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Following the materialist approaches to contemporary digital memory- making, this article explores how unequal access to memory production in videogames is determined along economic and cultural lines. Based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with different European, Asian and North American historical game developers, I make the case for how materialist and cultural aspects of videogame development reinforce existing mnemonic hegemony and in turn how this mnemonic hegemony determines access to the production of memory- making potentials that players of videogames activate and negotiate. My interview findings illustrate how individual workers do not necessarily intend to reproduce received systems of power and hegemony, and instead how certain cultural and material relations tacitly motivate and/or marginalise workers in the videogame industries to reproduce hegemonic power relations in cultural memory across race, class and gender. Finally, I develop the argument that access to cultural production networks such as the games industry constitutes important factors that need to be taken seriously in research on cultural memory and game studies. Thus, my article investigates global power relationships, political economy, colonial legacies and cultural hegemony within the videogame industry, and how these are instantiated in individual instances of game developers.

Serious Games are often employed in the health sector. Games for health, e.g., for diagnostic purpose, education, and training, are used to address tasks as diverse as rehabilitation, cancer awareness, and understanding of or coping with psychological disorders. One important area in which Serious Games play an important role is education, training, and learning, which is the focus of the present paper. A challenge in the development of Serious Games is the interdisciplinary nature of the project itself. Medical experts, social scientists, computer scientists, and artists need to work together from the early stages of the project on to the development of a game concept. Working with an interdisciplinary team presents advantages and challenges. Bringing together experts from various disciplines ensures using state-of-the-art techniques and offers fresh perspectives. On the other hand, a common terminology and a usable workflow have to be established. This article focuses on the development and the lessons learned from the serious game SANTRAIN, which aims at the first responder training of the German Federal Armed Forces.

Time and time again derelict psychiatric institutions and rogue inmates serve as settings and antagonists in cultural narratives, and digital games are no exception. The eeriness of exploring what Erving Goffman calls »total institutions« and the tension of being confronted with the mentally ill orchestrate a persistent conflict between madness and reason. How this conflict is constructed on a narrative, aesthetic, and ludic level is the central focus of this article. The perspective applied leans heavily on discourse analysis to give a brief overview of contemporary ideas on mental illness and psychiatric institutions. Theoretically founded in Erving Goffman's concept of total institutions, Outlast (Red Barrels, 2013) and The Town of Light (LKA, 2016) are comparatively interpreted, concluding in the assumption that the perspective of both titles, while differing considerably, constructs mirroring glances on psychiatric institutions and the madness within.

Videospiele sind faszinierend. Daher ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass ihr Motivationspotential in verschiedenen Disziplinen diskutiert wurde. (Serious) Games for Health sind speziell für das Gesundheitswesen konzipiert und zielen darauf ab, positive Auswirkungen auf die Anwender*innen zu haben - physisch oder psychisch. Health Games dienen dazu, Anreize für mehr körperliche Aktivität zu schaffen, sie werden in der Medizin zu Therapiezwecken eingesetzt, sie können förderliche Verhaltensänderungen hervorrufen oder Außenstehenden helfen, Krankheiten (wie z.B. Depression) besser zu verstehen. Ein Spiel an sich macht eine Person jedoch noch nicht dick oder dünn, nicht klug oder dumm und eben nicht gesund oder krank. Es ist ein Zusammenspiel von Missionszielen, Inhalten, Technologie und Vermittlungstechniken, um das angestrebte Ziel zu erreichen. In der Kenntnis über die Spannungen zwischen der schnelllebigen Gamesbranche und dem mitunter restriktiven Gesundheitswesen zeigen wir, wie Games im Gesundheitswesen zum Einsatz kommen und gar kommerziell etabliert werden können. Dabei sehen wir Games als Medien mit hohem Potenzial, aber auch mit Herausforderungen und Grenzen an.

This essay takes a close look how the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) via virtual reality applications is picked up and portrayed in digital games. After all, video and computer games provide players with virtual worlds. They send players, and their characters – particularly in action games and first person shooters – into theaters of war that will be left by many soldiers suffering from PTSD after their missions. Taking CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS III (Treyarch 2015) as a leading example this article shows that the idea of a double virtual world, one with a virtual reality (VR) of therapeutical intention, not only takes the current medical status into consideration, but it sometimes also uses it for the orchestration of utopian and dystopian storylines.

