University of Malta
4 reports, presentations and talks by University of Malta in the Game Industry Library, the newest “Playable Folklore: Digital Games and the Representation of Folklore and Cultural Heritage” (2026).
Documents
Playable Folklore: Digital Games and the Representation of Folklore and Cultural Heritage
This paper examines how digital games represent folklore and cultural heritage, arguing that the translation of living, variable cultural processes into codified, rule-based systems introduces structural and ethical tensions.
- Translating living, variable folklore into codified, rule-based game systems creates structural and ethical tensions, chiefly that tradition becomes stabilised as 'heritage' when it is managed or staged for external consumption.
- The paper proposes 'playable folklore' as a lens that treats games not as display cases for heritage but as cultural systems in which traditions are selected, stabilised, transformed, and contested.
- Its theoretical framework rests on four concepts: cultural presence, folk mechanics, digital folklore, and mnemonic hegemony.
Environmental Storytelling and Active Spectatorship in Walking Simulators and Exploration Theatre
Environmental storytelling in exploration-based immersive theatre and walking simulators is the subject of this study, which argues that both forms place the surrounding environment at the centre of narrative meaning and offer participants exploratory freedom without the power to alter the story's events.
- Environmental storytelling in exploration-based immersive theatre and walking simulators places the surrounding environment at the centre of narrative meaning, while giving participants freedom to explore but no power to change the story's events.
- The study frames audiences and players as "active spectators": their agency is confined to interpreting spaces, traces, and atmosphere rather than intervening in the narrative.
- The analysis identifies two main environmental strategies: indexical storytelling, where objects and arrangements act as cause-and-effect clues inviting participants to reconstruct past events, and atmospheric storytelling, where mood and sensory qualities convey meaning affectively.
Musicking with Digital Games
This paper, by Costantino Oliva of the University of Malta, applies Christopher Small's concept of "musicking" to digital games, arguing that musicology of games should center on the forms of musical participation players engage in rather than on the pre-composed soundtrack.
- Oliva argues that game musicology should center on how players musically participate (performing, rehearsing, traversing, and so on) rather than on the pre-composed soundtrack, drawing on Christopher Small's concept of 'musicking'.
- The paper proposes 'ergodic musicking,' a form of musical participation in which the non-trivial effort of traversing a game involves degrees of musical engagement, and argues this form is unique to digital games rather than a blend of existing musicking practices.
- Rhythm games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band are analyzed as remediations of real-world musical activity via Miller's concept of schizophonic performance, while Thumper and Tetris Effect are presented as games exploring musicalities not tied to prior musicking forms.
How to Reference a Digital Game
Gualeni, Fassone, and Linderoth's paper "How to Reference a Digital Game" argues that the absence of shared academic standards for citing video games is a neglected problem, one closely tied to the unsettled question of what games are.
- Citation practices for video games lack shared academic standards, and Olsson's (2013) survey of game studies journals, conferences, and books found that referencing guidelines were rarely enforced.
- The authors argue that citation decisions are political acts: they shape how games are conceptualized, valued, and regulated, so citation methods should be treated as constitutive rather than neutral.
- The authors contend that the traditional concept of authorship is increasingly ill-suited to large commercial games, where production is distributed across teams, though it remains meaningful for independent works with a distinct creative vision.