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廖至珣 Chih-Hsun Liao

Professor Sun-chieh Liang

2023/1/16

Playful Utopia: Contemporary Utopianism in Digital Games

I. Research Motivation:

The term, Utopia, refers to the ideal societies or the social order that are considerably better

than the contemporary one. Throughout the literary history, many authors had created fictional

worlds to portray the sceneries of their ideal societies. In terms of what they did, writing down a

fiction is like building a new utopia on pages. Nowadays, with the advanced technology, there are

more and more mediums in which the images of utopia could be seen. One of the examples is

digital games. As an important part of modern popular cultures, digital games provide the virtual

spaces for designers to create fictional worlds, just like what literature allowed utopian writers to

do. However, unlike books and films, the mechanism of digital games makes them a unique

medium. The focus of this thesis is to figure out how digital games differ from other traditional

medias on presenting contemporary utopia.

II. Literature Review

1. Contemporary Utopianism:

I start this reading project by understanding the meaning of utopia is and what objective

utopia aims for in order to know more about contemporary utopianism. To answer these

questions, tracing back to the original utopia is necessary. Utopia is a word first coined by

Thomas More in 1516 for his book title and also the name of the fictional island in the book.

According to the introduction in Britannica, the term was the combination of two Greek words,

“ou” (not) and “topos” (place), and thus meant “nowhere”. In addition, originally, More chose

“Nusquama,” the Latin word for nowhere, as the title of his book (Vieira “The Concept of
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Utopia” 4). In this sense, More seemed to deny the possibility of the existence of such a place. In

other words, the so-called ideal society is impossibly achieved.

However, both Fátima Vieira and Lyman Tower Sargent provided the counterarguments to

this idea. In “The Concept of Utopia,” Vieira mentioned the poem written at the end of Utopia by

laureate Anemolius, which conveys the characteristics of the island of Utopia. It states that the

country should be viewed superior to Plato’s city since “its inhabitants and its laws are so

wonderful” and “is presented as having been achieved.” Therefore, the place should be call

“Eutopia (the good place) instead of Utopia” (Vieira “The Concept of Utopia” 5). As for Sargent,

he analyzed More’s intention of creating the policies presented in Utopia. Concerning the

historical background of More’s era, he found that Utopia appeared to stress equality, which

could be taken as a criticism of contemporary England (“More’s ‘Utopia’: An Interpretation of Its

Social Theory” 201), which is haunted by self-interest and greed for power and riches. From

these perspectives, utopia should be interpreted from two aspects: the satire of contemporary

present and the vision of a society that is much better than present one.

Nonetheless, different eras have different cultural and historical backgrounds, so the social

issues that people try to solve and their expectation of the future will also change with time. In

Sargent’s another essay, “Themes in Utopian Fiction in English Before Wells,” he showed that

utopia is an evolutionary concept. For examples, the concept of utopia in the 16th. century is

based on the Christian hierarchy. In the utopian literatures at that time, people were weak and

should be under strict guidance. On the contrary, after the Enlightenment, people have more faith

in humans’ rational ability to build utopian future (276). Under different social condition and

scientific development, the imagined ideal societies will correspondingly contain different

elements.

However, even though the concept of utopia can be adapted to the needs of different eras, it

doesn’t mean that the desire of better future will always exist in humans’ mind. Fátima Vieira’s
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work has mentioned the disastrous strike of the concept of utopia after the 18th. century and two

World Wars. People lost the faith that the future will get better and better (“The Concept of

Utopia” 15-18). As the response to this despair, her another work, “From the Political Utopia to

the Philosophical Utopia—and Rescuing the Political Utopia, on Second Thought,” explains the

background that forms the concept of contemporary utopia. It borrows Giles Deleuze’s

interpretation of the Foucauldian perspective of time to illustrate that the concept of utopia in

modern era shouldn’t stay in the depiction of political blueprint, but should be considered from

another form of time, “a time of becoming,” which “is born out of history” (67) and full of

possibilities. The concept of utopia turns from the political plan into the philosophical thinking,

the utopian thinking, which encourages people not to be limited to predict what is bound to

happen, but to keep questioning the present and explore various possibilities of future (68). Ruth

Levitas’ work offers a more vivid picture of this concept. She mentioned that “[u]topia is

forward-looking” (20), which begins when the utopian thinker explores real or fictional

alternatives to the contemporary present and induces a “transformative process” (16). Utopia has

become a driving force that leads people to keep making progress and aims at changing the world

by inspiring people’s imagination and critical thinking.

