Blog of Abstracts

Miłosz Markocki, Ph.D. is an independent researcher based in Toruń, Poland, whose expertise and research concerns fantasy fiction and online gaming (especially massively multiplayer online role-playing games), as well as the related communities. He is the co-author of the monograph Gameplay, Emotions and Narrative: Independent Games Experienced, as well as several peer-reviewed journal articles about online gaming and machinima videos. He is also the author of book chapters concerning game mechanics, storytelling, and various aspects of gameworld design (including cultural framework features), as well as online player communities and related culture.

Magical and Magic Identities in Games

FROG 2021 – Talk

Magic, magical qualities and phenomena, and magical items are often featured in various types of games. They can be depicted in a plethora of different ways, and be used as narrative or world building tools in game texts. Magic in games can be discussed and analysed as a game mechanic that influences the gameplay—for example when the player’s avatar is brought back to life because resurrection magic exists in the game world—or as the main plot point around which the entire story of a game is based on—such as in the case where the player has to fulfil various tasks in the game to lift an evil curse. This paper will focus primarily on magic as an element that facilitates the creation and development of different identities in a variety of games, as well as on the different ways of depicting, defining and classifying magic and the manner in which they influence potential individual and group identities in specific games. Based on examples of tabletop role-playing games and digital games, the paper will explore and analyse the way in which games depict and define diverse types of magic influencing and shaping the identities of singular entities, as well as larger groups, communities, classes, and even entire races of beings.

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Jonas Linderoth is a professor in Education and the subject Media, Aesthetics and Narration. He is currently working part time at the university of Gothenburg, part time at the Swedish defense university.

Don’t break the circle – The ”evil” design of the ball game Four square

FROG 2021 – Talk

Co-Author:
Carl Heath (Research Institute of Sweden)
Björn Sjöblom (Swedish Defense University)
Jonas Ivarsson (University of Gothenburg)

This talk is based on a study (Linderoth, Heath, Ivarsson & Sjöblom, forthcoming) about school personnel’s experiences of the ball game Four Square. Previous analyses of Four Square in the field of childhood studies have represented antagonistic play as always resulting from the children’s choosing. The results presented here challenge this view. The recurrent conflicting understandings that occur in Four Square can instead be seen as arising from the systemic characteristics of the game’s design. In four square, the boundaries of the magic circle can be blurred in a way that turns the game into an arena for bullying and exclusion. The study suggests that some ways in which school personal tries tackle this problem enforces the indistinct boundary between the game and the wider world, i.e. the blurred magic circle which is the root to the problem.

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Hossein Mohammadzade began his academic research in game studies with his thesis for his master’s degree in English Language and Literature at the University of Guilan. He is now an independent scholar, and he studies television and videogames. His main area of interest is the relationship between ideology, narrative, and videogames.

Revisiting Schools in Magic Gameworlds: Political Magic Representing Politicized Science

FROG 2021 – Talk

Co-Author:
Atefe Najjar Mansoor (Independent Scholar)

The vocabulary that is used to describe the process of learning magic is often similar to what is used to describe science. For instance, this is seen in two major videogames when magic is “studied” and the mages usually seek more “knowledge.” There are different “schools” of witchers in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and the mages in the “College” of Winterhold use spell “books” and “libraries,” and do “experiments” to learn magic in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. However, this is not the only similarity between science and magic in these gameworlds. For example, magic is often political and mages are used by politicians. There are characters that fear magic, associate it with the divine, and assume that some individuals are born with a talent for it, almost in the same way that people have perceived science and scientists at times. Therefore, this study argues that the resemblance between the two concepts hints at a symbolic meaning. The political magic in these gameworlds could represent politicized science in the physical world, and associating magic with science could have political implications. It also argues that studying how characters perceive or interact with magic in these videogames could lead to understanding how people engage with science in modern societies, how they understand it, mystify it, possibly even fear it or distort it into a modern religion, and how they believe and spread misinformation. Moreover, doing so could also help understand the relationship between ideology and science, and challenge the notion of apolitical science.

