Blog of Abstracts

Chris Binder is an artist and trainer for media literacy and game-based learning. He consults and speaks on the topics of media literacy, games, and art. Since 2020, he has working together closely with the Landesmedienzentrum Baden-Württemberg on the project „BLOCKALOT: The Creative Minetest Server for Future-Oriented Learning“

Abundant Bricks: Exploring economic systems and decision-making in the sandbox world of Minetest

FROG 2023 – Talk

The sandbox world of Minetest leaves it to the players whether they would like to participate in capitalist behaviour or not. Based on the principles of collaboration and creativity, Minetest doesn’t offer a monetary currency in its base game. Instead, one could argue that its economic value is derived from the structures that players create out of the basic building blocks found in its virtual world. The choice of (an) economic system(s) and its or their governance if left to those who are active in the world. As a free and open-source game, Minetest questions the state of game-making as a higly lucrative form of entertainment deeply intertwined with economic aspects.
Through the project BLOCKALOT, the Landesmedienzentrum Baden-Württemberg, Germany, (LMZ) has enabled learning facilitators to engage effortlessly in Game-based Learning via its possibilites to manage Minetest worlds and use premodelled learning scenarios with the learners. How do players and learners interact with the sandbox world? What, if any, economic decisions are made by individuals and groups? How could an alternative to the capitalist system that most players interact with on a daily basis look like in Minetest and what would be its incentive for interaction?
This talk willl give some insights into the ways in which economy and currency are perceived and used in Minetest worlds and learning scenarios. In particular, one international project that incorporates content and language integrated learning (CLIL) with sustainability issues will be presented as an example for a test site of economic decision-making and collaboration.

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Kevin Mercer is currently Assistant Professor of Digital Media Arts & Animation at Southern Illinois University. Mercer earned a BFA degree from Western Illinois University and an MFA degree from Penn State.

Mercer’s recent presentations include: Things Too Real: Addressing Environmental Disaster through Interactive Storytelling, Festival of Interactive Narrative & Storytelling at University of Otago and New Zealand Centre of Digital Excellence; Interdisciplinary VR: Merging Game Design & Language to Facilitate Student Engagement, Meaningful Play at Michigan State University; SALUKI-X: Investigating Ethical Space Exploration Through Hybrid Methodologies for Designing, Mapping & Navigating Virtual & Built Environments, Mid-America College Art Association Conference at Slippery Rock University.

The Socio-Spatial Currency of Dark Souls & Death Stranding

FROG 2023 – Talk

Video games such as Dark Souls and Death Stranding feature asynchronously shared virtual spaces in which the players’ understanding, navigation, and alterations of the in-game architecture are made possible with the transaction of social currency. Though purely digital, these game worlds are socio-spatial, informed by geographically dispersed, yet virtually close inhabitants, each seeking to care for said worlds.

In the case of Dark Souls, treacherous, labyrinthian environments are explored incrementally during cycles of the player’s life and death. Progress requires venturing beyond the safety of a dwelling, in this case a bonfire checkpoint, into ruins, cathedrals, and hamlets replete with vicious enemies and unseen traps. However, asynchronous online players are able to compose messages from lists of nouns, verbs, and qualifiers and leave them in the game world as signposts for others. This sharing of information, and, in many cases, misinformation, affects a given player’s creation of knowledge regarding a dangerous play space steeped in imposing, Gothic architecture (Rutten, 2016).

In the case of Death Stranding, the player is tasked with transporting resources and rebuilding the infrastructure of a post-apocalyptic United States. The gameplay loop sees the protagonist traversing extreme landscapes, seeking natural paths while also constructing roads and bridges along the way. Another example of asynchronous online interaction, Death Stranding enables players to use structures built by one another, then award them likes, perhaps the most prevalent social currency in the online world. By earning likes, the player’s standing and efficacy as a socio-spatial architect are increased, allowing them to build more, better. With time and ardor, players unknown to one another shape a virtual environment enabling easier and faster traversal for all. Death Stranding enables players by deploying them in space (Lefebvre, 1992) to improve in-game architecture, yielding a more utopian and less neoliberal play space.

Lefebvre, Henri. (1992). The Production of Space. Wiley.

Rutten, R. (2016). Beyond Proximities: The Socio-Spatial Dynamics of Knowledge Creation. Progress in Human Geography, 41(2), 159–177. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132516629003

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Dr. Mario Donick has studied German language & literature and history at the University of Rostock. He has a PhD in Communication Studies. He works as independent author and researcher. Books and articles on human computer interaction & society, as well as computer games.

The role of money for atmosphere in public transport vehicle simulations

FROG 2023 – Talk

In public transport vehicle simulation games, players can operate trains, trams, buses, subways, or aircraft. Usually, the main focus of these games is driving (or flying) the vehicle itself – we drive the tram or bus for relaxation or to match a schedule; we fly the plane to learn something about aviation or simply for the sake of flying, etc. However, in several simulations, additional tasks are included – such as paying for a bus ticket, controlling passengers for tickets, or paying for aircraft fuel.

This talk discusses selected examples of such money-related side tasks and asks about their function within the game. It has three parts:

1.) Why is it strangely satisfying to give change money to passengers buying tickets from the bus driver? Why is it fun to walk through the bus and identify passengers without tickets? It will be shown that the relevance of money-related side tasks for the main goals of such simulations is usually rather low, but that such tasks add to the perceived atmospheres of the simulated situations.