In conclusion, nowadays, responding to the change of time, the contemporary utopianism

should be viewed as the force or attitude seeking for changes to improve the present social issues

and find the various alternative paths that lead to improved futures.

2. Mechanism of Digital Games

The next step is to clarify how digital games represent the concept of utopia in a different

way compared to other medias, like novels or films. To achieve this goal, I need to understand the

characteristics of digital games first. Johannes Fromme and Alexander Unger pointed out that in

the modern time, not only the social need but also digital technologies could lead to the social
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and cultural richness of phenomena and activities (4), and the development of these technologies

opens up a lot of new possibilities of digital games. With the help of advanced technology, digital

games have become a new form of media which plays the crucial role in popular culture. Like

other medias, games can also inscribe cultural meanings and knowledge, but due to “the specific

technology and mediality of computer games,” the “forms and patterns of meaning construction

and user perception” open up their own cultural spaces framed as “playful” (4), which marks the

difference from other medias, like books or films. Fromme and Unger’s argument highlights the

importance of digital games and also raises another question about how forms and patterns of

meaning construction make games unique.

This question deals with the basic definition of digital games. Only when we know the

mediality of a digital game can we tell how it is different from any other forms of medias. In

Stephan Günzel’s works, “The Mediality of Computer Games”, he described the basic formation

of mediality of digital games in detail. At the first glance, digital games seem no more than the

combination of simulations and text editors, but actually their mediality marking difference from

any other artifact in the world is “how content appears” rather than “the way data is processed”

(32). According to classical ludology, a game becomes a game, because it has a meaning in and

of itself (33). Every game has certain aims or objectives for players to achieve, which makes the

game spaces, as mentioned previously, playful. How the program is used sets the difference

between simulation and games. In other word, the interactivity is the key that makes games

different than a movie or a static picture.

The interactivity of digital games implies that the players no longer play the roles as

outsiders who only receive the messages passively, like readers or audiences of movies. On the

contrary, they initiatively engage in every event and make response to the feedbacks from the

games. The interactivity can be interpreted from two different aspects according to how gamers

interact with games. The first type is between gamers and the game itself, which will alter how
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the game is supposed to serve players. Meister and Keilhauer both provide ideas about the use of

digital games in everyday lives. They reveal the fact that game-playing has become a crucial part of

our lives, especially for adolescents. Meister focus more on the description of media activities of

adolescents, like social integration, media competencies, and preference of computer uses between

intensive gamers and other adolescents. Keilhauer then explored how online games are used and what

possible subjective processes of appropriation are, which reaches the conclusion that young people

play online games mainly for the purpose of developing social relationships. The result of the usages

mentioned above is bringing what happens in the real life into the virtual space. Hemminger and

Schott have pointed out interaction between reality and game space is commonly identified in most

game sessions. Users of these spaces shape game-play culture by modifying and developing their

own rules and language or creating artefacts across spatial, cultural and social borders. This suggests

that the use of game space can transcend traditional spatial separation and results in the merging of

game space and real life (407). Games do not just serve as the tool of entertainment, but with the

creativity coming from gamers, the outcomes of games can have various possibilities, which might

even move beyond the imagination of developers.

