Program Think Design Play by Steven Langbroek

Welcome!

introduction We are very excited to share the THINK DESIGN PLAY conference program with you. The conference creates a space in which game and play experts from various backgrounds, disciplines and nationalities can experience unique encounters. THINK DESIGN PLAY is hosted by the Institute for Creative Design (at the Utrecht School of the Arts), a cross-disciplinary institute focusing on creative design for innovation. Conferences bring together people sharing interests in and aspirations for an object they research, and offer platforms for dissemination and collaboration. The goal of DiGRA, the premier international game research organization for professionals and academics, is to advance the study of games and playfulness. When DiGRA was first formed in 2003 the hopes of the new association were for game and play research to not only introduce a new topic of study and a new discipline to look up on research databases but to live up to the challenge that play and ludic pursuits mount to research, knowledge production and established scholarly practices. The different themes, venues and kinds of exploration in the various DiGRA conferences to date have been about living up to this. This year we have been tweaking the standard conference setup to maximize the opportunities for dialogue and the development of new insights and potential collaborations. It is our aim to create a conference where the subject matter resonates in both form and atmosphere. SUPERBUTTONKOALAPARTY â&#x20AC;&#x201C; September 14th The conference opens with a party celebrating all that digital and physical games have to offer. Starting with what will be an extraordinary keynote by Kid Koala, the party offers multiple rooms of music and play, and a great environment for everything from relaxed conversation to tilt-shifting performances. Conference Days â&#x20AC;&#x201C; September 15th-17th THINK DESIGN PLAY unfolds over the next three days. We feel that opening dialogues and the development of new insights and potential collaborations are very important. To practice what we preach, we are introducing a new kind session format called MATCH. MATCH. The MATCH format combines research and practice in an active and intimate setting. How does it work? The program committee carefully matched all participants with another speaker, allowing them to both present their work and engage in a conversation with the other speaker and the audience. All MATCHes take place in cabins in the conference playground. Each cabin provides room for an interested audience of 20-40 people. The regular MATCH takes 40 minutes, including introduction and debate. Each MATCH starts with a 10 minute introduction from each of the speakers. Presenters are encouraged to present without slides but will of course showcase materials: either on their digital device (laptop, Ipad, phone) or if needed connected to a larger screen or by drawing on a flip-chart. The audience plays a very active role during the MATCH. Audience members will receive MATCH cards that provide tools to actively engage in the session as moderator, timekeeper or critical friend. In order to support an ongoing discussion we have added a PLAYTIME of 40 minutes between all sessions. Effectively, then, a session can last up to 80 minutes. The constraints of the format are meant to provide a shape to discussion, but also to encourage speakers to bend the rules according to their individual style and needs. So get ready to engage with high quality research and practice in an environment that really maximizes the opportunities for dialogue and potential collaborations. Helen Kennedy, DiGRA President Marinka Copier, Conference Chair Annika Waern, Program Chair

keynote speaker In Defense of Beauty. Rethinking games research Eric Zimmerman Rethinking Games Research We are at a turning point. Those of us who do study and research games have begun to accomplish much of what we set out to do. Games have achieved wide cultural acceptance. They are taken seriously at universities and are funded by major foundations and government grants. Games have even reached the White House. We are beginning to understand what games do best: games teach systems thinking; play promotes creativity and innovation; tinkering leads to critical understanding. We are at the start of what seems to be a ludic century in which games will replace the moving image as the dominant model for art and leisure. The question is, what comes next? Despite our successes, there is a nagging feeling that something is missing. Humanities games research feels wildly irrelevant to developers and players. Social Science research is being usurped by marketing and gamification. And games and learning scholars chase the holy grail of “proof ” that games teach more effectively than traditional instruction. Maybe we’re barking up the wrong trees — or even wandering in the wrong forest altogether. Despite the fact that we all love games, we are instrumentalizing them – to their detriment and to ours as well. It is time for a shift in our approach, to expand and reinvent what we mean by games and research. Facing down these difficult dilemmas means changing the way we think about games. What questions lurk behind our assumptions about why games are valuable? Why do we all insist that games are good for you? What can we learn from other cultural forms? What are we losing when we instrumentalize the games that we love so much? Please come prepared to participate. Eric Zimmerman is an award-winning veteran game designer, writer, and academic who invents new forms of play on and off the computer. For nine years, Eric was the Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer of Gamelab, a game development company based in New York City. Eric is a founder of the Institute of Play, a nonprofit that looks at the intersection of games and learning and has opened a school in New York City based on play as the model for learning. Eric has written and lectured extensively about game design and game culture. He is the co-author with Katie Salen of Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (MIT Press, 2004). He is also the co-editor with Katie Salen of The Game Design Reader (MIT Press, 2006). Eric has taught courses at MIT, NYU, Parsons School of Design, and School of Visual Arts. Currently Eric is a Visiting Arts Professor at the NYU Game Center where he teaches game design. //Keynote// Thursday September 15, 9.00-9.50 5

keynote speaker Live Book Review: Video Gamers Garry Crawford The field of games research has several different foci, one of them being the activity of game players. The new title, ‘Video Gamers’ by Garry Crawford (Published August 2nd 2011 by Routledge), claims to be “the first book to explicitly and comprehensively address how digital games are experienced and engaged with in the everyday lives, social networks, and consumer patterns of those who play them”. This Live Book Review is a keynote interview session by Frans Mäyrä, where Garry Crawford will be asked to introduce his book, the rationale behind this project, and how he intends this volume to contribute to the field of game studies. Garry Crawford is a Cultural Sociologist at the University of Salford in the UK. His research and teaching focus primarily on audiences and consumers, and in particular, sport fans and video gamers. He has published numerous works, including the books: Video Gamers (2011), Online Gaming in Context (2011, edited with V.K. Gosling & B. Light), The Sage Dictionary of Leisure Studies (2009, with T. Blackshaw), Introducing Cultural Studies (2008, with B. Longhurst, G. Smith, G. Bagnall & M. Ogborn), and Consuming Sport (2004). His work on video gamers seeks to understand gaming culture away from the sight of a games machine, and consider video games within the complex flows and patterns of everyday life. Frans Mäyrä is the Professor of Hypermedia, Digital Culture and Game Studies in the University of Tampere, Finland. He is the head of University of Tampere Game Research Lab, and has taught and studied digital culture and games from the early 1990s. His research interests include game cultures, meaning making through playful interaction, online social play, borderlines, identity, as well as transmedial fantasy and science fiction. //Keynote// Thursday September 15, 13.00-13.50

keynote speaker Maximum Impact Game Design Reiner Knizia Dr. Reiner Knizia is one of the world’s most successful and prolific game designers. He has had more than 500 games and books published in many countries and languages worldwide with sales totalling over 15 million games. He has won numerous international awards. Reiner Knizia has a Master of Science degree from Syracuse University (USA) and a PHD in Mathematics from Ulm University (Germany). Before dedicating himself to the full-time development of games, he was the Operations Director of a £ 10 billion mortgage company based in the United Kingdom. Reiner Knizia has had teaching assignments at various international universities / institutions on Learning Techniques, Management and Game Design, e.g. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT and the ABECOR Banking Institute. Find out how games mirror our lives and times, and what important factors influence the impact of game design. Drawing on Reiner’s vast experience, you can look forward to many insightful examples in an engaging and fun presentation. //Keynote// Thursday September 15, 19.00-19.50

keynote speaker Playing with Fire Jen Jenson and Suzanne de Castell Gender continues to come under fire both within the field of digital game studies and across its broad domain of reference: digital entertainment culture, science, and technology. Drawing from recent research on gender and digital games, we explain and demonstrate ways that tropes of play, entertainment and other ‘magically encircled’ practices continue to ignite brush fires they do not even attempt to contain, at a cost that continues to be considerable for women specifically, and for the advancement of digital games studies more generally. Contesting ‘libertarian ludologies’ means de-fusing, then re-fusing, this time ‘with a difference’, received normative discourses and practices in game studies. Identifying specific methodological, epistemic, aesthetic, and ethical flames still being fanned and very much alive in contemporary gender focused games theory, research, design and practice, we conclude by describing a current project FiG (Feminists in Games) that seeks to more productively advance conditions of play for all concerned by attending to ‘player experience’ more diversely conceived and through a methodological turn that positions research as design. Anyone interested in feminist initiatives in games research, design, development are welcome to attend the first meeting of a new organization, Feminists in Games, an international project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to support the design and implementation of local, feminist interventionist research projects. Suzanne de Castell is a Professor of Curriculum and Instruction in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Her doctorate is from Senate House at the University of London, and she has published widely on educational history, philosophy and theory, literacy studies, gender/technology studies and digital games and education. Her current research centres on multimodal analysis of educational interactions, learning and attention in formal and non-formal environments, and identity and activity in game-based multiplayer worlds. Working with Jen Jenson and Nick Taylor she has designed and developed several educational video games, her favourite being a baroque music game their team developed for the world-famous Toronto-based Baroque orchestra, Tafelmusik.

//Keynote// Friday September 16, 9.00-9.50 10

Jen Jenson is Associate Professor of Pedagogy and Technology in the Faculty of Education at York University. Her published work is on gender and technology, sociocultural contexts of gameplay, digital games and education, and educational policy and policy practices in K-12 schooling in Canada. Her most recent work involves the study of players’ identities and practices in massively multiplayer online games. She has also designed and created a number of educationally focused video games with Suzanne de Castell and Nick Taylor and their most recent work includes the development of mobile games for school-aged children.

keynote speaker Rethink, Redesign and Replay Mary Flanagan In this talk, Mary Flanagan examines some of the most effective games from the values-oriented standpoint. She explores how a critical play approach allows us to consider games under new light, and redesign them for revolutionary types of play. Flanagan argues that the bind in which designers and scholars are increasingly finding themselves -- that of behaviorists -needs to be challenged by such a focus on criticality. If fostering critical play means allowing players to see their choices clearly, Flanagan cautions that such player positioning may lure designers into questionable values-territory. Dr. Mary Flanagan, Distinguished Professor at Dartmouth College, is an innovator known for theories on activist design, and critical play. In 2003 she founded Tiltfactor.org as a rigorous theory/practice laboratory focused on values, education, and social issues. Recent laboratory work includes new games for health. Flanagan has written +20 essays/chapters on games, empathy, gender, art, and design; Critical Play (2009) is her most recent book. Her artwork spans game-inspired systems to computer viruses, interfaces to interactive texts. //Keynote// Friday September 16, 19.00-19.50

keynote speaker Playing Well Together Bernie DeKoven Bernie DeKoven is a fun theorist, game designer and workshop facilitator. In his book, The Well Played Game, he voiced a philosophy of “healthy competition” that formed the core teachings of the New Games Foundation. No matter what kind of game you’re talking about, there is a core experience, beyond the design and technology of the game that makes the game worth playing. You can observe this experience in almost any game, from a children’s game like hide and seek to a professional sport like basketball. In general, it’s the experience of participating in a functioning community of players. Specifically, sharing the experience of playing well. Bernie DeKoven will be addressing a small revolution in play that began in the 70s with the advent of the New Games Foundation and continues today in games like World of Warcraft. He plans on raising some questions, some hopes, some aspirations, and some eyebrows: “My hope is to encourage you in the development of new areas of research and practice that will explore the relationships between the player and the community of players, between the player as participant and the player as designer, between the spirit of competition and the spirit of the game. And maybe to play a game or two - for, you know, fun.” He became co-director of the New Games Foundation, and has developed internationally successful programs in facilitating collaborative games, community events and business meetings. Bernie has designed award-winning games for Ideal Toy Company, Children’s Television Workshop, CBS Software and Mattel Toys. Bernie earned his Master’s degree in theater from Villanova University where he received a Rockefeller Fellowship in playwriting. He is a lifetime member of The Association for the Study of Play and winner of the 2006 Iffni- Raynolds award for “outstanding achievement in the field of fun” from the North American Simulation and Gaming Association. Bernie is the author of the deepFUN.com website. //Keynote// Saturday September 17, 9.00-9.50

superbuttonkoalaparty

keynote performer Kid Koala at the SUPERBUTTONKOALAPARTY

SUPERBUTTONKOALAPARTY will be opened in style by Canadian illustrator/musician/pastry-addict/gamefan Kid Koala. His mix of musical performance, playtime and keynote speech kicks off an action-packed party, with music, games and interaction spread across the multiple rooms of a brand new venue. Kid Koala is a world-renowned scratch DJ who has made a name for himself not only with his music, but also with his visual art. He has released three solo albums on Ninja Tune: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (2001), Some of My Best Friends Are DJs (2003), and Your Mom’s Favorite DJ (2006). He has also been involved in collaborations such as Gorillaz, Deltron 3030, and The Slew. He has toured with the likes of Radiohead, the Beastie Boys, Money Mark, John Medeski, Mike Patton, Jack Johnson, DJ Shadow, and The Preservation Hall Jazz Band. He has contributed to scores for director Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World as well as director Rian Johnson’s Looper and has composed music for The National Film Board of Canada, the Cartoon Network, and Adult Swim. His unforgettable live shows range from silly touring turntable carnivals like Short Attention Span Theater (featuring turntable bingo) to quiet-time events like Music To Draw To. Following up on the success of 2003’s Nufonia Must Fall, Space Cadet is Kid Koala’s second graphic novel. He lives in Montreal with his wife, baby daughter and pet shrimp Amanda. //Keynote// Wednesday September 14, 20.00-01.30

Program //thursday, 15 september 2011// 8.30 — 13.00

Conference Registration at Utrecht School of the Arts Oude Amersfoortseweg 131, 1212AA Hilversum

9.00 — 9.50

Welcome and Keynote Eric Zimmerman [HUB]

10.00 — 12.00

Serious Games on Trial Rens Kortmann, Heide Lukosch and Harald Warmelink.

PhD Workshop on Investigating Games and Play: Themes, Theories, Practices, Methodologies Sybille Lammes, Ben Schouten, Joost Raessens and Tilde Bekker.

Panel on Practicing Masculinities Emma Witkowski, Tl Taylor, Betsy James Disalvo and Nick Taylor.

14.00 — 14.40 Parallel Session 3 14.40 — 15.20 Playtime 15.20 — 16.10

Panel on Business games as cultural techniques Rolf Nohr, Stefan Böhme and Serjoscha Wiemer.

15.20 — 16.00 Parallel Session 4 16.00 — 16.20 Playtime 16.20 — 17.10

Panel on Research, Practice, and Social Context Douglas Wilson, Dan Pinchbeck and Clara Fernández-Vara.

10.00 — 10.40 Parallel Session 1

16.20 — 17.00 Parallel Session 5

10.40 — 11.20 Playtime

17.00 — 18.00 Drinks and Playtime

11.20 — 12.00 Parallel Session 2

18.00 — 19.00 Dinner

12.00 — 13.00 Lunch and Playtime

19.00 — 19.50 Keynote Reiner Knizia [HUB]

Meeting: Feminism and Games

13.00 — 13.50 Keynote Garry Crawford and Frans Mäyrä [HUB] 14.00 — 15.10

Playing by the numbers: A panel on theorycrafting Kristine Ask, Faltin Karlsen, Mark Chen, Christopher Paul and Torill Mortensen. [HUB]

Panel on Digital Games as Cultural Industry? Does it matter? Aphra Kerr, Malte Behrmann, Mira Burri, Casey O’Donnell and Adrienne Shaw.

20.00 — 21.00

Panel on Modern Board Games and Why Game Studies Should Care Jose Zagal, Ben Kirman, Reiner Knizia, Chris Bateman, Andrew Sheerin, James Wallis, Douglas Wilson and Phoenix Game Foundation. [HUB]

21.00 — 22.00 Drinks and Playtime

Legend Colors

CABINS: OUTSIDE

HUB: INSIDE

Tickle Me Pink

Radiating Red

Outrageous Orange

Bedazzled Blue

Battleship Black

Laser Lemon

Leapfrog Green

Purple Pzaazz

Sonic Silver

//thursday, 15 september 2011// 10.00 — 10.40

Parallel Session 1

Robin Potanin and Oliver Davies. Designing the Designer

Hao Wang and Chuen Tsai Sun. Game Reward Systems: Gaming Experiences and Social Meanings

Jeffrey Wimmer. The professional identity of game-workers revisited. A qualitative inquiry on the case study of German professionals Juho Hamari and Veikko Eranti. Framework for Designing and Evaluating Game Achievements

Mirjam Eladhari. Jon Manker. Game Mechanics and Game Prototyping – The Negotiation of an Idea Dynamics of Social Actions in a Prototype Multi Player Game World

INDUSTRY ROLES

REWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS

PROTOTYPE

Heather Logas. Meta-Rules and Complicity in Brenda Brathwaite’s Train

Astrid Ensslin. Playing with rather than by the rules: metaludicity, allusive fallacy and illusory agency in The Path

META-RULES IN ARTGAMES

Fatima Jonsson. Go out and play! Investigating the attitudes towards game cafés in a Swedish context

Nick Taylor, Suzanne De Castell, Jennifer Jenson and Florence Chee. Playing in Public: A Latitudinal Look at LANS

PUBLIC PLAY

Mary Flanagan, Max Seidman, Sukdith Punjasthitkul, Martin Downs and Jonathan Belman. Preventing a POX Among the People? A Design Case Study of a Public Health Game

Marcelo Simão De Vasconcellos and Inesita Soares De Araújo. Online Video Games in Brazilian Public Health Communication

PUBLIC HEALTH

Paul Martin. The performance of the street network in GTA IV’s Liberty City

Isaac Lenhart. Kairotopos: A reflection on Greek space/time concepts as design implications in Minecraft

SPACE/TIME

Program //thursday, 15 september 2011// 11.20 — 12.00

Parallel Session 2

Jan Decock and Jan Van Looy. Forbidden or Promising Fruit? An experimental study into the effects of warning labels on the purchase intention of digital gamers

INDUSTRY Saara Toivonen and Olli Sotamaa. Of discs, boxes and cartridges: The material life of digital games

William Robinson and Leif Penzendorfer. Tell Me Something I Don’t Know: Understanding Data in Splinter Cell

Stein Ciro Llanos and Kristine USER INTERFACE Jørgensen. Do Players Prefer Integrated User Interfaces? A Qualitative Study of Game UI Design Issues

Jose Zagal and John Sharp. A Survey of Final Project Courses in Game Programs: Considerations for Teaching Capstone

Lars Reng and Henrik Schoenau-Fog. Problem Based Game Design - Engaging Students by Innovation

GAME EDUCATION

Ivan Mosca. Just a Cyberplace. The rules in videogames: between Ontology and Epistemology

Douglas Wilson. In Celebration of Low Process Intensity

RULES

Hanli Geyser and Pippa Tshabalala. Return to Darkness: Representations of Africa in Resident Evil 5

Adrienne Shaw. “He could be a bunny rabbit for all I care!”: Identification with video game characters and arguments for diversity in representation

REPRESENTATION

Laura Herrewijn and Karolien Poels. Putting Brands into Play: How Player Experiences Influence the Effectiveness of In-Game Advertising

Vicente Mastrocola. ADVERTISING Using a game as an advertising piece for a Brazilian politics campaign

Jonas Linderoth. Beyond the digital divide: An ecological approach to gameplay

Tom Betts. PROCEDURALITY Pattern Recognition: Gameplay as negotiating procedural form

Legend Colors

CABINS: OUTSIDE

HUB: INSIDE

Tickle Me Pink

Radiating Red

Outrageous Orange

Bedazzled Blue

Battleship Black

Laser Lemon

Leapfrog Green

Purple Pzaazz

Sonic Silver

//thursday, 15 september 2011// 14.00 — 14.40

Parallel Session 3

David Nieborg. The inevitable sequel: The anatomy of the next-gen console game

Jan-Bart van Beek. Killzone, Killzone: Liberation, Killzone 2 and Killzone 3

INDUSTRY

Yan Xu, Evan Barba, Iulian Radu, Maribeth Gandy and Blair Macintyre. Chores Are Fun: Understanding Social Play in Board Games for Digital Tabletop Game Design

