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Rudolf Inderst und Pascal Wagner

Rudolf InderstRudolf Inderst studierte Politikwissenschaften, Neuere und Neuste Geschichte sowie Amerikanische Kulturgeschichte in München und Kopenhagen. Der an der LMU München und Universität Passau doppelt promovierte Spieleforscher leitet das Ressort Digitale Spiele bei dem Online-Kulturjournal nahaufnahmen.ch. Auf Twitter, Xbox Live und PlayStation Network findet man ihn als @BenFlavor.

 

Pascal WagnerPascal Wagner hat einen M.A. in kultureller und kognitiver Linguistik sowie einen B.A. in Anglistik und Rechtwissenschaften an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München absolviert. Seine Masterarbeit schrieb er über Lokalisation, Benennungsmotive und kulturelle Fixierung von Fantasieworten bei der Übersetzung digitaler Spiele aus dem Japanischen ins Englische und Deutsche. Er ist Gründer des Game Studies- und Wissenschaftskommunikations-Blogs languageatplay.de und Chefredakteur des Printmagazins für Videospielkultur GAIN – Games Inside. Auf Twitter ist er als @indieflock zu finden.

Cortana – eine digitale Assistenz zwischen Datenschutz und Weltraumschlachten

Vortrag,  Sonntag 20. Oktober, 14:30 – 15:00

„Die Geschichte wiederholt sich nicht, aber sie reimt sich.“ Dieser, irrtümlich Mark Twain zugeschriebenen Satz, kann in den Sinn kommen, wenn man sich die aktuellen Meldungen rund um Microsofts Sprachassistenz-Programm Cortana ansieht. Als nur eine Tageszeitung von vielen vermeldete die NZZ im August 2019, dass die persönlich geglaubten Sprachnachrichten von externen oder internen MitarbeiterInnen analysiert würden – vorgeblich, um die Gesamtqualität des Produktes zu verbessern.

Erstaunlich selten gehen dabei Medien auf die Tatsache ein, dass SpielerInnen der exklusiven Microsoft- und deren Xbox- Videospielkonsole-Shooter-Serie HALO diese Entwicklung hätten vorhersehen oder zumindest erahnen können. In der erfolgreichen Spielereihe unterstützt die weiblich gezeichnete, blauhäutige K.I. Cortana den Protagonisten der Action-Titel – den Master Chief – auch als Hologramm taucht sie dabei immer wieder auf. Doch Cortana verändert sich im Laufe dieser seit 2001 andauernden Geschichte: Aus einem anfänglich leicht erratischen Verhalten wird eine einflussreiche K.I. mit eigenem Willen und Agenda. Dieser Kontext unterstreicht und erweitert zugleich die Prämisse der diesjährigen FROG, dass Video- und Computerspiele „Abbilder kultureller Phänome“ seien: Eine digitale Assistenz transmutiert in für Kunden und SpielerInnen dysfunktionalen Kontexten im Sinne einer dramatischen Gesamterzählung.

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Florian Kelle

Florian KelleFlorian Kelle, former chef, is a master’s student in the Game Studies and Engineering programme at Klagenfurt university. Prior to studying in Klagenfurt, he received a bachelor’s degree in British and American studies from Bielefeld University. His bachelor’s ‘If I Throw a Ball at You, You Could Wait until It Starts Telling a Story – A Ludo-Narratological Approach to Metal Gear Solid 3 and 4’, he concluded his first work on games. Beyond narrative and formalist approaches, he interested procedural literacy and the extra-academic communities of knowledge that arise around videogames. During a seminar he taught on horror in videogames, he has developed an interest in the archaeological implications of exploring games as virtual spaces. Currently, Florian Kelle is working towards his master’s thesis on conducting archaeology in and of videogames.

The Big Dig: On Rethinking Videogames as Nexus

Junior-Keynote,  Sunday, 20th October, 13:30 – 14:30

Videogames are cultural artifacts. Just like in the real world, archaeology can be conducted in digital spaces. Recent developments in the archaeological treatment of videogames, archaeogaming, strive to regard videogames as hyperobjects. Whereas this concept does well in accounting for the pervasive nature of videogames, it further complicates how videogames can be interacted with and analysed from an archaeological perspective: What constitutes a videogame? Who is proficient enough to assess the phenomenon? Where do we start when dealing with this unfathomable artifact?