What’s more, not only do gamers change the use of games, Giddings and Yengin’s research

demonstrate that gamers’ initiative engagement could play a greater role in this type of

interaction. The work by Giddings and Kennedy indicates the fact that games are actually a

dynamic media with high flexibility of changing and that gamers, or players, are much more

influential than people originally expect in the interaction with games. Players’ preference of

game plot or gameplay system might force the producers to make corresponding modification in

the updated versions, or even more, fans-made modification of a game may turn out to be a

totally different new game and reach commercial success. The accessibility of the technology

allows for specific competences to develop which enable movement between consumer-producer

relationships. In game industries, players’ identity is not always rigid. They do not only enjoy the
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content made by others; sometimes, they can even be the producers, which brings more

possibilities of game development (134-35). As for Deniz Yengin, he pointed out the interaction

will build the close connection between game space and real world, and this interaction can

promote players’ self-improvement. Since game space has blurred the boundary of reality and

virtual world, players might convey his/her sorrow, concerns, joy, etc. during playing and they

“acquaint better with his/her surroundings, the life and himself/herself by filtering them through

the game” (24). This is because the games are used as an important communication medium and

people would seek to “satisfy their own particular desires, the individuals resort to digital games

to find what they want in the real life” (24). So far, it can be found that the interactivity of the

digital game does provide abundant possible ways of gameplays and thus make it a more flexible

media than any others.

The second type is the interaction between players and the content in games. This type is

often related to the change of players’ personal feeling or experiences and even contribute to their

cognitive development. Both Konstantin Mitgutsch and Karsten Wolf take playing games as the

process of learning. Karsten pointed out that the quests in games provide the chances of problem-

based learning and discovery learning (561-63). Players have to find the solutions themselves to

conquer different missions individually, which forces them to try repeatedly, make reflection on

their previous solution, and seeking for help initiatively. Mitgutsch’s research even explained the

detail of mechanisms during these processes. He mentioned that while playing digital games,

players will undergo the experience-based recursive learning that passionately transforms the

players’ experience, their knowledge, and themselves. In reacting to the missions and challenges

presented in games, players will modify their previous thoughts or cognition and retry. The loop thus

forms an experience-based recursive learning, which makes gaming as a fundamental

transformative learning process that enables one to use negative experiences as productive and

motivating tools to think and learn. Thus, the interactivity leads to the closer relationship of
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games and gamers and even open up more possibilities of players’ experience during the playing

process.

For the term, “interactivity,” Dominik Härig has a different point of view, which emphasizes

the initiative of both gamers and game more. He preferred to describe game-gamer relation as the

bidirectional communication instead of interaction (211). To him, gameplay experience is more

than the usual stimulus-reaction schemes. Players actively engage in process of gaming with their

expectation and emotions from the real world, and when players overcome quests with different

level of difficulty, the experiences will enhance their a priori knowledge and improve the ability

to judge critically. On the other side, a game’s mechanisms are implemented in order to neither

over nor underchallenge the player so that they will continue to stay in playing. In his sense,

games and gamers are not only reacting to the actions from each other. They actually both seek

for positive feedbacks. In addition, he mentioned that the loop formed by the gamer’s social

needs for appreciation of achievements and the attraction of games will enhance the continuing

interest in maintaining communication, which results in an experience of immersion.

As the outcome of interactivity, “immersion” is also an important element of gameplay

experience, which is frequently mentioned and used by gamers, designers, and researchers but it

is very difficult to be defined. Paul Cairns’ essay makes the initial effort of “positioning

immersion in relation to the various other, generic experiences that games offer” (340). It defined

“immersion” as a cognitive state that is influenced by activities with the game, the social

connections, and external factors around the game. It could be seen as “a confluence of different

psychological faculties such as attention, planning, and perception that when unified in a game

lead to a focused state of mind” (359), in which players are less aware of the world around them

and become immersed in the game. Even though immersion cannot be categorized with any other

existing concepts such as “attention”, “flow”, and “fun”, it can be usually experienced alongside

all of them and the pleasure of being immersed in a game makes immersion an important
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component of the gaming experience that players actively seek when they play games.

