesting similar responses to risk across sexes.
Test Trophy Please Ignore: Achievements as Paratexts in Palimpsestic Readings of Remasters and Remakes
This paper argues that achievements, or trophies, function as paratexts in Genette's sense, offering authorial commentary that reveals the palimpsestic relationship between original video games and their remakes and remasters.
- The paper argues that achievements/trophies act as paratexts in Genette's sense, offering authorial commentary that exposes the palimpsestic relationship between original games and their remakes and remasters.
- Trophy lists persist, change, or are newly created across versions, and these traces of revision can be read as interpretive, navigational, and commercial thresholds, a dimension the authors say previous scholarship on remakes as paratexts has largely omitted.
- A 2007 industry study cited in the paper correlated higher achievement volume with higher Metacritic scores and sales, and achievements became mandatory on Microsoft and Sony platforms after the Xbox 360's 2005 launch.
Rhetorics of Puppy Love and Death in The Pale Beyond (2023)
This paper offers a close reading of the 2023 survival game The Pale Beyond, examining how it portrays non-human animals, specifically the sled dogs under the care of crew member Ingrid Cordell.
- The paper's central claim is that The Pale Beyond (2023) builds a warm human-animal bond with its sled dogs and then removes the player's ability to intervene, forcing their deaths, which many players experience as manipulative rather than meaningful.
- The author argues that respectful animal representation in games rests on three traits (individuality, agency, and ephemerality), and The Pale Beyond creates conflict among them by giving the dogs emotional weight and narrative value while denying them any power over their own fate.
- The game is framed as a tension between promised player choice and later revoked agency, and the author interprets player frustration as stemming both from the portrayal of animal death and from this perceived hypocrisy.
Cozy History? Frameworks, Contrasts, and Affect in Cozy Historical Video Games
Alexander Vandewalle's paper argues that cozy historical video games, including titles with mythological content, constitute a distinct mode of "doing" history that departs from the dominant conventions of historical gaming.
- Alexander Vandewalle argues that cozy historical video games constitute a distinct way of 'doing' history, departing from the conventions of violence, conquest, technological progression, and cinematic realism typical of historical gaming.
- The paper introduces the concept of 'cozy history': an affective form of engagement in which players invest emotionally in a self-constructed presence within a loosely defined past, rather than in an authentic reconstruction of a specific region or era.
- Cozy historical titles such as Tiny Glade, REKA, Valheim, Dawn of Defiance, and Manor Lords emphasize building, nature, collectivity, and non-photorealist aesthetics while largely removing combat and stressful mechanics.
Speak with Blocks: Minecraft, Environmental Education and Activism
This paper by Gaia Amadori examines how digital games, specifically the sandbox title Minecraft, can serve as platforms for environmental education and ecological activism.
- The paper argues that video games should be analyzed as nodes in a network of stakeholders (NGOs, corporations, public institutions, developers, and gaming communities), not as isolated software products.
- It proposes an analytical model with three dimensions: the ecological issue addressed, the network of actors, and the video game ecosystem (assets, affordances, and paratexts such as user-generated content and streamer discussions).
- Greenpeace's 'To The Last Tree Standing' campaign recreated Poland's Białowieża Forest in Minecraft and then altered the map to show near-total deforestation; the paper says it reached millions and helped build public pressure that contributed to halting real-world logging there.
Preserving Japanese Indie Games at BitSummit Drift 2024
This extended abstract, authored by Michael Pennington and James Newman of Bath Spa University, argues that Japan's contributions to videogame history are at serious risk of being lost, both because digital games are becoming unplayable and because English-language histories tend to privilege American and Eurocentric…
- Japan's videogame heritage is at serious risk of being lost, both because digital games are becoming unplayable and because English-language histories tend to privilege American and Eurocentric perspectives.
- A central finding is that many Japanese indie developers worry their games will become unplayable due to hardware breakage or financial constraints that prevent ongoing maintenance.
- The authors conclude that audiovisual documentation of gameplay and spectatorship is itself a meaningful form of preservation.
Music beyond Gameplay: Embodied Experience of Acoustic Music in the Covers of Original Game Soundtracks
This paper examines fan-produced YouTube videos in which musicians perform acoustic covers of video game original soundtracks, treating these uploads as a form of participatory culture, prosumption, and meaning-making within game culture.
- Fan-produced acoustic covers of video game soundtracks are framed as active reconstructions rather than imitations: moving a digital, interactive score to traditional instruments forces performers to interpret the material and creates a distinct embodied musical experience.
- The authors treat these YouTube covers as de-centered paratexts and player-produced texts that document game reception and function as artistic expression within participatory game culture.
- The authors argue that a soundtrack's popularity tracks the size of its fandom and the cultural visibility of its publisher, citing Nintendo series such as The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, and Pokemon as enduringly prominent.