Katarzyna Marak

Nicholaus Copernicus University

Katarzyna Marak, Ph. D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland; she is the author of Japanese and American Horror: A Comparative Study of Film, Fiction, Graphic Novels and Video Games and the co-author of the upcoming monograph Gameplay, Emotions and Narrative: Independent Games Experienced, as well as a number of papers and chapters about independent games, game mechanics, player experience, the storytelling aspects of games and audience reception, as well as comparative analysis of fiction (film and literature). Her research interests concern game studies, with particular emphasis on independent game texts, horror fiction, testimonies of reception, and various aspects of American and Japanese popular culture.

Selected academic publications:

  • Aspekty funkcjonowania gier cyfrowych we współczesnej kulturze: studia przypadków, [Selected Characteristics of Digital Games’ Functions in Contemporary Culture: Case Studies] (2016); Katarzyna Marak and Miłosz Markocki, Toruń: Nicolaus Copernicus University Press
  • Marak, Katarzyna. “Walking through the Past: The Mechanics and Player Experience of Haunting, Obsession and Trauma in Layers of Fear.” Theoria et Historia Scientiarum 14 (2017): 55-69
  • Marak, Katarzyna. “Wybrane fanowskie praktyki dochodzeniowe na przykładzie fandomu gier Silent Hill [Selected Forensic Practices of the Silent Hill fandom members].” Studia Kulturoznawcze 2 (8), 89-100

All Sessions by Katarzyna Marak

  • 20. Nov | Summit Day

    The Summit Day will feature talks, project presentations, panel discussions, and workshops.

  • 12:30  - 13:00
    This paper is devoted to the unique ways specific paratexts, namely letsplays, contribute to the generating of academic knowledge about digital game texts. The main focus of the paper concerns the valuable information a scholar can obtain from letsplay recordings, which would otherwise be inaccessible if they relied exclusively on the process of critically playing the game. The academic interest in letsplays as paratexts and their potential is on the increase (Mukherjee 2015, Burwell and Miller 2016, Enevold and Stewart 2015), and they are recognized as a source of insight into how the game can be played in terms of skill, strategy and interpretation of content (Newman 2013, RaddeAntweiler and Zeiler 2015). Since letsplays are a peculiar type of paratexts which concentrate specifically on the player experience (Marak and Markocki 2016), they can supply the scholar with extensive data which might not otherwise be apparent to them during their own critical playthrough (Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum 2011), thus reducing the likelihood of potential blindspots in the subsequent analysis. By including in their research the letsplays of the analyzed game, the scholar can not only explore elements of the personal gameplay experience of other players, but also learn about relevant cultural and linguistic limitations of the game, as well as numerous aspects of local agency (Harrel in Lewis and Piekut 2016) it allows for. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate how this information specifically can greatly enrich the process of close reading, and consequently result in a much more comprehensive analysis; to that end, during my presentation I will briefly discuss a number of selected examples.
    20. Nov | Games Studies Summit: Paratextualizing Games
    Where
    room 204

  • 13:00  - 13:30
    Panel discussion
    20. Nov | Games Studies Summit: Paratextualizing Games
    Where
    room 204




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Katarzyna Marak