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Gabrielle Trépanier-Jobin is a Professor in Game Studies at the School of Media of Université du Québec à Montréal and the co-director of Homo Ludens research group on gaming practices and online communication. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT Comparative Media Studies | Writting. She is currently conducting research on player immersion as well as on diversity and inclusion in the gaming industry.

The Survival of Huizinga’s “Magic Circle”

FROG 2021 – Talk

Many game scholars rejected the idea of a spatiotemporal division between games and daily life suggested by Huizinga’s (1938) “magic circle” metaphor. It has been argued, for instance, that this separation ignores how everyday rules, norms and values apply in game environments and compete with rules that are specific to a game, a player community or a gaming context; that relationships between players can be as genuine as face-to-face relationships; that the avatar and the player identities are intertwined, etc. (Lehdonvirta, 2010; Consalvo, 2010). For all these reasons, several game scholars suggested replacing the expression “magic circle” with more accurate metaphors. Lehdonvirta (2010) proposes Strauss’ concept of “social world.” Consalvo (2010), for her part, suggests Turner’s concept of “liminal space” and Goffman’s concepts of “frames” and “modes.” Apter (in Salen and Zimmerman, 2003) talks about a “protective [psychological] frame” and Juul (2008) proposes the puzzle metaphor. Despite all these criticisms and suggestions, the concept of “magic circle” has survived and remained widely discussed in game studies. It has kept inspiring game scolars such as Arsenault and Perron (2009) with their concept of “magic cycle.” In our talk, we will try to understand why an expression that was used only once by Huizinga in his seminal book Homo Ludens has left such a mark on people’s minds. To do so, we will turn to the French philosopher Henriot (1989) who perceives play as a subjective experience that involves a playful attitude characterized by three moments. The first moment implies a “magical transmutation” of the objects which take a new significance. The second moment involves “lucidity” as the player knows that it is a game and not a hallucination. The third moment entails an “illusion”; the player allows herself to be enchanted without losing contact with reality (Perron, 2013). This conception of the player’s attitude as similar to the attitude one adopts in front of a magician might help us to understand why the “magic circle” metaphor sticks around despite the outdated idea it initially conveyed.

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Frank Pourvoyeur is an independent game developer and artist. His research interest is in games that are beneficial for the individual consciousness of players and the positive aspects of cooperative experiences. His research aims to make gaming more enjoyable while also allowing for deeper revelations about one’s personal awareness. He graduated from the Danube University in Krems in 2020 with a degree in game studies.

Intention based random number generator in games

FROG 2021 – Talk

Traditionally, magic is used to change the probability of events occurring. Practicing magicians try to make favorable events happen more likely, while avoiding undesirable events from occurring. Chance also plays an important role in designing events in games. Not only to select the occurrence of an event, but also to choose rewards. Random rewards have been shown to be meaningful and to trigger different emotions in players than when a reward is predictably earned. The likelihood of occurring is sometimes further modified by buffs or nerfs. This work will investigate different possibilities of random number generator implementations to check which adaptations to a strict random number generator provide the best game experience. The concept of a random number generator should not be abandoned, but it is suggested to be adapted to the intentions of players in order to provide better random results in the context of a game experience. Therefore the paper deals with the concept of an intention based random number generator, where the game attentively observes the actions of players to derive intentions that in turn favor the occurrence of desired events. In the following, possibilities are discussed how rituals can be used to work towards the occurrence of a desired random event in order to simultaneously preserve the principle of a stroke of luck but also to prevent unwanted grind in the process.

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Gaming historian and freelance journalist Damiano Gerli was born with a faithful Commodore 64 by his side, where his love for obscure titles first developed. He has been writing a history about the Italian gaming industry, researching forgotten software houses to document their stories, before it’s too late. Damiano has been writing about video games for 25+ years, with no plans to stop in the future.

