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Are Free-to-Play Games Evil? Reopening the Debate on Exploitation

21. Januar 2021 ·
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Most commercially successful free-to-play games balance on the verge of exploiting the player, although it is still very difficult to explain where fair play ends and exploitation begins. To draw this line, I turned to the labour theory of value (LTV) by Karl Marx to find out that it explains ludic exploitation in a satisfactory logical manner.
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“The change can only come from within the industry” – PAIDIA in conversation with games labour

21. Januar 2021 ·
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Talking about Marx, labour, games and play from an academic perspective was one of our main goals for this special issue. However, we don’t want to stay in our ivory tower. We want to show the interrelations of labour, games and play and we want to hear not only the voices of academics but of workers, too. PAIDIA sat down with a member of Game Workers Unite Germany. Lily (name changed) talked to us about their experience in the games industry, about bad labour conditions and their underlying problems, and what has to change in the industry. The interview was conducted by Tobias Unterhuber.
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From Deep Blue to Blade Runner – The Portrayal of Artificial Intelligence in the Fallout Game Series

27. Juli 2017 ·
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Wissenschaft steht immer wieder im Zentrum der postapokalyp­tischen Welt von Fallout, (( Interplay Productions: Fallout. 1997. )) sowohl auf der Ebene der Narrative als auch auf derjenigen der Spielmechanik. In diesem Artikel lassen wir jedoch Kern­energie, Genetik und Robotik beiseite und konzentrieren uns auf die Darstellung von Künstlicher Intelligenz (KI) in den vier Hauptteilen der Rollenspiel Reihe. Wir analysieren die wachsende Bedeutung der KI-bezogenen Erzählungen innerhalb der Spiele, ergründen die Kontexte, aus denen diese Geschichten stammen und arbeiten heraus, welche sich wandelnden Vorstellungen von KI im Laufe der Spielereihe hervorgerufen werden. Wir argumentieren, dass die KI-Darstel­lun­gen in Fallout tief in der zeitgenössischen Populärkultur verankert und durch zahlreiche Bezüge zur Science Fiction angereichert sind. Auch wird auf reale KI-Forschung Bezug genommen, allerdings verlieren diese An­knüp­fung­spunkte im Verlauf der Spielereihe an Bedeutung. Während die KI-Narrative immer wichtiger werden, sind diese vermehrt von Anthro­po­morphismus geprägt und auf ethische Fragen bezogen.
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Digital Games and the Collaborative Construction of Knowledge

27. Juli 2017 ·
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Introduction Alan Kay is a computer scientist who was the head of Atari’s research center at the beginning of the 1980s, during the golden age of digital gaming, as digital games started to take the Western world by storm. He was among the first researchers to recognize the emergence of...
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“Concise and clear” – PAIDIA in conversation with Nina Freeman

22. März 2016 ·
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PAIDIA talked to Nina Freeman creator of Cibele ( http://ninasays.so/cibele/ ) and level designer at Fullbright Company about the influence of poetry on her videogames, the artistic potential of the medium, coming of age-narratives in videogames and the coming of age of videogames as well as her design principles and practices. The interview was conducted by Tobias Unterhuber.
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The Art of Congruency – PAIDIA in conversation with Karla Zimonja

2. Oktober 2015 ·
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PAIDIA talked to Karla Zimonja the co-founder of The Fullbright Company about their game Gone Home, their upcoming project Tacoma 1 and her design philosophy. We spoke about a variety of topics: from the importance of agency and trust in the actions of the player to the problem of underrepresentation...
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Role-playing Romances and the Fantasies of Fans

15. Dezember 2014 ·
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Analyzing socio-cultural dynamics between norm and subversion in BioWare’s RPGs  Getting Acquainted Computer role-playing games or, as they are known among gamers, RPGs, are the domain of dragon slaying heroes and heroines, of quests to be fulfilled for glory and riches, of inventory management, of calculating and gathering experience points...
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Posthuman = Postgender? (De)stabilising Binary Oppositions in 'Mass Effect'

15. Dezember 2014 ·
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As literary critic Adam Roberts observes, Science Fiction, despite being generally regarded as a popular entertainment genre, offers quite a unique set of opportunities. On the one hand, it can be used to symbolically reaffirm the conservative status quo through its storyline: the system is disturbed by an intruding Other...
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Video games as an art form - Thoughts on a recurring debate and the elusive nature of art

5. April 2014 ·
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As a game scholar and as a gamer, sooner or later one comes upon an uncomfortable question: are video games art? As video games started gaining popularity, they have become the center of a polarized debate focused on this enquiry. I could try to dissect the arguments of Kellee Santiago,...
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© 2025 Paidia - Zeitschrift für Computerspielforschung (ISSN: 2363-5630)
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