Analog Game Studies, volume 1

Analog game studies vol 1Your theoretical injection of the day: ETC Press has announced the first collected volume of Analog Game Studies, edited by Aaron Trammell, Evan Torner and Emma Leigh Waldron.

Contents:

Foreword
Reinventing Analog Game Studies: Introductory Manifesto

ANALYSIS
“Fun in a Different Way”: Rhythms of Engagement and Non-Immersive Play Agendas – Nick Mizer

Strategies for Publishing Transformative Board Games – Will Emigh

Misogyny and the Female Body in Dungeons & Dragons – Aaron Trammell

The Playing Card Platform – Nathan Altice

Orientalism and Abstraction in Eurogames – Will Robinson

DOCUMENTATION
From Where Do Dungeons Come? – Aaron Trammell

Larp-as-Performance-as-Research – Emma Leigh Waldron

Sex and Play-Doh: Exploring Women’s Sexuality Through Larp – Katherine Castiello Jones

O Jogo do Bicho: Pushing the Boundaries of Larp in Brazil – Luiz Falcão

A Nighttime Tale of Xiros – Adam Lazaroff

Visual Design as Metaphor: The Evolution of a Character Sheet – Jason Morningstar

EXPERIMENTATION AND DESIGN
Uncertainty in Analog Role-Playing Games – Evan Torner

Post-Larp Depression – Sarah Lynne Bowman and Evan Torner

Rules for Writing Rules: How Instructional Design Impacts Good Game Design – Ibrahim Yucel

Storium’s Analog Heritage – Lillian Cohen-Moore

Regarding Board Game Errata – Jan Švelch

The Curse of Writing Autobiographical Games – Lizzie Stark

Kinephanos journal: Exploring the Frontiers of Digital Gaming

For your theoretical perusal, a new issue of the Kinephanos journal:

Exploring the Frontiers of Digital Gaming: Traditional Games, Expressive Games, Pervasive Games

Special Issue, April 2016 / Numéro spécial, avril 2016
Edited by / Dirigé par Sébastien Genvo & Carl Therrien

Introduction: Exploring the Frontiers of Digital Gaming: 
Traditional Games, Expressive Games, Pervasive Games
SÉBASTIEN GENVO & CARL THERRIEN
Université de Lorraine & Université de Montréal
English | Français

Century of Play: 18th Century Precursors of Gamification
MATTHIAS FUCHS
Leuphana Univesity

Football Manager: Mutual Shaping between Game, Sport, and Community
ALEXANDRE HOCQUET
Université de Lorraine & CNRS

Welcome to the Dollhouse.
Constructing Bodies in Crytek’s Crysis and Mattel’s Kiddle Dolls.

CARL THERRIEN & JOYCE GOGGIN
Université de Montréal / Universiteit van Amsterdam

Replaying the Lost Battles:
the Experience of Failure in Polish History-Themed Board Games

PIOTR STERCZEWSKI
Jagiellonian University in Kraków

Defining and Designing Expressive Games: The Case of Keys of a Gamespace
SÉBASTIEN GENVO
Université de Lorraine

Differentiating Serious, Persuasive, and Expressive Games
GABRIELLE TRÉPANIER-JOBIN
Université du Québec à Montréal

Bridging The Gap Between Game Designers and Cultural Institutions: A Typology to Analyse and Classify Cultural Pervasive Games
DIANE DUFORT, FEDERICO TAJARIOL, IOAN ROXIN
Université de Franche-Comté

World of Warcraft Dramaturgical Approach: A Drama that Plays with its own Limits
VICTOR CAYRES & ADOLFO DURAN
CAPES Foundation, Ministry of Education of Brazil / Federal University of Bahia

American Journal of Play 8.2

Here is American Journal of Play Volume 8, Number 2Winter 2016.

Though technically about the titular play, this journal is becoming increasingly intertwined with game studies.

Articles

ToDIGRA Journal vol 2, No 2 out

For your theoretical pleasure, here is ToDIGRA (Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association) Vol 2, No 2.

 

Loading journal 9/14: Game Studies In Media Res

For your very real, theoretical pleasure:

Special Issue: Game Studies In Media Res

A Special Issue of Loading brought to you by University of Waterloo guest editors, Gerald Voorhees, Michael Hancock and Steve Wilcox.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Editorial — Game Studies In Media Res: Beginning From The Middle-State PDF
Michael Hancock, Steve Wilcox
Editorial introduction to this special guest-edited issue of Loading.

