About The Project:

This interactive map was designed to offer a more accessible way to find and engage with the interdisciplinary literature on time in digital games. This map currently brings together 22 temporal constructs (named, reusable conceptual tools – typologies, frameworks, categories, etc.) published between 2003 and 2025 and plots them comparatively across two axes.

• Temporal Control – where a construct locates the primary source of temporal organisation. Ranging from player-controlled through player-leaning and system-leaning to system-controlled time.
• Temporal Scale – the span of play a construct is designed to describe. Distinguishing constructs that conceptualise time at four levels: moment, session, persistent play, and lifestyle play.

I hope this charting helps readers to see overlaps, gaps, and tensions across game studies, HCI, and related fields without flattening disciplinary differences. The project is intended as an evolving resource that can continue to grow through critique and future additions, making interdisciplinary work on time easier to approach.

This research was first published in the Proceedings of DiGRA 2026.

The map currently includes 22 temporal constructs, listed in the reference table below.

AI Disclosure: ChatGPT was used to support the coding of this interactive research tool. No author data, paper data, or source texts were provided to the model.

YEAR	AUTHOR(S)	CONSTRUCT	DESCRIPTION
2003	Aarseth, Smedstad & Sunnanå; Elverdam & Aarseth	Typology of Games	Treats time as one design dimension among many, distinguishing external vs internal time and parameters like pace, synchronicity, mutability and savability rather than a simple real-time/turn-based split. Note: First addressed in 2003 and later refined in 2007.
2004	Juul	Game Time Duality	Separates real-world play time from fictional game time and examines how games map, accelerate, decouple or fragment the relationship between the two, including dead time and flow. Note: First outlined in “Introduction to Game Time” (2004), expanded in Half-Real (2005).
2005	Björk & Holopainen	Game Design Patterns	Defines temporal components – actions, events, closures, end conditions and evaluation functions – that structure how state changes become meaningful progress and outcomes in games.
2006	Hitchens; Tychsen & Hitchens	Layered Model of Game Time	Introduces four linked time views – playing, engine, progress and world time – to separate real-world duration, system operation, player advancement and fictional chronology, and later extends these into a seven-layer model adding server, story and perceived time for analysing persistence, branching and subjective temporality in multiplayer and RPG play. Note: Developed further in 2007 and 2009.
2007	Zagal & Mateas	Temporal Frames	Introduces four coexisting temporal frames – real-world, gameworld, coordination and fictive time – plus characteristic anomalies, to analyse how different kinds of time interact in play. Note: Groundwork appears in 2005, then expanded across 2007, 2010, and 2015.
2008	Benford & Giannachi	Temporal Trajectories	Maps story time onto clock time through three trajectory types – canonical, participant and historic – to describe scheduling, re-engagement and replay in shared interactive narratives.
2009	Montola, Stenros & Waern	Temporal Expansion	Defines temporal expansion as games becoming always-available and hard to “turn off,” and classifies play modes and styles (dormant, ambient, asynchronous, persistent) that appropriate everyday time.
2010	Wei, Bizzocchi & Calvert	Narrative Pacing in Gameplay	Reimports narratology to games by relating story time to operational time through order, narrative speed (ellipsis, summary, scene, stretch, pause), frequency and polychrony.
2010	Ma & Bassi	Narrative Time in Video Games	Adapts tense/aspect theory to games via an “eternal progressive” present and five pace patterns (ellipsis, speed-up, isochrony, slow-down, quit) that distinguish persistent vs session-bound worlds.
2013	Lundgren	Temporal Themes	Offers seven temporal themes – live time, real time, unbroken flow, sequential, disordered, juxtaposed and branched versions – as a design vocabulary for how interactive systems organise event sequences.
2013	Deterding	Modes of Leisurely Video Gaming	Identifies five modes of leisurely gaming – relaxing, socialising, engrossing, hardcore, competitive – each with characteristic session length, interruptibility and fit with everyday schedules.
2014	Carter, Nansen & Gibbs	Game Engagement Modalities	Classifies games by their attention rhythms (pausable, intermittent, slow, timed, passive, etc.) to show which titles pair well in multi-gaming, multi-screen domestic settings.
2015	Anyó	Participation Time	Reworks discourse time as participation time – the rule-given but player-controlled time of interaction – to explain loops, retries and fuzzy temporality in game narratives.
2017	Goldstein & Khan	Taxonomy of Event Time	Standardises technical talk about time by classifying logical, simulation and wallclock time – and their scalar, vector and matrix forms – for designing and reasoning event ordering in digital systems.
2018	Hanson	Recursive Temporalities	Distils a distinct temporal mode where replay, looping and time manipulation become core mechanics that restructure player memory, learning and narrative experience.
2018	Scully-Blaker	Stasis & Stillness	Differentiates stasis (mechanically produced inaction) from stillness (player-chosen lingering), plus designed vs player-injected forms, to analyse how games structure meaningful pauses.
2019	Alvarez Igarzábal	Time and Space Typology	Presents a three-part toolkit – Change of State, Space-Time and Conditions – detailing how events, spatial layout and constraints (e.g. timers, turns, objectives) together structure gametime.
2020	Jayemanne	Chronotypology	Offers a comparative vocabulary of diachrony, synchrony and unstable signifiers, plus staged play relations, to describe how games weave and reconfigure multiple temporal schemes over play.
2020	Yıldız & Coşkun	HCI Time Perceptions	Curates five emerging time perceptions – right, collective, plastic, clock and digital time – as design materials for rethinking how interactive systems represent and structure everyday temporality.
2022	Rapp	MMO Game Temporalities	Links game temporalities (linear, circular, shared) to temporal experiences (progression, repetition, assimilation) and engagement forms (desiring, mechanic, social) to explain long-term MMO retention.
2024	Byers, Gibbs & Nansen	Holistic Typology	Proposes three interconnected frames – Game Time, Play Time and Affected Time – to link internal temporal design, patterns of play, and how games intersect with broader lifeworld schedules and inequalities.
2025	Gopinath & Holopainen	Timeplay	Introduces Timeplay as a typology of temporal agency, distinguishing adaptive, strategic, ethical and reflective ways that players manipulate and reason about time through game mechanics and stories.

Please use the form below to suggest additional temporal constructs, or to share questions or feedback.