Category: Frog 2017

Christian Kißler (*1991 in Hagen-Hohenlimburg, Germany) successfully obtained his Abitur in 2011 and accomplished his bachelor’s degree in biology and educational sciences in 2015. He is currently studying two master programmes: Educational Sciences and Education and Media: eEducation. Christian Kißler operates the biggest German YouTube channel for educational sciences. He works both at the German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases and as a tutor for diverse private and public institutions.

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A Different Kind of Game: Individual Development and Socialization

Panel talk, FROG main conference | Saturday, 14^th October, 18:00 – 18:30

How do I become who I am? How important are other people for the process of becoming me? Mead´s (1934, 1973) theory of Play, Game, Me, I and Self will be important to answer these questions. With easy words and brief stories many important aspects of the process of becoming oneself will be explained. The importance of other people will be shown: We become who we are by seeing the world through the eyes of the others (Wittpoth, 2009) and a person resp. subjectivity has always to be thought in relation to other persons and groups (Ricken, 1999; 2006).

Dominik Mieth studied film, literature and philosophy in Tübingen and Mainz focusing on screenwriting, narratology and ethics. After working in game development for six years as producer and game designer he became professor for game design at the Mediadesign University of Applied Sciences in Munich in 2012. His lectures cover game design and documentation, game rules and mechanics and the history of games and game development.

Mediadesign Hochschule

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“Please look to your right.” – Lessons learned from three Virtual Reality projects

Panel talk, FROG main conference | Saturday, 14^th October, 11:45 – 12:15

The presentation discusses three projects completed by Game Design students at the Mediadesign Hochschule München. It presents lessons learned from implementing gameplay for VR. Key findings cover interaction and interface design, virtual presence and immersion. How did the students use VR to create a novel experience? How did the students expect players to (re)act? How did players with little or no previous VR-experience react? What can this teach us for future VR games?

Federico Alvarez Igarzábal studied Audiovisual Communications and Visual Arts in Córdoba, Argentina. He has worked as a researcher and teacher at different institutions, including the University of Cologne and the TH Köln (Germany), where he is currently employed. Since 2013 he is working on his PhD thesis on the topic of temporal structures in video games and time perception under the working title of “Time and Space in Video Games.”

University of Cologne / TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences

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Marshmallows and Bullets

Panel talk, FROG main conference | Sunday, 15^th October, 12:15 – 12:45

This talk examines the Resident Evil HD Remaster of 2015 with the psychological notions of delayed gratification, temporal discounting, and time perspective. These concepts describe how players interact with video games in general, but are especially adequate for the analysis of survival horror games. The player’s mental construction of time is connected to decision-making processes related to resource management. Survival horror is characterized by the management of scarce resources in unsettling environments. Psychological studies concerned with the aforementioned notions, i.e. Mischel’s famed “Marshmallow Test”, shed light on mental processes that affect interaction with this genre and Resident Evil in particular.

Gernot Hausar is a Historian based in Vienna, Austria. Interests & research include information exchange & transfer, digital humanities, hackers, net-policy, eLearning, OCR, games & data mining.

University of Vienna / University of Applied Sciences FH Campus

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Being mean in Space – The Player Ecosystem of EVE Online (Suggested track: players gaining power)

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

EVE Online from icelandic CCP-Games has a lot of innovative approaches for including players in the game development process. Through this and their very permissive in-game rule system for play, a lot of player initiatives have developed as an addition to the official channels between players and developers. This results in a lot of innovative play styles and tactics and a thriving eco-system in-and out of game with a faithful player-base.In this talk I give an overview and evaluation of the different channels between developers and players and how this fits into “playing” the game.

Harald Koberg manages the department for digital games at Ludovico, an NGO in Styria/Austria focusing on gaming culture and game education. He conducts educational programs dealing with digital games in the social context, works as an expert for the BuPP and runs a study on differing perceptions of gaming and their social significance as part of his PhD-studies at the Institute for European Ethnology at the Karl-Franzens-University in Graz.

Ludovico; Institut für Volkskunde und Kulturanthropologie der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

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We are still weirdos. Challenging the notion of gaming culture at the “center of society”

Panel talk, FROG main conference | Friday, 13^th October, 15:00 – 15:30

Based on ongoing qualitative research, Harald Koberg argues that gaming as a cultural practice is far from the broad social acceptance it has repeatedly been diagnosed with by scientific and journalistic commentators. Referring to sociological theories of deviant behavior and stigmatization he demonstrates, how and why players might still feel the need to defend themselves against accusations and stereotypes – fostering the formation of strong gaming communities on the go. Attempting to uncover the underlying structures of social powers and protected norms, he draws attention to scarcely researched questions about the significance of gaming in the bigger social context.