Attention, flow and any other experiences seem to be other concepts different from

immersion, but the research by Emily Brown and Paul Cairns shows the closer relation between

them and immersion and also provides a grounded theory of qualities of immersion. Through

testing gamers’ experiences, immersion is indeed used to describe the degree of involvement with

a game, but the experiment suggests that this state of mind should be divided into three levels:

engagement, engrossment and total immersion, and the concepts like attention, flow and

accessibility are taken as the barriers which make involvement of each level possible when they

are achieved (1298-99). Immersion is not a common state of mind that every gamer can share the

same experience, but actually a more complicated stratified concept that causes different mental

effect on players in different levels. Also, the barriers of each level imply that immersion is not the

emotion that suddenly bumps into our mind, but the state that requires for certain premises

completed. The findings of this experiment build a more concrete description of the concept of

immersion, which can help analyze how immersion provides different gaming experience.

So far, the basic concept of immersion has been revealed, but how important it is to games

still needs to be confirmed. Ermi and Mäyrä’s research presents a heuristic gameplay experience

model demonstrating key elements that structure the gameplay experience and highly concerns

the importance of immersion to gameplay experience. From their perspective, gameplay

experiences of course are represented as the interaction between players and games, which

contain three dimensions: sensory immersion, challenge-based immersion and imaginative

immersion (100-101). The term, immersion, used here, implies that the mechanisms of games,

like audiovisual execution, challenges, and plots, are all meant to invite players’ sensory

mergence into the game world. Sensory stimulation attracts players’ attention, challenges keep

them continuing to play, and when all these are achieved, players are more easily absorbed with

the stories and the world, or begins to feel for or identify with a game character, or just enjoy the
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fantasy of the game. Thus, immersion seems to be the necessary conditions of gameplay

experiences.

However, the concept immersion is not limited in the field of games. It also can be seen in

the discussion of books and movies. How can one differentiate the immersion in different fields

so as to identify the uniqueness of games as a special media? To answer this question, I turn back

to one characteristic of games, that is, interactivity. Calleja’s In-Game: From Immersion to

Incorporation has pointed out that “the player of games has agency within the mediated world

that generates what players experience whereas books and films unfold a scripted narrative for

players to consume” (Chapter 7). When people read a novel or watch a movie, sometimes they

might share the emotions with the characters in the story, but most of the time, they just watch

the characters doing something as if they are watching the documentary films. However, in the

gameplay experience, the movements of the characters are totally controlled by players. It is us

who force them to make actions and cause the results. Therefore, the difference between the

immersion of games and other medias is that the interactivity can make players easier to

empathize with the emotion of avatars in the screen, experience the atmosphere of the scene, and

enjoy the fantasy of the storytelling.

Games as the new form of media have its own unique mechanisms and effects on users.

Interactivity is the crucial element of digital games as a form of medias. It not only defines the

essence of games that marks its difference from other medias, but also makes the use of games

dynamic and full of possibilities. What’s more, it also creates a special experience of immersion.

Based on these points, it can be sure that the mechanism of games allows this medium to own

different forms of meaning construction and also to become a special platform to represent

utopia.

3. How the Utopia is Presented in Game Worlds

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Digital game indeed is a unique medium, whose mechanism provides players new ways to

interact with the content and generate special experiences of immersion, but how could these

characteristics make digital games suitable for presenting the image of utopia? In other words, in

what ways digital games are connected to utopianism?

Alexander Galloway’s “Warcraft and Utopia” directly declares the close relationship

between games and utopia. He argues that “all video games are, at a certain level, utopian

projects” due to the similarity between the nature of utopia and the formation of the game world.

Utopia and the game world are both the products of imagination which come from nothing and

cannot be found in the real world, but in their description, we still can find some settings

simulating rules or social conditions in the real life. In this sense, the worlds of utopia and digital

games are re-created fictional worlds which are designed based on the real world but added with

new elements. Another similarity is that they are both full of possibilities. With humans’

creativity, the customs, cultures, world views, landscapes can all reach beyond the limits of

reality. Therefore, basically speaking, utopia and digital games share the same essence.

