Women are underrepresented in the digital games industry all over the world. In Australia, women’s level of contribution to game development is much lower than the USA, Canada, and UK. Reviewing literature from the areas of computer science, information technology, and digital games, this study focuses on the impact of social, structural and cultural aspects, and how these factors might influen...

The following article provides a theoretical framework for the usage of storytelling in digital learning games as a motivational tool. The centre of this framework is the concept of a virtual extrinsic motivation. This concept is developed in reference to design structures in entertaining digital games, Rheinberg’s extended cognitive model of motivation and Zillmann’s affection disposition theo...

Interactive fiction and video games are part of our cultural heritage. As original systems cease to work because of hardware and media failures, methods to preserve obsolete video games for future generations have to be developed. The public interest in early video games is high, as exhibitions, regular magazines on the topic and newspaper articles demonstrate. Moreover, games considered to be ...

This paper outlines a framework for understanding gameplay from the perspective of ecological psychology. According to this perspective, gameplay can be described in terms of perceiving, acting on and transforming the affordances that are related to a game system or to other players in a game. Challenges in games have an emphasis on perceiving suitable actions and/or performing suitable actions...

Continuing interest in digital games indicated that it would be useful to update [Authors’, 2012] systematic literature review of empirical evidence about the positive impacts and outcomes of games. Since a large number of papers was identified in the period from 2009 to 2014, the current review focused on 143 papers that provided higher quality evidence about the positive outcomes of games. [A...

This paper explores how media education principles can be extended to digital games, and whether the notion of ‘game literacy’ is an appropriate metaphor for thinking about the study of digital games in schools. Rationales for studying the media are presented, focusing on the importance of setting up social situations that encourage more systematic and critical understanding of games. The value...

In this paper, I discuss the debate over digital games and narrative in light of medium theory (also known as media ecology). The communicative environment created by a society’s media can favor certain kinds of cultural change. After analyzing the stories (or lack of them) in three very different games, I argue with ludologists that games are not narratives. I believe, however, that the digita...

Motivation is considered as an indispensable factor for carrying out any activity, and particularly learning. Also, it is believed that one way to encourage learning is the use of Digital Games, especially Serious Games as mediating tools of the teaching-learning process. Therefore, we carried out a literature search to identify different motivational theories described in the literature and th...

Research in the field of digital games is highly interdisciplinary but did not yet arrive at common conceptualizations and at a common language of discourse. The difficulty lies in the heterogeneity of knowledge sources, research methodologies, and practices of discourse relevant to understanding, analyzing, and possibly designing digital games. This paper aims to contribute to fill these gaps....