PhD in Design, Ilaria is Research fellow at Design Department and Adjunct Professor at School of Design, Politecnico di Milano. She designs, investigates and lectures in games for social change as systems for communication and social innovation. Her research – theoretical and practical – mainly addresses (1) the meaningful negative experiences certain games create to activate reflection and change, and (2) interactive narratives, between ethics and aesthetics. The focus is on games and narratives able to meaningfully challenge players to explore civic, social, political, moral or ethical issues, encouraging an alteration of entrenched attitudes and sometimes even behaviours.

Politecnico di Milano

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Game Designers as Play(er) Experience Divers

Panel talk, FROG main conference | Saturday, 14^th October, 12:15 – 12:45

A part from measuring the artefact usability/playability and its ability to successfully entertain the player, who designs games for social change aims should attempt to verify their communicative effectiveness. Are messages conveyed? How players receive them? To what extent are they understood? Good questions… often neglected.Indeed, as central are players, as it is play(er) understanding.This contribution tells the backgrounds and outcomes of a player-centred framework for designers willing to understand players and its application, and sometime misapplication to about 100 games.

I studied game studies and philosophy on the graduate level in Austria, currently still affiliated to the University of Vienna. My research interests focus on play and game studies in general, play therapy, cognitive theory of play, joint action in games, eSports, aesthetics of digital games and digital kitsch.

Universität Wien

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The Gambler’s and Explorer’s Shared Mental State

Panel talk, FROG main conference | Saturday, 14^th October, 09:00 – 09:30

There is a sharp divide between game and gambling studies. The wager component justifies this separation, although the mediality and content of a gambling game do not preclude negotiable consequences. A player experience based ontology can incorporate betting games into the field of game studies. The gap disappears if shown that the experience of wagering overlaps with an established player type. Gaming players’ mental states resemble the experiences of exploring ones. This hypothesis will be instantiated by a comparison between exploration in Minecraft and 4X games with slot machines and roulette, respectively.

Jason Goldsmith is Associate Professor of English at Butler University, where he is developing a video game lab with funds from an Innovation Grant.

Butler University, Indianapolis, IN, USA

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H.Ed. Games; Or, When the Player Gets Schooled

Panel talk, FROG main conference | Friday, 13^th October, 15:45 – 16:15

What does it mean to play games in the context of higher education? How do a player’s motivations and behaviors change when she is also a university student? We play games but are we still players in the generally accepted sense of that word?This paper will explore the player as learner by drawing on student feedback from, and my experience offering, courses on videogames. I offer a preliminary response to these questions and invite the audience to reflect on the forms and sources of knowledge that inform their experience of gaming.

Jonas Linderoth is a professor in education, currently at the university of Gothenburg. He is most known for his work about game perception from an ecological perspective, where he argues that games have very specific conditions for learning. He teaches courses such as Educational Game Design, Games and Simulations as Learning Environments and Game based learning in educational environments.

University of Gothenburg

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Educational game design – breaking the fundamental rules of the craft

Panel talk, FROG main conference | Sunday, 15^th October, 09:00 – 09:30

Drawing upon experiences from teaching students to design educational games Jonas Linderoth explores the tension between good game design and good educational practices. Jonas points out that what is good for entertainment value, user experience, immersion and flow does not necessarily make out design patterns that are good when you design for education. A popular argument is that education should learn from the world of gaming. The key point of this talk is that game design also have a lot to learn from the field of education.

Juergen Hoebarth (http://juergenhoebarth.com) is the CEO of Haexagon Concepts, which is a digital strategy consulting and transmedia storytelling agency. He is also the digital director at Piccing, Inc., where he is engaged in leading product vision and digital marketing. He holds two master’s degrees from the Academy of Visual Arts of Hong Kong Baptist University and is an avid follower and believer of the cryptocurrency and blockchain movement.

Haexagon Concepts

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E-Sports on the blockchain. How cryptocurrencies and the blockchain influence the e-sport ecosystem.

Panel talk, FROG main conference | Sunday, 15^th October, 11:30 – 12:00

The way e-sports companies are launched and operate is transforming, causing the raise of blockchain technologies, such as smart contracts, and cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum. As Ethereum gets more and more popular, numerous e-sports platforms are jumping on board to get funding via an ICO and to make use of the blockchain itself. The decentralized structure of a blockchain positively serves e-sports-related services, such as betting, wagering, prediction gaming or anonymously buying and selling digital items and goods. In particular, we will look into four main cases and how they utilize the power of the blockchain and cryptocurrencies.