One of the aims of the Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association (ToDiGRA) is to collect the best received work presented at the DiGRA conferences. This special issue collects some of the highlights from the 2015 edition of the DiGRA conference held in Lüneburg, Germany(May 14-17). The conference theme of “Diversity of play: Games – Cultures – Identities” invited submissions that reflected upon the diversityof games and gaming and this compilation features some of the bestwork on that. As usual, the invited keynote speeches are not an integral part of the Transactions. We did however publish the keynotes in a separate open access publication that you might want to read in parallel with the peer-reviewed articles in this issue. You can find the booklet with the title “Diversity of Play” (ed Mathias Fuchs) published by meson press in Lüneburg available for free download at: http://meson.press/books/diversity-of-play/
In this paper, we present the development of Tangible Handimation, a sequencer-inspired animation system for recording and playback of whole or individual parts of animations through direct manipulation and tangible interfaces. The development of the system from a keyboard and mouse set-up, Handimation, is described including a workshop with professionals. Users reported the system as enabling real-time performances and making the animation process more democratic, and based upon their input support for imminent feed-forward information was added to the design.
Computers have lead to a revolution in the games we play, and, following this, an interest for computer-based games has been sparked in research communities. However, this easily leads to the perception of a one-way direction of influence between that the field of game research and computer science. This historical investigation points towards a deep and intertwined relationship between research on games and the development of computers, giving a richer picture of both fields. While doing so, an overview of early game research is presented and an argument made that the
distinction between digital games and non-digital games may be counter-productive to game research as a whole.
While gamification is an often used tool in building interactive experiences for sports, little work has addressed systems designed by users for users and deeply embedded in the social setting of physical exercise. Consequently, a better understanding of sports gamification in the wild is needed to build systems that reflect the users' pre-existing social context. This paper presents a qualitative study of a gamification system, the Boar Board, designed by a sports coach to support users participating in regular exercises. Through surveys, interviews and observations over eight months, we built an understanding of the user adoption of the system and how the Boar Board supported the goals of the group. Based on this, we endeavour to understand the social aspects of the system, including trust, and posit a number of design considerations for future inquiry into gamification systems for sports.
In this article we report an autoethnographic study of pickup groups (PUGs) in the game Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2). The study focuses on how PUGs as social arenas are constituted by their participants and the role game design plays in structuring interaction. We use Goffman’s idea that activities are surrounded by a metaphorical frame together with an understanding of gameplay design patterns in order to analyze inclusion and exclusion, social positions and the relation between the game context and the players’ “wider worlds.” In the case of L4D2 the design pattern of Symbiotic Player Relationships creates a social situation that puts extra pressure on the players to perform well and leads to issues of identity. By negotiating the boundary between their in-game identity, based on gaming skill, and other social relations outside of the game context, players can constitute a more stable game session. The study concludes with the tentative suggestion that positive perceptions of other players’ out-of-game identity can save a game from falling apart, yet negative perceptions of other players’ values and out-of-game identities pose no threat to the game activity.
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