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Online Games

Snurb — Friday 20 October 2023 23:37

Twitch Streamers’ Compunctions about Streaming That Wizard Game

Politics | Produsage Communities | Online Games | Streaming Media | AoIR 2023 |

The next speaker in this AoIR 2023 session is Kyle Moody, who shifts our focus to branding and consumption markets in cultures; much fandom is tied up with such branding activities. In particular, the focus here is on Twitch, where affective labour and fan work collides with the gig economy of media content creation.

Twitch has made the individual easier to reach (and achieve reach) than ever before; most streamers are not backed by major gaming companies, but act as single agents who create gaming broadcast content and in doing so must adopt and follow certain performance practices: this may …

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Snurb — Friday 21 October 2022 22:16

News Games in Digital Journalism?

Online Games | Journalism | Industrial Journalism | ECREA 2022 |

The next speaker in this ECREA 2022 session is Carlos Ballesteros, whose focus is on news games as a vehicle for digital journalism. Such news games have been around for some time, but they exist in many different forms, and there’s still a lack of conceptual clarity with respect to this term. The general hope is that such games might increase the amount of time people spend with the news media.

But how are such games used to convey journalistic messages? Carlos examined some 84 news games from 48 mass media outlets in 17 countries, classifying these across a number …

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Snurb — Monday 23 May 2016 23:11

Motivations for Participating in Gamified Citizen Science Projects

Produsage Communities | Online Games | WebSci '16 |

The final speaker in this WebSci 2016 session is Ramine Tinati, whose focus is on citizen science platforms. Citizen science itself has been around for hundreds of years, but more recent developments in online crowdsourcing techniques have enabled even greater mass participation in such scientific activities; one early success in this was Zooniverse, which asks users for help in classifying galaxy types.

The platform studied by this paper is Eyewire, which asks users to complete puzzles that help in visually mapping the human brain. The platform also includes a real-time chat interface that connects players with each other …

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Snurb — Monday 26 October 2015 02:21

Funding and Pricing Challenges for Indie Games Developers

Online Games | Creative Industries | AoIR 2015 |

The next speakers at AoIR 2015 are Chris Paul and Mia Consalvo, who shift our interest towards games. What is a game, in the first place? Game styles now vary wildly, and address many different communities of gamers; this is a matter of constitutive rhetoric as the language being used brings distinctions into existence through repetition.

One element that defines games is their payment structure: in mobile gaming, are they free to play or do we pay to win, for instance? Which companies create fair and good or exploitative and greedy games?

There are many genres now emerging, such as …

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Snurb — Friday 25 October 2013 04:18

The Emergent Rules of Games Spectatorship

Produsage Communities | Online Games | Streaming Media | AoIR 2013 |

The next speaker at this AoIR 2013 panel is T.L. Taylor, focussing here on spectatorship in gaming. The mix of playing and watching has always been central to gaming as a social activity, but game studies has always privileged the hands on the controller; spectatorship has traditionally also relied on physical co-presence (e.g. at gaming championships).

But now there are sites like Twitch, which enable gamers to make their private play public as a livestream, and even to make money in doing so, as a spinoff from JustIn.tv. The site currently has some 600 unique broadcasters per month …

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Snurb — Monday 19 September 2011 22:49

User-Led Innovation: The Case of Crytek

Produsers and Produsage | Produsage Communities | Online Games | Produsage in Business | Challenge Social Innovation 2011 |

Vienna.
The next speaker at Challenge Social Innovation is Birgit Blättel-Mink, who focusses on the case of German games developer Crytek (which developed Far Cry, Crysis, and other games), based in Frankfurt, which engages with its users as innovators. The company has some 600 employees distributed across five international studios and two distribution centres; its core product is the Cry games engine.

Crytek’s user community includes casual gamers (on social networks), hardcore gamers (in the Crytek Mycrisis community and other online communities), and modders who generate modified games modules and take part in various specialist communities. Casual gamers …

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Snurb — Sunday 24 October 2010 00:44

Gaming Capital in Social Gaming

Online Games | AoIR 2010 |

Gothenburg.
The next speaker at AoIR 2010 is Olli Sotamaa, whose interest is in social games and gaming capital. Olli is a social gamer himself (on FrontierVille and Mafia Wars), as are other presenters in this session – these activities are publicly announced on Facebook and other social network Websites, generating what can be described as gaming capital (a special form of social capital); how does this operate in relation to social games, then?

Playing Mafia Wars, for example, isn’t a particularly exciting or deep gaming experience, but it is still very popular; what is of most interest here are …

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Snurb — Sunday 24 October 2010 00:44

Cooperative and Competitive Social Gaming Models

Online Games | AoIR 2010 |

Gothenburg.
The next speaker in this session at AoIR 2010 is Luca Rossi, who begins by highlighting the great diversity in computer gaming, and the substantial social aspects of shared gaming experiences. Indeed, creating sociable gaming experiences is now an important aim for the industry.

And yet, playing on Facebook also remains a solitary experience to some extent – you’re playing with others, perhaps, but at a distance. Friends in such games are positioned as resources, who variously can be played with or against. Social relationships are used as games resources, and it is possible that specific game structures work …

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Snurb — Sunday 24 October 2010 00:36

The Emergence of Social Games

Online Games | AoIR 2010 |

Gothenburg.
And we’re in the final session of AoIR 2010 – it’s been a fun and very busy conference. I might be a little distracted in my coverage of this session, as the Hannover 96 – FC Köln game is on at the moment as well… 2:0 at the moment!

We’re starting with Lisbeth Klastrup, who notes that gaming on Facebook has really taken off in recent times; the Farmville application has been most popular so far, with millions of users. Studying social media network games has become an growing sub-set of digital games research, too.

Social media games tend …

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Snurb — Friday 22 October 2010 01:28

Transnational Tendencies in Gaming

Online Games | AoIR 2010 |

Gothenburg.
The next speaker at AoIR 2010 is TL Taylor, whose interest is in game culture – an area where transnational connections are now also prevalent. Where games consoles used to be strongly region-controlled, this has loosened considerably – games bought abroad will now often also play in a different geographical region, even if the same is not necessarily true yet for DVDs and Blu-Ray discs. But in accessing and downloading games, for example, users are often still required to identify their location (or geolocated by their IP address).

Games companies themselves are also reinscribing regional specificity into the gameplay …

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Beyond Interaction Networks: An Introduction to Practice Mapping (ACSPRI 2024)

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Brightest before Dawn (CD, 2011)

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