Jonas Linderoth. Exploring Anonymity in Cooperative Board Games

BOARD GAMES

Annakaisa Kultima and Kati Alha. Using the VNA Ideation Game at Global Game Jam

Richard Wood, Paul Coulton and Leon Cruickshank. The fluidity of the ‘magic circle’: using playful interventions in the design process

DESIGN PROCESS

Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola. The Making of Nordic Larp: Documenting a Tradition of Ephemeral Co-Creative Play

Nicolle Lamerichs. ‘Can’t Stop The Signal?’ The Design of the Dutch Firefly LARP

LARP

Philip Lin. Negotiating Nationalism through Virtual Conflict: the Taiwanese FirstPerson-Shooter Gamers’ Feelings and Experiences in the Call of Duty

Holin Lin and Chuen-Tsai Sun. A Chinese Cyber Diaspora: Contact and Identity Negotiation on Taiwanese WoW Servers

NEGOTIATION

Niels Keetels and Jeroen Van Mastrigt-Ide. Practical considerations for playtesting games for physiotherapeutic effect

Mathias Nordvall, Leo Koivuniemi and Jalal Maleki. Cortex Wars: Expanding the Interactions for Paralyzed People

EXERGAMES

Mike Treanor and Michael Mateas. BurgerTime: A Proceduralist Investigation

Julian Togelius. A Procedural Critique of Deontological Reasoning

PROCEDURALITY

Program //thursday, 15 september 2011// 15.20 — 16.00

Parallel Session 4

Adam Russell and John Sear. Simon Mccallum Cinesthesia: mass-participation and Arild Jacobsen. game art in film theatres Crowd Presence: AR Gaming in physical and virtual groups

SOCIAL PLAY

Johannes Breuer, Ruth Festl and Thorsten Quandt. In the army now – Narrative elements and realism in military first-person shooters

Martijn Van Zwieten. Danger Close: Contesting Ideologies and Contemporary Military Conflict in First Person Shooters

FPS

Filip Lange-Nielsen. The Power-up Experience: A study of Power-ups in Games and their Effect on Player Experience

Fares Kayali and Josef Schuh. Retro Evolved: Level Design Practice exemplified by the Contemporary Retro Game

GOING UP

Lies Van Roessel and Jeroen Van Mastrigt. Collaboration and Team Composition in Applied Game Creation Processes

Brian Winn and Wei Peng. Stealth Exercise, Blatant Fun: Crafting an Exergame that Players Intrinsically Want to Play

DESIGN & RESEARCH PROCESS

Chris Bateman, Rebecca Lowenhaupt and Lennart Nacke. Player Typology in Theory and Practice

Kristine Ask. Are we playing the same game? How three different playergroups have domesticated World of Warcraft

PLAYER TYPOLOGY

Valentina Rao. How to Say Things with Actions I : a Theory of Discourse for Video Games for Change

Daniel Joseph. Ludotopians and Ludocapitalists: Gamification, Sandbox Games and the Myths of Cultural Industries

CRITICAL REFLECTION

Bart Simon. Pocket Utopias: Digital Gaming as Imaginary Social Action

Espen Aarseth. Ludus Revisited: The Ideology of Pure Play in Contemporary Video Game Research

GAME & PLAY

Olivier Szymanezyk, Patrick Dickinson and Tom Duckett. From Individual Characters to Large Crowds: Augmenting the Believability of Open-World Games through Exploring Social Emotion in Pedestrian Groups

Joerg Niesenhaus, Daniel Muenter, Tim Hussein and Juergen Ziegler. Playful Crowdsourcing for EnergyEfficient Automotive Navigation

CROWDS

Legend Colors

CABINS: OUTSIDE

HUB: INSIDE

Tickle Me Pink

Radiating Red

Outrageous Orange

Bedazzled Blue

Battleship Black

Laser Lemon

Leapfrog Green

Purple Pzaazz

Sonic Silver

//thursday, 15 september 2011// 16.20 — 17.00

Parallel Session 5

Arjan Dhupia. Kingdom Without a Tale?

Annika Waern.

Henrik Schoenau-Fog. The Player Engagement Process - An Exploration of Continuation Desire in Digital Games

Gordon Calleja. Incorporation: A Renewed Understanding of Presence and Immersion in Digital Games

ENGAGEMENT & IMMERSION

Fares Kayali, Gerit Götzenbrucker, Vera Schwarz, Peter Purgathofer, Babara Franz and Jürgen Pfeffer. Serious Beats: Transdisciplinary research methodologies for designing and evaluating a socially integrative serious music-based online game

Sander Huiberts. Listen! – Improving the Cooperation between Game Designers and Audio Designers

DESIGN & RESEARCH PROCESS

Frederik Van Den Bosch, Wannes Ribbens and Jan Van Looy. Doing It Themselves! A Mixed-Method Study into the Motivations of Players to ‘Create’ in the Context of Gaming

Todd Harper. “Oooh That ’s Cool!”: Aesthetics of Player-Created Little Big Planet Content

PLAYERCREATED

Ben Kirman, Francesco Collovà, Fabrizio Davide, Eva Ferrari, Jonathan Freeman, Shaun Lawson, Conor Linehan and Niklas Ravaja. Social Architecture and the Emergence of Power Laws in Online Social Games

Tanya Marriott. Designing social behavior through play

SOCIAL PLAY

Janienke Sturm, Rob Tieben, Menno Deen and Ben Schouten. PlayFit: Designing playful activity interventions for teenagers

EXERGAMES Steven Boyer. Jane Fonda’s Wii Fit: Continuity, Contingency, and Concordance in Fitness Gaming

Hanna Wirman, Willie Smits, Gino Yu and Wilson Yuen. Defeated by an orangutan? Approaching cross-species gameplay

Kars Alfrink, Irene van Peer, ANIMAL PLAY Hein Lagerweij, Clemens Driessen and Marinka Copier. Designing play for pigs and humans 23

Program //friday, 16 september 2011// 8.30 — 13.00

Conference Registration at Utrecht School of the Arts Oude Amersfoortseweg 131, 1212AA Hilversum

9.00 — 9.50

Welcome and Keynote Jen Jenson and Suzanne de Castell [HUB]

10.00 — 12.00

Panel on International Gaming: Comparative Survey Research on Digital Gaming Thorsten Quandt, Ruth Festl, Vivian Chen, Raine Koskimaa, Jan van Looy, Frans Mäyrä and Jaakko Suominen. [HUB]

Building a Game Lab 2.0: Surviving and Thriving Clara Fernandez Vara, Celia Pearce, Mary Flanagan, Marinka Copier, Frans Mäyrä, Kristy Norindr and Jonathan Dovey.

14.00 — 14.40 Parallel Session 8 14.40 — 15.20 Playtime 15.20 — 16.00 Parallel Session 9 16.00 — 16.20 Playtime 16.20 — 17.10

Panel on Puppy Machines: simulated animals and videogame culture Patrick Crogan, Seth Giddings, Helen Kennedy and Bart Simon.

16.20 — 17.00 Parallel Session 10 17.00 — 18.00 Drinks and Playtime

The Ivory Tower that Isn’t: A Gamer Scholar Rant Session José Zagal, Suzanne de Castel, Frans Mäyrä , Jesper Juul, Mary Flanagan, Espen Aarseth, and Maggie Greene [HUB]

10.00 — 10.40 Parallel Session 6

18.00 — 19.00 Dinner

10.40 — 11.20 Playtime

19.00 — 19.50 Keynote Mary Flanagan [HUB

11.20 — 12.00 Parallel Session 7 12.00 — 13.00 Lunch and Playtime

20.00 — 20.30 Opening EJECT 2011: Graduation expo Art, Media and Technology

Meeting: International MA Game-Studies

Meeting: Global Game Jam

20.30 — 21.00

DiGRA AGM

21.00 — 22.00 Drinks and Playtime

13.00 — 13.50 Keynote TBA [HUB]

Panel on Moral Issues in Digital Game Play Karolien Poels, Tilo Hartmann, José Zagal, Garry Young, Monica Whitty and Steven Malliet.

14.00 — 15.10

Gamification: A Roundtable on Game Studies and HCI Perspectives Aphra Kerr, Rilla Khaled, Sebastian Deterding and Dan Dixon. [HUB]

Metagame Tournament with Eric Zimmerman and John Sharp [HUB]

Legend Colors

CABINS: OUTSIDE

HUB: INSIDE

Tickle Me Pink

Radiating Red

Outrageous Orange

Bedazzled Blue

Battleship Black

Laser Lemon

Leapfrog Green

Purple Pzaazz

Sonic Silver

//Friday, 16 september 2011// 10.00 — 10.40

Parallel Session 6

Maggie Greene. Nail Houses and River Crabs: Online Games and Society in China

Mark Chen.

Magnus Johansson, Fatima Jonsson and Lina Eklund. Social Ties and Group Identity in three MMOGs

Peichi Chung. The Game Industry Development in Southeast Asia

GAME INDUSTRY ASIA

Stephen Mandiberg. Tjerk Teitsma. Translation and/as Interface Game Design ready for Translation

TRANSLATION

Katia Aerts, Evelyn Cloosen, Bob De Schutter, Jeroen Wauters and Jeroen Dierckx. GameHUB: Developing Serious Games in Flanders

Christof Van Nimwegen, Herre Van Oostendorp, Michael Bas and Joost Modderman. GameDNA: Teaming up a client, a game studio and a research department for a richer game notation

SERIOUS GAMES DEVELOPMENT

Vinciane Zabban. What Keeps Designers and Players Apart? Thinking How an Online Game World is Shared.

Tanja Sihvonen and Melinda Jacobs. In Perpetual Beta? On the Participatory Design of Facebook Games

DESIGNERS AND PLAYERS

Arne Schröder. Interdependencies: Playing with Identity in World of Warcraft Guilds

Jennifer Jenson, Nick Taylor, Suzanne De Castell and Barry Dilouya. High Fidelity: Avatars and their Players

IDENTITY

Pilar Lacasa, Rut MartinezBorda and Héctor DelCastillo. Adolescent thinking and online writing after the use of commercial games in the classroom

LANGUAGE Frederik De Grove, Jan Van Looy and Peter Mechant. LEARNING Evaluating the Potential of Game-Based Language Learning: an Experimental Study into the Playing and Learning Experiences of Adult Foreign Language Learners

Jonne Arjoranta. Do We Need Real-Time Hermeneutics? Structures of Meaning in Games

Jason Begy. Abstract Games as Experiential Metaphors

MEANING & METAPHOR 25

Program //friday, 16 september 2011// 11.20 — 12.00

Parallel Session 7

Christopher Paul. Word Play: Thinking About Game Design and the Early Game Experience

Emiel van Kampen. Don’t Press Start

EARLY GAME EXPERIENCE

Steven Malliet and Thomas Laureyssens. Designing Games to Improve Social Interactions on the Work Floor

Perttu Heino and Ari Närhi. Educational Computer Games for Improved Production Performance

ORGANIZATIONS & PLAY

Rune K. L. Nielsen and Espen Aarseth. Game Addiction Triangulated: Media Panic or Health Problem – Who Can Tell?

Gareth Schott and Jasper Van Vught. Replacing Preconceived Accounts of Digital Games with Experience of Play: When parents went native in GTA IV

PUBLIC PERCEPTION

Jef Folkerts. Video Games, Walking the Fine Line between Art and Entertainment

John Sharp. Painting with Games: JODI, Joseph DeLappe and the Technologies of Game Development

ART & GAMES

Jessica Enevold. Domestic Stagings: The Practice and Performance of Play, Gender, and Family

Lotte Vermeulen, Jan Van Looy, Frederik De Grove and Cédric Courtois. You Are What You Play? A Quantitative Study into Game Design Preferences across Gender and Their Interaction with Gaming Habits

GENDER

Rilla Khaled and Pippin Barr. Survive Together, Buy Alone: A Case Study of Cultural Values in Two Divergent Games

Jonathan Belman, Mary VALUES Flanagan, Helen Nissenbaum and Jim Diamond. Grow-A-Game: A Tool for Values Conscious Design and Analysis of Digital Games

Nassrin Hajinejad, Iaroslav Sheptykin, Barbara Grüter, Annika Worpenberg, Andreas Lochwitz, David Oswald and Heide-Rose Vatterrott. Casual mobile gameplay – On integrated practices of research, design and play

Ilina Kareva and Jovan Kostovski. DIY Mobile-based Augmented Reality Game for Motivating Physical Activity

MOBILE

Legend Colors

CABINS: OUTSIDE

HUB: INSIDE

Tickle Me Pink

Radiating Red

Outrageous Orange

Bedazzled Blue

Battleship Black

Laser Lemon

Leapfrog Green

Purple Pzaazz

Sonic Silver

//Friday, 16 september 2011// 14.00 — 14.40

Parallel Session 8 INDIE GAMES

Orlando Guevara-Villalobos. Cultures of independent game production: Examining the relationship between community and labour

Lindsay Grace. The Poetics of Game Design, Rhetoric and the Independent Game

Joseph Osborn. Procedural Minimalism

Sybille Lammes

Jeroen Van Bree. The End of the Rainbow: In search of crossing points between organizations and play

Harald Warmelink. Towards a Playful Organization Ideal-type: Values of a Playful Organizational Culture

Pejman Mirza-Babaei, Sebastian Long, Emma Foley and Graham Mcallister. Understanding the Contribution of Biometrics to Games User Research

METRICS Alessandro Canossa and Yun-Gyung Cheong. Between Intention and Improvisation: Limits of Gameplay Metrics Analysis and Phenomenological Debugging

Faltin Karlsen. Theorycrafting: from collective intelligence to intrinsic satisfaction

THEORYCRAFTING Karin Wenz. Knowledge Production and Surveillance in Game Communities: The practice of theorycrafting

Jan Van Looy, Cédric Courtois and Lotte Vermeulen. Why Girls Play Digital Games: an Empirical Study into the Relations between Gender, Motivations and Genre

Suzanne De Castell, Jennifer Jenson, Nick Taylor and Megan Humphrey. Constructing ‘Expertise’ in Virtual Worlds

Anders Frank. Unexpected game calculations in educational wargaming Design flaw or beneficial to learning?

SUBVERSIVE Konstantin Mitgutsch and Matthew Weise. Subversive Game Design for Recursive Learning

Sybille Lammes. The map as playground: Location-based games as cartographical practices.

Mark Lochrie, Paul Coulton LOCATION BASED and Andrew Wilson. Participatory Game Design to Engage a Digitally Excluded Community

ORGANIZATIONS & PLAY

EXPERTISE

Program //friday, 16 september 2011// 15.20 — 16.00

Parallel Session 9

Mariam Asad. Meaning Making Through Constraint: Modernist Poetics and Game Design Analysis

Clara Fernandez Vara. Game Spaces Speak Volumes: Indexical Storytelling

POETICS & NARRATIVE

Aphra Kerr. Globalisation and mobile labour in the digital games industry: Implications for policy

Sonja Kröger, Emese Domahidi and Thorsten Quandt. The game boys’ network. A network analysis of the German digital games industry

INDUSTRY

Jaakko Stenros, Jussi Holopainen, Annika Waern, Markus Montola and Elina Ollila. Narrative Friction in ARGs: Design Insights from Conspiracy For Good Gerard Van Wolferen and Hugo Verweij. Feel the Music

Kars Alfrink, Alper Cugun, Marinka Copier and Herman Koster. Code 4: A Pervasive Game for Organizational Change

CHANGE

Mathias Nordvall, Emil Boström and Jalal Maleki. Sightlence: a Game That Turns Deafblind People Into Gamers

DEAFBLIND GAMERS

Richard Van Meurs. And Then You Wait: The Issue of Dead Time in Social Network Games

Mark Eyles and Dan Pinchbeck. Playful Ambience

EXPERIENCE

Simon Niedenthal. Skin Games: Fragrant Play, Scented Media and the Stench of Digital Games

Niki Smit. Art vs Gameplay

INNOVATION

David Cameron, John Carroll and Rebecca Wotzko. Epistemic games & applied drama: Converging conventions for serious play

Rachel Muehrer, Jennifer Jenson, Jeremy Friedberg and Nicole Husain. Knowing Play: Learning about a Science-Based Videogame

LEARNING

René Glas. Breaking Reality: Exploring Pervasive Cheating in Foursquare

Aml Brown. Players and the Love Game: Conceptualizing Cheating with Erotic Role Players in World of Warcraft

CHEATING

Legend Colors

CABINS: OUTSIDE

HUB: INSIDE

Tickle Me Pink

Radiating Red

Outrageous Orange

Bedazzled Blue

Battleship Black

Laser Lemon

Leapfrog Green

Purple Pzaazz

Sonic Silver

//Friday, 16 september 2011// 16.20 — 17.00

Parallel Session 10

Neal Mcdonald. A Survey of Actor’s Games

Jaakko Stenros.

Michael Soppitt Daniel Schultheiss. and Graham Mcallister. MUsE – A Framework for Understanding Player Experience Reception-based Gaming using Sequential Analysis Research

RESEARCH METHODS

Henrik Cederholm, Olle Hilborn, Craig Lindley, Charlotte Sennersten and Jeanette Eriksson. The Aiming Game: Using a Game with Biofeedback for Training in Emotion Regulation

Belinda Gutierrez, Sarah Chu, (EMOTIONAL) Dennis Paiz-Ramirez, BIAS Kurt Squire and Molly L. Carnes. Pathfinder: A case example of designing an engaging game on unconscious bias

Sebastian Möring. Funny Games – Analyzing Humorous Modifications of Video Games

REFLECTION Jaakko Suominen. Game Reviews as Tools in the Construction of Game Historical Awareness in Finland, 1984– 2010: Case MikroBitti Magazine

Douglas Wilson. Getting Players to Look at Each Other: Adventures and Misadventures in Designing for Motion Controllers

Gordon Tiemstra, PHYSICAL PLAY Renée Van Den Berg, Tilde Bekker and Mark De Graaf. Guidelines to Design Interactive Openended Play Installations for Children Placed in a Free Play Environment

Harald Warmelink and Marko Siitonen. Player Communities in Multiplayer Online Games: A Systematic Review of Empirical Research

MMOGS Stephanie Fisher, Jennifer Jenson and Suzanne De Castell. Proving Grounds?: PvP as Child’s Play in a Massive Multiplayer Online Game

Ioanna Iacovides, James Aczel, Eileen Scanlon and Will Woods. Making sense of game-play: How can we examine learning and involvement?

Pilar Lacasa, Rut MartinezBorda and Laura Mendez. Games and machinima in adolescents’ classrooms

Joris Dormans. Integrating Emergence and Progression

SCHEMATA Peter Howell. Schematically Disruptive Game Design

LEARNING

Program //saturday, 17 september 2011// 8.30 — 13.00

Conference Registration at Utrecht School of the Arts Oude Amersfoortseweg 131, 1212AA Hilversum

9.00 — 9.50

Keynote Bernie DeKoven [HUB]

10.00 — 12.00

Melanie Swalwell. More Than A Craze: Photographs of New Zealand’s early digital games scene

Workshop Further explorations into the well-played game, new games, and the affordances of fun by Bernie DeKoven [OUTSIDE: PLAYGROUND] Workshop Think,design,play...learn! by Chloe Varelidi

Workshop Machinations Game Design by Joris Dormans

Live Action Role-Playing Game (LARP) Prayers on a Porcelain Altar run by Jaakko Stenros

Well Played Minecraft moderated by Gordon Calleja [HUB]

12.00 — 14.00 Closure and Lunch 10.00 — 20.00 Playtime

playtime The conference offers a wide variety of opportunities to engage with speakers and participants in a creative environment, meet people from diverse and exciting backgrounds and share stories, enthusiasms and ideas.

Research & Design Showcase by the Institute for Creative Design The Showcase demonstrates the work of the Institute for Creative Design (at the Utrecht School of the Arts), a cross-disciplinary institute focusing on creative design for innovation. At the Showcase you can experience a variety of projects from students, researchers and alumnae.

EJECT 2011: Graduation expo Art, Media, Technology Curious to experience the work that graduate students from the Department of Art, Media & Technology deliver? Friday September 16 sees the start of EJECT 2011, the annual graduation exhibition. Immerse yourself into games, interactives, films, animations, media, music, sound and innovative cross-overs!