Videogames have traditionally been defined through cultural play theory and medium-specific theories from the school of ludology. Taking into consideration discussions of the magic circle and paratexts, it is evident that there must be more to what constitutes the game. Consequently, demarcating what truly constitutes the digital artifact through established positions becomes difficult.

In my talk, I address the nature of videogames as hyperobjects. First, I look at how archaeology and archaeogaming deal with artifacts. By extending on existing notions of archaeology in and of videogames, I complement theories of archaeogaming with the medium-specific character of play and interaction. Concrete examples from videogames and their contextual surroundings illustrate the extension of the boundaries. I claim that games in the narrow sense should be considered as a nexus for all the features that constitute the artifact ‘game’ as a hyperobject, allowing for archaeology in and of games to be conducted.

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Alexander Pfeiffer

Alexander PfeifferAlexander Pfeiffer is recipient of a Max Kade Fellowship awarded by the Austrian Academy of Science to work at MIT with The Education Arcade. His research focus as a postdoctoral fellow at MIT is on blockchain technologies and their impact on game-based education and learning assessment.

Before joining MIT, Alexander headed the center for applied game studies at Danube-University Krems, Austria, for eight years. He is co-founder of the Austrian-based tech start-up Picapipe GmbH and the Malta-based B & P Emerging Technologies Consultancy Lab Ltd. He holds a doctorate and a social and economic sciences degree (mag.rer.soc.oec) from the Vienna University of Economics and Business, a Master of Arts from Danube-University Krems, and an Executive MBA from Alaska Pacific University, Anchorage.

At his time heading the center for applied game studies at Danube-University, he co-created the Professional Master of Business Administration course in Leisure, Entertainment and Gaming Business Management. He has been a pioneer in connecting digital game studies and gambling research. His goal is to talk about this particular part of his research work during F.R.O.G. 2019.

His interests, besides the topics above, are e-sports, media studies, emerging technologies, game studies, saving the world and binge-watching TV series.

Mixed Reality: Las Vegas as gamified theatre and GTA Online in gambling-thrill. About the connection

Lecture,  Sunday, 20th October, 12:00 – 12:30

Caillois (1961) writes that games can relate to the basic character of a society by analysing which games are or were popular in that society. For Caillois, a game consists of four elements: Agon (competition), Alea (chance/luck), Mimikry (simulation/masking), Ilinx (vertigo/thrill). He claims that Agon and Alea are mostly found within modern societies.

The renowned gambling researcher Natascha Schüll (2012) refers in her book “Addiction by Design”. to Erving Goffman a Canadian sociologist who conducted an ethnographic study in Las Vegas (1967). Goffman acted as a blackjack dealer, a role that seemed to him to be the most appropriate observation perspective for his study. For him, playing at the table was a “competition of character”, in which players could demonstrate their courage, integrity, and mastery depending on the situation. The casino game offered an opportunity for people in an increasingly bureaucratic society to become heroes and heroines through “destiny”. The casino fulfilled the desire for “action” in the lives of the players, a place for mimicry and a conscious entry into a staged world.

The “GTA Casino Online” update was released on 23 July 2019. Players now can visit a casino in their favourite digital game in order to place their (virtual) money, at typical casino games and sports bets. The update has become a full success, not only for players but also for streamers. The players now become heroes and heroines through an open-world digital game offering a casino setting. “Mixed Reality” has become real in several respects.

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Katharina Bisset

Katharina BissetKatharina Bisset is geek, lawyer, translator and all-round creative. Early on in law school she focused on what interested her most: the legal implications of technology. She’s been working in IT-, IP-, Media-, and Data Privacy Law since 2002, whilst never giving up her side passions, whether that’s podcasting, photography,  publishing fiction and writing the occasional line of code. With Nerds of Law, equally IT-minded lawyers are working on LegalTech in an effort to bring technology and lawyers together. In some moments of free time she writes on her dissertation about the Open Source Software License GPL. As Associate she advises clients in her areas of expertise, from software licensing contracts to privacy policies and, if necessary, representing them in court.

Players Unite Legally

Lecture,  Sunday, 20th October, 11:30 – 12:00

Virtual reality is not an anarchistic space. Laws apply here, too. When technical advancement races ahead and legislation struggles to keep up, lawyers, game-designers and players face new legal challenges. Who owns digital goods? Has the GDPR stopped online games in Europe for fear of fines? What are the copyright implications of Twitch, Walkthroughs and other player-generated content? What are the contractual problems regarding in-game- purchases? When do games become gambling?

