Tag: Vol. 7 No. 1 (2024)

Daniela De Angeli

ABSTRACT:
Escape rooms are increasingly popular all around the world. Due to their popularity, we are also seeing more variations in concept, form, and aim. For example, nowadays we can engage with physical, digital or mixed escape rooms. Escape rooms are also developed for a range of purposes beyond entertainment, including to broadcast a message, train, and/or exchange data. However, past research on escape rooms has focused mostly on analysing physical versions or on investigating if and how escape rooms can educate players. This paper aims to overcome these gaps by exploring how escape rooms (digital, physical or mixed) can be designed for a variety of purposes beyond entertainment. Hence, this paper offers two main contributions: a definition of escape rooms with a purpose and a framework that can be used to both design and analyse escape rooms with a purpose. The framework is initially implemented based on a literature review in the fields of serious games, escape rooms and puzzle design. Its efficacy is then tested through the analysis of three escape rooms with a purpose. Following this analysis, the framework is finalised to include the following key design elements: concept/idea; stakeholders (target players and others); purpose; goal/winning condition; equipment; theme; narrative (puzzle organisation and storytelling methods); puzzle design; and evaluation.

KEY WORDS: 
design, education, escape room, game, location, methodology, narrative, serious games.

DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2024-7-1.108-134

Maximos S. Theodoropoulos

ABSTRACT:
Literature on the digital games industry and gaming history has for the most part focused on the global production centres of North America, Western Europe, Japan, and, lately, China. However, in recent years, a call to research the diverse and less dominant national contexts within which digital games are produced has been addressed. In this article, we shed light on early digital game development in Greece, covering the years between 1982 and 2002. This particular region has been highly neglected by both domestic and international researchers. We approach Greek digital game development from both historical and cultural perspectives, through an investigation of how local game developers interact with a wide range of contextual facets in a complex interrelation between global and national conditions. This article argues that, in order to highlight the characteristics of early national game production cultures and digital games design, one must examine them as well under the broader cultural production ecosystem, along with the economic and institutional contexts and transformations within which digital game production takes shape.

KEY WORDS: 
cultural industries, digital games, digital games history, game design, Greece.

DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2024-7-1.86-106

Miroslav Macák

ABSTRACT:
Over recent decades, digital games have been trying to find new ways to monetize their player base. The games have evolved from purely premium titles sold as a product, to repeatedly monetized free-to-play games as a service that allow players to spend limitless amount on various microtransactions. However, there are still some oddities present on the gaming market. The case study analyses the digital game Pokémon TCG Live, which does not have any form of direct monetization. The study points out how it corresponds to both the overarching Pokémon franchise, as well as the digital games industry. Its main goal is to identify its core mechanics that are traditionally connected with monetization practices, and find its position on the market in relation to other digital trading card games. Another point of interest for our study is the high level of interconnection between the printed and digital versions of the Pokémon Trading Card Game and how it impacts the online client.

KEY WORDS: 
free-to-play, media mix, monetization, Pokémon, Pokémon TCG Live, trading card games.

DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2024-7-1.74-85

Dinko Jukić

ABSTRACT:
The study research phenomenon of trophies in digital games. It starts from the analysis of the trophy hunter and trophy community constructs. The phenomenon of collecting trophies in digital games and its impact on gamers, but also on the gaming experience, is researched. The trophy concept is a paradox because it simultaneously creates gamers who choose games according to the difficulty of the trophy, and play games they do not like because of the easiness of the trophy. The aim of the paper is to investigate, present and analyse the phenomenon of trophies in digital games from cultural, anthropological, and marketing aspects. Collecting trophies was observed in the context of the phenomenon of narcissistic culture according to Lasch’s theory. Also, the study draws a parallel between the phenomenon of trophies as a reward for gamers, but also the development of niche marketing. Trophy hunters represent a more detailed segmentation of consumers who we understand as brand ambassadors for digital games. Also, trophy hunters encourage each other to collect trophies and thus shape gamers. To obtain a precise insight into the phenomenon of trophies and trophy subculture, the method of virtual ethnography was used.

KEY WORDS: 
consumer behaviour, digital game, narcissism, referent group, trophy.

DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2024-7-1.50-72

Adeline Loh

ABSTRACT:
This paper takes Yakuza 0, a retrospective prequel and standalone entry to the Yakuza digital game franchise from Japan, as a case study for disabled feminine bodies vis-à-vis their male counterparts in game narratives. Of note is Makimura Makoto, a downtrodden Chinese-Japanese woman experiencing post-traumatic psychogenic blindness, who serves as the unwitting kingpin of the yakuza’s schemes. This paper posits that a reading of the game’s narrative (as supplemented by its gameplay mechanics) through the critical lens of disability studies offers a more affective and recuperative understanding of the game’s treatment of its marginalised characters. This paper first seeks to intervene in the game’s embodied and gendered power dynamics by attending to the body politics of its fictitious criminal underworld. Correspondingly, this paper troubles the game’s presentation of disability as a gendered performance, wherein feminine bodies disproportionately experience the material consequences and trauma of their disabilities, framed as pivotal narrative movements that spur the game’s male protagonists forward. Ultimately, this paper works towards a more empathetic reading of Yakuza 0 as a roadmap for how the franchise and digital games at large can address disability as a compounding, ever-evolving relational condition in addition to its physical and/or mental dimensions.

KEY WORDS: 
body politics, digital games, disability studies, game studies, gender, narrative, Yakuza 0.

DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2024-7-1.38-49

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