Indigo On The Road by the Dutch Game Garden INDIGO is the first large scale playable presentation of innovative and independent video-game design in the Netherlands. INDIGO is an initiative of the Dutch Game Garden. Indigo On the Road shows a small selection of games from the original event. Sometimes new games are added as well, just to keep things fresh and exciting.

The MIT Press Bookstore The MIT Press is the only university press in the United States whose list is based in science and technology. This does not mean that science and engineering are all we publish, but it does mean that we are committed to the edges and frontiers of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to exploring new fields and new modes of inquiry. We publish about 200 new books a year and over 30 journals. Our goal is to create books and journals that are challenging, creative, attractive, and yet affordable to individual readers.

Subcultures Subcultures is a specialized game store located in an atmospheric 750 year old wharf in the heart of Utrecht. Subcultures is all about games, play, storytelling, creation and modification. Apart from a wide assortment of games, toys and LARP gear, we also sell DIY goods, to help players create their own games and toys. But we not only sell games, we also organize demonstrations, workshops, tournaments and LARP events.

WORM.shop WORM.shop is part of WORM, Institute for Avantgardistic Recreation based in Rotterdam. For Think Design Play we have drawn together a special selection of books, magazines and films relating to game culture, circuitbending, sound art, media art and underground culture. Also available will be DIY kits for building your own sound or video synthesizers and noisetoys! Plus readymades like the Cracklebox, the Buddha Machine and the 1-bit Symphony. And they might even seduce you with various game-related items with no other function than just being fun. All this in collaboration with WORMâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in-house media lab called moddr_.

nice to meet you!

Utrecht School of the Arts introduction Utrecht is a hotspot in the Netherlands when it comes to game design and technology. With high-end Research and Design courses, a buoyant city and its innovative Dutch Game Garden, Utrecht is an ideal location for innovation in both entertainment- and applied game design and development. The Utrecht School of the Arts, the first to offer a game design program on the European continent in 1998, was established in 1987. With around 3800 students across a wide array of bachelor, master and post academic programmes and courses it is one of the largest higher education institutes for culture and the arts in the Netherlands and Europe. Together with Utrecht University, the Utrecht School of the Arts founded the Dutch Game Garden, an institute which accelerates the growth of the Dutch game industry by providing wide-ranging support and facilities for students, start-ups and established game companies that are located in the Netherlands. The Utrecht School of the Arts is nationally and internationally recognised for its teaching and research in digital and interactive media, its research in the areas of visual narrative design, music design and game design and was highly ranked by Business Weekly as one of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most influential design institutes. The Institute for Creative Design (at the Department of Art, Media and Technology) counts over 1100 students and 300 staff members who combine excellence in the design of digital media with applied research and design to find solutions for complex challenges in our society. Students collaborate in cross-disciplinary teams on assignments from a wide range of clients and partners. They deliver state-of-theart prototypes and concepts demonstrating the added value of creative design and technology. Whether it is for health care, safety or sustainability, their creative capacity and innovative potential is challenged by complex design problems. Additionally, dedicated research teams work in parallel on larger research and design projects in national and international consortia (like the GATE project). With over 100 externally assigned projects a year, the Institute is involved in a substantial amount of creative output to help shape society and creative industries of tomorrow.

Research & Design Showcase by the Utrecht School of the Arts GATE Health pilot Developer: R&D progam Applied Game Design The GATE Health pilot involves the design and development of an applied video game that utilizes the Nintendo Wiiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s motion-control capabilities for the rehabilitation of children with an acquired brain injury (ABI). Disguised as a multiplayer action/ roleplaying-game the game is designed to satisfy specific therapeutic needs focusing on motor, cognitive, and socio-emotional skills. For group therapy, the game allows rehabilitation therapists to customize individual player settings in real-time without interrupting the play session. Additionally, the game collects performance-data when played at home which enables the therapist to assess usage. The GATE Health pilot is conceived in cooperation with domain experts from several rehabilitation centres in The Netherlands, and is planned for completion in early 2012.

Fragmented Developer: Wijnand Veneberg Fragmented is an interactive installation in which the spectator becomes the screen. When entering the installation your silhouette gets detected by two Kinect cameras. Images set in a database of avatars are continually being projected on your silhouette. Surrounded by walls of mirrors you seem to be floating in an infinite space. You become a virtual body, a body in process, a pastiche and copy of many different identities and a surface appearance in which the original you seems to disappear.

JAVA RHINO presents PROJECT NOVA Developer: Jordi Boin, John Gottschalk, Nathan Visser and Giov Willems

A Spaceship Cockpit Simulation Installation. Do you like buttons, switches or knobs? Have you ever wondered what itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like to drift around in space with nothing between you and the infinite emptiness other than a few pieces of metal? Or do you just want to sit back and listen to tunes presented by your favourite disc jockey from 500 light-years away? Please come out and take the GraveDigger 2000 for a spin around the nearest asteroid belt. Just make sure to watch out for any threats and remember, all the help files are provided in a physical copy for your perusal at any time, whether life support systems are running or not. Have fun and good luck! This limited time offer is made possible to you through JAVA RHINO: Providing for your needs in spaceship operating systems throughout the whole of the Archibald Galaxy.*

Tape Generations Developer: Johan Rijpma

Without any explanation, large groups of tape rolls go through an unpredictable process of development and degeneration. The extremely slow paced life of these objects is revealed within an isolated space where everything is based on a balanced, symmetric structure. From this orderly state, deviations and differences in behaviour suddenly appear and result in unpredictable compositions and movements that seem to resemble natural phenomena.

Fortress Vechten Developer: Daan Kars, Joost Fibbe and Julien Mier Fortress Vechten is a fortress in the Dutch Waterline. Because large parts of the netherlands are below sealevel, the Dutch have been fighting the water for as long as they can remember. However, water is not only an enemy of the country. In times of war water became a welcome ally and the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best line of defence. The Dutch caused intentional inundation using Hollands biggest secret weapon: the Dutch Waterline. Fortress Vechten is open for the public to visit and its symbiotic relation between culture and nature can be an inspiration for the architecture of tomorrow. The graphic overlay reflects the mathematical precision in how these fortresses were build.

MINERVA Developer: Danielle Krabshuis, Joep Houterman, Leea Verschelden, Stijn Frishert and Rick Lemmen What happens when you get shipwrecked? MINERVA is a deep-sea horror game played inside an installation. The game takes the player through the engine room and the nursery of the sunken HMS MINERVA. By sound, art, physical environment, level design and a very special speaker, MINERVA creates a unique horror experience.

I.D.A Racegame Developer: Tommie Wildschut, Jeroen Verloop, Niels Iburg and Wynand Klees I.D.A is an interactive ride in which you can experience the different Games & Interaction programs that are offered at the Department of Art, Media and Technology: Game Design and Development, Game Art and Interaction Design. Each program is represented by an abstract visualization.

Periscope Inc. Developer: Marije de Wit Periscope Inc. is an educational game made for teenagers who are living in Leidsche Rijn, a new district of Utrecht. It teaches teenagers about the closed water system they have in Leidsche Rijn and how it works. The game is played online as well as offline in the physical world, using periscopes as a connection between the two worlds. The player needs to go outside and visit parts of the water system to unlock doors in the online world. Periscope Inc. tells a story about creatures who are living underground beneath Leidsche Rijn. They made periscopes to seek for information about the world above them. Just like we do with other planets. The character you are playing gets obsessed with this new world and wants to know everything about it.

Research & Design Showcase by the Utrecht School of the Arts Kids vs. Goblins Developer: Stolen Couch Games Kids vs. Goblins is a unique tactical action RPG for iPad with intuitive controls and a compelling story. Guide three heroes through six exotic environments filled with bloodthirsty enemies. Each hero has a unique set of magical spells that are yours to control. Every situation calls for different spells and tactics, so choosing the right combination of spells is very important when you enter a hostile area. The game will contain 70 different spells for you to master and combine, to unleash interesting and devastating effects on your enemies.

Fingle Developer: Adriaan de Jongh Fingle is a two-player iPad game about the thrills of touching each other’s hands on a multi-touch device. It is a game said to be just like sex. Fingers and hands will be sweaty.

Mac ’n Cheese Developer: Roy Nieterau, Tom Hankins, Gijs van Kooten and Guido Puijk In conjunction with the creation of Mac’n Cheese, a customized toolset for animation has been created based on Roy Nieterau’s master thesis called: “Animate. Pressure. Release.” The thesis centre question is: How to hold a better creative flow, so improving productivity and intuition, by using a customized toolset for 3D character animation? The thesis presents a rule set for creating tools to enhance flow and creativity in the act of animating in 3D software. Even more, it also provides a generous amount of concepts and designs that are interesting for near-future development towards an easier 3D work environment.

The P is for Panic Developer: Leo van der Veen “... Still, for many drivers, not only women, it is difficult to park their cars. Not for me. I always gently push my Mercedes’ ass backwards into an empty parking place. Not today...” The P is for panic is a two minute multimedia play inside a parking ticket machine. More info and other installations can be found at www.nr37.nl. Ah, and don’t forget to take your ticket. 38

Bum stories Developer: Ingmar Larsen The concept of privacy is changing, especially for users of social media. People consider their online profiles and online behaviour as their private domain. And therefore share their most intimate information without realising that the whole world could be watching. I constructed an interactive portable toilet in which visitors can experience this blurry line between the online and offline world. Bum your story!

Social Synthesis Developer: Robin Piets How can I get people to come closer to each other? Social Synthesis is the result. The project is a social sound-experience installation in the shape of a small platform (300 x 240 x 25 cm) with nine built-in speakers. Each visitor will acquire it’s own personal ’sound’ that has a direct link with it’s position on the stage. Moving towards other visitors will lead to a change in the intensity and intimacy of their personal soundscapes. Visitors will be challenged to enter a social game, which will stimulate them to come closer to each other.

The Playground Developer: Jephta Peijs, Eveline Lanooy, Bob albers and Yhorik Aarsen In The Playground you go back in time, and become a child again. You’re playing an innocent wargame in the local playground of your village against your friends. Your weapons are: water balloons, paper blowdarts and a wooden sword. Although this setup is already pretty unique we added an extra feature: biofeedback! The Xbox controller is enhanced to work with a chest band, which monitors your heart. In The Playground you can use your heart rate to unlock special abilities such as jumping super duper high and running incredibly fast when having a high heart rate. Or what about sneaking as an invisible ghost and zooming your crosshair like a hawk when your heart rate is very low. Decide your strategy, control your mind and body and defeat your friends!

dutch game garden introduction Dutch Game Garden accelerates the growth of the Dutch game industry by providing wide-ranging support and facilities for students, start-ups and established game companies that are located in the Netherlands. In our Business Center we provide top-class facilities for existing and growing game companies. We create true game development hotspots with access to other important companies, world class research institutes, universities and schools. Our headquarters in the city of Utrecht is already booming with activity. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got dedicated game companies housed here and lots of cross-over entrepreneurship thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s big on games and play. Through our Incubator program we help young developers setting up game studios or game related businesses. We provide training in entrepreneurship, access to a network of technical, financial and legal experts and help with housing and tools. Through our industry and government contacts we also offer support when doing business internationally. Finally, through our Game Development Club we aim to motivate students of various game design, media, arts and programming courses at universities and schools in the Netherlands to collaborate on joint projects. We provide them with places to work, tools and software, but we also set up international competitions for them to enter and organize all kinds of activities. Dutch Game Garden is funded by the Dutch Ministry for Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation, the City of Utrecht, the Province of Utrecht and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) of the European Committee.

indigo on the road Paper Cakes Developer: HUSCK (Collaboration between HKU and USC students) Paper Cakes is a mind-boggling puzzle platformer on a virtual piece of paper. Find your way to the cake by folding the level itself! The game consists of 40 levels, gradually introducing new gameplay mechanics and slowly increasing difficulty. Paper Cakes was a student showcase winner at the Independent Games Festival 2010 and was also nominated for best student game. It featured at Indigo 2010 as well.

Bohm Developer: Monobanda Bohm is a zen-like and soothing experience in which players create a tree. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about slow gameplay. Growing, creating branches, pushing your tree into strange shapes, and discovering how beautiful and relaxing these simple processes can be. Every tree is generated procedurally while you play. As the tree grows, so does the adaptive music made by Claynote. Both change and evolve over time, under the influence of buttons pressed and decisions made. Powered by Cannibal Game Studios and supported by Gamefonds. Nominee at the Independent Games Festival 2011.

Mindout Developer: Dreams of Danu In Mindout you destroy bricks by bouncing a brain-powered ball. Each time you hit a brick, the explosion coming from your charged ball destroys the bricks around it. The Neurosky MindWave is used to read your brainwaves. If your attention is high, your explosion is big, but if your attention is low you will only destroy a single brick. Concentrate hard enough and wipe away entire sections with each bounce. Your goal is to earn as many points as possible before time runs out.

indigo on the road Flix2 Developer: Joris Dormans Flix 2 is a whimsical yet challenging platformer where you play Flix: half blob, half spider. You can jump, roll up steep hills, stick to ceilings, and use your grappling arm to swing through the levels of this skill-based game. Collect stars to open the exit to the next level while avoiding traps and enemies.

Volo Airsport Developer: Martijn Zandvliet Ever wondered how it feels to soar through the skies in a wingsuit? When playing Volo Airsport you get as close to this feeling as possible without actually having to whizz past dangerously high mountaintops and steep canyons yourself. This one-man project by developer Martijn Zandvliet is still in the making, but the prototype is already lots of fun to play. Each button controls a limb of your flying stick figure, to assure maximum control while you try to make your free fall last as long as possible.

Omicron Creator: Arcady Studios Omicron is a microscopic life simulation/arcade game where the player controls a single cell organism in a deep, luminescent microcosm populated with odd entities. Every object in the game is created using beautiful particle effects, dynamic music generation, physics simulation, and a minimalistic design to provide a unique game play experience.

Darwins’s Disco Developer: Garbage Game Development If Darwin was right, all odds are against this creature! Control the last one of these magnificent creatures with up to 4 friends! Every player controls a part of the creature: The legs, the wings, the tail and the head. If you work as a team you will survive the longest, and get the highest score! Keep your focus however, because the body part assigned to each player keeps changing all the time!

Winnitron NL Developer: Monobanda The idea for the Winnitron 1000 arcade cabinet originally came from the BitCollective from Winnipeg, Canada: to build a “jukebox” of new indie titles that often sport a distinct retro-style. Vlambeer (of Super Crate Box fame), animation and pixel wizard Paul Veer and Dutch Game Garden proudly present the Dutch version of this machine: the WINNITRON NL. It runs all the games featured on its Canadian counterpart, but we’d like to give special attention to the two Dutch titles currently running on it. Those are the multiplayer version of Super Crate Box and Global Game Jam 2011 game Apoca by Angry Little Red Box.

The Jelly Reef Creator: Pigeonhead Studios The jellyfish, pink and green, need your help. Sit down around the Microsoft Surface and swipe the water with your fingers to guide the jellyfish away from harm. Save as many as you can to discover more dangerous locations, strong currents and more captured jellyfish! The game was made especially for the Dutch Game Garden. When a player places a small statue of the Dutch Game Garden logo on the table, jellyfish near the statue group together around it, introducing a selection of Dutch Game Garden companies.

SHORT ABSTRACTS Full abstracts and papers can be found in the Conference Proceedings and on gamesconference.org

Ludus Revisited: The Ideology of Pure Play in Contemporary Video Game Research Espen Aarseth This paper aims to reevaluate the concept of Ludus, from its Latin roots and uses and through to its modern ones as games and play, thus hopefully also restoring its original, broad meaning. Cailloisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (1961) influential reconstruction of Ludus as rule- based as opposed to playful is central here, but of course highly problematic, as is any attempt to reduce the original notion into a pole on a sliding scale or spectrum.

GameHUB: Developing Serious Games in Flanders Katia Aerts, Evelyn Cloosen, Bob De Schutter, Jeroen Wauters & Jeroen Dierckx While Belgian game development studios do exist (e.g. Larian Studios, Sakari Games, 10tacle studios, etc.), the Belgian game development industry is negligible from an international perspective. In order to provide a boost to the small Belgian gaming industry in general, and more specifically to upstart small and medium businesses that aim to develop digital games, the PHL University College, the Group T-Leuven Engineering College, the Hasselt University, and the Limburg Catholic University College joined forces in the GameHUB project. This project aims at further developing and unlocking game development expertise in the Flanders region of Belgium.

Code 4: A Pervasive Game for Organizational Change Kars Alfrink, Alper Cugun, Marinka Copier & Herman Koster. Promoting organizational change within large government bodies remains an elusive goal. The game Code 4 is developed to create a coherent fully mixed media approach to eliciting organizational change effects by employing employees as the primary actors (players) in a game. The Code 4 game is set in an analogous world with a clear cause to action during a dystopian financial crisis and with rules that mirror but also counteract existing bureaucratic processes. The gameplay rewards successful collaboration regardless of the existing organizational framework. 47

SHORT ABSTRACTS Designing play for pigs and humans Kars Alfrink, Irene van Peer, Hein Lagerweij, Clemens Driessen & Marinka Copier Farmed pigs in the European Union are required to have access to ‘enrichment materials’, in order to allow them to perform their (natural) behaviour, to reduce boredom and tail biting, and, hence, to reduce the need for tail docking. This legal requirement has led farmers to provide materials such as a plastic ball or a metal chain with some plastic piping. To allow for a more interesting development of (human and animal) behaviour, and to learn more about some of the processes involved, a team of designers and researchers joined together to design a game challenging the cognitive abilities of both pigs and people.

Do We Need Real-Time Hermeneutics? Structures of Meaning in Games Jonne Arjoranta Games differ from most other forms of media by being procedural and interactive. These qualities change how games create and transmit meaning to their players. The concept of “real-time hermeneutics” (Aarseth 2003) is analysed in order to understand how temporality affects the understanding of games. Temporal frames (Zagal and Mateas 2010) are introduced as an alternative way of understanding time in games.

Meaning Making Through Constraint: Modernist Poetics and Game Design Analysis Mariam Asad The process of reading a modernist poem is just as much a process of deconstructing it: the language is designed to make meaning through inefficient means. The reader must decode the text. The process of reading is not unlike the process of playing. I compare masocore games with the poetics of William Carlos Williams to discuss how constraints can be meaningful through the affordances of each medium.

Are we playing the same game? How three different playergroups have domesticated World of Warcraft Kristine Ask

In this paper I propose the use of domestication as a theoretical framework to analyze how heterogeneous player practices can develop within the same game design. Domestication highlights the cognitive, symbolic and practical dimensions. To exemplify this I will showcase how three different playergroups have domesticated World of Warcraft (Blizzard 2004).

Player Typology in Theory and Practice Chris Bateman, Rebecca Lowenhaupt & Lennart Nacke This paper tracks the development of a sequence of player typologies developing from psychometric type theory roots towards an independently validated trait theory of play, albeit one yet to be fully developed. Statistical analysis of the results of one survey in this lineage is presented, along with a discussion of theoretical and practical ways in which the surveys and their implied typological instruments have evolved.

Abstract Games as Experiential Metaphors Jason Begy Despite their age and prevalence, abstract games are often overlooked in contemporary discussions of games and meaning. In this paper I offer experiential metaphors as a critical method applicable to all games, particularly abstract games. To do this I introduce structural metaphors, image schemata and experiential gestalts to explain how experiential metaphors function. I then compare this method with the simulation gap (Bogost 2006, 2007) and show how the two relate. I close with two examples of abstract games that function as experiential metaphors.

Grow-A-Game: A Tool for Values Conscious Design and Analysis of Digital Games Jonathan Belman, Mary Flanagan, Helen Nissenbaum & Jim Diamond This paper discusses a tool developed by the Values at Play (VAP) project to facilitate values-conscious design and analysis of digital games. Our tool, called the Grow-AGame cards, has been implemented and assessed in numerous advanced and beginner game design courses. Here, we report five case studies of Grow-A-Game exercises, each demonstrating how the cards can be used to produce innovative and interesting valuesfocused designs and/or guide meaningful exploration of the relationship between values and games.

short abstracts Pattern Recognition: Gameplay as negotiating procedural form Tom Betts This paper will examine the relationship of pattern recognition and Gestalt principles to procedural form in gameplay. It will identify key features of pattern based play mechanics and outline important synergies between programming paradigms and procedural form. In the course of the paper I will examine the formal and aesthetic qualities of procedural structures and discuss how they generate the experience of psychological flow. I will also identify the role of these mechanisms and their effects in current game design.

