DiGRA
The Digital Games Research Association: the international association of academics and professionals who study digital games. Its Digital Library holds the proceedings of the DiGRA conferences since 2002.
Documents
Role Theory: The Line Between Roles as Design and Socialization in EverQuest
This paper applies sociological role theory to the massively multiplayer online game EverQuest, examining how character classes are functionally designed into the game and then reshaped through player socialization and individual appropriation.
- Role theory is applied to EverQuest, arguing that character classes are first functionally designed, then refined by community norms, and finally individualized through each player's personality and style of play.
- The paper finds that the relationship between game structure and player socialization is reciprocal rather than simply oppositional, challenging the expectation that player interaction would deconstruct rigid structural roles.
- Using the cleric class as its main example, the paper shows that design prioritizes the stability of the class role over any individual player, so any competent cleric can fill the position in group play.
Game Styles, Innovation, and New Audiences: An Historical View
Costikyan's paper argues that games have always been organized into genres defined not by theme but by shared core mechanics, and that new genres, once discovered, drive a wave of imitation and, in turn, attract new audiences.
- Games are organized into genres defined by shared core mechanics rather than theme, and new genres, once discovered, spawn waves of imitation and attract new audiences.
- The largest commercial successes typically arise from genuinely new genres that discover new 'peaks' in gameplay space, rather than from refinements of existing ones, making such innovation the most valuable contribution a designer can make.
- Rising development costs have made publishers increasingly reluctant to take risks on experimental designs, which the author warns may threaten the games industry's long-term health.
Law, Order and Conflicts of Interest in Massively Multiplayer Online Games
This paper examines how conflicts and social norms operate in massively multiplayer online games, using the fantasy MMORPG Everquest as its case.
- Rules in large online games like Everquest arise from two sources: the publisher's formal rules and the norms players develop among themselves over time.
- Based on roughly 400 hours of ethnographic gameplay (February–April 2004), supplemented by in-game interviews, event logging, and analysis of two Everquest forums including Sony's official forum, the authors identify recurring objectionable behaviors such as kill-stealing, train-pulling, camping, twinking, power-leveling, macro-driven automated play, and real-money item trading.
- Most objectionable behaviors are regulated through informal social sanctions rather than formal enforcement, and their effectiveness depends heavily on how susceptible each individual player is to social pressure.
Understanding Korean Experiences of Online Game Hype, Identity, and the Menace of the "Wang-tta"
Florence Chee's 2005 study, based on four months of ethnographic fieldwork in Seoul during 2004, examines why Korea has earned a reputation for intensive online gaming and argues that this reputation is better explained by social, cultural, and infrastructural conditions than by a universal notion of biomedical addiction.
- Florence Chee's 2005 study, based on four months of 2004 ethnographic fieldwork in Seoul, argues that Korea's reputation for intensive online gaming is better explained by social, cultural, and infrastructural conditions than by a universal model of biomedical addiction.
- Korean PC game rooms ("PC bangs") are treated as third places for social connection and shelter, charging roughly one US dollar per hour, with about one venue per Seoul city block and round-the-clock operation.
- Many players, especially in PC bangs, are motivated more by social bonds than by the games themselves, with one couple's relationship developing through shared play.
Studying Games in School: A Framework for Media Education
Pelletier's paper argues that digital games deserve to be studied in schools as a subject in their own right, not merely as tools for teaching other disciplines.
- Pelletier et al. argue that digital games should be studied in schools as a subject in their own right, not merely as tools for teaching other disciplines.
- The proposed framework analyses games through an integrated combination of design, play, and culture, adapted from Buckingham's three-part media education model of text, audiences, and institutions.
- Young people's informal game literacy is uneven and shaped by unequal social access, which the authors argue makes structured classroom study and practical game-making valuable.
Information Behavior and the Formation and Maintenance of Peer Cultures in Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games: A Case Study of City of Heroes
This paper offers a conceptual framework for a planned study of how players in Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) form and sustain small peer groups such as guilds, clans, and teams, using the massively multiplayer game City of Heroes as its case.
- The paper is an early-stage conceptual framework for a planned study, not a report of empirical results; its claims rest mainly on existing literature rather than new data.
- It proposes that play theory and information behavior theory (especially meaning-making) together can explain how MMORPG players form and sustain guilds, clans, and teams with their own rules and mores despite anonymity and missing offline social cues.
- The framework treats MMORPGs three ways: as games, as 'virtual sandbox' play spaces, and as cultures where knowledge, behavior, and artifacts are learned and negotiated.
Addressing Social Dilemmas and Fostering Cooperation Through Computer Games
This paper examines how the concept of social dilemmas, situations where individual self-interest conflicts with collective benefit, can be addressed through computer games, with particular attention to identity formation and cooperation.