Xyzzy – the magic word that changed everything

FROG 2021 – Talk

Xyzzy was the first magic “spell” ever used in gaming, first appearing in 1976′ Colossal Cave Adventure (the first adventure game in history) as the “magic word”. The word would then later appear countless times, from other games to even applications like Gmail. Its role, in time, has changed, slowly evolving into something that works in a similar level to the number “42” in humorous sci-fi novels. A passkey of sorts, to be used to evoke a reaction from an Interactive fiction title, or even a simple easter egg. Later, considering how Colossal Cave Adventure shaped the adventure genre, magic would always remain an essential part of a genre which would refuse – time and time again – to be chained against the walls of reality. Even the very first graphical adventure game, Mystery House in 1980, would award the player the title of “guru wizard”, despite it being a murdery mystery. The talk would also focuse among other titles, on how magic – and especially magic users – were described and used in early adventure classics like Sierra’s famous King’s Quest or Quest for Glory series. Xyzzy and its slightly magical flavour would prove to be an essential ingredient for the genre, inspiring countless of other adventure games, even far removed characters like Simon the Sorcerer or the Voodoo Priestess in the Monkey Island series.

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I am a design and technology generalist — a multidisciplinary, creative technologist, product designer, strategist, experience & interaction designer, mixed reality developer and overall digital age enthusiast, Currently I am designing virtual worlds and virtual experiences.

Killem all. A unique VR experience

FROG 2021 – Talk

Co-Authors:
Dina Levy
Erez Mor

…from early days video games are obsessed with death. In many games we kill and in many games, we die. Why does death take such a major role in games, and is it actually death? In his Magic Circle Huizinga introduced games as suspension of reality. As such games are suitable candidates for people to experiment with the boundaries of morality, mortality, and death. In games, you are allowed to go beyond, play with fire, touch the sublime, hurt, destroy and kill anything you want, But this idea also has a small catch. Since the game sphere is a safe haven, with no real consequences or implications, dealing with death and killing loses its essence – for “it is only a game”. Game designers put a lot of effort into their games to create believable convincing life-like death-like experiences, (some are portrayed in this essay), but the suspension of disbelief always ends up heating the “Game Over, Please start again”, anticlimax. So as gamers we strive to play with death and games do offer the promise, but on the same hand also deny us the “true” essential experience. But what happens when the blood-gushing festive yet impotent magic circle is introduced with the “ultimate empathy machine” – the VR? Will the always failing in-game death experiences manage to somehow manifest differently as an embodied virtual experience? Will killing be different when it is your (virtual) hands doing the killing? Will dying feel different when it is your head that is decapitated? This essay will try to examine these questions through a unique VR experience – where you get to Killem all.

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Alesha Serada is a PhD student and a researcher at the University of Vaasa, Finland. Their dissertation, supported by the Nissi Foundation, discusses construction of value in games and art on blockchain. Inspired by their Belarusian origin, their research interests revolve around exploitation, violence, horror, deception and other banal and non-banal evils in visual media.

Each Monster Has Its Own Voice: Creativity, Alienation and My Singing Monsters

FROG 2021 – Talk

Music has been connected to magic and spirituality, most likely, since its beginning in human society (Morley 2013). The magical powers of music are the main theme in many so-called music video games that mimic and gamify various activities related to composing and performing music (Austin 2016). The game that I analyze here is a mobile and desktop casual game called My Singing Monsters (Big Blue Bubble, 2012). It was developed in Canada in 2012 at an early stage of explosive growth of free-to-play games in the West and is still enjoyed by millions in 2021. The game offers a fun and user friendly music editor, as well as the possibility to share one’s compositions with other players – a unique feature that is adored by the core player base. However, the mechanics of the game that takes most of the player’s time is removed from the process of making music. I suggest that, to keep up with the free-to-play business logic, the game playfully introduces techniques of quantification and reification (Lukacs, 1972) of labour, which results in alienation from the results of one’s potentially creative input. Does the attention economy of this game kill the magic of its creativity? I conclude that the liberating potential of the game can still be found in its monstrosity, which puts it apart from the typical, and potentially exploitative aesthetic of ‘cuteness’ (Page, 2016) in free-to-play games. Selected references Austin, M. (2016). Music Video Games: Performance, Politics, and Play. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. Lukacs, G. (1972). History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. MIT Press. Morley, I. (2013). The Prehistory of Music: Human Evolution, Archaeology, and the Origins of Musicality. OUP Oxford. My Singing Monsters: Dawn of Fire. (2015). Big Blue Bubble. Page, A. (2016). “This Baby Sloth Will Inspire You to Keep Going”: Capital, Labor, and the Affective Power of Cute Animal Videos. In The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness (pp. 75–94). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315658520-9

