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
Simulating the Storytelling Qualities of Life: Telling Stories with the Sims
Satu Heliö's paper, presented at the DiGRA 2005 conference, addresses the long-running ludology versus narratology debate in game studies by proposing that the "narrative mindset" and social schemas offer a more useful framework for understanding player motivation than a strict divide between stories and games.
- Heliö argues that narrativization is a deeply embedded human cognitive tendency, drawing on cognitive psychology research into narrative schemas and scripts, and that certain game forms amplify it rather than games being inherently narrative.
- The paper proposes the 'narrative mindset' and social schemas as a more useful framework than a strict ludology-versus-narratology divide for understanding player motivation.
- The Sims (2000) and The Sims 2 (2004) are identified as 'borderline cases' in Jesper Juul's taxonomy and are presented as especially suited to storytelling, with their god-like external perspective inviting a third-person narrator's interpretive stance.
Pretty Good for a Girl: Gender, Identity and Computer Games
Catherine Beavis's 2005 DiGRA paper, "Pretty Good for a Girl: Gender, Identity and Computer Games," argues that gendered identities are not fixed in advance but are actively formed within particular game-playing contexts, and that generalizing about games and gender obscures this process.
- Gendered identities in gaming are not fixed in advance; they are actively formed within particular game-playing contexts, so generalizing about games and gender obscures this process.
- The study is a small, qualitative, interpretive two-site design (a Melbourne Year 8 English unit and five South East Asian women aged 18 to 22 in an all-girls Counter-Strike clan at a LAN café), so its findings are not statistical and are limited in geography, age, and sample size.
- Students' expertise and strategies for learning games (persistence, trial and error, using tutorials or cheats, giving up) varied more with experience and interest than with gender, although boys were more often familiar with games.
Online Gaming as a Virtual Forum
Matthew Payne's essay argues that Horace Newcomb and Paul Hirsch's 1994 framework, which treats television as a cultural forum rather than a site of ideological indoctrination or a simple media effect, offers a useful starting point for understanding online multiplayer gaming.
- Matthew Payne argues that Newcomb and Hirsch's 1994 framework, which treats television as a cultural forum rather than an ideological or effects-based medium, is a useful starting point for studying online multiplayer gaming.
- The essay contends that videogame scholarship, like early television studies, has been dominated by effects research and content analysis, and that a forum-based approach better captures the social meaning of play.
- Players are framed as active participants in cultural dialogue rather than isolated or passive consumers, and gaming is positioned as a medium long dismissed as childish or low-art.
The Pleasures and Practices of Virtualised Consumption in Digital Spaces
This conceptual paper, presented at the DiGRA 2005 conference, argues that virtualised consumption, such as buying virtual goods in games, browsing virtual marketplaces, and displaying digital possessions, should be understood as a legitimate and pleasurable form of consumption rather than a failure of marketing.
- The paper argues that virtualised consumption, such as buying virtual goods and browsing virtual marketplaces, should be treated as a legitimate, pleasurable form of consumption rather than a failure of marketing.
- Its central thesis frames virtual consumption as the latest stage in a historical shift from utility toward emotional, sign-based, and playful experience, with digital spaces acting as liminoid play-spaces where imagination is stimulated and partly actualised.
- The authors contend that cart abandonment is a misreading of consumers who gain satisfaction from imaginative engagement with goods they never intend to buy, rather than a sign of lost sales.
Theory Wars: An Argument Against Arguments in the So-Called Ludology/Narratology Debate
Celia Pearce's paper "Theory Wars" responds to Gonzalo Frasca's 2003 essay "Ludologists Love Stories Too," which argued that the ludology/narratology debate was largely a misunderstanding.
- Celia Pearce's "Theory Wars" responds to Gonzalo Frasca's 2003 essay "Ludologists Love Stories Too," arguing that Frasca's essay deepens the ludology/narratology divide by polarizing scholars into opposing camps and mislabeling their positions.
- Pearce contends that attaching the "-ist" suffix to researchers creates a false binary, and that many scholars would prefer to move freely between play-centered and narrative-centered perspectives.
- Her central proposal is to reframe "narrative" as an adjective rather than a noun, shifting the question from whether games are narratives to in what ways they are narrative.
The Sponsored Avatar: Examining the Present Reality and Future Possibilities of Advertising in Digital Games
This paper examines advertising within digital games, both current practice and future possibilities, including full sponsorship, product placement, brand integration, and cross-promotion with other entertainment media.
- Advertising spending is shifting away from traditional television commercials toward placements in entertainment, with one cited beverage company redirecting more than $300 million in annual spending.
- Game-based advertising remained a small share of revenue relative to film and television, with projections of roughly $260 million by 2008, though agencies increasingly seek game placements and some have created dedicated game advertising divisions.
