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Paul Cureton, Paul Coulton

ABSTRACT:
Urban planning has been simulated through various city-building games such as The Sumerian Game (1964), SimCity (1989), and Cities: Skylines (2015), amongst many others. Gaming technology has been utilized in 3D GIS, City Information Models (CIMs), and Urban Digital Twins (UDTs) to enhance public participation and engagement in the planning process. This article studies the overlap and ‘game-like’ qualities of these systems and presents an Urban Game Continuum. This interactive tool works in tandem with a taxonomy of city-building games and existing UDTs in order to assist with the design of future systems. A case study imported GeoData from Lancaster, UK, into a games platform. The continuum tool and case study offer new insights into opportunities for the utilisation of game design and gaming technology in urban planning and digital transformation. The article argues that the current use of gaming technology for real-world applications is one-directional and misses opportunities to include digital game design and research, such as mechanics, dynamics, flow, and public participatory world-building for future scenarios. By incorporating these elements, UDT systems could offer higher levels of citizen engagement.

KEY WORDS: 
city-buiding games, digital games, future scenarios, urban digital twins, urban models.

DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2024-7-1.18-36

Sina Torabi

ABSTRACT:
Digital games have come a long way since their origins as pure entertainment and can no longer be easily brushed aside as a frivolous pastime. The past decade or so has seen the introduction of many narrative-intensive games that take the joy of watching a great story unfold and combine it with a sense of agency in the audience, in this case, the player, thus giving us a new form of dramatic narrative. Despite the seeming appropriateness, however, attempts at conjoining Aristotle’s Poetics to digital game scholarship have been contentious. This paper aims to show that there is great merit in viewing narrative games through the lens of the terms and mechanisms discussed by Aristotle, more specifically his outlining of the ground rules for the desired form of tragedy. Additionally, a more in-depth definition of words like hamartia, catharsis, and mimesis and their application will show the appropriateness of such a method in arguing for the artistic and aesthetic worth of this new medium that is known for obfuscating the more familiar structures of other narrative forms. To support the argument, the paper relies on recent digital game discourse and uses Naughty Dog’s award-winning, and highly contentious game, The Last of Us Part II, to demonstrate how it fits the mould designed by Aristotle and why it deserves the title of tragedy.

KEY WORDS: 
Aristotle, catharsis, digital game studies, hamartia, narrative, Poetics, The Last of Us Part II, tragedy.

DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2024-7-1.4-17

Anna Hurajová, Alexej Slezák, Vladimíra Hladíková 

ABSTRACT:
This research paper aims to provide a picture of women’s participation in various positions in the field of digital games in Slovakia, such as creators of game content, women involved in eSports, the gaming industry, casual gamers as well as women working in the field of digital game education. Based on theoretical knowledge and qualitative in-depth interviews with seven women working in various positions in the gaming industry, the women’s positive and negative work experiences, and the problems and obstacles linked to their gender were identified. The research is specifically focused on the situation of women in the gaming industry in Slovakia. The results show that female gamers and streamers face negative behaviour from their fellow players and viewers which may result in an array of negative consequences. Findings also indicate that the low representation of women in some areas of the gaming industry is a consequence of prevailing gender roles in society. Furthermore, women’s participation in eSports and competitive gaming is limited due to toxic meritocracy, prevailing masculinity and sexism.

KEY WORDS:
eSports, gaming industry, gender, obstacles, stereotypes, women.

DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2023-6-2.92-115

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Mária Koscelníková

ABSTRACT:
The standard industry practice in publishing or audiovisual translation should be mentioning the translators for their work in the credits. When it comes to technical texts, for example manuals or localized texts such as websites, translators or localizers are hardly ever mentioned, especially when translation agencies provide the entire process of translation or localization. Digital games usually do contain credits listing all people working on a digital game, but such lists tend to leave out translators or localizers. The paper aims to investigate the issue of crediting digital game translators or localizers in Slovak digital games and show different crediting practices. We inspect credits in digital games made by Slovak developers and show different crediting practices in the industry. We examine the use of credits in Slovak digital games and rationalize the situation by looking at the localization of digital games, localization training at Slovak universities, and language support for Slovak digital games. The paper contains reviews of 69 selected computer and mobile device games published by 34 studios or developers.