Designing a game is just like creating a new utopia.

In addition to the similar logic of formation, the space of digital games unexpectedly

matches the function of utopia. In literatures, utopia usually provides the critical examinations of

present societies and proposes possible way of future development. To verify the hypothesis

presented in utopia, the virtual space of digital games could be the ideal platform for the

examination. In “Playful Utopias: Sandboxes for the Future,” the author, Hartmut Koenitz,

viewed digital games as the role of ‘sandboxes’ in which people can build what is described as

utopias and test those societal issues and people’s ideals in it. The simulation in game space serve as

the experimental station allowing players to explore different kinds of future. A specific advantage of

video games and interactive digital narratives is that they are not bound by the restrictions of the real

world, yet can simulate probable scenarios with great details. And this should be expanded further
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and considered as vessels for utopias and playful explorations for trying out what could be the

available direction toward the future.

The pattern of how the image of utopia is exactly implemented in games can refers to the

studies by Gerald Farca and Anne Dippel. The former suggests that the utopian impulse has

already permeated human society and their creations, which oscillates between utopian and anti-

utopian possibilities and manifests itself in digital games in general and utopian and dystopian

video games in a reinforced manner. For general games, players will be involved in a form of

play that is fundamentally regenerative through the interaction with spaces, plot frameworks,

characters and cultures, and the system in games (111). The stimulation coming from the

interaction can motivate players to think from different perspectives and make reflections on the

present life. As for utopian and dystopian video games, players are often placed in a world that

could be better or worse than the present. According to their choices, the world may go on the

path to either utopia or dystopia (119-23). This kind of regenerative play will further serve as the

warnings of contemporary trends and tendencies that may lead the world into negative directions

and involve players in different ways in the negotiation of hope. Farca thinks that utopian

thinking can be generated through the interaction with the content of games. Through playing the

games, players can explore different points of view about lifestyles and social constitution. As for

Dippel, she takes utopian thinking as the outcome of playing games. She thinks digitality and play

open up possibilities to speculate about potential futures and bring a grain of optimism into the vision

of failed encoded potential utopian spaces. Digital games are more than a medium; “they may be seen

as architecture, bureaucracy, objects of affect and emotion” (246), which allow its players to critically

rethink the capitalist values by experiencing them in a whole new dimension. The fictional world is

used to compare with the empirical world so as to inspire critical thinking on the daily norms,

conventions and social habits. Even though Farca and Dippel stand from different perspectives,

the common point is that the design of games stimulates utopian thinking.
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To demonstrate the pattern presented by Farca and Dippel, the games I choose for case study

are Elden Ring and Detroit:Become Human. Both of these two games offer high degree of liberty

for players to explore. In Elden Ring, following the description of the dystopian game in Farca’s

essay, players are placed in a post-apocalyptic world. Their exploration will cause different

endings of the world. The game adopts the gameplay as the so-called open-world. The text, “Task

Deployment in Three Types of Game Spatial Structures” points out that compared with linear

narrative, the open world leaves more freedom for players to decide their own route of exploring

the maps. Combined with the fragmentary narration, under which players can only learn the story

from the illustrations of items or NPCs in games, the free exploration caused by the open world

system will lead to various interpretations of the story. All these designs are meant to provide the

chance for players to generate as many outcomes of the gameplay experience as possible. By

doing so, players can be inspired to ponder different values in the game and come up with their

own conclusions of what should be the most important for the world. As for Detroit:Become

Human, it is more like an interactive movie rather than a game, but during the plot, there are

several times when players need to decide characters’ next movement. The point is that even

though the route of exploration cannot be chosen by players but the key actions determining the

endings are made by players themselves, which will generate the more vivid sense of presence,

guilt, or achievement. The different point of Detroit is that players are not only influenced by the

interaction with vivid characters in the game, but also by the main issue discussed in the game.

The central issue of Detroit doesn’t belong to the fictional world, but is one of the controversial

social issue discussed today: what can be called human and who deserves human rights?