- The paper's central thesis is that cooperation in games is best fostered by increasing trust and by making individuals explicitly aware of their choices, and that in-game communities should develop their own norms rather than have them imposed from outside.
- A prior three-researcher study using a custom Neverwinter Nights module with pre- and post-gameplay surveys found that players experimented with alternative strategies, but this did not measurably change their real-life choices in a hypothetical social dilemma, though it did prompt deeper reflection on real-world situations.
- The earlier study's authors attributed the null behavioral result to the game's limited depth and the absence of interaction with other real people, and concluded that identity is more complex than anticipated, shaped by individual differences.
Growing Complex Games
Growing Complex Games, a 2005 DiGRA conference paper by Nicholas Glean, argues that strategy and "God" simulation games such as SimCity, Civilization, Children of the Nile, and Rome: Total War should be analyzed as complex systems using concepts drawn from complexity science.
- Glean's 2005 DiGRA paper argues that strategy and 'God' simulation games such as SimCity, Civilization, Children of the Nile, and Rome: Total War should be analyzed as complex systems using concepts from complexity science.
- Although fully deterministic, these games generate emergent, unpredictable, and novel play patterns arising from interacting agents and player decisions.
- The paper frames such games not as accurate predictive models of real-world phenomena but as 'transitional objects' that enable experimentation and reflection.
The Ability of Branded Online Games to Build Brand Equity: An Exploratory Study
This exploratory study examines whether advergames, online video games embedded with brand imagery, can build brand equity more effectively than banner advertisements.
- An M&M's advergame achieved 32% unaided recall and 57% aided recognition, versus 3% and 14% for a banner ad, with 68% combined recall compared with 16% for the banner.
- In a paired comparison, the advergame produced significantly higher brand recall than the banner ad (t=4.53, p=0.0009), supporting the view that advergames can outperform banners in building brand awareness.
- The study's sample was small and non-representative: 37 completed responses out of 108 registrants, recruited from online game community forums.
Wherever Hardware, There'll Be Games: The Evolution of Hardware and Shifting Industrial Leadership in the Gaming Industry
The document argues that the video game industry's growth has been driven less by convergence than by successive platform diversification, with each new hardware generation, from arcade cabinets and pinball machines to consoles, handhelds, personal computers, and networked play, opening new customer segments and widening the…
- Growth in the video game industry has been driven mainly by successive platform diversification, with each new hardware generation (arcades, pinball, consoles, handhelds, PCs, networked play) opening new customer segments rather than by convergence.
- Hardware transitions are treated as the central engine of industrial change, repeatedly reshaping which firms held leadership, drawing on Young's and Schumpeter's frameworks.
- Atari's pinball division failed despite technical innovation due to manufacturing disadvantages and lost talent, and the traditional pinball industry's market share collapsed from 80 percent in 1975 to 5 percent in 1984 under digital competition and rising costs.
Immersion in Game Atmospheres for the Video Game Heritage Preservation
This paper proposes a method for preserving the atmospheres in which video games are played, arguing that while virtual museums and emulators now preserve game software, copies, screenshots, and commentary, the physical environment of play, its lighting, furniture, sounds, and social context, remains largely unarchived despite…
- The report argues that the physical atmosphere of play (lighting, furniture, sounds, social context) is largely unarchived even though players often remember it as one of their strongest experiences, while software preservation through emulators and virtual museums is comparatively well developed.
- The author positions video games as a major cultural form, noting the industry has surpassed cinema economically and has existed for more than thirty years, yet physical game exhibitions remain rare because hardware and software are fragile and scarce.
- The proposed method has three stages: forum-based player narratives about place and sensory perception, synthesis of recurring elements (lights, sounds, furniture, people) into representative atmospheres, and documentation of each atmosphere with date, description, element list, layout picture, permitted interactions, and associated games.
The Comparison of Online Game Experiences by Players in Games of Lineage & EverQuest: Role Play vs. Consumption
This study compares how two physically similar massively multiplayer online role-playing games, Lineage and EverQuest, acquire markedly different meanings depending on how their players perceive them.
- The same physical design and technology in Lineage and EverQuest produced fundamentally different virtual worlds, because players' understanding and use of each game differed; the authors argue digital content's value is shaped by consumers rather than solely by designers.
- Lineage players treated the game as an extension of everyday social life, using it to express identity, build relationships, and conduct economic activity, while EverQuest players viewed it mainly as a fantasy product to consume for exploration and goal achievement.
- Lineage respondents prioritized character names and social interaction when creating characters, whereas EverQuest respondents prioritized character ability and leveling.