Blog of Abstracts

For more than 20 years I have been working as a social pedagogue in various fields of activity. As an experienced former head of a school class for potential dropouts, I used digital games for several years to promote the search for identity. Games game me easy access to the young people, so that I could offer pedagogical support to potential dropouts. Digital games enabled the young people to deal with sensitive issues of a game in relation to their own identity. I Aam currently working as a policy maker at the Resource Centre for non-formal Education of Luxembourg secondary schools.

In search of identity through the game “Gris”

FROG 2020 – Short Talk

Searching the own identity trough the game Gris? Gris is a stylish game that deals with the topic of depression. During the gameplay the avatar develops with great care. His healing process until the pain is accepted is the main part of the game. How can the game scenario of Gris contribute to the individual search for identity? In identity crises we must be aware of the many forms of identity crises, as social crises, individual crises and individual crises of meaning. Differences between public and social identity imply a different view of perspectives, whether personal or public. Social interaction is essential in the search for identity. The ability to perceive and understand one’s own inner being and emotions enables system-oriented processes to be created within a peer group. Emotions, changes and (personal) contact are essential for identity, as they have a common/influencing effect on each of them. The prerequisite for this is the ability to change perspectives. This ability is acquired through cognition, which must be supported by the public community in order for people to benefit from this development. Accordingly, the educational aspect and equal access to education represent the conclusion of the search for identity.

Swen Körner is a professor at the German Sport University Cologne and Head of Department for Training Pedagogy and Martial Research. His research is geared towards the optimization of police education and training, practical issues of evidence based violence prevention and the relevance of martial arts in different domains of modern society.

train2fight the virus – possibilities of university online teaching in sports

FROG 2020 – Short Talk

Co-Authors:
Mario S. Staller (University of Applied Sciences for Police and Administration, North Rhine Westphalia)

The spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Germany and the general restrictions on social contacts decided upon pose major challenges for institutional teaching and learning settings (Koerner & Staller, 2020). In March 2020, a collective helplessness quickly spread among many lecturers at the German Sport University Cologne (DSHS), one of the world’s most renowned sport universities, as a result of the ban on face-to-face teaching. While online based solutions were already known and proven for theory courses primary dealing with cognitive contents, for online practical teaching using electronic devices for the learning of motor and tactical skills neither experience nor orientation was available. In order for the practical teaching to take place under conditions of COVID-19 innovative and adapted solutions were in need, which at the same time at least principally meet the demands of the respective university curriculum. In the case of DSHS` regular “self-defence” module, this meant that students had to be enabled to “understand and practically apply basic principles of self-defence” (DSHS, 2020) by means of online teaching. The paper presents the conceptual framework of DSHS` university “self-defence” course developed specifically for this challenge, in which elements of gamification (Schell, 2008; Fischer et al., 2017) play a driving role.

Mario Staller is a professor at the University of Applied Sciences for Police and Administration North Rhine Westphalia in the Department of Policing. His research focuses on the professionalization of police education and training both on a practical and an organizational level. Furthermore, current research projects include evidence-based violence prevention and coach development within these settings.

Is there more? – On the (non-)definition of gamified teaching

FROG 2020 – Short Talk

Co-Authors:
Swen Körner (German Sport University Cologne, Department for Training Pedagogy and Martial Research)

The gamification of higher education has potential (Bai et al., 2020; Sailer & Sailer, 2020). The range of possibilities for gamification is diverse and does not appear to be definitively determined (Toda et al., 2019). However, there is consensus that gamification must not impair the effectiveness of learning setting (operationalized as learning that has taken place) in higher education (Fischer et al., 2017). Accordingly, empirical research on the effectiveness of gamification focuses mainly on its direct benefits (e.g., motivation, commitment, learning process performance, retention or application of the taught content). The focus on the effectiveness of a gamified learning environment seems to encourage the application of game-design elements that are primarily related to performance (progress, development and feedback): Points, levels, challenges, trophies, rankings. Thus there is a danger that design elements with primary effects, which are more on an emotional level, are less focused upon limiting the gamified learning experience or not developing the full potential of a gamified learning setting. This article discusses possibilities of an open gamification environment on the basis of a case study in a psychology course at a police academy. The focus is on the planning and reflection process of the teaching, which transcends the possible restrictive definition of gamification.

Dr. Tobias Unterhuber studied modern German literature, comparative literature and study of religion at LMU Munich and at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2018, he earned his PhD with his thesis on the works of Swiss author Christian Kracht. He is a post-doc for literature and media studies at the Leopold-Franzens University Innsbruck. In addition to pop literature, literary theory, discourse analysis, literature & economics and gender studies, his research interests include video game research in the field of cultural studies. He is an editor of the game studies journal PAIDIA.

