The State at Play: Iain M. Banks’s Gaming Galactic Empires

Situated Play and Mobile Gaming

There is no other play than situated play. A game becomes situated via play activities. Without playing we have the mechanics of a game, the elements and the relations, the roles and the rules. Situated play emerges within playing when the skeleton becomes alive, the role becomes a person, and the abstract game system becomes a concrete unrepeatable gaming experience. For mobile games having pe...

Productive Gaming: The Case for Historiographic Play

Game State versus Play State: From DVDi Games to a Language of Gaming Experience

Research in the field of digital games is highly interdisciplinary but did not yet arrive at common conceptualizations and at a common language of discourse. The difficulty lies in the heterogeneity of knowledge sources, research methodologies, and practices of discourse relevant to understanding, analyzing, and possibly designing digital games. This paper aims to contribute to fill these gaps....

Big Huggin': Affection gaming for alternative play

Big Huggin‘ is an alternative interface game designed to critique the way we play. It is offered as part of the ongoing Critical Gameplay project. Instead of firing toy guns or gesturing abstractly, players must hug a large stuffed animal to win the game. The game has been played by more than 2000 people at 8 venues in North America, South America and Europe.

Ambient Gaming and Play: Opportunities and Challenges

During the workshop on Ambient Gaming (AmGam’11) at the International Conference on Ambient Intelligence in Amsterdam, 16-18 November 2011, 17 participants from 8 different countries discussed emerging research topics around Ambient Gaming. With ambient games and play we denote playful activities that are seamlessly integrated within our daily lives in such a way that the boundaries between oth...