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Documents
Whitepaper3 pages
Achievement Unlocked: The Art of Localizing Minecraft's Advancements
This paper examines the localization of achievements, specifically focusing on the 122 "advancements" in version 1.21 of Minecraft: Java Edition.
- The study analyzes the 122 advancements in Minecraft: Java Edition version 1.21, treating their display names as a site where translators balance gameplay guidance with cultural meaning when localizing into French.
- Each advancement is framed as having a visible signifier (name, description, icon) and an invisible completion logic (trigger, conditions, multiplier), so localized names must preserve the hint toward what players need to do.
- Translators must adapt culturally specific references that may not travel across cultures, as shown by the English advancement "Country Lode, Take Me Home," which alludes to a well-known song and relates to using a compass on a lodestone.
DiGRAJun 2026
Whitepaper5 pages
Repeated Pleasures: Motivations for Replaying Story-driven Games
This document outlines a study investigating the motivations behind replaying story-driven video games, focusing on how player characteristics influence replay intentions.
- The study investigates why people replay story-driven video games, a topic the authors note has received little research attention compared with general media selection and novelty preference.
- Data come from 344 university students in an online longitudinal experiment, examining whether gaming motivations, transportability, imaginative engagement, and gaming experience/skill predict replay intention.
- Replay intention was measured with a single five-point item asking how likely participants were to choose a previously played game over a novel one, supplemented by open-ended questions about replayed titles, changed decisions, and influencing factors.
DiGRAJun 2026
Whitepaper5 pages
From Player-Centered to Agent-Centered: A New Paradigm for Interactive Narrative in the Age of Large Language Models
This paper introduces a new paradigm for interactive narrative, shifting from a player-centered to an agent-centered approach, particularly in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs).
- The paper argues that LLM-driven interactive narrative shifts pleasure from player-centred choice toward relationships with semi-autonomous agents that remember, infer, improvise, and sometimes fail.
- It proposes the Agent-Centered Narrative Pleasure (ACNP) framework, linking three dimensions: agency distribution, authorship configuration, and pleasure structures.
- Its evidence is exploratory and comparative, based on qualitative coding of five agentic systems (1001 Nights, Generative Agents, AI Town, Instantale, SIMA 2), with no survey data or quantitative sample sizes reported.
DiGRAJun 2026
Whitepaper4 pages
Retellings as a New Player Discourse: A Case Study of Let's Play Videos
This research proposes a new theoretical framework for understanding "game retellings," defined as narratives players create about their video game experiences.
- Existing retelling theory focuses on the narrative properties of interactive systems and underweights player agency and intention, which this paper seeks to correct.
- The paper argues that retellings form a player discourse that negotiates between the player's intentions and the game's, producing new meanings layered on top of the source text.
- The framework draws on Eladhari's concept of retelling, Umberto Eco's hermeneutics, and game-focused ludohermeneutics, and is applied through multimodal discourse analysis.
DiGRAJun 2026
Whitepaper5 pages
Flesh, Plastic, Stone: The Pleasure of Recontextualised Character Models
The document explores the unique pleasure derived from instances in videogames where character models are intentionally recontextualized as inert objects, such as sculptures or toys, thereby undercutting the game's own fiction.
- The paper argues that moments where game characters appear as statues, toys, or museum exhibits deliberately undercut their own fictions and produce a distinctive pleasure, analysed through theories of comedy, the ontology of digital objects, and the cultural status of games.
- Its central example is Shenmue II, where a marble bust of a villain turns out to be the same scaled and retextured 3D model used for the character himself.
- The author contends such moments do more than mock players who mistake digital puppets for living people (as Bergson's theory of laughter might suggest), also mediating anxieties about games as commodified playthings versus serious art, and the deskilled, precarious labour of developers whose cutting-edge assets become obsolete.
DiGRAJun 2026
Whitepaper3 pages
Interactivity as Embodied Pleasure: A Media-Phenomenological Reframing through Interactive Short Videos
This theoretical paper challenges the dominant technical-operational definition of interactivity in game studies by examining "finger-interactive" short videos on platforms such as Douyin and TikTok.
- The paper argues that the dominant technical-operational definition of interactivity in game studies is too narrow, since 'finger-interactive' short videos on Douyin and TikTok invite touch and reward performance even though the system detects no input, adapts to no action, and changes no state.
- It introduces the 'Participation Illusion', a felt sense that one's actions affect the mediated environment without any system acknowledgment, and presents it as identifying the minimal experiential conditions of interaction rather than as deception.
- The minimal conditions of interactivity are identified as action intentionality, coupled expectation between movement and media rhythm, and affective confirmation through felt correctness or success; when these form a self-sustaining loop, interactivity emerges regardless of computational responsiveness.
