This paper traces successful and unsuccessful attempts to shape the meanings of the video game Dance Dance Revolution, specifically with reference to what "dancing" means in this context, as the game moves between various interested parties - game developers, players, Internet forum participants, and other media producers. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory and the network analyses of Manuel Castells, the paper reconstructs the forces shaping players' stylistic decisions through an analysis of dance game machines and software, and of a single forum thread on DDRFreak.com, a major website in the dance game community. The paper asks who decides how DDR players dance and at what times? Are the decisions about play made in the development meeting, the arcade, competitions, online or around the home console? Globally, how do some regions or groups emerge as experts or leaders in play style? Analysis indicates that within the United States, Californian players from major cities dominate discussion, supported by the global flows of people, resources, and capital through the state. The dominant players support their stated norms for play through recourse to mainstream conceptions of masculinity, rap music and associated styles of dance.

Dean Chan - Negotiating Intra-Asian Games Networks: On Cultural Proximity, East Asian Games Design, and Chinese Farmers

A key feature of networked games in East Asia is the relationship between the adaptation of regional Asian aesthetic and narrative forms in game content, and the parallel growth in more regionally-focused marketing and distribution initiatives. This essay offers a contextual analysis of intra-Asian games networks, with reference to the production, marketing and circulation of Asian MMORPGs. My discussion locates these networks as part of broader discourses on regionalism, East Asian cultural production and Asian modernity. At the same time, I consider how these networks highlight structural asymmetry and uneven power relations within the region; and I examine the emergent use of gamer-workers known as Chinese farmers in the digital game-items trade.

Laurie N. Taylor - Cameras, Radios, and Butterflies: the Influence and Importance of Fan Networks for Game Studies

As academic game studies emerges as a growing, interdisciplinary, and varied field, researchers require additional resources in order to study games in a larger context. Fan networks produce many such resources often otherwise unavailable - including walkthroughs, hint guides, and other forms of fan research - which are significant for the academic study of games. While professionally produced walkthroughs, game guides, and other research materials are available for the majority of new, popular games, many games never have walkthroughs, and older walkthroughs are often largely unavailable.

David B. Nieborg - Mods, Nay! Tournaments, Yay! - The Appropriation of Contemporary Game Culture by the U.S. Military

This paper analyses the official U.S. Army PC-game, America's Army, against the backdrop of the ongoing war on terror and the military-entertainment complex. It considers the dual role of the game as a recruiting tool and a propaganda instrument. The expansion of the military-entertainment complex has significant consequences for the militarisation of the domestic sphere and youth popular culture. Whereas commercial game developers and publishers are eager to tap into First Person Shooter mod communities in order to institutionalise both cultural and economic value-exchanges, it is impossible to modify the official U.S. Army Game in any way. Yet, a closer look at America' s Army and its community shows the appropriation of various other elements of contemporary game culture: for instance, clan culture, LAN-parties and various forms of fan production. The analysis of America's Army and its community demonstrates that the appropriation of game culture has serious political-ideological implications

Larissa Hjorth - Playing at being mobile: Gaming and cute culture in South Korea

This paper is based on ongoing research into the gendered use of mobile convergent media in the Asia-Pacific region. In particular, what role does the cute have and how does it correlate with types of consumption? As a region, the Asia-Pacific is marked by diverse penetration rates, subject to local cultural and socio-economic nuances. Two defining locations - Seoul (South Korea) and Tokyo (Japan) - are seen as both mobile centres and gaming centres which the world looks towards as examples of the future-in-the-present. Unlike Japan, which pioneered the keitai (mobile) IT revolution with devices such as i-mode, South Korea has become a centre for mobile DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadband) with the successful implementation of TV mobile phones (TU mobile) in 2005. One of the key features of mobile media technologies is the attempt by the industry to find the next killer application . One such application is the possibility of online multiplayer games accessed through mobile (broadband) telephonic devices such as MMO golf RPG Shot Online (a golf game for mobile phones). Amongst this frenzy of trend spotting and stargazing, Seoul as a mobile broadband and gaming centre provides a curious case study for the social and cultural intricacies informing the rise of gaming as an everyday practice for many Koreans.

This article begins by outlining the game play and technoculture particular to South Korea and then explores the phenomenon of Kart Rider in South Korean gaming cultures - and its perception/ reception outside Korea - to sketch some of the issues at stake in playing it cute (particularly in the form of cute avatars), consuming Korea and the endurance of co-present communities. In particular, it contemplates the implications of current emerging online mobile gaming genres such as so-called female games such as the cute' Kart Rider in order to think about changing modes of game play and attendant social spaces.

Bo Kampmann Walther - Pervasive Gaming: Formats, Rules, And Space

Pervasive Gaming (PG) denotes a noteworthy change in the history and nature of computer games. By intentionally merging virtual and physical space, pervasive gaming not only extends the magic circle of play; it further challenges our conception of game rules, game mechanics, and game entities. This paper introduces and discusses some of the key characteristics of this novel trend in computer games. Following a short description of the significant features of pervasive computing, Walther explicates pervasive gaming in relation to time, space, and presence (or immersion). Then I position four axes or zones of pervasive gaming: mobility, distribution, persistence, and transmediality. Further, I describe and analyse three essential units of PG (rules, entities, and mechanics), and finally, I speculate about the role of space in PG by differentiating between tangible space, information space, and accessibility space.