Search results for "digital games"

Becoming a Gamer: Performative Construction of Gendered Gamer Identities

2021

This article examines how women construct their gameplay identities in relation to the hegemonic “gamer” discourse. The article is based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with women who occupy central roles in the Finnish gaming industry. We deploy Judith Butler’s theorization of performative identity construction to examine how the women negotiate their identity in relation to the hegemonic gamer discourse, focusing on how they both embrace and resist the hegemonic, masculine constructions of gameplay. The study shows the dynamics surrounding the gamer identity. While women submit to the hegemonic gamer discourse, reproducing the masculine gamer notions to gain recognition as a viabl…

Establishing Video Game Genres Using Data-Driven Modeling and Product Databases

2015

Establishing genres is the first step toward analyzing games and how the genre landscape evolves over the years. We use data-driven modeling that distils genres from textual descriptions of a large collection of games. We analyze the evolution of game genres from 1979 till 2010. Our results indicate that until 1990, there have been many genres competing for dominance, but thereafter sport-racing, strategy, and action have become the most prevalent genres. Moreover, we find that games vary to a great extent as to whether they belong mostly to one genre or to a combination of several genres. We also compare the results of our data-driven model with two product databases, Metacritic and Mobyga…

Playing horror : narrative and genre in Valve's Left 4 Dead Series

2013

The place of story and narrative in digital games has been a hotly contested topic within the field of Game Studies during the past two decades. Beyond the question of whether games can or should be used for telling stories, research interest has focused on the nature of game narratives and their distinct qualities in comparison to other expressive media, like literature and film. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to this debate by examining the elements involved in storytelling not in digital games overall, but in one particular series, namely Valve Software‘s Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. The use of this in-depth case study allows an examination of how various different elements co…

Injustice in the Ruins and a Disordered Post-Apocalypse: Gothic Ideology in the Digital Game World of Fallout 3

2020

The Gothic is an influential source for storytelling in a wide range of digital games. Thus far, interpreting it in games and how they are informed by Gothic ideology has been little studied. This study seeks to address this gap in research by investigating these issues in the narrative of the action role-playing game, Fallout 3. More specifically, through a close reading of the game narrative and by drawing on theories of the Gothic, ideological aspects of the Gothic are analyzed in detail with specific reference to non-player characters and their actions and dialogue along with elements of the mise-en-scéne, style, and simulation. Results show how classic Gothic ideology is reproduced in …

Utilizing games in the co-production of mental health services

2020

This study analyses the application of a co-production approach in utilizing digital games and game-related methods in mental health services. The goal is to offer a real-world experiment on co-production, focusing on mental health service users, active gamers and mental health practitioners who worked together in equal ways and valued each other’s unique contributions during the experiment. The implications of a co-production approach for applying digital games in the field of mental healthcare are somewhat limited and under-explored. In this case study, seven workshop sessions were held involving service users, gamers and professionals. Participants were interviewed concerning their exper…

När barnet blir expert: Förklaringar av ord och procedurer i det digitala spelet Growtopia

2019

The ability to explain word meanings is central to a child’s language development and socialisation into different domains of language use. In previous research explanations have been shown to be linked to cognitive and linguistic development as well as academic language and discursive skills. This paper analyses what kinds of linguistic and discursive competences are put to use in explanation activities in interactions between an 8-year-old bilingual child (Albin) and his mother around a digital game. The data comes from a larger data set of video-recordings and field observation of children’s interactions around games. The analysis focuses on explanation sequences in which the child expli…

Psychometric properties of the Internet Gaming Disorder Test (IGDT-10) and problematic gaming behavior among Finnish vocational school students.

2019

This study was conducted to investigate the psychometric properties of the Finnish version of the Internet Gaming Disorder Test (IGDT-10), identify the proportion displaying problematic gaming behavior (PGB) among Finnish vocational school students, and characterize the relationships between sociodemographic factors and gaming characteristics predicting PGB in this population. This cross-sectional study involving 773 students (mean age 17.5 years). Socio-demographic and gaming behavior characteristics were established using a web-based survey. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed that the IGDT-10 test has appropriate psychometric properties. The proportion of students exhibiting PGB …

Morality in Let’s Play narrations : Moral evaluations of Gothic monsters in gameplay videos of Fallout 3

2018

Performative Let’s Play gaming videos are a part of contemporary Internet culture through which morality becomes shared. Many digital games draw on Gothic traditions to feature human-like monsters who demand morally complex interpretations from players. This study examines what kinds of moral evaluations players form of ambiguous Gothic monsters in Let’s Play videos of the action role-playing game Fallout 3. With a discourse analysis of transcribed speech obtained from 20 Let’s Play series on YouTube, it argues that the moral evaluations that players actively produce impact significantly on the play experience, that players take diverse moral stances whose (in)determinacy varies based on w…

Real-time hermeneutics : meaning-making in ludonarrative digital games

2015

Introduction: Exploring Nordic Game Research

2014

Nordic DiGRA 2012 Conference was held at the University of Tampere on June 6-8, 2012. In this Special Issue of the Transactions of DiGRA journal, we present a selection of the best papers of that conference.