DiGRAJun 2026
Whitepaper5 pages
Predicting Trolling Behaviors Using In-Game Timeline Data: A League of Legends Case Study on Divergent Mechanisms Behind AFK and Item Tier-Dropping
This study constructs predictive models for trolling behaviors in League of Legends, challenging the traditional view that trolling is solely driven by malicious intent.
- The study challenges the view that trolling is mainly driven by malicious intent, proposing instead that distinct trolling behaviors stem from different performance trajectories.
- Using about 2.9 million League of Legends match timelines from the official Riot Games Developer API, the authors model two behaviors: AFK inactivity and intentional item tier-dropping.
- AFK is most closely associated with early and sustained disadvantage relative to a lane opponent, consistent with withdrawal after diminished perceived influence.
DiGRAJun 2026
Whitepaper3 pages
Nostalgic Development Practices: Fantasy Consoles and DIY Game Engines
The document analyzes the growing trend of game developers creating custom game engines and utilizing "fantasy consoles" as a rejection of mainstream, readymade engines like Unity or Unreal.
- The paper examines a movement of game developers who reject readymade engines like Unity and Unreal in favor of custom-built engines or 'fantasy consoles' with deliberate technical constraints.
- Billy Basso's homebrew engine for Animal Well (2024) is the central case study, with critics and the developer himself framing it as key to the game's success.
- Developers of Factorio, Teardown, and Sokoban are cited as using bespoke tooling to signal technical skill, intentional design, and artistic uniqueness.
DiGRAJun 2026
Whitepaper4 pages
Monstera pocketii: The Botanical Vitality of Pokémon
This paper argues that the Pokémon franchise should be read through plant studies rather than solely as representations of animals.
- The paper argues Pokémon should be read through plant studies rather than solely as animal representations, emphasizing the botanical and 'living surface' qualities of the creatures and franchise, which exceed the category of the animal.
- Author Nikolas Matovinovic (Monash University) builds on ecocritical and critical plant studies frameworks, drawing on Sean Morey and Jason Crider's 'Hyperanimal' concept and theories of plant agency and interspecies communication, including orchid-wasp relations.
- Carnivorous-plant-inspired Pokémon such as Victreebel and Carnivine are presented as the most significant contemporary screen depiction of carnivorous plants, a category the paper says existing plant horror scholarship largely overlooks.
DiGRAJun 2026
Whitepaper4 pages
Artistic In-Game Photographs as Media of Care
This paper argues that many works of artistic in-game photography can be understood as media of care, drawing on feminist care ethics, game studies, and photography theory.
- The paper argues that artistic in-game photographs can be read as 'media of care,' showing care structures thematically, structurally, or materially and taking part in discourses on social and ecological responsibility.
- It proposes two care structures: existential care, arising from the obligation to keep avatars alive and sustain play (which persists even when photo mode suspends it), and relational care, adapted from Puig de la Bellacasa's 'matters of care' to describe how games embed in broader ecologies beyond play.
- The analysis is qualitative and media-aesthetic/photography-theoretical; it reports no survey sample or dataset, so its claims rest on interpretation of selected works rather than measured evidence.
DiGRAJun 2026
Whitepaper5 pages
Killing Them Softly: Exploring the Contradictory Pleasures of Cosy Detective Videogames
This extended abstract explores the paradoxical appeal of "cozy detective videogames," a subgenre combining the relaxing aesthetics of cozy games with the thematic darkness of crime fiction.
- The paper argues that cosy crime games are doubly complex, combining the relaxation of cosy gaming with the reassurance of traditional crime narratives, and that this tension merits scholarly attention.
- Cosy crime is framed as a reaction to hardboiled fiction and police procedurals, drawing on Golden Age conventions such as puzzle-based plots, country house settings, humour, and moral resolution.
- The authors cite a perceived renaissance of detective fiction, pointing to Agatha Christie adaptations, Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club, and long-running television series as evidence of appeal in cosy crime.
DiGRAJun 2026
Whitepaper5 pages
From Pixels to Planet: How Game Makers Strive for Planetary Impact Beyond the Magic Circle
This study investigates how European game developers are integrating planetary concerns into their design and production practices, moving beyond traditional notions of games as purely escapist or immaterial.
- Game developers are increasingly using their medium to address planetary and climate challenges, moving beyond games as self-contained play spaces, according to ethnographic research conducted during 2025 within the Horizon STRATEGIES project.
- The study draws on fieldwork, studio visits, and interviews with more than sixty studios and industry professionals across nine European countries, spanning triple-A and indie developers, publishers, and hardware producers.
- Change is most often initiated bottom-up by passionate individual developers, and studios frequently focus on climate change, biodiversity, and nature conservation, often collaborating with NGOs for expertise and funding.
DiGRAJun 2026