Doing It Themselves! A Mixed-Method Study into the Motivations of Players to ‘Create’ in the Context of Gaming Frederik Van Den Bosch, Wannes Ribbens & Jan Van Looy In this paper we explore how user-generated content in digital games can be conceived within the conventional knowledge of player motivations and uses. In this study we focus on players of two particular games: Spore (PC, Mac) and LittleBigPlanet (PS3). Both titles have been promoted as creative game experiences and have introduced several popular user-generated content principles into mainstream gaming. Consequently, we can ask ourselves if and how these new game mechanics have an impact on players uses and gratifications? Our data have been collected through a multi-method approach, combining in-depth interviews (N = 8) and an online survey (N = 97). The results show that the appeal of create-games lies in a mixture of traditional gaming motives and the will to create new gaming experiences.

Jane Fonda's Wii Fit: Continuity, Contingency, and Concordance in Fitness Gaming Steven Boyer In order to investigate the implications of new gaming technologies, this paper turns to an unlikely source of parallels in comparing Wii Fit with Jane Fonda’s Workout video. This historical and discursive analysis complicates the relationship between consumer and producer with regard to emerging technologies, turning to Celeste Condit’s concept of concordance to investigate the negotiations at stake in the adoption and promotion of these devices by a broad audience. Moreover, it examines the centrality of women in the adoption of supposedly male-oriented technologies, the impact of these devices on the social construction of the body, and questions the consequences of a reliance on novelty that has become embedded in the video game medium’s focus on innovation. 50

The End of the Rainbow: In search of crossing points between organizations and play Jeroen Van Bree Against the backdrop of an unstable economic and social environment, managers and scholars of organization have been taking an increasing interest in computer games as a source of inspiration. This paper reviews three perspectives that have been taken when attempting to enrich organizations with elements of computer games. We consider the design of computer games to be the most interesting of the three perspectives and present two case studies in which game design principles were applied in an organizational setting. The studies show the value of such a design process as an instrument for exploring a complex organizational system. Furthermore, the use of isolated game elements in a finite organizational context was shown to be an effective way to create effects such as transparency and curiosity.

In the army now â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Narrative elements and realism in military first-person shooters Johannes Breuer, Ruth Festl & Thorsten Quandt From their early beginnings until today computer and video games have always been substantial parts of the so-called military-entertainment complex. Especially the genre of first-person shooters (FPS) has been closely associated with the military due to its typical contents and gameplay mechanisms. This paper presents a content analysis of narrative elements in military-themed FPS games from 1992 to 2010 (n=189). The results show that particular conflicts, locations and fractions appear very frequently in these games. The wars and conflicts are almost exclusively portrayed from an American or Western perspective and the degree of realism differs depending on the respective topics and settings. Based on the results of the content analysis, we develop a typology of levels of realism in FPS. The findings are discussed with regard to potential effects of military- themed FPS on their players as suggested by narrative persuasion theory.

Players and the Love Game: Conceptualizing Cheating with Erotic Role Players in World of Warcraft Aml Brown Using data complied over 9 months of fieldwork, this paper aims to explore how erotic role play in World of Warcraft (Blizzard, 2004) has, in some cases challenged and in other cases reinforced, traditional Western concepts of monogamy and fidelity. Data was collected through the use of in- game interviews with self-identified erotic role players on a heavily populated role play server located in the United States. Discussions and analysis aim to revisit and redefine old diametric binaries; from what constitutes cheating and what constitutes fidelity, to when erotic play leaves the screen and enters the biological body. Particularly, the themes to be discussed relate to how players negotiate real life romantic relationships alongside ones in game and how engaging in sex online conflates traditional notions of fidelity.

Short Abstracts Incorporation: A Renewed Understanding of Presence and Immersion in Digital Games Gordon Calleja In this paper I claim that the confusion and apprehension surrounding the use of these two terms is based on a number of challenges they pose to a clear understanding of the phenomenon they have been employed to describe. The paper takes digital games as the most popular and experientially powerful forms of virtual worlds and thus uses them as its primary exemplar. The radical stance taken here will be to claim that this confusion arises because neither metaphor adequately describes the relationship between player and game.

Epistemic games & applied drama: Converging conventions for serious play David Cameron, John Carroll & Rebecca Wotzko This paper describes a way to bridge the remaining conceptual gap between the conventions of digital games and those of non-theatrical drama forms, particularly when both fields are applied to non-entertainment settings. The approaches and literature surrounding both David Williamson Shafferâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work in epistemic games and Dorothy Heathcoteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work in applied drama are compared. The teaching strategies in both approaches use a range of dramatic techniques that engage students in learning tasks which involve solving problems, and producing working content as if the students were professionals in a particular field of expertise. The similarities between the two pedagogies allow designers of serious digital games to borrow from frameworks in applied drama to further develop authentic learning experiences. A case study examines the application of these two pedagogies in the design of a Web-based game engine for the delivery of training scenarios.

Between Intention and Improvisation: Limits of Gameplay Metrics Analysis and Phenomenological Debugging Alessandro Canossa & Yun-Gyung Cheong Gameplay metrics analysis tends to assume that all player behaviour is equivalent and it is generally treated undistinguishedly as expression of player intentions; what is argued in this article are the benefits of acknowledging the different natures of intentional and improvised player behaviours. Phenomenological debugging is the practice through which game developers attempt to elicit defined emotional responses. Although it is not believed that it is possible to discover deterministic correspondences between certain stimuli and defined emotional responses, it is still possible to build scaffolds for certain desired experiences. Awareness of the shift between intentional actions and improvised actions becomes fundamental during this process of phenomenological debugging. 52

Constructing ‘Expertise’ in Virtual Worlds Suzanne De Castell, Jennifer Jenson, Nick Taylor & Megan Humphrey Expertise is a major confound in any attempt to study player types and play styles. Beyond the research community, both designers and players have a significant stake in how expertise is cultivated and recognized/rewarded. Here, we report on a model of expertise that takes into consideration the multiple expressions of expert play across different MMOs, as developed through a multi-site, mixed methods study of virtual world players in their ‘real world’ contexts. Based upon a study of 250 players across 8 sites (from university laboratories to public LAN events), this paper formulates a model for identifying and assessing MMO expertise that is attentive to multiple forms, components and expressions of expertise that players themselves are guided by.

The Aiming Game: Using a Game with Biofeedback for Training in Emotion Regulation Henrik Cederholm, Olle Hilborn, Craig Lindley, Charlotte Sennersten & Jeanette Eriksson This paper discusses the development of the Aiming Game, a serious game intended to be used as a tool for training emotion regulation. The game is part of an intervention package designed to support training of financial investors in becoming aware of their emotional states as well as providing them with a toolbox which can be used for training to counteract cognitive biases which may interfere with their trading activities. The paper discusses how such a game can be implemented as well as how it can be effectively evaluated. The evaluation is mostly focused on the effectiveness of the induction of emotional arousal by the game, which is supported by standardized game design methods and patterns.

The Game Industry Development in Southeast Asia Peichi Chung This paper studies the regional game industry development in Southeast Asia. The project is an extended study on the mapping of industry network linkage in online gaming in Asia. Previous work of this project focuses on the regional influence of East Asian game development in the online game market of Asia. The author has examined the particular industry integration process that originates in East Asia and has studied the regional industry dynamics related to the regionalization of MMORPG game culture in Asia.

short Abstracts Do Players Prefer Integrated User Interfaces? A Qualitative Study of Game UI Design Issues Stein Ciro Llanos & Kristine JĂ¸rgensen With basis in a qualitative player study, this paper presents different player attitudes concerning user interface elements. The paper focuses on how the game user interface influences the playersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; involvement in the game, and how the players navigate between different sources of involvement. We argue that there is no necessary connection between a transparent interface and involvement, and that in many cases, overlay interfaces are preferred due to the clear information they present.

Forbidden or Promising Fruit? An experimental study into the effects of warning labels on the purchase intention of digital gamers Jan Decock & Jan Van Looy Using a forced choice paradigm, in a 2 (age: -18, +18) x 4 (label: no label, 18+, violence label, extreme label) x 2 (cover type: soft, hard) mixed factorial design, this study was able to experimentally show the effects of warning labels on the preference of game covers. Warning labels made these game covers more desirable. This effect was only found for subjects of minor age (12 to 17 years old) and for adult subjects (aged 18 and more). No difference was found in effects of evaluative or descriptive ratings: both age label and content label had the same attracting effect on game covers. Given these results a revision of the process behind the forbidden fruit effect and the role of reactance in it, seems in order.

Kingdom Without a Tale? Narrativity in Current Locative Game Design Arjan Dhupia The novelty of locative gaming can be framed as the capability of linking a mediated and corporeal presence at a new scale, allowing for new types of play and narrative architectures, spanning between fiction and reality. This paper is concerned with the narrative potentials of such location-based game environments to inform future game design. By exploring a wider range of locative works outside of game development, I will contrast narratological strategies of current locative smartphone games (Parallel Kingdom and Gbanga) with those found in locative art (PDPal and 34 north 118 west) in order to outline alternate compositions for engaging ludic experiences.

Integrating Emergence and Progression Joris Dormans This paper investigates how structures of emergence and progression in games might be integrated. By leveraging the formalism of Machination diagrams, the shape of the mechanics that typically control progression in games are exposed. Two strategies to create mechanics that control progression but exhibit more emergent behavior by including feedback loops are presented and discussed.

Game Mechanics and Dynamics of Social Actions in a Prototype Multi Player Game World Mirjam Eladhari This paper describes the social actions called ‘affective actions’ that are implemented in the prototype multiplayer game world The Pataphysic Institute (PI). An aim of this paper is to demonstrate how a game mechanic can result in a certain set of dynamics or play patterns. Affective actions are but one feature of the many that make up the game world of PI. In this paper, the feature is used as a vertical slice into the game design. The aim is to, by using this slice, show the founding the principles of the game, the play tests that informed the design, as well as the play patterns that were observed as they emerged in a series of game mastered play–test sessions.

Domestic Stagings: The Practice and Performance of Play, Gender, and Family Jessica Enevold Playing digital games is becoming a common everyday practice in many homes. This paper deals with the constitution of such practices by taking a closer look at the material objects essential to play and their role in the “design of everyday life” (Shove et al 2007). Having previously looked at how players’ gaming habits are tied up with time restrictions and time allowances that to a large extent are gendered (Enevold & Hagström 2008; 2009), I here turn to the domestic spaces of play, scrutinizing the home environment in which the large part of today’s playing of digital games takes place.

short Abstracts Playing with rather than by the rules: metaludicity, allusive fallacy and illusory agency in The Path Astrid Ensslin This paper seeks to make a contribution to the study and understanding of videogames as literary-ludic art and their hermeneutic analysis, or‘close play/reading’. It begins by examining quasi-literary aspects exhibited by the game and experienced during gameplay, which underscore its hybrid status between art game and digital literary narrative (Ensslin, forthcoming a/b; Hayles 2007). To do so, I shall situate The Path on a ludic-literary spectrum and explore how it relates to other digital artefacts on this continuum. The second and main part of this paper offers a systematic ludonarratological reading of The Path. Drawing on Ryan (2006: 203), I demonstrate how elements of game design, gameplay, narrative and textuality concur to evoke a (self-) critical stance in the player.

Playful Ambience Mark Eyles & Dan Pinchbeck This research started in 2004 as a search for a pervasive game equivalent of Brian Eno’s ignorable ambient music, such as ‘Music for Airports’. Brian Eno explicitly stated that the attention of listeners might alter over time, from ignoring to listening intently to the music; the ambient music pervading an environment and creating a mood, “ it must be as ignorable as it is interesting” (Eno, 1978) Listeners might come across the music and then choose to what extent they engage with it.

Game Spaces Speak Volumes: Indexical Storytelling Clara Fernandez Vara In the problematic exploration of the narrative potential of videogames, one of the clearest aspects that bridge stories and games is space. This paper examines the different devices that videogames have used to incorporate stories through spatial design and what is known as environmental storytelling, focusing on the design elements that make the story directly relevant to gameplay beyond world-building and backstory exposition. These design-related elements are accounted for with the term indexical storytelling.

Proving Grounds?: PvP as Child’s Play in a Massive Multiplayer Online Game Stephanie Fisher, Jennifer Jenson & Suzanne De Castell This paper reports on the findings of a “virtual worlds gaming club” for children in a Toronto elementary school as part of a larger MMOG study that examines the connections between the ‘real-life’ identities of virtual world users and their behaviours, preferences and routines in these virtual worlds.

Preventing a POX Among the People? A Design Case Study of a Public Health Game Mary Flanagan, Max Seidman, Sukdith Punjasthitkul, Martin Downs & Jonathan Belman The POX: Save the People game was developed to address some of the core concepts included in curricular frameworks for Science Literacy in the USA. This paper documents our design research, design approach, and prototyping process.

short Abstracts Video Games, Walking the Fine Line between Art and Entertainment Jef Folkerts This paper is partly a response to the ongoing debate in the game world about whether games can be art, and partly an excerpt from my Ph.D. research. I aim to offer some insights in the cognitive experiences gamers have while playing - hopefully useful to both designers and scholars. I will argue that an art experience is a particular kind of cognitive experience, namely a distinctive type of imagination.

Unexpected game calculations in educational wargaming Design flaw or beneficial to learning? Anders Frank This paper describes situations where learning games are not perceived by the player as being realistic. In educational wargaming this is seen when the game calculates battle- outcomes. Defined as unexpected game calculations, these incidents can cause players to adopt a Gamer Mode attitude, in which players reject the idea that the game accurately portrays warfare. In a study involving cadets playing a commercial strategic wargame as part of their course in war science, unexpected game calculations emerged and resulted in different user responses. Although user responses risked damaging the worth of learning from gaming, this paper argues that these incidents could enhance learning, as the cadets became interested and keen on finding rationales to why and how unexpected calculations occur.

Return to Darkness: Representations of Africa in Resident Evil 5 Hanli Geyser & Pippa Tshabalala Darkest Africa, the imagining of colonial fantasy, in many ways still lives on. Popular cultural representations of Africa often draw from the rich imagery of the un-charted, un-knowable otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC; that Africa represents, fraught with post-colonial tensions. When Capcom made the decision to set the latest instalment of its Resident Evil series in an imagined African country, it was merely looking for a new, unexplored setting, and they were therefore surprised at the controversy that surrounded its release. The 2009 game Resident Evil 5 was accused of racially stereotyping the black zombies and the white protagonist. These allegations have largely been put to rest, as this was never the intention of Capcom in developing the game or selecting the setting. However, the underlying questions remain: How is Africa represented in the game? How does the figure of the zombie resonate within that representation? And why does this matter? 58

Breaking Reality: Exploring Pervasive Cheating in Foursquare René Glas This paper explores the notion of cheating in location-based mobile applications. Using the popular smartphone app Foursquare as main case study, I address the question if and how devious practices impact the boundaries between play and reality as a negotiated space of interaction. After establishing Foursquare as a prime example of the gamification phenomenon and pervasive gaming, both of which require us to rethink notions of game and play, I will argue that cheating in location-based mobile applications challenges not just the boundaries of play, but also of playful identity.

The Poetics of Game Design, Rhetoric and the Independent Game Lindsay Grace This paper approaches the question about games as art from a fundamentally different perspective. Instead of asking questions of visual aesthetics and pursuing analogies to film or commercial arts, it demonstrates an even clearer analogy to poetic forms. Allying common practices in independent games in particular, this paper serves as an illustrative demonstration of the poetics of game design, emphasizing the poetic properties of independent game designs. It frames game design in terms of the rhetorical devices used to create an experience. Such framing is useful to independent game designers, developers of persuasive and critical gameplay, and archivists seeking an effective way to catalog digital games that is driven by structure instead of subject or play mechanic.

Nail Houses and River Crabs: Online Games and Society in China Maggie Greene This paper is a preliminary consideration of the role of domestically produced games in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), in particular those that do not fall into the massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) category. Using the 2010 release Nail House Versus Demolition Crew, I illustrate the utility of examining Chinese-language discourse surrounding single player games. Nail House is related to the phenomenon of “nail households,” or homeowners resisting eminent domain, that have become increasingly visible over the past decade. It is therefore unsurprising that much of the conversation surrounding the game considered its connection to current events. However, it also inspired discussion of government attempts at creating “harmony” on the internet via censorship, the issue of shanzhai (pirated and copied goods) in the Chinese market, and the use of games as social commentary. The attention paid to Nail House by foreign media also provides another avenue to considering the global circulation and reception of games.

short abstracts Evaluating the Potential of Game-Based Language Learning: an Experimental Study into the Playing and Learning Experiences of Adult Foreign Language Learners Frederik De Grove, Jan Van Looy & Peter Mechant In the academic literature on educational gaming it is often claimed that a positive user experience is a conditio sine qua non for producing or enhancing learning effects (Fu, Su, Yu, 2009; Kiili, 2005). While multiple theoretical frameworks have been proposed to illustrate the educational potential of digital games (De Freitas & Oliver, 2005; Becker, 2009), little empirical research has been conducted with actual games and actual learners. An important question thereby is what kind of games to use: existing commercial games or special-purpose educational ones (Van Eck, 2006). The former often boast significantly larger budgets permitting to invest more in the quality of the experience whereas the latter are more directly aimed at predefined learning outcomes. The aim of this study is to measure and compare how adult foreign language learners experience playing two foreign language learning games and one non-educational commercial game in a foreign language. It is hypothesized that the commercial game will evoke a more positive game experience whereas the educational games will be perceived as more instructive.

Cultures of independent game production: Examining the relationship between community and labour Orlando Guevara-Villalobos In this paper I aim to show the process in which independent game development is being shaped and leveraged by communities of developers. Despite digital distribution channels and the emergent markets configured around a new generation of mobile and online platforms, indie developers still struggle to develop creatively controlled games mainly by the means of more or less compromising sources of funding. Within this context, I argue that experimentation, user testing and feedback, exploration of ideas, skill acquirement, collaboration and moral support within indie communities are crucial elements of the process of game development.

Pathfinder: A case example of designing an engaging game on unconscious bias Belinda Gutierrez, Sarah Chu, Dennis Paiz-Ramirez, Kurt Squire & Molly L. Carnes Women and underrepresented racial/ethnic minorities (URMs) are systematically disadvantaged in academic science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and the biological and behavioral sciences (BBS). Compared to White men, they are less likely to be hired at advanced levels (Misra, Kennelly, & Karides, 1999), less likely to be tenured, and less likely to hold senior rank, even when such factors as years worked, number of peer-reviewed publications, receipt of research grant funding, proportion of time in clinical activities, and tenure status are controlled (Palepu et al., 1998; Ash, 2004; Jackson, 2006). One of the factors that contributes to this disparity is unconscious (or implicit) bias.

Casual mobile gameplay â&#x20AC;&#x201C; On integrated practices of research, design and play Nassrin Hajinejad, Iaroslav Sheptykin, Barbara GrĂźter, Annika Worpenberg, Andreas Lochwitz, David Oswald & Heide-Rose Vatterrott The Mobile Game Lab is a community of players, designers and researchers of Mobile Games currently initiated from the research project Landmarks of Mobile Entertainment. As researchers we find ourselves in a quite complex, frightening and yet pleasurable situation. Our research goal is to develop a dynamic system of landmarks for pedestrian navigation by means of mobile game play. To achieve our goal, we have to play and involve other players, we have to understand the various facets of game design and research, we have to deal with different partners, and integrate their diverse practices. How to focus on such a project in a manner that the different forces involved move in synchrony with mobile game play at the core?

short Abstracts Framework for Designing and Evaluating Game Achievements Juho Hamari & Veikko Eranti This paper presents a framework for evaluating and designing game design patterns commonly called as “achievements“. The results are based on empirical studies of a variety of popular achievement systems. The results, along with the framework for analyzing and designing achievements, present two definitions of game achievements. From the perspective of the achievement system, an achievement appears as a challenge consisting of a signifying element, rewards and completion logics whose fulfilment conditions are defined through events in other systems (usually games). From the perspective of a single game, an achievement appears as an optional challenge provided by a meta-game that is independent of a single game session and yields possible reward(s).

