Proceduralist readings

Abstract

Newsgames and artgames, two genres in which designers wish to communicate messages to players, often deploy procedural representation. Understanding these proceduralist games requires special attention to a game's processes as well as how these interact with its theme and aesthetics. In this paper we present a method for proceduralist readings of arcade-like 2D games so that players can determine their range of intended and unintended meanings, critics can assess the strengths and weaknesses of the presented arguments, and designers can identify ways to refine their rhetorical strategies.Through identifying the components of games that can be interpreted and emphasizing where cultural considerations influence interpretations, we present a framework for meaning derivations that strive to take the entirety of a game into consideration. As demonstrated by several examples, this framework requires much more explicit and formal arguments for why a game carries a meaning and precisely where each component of one's argument came from.

Satirical Game Design: The Case of the Boardgame Construction BOOM!

“…In our analysis we will use the theoretical approach to the keycomponents of satire in games by Caselli et al [13] and the framework designed by Treanor et al (specifically as a tool for journalists to create newsgames) [65] to provide a foundation for a preliminary evaluation of how satire can be expressed through various game elements. Therefore our analysis relies heavily on porting the concept of satire, which originated in the field of literature and literary criticism, to both digital and analogue games by Caselli et al [13].…”

“…Game designers have a number of tools at their disposal to communicate the game's satiric intent which can be broken down into operational elements and interpreted components [65]: We have opted to structure the analysis of Construction BOOM! in accordance with the various components of games as identified by Treanor et al [65].…”

“…Game designers have a number of tools at their disposal to communicate the game's satiric intent which can be broken down into operational elements and interpreted components [65]: We have opted to structure the analysis of Construction BOOM! in accordance with the various components of games as identified by Treanor et al [65]. The reason for this division is twofold: (1) their framework was designed to be used as a practical design tool and (2) the framework's separation of the game components into individual units of meaning without conflating them into the description of the mechanics 1 allows assumptions about a game's meaning to be explicit and not conflated into the descriptions of the mechanics.…”

“…Playing History 2: Slave Trade is such a clear example, precisely because it replicates, nearly identically, the game mechanics of an existing game and allows for an analysis of the effect of changing only this limited variable. Treanor explores how interpretation of abstract mechanics changes depending on theme and aesthetics [65]. We can illustrate this with an example of an existing satirical game, Molleindustria's Phone Story [44].…”

Refining operational logics

“…ideas [3,21] and a variety of projects in player/game modeling and generation [4,6,7,[16][17][18]. e key move in all these cases has been to step away from considering games as bags of mechanics and towards viewing them as assemblages of abstract operations from diverse logics.…”