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
Interaction Forms, Agents and Tellable Events in EverQuest
This paper develops an analytical framework for studying interaction in virtual worlds, using the 1999 massively multiplayer online game EverQuest as its primary case.
- The paper proposes an analytical framework for virtual worlds built on four basic agents (players; NPCs and informative objects; manipulable objects; world rules) and four basic interaction forms (navigation, manipulation, social interaction, information retrieval).
- The framework is presented as a work in progress: its in-depth empirical analysis of EverQuest (released 1999) is reserved for later publication.
- The author argues that existing definitions of interactivity are too vague to be analytically useful, and situates the framework within Jensen's three paradigms of interactivity and the ludology-narrative debate, claiming virtual worlds contain elements of all of them at once.
Representing Users in the Design of Digital Games
Aphra Kerr's paper argues that digital game designers typically represent their users implicitly rather than through direct engagement, and that this tacit approach, often shaped by the designers' own tastes, can embed gender bias into game design.
- Digital game designers typically represent their users implicitly rather than through direct engagement, and this tacit approach, often shaped by designers' own tastes, can embed gender bias into game design.
- The study's Irish interviews covered digital game companies that were almost entirely male and targeted young men aged roughly 15 to 40, with industry factors such as risk-averse publishers, console manufacturers, and skilled-labour shortages shaping game types and design priorities.
- In the central case study of the fictional online multiplayer strategy game from games.inc, launched in Germany in December 2001 with about 1,000 subscribers, designers projected their own preferences as technologically literate male gamers aged 25 to 40 instead of conducting formal user research.
A Touch of Medieval: Narrative, Magic and Computer Technology in Massively Multiplayer Computer Role-Playing Games
Eddo Stern's essay argues that magic and technology, though often treated as opposites, share a long historical bond that shapes the narratives of massively multiplayer online role-playing games.
- By late 2001, Ultima Online had roughly 250,000 subscribers while EverQuest had between 400,000 and 700,000, signalling the large scale of the MMORPG phenomenon.
- Stern argues that dominant MMORPGs, controlled by a few large corporations, operate as indefinitely continuing services rather than finishable products, which defers narrative resolution indefinitely.
- Backstories and non-player characters are largely redundant to play: players tend to ignore backstories and treat NPCs mainly as dispensers of information, which Stern presents as evidence that conventional narrative approaches fail for software-narrative hybrids.
Killing Like a Girl: Gendered Gaming and Girl Gamers' Visibility
Bryce and Rutter's paper challenges the widespread framing of computer gaming as a male, violent, and antisocial pastime, arguing that female participation is substantial yet systematically overlooked in both academic and industry discourse.
- Gaming is often framed as a male, violent, antisocial pastime, but Bryce and Rutter argue that female participation is substantial yet systematically overlooked in both academic and industry discourse.
- Survey data cited in the paper show 43 percent of US gamers were female (Interactive Digital Software Association), and European Leisure Software Publishers Association estimates valued the market at roughly £5.8 billion.
- The authors contend that text-based content analyses labelling games as stereotypically gendered overgeneralise from unrepresentative samples, neglect genre diversity and audience reception, and wrongly assume representation deterministically shapes consumption.