“Oooh That’s Cool!“: Aesthetics of Player-Created Little Big Planet Content Todd Harper Created by British developer Media Molecule, Little Big Planet and its recently-released successor, Little Big Planet 2, are some of the most iconic and eclectic titles available for the Playstation 3. The central concept of the LBP series is “creativity,” and the game’s various aesthetic and procedural dimensions reflect that. The provided story mode levels appear to be made of random household materials and are on a shrunken, toy-like scale, embodied in the series mascot Sackboy, a tiny and expressive canvas doll. The game uses a pastiche of artistic and creative influences and, at least in the first Little Big Planet, a “world cultures” sensibility. Media Molecule presents the world of the game as an “ethereal dreamscape” (Media Molecule, 2008) where creativity roams free.

Educational Computer Games for Improved Production Performance Perttu Heino & Ari Närhi

The world is changing rapidly. For the younger generation soon entering the working life, games form a natural part of every-day activities. The change has been recognized by many researchers but not much has been done to study the new working environments in practice. During the development of automated hazard and operability study (HAZOP) in two international projects the potential of adding game-like features to the process design environment was recognized. However, proper study of such features has only recently become possible due to the rapid improvement of the modelling, processing and visualization capabilities of computer- aided design environments. Finnish-Japanese collaboration between knowledge based hazard identification research groups started with joint work on the evaluation of knowledge-based HAZOP systems. In this paper, the subsequent joint feasibility study project on the development of gaming features has been described.

Putting Brands into Play: How Player Experiences Influence the Effectiveness of In-Game Advertising Laura Herrewijn & Karolien Poels This study investigates the relationship that exists between the effectiveness of in-game advertising (IGA) and one specific context characteristic: player experiences during gameplay. Gaming is an active experience where a person is drawn into a virtual world and confronted with numerous emotions and experiences. It is argued that these player experiences might have an impact on how a player processes the game environment, including in-game ads. An experimental design was employed in which participants had to play an online computer game that contained in-game ads. Results show that manipulating player experiences had an effect on IGA effectiveness in terms of brand recognition and brand likeability, supporting the notion that player experiences are important context characteristics that have to be taken into account while studying the effectiveness of in-game advertising.

Schematically Disruptive Game Design Peter Howell Many games focus their resources at satiating player ‘needs’, and meeting perceived expectations that players have of how games should behave and of what constitutes enjoyable, gratifying gameplay. This paper outlines an alternate position on game design – one which focuses on disrupting these expectations, on designing games that players cannot succeed in simply by relying on their pre-acquired gameplay experiences. A critique of current game design trends is offered, and possible future outcomes of these trends analysed. The proposed framework for ‘Schematically Disruptive Design’ is discussed in relation to the current body of literature, alongside a justification of taking a development-led, horror-focused approach to this research programme. The current position of the research and intended direction of study is lastly outlined, along with the intended application of future results.

Listen! – Improving the Cooperation between Game Designers and Audio Designers Sander Huiberts In the design research investigation Listen! the multi-disciplinary collaboration between game design and audio design students is researched. The research focuses on gathering more insight in the creative design process of game audio and presents general recommendations and pitfalls for the development of game audio.

Abstracts Making sense of game-play: How can we examine learning and involvement? Ioanna Iacovides, James Aczel, Eileen Scanlon & Will Woods It has been argued that there is a need for more “rigorous research into what players do with games (particularly those that don’t claim explicit status as educational), and a better understanding of the thinking that is involved in playing them.” (Squire, 2008, p.167). This paper introduces a set of methods developed to explore these issues via a multiple case study approach, including; game-play observation, cued post-play interview, the collection of physiological data and the use of gaming diaries over a three week period. An examination of the strengths and limitations of the approach adopted is presented with reference to two particular methodological issues (i) how to identify breakdowns and breakthroughs that occur during game-play; (ii) how to identify learning occurring beyond game-play. The paper will conclude by emphasising the importance of taking both micro and macro level experiences into account when it comes to capturing learning and involvement within this context.

High Fidelity: Avatars and their Players Jennifer Jenson, Nick Taylor, Suzanne De Castell & Barry Dilouya Avatars remain a fascinating frontier of identity-based speculation, from early accounts that claimed endless new possibilities for ‘being’ to more recent accounts that show ‘play’ with avatars as richly differently than real life selves, while constrained by and limited to affordances of virtual worlds. This paper reports on findings from a study of 120 players in 3 different virtual worlds, demonstrating much more fidelity between players and their avatars than is reported on in other literature. This work is ground in feminist post-structural theories of identities, and leverages that theoretical work to guide and problematize our conclusions.

Go out and play! Investigating the attitudes towards game cafés in a Swedish context. Fatima Jonsson In this article I explore parents’ attitudes towards and perceptions of game cafes and LAN parties and how game cafes and LAN parties and game playing in public are represented in the national newspapers in Sweden. In addition to this I also look at the staffs understanding of game cafes. This study is framed within a discussion concerned with youth life conditions and images of youth. The results shows that the LAN party is constructed as a ‘place-for-nerds’ and as a ‘place-for-fun’ Game cafes are portrayed as ‘arenas for professional gameplay’ and ‘places for sociability’. Playing games in the game café is highlighted as an ordinary activity for “ordinary” youth and attracting people of various ages by the staff. Based on these results the game café and mass LAN parties can be seen as contested playgrounds for youth who like to play computer games and surf on the Internet in public. These playgrounds are thus highly contested arenas both celebrated and critiqued where social, cultural, family values, norms and values and power relationships and discourses of playing computer games are expressed.

Ludotopians and Ludocapitalists: Gamification, Sandbox Games and the Myths of Cultural Industries Daniel Joseph This paper examines the historical role of myth-making in the development of cultural industries and argues that those who study videogames need to take it into account to properly locate the videogame industry inside of neoliberal capitalism. This is framed through the recent discussions of gamification and sandbox games as examples of ludotopian play or the enclosure of games under ludocapitalism.

Social Ties and Group Identity in three MMOGs Magnus Johansson, Fatima Jonsson & Lina Eklund The focus of this paper is the creation of group identity within guilds in three MMOGs: World of Warcraft (Blizzard, 2004), Lord of the rings Online (Turbine Inc., 2007) and DC Universe Online (Sony Online Entertainment, 2011), and the tools built into these games. Our research questions are: • How is the formation of group identities and common activities of guilds supported by games and how do players and player communities value the in-game guild tools for supporting and strengthening social ties within guild groups and player communities? • What roles do the use of add-ons and web based guild pages play for the creation of group identities and qualities of social ties? 65

short Abstracts DIY Mobile-based Augmented Reality Game for Motivating Physical Activity Ilina Kareva & Jovan Kostovski This paper describes a platform for creating and playing mobile phone games for motivating physical activities based on augmented reality. The goal of the research was to determine the possibilities of using smart phones to motivate physical activity among the youngest users. As a result of this research a prototype system was built and the defined use cases were tested. From the tests made with a group of primary school students the system was found very entertaining and interesting for use and the capabilities for creating new challenges makes it location-independent and usable in any part of the world.

Theorycrafting: from collective intelligence to intrinsic satisfaction Faltin Karlsen My aim with this paper is to explore theorycrafting as cultural praxis, closely related to gaming. Theorycrafting can be defined as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the attempt to mathematically analyze game mechanics in order to gain a better understanding of the inner workings of the gameâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. I will engage two perspectives in my analysis. First, I will focus on theorycrafting as a collective enterprise from a techno-social perspective. This will include an analysis of how web resources are furnishing the activity. Second, I will focus on what motivation players have for engaging in theorycrafting in the light of the meaning that the crafters find, or import, in this activity. This will also address how a general fascination for technology, and not only games, can be an important aspect of theorycrafting. The empirical basis for my analysis is 12 interviews of excessive World of Warcraft players and websites dedicated to the game.

Serious Beats: Transdisciplinary research methodologies for designing and evaluating a socially integrative serious music-based online game Fares Kayali, Gerit Götzenbrucker, Vera Schwarz, Peter Purgathofer, Babara Franz & Jürgen Pfeffer Recent studies show that the second generation of migrants is not adequately integrated into mainstream society but tends to segregate into secluded segments. ‘Internet Use and Friendship Structures of young migrants in Vienna: a Question of Diversity within Social Networks and Online Social Games’1 is a transdisciplinary2 research project with the objective to create a serious music-based online social game, which firstly is intended to be a positive impact game with the purpose of furthering integration and encouraging the manifestation of meaningful multiethnic relations. Secondly, the game shall make social interaction observable for evaluation. This paper gives an overview of which methodological approaches can be combined in the phases of the game’s design process and shows how the mutual embedding of game design researchers and social scientists works in this context.

Retro Evolved: Level Design Practice exemplified by the Contemporary Retro Game Fares Kayali & Josef Schuh The examples of independent games presented in this paper provide fun through strong, innovative and playful game mechanics. The often-resulting combination of retro flair with focused gameplay is what makes the “contemporary retro game”. This paper argues that game and especially level design have evolved over time and provides insights on contemporary level design practice. By a qualitative analysis of contemporary game examples and a reflection of the authors’ own practice as game and level designers, this paper defines qualities of good level design and presents several distinct level design practices; to expand on strong core mechanics, iterative level design, to design game modes instead of levels, sandboxes, emergent gameplay and object-oriented level design.

short Abstracts Practical considerations for playtesting games for physiotherapeutic effect Niels Keetels & Jeroen Van Mastrigt-Ide The findings presented in this paper are based on a case study that was carried out in the second half of 2010, during the concept and preproduction phase of an applied video game that utilizes the Nintendo Wii’s motion-control capabilities, for the rehabilitation of children within the age range of 8 – 16 with an acquired brain injury (ABI). For this game a set of specific therapeutic outcomes in the areas of motor, social-emotional and cognitive skills, were defined by content and context experts; the game design challenge then, was to create a design that produces and coordinates these outcomes through mechanics and interactions.

Globalisation and mobile labour in the digital games industry: Implications for policy Aphra Kerr This paper presents the findings of a survey of the digital games industry in Ireland. The survey found that while there has been a significant growth in overall employment levels in the Irish games industry over the past decade, this growth has not been in the creation of new games but rather has been in multinational firms who have located downstream service elements, particularly online community support for the European market, in Ireland. A crucial element of this growth had been Ireland’s membership of the European Union and the availability of mobile labour. However, while there was some diversity in terms of nationality in the labour force, it still lacked diversity in terms of age and gender. This paper explores how the local institutional policy context, combines with pan-European labour laws, the global political economy of the games industry and new technologies to shape Ireland’s games industry.

Survive Together, Buy Alone: A Case Study of Cultural Values in Two Divergent Games Rilla Khaled & Pippin Barr

Human culture and human cultural values are fundamental to all aspects of our lives. Our values shape how we think, how we perceive the world around us, the actions we choose to take, and the behavior we expect in others. Cultural values, those we tend to share with those around us, are particularly powerful. It is natural, then, to consider the impact of such a fundamental element of human life on video games.

Social Architecture and the Emergence of Power Laws in Online Social Games Ben Kirman, Francesco Collovà, Fabrizio Davide, Eva Ferrari, Jonathan Freeman, Shaun Lawson, Conor Linehan & Niklas Ravaja This paper explores the concept of the “social architecture” of games, and tests the theory that it is possible to analyse game mechanics based on the effect they have on the social behaviour of the players. Using tools from Social Network Analysis, these studies confirm that social activity in games reliably follows a power distribution: a few players are responsible for a disproportionate amount of social interactions. Based on this, the scaling exponent is highlighted as a simple measure of sociability that is constant for a game design. This allows for the direct comparison of social activity in very different games. In addition, it can act as a powerful analytical tool for highlighting anomalies in game designs that detrimentally affect players’ ability to interact socially. Although the social architectures of games are complicated systems, SNA allows for quantitative analysis of social behaviours of players in meaningful ways, which are to the benefit of game designers.

The game boys’ network. A network analysis of the German digital games industry Sonja Kröger, Emese Domahidi & Thorsten Quandt This paper aims to map the German digital games industry. Using expert interviews and social network analysis, the current paper focuses on the industry development in Germany, identifying structures of organizational and personal networks in the digital games industry. Following a holistic approach, it is argued that while actors of the standard value chain are key units in the digital games industry, stakeholders who influence the political and social discourse have to be taken into account as well. The results show, that not only console manufactures have an outstanding role in the German digital games industry. Considering in-degree and eigenvector centrality, trade associations (e.g. GAME, BIU) and political organizations (e.g. USK, KJM) are well connected and consequently important actors too.

Short Abstracts Using the VNA Ideation Game at Global Game Jam Annakaisa Kultima & Kati Alha In this article we present the findings of a game idea experiment run at the Global Game Jam (GGJ) 2010 and 2011 events in Tampere, Finland. We were examining how well the game-based ideation method Verbs, Nouns, and Adjectives (VNA) and similar approaches fit the constrained game design processes. GGJ 2010 and 2011 both had a theme for which ideas were produced. Our previous studies indicate that the VNA ideation method is well-suited to blue-sky ideation, but it is harder to use the ideas in ongoing design processes. In this study we compared four different approaches and the ideas resulted by using these methods. This study shows that the theme-tuned VNA variant performed best both in theme-related and interesting ideas, indicating that the method for coming up with new ideas matters.

Adolescent thinking and online writing after the use of commercial games in the classroom Pilar Lacasa, Rut Martinez-Borda & Héctor Del-Castillo This study focuses on the connections between young people’s everyday experiences with video games and social networks, and the formal high school curriculum. We assume that digital literacy combines elements of traditional literacy and media education with other dimensions founded on the idea of a participatory culture. The research has been designed from an ethnographic point of view. It has been carried out in a secondary school environment. The main dimensions of the study were the following: participants, 18 boys and girls, the teacher and the research team; the school and, the activities which were organized around the video game, Spore. Our data are discussed taking into account some of Diana Kuhn’s (2005) contributions when raising the issue of education for thought. Intellectual skills related to scientific knowledge must be referred to abilities of inquiry and argumentation both of which are carried out in a social context and associated to contextual values.

Games and machinima in adolescents’ classrooms Pilar Lacasa, Rut Martinez-Borda & Laura Mendez

This presentation identifies innovative educational practices when commercial video games, combined with other new or traditional technologies are present in the secondary education classrooms. The major goal of the project was to generate new knowledge about how to design scenarios, using commercial video games as the starting point, which may contribute to the development of new literacies when students work with specific curriculum contents. Our data has been analyzed exploring the machinima productions in order to analyze the relationships between the video productions, the game and, the gamers’ perspective about his/her own activity. To examine these strategies several dimensions have been considered in order to compare different approaches to machinima.

‘Can’t Stop The Signal?’ The Design of the Dutch Firefly LARP Nicolle Lamerichs In this paper, I analyze the design of a Dutch live-action role-playing game (LARP), based on the television series Firefly. I discuss it as part of the recent participatory culture in which fans mediate existing fiction into other products such as games. Game studies have often bypassed types of gaming that are initiated by players themselves by taking professional and digital games as their starting points. By focussing on a local example of a fan game, I hope to provide new insights in game design and play. After disseminating between fan and game practices, and sketching some of the previous research thereof, I shall elaborate upon the design of the game in four ways by focussing on the designer, the context, the participants and its construction of meaningful play. I argue that the fan LARP displays a particular design perspective based on the co-creative ethos of role-playing and fandom itself. Whereas existing research isolates the actors that are relevant in game practices, designer, player and fan modes clearly interrelate here.

The map as playground: Location-based games as cartographical practices Sybille Lammes In this paper I will examine how maps in location-based mobile games are used as surfaces on which players can inscribe their whereabouts and other local information while being on the move. I will look at three different location-based games to which maps are central as a playing surface: RunZombieRun, Paranormal Activity Sanctuary and Own This World. My main argument will be that such cartographical locationbased games foreground the fluidity of mapping and emphasise the performative aspects of playing with maps. As such they are not representations used by players for consultation, but as Latourian mediators (Latour 1990, 1993, 2004) they produce new social spaces (Lefebvre 1991). It therefore does not suffice to conceive maps in such games as “mimetic interfaces” (Juul 2009). Instead they should be approached as what I will call navigational interfaces. To understand them as such I will combine perspectives from game-studies with understandings of maps as technological and spatial practices as developed in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Human Geography.

short Abstracts The Power-up Experience: A study of Power-ups in Games and their Effect on Player Experience Filip Lange-Nielsen There is a lack of a comprehensive discussion in the literature of what a power-up is and how it can be studied, and the term is often used without definition. Using a case study of Metroid Prime, I argue that the most interesting aspect of power-ups as game mechanic is that they shift experiential character when a given power-up’s implied formal use changes during gameplay. With this I mean that a power-up can at the same time be a means to achieve a goal as well as a goal to be achieved itself. A model explaining this is provided. I also propose a model for categorizing power-ups in an attempt to differentiate power- ups from other formal design elements and in such a manner provide a possible reference for designers looking to choose appropriate solutions for their games, as well as an analytical tool for researchers.

Kairotopos: A reflection on Greek space/time concepts as design implications in Minecraft Isaac Lenhart The game of Minecraft provides an open virtual environment which is somewhere between game and pseudo-game framework (at the current level of development) in which the player is free to explore, investigate and change the world around them. The “virtual environment” of Minecraft naturally involves a description and participation of a spatial and temporal framework in which the player is placed, and presents a unique set of qualities that cross into several categories of Greek notions of the meaning of space and time.

Negotiating Nationalism through Virtual Conflict: the Taiwanese First-Person-Shooter Gamers’ Feelings and Experiences in the Call of Duty Philip Lin

The production and distribution of the first-person-shooter (FPS) digital games, especially the ones attached to war scenarios, have dramatically increased after the tragic event of 9/11. With the combination of fiction, historical and factual elements mixed in the design of the new generation FPS games, millions of the global gamers have deeply engaged to this conflict-oriented militainment genre. The most selling war-themed FPS game series, Call of Duty has become one of the hottest topics largely discussed in the press, blogs, forums and gamers’ daily conversations. The official Call of Duty group in facebook even attracted nearly 10 million fans worldwide, makes it one of the fastest growing social network communities.

A Chinese Cyber Diaspora: Contact and Identity Negotiation on Taiwanese WoW Servers Holin Lin and Chuen-Tsai Sun Due to the long-delayed release of World of Warcraft’s (WoW’s) second expansion in China, many Chinese players moved their accounts to Taiwanese servers in 2008. This “WoW rush” resulted in daily contact between tens of thousands of residents of Taiwan and China, two countries whose official relationship is marked by limited contact and political tension. Instead of having short-term political discussions on online forums, Chinese and Taiwanese players are now establishing long-term relationships in ongoing game worlds. This represents a new form of virtual migration, consisting of individuals who physically exist in their home countries, but spend large amounts of time engaged in cross-border interactions in cyberspace. We call this new practice “migration without physical presence.” In this paper we analyze this phenomenon and its implications, and review the characteristics of cross-Taiwan Strait interactions at various stages of this cyber-diaspora.

Beyond the digital divide: An ecological approach to gameplay Jonas Linderoth This paper outlines a framework for understanding gameplay from the perspective of ecological psychology. According to this perspective, gameplay can be described in terms of perceiving, acting on and transforming the affordances that are related to a game system or to other players in a game. Challenges in games have an emphasis on perceiving suitable actions and/or performing suitable actions, often with emphasis on one aspect. For example, in many board games, strategy games and puzzle games, the challenge is to perceive appropriate affordances while in many sports, multiplayer shooter games, racing games, etc. the challenge is to use appropriate affordances. From this follows that the ecological approach to gameplay overrides the division of games as being digital and non-digital games.