Different from Farca’s perspective, not only the content, but even the gameplay experience can

be inspiring of utopian thinking.

With these two case studies, I try to explain the connection between utopia and digital

games. Except for highlighting the potential of game world in digital games, the main concern
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falls on how the digital games become a new medium which is suitable for presenting

contemporary utopianism.

III. Outline of Chapters

To further clarify the relationship between contemporary utopianism and its new medium,

digital games, the theme of this thesis is intended to find out how digital games exactly manifest

utopian thinking in the virtual spaces and especially how games’ characteristics, like

interactivity and immersion, promote this phenomenon in gameplay experience. To make the

argument clear, I divide the content into two parts. First, I will present the detailed introduction

of some basic concepts, like utopian thinking and the characteristics of digital games, to set the

foundation for further discussion. In the first chapter, by introducing the history background, it

can be revealed how political utopia was transformed into philosophical utopia and what the

main difference between traditional and contemporary utopianism is. In addition, I will analyze

how digital games as the new medium represent utopian thinking in the second chapter. The

main point will fall on how the interactivity of game makes the medium unique and how the

effect of immersion on players enhances the experience of utopian thinking. In the second part, I

will demonstrate how utopia and game worlds are connected in practice. In the third chapter,

except for illustrating their interaction within the game, I will also make some reviews of the

models of games’ function of inspiring utopian thinking. Finally, the forth chapter will end the

thesis with two case-studies as examples of utopian thinking presented or inspired in games.

According to Anne Dippel’s and Gerald Farca’s analyses from different perspectives on how

games generate utopian thinking, the two cases will also be classified into two categories: (1)

the utopian thinking within the games, and (2) the utopian thinking out of the games. For the

first type, the utopian thinking would be generated through the players’ interaction with the

virtual environment. Thus, I choose Elden Ring, the action role-playing game published in 2022,
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as a case with complete plot and realistic landscape to illustrate how utopian thinking is inspired

by the setting in game worlds. As for the second category, utopian thinking happens through the

players’ reflection on the issue presented in games. I choose Detroit: Become Human, an

adventure game in the form of interactive movie, as the example to explain how gameplay

experiences motivate players’ utopian thinking. Through demonstrating the setting of game

spaces and the various mechanism allowing player’s interaction, people could have an insight

that digital games have become a new medium that inspires utopian thinking in a way different

from traditional medias.

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Reading List (MLA 8th. edition)

On Utopia

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "utopia". Encyclopedia Britannica, 19 Sep. 2022,

https://www.britannica.com/topic/utopia. Accessed 23 October 2022.

Levitas, Ruth, and Lucy Sargisson. “Utopia in Dark Times: Optimism/Pessimism and

Utopia/Dystopia.” Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination. New

York: Routledge, 2003, pp. 13-27.

More, Thomas. Utopia. Trans. Clarence H. Miller. Yale University Press, 2001.
Sargent, Lyman Tower. “More’s ‘Utopia’: An Interpretation of Its Social Theory.” History of

Political Thought, vol.5, no. 2, 1984, pp. 195-210.

- - - “Themes in Utopian Fiction in English Before Wells.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 3, no. 3,

1976, pp. 275–82.

Vieira, Fátima. “The Concept of Utopia.” The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature. Ed.

Gregory Claeys. Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 3–27. 

- - - “From the Political Utopia to the Philosophical Utopia—and Rescuing the Political Utopia,

on Second Thought.” Utopian Horizons: Ideology, Politics, Literature. Ed. Zsolt Czigányik.

Budapest: Central European UP, 2017. pp. 63-76.

On Digital Games: Interactivity

Fromme, Johannes, and Alexander Unger. “Computer Games and Digital Game Cultures: An

Introduction.” Computer Games and New Media Cultures: A Handbook of Digital Games

Studies. Ed. Johannes Fromme, and Alexander Unger. Springer, 2012, pp. 1-28.