Many video games reinforce a rationalizing logic of self-care through the use of health management tools like hit points and health bars. This paper attempts to problematize the quantification of health in games by situating it at the nexus of objective rationality and hegemonic masculinity. I argue that this assemblage not only necessitates the conditions of existence for hit points and status effects, but also embeds the mechanisms with biopolitical scripts that (re)produce the ideal masculine biocitizen. This rationalization of health in games reinforces hegemonic practices of biomedicine that aim to preserve masculinity rather than improve overall health. Hit points and health bars therefore reproduce masculine ways of seeing that contribute to masculine health practices in the everyday world and consequentially men’s health disparities.

This article argues that video games carry tremendous potential in furthering public understanding of mental illnesses. WHAT REMAINS OF EDITH FINCH is considered as an example to demonstrate, focusing on the specific sequence of Lewis Finch and which aspects of Lewis’ biography are indicative of schizophrenia. The variant models of comorbidity between addiction and psychosis play a significant theoretical role as, according to the developers, the character’s main trait is a marijuana addiction. The actual narrative, however, indicates causes and consequences of mental illnesses that go way beyond drug abuse, such as traumatic childhood experience and social isolation. Following a biographical approach, this article thus focuses on the ludic construction of Lewis’ psychosis, reaching the conclusion that players may, by virtue of their interactive involvement, experience ›symptoms‹ such as depersonalization and forms of dissociation within the safe framework of play.

The term »medicalization« describes a process in which non-medical problems are explained and solved in medical terms. This often happens through the definition of disease categories. Medicalization as a multifactorial process leads to the pathologization of certain phenomena, to an associated expansion of social control and, in the context of the economization of medicine, to increased social inequality. The expansion of medical competence can take place as a primary medicalization on an institutional and structural level, or as a secondary medicalization on an epistemological level. The latter encompasses the circulation of all medical knowledge in society and (popular) culture. Digital games are also implemented into this medical structure of integration, on the one hand in the form of serious games as a medicalized technology and their use as therapeutic, diagnostic, educational or research tools. On the other hand, commercial games are secondarily medicalized, if they use medical semantics to plausibilize their narrative or game mechanics. Thirdly, games can critically question medicalization as a process and thus provide a normative commentary on problems of medicalization. The operationalization of the concept of medicalization for the analysis of digital games is carried out in the following steps: First, the concept of primary medicalization, its causes, characteristics and consequences are outlined. As a second step interfaces of media and cultural analysis regarding medicalization are identified in the context of the sociocultural circulation of medical knowledge (secondary medicalization). Thirdly, it will be shown to what extent one can speak of medicalization of digital games and which categories could form a meaningful analytical tool kit. Finally, by means of the games RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 (Rockstar Studios 2018) and SPIDER-MAN (Insomniac Games 2018), the elaborated aspects are applied in two brief qualitative analyses.

CELESTE (Matt Makes Games 2018) is a game about climbing a mountain. But it is also a game about protagonist Madeline’s struggle with her mental disorder, specifically depression and anxiety attacks. Embodied by a dark doppelganger named Part of Me, Madeline’s disease makes her perilous climb almost impossible and fights her every step of the way. By primarily externalizing mental disorders on a narrative, visual, and ludic level, CELESTE presents an innovative and differentiated way of depicting depression as a form of functional disorders within the game text. As a theoretical starting point, the widely recognized biopsychosocial model has been chosen in which human beings are defined as whole entities and the relationship between health and disease is described as a dynamic process where one does not cancel out the other. Media portrayals of mental illness – in films and on television, as well as in video games – can be stigmatizing. But with their specific quality of interactivity and the recipient as an active subject, video games have the power to let players experience disease in an innovative way which, in this article, will be exemplified with the video game CELESTE.

Cancer, a hyponym for serious contemporary diseases, concerns a growing number of patients each year since research has significantly improved and patients can be diagnosed early. While many cases seem to be preventable, it is one of the leading causes of death. In popular media, cancer is often emotionally represented and a sign of death. In medical terms, it might be understood on a cellular level without regarding external conditions. This article shows that both ways can be discussed in two disease models that help to set a discursive framework of cancer representation in digital games. Re-Mission (Realtime Associates, Inc. 2006) shows a scientific side of occurrence by guiding an avatar through the human body while treating cancer internally. The game perpetuates a biomedical interpretation. In contrast, THAT DRAGON, CANCER (Numinous Games 2016) examines a biopsychosocial attempt perspective. While both games are determined by their contexts of production, their representation of cancer can be read as staying close to their initial disease model.