This presentation aims to cover these and other current legal issues, combined with a general overview of the legal principles that apply to gaming, to create awareness of where the pitfalls may lie, what lawyers deal with in relation to gaming and why it helps if a lawyer is a gamer himself.

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Mahshid Mayar

Mahshid MayarSince Oct. 2016, Mahshid Mayar has been an assistant professor of American Studies at Bielefeld University. In her current position, Mahshid follows two broad lines of research; while she engages with the ‘blank’ in postmodern American literature (‘erasure’ and ‘blackout’ literature) for her second-book project, she also conducts research on digital games, where she theorizes the study of digital games and examines game titles that open dialogues on history and culture. Since early 2019, Mahshid has been a member of the central committee of the Arbeitskreises Geschichtswissenschaft und Digitale Spiele.

Banal, Boring, Banned: Unplayability in Digital Games

Keynote,  Sunday, 20th October, 10:30 – 11:30

Frowning frantically as you look for a replacement to the missing link to a controversial game; scratching your upper arm in boredom; hesitating to press the ‘next’ button; averting your gaze from the screen; going online to vent about the banality of the newest release by your favorite gaming company; breathing with difficulty in shame or shock…. You are working your way through an unplayable game. Labeled banal or boring, or banned by various gamer communities, unplayable games are titles that are received with mixed reviews and that either come with (1) varying degrees of ‘un-play-ability’ inherent in them, or (2) are received by gamer communities as such. Examining a number of digital games, ranging from Everything to September 12th and from Muslim Massacre to Super Columbine Massacre RPG, I wish to theorize a category of games that are at odds with the founding tenets of an industry so narratively and structurally conservative and so entirely profit-driven. To this end, I raise and try to answer a number of questions: What does unplayability in digital games connote? In what respects do playable and unplayable games stand apart? What motivates companies other than financial profitability to produce unplayable games in the first place? In other words, is playable the bare, expected minimum a game has to be in order for it to be marketable? And, finally, once dismissed as ‘unplayable,’ what do we do with unplayable games?

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Richard Hahn

Richard HahnRichard Hahn hat in Tschechien, Spanien, der Ukraine, Slowenien und der Slowakei Deutsch als Fremdsprache sowie Landes- und Kulturkunde unterrichtet und zahlreiche Bildungsprojekte durchgeführt.

Spielerisches bzw. spielbasiertes und digital vermitteltes Lernen haben dabei immer eine tragende Rolle gespielt. Als Projektleiter des „Digital Learning Centers“ ist er derzeit mit der Entwicklung und Implementierung einer E-Learning-Strategie für ein Unternehmen in der Erwachsenenbildung beauftragt. Im Rahmen seiner Masterthesis hat er 2019 das Potenzial von Chatbots in der Wissensvermittlung erforscht.

Digitale Gamebooks mit twine

Praktische Präsentation, Samstag 19. Oktober, 17:45 – 18:00

Gamebooks bzw. andere Formen von interactive fiction können auch zur Wissensvermittlung bzw. zur spielerischen Auseinandersetzung mit (Mikro-)Lerninhalten eingesetzt werden. Dabei kommen nützliche Effekte wie Selbstbestimmung, intrinsische und extrinsische Motivation sowie zeitliche und örtliche Flexibilität zum Tragen. Neben den eigentlichen Inhalten werden – je nach tragender Story – auch verschiedene persönliche bzw. soziale Kompetenzen trainiert.

Mit der quelloffenen und kostenlosen Software twine ist es möglich, sebst digitale Gameboooks zu erstellen, die als .html-Dateien auf allen internetfähigen Endgeräten lauffähig sind. Mit Basiskenntnissen in HTML und CSS sowieder Bereitschaft, sich mit Grundkonzepten der Programmierung (Datentypen, Variablen, Fallunterscheidungen, Schleifen, etc.) auseinanderzusetzen, kann jede/r zur Autorin bzw. zum Autor attraktiver Gamebooks mit unterschiedlichen Graden der Komplexität werden.