Exploring Anonymity in Cooperative Board Games Jonas Linderoth This study was done as a part of a larger research project where the interest was on exploring if and how gameplay design could give informative principles to the design of educational activities. The researchers conducted a series of studies trying to map game mechanics that had the special quality of being inclusive, i.e., playable by a diverse group of players. This specific study focused on designing a cooperative board game with the goal of implementing anonymity as a game mechanic. Inspired by the gameplay design patterns methodology (Björk & Holopainen 2005a; 2005b; Holopainen & Björk 2008), mechanics from existing cooperative board games were extracted and analyzed in order to inform the design process. The results from prototyping and play testing indicated that it is possible to implement anonymous actions in cooperative board games and that this mechanic made rather unique forms of gameplay possible. These design patterns can be further developed in order to address inclusive educational practices.

short Abstracts Participatory Game Design to Engage a Digitally Excluded Community Mark Lochrie, Paul Coulton & Andrew Wilson This paper explores issues around using a Participatory Design of a Location Based Game (LBG) developed as part of a project to connect young people (11-19 years old) in Lancaster and Manchester by exploring issues surrounding place and their sense of belonging within their community. Both these communities were chosen, as they are representative of particular socio-economic conditions that have led them to be considered digitally excluded. The results highlight issues researchers face when working with such a group and the importance of building trust and being sensitive to the lives of the participants.

Meta-Rules and Complicity in Brenda Brathwaite’s Train Heather Logas Train, a board game designed and produced by Brenda Brathwaite (2009), is an unusual game in many regards. It is a game that reliably elicits feelings of complicity in its players with a tragic human event from history. It does this by using the technique of taking advantage of players’ and audience members’ expectations about the meta-rules around games and conflating them with the meta-rules of our society. In this paper, I will introduce the game Train, briefly explain the concept of meta-rules and their importance to our understanding of game design and game studies, and examine in detail the particular meta-rules that are utilized in Train to create emotional resonance in all who encounter it. Through this close reading of one game, I will show how the meta-rules around games can be effectively taken advantage of to produce projects that force our own internal examinations of our relationships with tragic events and society at large.

Why Girls Play Digital Games: an Empirical Study into the Relations between Gender, Motivations and Genre Jan Van Looy, Cédric Courtois & Lotte Vermeulen In recent years, several studies have explored the motivations for playing different game genres such as MMO (Yee, 2006a, 2006b) and FPS (Jansz & Tanis, 2007). Others have taken steps towards creating an integrated framework for use across genres (Sherry, Lucas, Greenberg, & Lachlan, 2006). Despite the strong gender bias of the game industry, however, none of these studies have tackled the issue of gender differences in motivations. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring the relation between genres and gamer motivations. For this we draw upon a sample of 983 gamers recruited on online forums to fill out an online survey. 74

Designing Games to Improve Social Interactions on the Work Floor Steven Malliet & Thomas Laureyssens In this paper we describe the design process of a series of games aiming to stimulate language acquisition and social interactions among a group of unskilled laborers. The games were developed in the context of a game design class in which 16 master students participated. The goal of the course was to create play interfaces suitable for public space, on the work floor of the textile sorting centre TexOkazi in Hasselt, Belgium. The majority of the workers were immigrants who did not speak Dutch fluently, despite this being the common language at the sorting centre. The laborers emanated from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and interactions on the work floor were often restricted to colleagues of one’s own kin or colleagues who shared one’s native language.

Translation and/as Interface Stephen Mandiberg This paper argues that game translation should be understood and treated as a type of interface. In contrast to the dominant industry view of translation as simply a means of spreading a game from one country to another, or the academic discourse that ignores different linguistic versions, this paper contends that translation is an interface between the world, players and games that can be transparent, reflective, or both, and that translation spans multiple layers of the game from the code to the experience. This argument will connect J. David Bolter and Diane Gromala’s discussion of interface as a design principle with Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost’s five-layer platform studies model for understanding games. By repositioning translation as an expansive and necessarily complex interface we can move toward better understanding the space of translation in games and the broader importance of translation to gaming.

Game Prototyping – The Negotiation of an Idea Jon Manker This is a study on the function of the prototyping process in game design. It is based on interviews with 27 game designers in leading positions at companies of various sizes. Prototyping is an important part of game design with which design ideas are explored. One central purpose of prototypes is to serve as a communicational tool. As such it is used to negotiate design problems. Rhetoric has a long tradition of analyzing communication and negotiation. In this paper a number of concepts from rhetoric, (topos, hodos, pistis, partes and to some extent synecdoche) are applied to game prototyping based on data collected as interviews. The results indicate that rhetoric concepts are useful when talking about the prototypes as they grasp the qualities of a prototyping in a good way. By applying the findings using negotiation theory to real practice the game prototyping process would likely become clearer without diminishing its creative qualities. As presented here negotiation theory could serve as a conceptual framework for game prototyping, which the design team can make use of in their design process.

short Abstracts Designing social behavior through play Tanya Marriott “All play means something” Johann Huizinga (Huzinga,J, 1949, page 7) In this paper I discuss the strategic and discursive implementation of interactive play in motivating positive social behavior within children and young adults. Central to my discussion is the social role of play and the roles of the players, as described by play theorists Johannes Huzinga (Salen, K et al, 2004, page 465) and Richard Bartle (Salen, K et al, 2004, page 79) Play theory seeks to build meaningful relationships between game participants through the formation of social groups within the play world, referred by Huizinga as the magic circle. In this paper I examine the aspects of social play within the game design of three year-four undergraduate visual communication student projects.

The performance of the street network in GTA IV’s Liberty City Paul Martin The atmosphere of a particular area in an open world game such as GTA IV (Rockstar North 2008; 2009; 2010) is determined by a number of factors: the events that happen there, the kind of events that are possible there, architectural style, street names, demographics, characters associated with the area, non-player character (NPC) presence, and many more. Two more factors, and the ones dealt with here, are the frequency with which the area is encountered by the player over the course of the game and the extent to which an area forms a distinctive sub-area within the game environment.

Using a game as an advertising piece for a Brazilian politics campaign Vicente Mastrocola We seek to analyze the use of a game as an advertising piece for a brazilian politics campaign. We discuss the impact of a game in the mediatic scene of internet and how important it can be for a new political scene in the contemporary world.

Crowd Presence: AR Gaming in physical and virtual groups Simon Mccallum & Arild Jacobsen

Augmented Reality (AR) Gaming involves the addition of virtual content to a view of the real world. This can be as simple as adding and offside line in Football games, to the inclusion of 3D game characters interacting with the environment shown in head mounted displays. Situating virtual content in a real context provides natural interfaces and breaks the 4th wall, to bring the game out of the screen and into the world.

A Survey of Actorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Games Neal Mcdonald This paper presents a survey of actorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s games and improvisational practices, presents a categorization of them, and compares the goals of the games in different categories with the goals and methods of a selection of LARP and JEEP.

And Then You Wait: The Issue of Dead Time in Social Network Games Richard Van Meurs Playing social network games involves a lot of waiting time; time where you can do nothing meaningful in the game and have to wait for certain things to grow, friends to send you gifts, or energy to refill. This paper addresses whether we the notion of dead time as introduced by Juul (2004) can be helpful in theorizing about this waiting time in social network games. It starts with a discussion of game time in general and continues with a discussion on how time works in social network games. Then it will address the notion of dead time. It is concluded that waiting time can indeed be seen as similar to dead time and that especially the playing time layer and perceived time layer from Tychsen & Hitchens (2008;2009) are helpful in understanding waiting in social network games.

Subversive Game Design for Recursive Learning Konstantin Mitgutsch & Matthew Weise How are playersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; expectations challenged through subverting common design patterns in digital games? The following paper outlines a game design experiment that combines state of the art learning research with game design. The goal of the game project is to explore how subversive design patterns can be created that force the players to rethink their expectations and interpretations. In the developed game Afterland various paradigm shifts subvert common gameplay patterns in order to encourage players to modify their anticipations. This is designed to provoke a corresponding paradigm shift in the players, forcing them to reassess certain expectations and to adopt new mental models, strategies, and goals other than those commonly found in games of this genre. The paper introduces recursive learning as a theoretical foundation for the game design process and offers constructive insight derived from this particular research-based game design project conducted at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab.

short Abstracts Understanding the Contribution of Biometrics to Games User Research Pejman Mirza-Babaei, Sebastian Long, Emma Foley & Graham Mcallister Utilising biometric data has become an increasingly active area in the video games user research community and a number of academic papers have been published1 introducing various biometric methods in video games analysis. However, there are few studies aiming to quantify the value of biometric methods as an addition to traditional observation-based user research methodologies. The interest of this study is to identify the strengths, weaknesses and qualitative differences between the findings of a biometrics-based, event logging approach and the results of a full, observation-based user test study. Findings are addressed in terms of the number of negative usability and UX issues found, and are categorised using PLAY heuristics (Desurvire et al. 2009).

Funny Games – Analyzing Humorous Modifications of Video Games Sebastian Möring The discussion of humor in relation to computer games is often lead from an angle which regards the way in which computer games contain humorous references to the culture they are part of. For instance Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North, 2008) is known for “its irony and [...] its satire” (Ouellette 2010, see also Dormann/Biddle 2009, Dormann et al 2006). Another example is the discussion of satirical newsgames by Madsen and Johansson (2002:76). Since humor often focuses on general knwoledge acknowledged practices it often has a revealing effect. This paper will regard the phenomenon from the opposite angle whereby computer games become subjects to humorous reflections. The goal of this paper is to investigate how humorous reflections on computer game mechanics or their gameplay serve as a sort of game criticism as well as a creative source for game design or simply creative reflection on the logic and structure of games.

Just a Cyberplace. The rules in videogames: between Ontology and Epistemology Ivan Mosca

In this essay you will find a theory about the relation of videogames and rules. The analysis illustrates the Social Ontology Project founded by John Searle and introduces some new concepts, such as Gameframe, Cyberplace and Interactive Figmentum. After some theoretical arguments you will find a double grill to categorize player types regarding to rules.

Knowing Play: Learning about a Science-Based Videogame Rachel Muehrer, Jennifer Jenson, Jeremy Friedberg & Nicole Husain In a rapidly evolving information mediascape shaped by participatory, mobile, and multimodal digital technologies, attention is the primary currency, and engagement its main requirement. School and university students tend to be far more fluent with, and far more attentive to these emerging media forms than the educators seeking to guide and support their learning. In contrast to the current “crisis” of learner (dis)-engagement where students are withdrawing from school, college and university-based learning activities (Canadian Educational Association, 2010), digital games are reaping the rewards of a new “attentional economy” (de Castell & Jenson, 2007). More effectively than any other medium, digital games engage players voluntarily and intensively for recurrent, extended periods. Building from the more general ‘first generation’ questions of “how can we use games to motivate students,» this paper attempts to study the particular contexts and opportunities that might be created in schools for using digital games, and contribute to a growing body of research that shows learning is accomplished through playing.

The inevitable sequel: The anatomy of the next-gen console game David Nieborg Drawing on critical political economy (Hesmondhalgh, 2007; Miège, 1989; Mosco, 2009) and media economics (Albarran, 2002; Hoskins et al., 2004) I will theorize how the forces of capitalism shape the video game’s commodity form (cf. Adorno, 1991; Günster, 2004). The library of so called “next-gen”, HD or seventh generation console games played on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 will serve as a case study to demonstrate how console games work as products and which purpose they serve for game publishers. I will use the popular Call of Duty franchise to investigate the anatomy of the next-gen video game, thereby focusing specifically on the pervasive business logic of serialization.

Skin Games: Fragrant Play, Scented Media and the Stench of Digital Games Simon Niedenthal This study will take an aesthetic approach to digital games as a means of speculating about the potential for fragrant play in digital media, and generating scenarios for experimental gameplay related to scent. Game aesthetics studies direct us towards three themes: to explore and account for the relationship of the body and senses to our experience of games and play, to acknowledge the relationship of games to other art forms, and to articulate our engagement in the aesthetic experience of gaming pleasure (citation removed). In pursuing this approach, this study could also serve as a template for exploring other senses that are currently under-engaged in digital games.

short Abstracts Abstracts Game Addiction Triangulated: Media Panic or Health Problem – Who Can Tell? Rune K. L. Nielsen & Espen Aarseth “Game addiction” is a much discussed and little researched topic. Computer and video game addiction has been a hot topic in the media for years, especially after the rise of the Internet and with the so-called “Massively Multiplayer Online Games” (MMOGs) in the early 2000s. Children, youth and adults alike spend long hours in these new online playgrounds often to the concern of parents and kin. Is excessive videogame play a disorder akin to drug abuse, or is it a sometimes time-consuming but otherwise innocent hobby? What are the long-term effects? How should one approach it as a stakeholder (e.g., teacher, parent, policy maker, or health councilor)? The aim of this paper is to produce an up-to-date account separating fact from fiction in relation to “computer game addiction” and the social and health-related consequences for youth and children who spend long hours playing. The discussion and conclusions will be based on a synthesis of results from three different research areas: Psychology, Neuroscience, and Cultural/ Media Studies.

Playful Crowdsourcing for Energy- Efficient Automotive Navigation Joerg Niesenhaus, Daniel Muenter, Tim Hussein & Juergen Ziegler In this paper, we describe the work-in-progress state of a playful simulation using crowdsourcing to gather data of efficient routes for automotive navigation in the context of electro mobility. Users will contribute well-known routes of their local area by playing the simulation. The routes will be evaluated with regard to height structure, traffic volume, and traffic signal frequency in the context of the daytime, season, and further time-dependent events. Based on this data, the simulation will be able to calculate the most energy-efficient route.

GameDNA: Teaming up a client, a game studio and a research department for richer game notation Christof Van Nimwegen, Herre Van Oostendorp, Michael Bas & Joost Modderman This report describes a Knowledge Transfer Project in the GATE (Game Research for Training and Entertainment) project lead by the Department of Information and Computing Sciences of Utrecht University. There is a growing interest in using serious games to uncover personality traits of people for job assessment. The disadvantage of the old paper questionnaires and interviews is the risk of giving socially desirable answers. Accommodating assessment in a game can provide a richer, less repetitive and more immersive context in which players might act more natural and intuitive. In order to design games for structured assessment existing methods do not sufficiently accommodate interactions between game and player and the players’ mental states and actions during play. We need better ways to visualize cognitive aspects within a player. A Game Studio, a Computer Science department and an HRD consultancy firm cooperate on developing GameDNA, a richer notation and visualization tool for serious games involving assessment. This tool will enable different stakeholders to conceptualize serious games, communicate about them, and develop such games more effectively. In parallel, a serious game to measure the personality trait “Compliance” (a hot topic after global crises in financial services) is being developed as a live test case for GameDNA.

Sightlence: a Game That Turns Deafblind People Into Gamers Mathias Nordvall, Emil Boström & Jalal Maleki Sightlence is a design project spurred by this situation and attempt to answer the following questions: Is it possible to design computer games that use haptics as the sole modality to communicate with the player; Is it possible to translate the interfaces of existing computer games into interfaces that are based only on haptics; and is it possible to accomplish this by only using cheap and readily available gamepads. In order to answer these questions the development of Sightlence was driven by a design and theory focused process. Its theoretical foundation was built from the domains of design theory, semiotics, human physiology, haptic design, human-computer interaction, and game studies.

short Abstracts Cortex Wars: Expanding the Interactions for Paralyzed People Mathias Nordvall, Leo Koivuniemi & Jalal Maleki The two goals that set the direction for the Cortex Wars project were if it is possible for computer games, that use brain-wave based interface devices, to be more complex than those available on the market today, and to explore possible input techniques that might be used in future projects even if they are unlikely to function well today. Since current computer games are simplistic, with seldom more than one interaction possibility, it was hard to know whether this was due to hardware immaturity, human limitations, or simply poor design. Regardless of the answer the low awareness of brain-wave based interfaces among users place a limit on the possible complexity, with regard to learnability, of any new interface suggestions. Therefore it was decided that the Cortex Wars project would explore the space of possible interactions and then implement more modest suggestions for the sake of learnability and save the more radical interface suggestions for later projects.

Procedural Minimalism Joseph Osborn In the field of game studies, academics and designers have formulated a variety of critical and industrial aesthetics. From narratology to ludology (and now back to somewhere in the middle), from the scrappy bedroom programmer to the installation artist, from the design of space to the design of source code, there are as many aesthetic perspectives on games as there are writers to recognize them. In general, these fall into two broad groups: Critics hold aesthetics of appreciation, and developers hold aesthetics of production. Each camp rarely reads the otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work. Many have agitated for more crossover between these worlds, and this paper hopes to contribute language and tools to bridge the gap between game thinker and game maker.

Word Play: Thinking About Game Design and the Early Game Experience Christopher Paul

One of the most crucial parts of any video game is introducing gamers into the flow and design of how the game works. Typically this is done through an introductory section rife with hints, tips or strategies. Lessons can also be spread throughout a game, from including a hint on the screen about which button to press at a key moment or by changing the color of a stone on a wall to denote that it is of particular interest. On a grander scale, game developers and genres work to introduce gamers into how to play games, whether that is through encouraging them to look at online resources, pursue a certain strategy, or any of a variety of other objectives and approaches.

Designing the Designer Robin Potanin & Oliver Davies This paper examines the selection criteria for design roles in the videogame industry and examines the profiles of students undertaking game design studies at NHTV in the expectation of working in the industry. A total of four analyses were conducted: job advertisements for design and production roles; an industry survey; MBTI profiling of a cross-section of IGAD students; and a survey of Design and Production students. In 2010 NHTV University of Applied Sciences initiated the Design and Production (D&P) specialization within its existing International Game Architecture Design (IGAD) bachelor degree. In preparing the specialization the authors analyzed a range of job advertisements for design and production staff in the videogame development industry and profiled its first intake of students according to gender, age, personality (MyersBrigg (MBTI), Brainhex) and play preferences. Which students were successful in their first year of game studies? How did they compare to programmers and artists?

HOW TO SAY THINGS WITH ACTIONS I: A THEORY OF DISCOURSE FOR VIDEO GAMES FOR CHANGE Valentina Rao This paper proposes the interpretation of video games as discourse (in the explanation of discourse commonly used in linguistics and studies of natural language, not as understood in semiotics or cultural studies) to explore further the dynamics through which video games can propose structured meaning and articulate an argument. Such topic is especially relevant for video games with an agenda, whose goal is not just to produce an engaging game experience, but also to convey a message and have some control over the desired outcome (persuasion, information, expression, aesthetic experience). The notion of discourse can help classify serious games according to their specific aim, and can help understand how meaning production in procedural rhetoric takes place.

Problem Based Game Design - Engaging Students by Innovation Lars Reng & Henrik Schoenau-Fog At Aalborg Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s department of Medialogy, we are utilizing the Problem Based Learning method to encourage students to solve game design problems by pushing the boundaries and designing innovative games. This paper is concerned with describing this method, how students employ it in various projects and how they learn to analyse, design, and develop for innovation by using it. We will present various cases to exemplify the approach and focus on how the method engages students and aspires for innovation in digital entertainment and games. 83

short Abstracts Tell Me Something I Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Know: Understanding Data in Splinter Cell William Robinson & Leif Penzendorfer The last decade has seen an arms race between major game developers, each pushing visual, aural, and haptic representations from the abstract further towards the verisimilar. This hi-fidelity, while perhaps immersive, burdens the players with more and more difficult data to parse. In tandem, game mechanics and dynamics continue to accrue forcing additional input and comprehension from their players, often needing prior knowledge of the genreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s preceding generation. The assumption here is that one plays a game based on the data they have available.

Collaboration and Team Composition in Applied Game Creation Processes Lies Van Roessel & Jeroen Van Mastrigt In this explorative study, the collaboration and team composition within applied game creation processes is investigated. Applied games are games that are deployed for purposes like training, education, persuasion, physical exercise etc., i.e. all games that bring about effects that are useful outside the context of the game itself. Ten Dutch applied game designers were interviewed and asked about the creation process of one recently finished applied game project. There are three tendencies that surfaced from these interviews: 1) a domain expert or Subject Matter Expert (SME) in the field one is making a game for is to be involved when creating an applied game, 2) this SME is typically the client - or working for the client - which can lead to unbalanced games and 3) although one could expect otherwise, there is usually no expert on transfer involved in the applied game creation process. In the final section, topics for further research are suggested.

