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
Games of Social Control: A Sociological Study of Addiction to Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games
This research proposes a sociological study of addiction to Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs), aiming to complement existing psychological explanations with a focus on social control.
- The project challenges dominant social-psychological explanations of game addiction, which attribute compulsive gaming to low self-esteem and weak social relations, by arguing that social networks within MMORPGs exert social pressure that leads players to neglect offline friends, family, school, and work.
- The authors frame the phenomenon through the sociological concept of social control, positing that shared in-game norms and obligations can restrict individual agency much as offline groups do.
- The abstract cites a reported 53 percent of frequent gamers playing multiplayer titles and states that MMORPG players average around 23 hours of play per week, with some sessions lasting ten hours or more.
The Significance of True Line of Sight in Warhammer 40,000
The document explores the concept of "true line of sight" (TLOS) in the tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000 (W40k), analyzing its significance beyond a mere game mechanic to encompass player perception, bodily engagement, and the hobbyist's creative process.
- True line of sight (TLOS) is a Warhammer 40,000 rule that determines which miniatures can see and attack one another, requiring players to trace a line from a model's head or weapon to a target's body.
- The paper argues that vision in wargaming is inherently tied to violence, since TLOS only has meaning within the shooting and damage resolution rules that follow it.
- Because the rule takes models and terrain positions at face value, a miniature's size, shape, and pose directly affect its vulnerability: a crouching figure is harder to shoot but less able to fire, while an exposed figure invites more fire, making modeling decisions strategically consequential.
Metagaming in Competitive Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
This research explores metagaming practices among competitive Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft players in the United Kingdom, focusing on attitudes and play styles observed at live tournaments.
- Competitive Hearthstone players practise metagaming well beyond in-game play, including opponent analysis, note-taking during matches, scouting between games, and reputation-building among regular tournament competitors, adapting Garfield's (2000) Magic: The Gathering framework.
- Frequent patch-driven changes and inconsistent tournament rules create a dynamic environment in which players and communities negotiate norms and build identity, with some events banning note-taking altogether.
- The author adapts Boluk and LeMieux's (2017) fourfold typology of metagames (about, within, around and without games) to Hearthstone, with examples including World of Warcraft characters, loophole exploitation, player psychology, audience reactions, and external espionage and markets.
Save the Park, Punish the Traitors: Games as Historical Documents
The paper argues that video games produced during periods of social and political turmoil can serve as historical documents, much as political cartoons and opinion pieces do.
- Video games made during periods of social and political turmoil can be treated as historical documents in their own right, similar to political cartoons and opinion pieces, rather than only as later depictions of past events.
- Timely games capture the perceptions, emotions, and political climate of the moment they were made, and they often disappear from circulation quickly, making them easy to lose as records.
- The study is a qualitative, illustrative case study comparing short reactive games from two Turkish episodes: the 2013 Gezi Park protests and the aftermath of the July 15, 2016 coup attempt, based on close readings rather than large samples or survey data.
Imaginary Russia: The Orientalisation of USSR in Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series
Kukulak argues that the Soviet Union in the Command & Conquer: Red Alert series is progressively reconstructed as a Western-imagined "Orient" rather than a modern European superpower.
- Kukulak (Jagiellonian University, DiGRA 2018) argues that the Soviet Union in the Command & Conquer: Red Alert series is built on Edward Said's concept of Orientalism rather than depicted as a realistic modern European superpower.
- The author contends the franchise, especially from its second installment onward, shifted from a relatively realistic alternate-history Cold War toward a campier style that polarizes the factions, casting the Soviets as a malevolent 'Eastern' empire.
- Allied campaigns frame the player as defender against Soviet aggression, and Orthodox church domes on Soviet tank factories are cited as cultural markers that contradict real Communism.
The Sacred and the Mundane: Video Games in the Convenience Store
This paper examines the unique play spaces created by coin-operated video game cabinets in convenience stores, bodegas, and corner shops.
- The paper is a conceptual and theoretical DiGRA 2018 extended abstract, not an empirical study: it presents no survey data, sample sizes, or quantitative findings.
- Its central thesis is that coin-operated video game cabinets in corner shops, bodegas, and convenience stores produce a distinctive mode of consumption with an intimate, ludic, and sacred quality, framed as a small shrine embedded in everyday commerce.
- The cabinet is positioned as tensioned between two roles: an object of consumption, like the snacks and necessities around it, and a site of potentially transformative play.