Spiele finden weder im luftleeren Raum einer als immateriell angenommenen Virtualität statt, noch innerhalb von Zauberkreisen, die klar von den sie umgebenden Produktions- und Lebensverhältnissen zu trennen sind. Wie aber sehen die materiellen Bedingungen aus, unter denen sie hergestellt, genutzt und in weitere Professionalisierungs- und Verwertungskontexte integriert werden? Um diese Frage zu beantworten, bündelt die von der Siegener GamesCoop konzipierte Ausgabe Spiel|Material aktuelle Arbeiten aus der deutschsprachigen Spielforschung, die das komplexe Verhältnis von Spiel und Material aus verschiedensten Perspektiven beleuchten. Sie schafft so Anschluss an den im angloamerikanischen Raum ausgerufenen ‚Material Turn‘ der Game Studies, berücksichtigt dabei aber explizit auch analoges Spielgerät. Mit den versammelten Beiträgen setzt der Band Schwerpunkte in den Bereichen Design und Fanproduktion, Interfaceforschung, Verwertung von Spiel- und Datenmaterial, Medienpädagogik und Kunstgeschichte. Dabei werden die Verhältnisse von Material, Form und Regelwerk sowie von Arbeit und Spiel diskutiert.

In this article, the authors carry out conceptual and theoretical reflections on smartphone communities by closely investigating two apps: Ingress (Niantic 2012) and Pokemon Go (Niantic 2016). While the games’ narratives fabricate reasons for the players to move, it is the Smartphone - understood as an open object between technological and cultural processes - that visualizes and tracks players’ movements and that situates and reshapes the devices, the users and their surroundings. A central aspect is that the ‘augmented’ cities that become visible in the apps are based on the traces of others: other processes and technologies, as well as other players. These traces of practices and movements structure the users’ experience and shape spaces. Traces are necessarily subsequent and we therefore develop the concept of a deferred (smartphone) community and analyse its visibility within the apps. By close reading the two case studies, we examine potential “smartphone communities” in their temporal dimensions, as well as their demands and promises of participation. In order to gain a perspective that is neither adverse to new media nor celebratory of assumed participatory community phenomena, the article aims to interrogate the examples regarding their potential for individuation/ dividuation and community building/dissolution. In doing so, the games’ conditions and the impositions placed on the players are central and include notions of consent and dissent. Drawing upon approaches from community philosophy and media theory, we concentrate on the visible aspects smartphone-interfaces. The traces left by the various processes that were at work become momentarily actualized on the display, where they manifest not as a fixed community, but as a sense of communality.

Automation of play has become an ever more noticeable phenomenon in the domain of video games, expressed by self-playing game worlds, self-acting characters, and non-human agents traversing multiplayer spaces. This article proposes to look at AI-driven non-human play and, what follows, rethink digital games, taking into consideration their cybernetic nature, thus departing from the anthropocentric perspectives dominating the field of Game Studies. A decentralised posthumanist reading, as the author argues, not only allows to rethink digital games and play, but is a necessary condition to critically reflect AI, which due to the fictional character of video games, often plays by very different rules than the so-called “true” AI.

Grand Theft Auto, Battlefield, Counterstrike - more and more, violence in computer games is becoming the subject of heated discussion. But what emotional experiences does the playful use of virtual violence make possible? Through participato observation in online games and at LAN parties and analyses of interviews, magazines, and videos, Christopher Bareither presents in detail how millions of people can take pleasure from that which would shock others. By refraining from judgmental cliches, this ethnographic study is able to provide a decisive contribution to a debate at the crossroads of popular culture, politics, and the public sphere. Grand Theft Auto, Battlefield, Counter-Strike - Gewalt in Computerspielen wird immer wieder kontrovers diskutiert. Doch welche emotionalen Erfahrungen ermöglicht der spielerische Umgang mit virtueller Gewalt? Durch teilnehmende Beobachtungen in Online-Games und auf LAN-Partys sowie mithilfe von Interview-, Zeitschriften- und Videoanalysen arbeitet Christoph Bareither heraus, wie Millionen von Menschen etwas als vergnüglich erleben können, was andere schockiert. Ohne wertende Klischees zu bedienen, leistet die ethnografische Studie damit einen entscheidenden Beitrag zu einer Debatte am Schnittfeld von Populärkultur, Politik und Öffentlichkeit.