Cinesthesia: mass-participation game art in film theatres Adam Russell & John Sear

This is a practice-based research report from a new two-man arts enterprise applying technology and design principles from the videogames industry to live interactive arts events. In our work we seek a hybrid of interactive installation design, generative and procedural arts, and live performance event production.

The Player Engagement Process - An Exploration of Continuation Desire in Digital Games Henrik Schoenau-Fog Engagement is an essential element of the player experience, and the concept is described in various ways in the literature. To gain a more detailed comprehension of this multifaceted concept, and in order to better understand what aspects can be used to evaluate engaging game play and to design engaging user experiences, this study investigates one dimension of player engagement by empirically identifying the components associated with the desire to continue playing. Based on a description of the characteristics of player engagement, a series of surveys were developed to discover the components, categories and triggers involved in this process. By applying grounded theory to the analysis of the responses, a process-oriented player engagement framework was developed and four main components consisting of objectives, activities, accomplishments and affects as well as the corresponding categories of engagement, disengagement and their triggers – were identified and rank-ordered.

Replacing Preconceived Accounts of Digital Games with Experience of Play: When parents went native in GTA IV Gareth Schott & Jasper Van Vught Cautionary frameworks continue to dominate evaluations of games within political contexts, obstructing consideration of the specific conditions and experiences offered by particular game texts. This paper challenges this tendency of prior governmentinstigated research to promote viewpoints that are not textually evaluative or playderived when reporting on perceptions of games possessed by the public. Instead, it prioritizes Dovey and Kennedy’s (2006) argument that ‘we cannot have recourse solely to [games] textual characteristics; we have to pay particular attention to the moment of its enactment as it is played.’ More concretely, this paper describes research sparked by the NZ Classification Office’s interest in exploring ‘the extent to which the public’s perception of causal links between game playing and various social ills’ might be ‘moderated or even undermined by [knowledge of ] how players actually respond to and negotiate their way through the content and characteristics of the medium’ (OFLC 2009, 24). Using in both game-play observation and depth interviews, we concluded that the participants’ preconceptions of Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North, 2008) were drastically reevaluated after experience playing the game, shifting attitudes and beliefs as to how games should be regulated.

short Abstracts Interdependencies: Playing with Identity in World of Warcraft Guilds Arne Schröder The focal point of this paper is on how identities in Massively Multiplayer Online RolePlaying Games (MMORPGs) are constructed in regard to the distinct conditions of MMORPGs as rule systems and social spaces. It concentrates on members of socially marginalized groups and their ways of dealing with a game space that on the one hand is structured around normative discourses of identity and on the other hand differs from real life settings through the gaming situation. The research is based on a triangulation of methods. It draws from participant observation in World of Warcraft (Blizzard, 2004) as well as from problem-centered interviews (Witzel, 2001) that were conducted with German players from several guilds on PvE-realms. The group of interviewees was chosen in the process of theoretical sampling and consists of male and female players of various sexual orientations.

MUsE – A Framework for Reception-based Gaming Research Daniel Schultheiss Game studies are approached from very different faculty cultures and research perspectives. As the reception based view usually examines the process of game usage and its environment, there are still several different entries into the field. Many theoretical approaches and empirical studies concentrate on single phases or theoretical constructs of game reception. Sometimes this is done very detailed, sometimes in a more superficial way. This article delivers a more holistic model for reception based gaming research called MUsE, which describes a whole cycle of game usage and also can be used in longitudinal study designs. Additionally, results of a first prototype study are presented at a glance.

Painting with Games: JODI, Joseph DeLappe and the Technologies of Game Development John Sharp

Since the mid-1990s, contemporary artists have used games and their technologies to produce works of art. Two artists in particular — JODI and Julian Oliver have embraced games, their formal characteristics and culture in sophisticated and nuanced ways. This paper consists of two parts: first, a formal reading of a work by each of these artists as works of art produced using game technologies, and second, a discussion of the two works’ commentary on games as an industry and a form of popular culture.

“He could be a bunny rabbit for all I care!”: Identification with video game characters and arguments for diversity in representation Adrienne Shaw Little empirical research has investigated how players identify with video game characters. In this paper, I use data from interviews with video game players who are members of marginalized groups, to interrogate the links made between how players identify with video game characters and the importance of representation. I discuss how games‟ ludic, bodily and socially interactive aspects result in players‟ being selfreflexive rather than identifying with the game characters/avatars; whereas narrative aspects of games help players identify with characters. Different types of games, moreover, shape the types of relationships players have with the onscreen characters. This paper looks at the links between how players identify with different kinds of video game characters, and concludes with the implications this has for arguments about the importance of the representation of marginalized groups in video games.

In Perpetual Beta? On the Participatory Design of Facebook Games Tanja Sihvonen & Melinda Jacobs This paper proposes a new way of looking into the ‘sociality’ of social (network) games. On the basis of looking closely at the development of Frontierville, a popular Facebook game, and more abstractly at the development of its fellow Zynga Facebook-based games (such as Farmville or Cityville), we argue that various network-based forms of participatory design are increasingly becoming both influential and indispensable in social (network) based game design than ever before. Although participatory design in gaming is not new, the way in which participatory design is being used in social (network) games is new, giving the player a greater and more immediate role in the game design than ever before. Whether this is for better or worse, this form of participation fostered by the structure of social networks has allowed social (network) game players to become much more powerful than previous in their relationship to the game industry.

short Abstracts Online Video Games in Brazilian Public Health Communication Marcelo Simão De Vasconcellos & Inesita Soares De Araújo Based on an ongoing doctoral dissertation, this paper discusses online video games’ potential for public health communication in Brazil. Brazil is a continental country, with wide variance of habits and cultures, presenting great challenges for public health policies. Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS), one of the largest public health systems in the world, serves entire Brazilian population guided by the principles of universality, comprehensiveness and fairness.Brazilian government places great importance in health communication strategies, using both traditional (print, radio, television) and new media (websites, social networks). However, most of this communication is centralized, prescriptive, unidirectional, focusing dissemination of peremptory norms and behaviors, ignoring local contexts and population knowledge. This limits communications’ effectiveness and potential for change, particularly among youngsters, resistant to less interactive and dialogic media.

Pocket Utopias: Digital Gaming as Imaginary Social Action Bart Simon This paper presents a preliminary attempt to articulate an analytically robust concept of imagination for game studies from a cultural sociological point of view. It is odd that in previous analytic frameworks for the study of digital games, very little direct attention has been given to imagination in understanding the meanings, values and dynamics of gameplay and games. A great deal of attention has been paid outside of game studies to the role of imagination in play, creativity and thought. Does imagination matter in digital gaming? On the surface it should seem so. Digital games and virtual worlds are often described as imaginative playgrounds where players may pretend, fantasize, and explore possibilities in a space set apart from the real world. This is precisely how we tend to think about imagination. It is our capacity to project a sense of ourselves and the world that is otherwise from what it is.

Understanding Player Experience using Sequential Analysis Michael Soppitt & Graham Mcallister This paper presents a methodology which allows for an objective analysis of video game quality based on player behaviour. A mutually exclusive and exhaustive code of 5 behavioural states is presented based on an analysis of 10 users each playing 3 video games. The coding scheme is verified for inter-coder agreement with resulting Kappa values in the range of 0.74 to 0.91 (good agreement to very good agreement). Results of the game studies presented show that good games allow the player to enter the Engagement state more frequently, and keep them in that state for a longer duration than bad games. In particular, the results show that good games exhibit an overall net positive behaviour from the very early stages of gameplay. The paper concludes with suggestions for future work.

The Making of Nordic Larp: Documenting a Tradition of Ephemeral Co-Creative Play Jaakko Stenros & Markus Montola Research and documentation of live action role-playing games, or larps, must tackle problems of ephemerality, subjectivity, first person audience and co-creation, as well as the underlying question of what larps are. In this paper these challenges are outlined and solutions to handling them are proposed. This is done through the prism of producing a picture-heavy art book on Nordic larp. The paper also discussed the problems of writing about game cultures as an insider and makes a case for addressing normative choices in game descriptions head on.

Narrative Friction in ARGs: Design Insights from Conspiracy For Good Jaakko Stenros, Jussi Holopainen, Annika Waern, Markus Montola & Elina Ollila Alternate Reality Games (ARG) tend to have story-driven game structures. Hence, it is useful to investigate how player activities interact with the often pre-scripted storyline in this genre. In this article, we report on a study of a particular ARG production, Conspiracy For Good (CFG), which was at the same time emphasising the role of strong storytelling, and active on-site participation by players. We uncover multiple levels of friction between the story content and the mode of play of live participants, but also between live and online participation. Based on the observations from the production, we present design recommendations for future productions with similar goals.

short Abstracts PlayFit: Designing playful activity interventions for teenagers Janienke Sturm, Rob Tieben, Menno Deen & Ben Schouten Young people spend a large part of their day sedentary, both at school and at home. The aim of the PlayFit project is to persuade teenagers to lead a more active lifestyle by using digital as well as non-digital games and play. In this position paper, we describe in detail the three key principles of our vision concerning the design of game-based interventions for stimulating physical activity: playful persuasion, ambient action and play profiles. In our vision teenagers take part in playful activities and games throughout the day. In these activities, casual action is inherent to the fun experience, thus reducing teenagersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; sedentary behavior. Relevant information about their activities and preferences is stored in a personal play profile, which affects the games they play and through which they can communicate to their peers. We illustrate this vision by means of several innovative game concepts.

Game Reviews as Tools in the Construction of Game Historical Awareness in Finland, 1984â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2010: Case MikroBitti Magazine Jaakko Suominen The paper introduces a case study on game journalistic practices and on the construction of historical self-understanding of game cultures. It presents results of the study of Finnish digital game reviews, retrieved from a major computer hobbyist magazine, MikroBitti. The results are based on a qualitative content analysis of 640 reviews from two magazine issues per year (1984â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2010). The aim is to examine changes in the production of game reviews, in the work of individual reviewers, and then to focus on particular stylistic characteristics: to study how game journalists refer, on the one hand to other popular media cultural forms and products such as television series, cinema, comics, literature, sports, news, board games, and on the other hand, to other digital games, game genres, genre-hybrids, game producers, national game product styles as well as game designer auteurs.

From Individual Characters to Large Crowds: Augmenting the Believability of Open-World Games through Exploring Social Emotion in Pedestrian Groups Olivier Szymanezyk, Patrick Dickinson & Tom Duckett Crowds of non-player characters improve the game-play experiences of open-world video-games. Grouping is a common phenomenon of crowds and plays an important role in crowd behaviour. Recent crowd simulation research focuses on group modelling in pedestrian crowds and game-designers have argued that the design of non-player characters should capture and exploit the relationship between characters. The concepts of social groups and inter-character relationships are not new in social psychology, and on-going work addresses the social life of emotions and its behavioural consequences on individuals and groups alike. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of current research in social psychology, and to use the findings as a source of inspiration to design a social network of non-player characters, with application to the problem of group modelling in simulated crowds in computer games.

Playing in Public: A Latitudinal Look at LANS Nick Taylor, Suzanne De Castell, Jennifer Jenson & Florence Chee This paper reports on an international, mixed-methods study of online gaming in public sites, which included fieldwork at Internet cafés and/or LAN events in Canada, Mexico, South Korea, Singapore, India, Dubai, Japan, and England. In keeping with the actornetwork theory (ANT) injunction to include in accounts of “the public” non-human as well as human actors (Latour, 2005; Latour and Weibel, 2005), this paper explores how different “publics” are produced as specific configurations of technologies, human actors, physical spaces, and socio-economic conditions are put into play in localized contexts. Drawing from site observations as well as interviews with and surveys of players, we ask what iterations and degrees of public gameplay are produced across these different contexts, who participates, and whether and to what extent this play is in virtual worlds.

short Abstracts Guidelines to Design Interactive Open-ended Play Installations for Children Placed in a Free Play Environment Gordon Tiemstra, Renée Van Den Berg, Tilde Bekker & Mark De Graaf In this paper we describe a study in which we examine how children play with an interactive open-ended play installation. The idea behind open-ended play solutions is that children can create their own game goals and rules. However, what design parameters help children in being able to do this? Challenges include how to get children started with creating games, and develop rules as they play, and how an interactive open- ended installation can be flexible in including different amounts of children and play objects. We processed the observations of children playing with SmartGoals (an open ended play installation) into a series of guidelines that can be used as inspiration for the design of future open-ended play installations.

A Procedural Critique of Deontological Reasoning Julian Togelius This paper describes a prototype game that learns its rules from the actions and commands of the player. This game can be seen as an implementation and procedural critique of Kant’s categorical imperative, suggesting to the player that (1) the maxim of an action is in general underdetermined by the action and its context, so that an external observer will more often than not get the underlying maxim wrong, and that (2) most in- game actions are morally “wrong” in the sense that they do not contribute to wellbalanced game design. But it can also be seen as an embryo for an authoring tool for game designers, where they can easily and fluidly prototype new game mechanics.

Of discs, boxes and cartridges: The material life of digital games Saara Toivonen & Olli Sotamaa

So far the field of game studies has mostly bypassed the everyday meanings attached to the material manifestations of digital games. Based on qualitative survey data, this article examines what kind of personal and collective values are attached to the physical copies of games, including the storage medium and packaging. The results show how materiality resonates with the reliability and unambiguity of ownership. Furthermore, games as physical objects can have a key role in the project of creating a home, receiving their meaning as part of a wider technological and popular cultural meaning structure. Finally, collecting associates games with more general issues of identity, sociability and history. Through storing and organising games and having them on display, gamers position themselves as part of game culture, gather subcultural capital and ensure the possibility for nostalgia.

BurgerTime: A Proceduralist Investigation Mike Treanor & Michael Mateas This paper explores the foundations and implications of interpreting videogames as representational procedural artifacts. Where our previous work established a method of proceduralist readings, close readings of videogames that emphasize the representational power of a game’s rules, to interpret videogames intentionally authored to represent, this study attempts to apply the method to a game was not: the classic arcade game BurgerTime. Interpreting BurgerTime provided a challenge to the proceduralist perspective that required investigating its outer limits and assumptions. In the end, a comprehensive reading is achieved by considering the gameplay of expert players: those who understand the rules of a game the most.

You Are What You Play? A Quantitative Study into Game Design Preferences across Gender and Their Interaction with Gaming Habits Lotte Vermeulen, Jan Van Looy, Frederik De Grove & Cédric Courtois Gaming is rapidly gaining popularity as a pastime among women. One explanation for this could be the industry targeting female gamers through specific ‘girl game’ releases. This could imply that there are a priori differences in game design preferences between female and male gamers. The purpose of the present study is to explore these differences to see whether there is a mediating effect of previous experience with certain game genres on subsequent design preferences of male and female gamers. More particularly, we distinguish between ‘core’ genre players (CP) and ‘non-core’ genre players (NCP). By means of a 2*2 ANOVA design using an online survey, we examine the main effects of gender, core genre players (CP/NCP) and the interaction effects between both independent variables. The results show that game preferences of male CP, female CP and male NCP are generally in line with one another whereas those of female NCP differ significantly.

short Abstracts Game Reward Systems: Gaming Experiences and Social Meanings Hao Wang & Chuen Tsai Sun The authors give an overview of how various video game reward systems provide positive experiences to players, and propose classifications for rewards and reward characteristics for further analysis. We also discuss what reward systems encourage players to do, and describe how they provide fun even before players receive their rewards. Next, we describe how game reward systems can be used to motivate or change behaviors in the physical world. One of our main suggestions is that players can have fun with both rewards and reward mechanisms—enjoying rewards while reacting to the motivation that such rewards provide. Based on relevant psychological theories, we discuss how reward mechanisms foster intrinsic motivation while giving extrinsic rewards. We think that reward systems and mechanisms in modern digital games provide social meaning for players primarily through motivation, enhanced status within gaming societies, and the use of rewards as social tools.

Towards a Playful Organization Ideal-type: Values of a Playful Organizational Culture Harald Warmelink Numerous organizations have embarked on playful endeavors such as serious gaming (playing games with a learning/training purpose) and ‘gamification’ (applying game technology and principles to make existing practices more game-like). One could consequently theorize about the dawn of playful organizations, i.e. a type of organization that is culturally and structurally playful. This article offers a first step towards a playful organization theory. It specifically offers a conceptual framework of a playful organizational culture. Following a review of play theory as well as organization and management theory that was inspired by play, the author describes a playful organizational culture as encompassing contingency, opportunism, equivalence, instructiveness, meritocracy and conviviality as values. The framework offers leaders, managers and game/play designers opportunities to further develop playful endeavors for organizations. It also offers social scientists opportunities to further research the emergence and issues of playful organizations.

Player Communities in Multiplayer Online Games: A Systematic Review of Empirical Research Harald Warmelink & Marko Siitonen Numerous researchers have written about the social dynamics of player communities in multiplayer online games. Following a systematic review of refereed empirical research publications from 2000-2010, this article synthesizes the key methods and concepts researchers have used to study and characterize player communities, as well as the aspects and operationalizations they have concentrated on. The analysis shows that qualitative approaches have been more popular than quantitative. The concepts used to characterize player communities were often not clearly defined or overlapped in meaning. Yet they revealed a prevalence of micro (groups or teams), meso (guilds or organizations) and macro (communities and networks) perspectives. Eighteen different aspects and operationalizations of player communities were identified. Six of these were clearly most popular, i.e. social structuring, rationale, culture & social norms, used ICTs, number of members and time of existence. The article concludes with several perspectives and suggestions for future research.

Knowledge Production and Surveillance in Game Communities: The practice of theorycrafting Karin Wenz Theorycrafting will be discussed here under the following aspects: Theorycrafting as knowledge production: Theorycrafting will be analyzed as a tool to gain control over the game and the game design. The use of “theory” will be reflected upon. In theorycrafting players try to take over control instead of being controlled by the game and its algorithms predefined by the game developers. At the same time they distribute the knowledge gained and offer formulas but also software applications to other players to calculate the best strategies themselves.

Getting Players to Look at Each Other: Adventures and Misadventures in Designing for Motion Controllers Douglas Wilson In 2009, my game studio at the time received two development grants from the Danish Film Institute to prototype an experimental Nintendo Wii game.1 The project, which we ended up calling Tryl: Videogame of the Future, was a wizard dueling game inspired by fantasy series like Harry Potter. Our idea was to develop a game in which players look at each other, rather than at the screen.The project failed in many ways and for many reasons. In this talk, I focus on some lessons we learned about designing for gestural input devices like the Wiimote. In the spirit of trying to learn from one’s failures, I reflect on our development process, highlighting some of the tricky interaction design issues we struggled against.

short Abstracts n Celebration of Low Process Intensity Douglas Wilson In this talk, I argue that this “proceduralist” position suffers from a number of inherent limitations. First, we cannot satisfactorily “rank” the formal aspects of games in relation to one another. From a design standpoint, multimedia elements like image and sound may indeed inform the very core of a creative game design practice. Second, such a formalist perspective makes the critical mistake of focusing too intently on the media object itself. Too often, we give short shrift to the social and cultural contexts in which those games are situated – and not just existing contexts, but also the contexts that players shape and create through their play. My concern is that over-privileging computer-enacted rules marginalizes a diverse ecosystem of possible hybrid approaches that might otherwise flourish in the gaps between conventional videogames and other media forms. There exists a fertile space of game design possibilities beyond formalized systems and computational algorithms – a space where players are rallied to improvise their own gameplay and appropriate games to their own purposes.

The professional identity of gameworkers revisited. A qualitative inquiry on the case study of German professionals Jeffrey Wimmer The phenomena of computer games and the different game cultures have already been drawing attention of researchers for many years, whereas the people behind computer games – the gameworkers – undeservingly remained in the shadows until quite recently. The lack of information about this workforce and its professional identity makes this research object especially interesting. The analysis relies on a pilot study about the issue of the professional identity of gameworkers, which aimed to dig deeper with the means of qualitative research. During that project nine German gameworkers were interviewed and an attempt to give an in-depth description of their professional identity was made. The study shows that the respondents have a very strong coherence with their profession and perceive themselves as a part of their profession and the team/studio they work with/at. The most salient reason for this is the deep interest the respondents have in computer games (for both making and playing games).