Characteristically Tensive: The Unreal in Poetic Gaming
This extended abstract, presented at DiGRA 2018, argues that the perceived tension between the ludic and literary elements in poetry games is not a paradox but a characteristic feature of both poetry and, to a lesser extent, computer games in general.
- The paper argues that tension between ludic and literary elements in poetry games is not a flaw to be resolved but a coherent expression of poetics, and that this tensive quality is characteristic of poetry itself.
- It challenges Astrid Ensslin's model of poetry games as a paradox between deep and hyper attention, arguing the dualistic model is too crude because many game genres already require players to shift between menus, 3D environments, cut scenes, and decision trees.
- Drawing on Philip Wheelwright, Roman Jakobson, and John Shoptaw, the paper extends principles of poetic tension from written language to game components such as levels, sprites, and textures, which gain semantic meaning only through interaction.
Next Gen? A Critical Examination of Historical Periodization in Video Games
This extended abstract critically examines how video game history is periodized, focusing on the widely used notion of "platform generations" as a case study.
- The paper argues that periodization is a foundational act of historical sense-making, since naming a period presumes beginning and ending points along with implicit spatial, social, and cultural assumptions.
- Existing video game historiography has been shaped by linearity and US-Japan centrism, and the authors seek to open discussion of alternative periodization methods.
- The 'platform generation' model remains dominant in gaming press, encyclopedias, and game databases despite academic skepticism, and the paper treats generations more as marketing than as precise historical categories.
Incentivizing Correct Waste Sorting by Game Design
This document outlines the design and preliminary evaluation of a serious mobile game aimed at incentivizing correct waste sorting.
- A pre-test found 72% of 50 controversial waste items were sorted incorrectly by 15 participants, and most interviewees reported little knowledge of their local sorting system or concern about sorting correctly.
- The authors frame citizen sorting errors as stemming from three gaps (low awareness, weak competence, and limited commitment), and argue game design can address all three.
- Because EU municipal waste systems differ, the authors propose a localizable app that adapts to any local sorting scheme as a substitute for the absence of a uniform EU-wide recycling system.
"We're Not Gonna Take It.": The Countercultural AAA Aesthetics of Wolfenstein: The New Colossus
This extended abstract argues that Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (MachineGames, 2017) is a prototypical case of the carnivalesque used as a poetics of defamiliarization in AAA games.
- The paper argues that Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (MachineGames, 2017) has apparent flaws that are deliberate parts of a unified aesthetic, and that critics and sympathetic reviewers missed the coherence between its narrative and ludic systems.
- The central thesis is that the game deploys Bakhtin's carnivalesque as a poetics of defamiliarization that stages the death and rebirth of first-person shooter conventions.
- The analysis reads the game's Nazi ideology as absurdist rather than endorsing, and interprets protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz's trajectory from an idealized Aryan body to a frail, grafted figure as an inversion of fascist notions of virility.
Games Biting Back: Anatomy and Ecofeminism
This extended abstract, presented at DiGRA 2018, analyzes the videogame ANATOMY by Kitty Horrorshow through an ecofeminist lens, challenging conventional understandings of game environments as passive narrative containers.
- Alexander Duncan's DiGRA 2018 extended abstract reads the indie horror game ANATOMY by Kitty Horrorshow through an ecofeminist lens, arguing it exposes rather than reinforces the hierarchy that casts environments as passive and subordinate to an active, male, European subject.
- Duncan builds on Henry Jenkins's concept of embedded narrative, arguing that its framing of game worlds as inert repositories waiting for the player still positions the environment as passive.
- The paper draws on Adorno and Horkheimer's critique of Enlightenment domination of nature and Val Plumwood's ecofeminist account of dichotomies linking passivity, nature, women, and colonized peoples.
Spectating Development: Backer Perspective on Games Crowdfunding
This study investigates backer motivations for participating in games crowdfunding, moving beyond the simple acquisition of a product to explore deeper forms of value.
- Backers value games crowdfunding for far more than receiving a product: many enjoy following development through project updates, which they describe as enjoyable and educational.
- The study draws on an online survey of 426 respondents conducted in 2016, with qualitative analysis focused on 114 open-ended answers describing motivations in respondents' own words.
- Motivations identified include obtaining tailor-made or rare products, perceived good deals on quality, price, or early access, and feeling compelled to back campaigns to secure the most complete version of a game.
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