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Dr Mark R Johnson is a Lecturer in Digital Cultures in the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on live streaming and Twitch.tv, esports, game consumption and production, and gamification and gamblification. He has published in journals including “Information, Communication and Society”, “New Media and Society”, “Games and Culture”, and “Convergence”. Outside academia he is also an independent game designer best known for the roguelike “Ultima Ratio Regum”, a regular games blogger, podcaster, and commentator in newspapers, television, and on the radio.

Procedural Content Generation and Game World Immersion

FROG 2021 – Talk

Procedural content generation (PCG) is a method for game design that generates distinctive or even unique game elements on each new playthrough. It has become well-known through highly successful “indie” games such as “No Man’s Sky”, “Dwarf Fortress”, “FTL”, “The Binding of Isaac” and “Slay the Spire”, as well as having smaller roles in blockbuster games including 2018’s “God of War”, “Bloodborne”, and “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim”. However, it has generally been limited to the design of physical spaces and the placement of important game elements (e.g. enemies, items, NPCs, etc) within those worlds. In “Ultima Ratio Regum”, a work I have been building incrementally for the past ten years, the game instead procedurally generates almost everything, from political beliefs of civilizations to the appearance of individual books within the game world, often with billions of possible permutations. One of the core design goals here has been to mimic reality – especially in a roughly ~1700s fictional setting, largely before the precise mass-production of products – and give everything in the game a sense of uniqueness and distinctiveness. Drawing on examples from the game and examining practices and the history of procedural content generation more broadly, the talk will explore how PCG techniques can be used to create a deep sense of immersion in a game world, a sense that the game world is “lived in” beyond the actions of the player, and the – accurate! – perception that a player’s world is genuinely unique, and will never be produced or seen again. I will conclude with a number of design suggestions for game makers looking to capture this sort of “magic”, and a number of academic research directions in this area which merit further exploration.

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Clio Em (Clio Montrey) is a composer, writer/game maker, opera singer and multi-instrumentalist who weaves imaginary worlds out of words and sound. She has received numerous awards for her creative work, including several competitive composition grants from the Austrian Government. Clio sings opera at Theater an der Wien in Vienna, Austria with the award-winning Arnold Schoenberg Chor in addition to her work as a contemporary soloist. She was on the research team of Barbara Lüneburg’s participatory art project TransCoding/What if?, based at the Kunstuni Graz, and is an alumna of McGill University, MUK, and MDW.

Building Fantasy Worlds Through Music

FROG 2021 – Talk

Music and video games are symbiotic creatures. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the fantasy genre, with its magic-infused themes and tropes. Worldbuilding – the creation of imaginary worlds – is often perceived as a visual and narrative undertaking, but it can be accomplished through various other, complementary means – especially music. Whether in-world melodies performed by characters like in Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda titles, or atmospheric soundscapes that provide a backdrop for the game’s adventure such as the stunning soundtracks of the Final Fantasy series, music renders gameplay more immersive and fosters a sense of escape from everyday life. Within the fantasy genre it can even function as a narrative or descriptive device, acting as aural representation of literal magical elements. In this talk I introduce the concept of fantasy worldbuilding through music and explain key concepts of dramatic development through music, such as the use of primary and secondary themes, leitmotifs, diegetic music, soundscapes, sound design and foley, and so forth. I the connect these concept back to musical dramaturgy in genres such as opera and other forms of music theatre, in order to create parallels to classical formats where worldbuilding through sound was first exploited. To close the talk, I perform a short original composition built specifically to illustrate each concept discussed.

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