In der Präsentation werden zunächst anhand eines Prototypen die Möglichkeiten von twine zur Darstellung verschiedener Inhalte und Interaktionsformen betrachtet, um danach auf die theoretischen Grundlagen einzugehen: Für ein gelungenes digitales Gamebook sind abgesehen vom Design noch andere Faktoren wie Story und Spielmechanismen ausschlaggebend. Eine tragende narrative Struktur sorgt für die emotionale Bindung der SpielerInnen und stellt sicher, dass sie sich noch länger an das Gamebook und seine Inhalte erinnern. Unterschiedliche Spielmechanismen schaffen extrinsische und intrinsische Motivation und geben den SpielerInnen Feedback auf ihren Spiel- und damit Lernerfolg.

Um den geschlossenen Rahmen von Gamebooks im Sinne der Mixed Reality, Communities of Practice oder persönlichen Lernumgebungen zu sprengen, werden abschließend Möglichkeiten zur Interaktion mit externen Ressourcen aufgezeigt.

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Dominik Müllner

 

Dominik MüllnerDominik Müllner is a teacher for English and History. During his academic studies, Dominik Müllner specialised on the pedagogical use of digital games in history classes and was also working as an expert for the “Federal Office for the Positive Assessment of Digital Games”. Furthermore, he is also working as a freelance trainer for educational play.

Playing History – Practical Applications for Teachers and Youthworkers

Practional Presentation,  Saturday, 19th October, 17:30 – 17:45

While Videogames are on the technological step of augmented reality and virtual reality, the pedagogical merits of videogames are slowly being realized in a school setting and the field of youthwork. Even though educational videogames are already in use at some schools, as a means to aid learning processes, the full potential of digital games has yet to be realized. Games provide students with the opportunity to delve deeper into its core and analyse the medium from a critical point of view. Thus, adolescents are able to reflect their own self-reference and moral values onto the game and vice versa. Especially videogames with a historical context provide themselves to be delved into, further explored and let adolescents transfer their experiences, discoveries and insights into the real world.
In light of this, a project commissioned by the Federal Office for the Positive Assessment of Digital Games (BuPP.at) was focused on creating a pool of methods to be used to convey history and political education through the use of digital games, which includes the following:

  • Paperchase through ancient Egypt
  • Refugee and migration
  • Media competence: World War 1
  • Change in perspective/judgement on political topics
  • Learning by Doing – political education
  • Climate change – possible measures through digital games
  • History as a strategy guide

Those methods were already tested with adolescents and it has been demonstrated that these subjects were more open-minded to a deeper analysis of videogames with serious content and grew to be more critical towards the presented contents of the games with growing interest. Furthermore, the adolescents demonstrated transfer processes from the games’ contents to their everyday life, thus proving that this project was successful in creating a mixed reality construct between history-focused games and reality, allowing learning processes to flourish.

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Alexander Preisinger und Florian Aumayr

Alexander PreisingerMMag. Dr. Alexander Preisinger ist Senior Lecturer am Institut für Geschichte der Universität Wien im Bereich Geschichtsdidaktik und Lehrer an einer Wiener HAK.

 

Alexander PreisingerMag. Florian Aumayr studierte die Lehramtsfächer Latein und Geschichte, Sozialkunde und politische Bildung an der Universität Wien. Derzeit arbeitet er als wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter.

 

„Geschichte ist, was Sie daraus machen!“ Computerspiele als Mittel der historisch-politischen Bildung

Vortrag,  Samstag 19. Oktober, 17:00 – 17:30

Digitale Spiele sind längst zum Massenphänomen geworden und prägen die Alltagswirklichkeit von Kindern, Jugendlichen und zunehmend auch von Erwachsenen. Da Computerspiele immer auch auf die gesellschaftliche Realität reagieren und kollektive Wissensbestände behandeln, prägen sie die Lern- und Verstehenswelten von SchülerInnen und Studierenden.

Der Vortrag will am Beispiel historischer Inhalte zeigen, wie die „mixed reality“ aus traditionellen schulischen und digital-lebensweltlichen Wissensformen systematisiert und genützt werden können. Dazu wird zunächst thematisiert, in welchen Formen und mit welchen Eigenarten Geschichte im digitalen Spiel vorkommt: Computerspiele werden als historische Simulationen verstanden, der Game Designer als „developer historian“, der Spieler zum Rezipienten und Produzenten von historischem Sinn. Durch ihre popularkulturelle Transformation von historischen Inhalten nehmen digitale Spiele Einfluss auf die Geschichtskultur und das individuelle Geschichtsbewusstsein. Der Vortrag wird ein Modell vorstellen, das zeigt, wie der Transfer dieses populärkulturellen Wissens in der Realität aussehen kann und letztlich zu Lerneffekten führt. Daran knüpfen Überlegungen der Didaktisierung im Unterricht an, die zeigen sollen, wie digitale Spiele für das kompetenzorientierte Fach Geschichte genützt werden können.