- Players generally accept in-game advertising, mostly because it enhances realism, but they worry that placements may feel incongruous and detract from the experience.
How Serious Are Serious Games?: Some Lessons From Infra-games
This paper examines whether serious games, particularly computer-based simulation games, can support advanced professional learning and decision-making in complex infrastructure domains such as utilities, ports, and wind farms.
- Serious simulation games are argued to help managers, policymakers, and young professionals grasp complex infrastructure systems (utilities, ports, wind farms) by letting them experiment with decisions and observe consequences over time in a safe setting.
- The authors contend that simulation games are only effective when combined with realism and engagement and embedded in broader research, debriefing, and follow-up processes, not used as standalone tools.
- Infrastructure planning is framed as a 'wicked' problem, marked by weak consensus on values and facts, pluricentric decision-making, and strategic stakeholder behaviour, which games can help participants experience and manage.
Affective Videogames and Modes of Affective Gaming: Assist Me, Challenge Me, Emote Me
This paper, presented at the DiGRA 2005 conference, examines affective videogames, which use players' physiological signals to modify gameplay in real time.
- Affective games differ from biofeedback games: in biofeedback the player consciously controls physiological responses to influence play, while affective games sense uncontrolled emotional reactions and feed them back into gameplay, forming an affective feedback loop.
- The authors' case study used an early prototype built with their Intelligent Gaming System toolkit, a Missile Command-style target-acquisition game that adjusted threat number and damage based on the player's heartbeat relative to a resting baseline to keep engagement in an optimal range.
- The evaluation involved only eight participants aged 21 to 38, so the findings are preliminary; players reported enjoyment, but experienced gamers responded less physiologically than novices, which the authors link to habituation and individual differences that must be compensated for.
Dialog as a Game
Peter Border's paper, presented at the 2005 DiGRA conference, proposes treating in-game conversation as a rule-governed game in which speakers make moves by transitioning between short dialog "chunks" rather than traversing ever-larger decision trees.
- Border proposes treating in-game dialog as a rule-governed game in which speakers move between short dialog "chunks" rather than traversing ever-larger decision trees, with the central claim that this yields more socially and emotionally coherent NPCs.
- The framework models characters with simplified emotional states (e.g., happy/sad, afraid/confident) and relationship variables (closeness, face, liking or irritation, trust), with the conversational "ball" passing between speakers as face is gained or lost.
- Relationship and emotional values decay toward zero over time unless refreshed, and each character uses a payoff function to decide whether a chunk is offered based on whether its requirements are met.
Lesser-Known Worlds: Bridging the Telematic Flows with Located Human Experience Through Game Design
This paper, presented at the DiGRA 2005 conference, argues that location-based games (LBGs), which use mobile technologies to structure play in real-world environments, should be understood not merely as commercial novelties but as potential contributors to cultural production and to people's engagement with urban space.
- The paper argues location-based games (LBGs) using mobile technology should be seen as contributors to cultural production and urban engagement, not merely commercial novelties, positioning city sites as active participants in play.
- Most existing LBGs and alternate reality games treat environments as backdrops for treasure hunts or combat, while a smaller set, such as GeoQuest in Marseille and Close Encounters in Los Angeles, engage more deeply with local history and communities.
- User research with roughly eighty first-year university students found a strong preference for playing with others in the same physical location, and games generated social and creative artifacts such as fan fiction, strategy guides, and modifications.
Early Games Production in New Zealand
Melanie Swalwell's paper examines the early digital games industry in New Zealand during the late 1970s and 1980s, a period that is largely absent from mainstream accounts of games history, which tend to focus on the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan.
- Early digital games reached New Zealand in the late 1970s and 1980s despite geographic isolation and restrictive import policies, yet this history is largely absent from mainstream games histories focused on the US, UK, and Japan.
- Major systems including Atari, Sinclair, Commodore, Sega, and Nintendo products did reach New Zealand, typically one to two years after their overseas release, with distribution uneven across platforms.
- Local manufacturers produced at least four early consoles, most prominently the Sportronic, a Pong-style clone, and around eleven companies were involved in arcade cabinet manufacture at some point.
Girls Creating Games: Challenging Existing Assumptions about Game Content
This paper examines the content of 45 games designed and programmed by middle school girls in California, aiming to deepen understanding of what girls find appealing in games and to inform the debate over whether games should be gender-specific or gender-neutral.
- Girls who were given the chance to design games produced content that departs from the commercial industry's dominant themes of competition, violence, and male-oriented fantasy, challenging assumptions about what girls want from games.
- Nearly all of the 45 games analyzed (99%) addressed social issues and fears, most often concerns about getting into trouble, the threat of violence, and relationship consequences.
- Real-world settings appeared in 71% of games and 53% used a prosocial lesson, while only 31% included violent feedback.