KEY WORDS:
digital game credits, game localization, localization training, translator crediting.

DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2023-6-2.80-91

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Emmanoel Ferreira

ABSTRACT: 
Based on a dialogue with authors of pragmatist philosophy, game studies, and communication, this article intends to understand the relationship between aesthetic experience and ludic media, in particular digital games, in what this relationship distinguishes from the aesthetic experiences provided by different media, such as literature, music, film and the arts in general. To better understand this relationship, we propose the presentation and development of three epistemological axes (or keys), namely: i) aesthetics and agency, ii) aesthetics and appropriation, and iii) aesthetics and politics. Furthermore, this article intends to present and comment on selected works of digital games to illustrate the relationship between play and aesthetic experience in each of those respective axes.

KEY WORDS: 
aesthetics, agency, appropriation, digital games, epistemology, play, politics.

DOI: 
10.34135/actaludologica.2023-6-2.62-78

Naz Almaç

ABSTRACT: 
A player’s subjective interaction with a digital game is referred to as player experience. The consequence of playing a game affects a player’s thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behaviours. To measure player experience there are various qualitative and quantitative methods. Iterative game development and play testing sessions enhance and optimize game designs, to determine the impact of functional and psychosocial consequences of gaming in various cultures, a credible scale is required. To be able to measure and analyse player experience, this study aimed at adapting the ‘Player Experience Inventory’ (PXI) scale developed by V. V. Abeele1 to Turkish. The results of test-retest analysis and back-and-forth translation demonstrate that linguistic equivalence is not applicable for the Turkish variant. Only one item for functional – audio-visual appeal – and two items from psychosocial – immersion and autonomy – consequence of gaming have a proper factor structure. In this way an adaption study was carried out by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and explanatory factor analysis (EFA) with three items from the scale. The validity and reliability of the scale and relationship of audiovisual appeal of gaming on game enjoyment were tested and this article proposes a model for the functional and psychosocial consequences of gaming.

KEY WORDS: 
digital games, game user research, moderation effect, player experience, scale adaptation.

DOI: 
10.34135/actaludologica.2023-6-2.42-61

Oleg Dietkow 

ABSTRACT: 
The issue with gamer identity has been troubling researchers for the last decade. Despite trying to assign different parameters such as time spent playing, individuals themselves do not identify along such lines and the reasons why one person defines themselves as a gamer and another does not have not been clear. The goal of this paper to demonstrate, by applying B. Suits ontology of games and understanding identity in accordance with H.-G. Moeller’s concept of profilicity as a form of identity construction, the existence of two separate constructs of the gamer label. To demonstrate this, a series of interviews were conducted with two groups of people engaged in gaming: those who sought fun and those that desired winning. Both groups show clear differences in selfidentification with their identity and the observed differences explain inconsistencies and issues observed by prior studies. Playing for fun is a factor that acts against seeing oneself as a gamer while playing to win is a factor inducive towards identifying as a gamer. Those that seek winning are likely to seek validation of their identity by comparing themselves to known gamer influencers while those that prefer playing over gaming will construct their definition of a gamer in an authentic manner.

KEY WORDS: 
digital game culture, digital games, gamer identity, profilicity, second-order observations.

DOI: 
10.34135/actaludologica.2023-6-2.20-40

Esteban Vera

ABSTRACT:
This paper discusses the concept of the hero and the role of memory as an object of (re) construction of the world in the narrative of the Nintendo digital game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Through the analysis of how memory is reconstructed in Link and the characters that inhabit Hyrule, memories, historical and social memory, monuments, documents, space, and gameplay within the same digital game are also reconstructed. Testimonial memory, in turn, will help remember and construct the narrative of Link’s personal and social history by reconstructing the story. The personal experience that the player has while interacting with the game through the act of playing can build the meta- discourse between memory and narrative to understand the hero and his journey through the world. In this sense, the importance of the character Link within the game is affirmed, as he is a much more complex subject than a simple archetype within the game mechanics.

KEY WORDS: 
digital games, hero, memory, narrative, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2023-6-2.4-18