Author: Natalie Denk

Ivo has a degree in architecture from TU Wien and is currently a student of Game Studies at University of Krems. He works as a Serious Game Designer for an international Railway Logistics Company and has successfully crowdfunded and published the board game www.world-control.net

Gambling for Freedom

FROG 2022 – Talk

Since the arrival of European settlers to the new world, First nation Americans have been subject to brutal allocation, separation and discrimination. As Indian reservations, recognized tribes have been granted partial sovereignty, not in the sense that they can raise their own army, but being able to enforce their own jurisdiction, that may differ from the state’s laws they are geographically located in. Through the means of liberal gaming and gambling laws, many tribes have found ways towards economic self-sufficiency in order to invest in their communities. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) of 1988 marked the most significant legal breakthrough for fiscal independence of many tribes within the United States.

Generating more revenue than the iconic American gambling-sanctuaries of Las Vegas and Atlantic City combined, gaming in reservations attracts vast amounts of domestic tourists, since the taboo of gambling persists in most parts of the United States and it’s puritan roots. Many native American tribes however have a big cultural heritage in games and also concerning luck, thus forming a core legal argument for it’s sovereign self-determination. In contrast, many first nations of Canada are denied their own laws concerning gaming and gambling, when no proof of a tribe’s cultural heritage directly linked to gaming can be provided.
This struggle for empowerment through the means of gaming is historically truly unique, worth revisiting and going into detail.

Nils Bühler is a media culture historian, currently researching the handling of mechanical, electrical and digital games by German media control institutions using a discourse analysis approach for his doctoral thesis at the University of Cologne. Other research interests comprise media control, game studies, and political philosophy. Bühler studied Media Cultural Studies, and English Studies. For his bachelor’s thesis, he examined representations of space in digital games. His master’s thesis analysed computer game regulation in 1980s Germany. He has been working on his dissertation since 2021 and is a scholarship holder at the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne.

Game Regulation Between Oppressing and Facilitating Freedom

FROG 2022 – Talk

Just like other media, digital games are regulated, prohibited, observed, and rated by authorities all over the world. But how far can a society go in controlling a medium before youth protection, security, and the protection of personality rights become means of oppression? This question has been a hot topic for censorship and surveillance studies for centuries. Yet, digital games have a feature that poses this question anew: Reading about a murder or watching gruesome movies is bad enough in some eyes – but acting out illegal or undesired behaviour in a game seems to have an even more serious quality. Requiring the player’s activity, games seem to be more persuasive, more dangerous, and hence, in many eyes, should be under stricter control than less interactive media. Still, after the moral panic of the early days of digital gaming has subsided, many legal actions against games seem excessive and unsubstantiated in hindsight.
This paper discusses the thin ethical line of game regulation. From a historical perspective, the moral reasoning and legal basis behind some examples of game prohibitions in Germany will be briefly explored, based on my ongoing research. On this basis, game regulation will be discussed as a question of political philosophy: Can there be a form of game regulation that fosters freedom and fights oppression? How can the delicate balance between individual freedom and collective positive liberty be maintained? Both questions refuse simple answers, yet there are some things to be learned from looking at the past.

Rudolf Inderst enjoys video games since 1985 and is a professor for Game Design at IU. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies.

A certain kind of “freedom” – the in-between-state of Game Studies in Germany

FROG 2022 – Talk

The state of German digital game studies can be described as a particular “in-between” one.

Yes, on the one hand, the general interest in academic game research has grown over the last two decades and certain cornerstones associated with classic disciplines in science and humanities could be observed – for instance the increase of conferences or publications (Paidia or Language at Play, just to name two). There’s also a local GSA DiGRA chapter and a subchapter within the Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaften has been established. An increment of informal connections on social media (Discord, Facebook groups etc.) is also to be mentioned here. Circling back to my 2020 FROG talk, the argument can also be made that video game essayist combine questions of game research and game analysis on YouTube, although this is – looking at the data – not a significant German phenomenon.

On the other hand, as this talk argues, digital games studies in Germany have not yet entered the state of independent academic discipline. This aforementioned specific “in-between” condition is related to its degree of institutionalization within the landscape of tertiary education. Digital game studies have have been parked in two fields mainly: They are a interdisciplinary field of interest for other academic disciplines such as literary, film or media studies (one might dare to add: including “attempts” of “hostile take-overs”). Also, they have become part of practice-oriented private or university of applied science programs offering course content in game design, game engineering or game development.

Altogether, we are therefore talking about a particular state of “freedom”: One that allows research and scholarship with – frequently – only the mildest boundaries in course creation and conduction. But also one that makes it very challenging to build a career upon since the institutional background is mostly missing.

