Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture
Open-access peer-reviewed journal on computer game culture, published since 2007 (now via Septentrio Academic Publishing).
Documents
Tanks, Chauffeurs and Backseat Drivers: Competence in MMORPGs
Carr and Oliver's study examines how competence is developed and recognized in massively multiplayer online role-playing games, using World of Warcraft as its primary case.
- Competence in MMORPGs cannot be reduced to character level or mechanical skill; the authors propose a 'management of resources' framework built on material, ludic, and social resources.
- Players are judged competent through markers such as preparation, fluency in specialist jargon, and understanding of one's role within a group.
- Learning in MMORPGs is fundamentally social and negotiated, with expertise transferred through coaching, 'chauffeuring,' and 'boosting,' while players risk becoming intrusive 'backseat drivers.'
Notes on the Biographical Meaning of Games and Online-Games
This study examines the biographical meaning of games and online games, arguing that understanding video games requires attention to offline, non-digital play and to the historical dimension of how people come to play.
- The study is a qualitative biographical research project begun in November 2007 under a German federal research program, using semi-structured interviews with participants in three age groups (25–35, 45–50, and 60–70), and its findings are explicitly preliminary given the limited sample size.
- The authors argue that understanding video games requires attention to offline, non-digital play and to the historical dimension of how people come to play, since play experiences are closely tied to life histories and social contexts.
- A survey of a Hamburg senior computer club found that over 150 members were present, many played computer games, but only three played online, with many preferring traditional card games and bundled titles such as Solitaire.
Key Dimensions of Contemporary Video Game Literacy: Towards a Normative Model of the Competent Digital Gamer
Christoph Klimmt's essay proposes a normative framework for digital game literacy, arguing that media literacy education for gamers should extend beyond the familiar concern of protecting players from game violence to address three further competence dimensions tied to contemporary game design.
- Christoph Klimmt argues that game literacy education should go beyond protecting players from game violence to cover three further competence dimensions tied to contemporary game design, framing game literacy as a subconcept of general media literacy with a focus on protective competence rather than enjoyment.
- The first dimension is resilience against automatic cognitive effects: many game effects, such as short-term hostile expectations, pro-violence attitudes among frequent adolescent players, and stereotyping of military enemies in shooter games, operate unconsciously and persist even when players try to resist them.
- Because direct suppression of these automatic effects is considered unlikely, the proposed response is awareness of them, post-play reflection, and techniques for creating psychological distance during play.
Passionate Digital Play-Based Learning: (Re)Learning in Computer Games Like Shadow of the Colossus
Konstantin Mitgutsch's 2009 article in Eludamos argues that Shadow of the Colossus produces a form of "passionate" learning that existing models of digital game-based learning fail to explain.
- Konstantin Mitgutsch's 2009 Eludamos article argues that Shadow of the Colossus produces a 'passionate' form of learning that existing digital game-based learning models, such as Marc Prensky's linear motivation-and-content model, fail to explain.
- The argument draws on the Greek concept of pathos, experience that affects and unsettles the learner, contrasted with logos-driven rational instruction, and on the ancient notion of learning through suffering.
- The game's loneliness, failed expectations, and tragic victories force players into repeated confrontation with unexpected resistance, prompting cycles of relearning and unlearning.
Serious Games Taken Seriously
This editorial by Christian Swertz, published in the 2009 issue of Eludamos, Journal for Computer Game Culture, examines the tension between freedom and constraint in serious games, which are digital games designed to teach.
- Serious games share a dialectical structure with learning itself: learners are constrained by rules and objectives yet remain free to interpret and engage with them, a paradox Swertz argues describes all learning.
- Swertz argues that a game's rules carry embedded learning objectives, which players discover through experimentation rather than being told directly.
- The idea of combining play and education is traced back to eighteenth-century pedagogy, citing Basedow and Rousseau's concept of negative education.
Reproducing the Machine
Mia Consalvo's editorial traces the institutional development of game studies over roughly its first decade, from the founding of the Digital Games Research Association in 2002 to the proliferation of journals, presses, degree programs, and conferences that followed.
- Consalvo's editorial traces the institutional growth of game studies from the founding of the Digital Games Research Association in 2002 through the proliferation of journals, presses, degree programs, and conferences over roughly its first decade.
- The author argues the field has gained legitimacy, but the quality-assurance structures that enabled this (peer-reviewed venues, conventions) have also produced hierarchies and routines that may be going unexamined.
- Establishing peer-reviewed venues and international conferences helped legitimize games as a serious object of inquiry, and efforts to move beyond the psychology-dominated focus on game effects broadened the field's questions and methods.