The loss and restriction of ludic and political agency in games

FROG 2020 – Short Talk

Agency is not only a central term in game studies but also “[a] crucial term in the theory and practice of feminism, as indeed any politics.” (Andermahr et. al. 1997, p. 13) What we are allowed and what we ought to do in a society is the range of our agency. Laws, implicit and explicit rules, ethics and authority limit it. Furthermore, tactics of marginalization, often based on race, gender and class, restrict people’s agency even further. Discriminatory behavior and structural violence thus can be described as attempts to restrict the agency of marginalized people. However, how is this related to agency in video games? The specific mediallity of video games always affords players agency. The range may vary but it is essential for games that players can choose their actions, to make choices – be it on the macro, micro or substructure level (Cf. Backe 2008). Video games offer players “the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices” (Murray 1998, p. 129). This has two consequences: 1. Society and games are both rule-governed systems, which give players and people agency. Therefore, ludic agency can act as a structural analogy of political and social agency. Players’ agency can represent the player character’s agency in a fictional world and society. 2. Since players are accustomed to having agency, the loss and restriction of their agency can be a powerful tool to show the aforementioned analogy and to let players experience, in a safe media environment, how people’s agency are not identical based on their class, their race and their gender. The presentation wants to show how games implement situations of agency loss and restricted agency to represent lost and restricted social and political agency and o not only show the players but let them experience how discriminatory systems work.

Jori Linnamäki is a PhD student at Tampere University, making his doctoral dissertation in Games Research about in-game thinking of players, ethical processes in game design, and understanding the connection between psychodrama and live games. He is curious about the potential of games to help us grow as humans. In his other professional life, he is a teacher (M. Ed.), drama instructor (BTA), Playback Theatre trainer, Psychodrama Director (CP), game designer and a supervisor. In all his fields, Linnamäki works with interaction systems and is searching for creative ways and methods to improve interaction, combining all his different professional fields.

An approach to board game design that centres allyship and empowers trans people

FROG 2020 – Short Talk

Co-Authors:
Josephine Baird (Uppsala University)

The Uppsala University Games & Society Lab started a game project with the Neuroscience Department with the aim to support trans people. During the reflective design and testing process things changed, partly due to ethical processing and partly due to COVID-19. This included changes in the team composition as well the nature of the game from an identity exploration edu-larp to a board game about protecting trans people from microaggressions. The design process was challenging, which inspired us to write an article about the process and its ethics. The article also provided guidelines for other designers working with and for vulnerable target groups. In this presentation, we explore the game design as well as the design and research process it inspired. In the board game, the board represents the trans person facing microaggressions and the players play allies trying to defend the trans person. The game is targeted at allies or the support network of trans people, helping them develop their allyship skills. Our design process was guided by Shaw’s (2011) criteria for ethical representation. We also created a model for an ethical design process, inspired heavily by Frame and Williams’ (2005) model for ethical decision making from a multicultural perspective. The questions we explore in this presentation are, how do we make a board game that has allies as the active party but at the same time it won’t be disempowering for trans people? What skills do allies need to be good allies? And how this led to the model for ethical game design we used and now propose.

Harald is a games researcher, media pedagogue and cultural mediator based in Graz, Austria. He works for the Styrian Government as an expert in digital culture. At Ludovico – an NGO focusing on the culture and pedagogics of play – he is responsible for all activities concerning digital play and organizes the annual button Festival of Gaming Culture. He wrote his doctoral thesis on »Digital Play and the Longing for Agency« and holds a PHD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Graz.

Owning the Stats – Gaming and Neoliberal Subjectivity

FROG 2020 – Short Talk

Digital play, as I plan to argue, uncovers cracks in the theoretical surface of common descriptions of modern societies. Games undermine binary concepts of reality and fiction, presence and absence, heterotopia and utopia. I propose that through these cracks digital games offer opportunities to evade aspects of materiality, especially considering the body and the governmental forces that influence it. And a thorough look at player’s motivation to engage with the medium shows how these opportunities affect games and their communities. Based on an understanding of digital games as experiences that do not end with the game-worlds and the margins of the game’s code, I want to demonstrate how digital games can be used as mirrors, offering a new perspective on neoliberal societies and people’s struggles to deal with the requirements they feel to be expected to fulfill in order to be valuable parts of said societies. In social contexts with strong tendencies to understand individuals as a set of metrics, many digital games offer possibilities to take control of the numbers and to experience a form of agency often lacking in everyday life. Gaming spaces invite us to play with power structures. But whether they stabilize or undermine them remains to be evaluated.

Alesha Serada graduated in Cultural Studies with a specialization in Visual Culture from the European Humanities University (Vilnius, Lithuania). Before that, they gained a Specialist’s Diploma in Oriental Philology (2006) at the Belarusian State University (Minsk, Belarus). Currently Alesha is a researcher and a PhD student at the University of Vaasa, Finland, where they study value and meaning in applications of blockchain technologies. Their research interests revolve around exploitation, deception, violence, horror, Machiavellian ethics and other banal and non-banal evils.

