This paper examines gamification as the remediation of an already published text into a game. It expands on the original understanding of the term by positioning it within the discourse of transmedia storytelling. Using Walden, a Game as a case-study, it is argued that it is better approached as a gamified rendering of the titular text in a virtual environment rather than a self-contained game. This argument is supported through formal analysis of the game's spatial design and comparative analysis with other game adaptations of published books as well as Walden, the book as the source text of the game. It is shown that Walden, a Game constitutes a superficial and limited remediation of its original text if it is considered as a game. Instead, it is proposed that it provides a gamified access to its source material and it is in this facilitation wherein its contribution lies. In this, gamification is extrapolated as an alternative entry point to an established work with its own affordances and merits.

In this paper, I analyse tarot readings and discern the game mechanics of the process. I specifically look at YouTube readings and document their ludic qualities by means of critical analysis and ethnography. I show the connection between gameness and tarot readings as a form of generating personal meaning from a system of predefined structures. Particularly, I argue that it is the ludic attributes of tarot what facilitates its therapeutic appeal as an act of self-care. I exemplify this argument by focusing on the choice-making mechanics of YouTube tarot readings. As I argue, these mechanics provide participants with the ability to manifest their desire. I draw further connections between these game mechanics, tarot, and self-care within the context of romantic love. Based on this, I finally support the ability of games to offer and sustain experiences of love due to their mechanics.

In some games, the player is positioned in the role of a lone hero, who has to overcome obstacles and defeat adversaries, in order to save the woman they love. It is argued that such games follow the tradition of adventure romances dating back to 12th century France. From those romances, a particular understanding of love was shaped, romantic love that is. Romantic love as a cultural phenomenon is situated in a limited historic period, in which it pertained to a certain experience of love, that of desire which is refined to something honourable, elegant, and civilized through personal suffering and sacrifice. As such romantic love was the product of a specific set of chivalrous rules, which the aristocracy aspired to so as to elevate and discern themselves from the commoners. This experience was mostly witnessed in literature than real life, or as Huizinga claims in sports, games, and tournaments. In the current paper, it is argued that digital games that uphold this tradition are able to offer to their players the experience of romantic love because they constitute challenges to the fulfilment of one's desire. In that regard, they afford the experience of romantic love in its historically situated meaning due to their code. This posits digital games as the appropriate medium to offer romantic love as they form manifestations of the experience as such.