Author: FROG

Sebastian Felzmann, M.A., studied German Literature at the KIT. Together with Adam Rafinski and Jens M. Stober he initiated the HfG GameLab. Sebastian has written a book and several scientific papers about media nostalgia and retro gaming and even held various lectures about that subject. As a book producer he supported Steffen P. Walz and Sebastian Deterding in the publication of “The Gameful World”, a 690-pages-thick handbook about Gamification.

Cologne Game Lab // TH Köln

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Aptum, Agency & Aggressions – Player Reactions to „That Dragon Cancer“

Panel talk, FROG main conference | Saturday, 14^th October, 16:30 – 17:00

„That’s a GAME?“ – „That is NO game!“ Core gamers are criticizing mainly the gameplay and the narrative mediation of „That Dragon Cancer“ – with harsh words and barely hold back aggression. My talk will have a closer look  into the narrative structure of „That Dragon Cancer“, the gameplay mechanics, its abuse of agency and its interconnection with the player experiences gained in prior games. For examining those I’ll use to concept of “scripts” as structured objects representing standardized generalized episodes as a tool to explain the profound unease that the players experienced.

Rudolf Inderst (*1978) is a third-year PhD student of media studies at the University of Passau and enjoys video games since 1986. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporay and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds a PhD in American cultural studies. He is interested in game studies, political theory and the history of ideas.

Follow him on Twitter: @benflavor

University of Passau

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Wolfenstein: The New Order as a player-centric continuation of dystopian narrative traditions

Panel talk, FROG main conference | Saturday, 14^th October, 14:15 – 14:45

The developers and publishers of Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014) skillfully use marketing campaigning, in-game as well as cut scene storytelling, and game mechanics to set up a continuation of dystopian narrative traditions established in the 20th century. Media following these patterns focus upon the politics of anti-individualization and the transformation of the political human entity into a agenda-less spectator and heeler.

Rita Santoyo Venegas studied Philosophy at the UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Her main research interests are ethics, epistemology, philosophy of technology, and game studies. She is currently a PhD candidate at the UNAM and is working on a dissertation about computer games as cognitive artifacts and the foundations of an epistemology based on critical digital game play and analysis.

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

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The Intellectual Power of Players: Scientific Collaboration through Digital Play

Panel talk, FROG main conference | Sunday, 15^th October, 17:30 – 18:00

In this paper, I examine the notion of collaboration in player communities, for certain games can promote the creation of epistemological communities that work together to create new knowledge. I focus on the fundamental role players have while they play certain computer games that have been specifically designed to address scientific problems, such as Foldit, Play to Cure: Genes in Space, EteRNA, and Eyewire. These games are an outstanding example of the combination of scientific research and digital play as an epistemological experience, as players contribute with innovative solutions to scientific questions, and researchers analyze their contributions to incorporate them in ongoing research.

A PhD candidate at the Department of Cultural Studies at Nicolaus Copernicus University Faculty of Languages. His main interests are: online games, MMORPGs, players online communities, Internet culture and various cultural mechanisms occurring in the online world of the Internet.

The Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń

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Game within a game? – the problem of total conversion mods

Panel talk, FROG main conference | Sunday, 15^th October, 16:45 – 17:15

The distinction between indie games and mainstream game mods is a seemingly easy one—one is fully developed and published game, and the other is, in most cases, a set of changes to an already created game. But what about total conversion mods (TC)? Despite the changes in some aspects or elements of the game—and the modders’ choices concerning which inscribed elements to leave and which to replace, some of the original elements and mechanics always remain. The goal of my presentation is to tackle the question of the novelty of TCs and provide arguments for an answer.