Win the Game by Not Paying: False Consciousness in Free-to-Play Games

FROG 2020 – Short Talk

In this paper, I evaluate the main argument in favor of the freemium monetization model as opposed to a one time purchase and the subscription model. This argument is usually presented as follows: “one can play a free-to-play game for free if they cannot afford to pay”. Firstly, I turn to the available statistics on free-to-play economies (Seufert, 2014) and find out that, indeed, free-to-play games possess a democratizing potential in making gaming experiences available to the widest audience (Clark, 2014). However, such games are still perceived by critics and gamers as morally ambiguous because of their potentially coercive techniques (Nieborg, 2016) and ‘dark patterns’ of game design (Zagal et al., 2013). I proceed with the observation, derived from game reviews on Google Play and the App Store, that players take their pride in achieving their goals in a game without paying. I suggest that a free-to-play game is a game between the player and the publisher of the game: the goal of the publisher is to make a player pay, and the goal of the player is to enjoy as much of the game for free as possible. One possible direction of critique is to apply the Marxist concept of ‘false consciousness’. The starting point is that ‘false consciousness’ is never completely false: ideological claims labeled as ‘false consciousness’ are often based on true facts (Eagleton, 1996). So, if the publishers promise free gameplay, they in fact make the game playable without investing real world money; however, the game is never completely free. The illusion of ‘free play’ results in a situation that Tiziana Terranova calls “a poverty of attention”: the qualitative degradation of attention in overstimulating digital environments (Terranova, 2012). Paradoxically, based on that, I state that only the players who have already paid really play the game for free: they can dedicate most of their time and attention to self-actualization in the game.

Pascal Wagner is an M.A. cognitive and cultural linguist with a B.A. in English Studies and German Media and Human Rights Law from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich. His theses concerned gaming-specific language in online settings and fictional spell names in JRPG games. Currently he works at the Goethe-Institut München, developing a video game-based language diagnosis test for primary school children. He founded the blog and ludolinguistics resource page languageatplay.de to further advance the field of linguistics into the game studies. In 2020, he co-founded the anti-fascist network “Keinen Pixel den Faschisten!” Reach him on Twitter as @indieflock and @languageatplay.

Becoming their target: Anti-fascist gaming network “Keinen Pixel den Faschisten” and its right-wing backlash

FROG 2020 – Short Talk

When over 40 bloggers, podcasters, developers, streamers, developers and other content creators from the German-speaking video gaming space launched their anti-fascist network “Keinen Pixel den Faschisten!” in April 2020, hatred from German speaking right wing outlets was sure to follow. Indeed it did: A counter account on Twitter was formed by German GamerGate-followers to ascribe an anti-free speech stance to “Keinen Pixel”. English translations of antifascist texts were seeded onto international messaging boards of the GamerGate campaign to rile up resistance from the English speaking right. Even a conspiracy theory was fabricated in which the German government allegedly subsidised the network financially to further the censoring of free speech in gaming spaces. This talk from one of the co-founders of the network outlines the steps taken against “Keinen Pixel” and puts them in context of well-known right wing activist methodology. It will lead with a short introduction of what lingering influence of the GamerGate movement in German speaking internet communities remains, why a network such as “Keinen Pixel” was and needed to be founded and what said network does to counter fascist tendencies and influence in gaming spaces. The talk will reference common propaganda theory and relevant linguistic basics as well as fundamentalist strategies of arguing and debating.

Ricarda Goetz is a political scientist with a strong focus on popular culture and gender. She works for the City of Viennain the basic research section of the Women´s Department. As an independent researcher she publishes in different media, gives lectures and workshops in the realm of cultural studies.

Empathy and Inclusivity in Games. The Proteus effect

FROG 2020 – Short Talk

Games have become more varied and inclusive. The hero and protagonist is not only a 30 something white heterosexual CIS male. Protagonists in games, avatars, look and behave different nowadays. Women-avatars can be warriors, men-avatars can be vulnerable, and humanoid looking avatars can have same-sex relationships and follow new narratives. “The Sims” is one game that offered to create gender fluid game characters since 2016. Players can create virtual characters with or without any physical attributes. “The Sims”, released more than 20 years ago, was also one of the first video games to allow characters of the same sex to have a (sexual) relationship. This inclusive attitude toward the appearance of gender and sexuality, once a rarity in video games, is becoming more common as games take on more diverse and also weightier subject matters. There are different reasons for creating these sometimes called ‘serious games’ or ‘empathy games’. Many of the reasons are linked to what is known as the Proteus effect. The Proteus effect proposed by Yee and Bailenson (2007) suggests that the human embodiment in digital avatars may influence the self-perception of the player both online and offline, based on their gaming avatar’s aesthetics or behaviors. Different studies since then focused on how players can be influenced by their avatars. Jesse Fox who has been studying how online interactions with avatars and digital games influence people’s offline attitudes, did a series of studies and publications since 2009. She saw that participants responded better to avatars modeled closely on their real appearances, as opposed to generic-looking ‘perfect’ avatars. She also found out that women may be at risk for experiencing self-objectification and developing greater ‘rape myth acceptance’ when their avatars wore revealing clothing. The latter myth refers to the assumption that women´s clothing is responsible if she is assaulted. In another study, participants who were assigned a more attractive avatar in a virtual environment were found to exhibit more confidence and intimacy in the real world than those assigned to a less attractive avatar. Future studies need to clarify the extent of these effects as well as how different avatars can be used to elicit positive changes in attitudes, game play and self-image.