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In 2019, the Notre-Dame de Paris was devastated by a fire. The importance of the Notre-Dame as world heritage was underlined by the countless contributions, donations and solidarity all around the world that pledged to help to rebuild the cathedral. Among all contributions Ubisoft’s idea to offer its game Assassin's Creed: Unity for free to the public was arguably most celebrated as innovative and creative measure to secure heritage in case of its destruction. This case opens up new perspectives and roles of heritage management as also the development and distribution of video games in the twenty first century. The case of Ubisoft’s Notre-Dame is discussed in this paper under a comparative analysis to the game Never Alone and a critical inquiry towards the benefits, consequences and repercussions of the growing importance of synchronising heritage protection with video game production. Also, the perceptive aspect of connecting to heritage as player through a game and its spatial aspects will be explained under Chapman’s concept of narrative gardens.

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The emerging body of work on participatory game design (PGD) highlights the significance of working with end-users’ voices as the starting point. This is particularly critical in serious games that seek to impact social change in areas such as sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). This article, which is based on fieldwork with 16 college instructors in four agricultural colleges in rural Ethiopia, draws together concepts of participatory visual methods (particularly cellphilming), PGD and a game universe perspective to offer an engaging and interactive approach to the design of serious games. We refer to this as ‘Participatory Arts-based Game Design’ (PAGD), an approach that was used to create Mela, a serious game to address SGBV in Ethiopian agriculture colleges. Exploring Mela game’s participatory and engaging design process, this article offers a framework for serious game development to address critical social change issues that go beyond the game itself. It has the potential to not only place the end-users at the centre but to recognize the critical role of engagement and immersivity in a field oriented towards impact and sustainability.

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Virtual worlds by nature of their persistence and ability to have multiple simultaneous users in the same space can act as contact zones, defined by Mary Louse Pratt as a "social space where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination," (1991, p. 34). One affordance of virtual worlds in constructing the contact zone is the ability for the developer to use localization to bridge language gaps between a user and the virtual world and, to some extent, between players who have a shared understanding of the virtual world. This understanding extends to the properties of objects and locations and any narrative lore or background in the world. However, localization can be a double-edged sword, with choices in translation and localization leading to confusion among virtual world users and conflict between users and developers.

Language impacts two aspects of the virtual contact zone. For one, players communicate using languages they are proficient in, using whatever affordances are available in the interface and paratextual platforms, such as the official forums and social mediaplatforms like Reddit and Tumblr. For another, the world itself is awash in language. That text manifests itself in gameplay elements from user abilities and item names to more narrative elements such as character names, dialogue, and written story and worldbuilding elements. These textual and narrative components, called "lore," are essential in contextualizing virtual spaces. Lore helps build the virtual world beyond the actual mechanics and interactions within a virtual space. Lore gives users a sense of not just place but of geography, not just time, but of history, and not just context for players but their place within the story of the virtual world. Lore offers players motivation for playing in addition to traditional gameplay motivators such as exploration, achieving, socializing, and defeating enemies or other players (Yee, 2006; Bartle, 1996) to interact with the world.

This paper focuses on the case of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (FFXIV), an MMORPG initially released in 2013, its production, approaches to localization,and how it contributes to building a "virtual contact zone." In looking at specific instances where controversies in translation and localization led to confusion and conflict among the participants and developers of the game, this case study illustrates the role of localization in games beyond translation and acculturation. Localization not only serves as the linguistic bridge among members of the contact zone but, in the case of online games where world-building and narrative are important aspects for immersion and play, creates shared experiences and understandings of that virtual world among all members of the virtual contact zone.

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In the past decade, “walking simulator” has evolved from an insult to a critically and commercially successful genre of games. Through subversive mechanics and an emphasis on immersive, affective storytelling, these games are well-situated to explore LGBTQ+ narratives and queer forms of play (Ruberg, 2019). This paper unpacks the affective implications of games that urge the player to “snoop around” personal spaces, including Gone Home (Fullbright, 2013), What Remains of Edith Finch (Giant Sparrow, 2017), and A Normal Lost Phone (Accidental Queens, 2017). After a broad overview of the genre and relevant scholarship, the author examines the emotional impact of ludic “snooping”. Specifically, the author considers how games centring this mechanic simulate intimacy (while problematizing consent), engage agency through interaction and movement, and harness a disorienting atmosphere in their storytelling. Finally, the paper reflects on how character identification can be understood in the context of “games for change”, so-called empathy games, and the need to move towards a more thoughtful engagement with queer affect. This paper touches on each of these issues with a broad, interdisciplinary approach rooted in rhetoric, close reading, and queer theory.