game design

Even before worldwide quarantines added impetus, material gaming had already become increasingly enacted in virtual spaces. Rather than virtual play replacing the material, as some speculated in the early days of videogames, material play has become increasingly entangled with virtuality. These increasingly complementary modes of play offer a rich space for exploring the multifaceted embodied and conceptual activity of play, the blending of material and virtual that in many ways defines games.The three panelists encompass a wide range of perspectives, including the perspective of a game maker translating material play into the digital realm, that of a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) scholar who researched how players interact differently with the Catan boardgame and its digital implementations, and that of a theorist reflecting on how virtual spaces remediate material affects. Together, these diverse perspectives aim to explore the paradoxical yet generative spaces where materiality and virtuality intersect in gaming.The theoretical approach looks at analog games as capable of producing the specific circumstances that foreground the affective relationships between the players and the other pieces of the assemblage. Because of the procedural nature that necessitates specific types of interactions between parts of the play assemblage, analog games amplify the social interactions between players and differently produce affective orientations as a consequence of their systems. Then examines the ways that these games are remediated and adapted to digital platforms highlighting the things that are lost or changed in the move to digital, uncovering the types of experiences that are important for each type of adaptation.

The HCI approach presents Association Mapping (AM) in HCI; called so because the formation of a network is due to objects making associations in context. By recording the associations that form a network, it is possible to understand what objects are most central within that network. . This research contributes to the next paradigm of HCI by providing a new tool to understand use that is fragmented, distributed, and invisible. AM incorporates association as its measurement. This results in passive measures of attention, hybridity, and influence in network formation of any kind. It does this by making the systemic nature of use visible and capable of evaluation at any level.And finally the design approach applies design strategies for incorporating three main types of play: Screenplay, Gameplay, and Roleplay, seeking to answer questions about how to bridge the narrative and performance aspects of digital and analog play. This is particularly applicable to classic games that are associated with transmedia narratives and characters, such as the Clue board game, where there are established cinematic traditions and character roles.During the COVID-19 pandemic, board games have become a useful medium for examining our changing relationship with physical and digital interaction. In addition to presenting our own findings, this panel also offers several methodologies for furthering research into the intersections of the analog, digital, physical, and virtual.

Video games and their associated forms stand as the most lucrative entertainment sector on the planet, dominating other forms of visual media in dollars generated annually. In the proposed paper, adapted from a dissertation chapter, I will draw upon my experience as a game designer to illuminate the increasingly dire ways that various actors in the political sphere – from online trolls all the way to world leaders – have combined the language and techniques borne from the industrial practices of game design with the power of social media and other online communication platforms to produce new forms of disinformation, propaganda and conspiracy theory. In this paper, I will trace the history of a specific form of game – the Alternate Reality Game (ARG), from its early literary history in 1903 to its modern incarnations. Subsequently, by harnessing lessons from my own work developing ARGs for the 2016 video game Frog Fractions 2 and the 2020 film Dared My Best Friend, I will examine how closely the principles employed during ARG marketing campaign have been in similar use in American politics since the 2016 American presidential campaign, culminating in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capital. I will discuss how modern totalitarian systems will almost certainly continue to refine and deploy these strategies in the future as a new, dangerous form of propaganda: one that lives primarily in online discussion platforms and, much like the narrative of an ARG, is constructed both unwittingly and collaboratively by the targets of the propaganda themselves. Finally, I utilize my experience both as a designer and online community manager to address how, especially during COVID-19 quarantine, these emerging risks can be combated as the daily intersection of digital and analogue worlds continue to merge ever closer.

(Source: Author's own abstract)

Electronic literature and computer games share a common history beginning from the earliest adventure games (Rettberg 87). As both the “technological platforms” that host electronic literature and games, and the “social contexts” that inform them evolve, so does the content, gameplay, and types of interactions they facilitate (Rettberg). The development of the Tinder platform and other mediated dating applications has precipitated the incorporation of interactive fiction games into the dating experience.The conception of dating as a game is by no means a new phenomenon. The “pickup” model of dating considers interactions between potential sexual partners to be governed by a set of rules that participants can learn in order to “win”(Almog and Kaplan). While such practices existed long before digitally mediated dating sites, applications like Tinder extend the gamification of dating; the Tinder platform further gamified these experiences with the release of the electronic literature game, Swipe Night, which debuted in October 2019. Swipe Night, in the model of hypertextual fiction, allowed users to play through a narrative, making choices that impacted the resulting storyline.Swipe Night was intended to connect users in new matches based on their choices as they navigate through the Swipe Night story, a deviation from Tinder’s usual matching via geographic proximity alone. The game played out over four weeks, with each week continuing the story from the week before. The in-app interactive narrative was largely successful, with over a million people tuning in each week (Perez). The Swipe Night trailer began making its rounds on tinder and other social media apps in late September 2019. In the 45 second trailer, users were introduced to the concept of the narrative: “Every Sunday, experience an interactive adventure where your choices can lead to matches. But you only have till midnight until the adventure is over” (Timmermans and De Caluwé).While the Tinder application has, since its inception, facilitated the gamification of dating through its fast-paced, turn-based interactions, the debut of the hypertextual fiction Swipe Night further underscored the game-like interactions of the platform. However, Swipe Night also enabled community development based around common choices within the narrative, and fostered discussion among Tinder users on a variety of platforms. While users’ Tinder data is ephemeral and not publicly available, cross platform conversations offer insight into user perceptions and experiences navigating the Tinder platform, and Swipe Night in particular. This study examines user reactions to the Swipe Night event on the subreddit r/Tinder; some users praised the unique matches they were able to form through interaction with the electronic narrative, while others lamented the effectiveness of the fiction for facilitating the development of actual relationships. As the formation of both communities and romantic relationships increasingly occurs via digitally mediated communication, a study of Tinder’s Swipe Night event provides essential insight into both the gamification of human interaction and audience reception of these developing interactive fiction technologies.

(Source: Authors' own abstract)

James Wallis uses genre as the fulcrum for balancing game rules and narrative structure in story-telling games, which he differentiates from RPGs through their emphasis on the creation of narrative over character development.

The source is the essay-review on www.electronicbookreview.com written by James Wallis.

In this interview Michael J. Maguire also known as clevercelt writes about his development in the field of electronic literature both as creative writer and academic scholar. He gives some insights into the work of programming, his interest for computer games and the Phd thesis. The interview stands out for the many references to other authors.