2.) The atmospheres are not just created by the game itself, but emerge against the background of player’s real-world experiences with public transportation and knowledge about cost-related issues, such as the questionable real-world treatment of passengers without tickets (esp. sometimes poor people end up in jail for not being able to pay for tickets, while still forced to use public transport), or the slowly changing role of money in real-world public transportation (free rides in some places; more affordable monthly tickets). The talk will use the “situation” term in its neo-phenmenological understanding (cf. H. Schmitz, Der Leib, 2011) as triad of “fact” (“Sachverhalt”), “problem” and “program” to identify what makes up the gaming situation (and the role of money in it) and how this leads to the perceived atmospheres.

3.) In the end, the talk asks what would change if money would be removed from such simulations entirely.

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Fiona S. Schönberg holds a BA in Film & English Literature Studies, an MA in Mediendramaturgie (Media Dramaturgy). She is a novelist, script writer and (narrative) game designer from Germany, as well as a PhD candidate at Regensburg University and an associated researcher for Regensburg University’s Digital Area Studies Lab.

Life is Cheap – The Cycle of Profit, Investment and (Self) Improvement in Roleplaying Games

FROG 2023 – Talk

Whether it’s Septims or Eurodollars, Nuyen, Bottlecaps, some flavour of Galactic Credit or the ever ubiquitous gold and silver pieces – most roleplaying games, both digital and analogue, feature some form of diegetic currency.
When observing what these games actually permit the players to spend that money on however, a common trend emerges. Even though a wide range of these games feature mechanics to spend money on food, housing, and a number of leisure or luxury items and activities, and even though the accumulation of wealth is presented as an actual diegetic goal in many such games, the vast majority of opportunities to spend money (both in number and quantity) are focused on improving the mechanical efficiency of the player avatar to perform whatever (usually violent mercenary) work they do to earn money to begin with.
This talk will explore the procedural rhetoric of this loop. The loop of all but (mechanically) guaranteed profit, generating money as a diegetic currency of mechanical progression, and specifically how the progression of profit to invest into greater (combat) efficiency, in turn leading to greater profits, closely mirrors capitalist libertarian theories of individual economic progression but eschews the many pitfalls that such theories chafe against outside the realm of gamified fiction.

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Pratama Wirya Atmaja is a lecturer at the University of Pembangunan Nasional “Veteran” Jawa Timur, Indonesia, with a background in games and software engineering. His research focuses on educational games, interactive narratives, systems thinking, and transmedia learning. He is especially interested in design topics, both theoretical (e.g., the intersection between information, narrative, and interactivity) and practical (e.g., how to connect specific game components to specific components of learning content). He has been a member of ARDIN (Association for Research in Digital Interactive Narratives) and COST Action INDCOR (Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representations) since 2022.

Co-Authors:
Sugiarto (University of Pembangunan Nasional “Veteran” Jawa Timur)
Yisti Vita Via (University of Pembangunan Nasional “Veteran” Jawa Timur)
Hendra Maulana (University of Pembangunan Nasional “Veteran” Jawa Timur)
Dhian Satria Yudha Kartika (University of Pembangunan Nasional “Veteran” Jawa Timur)

How Informative Narrative Game Experts Make or Break Future Society

FROG 2023 – Talk

The uses of games have increasingly become ubiquitous, a phenomenon termed “cultural ludification” (Karhulahti, 2015). Thus, game-related expertise and professions may eventually become essential in society. However, since “games” encompass a wide variety of playable media, the quality may not apply to all subsets of the expertise. Here, we argue that expertise in informative narrative games (INGs) is the most likely to be future-proof. We sharpen our argument by specifying the kind of INGs with the deepest social impact: those representing complexity through intrinsic integration between their information, narrative, and interactivity aspects (Atmaja & Sugiarto, 2022). Taking cues from scholars such as Klabbers (2018), we propose that realizing such INGs requires expertise spanning four domains: content, development, media, and consumption. Each entails specific professions, some of which are currently uncommon in games. Lastly, we discuss leveraging 21st-century education to prepare the young generation for the professions.

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Benjamin Hanussek is Head of PJAIT Game Lab at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw, where he acts as project-coordinator, lecturer, and research advisor in the New Media Arts Department for Game Studies & Design. His work emphasizes pragmatic and industry-aligned approaches in game studies, facilitating exchange between academia, cultural institutions and game studios. Moreover, he works as LQA Testing Associate at Lionbridge Games, reviewing indie and AAA localizations for publishers including Team17, THQ Nordic, and Bandai/Namco.

Co-Author:
Yaraslau Kot, Tallinn University

Brace Yourselves, AI Is Coming: How Artificial Intelligence is going to increase revenue and transform jobs in the games industry

FROG 2023 – Talk

This paper critically assesses the impending impact of artificial intelligence (AI) integration on revenue generation and employment dynamics within the games industry through literature review, comparative analysis and qualitative interviews. AI’s role in optimizing production processes presents a compelling avenue for revenue augmentation. Leveraging AI for procedural content generation (i.e., visual, textual) or automated quality assurance holds potential to streamline development cycles, improve efficiency, and bolster creative outputs. However, these advancements also spotlight concerns related to job displacement. Therefore, the adoption of AI technology prompts a critical examination of the evolving employment landscape. Yet, opportunities arise for the industry to transition toward more specialized roles; roles focused on instructing AI, analysing and iterating its generated content. By conducting a literature review in the domain of Game Production Studies and drawing parallels to the transformative effect of the introduction of the Unity game engine in 2005, this study examines the dual prospects of enhanced revenue streams through production process optimization and looming job displacement. Furthermore, through qualitative expert interviews with three industry professionals from different areas (Game Design, Project Management, HR) further insight shall be taken into account. AI’s integration will ultimately reshape the industry’s landscape by enhancing revenue streams through efficiency gains but to which extent and cost? The importance of workforce adaptation is critical, emphasizing the need for strategic planning of both employers and employees to navigate the delicate balance between technological advancement and the preservation of jobs in the games industry.

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