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
The Localization of Digital Games: A Case Study in China
This paper examines the challenges facing digital game localization, using China as a case study to explore why some foreign games succeed in the Chinese market while others fail.
- 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.
The Use of Video Game Technology for Investigating Perceptual and Cognitive Awareness in Sports
This paper, presented at the DiGRA 2005 conference, proposes a framework for using video game technology to study and enhance the perceptual, attentional, and cognitive skills underlying expertise in sport, with ice hockey as the focal domain.
- 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.
Possibilities of Non-Commercial Games: The Case of Amateur Role Playing Games Designers in Japan
Kenji Ito's study examines amateur role-playing game designers in Japan who build games with Tkool 2000, a freeware toolkit whose simple 2D graphics and menu-based scripting lower the barriers of hardware and technical skill.
- The study surveyed 102 self-identified Tkool 2000 designers ("Tkoolers"), a freeware RPG toolkit with simple 2D graphics and menu-based scripting that lowers hardware and technical barriers; the author notes self-reported data and possible sampling bias as limitations.
- Tkoolers are predominantly young males, many not especially drawn to computers, and are motivated mainly by fantasy fulfillment, storytelling, and extending games they enjoyed rather than by financial reward.
- The internet is indispensable to amateur designers: online communities, graphics and music repositories, and sites and review boards such as 2ch enable collaboration, distribution, and feedback.
Contexts, Pleasures and Preferences: Girls Playing Computer Games
Diane Carr's study examines how girls' gaming preferences are formed, drawing on observations of a computer games club at a single-sex state school in South London.
- 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.
The Effects of a Consumer-Oriented Multimedia Game on the Reading Disorders of Children with ADHD
This study examines whether Dance Dance Revolution (DDR), a consumer entertainment game, can improve reading impairments in sixth-grade students diagnosed with ADHD.
- A test-retest study of 62 sixth-grade students with ADHD and reading impairments, drawn from four West Virginia and neighboring-state middle schools between 2002 and 2004, tested whether Dance Dance Revolution could improve reading skills.
- Results were modest: of 24 PAL-RW subtests, the DDR treatment group showed only slightly larger gains than controls on RAN Digits and Receptive Coding, with small effect sizes.
- The RAN Digits result was ambiguous, with some evidence that treatment participants performed worse on that measure.
The Psychophysiology of Video Gaming: Phasic Emotional Responses to Game Events
A 2005 study by Ravaja and colleagues, presented at DiGRA, investigates the psychophysiology of video gaming by measuring phasic, event-level emotional responses rather than the tonic, averaged physiological states that prior game research relied upon.
- 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.
Building and Reconstructing Character: A Case Study of Silent Hill 3
This paper, by Petri Lankoski of the University of Tampere, examines how the player character Heather is constructed in Silent Hill 3, a 2003 survival horror game.
- 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.
Playing in the Sandbox: Developing Games for Children with Disabilities
This study, presented at the DiGRA 2005 conference, argues that children with disabilities, particularly those with cerebral palsy, do not primarily need specially designed games; they want to play the same commercial titles as their peers.
- 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.
A Short and Simple Definition of What a Videogame Is
This paper, presented at the DiGRA 2005 conference, proposes a short and simple definition of the videogame: a game played through an audiovisual apparatus that can be based on a story.
- The paper proposes a short, reusable academic definition of the videogame as a game played through an audiovisual apparatus that can be based on a story, intended as a foundation for future videogame design methods.
- The author argues that serious videogame studies only began in recent years, even though the videogame industry was already more than thirty years old at the time of writing (2005).
- The definition is grounded in established game theory, drawing on Caillois, Huizinga, Zimmerman, Crawford, Kramer, and Juul's account of automation and rule enforcement.
From Real-World Data to Game World Experience: Social Analysis Methods for Developing Plausible & Engaging Learning Games
The document presents a methodological framework for transforming qualitative interview data into interactive learning games, using HEALTHSIMNET, a prototype designed to improve practice within an HIV health care network in British Columbia, as its central case.
- 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.
Framing Virtual Law
"Framing Virtual Law," presented at DiGRA 2005, argues that the conventional real-versus-virtual dichotomy obscures how legal order actually operates in online game 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.
Game Mediated Communication: Multiplayer Games as the Medium for Computer Based Communication
This study by Mats Wiklund at Stockholm University investigates whether multiplayer games are becoming the natural medium for computer-based communication, a question motivated by the growing prominence of in-game chat and voice interaction.
- 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.