Tag: Vol. 7 No. 2 (2024)

Aaron Oldenburg

ABSTRACT:
This article discusses walking simulators and self-playing games in the context of the spiritual practice of death meditations. It explores states of mind that walking simulators may have the ability to provoke and how these can be furthered through automation. Although the focus is on potential benefits of a niche approach to game design, the article also discusses ways that this form of experimentation illuminates elements of mainstream games. The author discusses the process and design choices involved in creating their own self-playing walking simulator. Work is analysed in AAA and indie games, including Death Stranding and Proteus, as well as contemporary art, including the work of Ian Cheng, in the context of walking and death meditation. The article draws from game design theory and philosophy in exploring the arguments for specific experiential aspects of walking simulators and self-playing games. The benefits of games and other walking-focused artwork provoking meditations on death are argued from the perspectives of psychology and spirituality. It looks at the theme of death meditation from an individual as well as collective/environmental perspective.

KEY WORDS:
AI, automation, death, meditation, procedural, simulator, spirituality, walking.

DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2024-7-2.94-108

Marshall Needleman Armintor

ABSTRACT:
The last decade has seen the rise of a mini-genre of digital games colloquially known as ‘looter shooters’. Looter shooters such as the games in the Borderlands series swamp the player with guns, cash, armour and powerups to the point that an important game mechanism becomes converting the loot into liquid capital at various in-game repositories. Aside from the garish critique of late-capital overproduction, the endless fountain of ordnance and flashy goods is a ‘grind’ of its own which requires the player to perform labour to sort out the best loot. This article also formulates a theory of grind based on the mechanics of opening loot boxes. Although gacha can tempt the player to gamble on exciting mystery loot containers, by contrast, the grind is all about the predictable and the mundane, where narrative fails to appear on the horizon. The looter shooter continually upends the possibility of story, seamlessly deploying a twin grind/gacha mechanic to obviate both narrative and game, flattening it all into unlosable, yet ‘unwinnable’ work.

KEY WORDS:
accumulation, Borderlands, disaster capitalism, FPS, gacha, grind, late capital, lootboxes, looter shooter, narratology, procedurality, roguelite.

DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2024-7-2.80-93

Átila Gonçalves Barcelos da Silva Duval, Domingos Savio Coelho

ABSTRACT:
Gamification has been investigated in various fields, including education. And tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) provide a playful and yet safe space for unique learning experiences to take place. However, the literature on the use of TTRPGs is limited, notedly in behavioural science, and particularly in the Brazilian context. This study begins to explore the use of this type of gaming for the development of behavioural repertoires, especially socioemotional, in young people. The auto-efficacy of university students and individuals from the external community regarding their own social and emotional abilities was assessed before, during, and after their participation in a TTRPG campaign. A TTRPG system developed in a psychology research course was used, with mechanics designed to evoke social and emotional behaviours as challenges were faced. Comparative results before and during the campaign showed an increase in comfort to handle social situations and in confidence to handle emotional issues within the gaming environment. Comparisons before and after the campaign suggest a transfer of learning from the game experiences to their individual repertoires. Despite the promising results, the study addresses its limitations. Finally, the potential of TTRPGs as a psychoeducational tool was highlighted, and further investigations in different areas were suggested.

KEY WORDS:
psychoeducation, skills, socioemotional, tabletop role-playing games.

DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2024-7-2.52-62 

Amin Heidari

ABSTRACT:
This theoretical study explores the strategies of emoji implementation in digital games, influenced by emojis’ cute aesthetics. The effects of the Cute have been discussed from two perspectives. While some consider it as a sweet coating around the bitter pills of everyday life under capitalism, others regard it as a true mental refuge, capable of teasing, harshness and seriousness. By categorising emojis’ functions in digital games into five groups (personification, aesthetic substitution, doubling the fun, instrumentalization, and self-enhancement), it will be posited that sometimes emojis’ function is primarily rooted in their solacing power, and that at other times their role is more directly tied to reinforcing the rationale behind the capitalist market. Their role in personification (Emoji Quest), aesthetic substitution (Disney Emoji Blitz) and doubling the fun (Emoji Kitchen – DIY Emoji Mix) aligns with the comforting power of the Cute. Meanwhile, their role in instrumentalization (Emoji Clickers) and self-enhancement (Mirror Fun Emoji Face Stickers) can bolster ideological components of the capitalist market, namely greed and self-obsession.

KEY WORDS:
aesthetics, capitalism, cuteness, digital games, emoji, mobile games.

DOI:

10.34135/actaludologica.2024-7-2.38-51

Michaela Fikejzová, Martin Charvát

ABSTRACT:
The aim of the paper is to interpret the themes of dissemination of cosmic horror via the transformation of human bodies in the Bloodborne digital game. The analysis’ central operative concept is the medicalisation process introduced by Michel Foucault, when he described the birth and emergence of biopolitics at the end of the 18th century and showed how medical science, built on new paradigms, led to a specific control of the population, especially its natality and mortality. Within Bloodborne, we can see the mechanisms of medicalisation through the constitution of a powerful institution, which subsequently introduced the ritual of transfusion when experimenting with blood. However, this led to the transformation of human/mortal bodies by means of the beastly scourge, and thus to the alteration of the properties of mortal bodies, into a form of becoming-of-the-monster. As a result, medicalisation allows for the dissemination of cosmic horror and the loss of humanity. This type of analysis seeks to expand our understanding of the intersection of digital games and sociocultural phenomena at the level of representation, and their involvement in the construction of game fictional worlds.

KEY WORDS:
affect, Bloodborne, cosmic horror, inhuman, medicalisation, monster.

DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2024-7-2.26-37

Georgios Liapis, Ioannis Vlahavas

ABSTRACT:
Gaming technology’s potential extends beyond entertainment, providing a powerful platform for learning and evaluation, and for that, NPCs with static movement and conversation behaviours are often used. To make them more human-like and emulate actions, technologies such as artificial intelligence are utilized. This work proposes smart NPCs to imitate personality traits in a serious escape room setting. For their development, labelled personality profiles are normally required from human players to define their standard behaviours. As this is rather difficult, deep reinforcement learning is a feasible and effective alternative for generating the necessary dataset. Each NPC is an AI agent that simulates a specific personality according to the OCEAN 5 model. Our escape room environment also includes Raven-inspired intelligence tests and a custom communication system that allows the development of smart NPC teams. Analysis of gameplay data and metrics uncovered behavioural patterns affecting performance, stability, and task completion times. Such progress has potential across multiple digital game types for smart NPCs with specific personality, as well as for the creation of standard gameplay style profiles that can be used for players’ assessment.

KEY WORDS:
agents, deep reinforcement learning, machine learning, NPC, serious games.

DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2024-7-2.4-25