https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/19740 Thu, 12 Nov 2026 23:50:30 GMT 2026-11-12T23:50:30Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/150296 Title: Libraries in digital games : representations and explorations Authors: Bonello Rutter Giappone, Krista; Vella, Daniel Abstract: This article explores the representation and spatial configurations of libraries in digital games. It considers their participation in the contemporary (pop-)cultural imaginaries and thematics surrounding the idea of the library, arguing that the libraries represented in games are shaped by the encounter between these broader currents and the digital materiality and design conventions of the medium. The argument draws upon a range of examples across genres, considering the significance accorded to libraries within digital games and taking as its starting-point the representation of print archives and the spaces that contain them, although it will later extend this to include a reflection on digital archives. A set of persistent associations and motifs is identified – such as the forgotten and/or ruined archive, nostalgia, and the library as house of secrets or as repository of history and tradition – and their significance unpacked. In particular, a tension between the archive as a space entrusted with stabilising memory and the archive as precarious is identified. This tension is often accompanied by spatial disorientation, in the ‘puzzling’ architectural layout of the library itself. What emerges, however, is that this inclination towards incoherence is often itself in tension with the driving impetus to ‘solve’ or reconstruct the library-in-pieces, make use of the fragments themselves as clues, or exploit library spaces in goal-oriented ways. Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/150296 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/150289 Title: On ludic beauty : Kant, Schiller, and the aesthetics of gameplay Authors: Vella, Daniel Abstract: To frame an aesthetic approach to games, this chapter begins by unpacking the articulation of ‘play’ as a central concept in the discussion of beauty in the aesthetic philosophy of Kant and Schiller, focusing on the idea of beauty as a bringing‑together of the two disparate sides of human being in the shape of ‘formed matter.’ On this basis, the chapter then makes a case for understanding the ‘matter’ of games as being the player’s first‑person experience of taking action in the game, and the ‘form’ as the comportment shaped for the player by the rules of the game. This leads to a proposal for a category of ‘ludic beauty’ – judgement of beauty that pertains to a game’s status and qualities as a game, that is, to the way it plays, in distinction from other kinds of beauty (pictorial, etc.) that might equally pertain to games. To understand the significance of ludic beauty, the chapter then examines the relation of play and aesthetic experience to freedom in Kant and Schiller. This leads to the claim that ludic beauty – in allowing us to willingly adopt comportments and ways of being in the world that diverge from those we might generally inhabit and to engage with these ways of being aesthetically – can give us direct aesthetic experience of dimensions and possibilities of our own being. Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/150289 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/150285 Title: "A beachfront property in Gaza is not a dream" : Utopia, the digital, and the image of the ruin in Palestine Authors: Vella, Daniel Abstract: This essay takes as its starting point an image shared in December 2023 by the Israeli real estate firm Harey Zahav, depicting the plans for a row of luxury beach villas digitally superimposed onto a photograph of ruins in Gaza. Taken in the context of other images of ruination which have been shared and remediated during the assault on Gaza following October 7, 2023, this essay argues that the image is emblematic of a radical shift away from the long-standing Israeli practice of clearing or otherwise obscuring Palestinian ruins within the territory of Israel, as a means of concealing both the pre-1948 Palestinian presence in the land and the violence and ethnic cleansing through which the state was founded. Drawing on discussions of utopia by Ernst Bloch, Fredric Jameson, China Miéville and others, the significance of the representation of images of Palestinian ruins shall be read in the context of the idea of utopia, and the ‘forced forgetting’ of the foundational violence upon which the concept of the utopian ‘blank slate’ is founded. The essay shall then build on the work of Saree Makdisi, Ilan Pappe, Walid Khalidi and others to survey the history of the Israeli treatment of Palestinian ruins, and the way in which their active destruction has been a key mechanism in a process of memoricide at work both in the Israeli relation to the landscape and discursive practices. Finally, the essay shall consider how recent images like the one produced and shared by Harey Zahav represent a shift towards a foregrounding – rather than a concealment – of state violence in the Israeli-Palestinian context, and read the significance of this shift in relation to what Taner Akçam, following Hannah Arendt, has referred to as the “end of tradition” (2025) of the post-war Western liberal world order. Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/150285 2024-10-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/150255 Title: Editorial : user states in extended reality media experiences for entertainment games Abstract: Content for extended reality is an aesthetic experience combining a series of multifaceted media, which combined offers a unique experience to its users. Unlike traditional media, extended reality content allows users to interact and observe this content using a large variety of methods. Such interactivity leads to a series of opportunities and even questions as to how these virtual worlds are perceived, interacted with or how they influence the player themselves, both from a physiological and emotional perspective. This Research Topic tasked authors to submit their work exploring this especially daunting task, inviting multifaceted research including Research Topic such as affective computing, procedural content generation, game content orchestration, human computer interaction and human physiological reaction to the content. [excerpt] Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/150255 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z