Bart Simon

Geek Chic Machine Aesthetics, Digital Gaming, and the Cultural Politics of the Case Mod

This article explores the relationship between computer gamers and their machines in an effort to characterize cultural attitudes toward the materiality of information technology. Whereas dominant culture desires a world in which information technology performs seamlessly within the fabric of everyday life, case-modding gamers prefer to foreground both their computer machinery and their virtuosity in its manipulation. Instead of desiring the disappearance of machines into the background of a world that those machines produce, case modders revel in, and indeed identify with, the material guts of their computer systems. This machine aesthetic is explored further in the context of the LAN party, where the case modders’ machines become as much of a spectacle as the games on the screen.

Discipline and Dragon Kill Points in the Online Power Game

This article discusses the origins and development of the player-innovated dragon kill point (DKP) system as an example for thinking about Foucauldian conceptions of disciplinary power and the production of gamer subjectivity in the contexts of massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) power gaming. The argument considers the generalized hyperrationalism of DKP-based gaming as both an ideal digital form of panoptic control as well as a kind of ironic form of play with the limits of the possibility of control within digital culture.

Beyond Cyberspatial Flaneurie: On the Analytic Potential of Living With Digital Games

This article seeks to make a case for the cultural analysis of digital games as a critical location for understanding the role of digital technologies in mediating the everyday social interaction and organization of subjects in the early 21st century. Digital games are considered as exemplary objects of analysis in terms of shifts in leisure culture, the increasing prevalence of computer-mediated interaction, the proliferation and intensification of visual culture, and the form and structure of posthuman information societies. The future of game studies lies in the willingness to grapple with the specificities of the medium without losing sight of and making a case for its broader cultural significance.

Propinquity: exploring embodied gameplay

Consumer game platforms are realizing Ubicomps vision of seamless, sensor-based, embodied interaction with computation. Here we present Propinquity, a full-body dancing/fighting game using proximity and touch sensing. Relying primarily on auditory feedback, Propinquity attempts to reconfigure sensor-based gameplay as an activity where players orient towards one another rather than a central screen. By presenting this particular demo, we hope to stimulate discussion of embodiment, expressiveness, play, performance, and social production in both ubicomp interaction and game design.

Megabooth: The cultural intermediation of indie games

This article considers the history, practices and impact of the Indie Megabooth and its founders in terms of their role as a ‘cultural intermediary’ in promoting and supporting independent or ‘indie’ game development. The Megabooth is a crucial broker, gatekeeper and orchestrator of not only perceptions of and markets for indie games but also the socio-material possibility of indie game making itself. In its highly publicized outward-facing role, the Megabooth ascribes legitimacy and value to specific games and developers, but its behind-the-scenes logistical and brokerage activities are of equal if not greater importance. The Megabooth mediates between a diverse set of actors and stakeholders with multiple (often conflicting) needs and goals and in doing so helps constitute the field of production, distribution, reception and consumption for indie games. ‘Indie-ness’ and independence are actively performed in and through intermediaries such as the Megabooth.

Development and integration of digital technologies addressed to raise awareness and access to European underwater cultural heritage. An overview of the H2020 i-MARECULTURE project

The Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH) represents a vast historical and scientific resource that, often, is not accessible to the general public due the environment and depth where it is located. Digital technologies (Virtual Museums, Virtual Guides and Virtual Reconstruction of Cultural Heritage) provide a unique opportunity for digital accessibility to both scholars and general public, interested in having a better grasp of underwater sites and maritime archaeology. This paper presents the architecture and the first results of the Horizon 2020 i-MARECULTURE (Advanced VR, iMmersive Serious Games and Augmented REality as Tools to Raise Awareness and Access to European Underwater CULTURal heritage) project that aims to develop and integrate digital technologies for supporting the wide public in acquiring knowledge about UCH. A Virtual Reality (VR) system will be developed to allow users to visit the underwater sites through the use of Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) or digital holographic screens. Two serious games will be implemented for supporting the understanding of the ancient Mediterranean seafaring and the underwater archaeological excavations. An Augmented Reality (AR) system based on an underwater tablet will be developed to serve as virtual guide for divers that visit the underwater archaeological sites.

A serious game for understanding ancient seafaring in the Mediterranean sea

Commercial sea routes joining Europe with other cultures are vivid examples of cultural interaction. In this work, we present a serious game which aims to provide better insight and understanding of seaborne trade mechanisms and seafaring practices in the eastern Mediterranean during the Classical and Hellenistic periods. The game incorporates probabilistic geospatial analysis of possible ship routes through the re-use and spatial analysis from open GIS maritime, ocean, and weather data. These routes, along with naval engineering and sailing techniques from the period, are used as underlying information for the seafaring game. This work is part of the EU-funded project iMareCulture whose purpose is in raising the European identity awareness using maritime and underwater cultural interaction and exchange in the Mediterranean sea.

Secret Lives of Data Publics : Mixed Reality Smart City Interfaces

Conventional smart city design processes tend to focus on instrumental planning for city systems or novel services for humans. Interacting with data produced by the new services and restructured systems entailed by these processes is commonly done via interfaces like civic dashboards, leading to a critique that data-driven urbanism is bound by the rules and constraints of dashboard design [1]. Informed citizens are expected to engage with new urban information flows through the logic of dashboard interfaces. What datastreams are left off the dashboard of engaged urban experience? What design opportunities arise when dashboard visualizations are moved into the domain of mixed reality? In this two-day workshop, participants will construct prototype mixed reality interfaces for engaging the informational layer of the built urban environment. Using the Unity game engine and the Microsoft HoloLens, participants will focus on generative design in the space of data-driven interfaces, addressing issues of data access, civic agency, and privacy in the context of smart cities. Specific attention will be paid to interfaces that facilitate harmonious co-existence between humans and non-human systems (AI, IoT, etc.).