Ralph J. Moeller was born in Vienna/Austria in 1969. He is the CEO of two independent software/service vendors and has been working in IT as consultant, software developer and trainer since 1991. His big interest in games led to a postgraduate study of Game Science which he finished in 2016, to be followed by a study in Game-based Media and Education. In the course of this study he developed a deep interest in Transmedia Storytelling which would also became the subject of his latest master-thesis.

Divergence: Incoherences in Transmedia Storytelling – The Gamer’s Perspective

FROG 2022 – Talk

Modern transmedia franchises like Star Wars or Star Trek contain a high amount of complexity, for the builders of those worlds as well as the consumers. Part of the complexity results from the versatility of the universes built within the franchises, the story worlds and characters created.

Divergence occurs when a Transmedia Storyworld becomes incoherent within itself. Recent developments in several storyworlds have shown this phenomenon to have a strong impact on the franchises and sometimes even caused notable changes in storytelling. Prominent examples shall be discussed during the presentation.
The gaming industry is affected by this just as the film and streaming industry is. The effect of Divergence on game perception and immersion can be negative, even more so if the franchise or game is still fresh and growing.

This talk shall give insight into the means created by the author to identify, isolate and, if desired, prevent divergence in transmedia franchises. I will present a proposal for a categorization of said phenomenon and focus on the reasons divergences within a franchise surface, how they can be identified and what kind of divergence can be isolated.
As supportive means for the categorization method, a graphical model will be presented to illustrate the methodology. Using this model, the method can be demonstrated on several examples from prominent transmedia franchises.

Daria Balakina is the CSR manager at EX CORP., a company developing technological solutions in the competitive gaming market. Her previous job positions were related to youth and academic publishing, culture and literature of indigenous peoples of the North, and science and technology studies. After being a programme director of the biggest pop science festival in the Post-Soviet space, she started working as a researcher and partnership manager to promote equality within IT and competitive gaming markets. Her main research interest is equitable access to opportunities in the spheres with a high level of inequality.

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.

Vicious Circles in Women’s CS:GO Scene: Tournament Economy and Professional Requirements

FROG 2022 – Talk

Since 2003, the primary goal of women-only CS tournaments has been to boost women’s esports and to encourage more women to play competitively. And yet, 20 years later, it has still not been achieved, despite the efforts of women pro players and other industry actors. Esports is still primarily perceived as a ‘boys’ thing’ by most of the industry stakeholders, and the number of women playing competitively is still incomparable to men. Why does the esports landscape remain hostile to women, despite the industry’s self-representation as meritocratic? Drawing on 13 qualitative interviews with women pro-players specializing in CS:GO from 5 countries, the analysis of prize pool data, and a systematic literature review, this paper argues that women are facing a variety of barriers preventing them from integration into the gaming community, thereby drastically reducing the opportunities of professionalization that are available to them. These barriers include: (1) internal struggle and community requirements; (2) toxicity of the gaming community; (3) unequal treatment and lack of emotional support; (4) insufficient financial means; (5) limited competitive opportunities; (6) distorted media representation. The paper concludes with some suggestions of how to overcome these barriers.

BMus by UNAM (National Autonomous Mexico’s University) in guitar performance receiving the Gabino Barreda Medal for his academic merit, and MMus with honors in musicology by the same institution. As a guitarist, he has participated in contemporary music projects and early music ensembles. As a researcher, he has presented his work at conferences in Mexico such as the Karl Bellinghausen Conference in CENIDIM (National Music Research Center) and the Musical Research Conference at Nayarit’s University; and in the international conference LUDO2022 at Royal Holloway University, England.

Agency and codephagy in video games, four study cases in the Mexican context

FROG 2022 – Talk

Through the study of four study cases, the present paper aims to observe in the Mexican context how are in play issues of cultural identity and how different actors put in motion distinct forms of agency. This agency can be understood as “codephagocy” (codigofagia), a concept coined by Mexican-Ecuatorian philosopher Bolívar Echeverría, which describes the relations in which cultural codes “devour” one another, and the dominant code is transformed from the inside due to the remains of the dominated “eaten” code. For the purposes of this paper, I “play” with the notion of code, both as informatical and cultural.

The four study cases selected are ones in which we can see different instances of cultural codes: the video game Mulaka, developed by the Mexican Studio Lienzo where the indigenous codes from the raramuri people (natives from the north region of Mexico) are “in play” with the codes of the game industry; the speedrunner and streamer The Mexican Runner and his NESmanía challenge, in which are used some stereotypical Mexican codes in conjunction with images from different video games; the Minecraft’s “Mexican Mod” that introduces through the informatical code textures, images, and music, elements from Mexican urban everyday life; and the piece 8 Bit Bolero Boom Box from the Mexican artist Arcángel Constantini, playing with the word bolero, the artist takes some golden age boleros and arrange them to 8-bit timbres. Each of these study cases explores different ways in which I identify agency–the capacity of individuals to exercise change in their everyday life–in the form of codephagocy, the interpenetration of cultural identities as a state of code in a domination relationship.