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Documents
Whitepaper12 pages
The Pervasive Interface: Tracing the Magic Circle
"The Pervasive Interface: Tracing the Magic Circle" posits a redefinition of the interface concept within pervasive games, arguing it extends beyond conventional hardware and software to encompass the player's imagination and the reinterpretation of everyday reality.
- Eva Nieuwdorp's DiGRA 2005 paper argues that pervasive games, which embed fantasy within everyday physical and social settings, require rethinking the concept of an interface beyond hardware and screens.
- The paper proposes a "liminal interface" crossed in two stages: the paratelic interface, a playful state where players set aside lifeworld conventions through Goffman's rules of irrelevance, and the paraludic interface, a rule-bound structure where the game world's semiotic conventions dominate.
- The paper reworks the magic circle as a permeable, two-way boundary rather than a sealed space, and contends that the game world must feel omnipresent and internally consistent or the magic circle is pierced and the game collapses.
DiGRAJan 2005
Report18 pages
The Narrative and Ludic Nexus in Computer Games: Diverse Worlds II
"The Narrative and Ludic Nexus in Computer Games: Diverse Worlds II" empirically investigates the interplay between narrative and gameplay elements in contemporary computer games.
- The study analyses 80 critically acclaimed 2003 titles using Jenkins' four dimensions of narrative architecture and Aarseth, Smedstad and Sunnanå's thirteen-factor ludological typology, aiming to move past the narratology-ludology debate by examining how story and mechanics interact dynamically.
- Narrative formal systems appear in roughly three-quarters of the sampled games, with evoked and enacted narrative the most prevalent forms, while flashback and flash-forward techniques are rare and story information is predominantly presented objectively.
- Most titles feature geometrical topography, finite goal structures, real-world-paced time, and single- or two-player configurations, with deterministic responses, real-time environments, and objective-based rules common, and overcoming evil the dominant strategic objective.
DiGRAJan 2005
Report2 pages
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.
DiGRAJan 2005
Whitepaper4 pages
The Use of Video Game Technology for Investigating Perceptual and Cognitive Awareness in Sports
This paper outlines a research framework designed to investigate the transferability of perceptual and cognitive learning from video game environments to real-world sports, specifically ice hockey.
- The paper is a 2005 DiGRA conference proposal, not a completed study, and it reports no empirical results; its planned experiment's outcome remains untested.
- The authors argue that expert athletes and skilled video game players both build advanced perceptual and decision-making abilities through immersive practice, with ice hockey as the focal sport domain.
- The central claim is that expertise depends on holding and shifting between multiple knowledge types (cue utilization, pattern recognition, visual search, situational probability assignment) within ecologically realistic contexts rather than isolated lab trials.
DiGRAJan 2005
Whitepaper7 pages
Contexts, Pleasures and Preferences: Girls Playing Computer Games
This study investigates the gaming preferences of girls, arguing that these preferences are dynamic, context-dependent, and shaped by an "assemblage" of past experiences, access, and peer culture, rather than being solely attributable to gender.
- Preferences are not fixed: over one school term, the nine participating girls expanded their favourite-game lists from 26 titles to include 16 newly encountered games, suggesting that simply offering new games in a new context was enough to alter stated tastes.
- Physical site features shaped genre choice: consoles placed near the noisy social area drew girls to instantly gratifying, turn-taking games such as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 and Dead or Alive 3, while the solitary PC corner favoured narrative-driven titles like The Sims and the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings games.
- Avatar gender mattered less than assumed: the girls showed little interest in female-led games, and questionnaire responses about ideal characters rarely specified gender, with those who did sometimes choosing male avatars, most pronounced among girls with the greatest home access.
DiGRAJan 2005
Whitepaper13 pages
The Psychophysiology of Video Gaming: Phasic Emotional Responses to Game Events
This study explores the phasic psychophysiological responses to specific game events, aiming to demonstrate how emotion-related physiological data can inform game design.
- The study shifts from tonic, averaged physiological measures to phasic, event-level responses, arguing that tonic measures cannot separate the varied emotions elicited by specific moments of play.
- Physiological data (facial EMG, skin conductance, and cardiac interbeat intervals) were recorded from 36 participants playing Monkey Bowling 2 and synchronized with video at roughly single-frame accuracy.
- Falling off the lane and knocking down pins both produced positive-valence responses, and falling off the lane also elicited high arousal, suggesting active participation can make even failure emotionally rewarding.