Das JAHRBUCH IMMERSIVER MEDIEN erscheint seit 2011 jährlich mit deutschen und englischen Beiträgen unter einem Themenschwerpunkt. Die aktuelle Ausgabe behandelt das Thema «Die mediatisierte Gesellschaft: Leben und arbeiten mit immersiven Medien». Sie enthält neben themenbezogenen Artikeln zudem einen Bericht aus der Forschung und Besprechungen relevanter Medien/Publikationen zum Thema Immersion., Editorial Patrick Rupert-Kruse: Amalgamierung/ Konfluenz/ Konvergenz Artikel Frank Steinicke & Gerd Bruder: Im Selbstversuch 24 Stunden in der virtuellen Realität Dawid Kasprowicz: Lebenstreue Medien. Von immersierten Körpern zu digitalen Menschmodellen Christoph Ernst: Transitivität und immersive Formen des Films. Eine Skizze am Beispiel von INCEPTION Isabella Beyer: 360°-Darstellungskonzepte im Wandel der Zeit Stephan Günzel: Von der Illusion zur Involvierung. Geschichte und Systematik der Begriffe Präsenz und Immersion Forschung und Lehre Thomas Heuer & Patrick Rupert-Kruse: Virtuelle Realität als Forschungsfeld. Die Oculus Rift in Forschung und Lehre des Instituts für Immersive Medien Rezensionen Jürgen Rienow: Die 360°-Fulldome-Show POLARIS vom Planetarium St. Etienne Florian Retiet: Immersive Welten in Videospielen. Eine Rezension zu RED DEAD REDEMPTION und anderen faszinierenden Welten in Videospielen André Vollmer: Story und Game-Design im Zusammenspiel. Die immersive Kraft der Narration im Horror-Video-Spiels WHITE NIGHT

Der Aufsatz untersucht das auf der 1977 begonnenen Filmreihe basierende STAR WARS-Universum als einen Prototypen des Transmedia Worldbuilding. Im Unterschied zu in sich geschlossenen, von einzelnen Autor/innen geprägten Welten wie THE LORD OF THE RINGS oder THE MATRIX schafft das eigendynamische STAR WARS-Universum neue Kernels als erzählerische Kerneinheiten, die sich von den ursprünglich von George Lucas kreierten und auteurisierten Segmenten lösen können. Eines der prägnantesten Beispiele des Expanded Universe bildet das Online-Rollenspiel THE OLD REPUBLIC (2011– ). Dieser Ableger des popkulturellen Mythen-Patchworks wird auf der Basis des von Tosca und Klastrup entwickelten Modells zur Analyse transmedialer Welten diskutiert, die Erweiterung des Modells um Bachtins Chronotopos der Abenteuerzeit soll zusätzlich eine differenziertere Betrachtung der zeitlichen Aspekte von Online-Rollenspielen ermöglichen., The article examines the STAR WARS galaxy as a prototype of transmedia worldbuilding strategy. In contrast to closed authored transmedia worlds such as THE LORD OF THE RINGS or THE MATRIX, the STAR WARS universe created new kernels that distanced themselves from the segments authorized by selfproclaimed auteur and producer George Lucas. One of the most significant examples of the so-called Expanded Universe provides the role-playing video game THE OLD REPUBLIC (2011– ). This branch of the pop-cultural mythological patchwork is discussed in relation to the analytic model of transmedia world established by Susana Tosca and Lisbeth Klastrup, extended by Michael Bachtin’s chronotopos of adventure time in order to enable a more differentiated terminology for temporary aspects of Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.

Ursprung der Demoszene ist die Heimcomputer-Ära und illegale Crackerszene der 1980er Jahre. Damals verteilten Crackergruppen geknackte Computerspiele, primär ohne kommerzielles Interesse, jedoch ergänzt um audiovisuelle Signaturen. In den frühen 1990er Jahren spalteten sich viele Gruppenmitglieder ab, um sich primär der Programmierung der nun vom Spiel unabhängigen Form der 'Demos' zu widmen. Die Ideale der Demoszene zeugen von ihren kulturhistorischen Wurzeln, die sich über die Crackerszene bis zur Hackerkultur der 1950er Jahre zurückverfolgen lassen. Der vorliegende Beitrag wird die unterschiedlichen Arbeitsweisen und Motivationen der Gruppierungen nachvollziehen und anhand des Verhältnisses von Offenheit und Wettstreit die Werte der Demoszene ergründen.