"Play Belongs to Everybody": An Interview with the Ludica Collective
The Ludica Collective, a group of game researchers and designers including Janine Fron, Celia Pearce, Jacqueline Morie, and Tracy Fullerton, presents its work as a deliberate effort to make play open to everyone rather than reserved for competitive winners.
- The Ludica Collective, including Janine Fron, Celia Pearce, Jacqueline Morie, and Tracy Fullerton, aims to make play open to everyone and pursues "interventions" into both the male-dominated mainstream game industry and academic game studies.
- The collective's core critique is the underrepresentation of women in game design and at venues like the Game Developers Conference, where women are rarely invited to speak on design.
- Members argue that the belief "there are no women game designers" discourages young women by denying them role models, and they plan to survey recent GDC programs and compile a list of potential speakers to push for change.
"We Don't Want It Changed, Do We?": Gender and Sexuality in Role-Playing Games
Arne Schröder's 2008 Eludamos article examines how gender and sexuality are represented in the Gothic role-playing game series, drawing on feminist and queer media theory, including the work of Laura Mulvey and Judith Butler, alongside a mixed narrative and ludological method.
- Only 6 of 101 named human characters (about 5.9%) in Gothic I are female, well below the roughly 20% average the author cites, and female representation falls to 9.1% in Gothic II.
- The author argues the Gothic series reproduces traditional gender dichotomies and compulsory heterosexuality rather than challenging them, with its masculinity functioning as a compensatory fantasy built around a hypermasculine action-hero archetype.
- Female characters who do appear are mostly confined to sexualized or domestic roles, such as serving male leaders or sweeping floors, are unavailable for conversation, and are sometimes framed for a voyeuristic male gaze.
Thinking Out of the Box (and Back in the Plane): Concepts of Space and Spatial Representation in Two Classic Adventure Games
Veugen and Quérette's article, published in Eludamos in 2008, examines how spatial representation shapes gameplay in classic point-and-click adventure games, using the Gabriel Knight series as its central case.
- Veugen and Quérette argue that gameplay and the audiovisual representation of space in adventure games cannot be separated, so how gamespace is represented shapes what players can do within it.
- The authors frame their analysis through Stockburger's five modalities of space and use Sierra's Gabriel Knight series as their central case study.
- The move from fixed two-dimensional screens to navigable 3D environments changed both how narrative space is experienced and how players search for clues and move through the world.
A Review of Agent Emotion Architectures
This review, published in the journal Eludamos in 2008, surveys computational models of emotion for software agents in games and simulations.
- Agent emotional AI in games has advanced more slowly than graphics, sound, and control technologies, and a key obstacle is the lack of accessible, psychologically grounded emotion architectures for developers without a psychology background.
- In the surveyed systems, emotional components are tightly integrated with agent decision-making, making them difficult to separate from the broader agent system.
- Bartneck's analysis of the OCC model proposes a five-stage treatment (classification, quantification, interaction, mapping, expression) and identifies gaps including the absence of a history function and emotion interaction.
"You Are Dead. Continue?": Conflicts and Complements in Game Rules and Fiction
Jason Tocci's "You Are Dead.
- The core thesis is that the die-and-retry failure structure inherited from board games and sports is a legacy design shortcut, not an inherent constraint of the medium, and that it often undermines narrative coherence.
- Drawing on Jesper Juul's rules-and-fiction framework, the author argues that rules and story can complement rather than only conflict with each other, so games can deliver full narratives while still offering meaningful challenge.
- Player evidence includes a 2005 Bowen Research survey and forum discussion showing many players prize story-driven games and find death and retry interrupt narrative progression.
Video Game Play Effects on Dreams: Self-Evaluation and Content Analysis
Gackenbach and Kuruvilla's study examines whether video game play shapes dream content, drawing on the idea that gaming is an intensely immersive form of technological mediation that may influence cognition, including dreaming, which itself relates to memory consolidation and emotional regulation.
- Gackenbach and Kuruvilla studied 890 college students, analyzing 229 dreams from high- and low-end video game players against Hall and Van de Castle normative data.
- Hard-core gamers' dreams contained more familiar, dead, and imaginary characters and fewer instances of general misfortune, consistent with a 'threat simulation' function in which gaming rehearses dangerous scenarios safely.
- Roughly two-thirds of the findings replicated across interview and online data collection methods, while the remaining third were attributed mainly to differences in collection procedures, such as explicitly requesting dreams about video games, rather than stable differences between players.