Articles

The Tyranny of Realism: Historical accuracy and politics of representation in Assassin’s Creed III PDF
Adrienne Shaw
Like other games in its series, Assassin’s Creed III (AC3) is heavily invested in a wellresearched, nuanced representation of historical…
Disability, Neurological Diversity, and Inclusive Play: An Examination of the Social and Political Aspects of the Relationship between Disability and Games PDF
Sarah Gibbons
This article explores existing connections between disability studies and game studies, and suggests how the two fields might greater inform each…
Renegade Sex: Compulsory Sexuality and Charmed Magic Circles in the Mass Effect series PDF
Meghan Blythe Adams
This article examines portrayals of sexuality in video games, particularly in terms of the increasing inclusion of queer and non-normative…
Cyborg Games: Videogame Blasphemy and Disorientation PDF
Elise Vist
This paper describes the genre of “cyborg games,” using examples of independent videogames (such as Gone Home) to illustrate the genre, as well…
Going Beyond the Game: Development of Gamer Identities Within Societal Discourse and Virtual Spaces PDF
Jan Grooten, Rachel Kowert
What is a ‘gamer’? And what does it mean to be a gamer today? This paper will address these questions through a theoretical discussion of the…
The Game FAVR: A Framework for the Analysis of Visual Representation in Video Games PDF
Dominic Arsenault, Pierre-Marc Côté, Audrey Larochelle
This paper lays out a unified framework of the ergodic animage, the rule-based and interactiondriven part of visual representation in video games….

New issue of Analog Game Studies

For your analog interests, here is Volume II, Issue VII of Analog Game studies.

Manipulating Environments in American Freeform – Jason Cox

Playing With Portals: Rethinking Urban Play With Ingress – Kyle Moore

The Eurogame of Heterotopia – Devin Wilson

The First Nations of Catan: Practices in Critical Modification – Greg Loring-Albright

In this final issue of the year, we are exploring material components of analog gameplay. The materiality of games is important to consider as it lends insight into the ways that games can be located within the clear parameters of space and time—often despite the best efforts of players and designers to otherwise construe them as timeless or nostalgic media. Additionally, materialities help to remind us of the limitations of play. Our bodies must navigate black-box theater rooms and city spaces, as manipulate pawns, chits, meeples, cards and other trappings of board games. These deliberate, sometimes awkward, yet often tacit negotiations help to remind us of the always-present stakes of materiality.

Jason Cox’s essay “Manipulating Environments in American Freeform” offers a starting point for those curious about the ways in which emerging practices of larp design offer more to players than just narrative—they tell stories about spaces as well, and attend to how environments affect our bodies. This is also what is at stake in Kyle Moore’s essay, “Playing With Portals: Rethinking Urban Play with Ingress,” a theoretical sketch of the ways that the game, formerly a Google product, compels players to experience urban space in new and often challenging ways. Finally, the last two essays in this issue, Devin Wilson’s “The Eurogame as Heterotopia,” and Greg Loring-Albright’s “The First Nations of Catan: Practices in Critical Modification”—both in dialogue with last year’s AGS essay by Will Robinson—take up critiques of the abstracted representations characteristic of Eurogames. Wilson’s piece argues for a new and less oppositional reading of abstract game materials, positioning them as a space of polysemic and potentially revolutionary interpretation. In contrast, Loring-Albright moves forward from the problematic of abstraction established by Robinson by offering a new critical ruleset for Catan that accounts for the erasure of indigenous peoples in the game’s narrative. And, in the spirit of materiality: we’ve included the rules as a bonus to our readers.

Thank you, readers, for an excellent year, and keep an eye out in the coming months for more exciting content!

-The Editors
November 9, 2015

 

Futures: Journal of Virtual Worlds Research issue 8, 2

For your theory itchJournal of Virtual Worlds Research issue 8, 2.

This issue presents six papers each reflecting on one angle to the future of virtual worlds: Four concrete views relating to: bots, head mounted displays (HMD), neuroscience and meditation, and eSports; as well as two theoretical views relating to the focus of virtual worlds research, and looking at virtual worlds as a mediator between “technology trends” and the “digital transformation of society and business.”

From the point of view of 2015: the virtual is becoming the real and the real is becoming the virtual.

Table of Contents

Editor In-Chief Corner

Toward the Futures of Real AND Virtual Worlds PDF
Yesha Y. Sivan

Essays

Three Real Futures for Virtual Worlds PDF
Tom Boellstorff
Is a Technological Singularity Near Also for Bots in MMOGs? PDF
Stefano De Paoli
Conceptualizing Factors of Adoption for Head Mounted Displays: Toward an Integrated Multi-Perspective Framework PDF
Ibrahim Halil Yucel, Robert Anthony Edgell
Being There: Implications of Neuroscience and Meditation for Self-Presence in Virtual Worlds PDF
Carrie Heeter, Marcel Allbritton
The eSports Trojan Horse: Twitch and Streaming Futures PDF
Benjamin Burroughs, Paul Rama
The Metaverse as Mediator between Technology, Trends, and the Digital Transformation of Society and Business PDF
Sven-Volker Rehm, Lakshmi Goel, Mattia Crespi