DiGRAJan 2005
Whitepaper7 pages
Building and Reconstructing Character: A Case Study of Silent Hill 3
This paper presents a case study of character building in the game Silent Hill 3, analyzing how the player character, Heather, is constructed and perceived.
- Predefined functions such as cutscene dialogue and written monologue are the primary means by which Heather's nature is revealed in Silent Hill 3, while goals play only a minor role.
- Possible and impossible actions frequently reinforce the characterization conveyed by predefined functions, operating through the game's control design.
- The opening user guide, the playable nightmare sequence, and the first cutscenes are especially important for setting the player's interpretive expectations of the character.
DiGRAJan 2005
Whitepaper6 pages
Playing in the Sandbox: Developing Games for Children with Disabilities
This study investigates the preferences and needs of children with disabilities regarding computer games, challenging the notion that special games are required for special needs.
- The principal barrier for children with disabilities, especially those with cerebral palsy, is physical rather than a lack of suitable content: console controllers for Xbox and PlayStation require two dexterous hands, and many of these children lack them.
- The author argues these children do not primarily need specially designed games; they want to play the same commercial titles as their peers, so the priority is accessible input hardware for mainstream multiplayer games.
- Informal interviews with cerebral palsy students aged 18 to 21 at a centre attached to a mainstream high school reported that games made them happier, improved self-esteem, and gave a sense of social belonging, with one student believing driving games helped him control a powered wheelchair.
DiGRAJan 2005
Report9 pages
Games for Learning: Are Schools Ready for What's To Come?
This 2005 pilot study, presented at the DiGRA conference and conducted by researchers at the University of Calgary, examines whether K-12 teachers are ready to integrate digital games into classroom instruction.
- Seventy percent of surveyed K-12 teachers reported using simulations or games in class, and 57 percent used games specifically, mostly for learning.
- The main barriers to classroom game use were inadequate hardware and software, insufficient time, and lack of knowledge about integrating games into curricula, rather than resistance to games themselves.
- Willingness to try game-related applications was generally high, with educational downloads and simulations rated most favorably and commercial off-the-shelf games receiving more mixed responses.
DiGRAJan 2005
Whitepaper14 pages
From Real-World Data to Game World Experience: Social Analysis Methods for Developing Plausible & Engaging Learning Games
The document outlines a methodological approach for developing plausible and engaging learning games by transforming real-world social data into interactive narratives.
- The report's core method converts qualitative interview data into causally structured game narratives using cultural-historical activity theory, grounded theory coding in ATLAS.ti, action-relevant episodes, and TEAMVIEW representations, so that tensions within activity systems can be resolved in multiple ways to produce varied plot developments.
- The central case is HEALTHSIMNET, a prototype for improving practice within an HIV health care network in British Columbia, built from interviews with network participants.
- Interviews surfaced consequential design issues including legal barriers to public health action, widespread gaps in family physician knowledge about HIV, underserved patient populations, and spiritual and judgmental influences on care.
DiGRAJan 2005
Whitepaper10 pages
Framing Virtual Law
"Framing Virtual Law" establishes a five-layer analytical framework—Actual, Interface, System, Instantiation, and Virtual—to dissect the complex legal and normative landscape of virtual worlds.
- The paper replaces the real-versus-virtual dichotomy with a five-layer model (actual, interface, system, instantiation, virtual) and argues that control over virtual worlds is distributed across these layers rather than held by a single authority.
- Actual-world law operates mainly at the outermost layer through courts and sanctions, while end-user license agreements at the interface layer often waive participants' access to courts, leaving owners largely shielded from legal challenge.
- Illustrative cases such as the Korean Lineage "off-line PK" assault and the banishment of Peter Ludlow from The Sims Online show owners excluding participants with little practical recourse.
DiGRAJan 2005
Whitepaper8 pages
Game Mediated Communication: Multiplayer Games as the Medium for Computer Based Communication
This document explores the increasing role of multiplayer games as a medium for computer-based communication, hypothesizing that these games are becoming a natural environment for general computer chat.
- Roughly 16.83% of computer chatters spontaneously linked chat with multiplayer games even though the interviewer never raised games, suggesting games are already a natural association for computer-mediated conversation.
- Among students aged roughly 10 to 15 at two Swedish schools, 101 of 131 interviewed reported chat use, and spontaneous game association was nearly identical for younger and older students (17.07% vs. 16.67%).
- Positive associations dominated: 76.47% of game-related answers arose from questions about the benefits of chat.
DiGRAJan 2005