Stealth Exercise, Blatant Fun: Crafting an Exergame that Players Intrinsically Want to Play Brian Winn & Wei Peng

This report discusses the design of a custom built exergame, called Olympus, being developed as part of a research project currently in progress at the Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab at Michigan State University. The project is partially funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through the Health Games Research initiative.

Defeated by an orangutan? Approaching cross-species gameplay Hanna Wirman, Willie Smits, Gino Yu & Wilson Yuen A number of studies have already approached orangutan game play in various zoos. Andrea W. Clay et al. (2011) discuss the benefits of technology such as touch screens for orangutan welfare in Zoo Atlanta (see also Perdue et al. 2011). Karyl B. Swartz and Sharon A. Himmanen’s (2006) study used touch screens to facilitate a list learning task in order to measure orangutans’ recognition memory. Meanwhile, in studies by Jennifer Vonk (2002; 2003), orangutans were tested with touch screen in regard to their abilities to understand concepts of social relationships and to discriminate between objects based on their colour and shape. But while the introduced studies concentrate on applying games as a medium for cognitive tests, it is the goal of our project to create and study games that both human and orangutan players can enjoy regardless of the existence of external rewards. This paper addresses the theoretical basis for discussing how and to which degree orangutans, together with humans, can find computer games enjoyable as autotelic activities.

Feel the Music Gerard Van Wolferen & Hugo Verweij The goal of the Feel the music project is to enable deaf (hearing impaired) people to enjoy music, for instance on a dance floor. A vest is equipped with vibrating motors that can wirelessly communicate with a computer, which translates the music into vibrating patterns in real-time. The original vest was created for helicopter pilots by TNO. The Feel the Music project was assigned by Sense Company and carried out by the Utrecht School of the Arts.

The fluidity of the ‘magic circle’: using playful interventions in the design process Richard Wood, Paul Coulton & Leon Cruickshank The use of games as part of the design process has been extensively explored in much of the current design research literature (Brandt, 2004, 2006, 2008)(Habraken and Gross, 1988)(Johansson and Linde, 2005). However, to date, the research focuses primarily on three key aspects, collaboration, theory and method of games with intended outcomes. Academic research for games and more generally play within a creative and collaborative context is wide and varied. This is evident from management theory (Schrage, 2000) (Roos, 2006), through computing (Prensky, 2000) and into design (Brandt, 2004) (Johansson, 2005)(Lockton, 2008). Nonetheless, research into other potential contexts within which play can be applied is limited. This paper examines the effects of using playful interventions within the design and creative processes by using the exploration of the boundaries of the ‘magic circle’ within a game-like activity as a means to assert new and creative outcomes.

short Abstracts Chores Are Fun: Understanding Social Play in Board Games for Digital Tabletop Game Design Yan Xu, Evan Barba, Iulian Radu, Maribeth Gandy & Blair Macintyre When designing tabletop digital games, designers often draw inspiration from board games because of their similarities (e.g. spatial structure, social setting, and physical interaction). As part of our tabletop handheld augmented reality (THAR) games research, in which computer graphics content is rendered and registered on top of the playersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; view of the physical world, we are motivated to understand how social play unfolds in board games with the purpose of informing design decisions for THAR games. In this paper we report an empirical study of recorded video from a series of board game play sessions.

What Keeps Designers and Players Apart? Thinking How an Online Game World is Shared Vinciane Zabban Considering both play and design as world building activities, this paper offers to think the question of the distribution of authority on online game worlds through a sociotechnical perspective, and investigate the paradoxical relationship between designers and players of an online roleplaying game universe. The analysis is grounded on longterm investigations led on the project of an online multiplayer role playing game universe. This material allows to describe and question the complex agencement of mediations whichkeep apart design and play activities in the building of the game world.

A Survey of Final Project Courses in Game Programs: Considerations for Teaching Capstone Jose Zagal & John Sharp This report discusses the design of a custom built exergame, called Olympus, being developed as part of a research project currently in progress at the Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab at Game design and development programs often include a final project or capstone course as a means of assessing the cumulative theory, processes and techniques learned by students through the program or departmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s curriculum. While these courses are prevalent in programs around the world, there has yet to be a study of how, why, and to what end these courses are designed and run. We review the literature on capstone courses, discuss the findings of a long-form survey administered in early 2011, and propose a set of framing questions for the design and implementation of capstone courses. Survey findings include common goals of capstone courses, make-up of faculty teaching these courses, the support obtained and desired for the courses, the technologies used to create capstone projects, the methods of project management used in the courses and the expectations of faculty teaching the courses. These results can serve as a baseline for faculty and administrators looking to develop or improve their game design and development curricula. State University. The project is partially funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through the Health Games Research initiative.

Danger Close: Contesting Ideologies and Contemporary Military Conflict in First Person Shooters Martijn Van Zwieten More and more military first-person shooters situate their action in contemporary conflicts, with some claiming to various degrees to realistically depicted that conflict. Using the recently released game Medal of Honor as an example, this paper shows that such realism is made impossible by the presence of three ideological constructs found in military shooters: the FPS apparatus, the military-entertainment complex and neoOrientalism. These constructs respectively naturalize violent intervention, frame the U.S. military as just heroes, and present Afghanistan and its inhabitants as fundamentally terrorist. Each of these constructs thus works to strip elements of military conflict of context, and reinforces the othersâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC; tendency to turn a complex war into a simple case of good vanquishing evil.

panels and workshops PLAYING BY THE NUMBERS: A PANEL ON THEORYCRAFTING KRISTINE ASK, FALTIN KARLSEN, MARK CHEN, CHRISTOPHER PAUL & TORILL MORTENSEN Theorycrafting refer to a performance and number-oriented approach to playing in World of Warcraft (WoW). This panel will discuss in what ways theorycrafting represent a reconfiguring of play that shape both community practices and design. While supporting the widely adopted powergamer ideal of effective and goal oriented play, theorycrafting is also a contested area. Players are questioning it›s tools and measurements and the ways in which it can be at odds with their ideals of immersion or social interaction. What does it mean to be playing by the numbers?

PANEL ON PUPPY MACHINES: SIMULATED ANIMALS AND VIDEOGAME CULTURE PATRICK CROGAN, SETH GIDDINGS, HELEN KENNEDY & BART SIMON Videogame culture is a thriving ecology of virtual creatures: from domestic Pokemon and the familiars of World of Warcraft to the tetchy denizens of Amimal Crossing, beasts, monsters and demons are trained by, and train, their human players. These creatures roam their environments, driven both by the procedural instincts of the game program and the fight or flight stimuli (or nurture) of player input. However they thrive too in the actual world, circling firstly as toys and merchandising, media images and sounds, and secondly as ideas and potentials - generative resources for play beyond the console, or for education about, and advocacy for, the ecosphere. This panel will take virtual animtals as the starting point for a set of overlapping enquiries into the nature of videogame culture.

WORKSHOP FURTHER EXPLORATIONS INTO THE WELL-PLAYED GAME, NEW GAMES, AND THE AFFORDANCES OF FUN BY BERNIE DEKOVEN Bernie DeKoven is a fun theorist, game designer, workshop facilitator and lecturer. His lifelong belief that things can be made more fun led him to develop and implement new ways of playing, New Games for groups of all ages and sizes, from singles, couples and families to schools, communities and cities. In his book, The Well Played Game, he voiced a philosophy of “healthy competition” that formed the core teachings of the New Games Foundation. He became co-director of the foundation, and has developed internationally successful programs in facilitating collaborative games, community events and business meetings.

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WORKSHOP MACHINATIONS GAME DESIGN BY JORIS DORMANS This is an advanced game design workshop utilizing the Machinations framework as a formal abstract design tool. This workshop should run one, but preferably two, hours, with up to thirty participants. The target audience for this workshop are game designers and researchers. During the workshop participants will build game prototypes from randomly selected game mechanics. These mechanics are presented as dynamic interactive diagrams in an specially designed diagram tool. The design process is structured through the manipulation of these diagrams. The aim of the workshop is to illustrate the application of the framework and tool in designing emergent behavior in games.

BUILDING A GAME LAB 2.0: SURVIVING AND THRIVING CLARA FERNANDEZ VARA, CELIA PEARCE, MARY FLANAGAN, MARINKA COPIER, FRANS MÄYRÄ, KRISTY NORINDR & JONATHAN DOVEY This round table, inaugurated at DiGRA2009, continues the conversation into how game research affiliated with academic institutions can survive and thrive in a time of both increasing student interest as well as increasing budgetary constraints. Due to budgetary and other social constraints, some European universities are increasingly looking to American-style management of funding at institutions of higher education. This affects games research as well. The round table presents short studies from different game laboratories across the world, systematically yet briefly exploring their organizational model, funding model, role in the curriculum, and research models. The speakers are all lab coordinators from across institutions, who have worked in setting up a game lab, and have found ways to keep supporting it. The purpose of this session is to tackle each issue collaboratively, touching on laboratory activities, spaces, and themes related to support and future research, leaving time for discussion by the audience to compare models and formulate discussion.

SERIOUS GAMES ON TRIAL RENS KORTMANN, HEIDE LUKOSCH, HARALD WARMELINK & JOKE WITTEVEEN Can serious games prove their worth? Presumably. But before a judge in a trial? Who knows! In close collaboration with SAGANET, the Dutch society for simulations and games, a trial will be held against several serious games. They have been charged with failing to realize their claimed learning effect. It’s up to the games’ designers and researchers to convince the judge otherwise. Who will win? And more importantly, how will the plaintiff and defendant argue their case? Attend the trial to find out. 101

panels and workshops PANEL ON BUSINESS GAMES AS CULTURAL TECHNIQUES ROLF NOHR, STEFAN BÖHME & SERJOSCHA WIEMER This panel presents the research project „Business Games as Cultural Techniques. Transforming Knowledge and Steering Actions at the Interface between Economy, Computer Sciences and Mediality”.1 The main idea of the project is to reflect a development that is central in the history of the computer as well as games between 1950 and 1970, when both these cultural techniques were at the centre of great and revolutionary changes to the social order. The main result of this rearrangement is today’s understanding of the logic to market economy and steering rationality – but also the idea of serious games or the specific connection of computer and game.

GAMIFICATION: A ROUNDTABLE ON GAME STUDIES AND HCI PERSPECTIVES RILLA KHALED, SEBASTIAN DETERDING & DAN DIXON At the CHI 2011 conference in May, the authors ran a workshop that brought together diverse researchers from the HCI community working on gamification-related topics (Deterding et al. 2011). The goals for this workshop are to synthesize a shared picture of pertinent existing and current research surrounding gamification, to identify potential new aspects and research opportunities opened by the current upsurge of gamified applications, and to clarify the dialogue around what gamification might be in relation to similar areas, such as serious games or pervasive games. While the CHI and DiGRA communities overlap to some extent, they also diverge, as was exemplified by the many CHI workshop submissions received that position gamification as a potentially useful tool in services of utility. In contrast, gamified applications have received a predominantly skeptical reception both in the game industry and game studies, arguing that in their current shape, they either misuse or misunderstand core properties of games (e.g. Bogost 2010, Robertson 2010). To clarify what gamification is, or could become, we think it essential to bring in game studies perspectives. Conversely, we believe that an examination of gamified applications could further our understanding of video games in general, both in their motivational qualities and in their nature between designed artifact and social construct or context. At this point in time the game studies community would benefit from an exposure to and a critical examination of the perspectives of the HCI community

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PHD WORKSHOP ON INVESTIGATING GAMES AND PLAY: THEMES, THEORIES, PRACTICES, METHODOLOGIES SYBILLE LAMMES, BEN SCHOUTEN, JOOST RAESSENS & TILDE BEKKER In this workshop we want to stimulate an exchange between PhD students from different countries and universities to help improving their theoretical and methodological framework for research. The workshop will take the form of a discussion being moderated by the organizers of this workshop as well as other senior researchers of DiGRA. This workshop is intended for PhD candidates who want to further improve their work by discussing it with peers in an international and crossdisciplinary context, thus improving their theoretical and methodological framework and helping them to look at their research from a fresh angle. In a discussion that is moderated by senior researchers, participants will further elaborate on their work-inprogress. During the workshop cutting-edge position papers on a wide range of topics will be presented by PhD students from various universities, refereed and discussed in various thematic sessions. The sessions are organized around themes that are important for research about games and play, such as persuasion, motivation, storytelling, play styles etc.

PANEL ON MORAL ISSUES IN DIGITAL GAME PLAY KAROLIEN POELS, TILO HARTMANN, JOSĂ&#x2030; ZAGAL, GARRY YOUNG, MONICA WHITTY & STEVEN MALLIET Morality in digital games is being studied from several disciplines, including communication science, psychology, moral philosophy, cultural theory and humancomputer studies. Findings from these different disciplines, remain fragmented and are hardly shared on an interdisciplinary level. This panel seeks to move beyond the boundaries between different paradigms and aims to explore the wide range of moral issues that apply to digital game play from a multi-disciplinary perspective.

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panels and workshops PANEL ON INTERNATIONAL GAMING: COMPARATIVE SURVEY RESEARCH ON DIGITAL GAMING. THORSTEN QUANDT, RUTH FESTL, VIVIAN CHEN, RAINE KOSKIMAA, JAN VAN LOOY, FRANS MÄYRÄ & JAAKKO SUOMINEN Computer and console gaming has become a major entertainment sector around the globe. Still, the diffusion rates and the general acceptance of gaming vary between countries. There is some anecdotal evidence that theret are countries and regions which are more open to technological advancement and gaming in particular. However, until now, researchers had to rely mostly on market research and industry information when trying to identify the state of gaming in their respective countries. In a unique effort to solve the problem of missing cross-national research, this panel brings together several international teams of researchers, presenting several large-scale surveys in a comparative manner.

MORE THAN A CRAZE: PHOTOGRAPHS OF NEW ZEALAND›S EARLY DIGITAL GAMES SCENE MELANIE SWALWELL “More Than A Craze” is an online exhibition consisting of 46 photographs of New Zealand›s early digital games scene, in the 1980s. The exhibition includes the work of some of New Zealand›s best known documentary photographers – Ans Westra, Christopher Matthews, Robin Morrison – with images from the archives of Wellington›s Evening Post and Auckland›s Fairfax newspapers. These photographers captured images of games, gamers and gameplay in the moment when these were novel. These images are significant in that they offer insights into the early days of digital games. They are an important primary source material for researchers interested in the history of play and interactive entertainment. The exhibition has been curated by Melanie Swalwell and Janet Bayly. It is an online exhibition, hosted by Mahara Gallery, Waikanae (http://www.maharagallery.org.nz). It is one of the outcomes of Swalwell›s research into the history of digital games in New Zealand, in the 1980s.

LIVE ACTION ROLE-PLAYING GAME (LARP) PRAYERS ON A PORCELAIN ALTAR RUN BY JAAKKO STENROS Prayers on a Porcelain Altar is a larp about waking up hung over and feeling mean. You do not remember much from last night, but maybe the others do. Did you punch or fuck someone last night? Or, maybe both? While finding out, why not call that ugly guy next to you some bad names, and have a good laugh at his expense? Everyone here, including you, wants to become an actor. It›s fun to keep the competition on its toes. A discourse-oriented mini-larp for 8-10 players, about insulting others and maybe finding out what you have done last night. Written by J. Tuomas Harviainen. 104

WORKSHOP THINK, DESIGN, PLAY...LEARN! BY CHLOE VARELIDI In the “Think,Design,Play...Learn!” workshop we will explore how game principles can be applied to the design of learning experiences. In the first phase of the workshop we will “playstorm”; play a game to come up with ideas for games that teach us something new. “Playstorming” involves the wild and often outrageous creative process of combining concepts like “photosynthesis” with actions such as “dancing” and items like “badges”, to pitch the best ideas for a learning game. In the second phase of the workshop, we will use digital and analog prototyping materials to build some of the best ideas!

PANEL ON PRACTICING MASCULINITIES EMMA WITKOWSKI, TL TAYLOR, BETSY JAMES DISALVO & NICK TAYLOR When the subject of gender arises in the context of game research attention is often turned to women and girls, with discussions of femininity taking center stage. While a valuable part of the field, and indeed an important intervention & corrective to a historical oversight more generally, more needs to be done to broaden the conversation. The construction and performance of gender amongst boys & men within game culture, including conversations about masculinity, warrant serious attention. Similarly, fuller accounts are needed that highlight the complex intersectionality at work in gender construction; the ways sexuality, race, class, and technicity are interwoven into the specificities of any particular gendered performance. This panel uses a specific domain, e-sports, to look at multiple masculinities produced throughout various sites and practices. Drawing on several qualitative studies the panel will address a number of ways men & boys are negotiating gender and its (often very public) performance within game culture. The panel will highlight how these constructions are in dialogue with notions of athleticism, technical skill, competitive practice, and broader formulations of geek identity.

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panels and workshops PANEL ON RESEARCH, PRACTICE, AND SOCIAL CONTEXT DOUGLAS WILSON, DAN PINCHBECK & CLARA FERNÁNDEZ-VARA How might design practice be incorporated into the academic study of games? The issue of how and when design practice qualifies as “research” and whether practice itself is able to disseminate “knowledge” remains a topic of considerable discussion. Creative practice, as a possible component of serious scholarship, has enjoyed increasing visibility in a variety of disciplines. In the design research literature, for example, there is strong tradition of incorporating one’s own creative practice into research – even into research oriented towards the theoretical (Seago & Dunne, 1999; Gaver, 2008). This panel features three researcher-practitioners whose game projects have enjoyed critical acclaim beyond the walls of the academy, out there in “the real world.”

PANEL ON MODERN BOARD GAMES AND WHY GAME STUDIES SHOULD CARE JOSE ZAGAL, BEN KIRMAN, REINER KNIZIA, CHRIS BATEMAN, ANDREW SHEERIN, JAMES WALLIS, DOUGLAS WILSON & PHOENIX GAME FOUNDATION This panel brings together academics and practitioners from both sides of the digital gaming divide, in an attempt to explore what makes the modern board game interesting, and discuss the opportunities and challenges this evolving form of play presents and the impact that board games, and their study, should be having on game studies more broadly. Panelists will discuss not only the current issues in board game design and study as well as outline a broader research agenda for the game studies community to tackle.

THE IVORY TOWER THAT ISN’T: A GAME SCHOLAR RANT SESSION JOSÉ ZAGAL, SUZANNE DE CASTELl, FRANS MÄYRÄ , JESPER JUUL, MARY FLANAGAN, ESPEN AARSETH & MAGGIE GREENE This session will feature a series of candid, brutal, and ultimately enlightening rants by game scholars young and old. The invited panelists, from jaded senior researchers to hotheaded junior faculty will be given free rein to rant and vent about a topic or issue of their choice. The catch? The audience will have the opportunity respond to the rants as well as join in the discussion allowing the discussion to shift focus into identifying solutions. 106

meetings FEMINISTS AND GAMES Anyone interested in feminist initiatives in games research, design, development are welcome to attend the first meeting of a new organization, Feminists in Games, an international project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to support the design and implementation of local, feminist interventionist research projects.

GLOBAL GAME JAM The Global Game Jam (GGJ) is the world’s largest game jam event occurring annually in late January. GGJ brings together thousands of game enthusiasts participating through many local jams around the world. GGJ is a project of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). GGJ 2012 is scheduled for January 27-29, 2012.

INTERNATIONAL MA GAME-STUDIES In this expert meeting we want to offer a platform for researchers that are active in MA teaching programmes about games and play to exchange ideas and to discuss possibilities of further collaboration. Increasingly universities around the globe offer MA programmes that either specialize in game-studies and play or offer possibilities of trajectories in that direction. Some of these programmes overlap, while there are also great differences in chosen (inter) disciplinary approaches and the length of programmes. Although we witness a proliferation of such programmes –which indicates a growing demand for teaching about games and play - an international structure for exchanging best practices doesn’t yet exist, let alone that there is an international structural collaboration between MA programmes. The aim of this meeting is to come to a tentative overview of what there is ‘on offer’ in MA teaching about games as well as ascertaining what the bottle-necks and needs are to improve this field of teaching.

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