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Felix Schniz

Felix SchnizFelix Schniz is the director of studies and co-founder of the master’s programme Game Studies and Engineering at the University of Klagenfurt. He originally graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in English and American studies from the University of Mannheim, where he subsequently joined the master’s programme Cultural Transformations of the Modern Age: Literature and Media. With a thesis exploring the metamodern tendencies of the third-person shooter Spec Ops: The Line (2012), he concluded the programme with excellence. Today, Felix Schniz furthermore is a PhD candidate and research assistant at University of Klagenfurt, as well head of the Klagenfurt Critical Game Lab. The focus of his dissertation are experiential dimensions of videogames.

The Flanêur in a Masticator: An Experience of Thought through Virtual Walking inAmnesia: A Machine for Pigs.

Lecture,  Saturday, 19th October, 16:00 – 16:30

The Romantic tradition of the Lustwandel experiences a Renaissance in virtuality. Walking simulators – videogames that want us to focus on our primordial sense of existence – revive the traditions of the philosophical ritual. They transform the exploration of fictional landscapes into an interactive work of art that aims to foster emotions. Depending on the design principles of the videogame world, players can undergo impactful processes of understanding.

I analyse the experiential quality of the horror game Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs that, as I argue, arises from its foundational conception of players as flâneurs and the concurrent subversion of this motif. Set at the dawn of the 20th century, players navigate industrialist Oswald Mandus through a fabulaic search for his missing sons that takes him from the safety of his manor into death by the maws of his own meat-processing factory. I portray how the game counterpoints freedom and automation in mechanical, as well as aesthetical dimensions, transmuting the videogame’s archetypical eclectic procedurality into the machinated catharsis of a protagonist who is unable to outsmart the machine he created.

Ultimately, I demonstrate Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs as being capable of facilitating a philosophical experience in the sense of a recondite revelation. Mandus’ swansong of the creator devoured by its own beast is presented as a tale of early Modern naiveté. Likewise, the players are inclined to reflect upon themselves as mimicking victims of machinated horrors: by immersing into the game, I propose for discussion, they succumb to their very own ‘machine for pigs.’

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Damian Stewart

Damian Stewart is a New Zealand-born Wiener. As well as being a veteran of the Austrian and New Zealand game industries, he has worked as a software engineer for interactive design, AR and VR projects, and as a professional artist and musician. Damian is currently studying toward an MA in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at the University of Vienna.

 

 

“This Is For The Players”: Industry Construction of the “Gamer” Identity

Lecture,  Saturday, 19th October, 15:30 – 16:00

In 2019, almost everybody plays videogames. However, the dominant cultural narrative around videogames says something different: the stereotypical “gamer” is still an under-socialized straight white young man playing with toys in the basement. Negative stigma leaves many players unwilling to self-identify as “gamers”; those who are willing to do so often work to reinforce the stereotype (despite its negative connotations) by actively excluding those who do not “fit”.

Drawing from a growing body of recent scholarship that examines the behaviours and identities of players often subject to exclusion from videogame culture (such as women, queer people, and people of colour), the present work argues that the “gamer” identity is a subcultural formation constructed by and for the benefit of the videogame industry, and that the cultural idea of the “videogame” exists hand-in-hand with the stereotype of the “gamer”.

To illustrate this process, an analysis of selected scenes from the film Wine Country (2019) and the TV programme Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (2017) reveals how these media construct a “gamer” identity in tandem with a particular conception of the videogame as a cultural artefact. Comparison with industry practises and “gamer” behaviours suggests a similar parallel construction of identity and cultural artefact at work in the videogame industry; here, however, the reality of a broad, diverse audience of videogame players renders such constructions inherently contradictory. This causes ongoing conflict and exclusion and ultimately stunts artistic growth within the medium; until it is addressed, irrespective of technological improvement, the promise of videogames will remain unfulfilled.