Increasingly, technology is at stake in toys, games and playing. With the immense popularity of computer games, questions concerning the role and function of technology in play have become more pressing. A key aspect of the increasing technologization and digitalization of both toys and play is the vagueness of borders between producers, consumers and players. In these so-called participatory cultures, players do not simply play with toys designed behind closed doors but become co-designers. This book takes a critical look at the advantages and disadvantages of participatory cultures and places the changing world of toys, games and playing in a historical context. Contrary to many New Media and computer game studies, this book takes the historical background of these phenomena into account by situating the changing world of play in the context of the social and cultural processes of commodification, domestication and urbanization from the 1850s to the present.

Thema des Beitrages ist die Kreation von Raum in interaktiven Spielen. Welche Raumkonzepte werden zu Konstruktion von Spielen verwendet? Ein Vergleich der Konstruktions- und Raumkonzepte in den Spielen ���Myst III Exile��� und ���Unreal Tournament��� zeigt einen grundlegenden Unterschied: W��hrend die Welt im dritten Adventure Game der ���Myst���-Reihe additiv aufgebaut ist und die topografische Begrenzung konzeptueller Teil des Spiels ist, ist das Ego-Shooter- und Multiplayer-Spiel ���Unreal Tournament��� von einem antagonististischen Kreationskonzept gepr��gt. ���Unreal��� ist eine Welt voller M��glichkeitsr��ume, aus der einzelne Welten und R��ume als Levels herausgeschnitten werden. Bestehende ��sthetische und formale Gegebenheiten werden umgedreht, und es enststeht eine Schattenwelt, die stark an das urspr��ngliche Konzept William Gibsons von Cyberspace erinnert "als einem Informations- und Kommunikationsraum, wo sich Menschen einer gemeinsamen Halluzination hingeben" und wo schliesslich die Grenze zwischen Realit��t und Virtualit��t zerfliesst.

Das Strategie-Adventure WIGGLES wird auf eine typische Raum- und Zeitkategorie hin untersucht. Typisch f��r Strategiespiele ist die Kategorie des "unsicheren Raums", die aus den Filmwissenschaften stammt. Die zyklische Zeit ist eine Zeitkategorie, die sich in den meisten Computerspielen findet. Die zyklische Zeiterfahrung findet ihre Begr��ndung in den f��r Computerprogrammen typischen Schleifen, die sich w��hrend des Spiels als Formen der Rekursion ��u��ern.

This article discusses the phenomenon of Games for Health from a perspective of biopolitical theory. Games for Health is an emerging type of digital game which has ›health‹ as its topic. This includes very different aspects, like playing while exercising, playing while learning theoretical knowledge about a healthy lifestyle, playing as a part of rehabilitative therapy, and playing while training to be a medical practitioner. While Games for Health are quite diverse, they share some features which can be analyzed more precisely with theories of biopolitics. In this article topics like disciplining, normalization, self-surveillance, immaterial labor, and the constitution of bio-citizens in relation to Games for Health are discussed.

Ebner, Martin [Hrsg.]; Schön, Sandra [Hrsg.]: L3T. Lehrbuch für Lernen und Lehren mit Technologien. 2. Auflage. 2013, [9] S., Computer- und Videospiele gewinnen immer weiter an Popularität, vor allem auch durch neuere Entwicklungen wie der zunehmenden Eignung moderner Smartphones als Spielplattform oder dem Trend zu Browser- und Social-Games. Millionen von Menschen nutzen digitale Spiele als reine Freizeitbeschäftigung, ohne sich der mit den Spielen verbundenen Lernprozesse bewusst zu sein. Zwar dienen das bei Unterhaltungsspielen erworbene Wissen und die sich entwickelnden Kompetenzen in erster Linie der Erreichung der Spielziele, aber das Lernpotenzial digitaler Spiele lässt sich auch für formelle Bildungsziele nutzen - das zumindest ist die Grundidee des "Digital Game-Based Learning". Was und wie lernt man durch digitale Spiele? Wie lassen sich Computer- und Videospiele zu Lernzwecken instrumentalisieren? Wie müssen digitale Lernspiele ausgestaltet werden, um einen möglichst hohen Lernerfolg zu gewährleisten, und wie können die Spiele in geeignete Lernarrangements eingebunden werden? Mit diesen und ähnlichen Fragen beschäftigt sich die Wissenschaft im Themenbereich (Digital) Game-Based Learning. Ziel dieses Kapitels ist es, das Konzept des (Digital) Game-Based Learning vorzustellen, indem einerseits seine Grundüberlegungen und wichtige Einflussgrößen erläutert, und andererseits Potenziale, Probleme und Herausforderungen veranschaulicht werden. Abgerundet wird das Kapitel durch einige Praxisbeispiele. (DIPF/Orig.)