Giddings, Seth, and Helen Kennedy. “Digital Games as New Media.” Understanding Digital

Games. Ed. Joanna Bryce, and Jason Rutter. London: Sage, 2006, pp. 129-47.

Günzel, Stephan. “The Mediality of Computer Games”. Computer Games and New Media

Cultures: A Handbook of Digital Games Studies. Ed. Johannes Fromme, and Alexander

Unger. Springer, 2012, pp. 29-46.

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Hemminger, Elke and Gareth Schott. “Mergence of Spaces: MMORPG User-Practice and

Everyday Life.” Computer Games and New Media Cultures: A Handbook of Digital

Games Studies. Ed. Johannes Fromme, and Alexander Unger. Springer, 2012, pp. 395-409.

Keilhauer, Jan. “Online Games: Modern Media Worlds of Young People.” Computer Games and

New Media Cultures: A Handbook of Digital Games Studies. Ed. Johannes Fromme, and

Alexander Unger. Springer, 2012, pp. 317-328.

Meister, Dorothee M., and et al. “Digital Games in the Context of Adolescent Media Behavior.”

Computer Games and New Media Cultures: A Handbook of Digital Games Studies. Ed.

Johannes Fromme, and Alexander Unger. Springer, 2012, pp. 295-315.

Mitgutsch, Konstantin. “Learning Through Play – A Delicate Matter: Experience-Based

Recursive Learning in Computer Games.” Computer Games and New Media Cultures: A

Handbook of Digital Games Studies. Ed. Johannes Fromme, and Alexander Unger.

Springer, 2012, pp. 571-84.

Yengin, Deniz. “Digital Game as A New Media and Use of Digital Game in Education.” The

Turkish Online Journal of Design Art and Communication, vol. 1, 2011, pp. 20-25.

Wolf, Karsten D. “The Instructional Design and Motivational Mechanisms of World of

Warcraft.” Computer Games and New Media Cultures: A Handbook of Digital Games

Studies. Ed. Johannes Fromme, and Alexander Unger. Springer, 2012, pp. 557-69.

On Digital Games: Immersion

Brown, Emily, and Paul Cairns. “A Grounded Investigation of Game Immersion.” CHI '04

Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing

Machinery, 2004, pp. 1297-1300.

Calleja, G. In-Game: From Immersion to Incorporation. Boston: MIT Press, 2011.

Cairns, Paul, Anna Cox, and A. Imran Nordin. “Immersion in Digital Games: Review of Gaming

Experience Research.” Handbook of Digital Games. Ed. Marios C. Angelides, and Harry

Agius. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2014, pp. 337-61.
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Ermi, L. and F. Mäyrä. “Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analysing

Immersion.” Proceedings of the DiGRA conference Changing views: worlds in play,

Vancouver, Canada, DiGRA, 2005, pp. 88-115.

Härig, Dominik. “Inside and Outside the Game.” Computer Games and New Media Cultures: A

Handbook of Digital Games Studies. Ed. Johannes Fromme, and Alexander Unger.

Springer, 2012, pp. 209-217.

On Utopianism in Games

Dippel, A. “Ludopian Visions: On the Speculative Potential of Games in Times of Algorithmc

Work and Play.” Playing Utopia: Futures in Digital Games. Columbia University Press,

2019, pp. 235-52.

Farca, Gerald. “The Concept of Utopia in Digital Games.” Playing Utopia, Columbia University

Press, 2019, pp. 99-148.

Galloway, Alexander R. “Warcraft and Utopia.” CTheory, 16 Feb. 2006,

https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/ctheory/article/view/14501.

Koenitz, Hartmut. “Playful Utopias: Sandboxes for the Future.” Playing Utopia, Columbia

University Press, 2019, pp. 253-66.

Case Studies

Cage, David. Detroit: Become Human. Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2018,

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1222140/_/.

Miyazaki, Hidetaka, and George R. R. Martin. Elden Ring. Bandai Namco Entertainment, 2022,

https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/elden-ring/elden-ring.

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