Game Studies

Dramatic reality is a core concept in drama therapy, and perhaps also the most genuine feature of the field. All drama therapists draw on dramatic reality in some form, both in their clinical practice and in their theoretical thinking. This paper explores the concept of dramatic reality in drama therapy from a philosophical angle, in a way that is unattached to a particular model or a specific approach: first, the article defines the concept's scope and boundaries, with reference to its modes as informed by Schechner's notion of performance activities; then it describes the main features and properties of dramatic reality, while looking at their implications in a therapeutic setting. Finally, it points out the four main tasks that drama therapists are called on to perform in connection with dramatic reality.

We analyze collaborative play in an online video game, World of Warcraft, the most popular personal computer game in the United States, with significant markets in Asia and Europe. Based on an immersive ethnographic study, we describe how the social organization of the game and player culture affect players' enjoyment and learning of the game. We discovered that play is characterized by a multiplicity of collaborations from brief informal encounters to highly organized play in structured groups. The variety of collaborations makes the game more fun and provides rich learning opportunities. We contrast these varied collaborations, including those with strangers, to the "gold standard" of Gemeinschaft-like communities of close relations in tightknit groups. We suggest populations for whom similar games could be designed.

Games like World of Warcraft have been called "inherently queer," providing gamic spaces where gender and sexuality seem fluid and customizable. Although the provocation is exciting and revisits many of the arguments made about the liberatory potential of cyberspace, this article hopes to antidote the assumption that the virtual is "inherently" queer and to unpack what I call the "interactive fallacy," the further assumption that video games offer players unlimited power and control. Through a close reading and close playing of two massively multiplayer games-Zynga's casual game FrontierVille and Blizzard's World of Warcraft-I hope to identify and interrogate the ways that gender and sexuality (even race) in games are both normative and subversive. In other words, in games about fantasy and fun, how and where and why might real world queerness, gender, and race be rendered, negotiated, and disrupted? Is that even possible? Games like FrontierVille and World of Warcraft offer beginnings for gendered and queered play, allowing players to imagine and enact a range of desires, but ultimately both games narrow these choices and possibilities, rendering them algorithmically inconsequential, and restore them to heteronormative ends. Looking at character creation, game play, and game narratives, this article argues for the productive opportunity in the play of, with, and play in sexuality and gender and race to discover what Lisa Nakamura calls "disruptive moments of recognition and misrecognition" that can offer subversive and queergaming potential and practices. Perhaps more important, this article also uncovers the ways that logics of digital games limit and norm players, narratives, and play itself.

In this interview by Yujia Yao, I talk about the current state of the Japanese gaming industry within its cultural and economic context. Interview questions include topics such as: the general decline of the Japanese game industry in global markets, the place of Nintendo in the industrial landscape, Pokemon Go, the mobile gaming market, Virtual Reality, and cultural influences.

Since the advent of the study of games, scholars have emphasised the idea of games as subsets of the real world, as make-believe and as representational systems. Games have been understood as delimited from the real world by a physical and conceptual boundary that clearly defines what should be understood as part of the game. Players enter and leave the game at will, voluntarily accepting the rules of the game when entering the game subspace, and there is no doubt that players are fully capable of knowing when they cross this boundary, and when they should interpret a specific action as part of the game or not. This paper asks how researchers can investigate the player's comprehension of the relationship between a game and the world methodologically by the use of qualitative approaches. The motivation for the paper is a postdoctoral research project facing precisely these issues, and the paper serves as a work in progress for developing a qualitative research method for investigating player's understanding of system features, interface elements and what constitutes the game border in computer games. The paper will present the aims of the postdoctoral research project and shortly describe its hypotheses and theoretical points of departure before going on to discuss and suggest methods for investigating these hypotheses.

The paper explores the recent growth in critical gameplay, an application of critical design to the production of computer games. This paper outlines play pedagogy and game rhetoric, relating critical design practices to the creation of computer games. It attempts to explain the art practice of critical game design, providing a brief digital game history and identifying prominent creative works in this relatively new space.

With the ever-increasing number of applications for mobile phones, we are more and more likely to be confronted with a problem of a separation from our environment when looking at our screen. It can be easily illustrated with a mobile game that uses the real world as a platform (a location-based mobile game). Typically, the player must stop to look at the screen to get information, which then can alter the dynamics of the gameplay. One solution is to incorporate this constraint into the design of the gameplay, but there are also other options to solve this disconnect issue. The FeelTact project proposes an innovative approach that does not use the screen as the primary output device. Instead, it concentrates on maximizing rich tactile feedback, as opposed to simple vibrations. The FeelTact device is a new type of tactile bracelet that will drive the information a player receives. The first FeelTact game is an audiotactile mobile game based on an urban navigation system. The results ...

The increasing amount of time children are spending on computers at home and school has raised questions about how the use of computer technology may make a difference in their lives-from helping with homework to causing depression to encouraging violent behavior. This article provides an overview of the limited research on the effects of home computer use on children's physical, cognitive, and social development. Initial research suggests, for example, that access to computers increases the total amount of time children spend in front of a television or computer screen at the expense of other activities, thereby putting them at risk for obesity. At the same time, cognitive research suggests that playing computer games can be an important building block to computer literacy because it enhances children's ability to read and visualize images in three-dimensional space and track multiple images simultaneously. The limited evidence available also indicates that home computer use is linked to slightly better academic performance.

With hundreds of new games being released every week, designers rely on existing knowledge to design control schemes for their products. However, in the case of games with new game mechanics, designers struggle to implement new button schemes due to the lack of research on players’ adaptation to new and non-standard controls. In this study we investigated PC players habits when playing a game they have no knowledge of, and how they adapt to its non-standard control scheme. Data was collected by using a specifically designed game instead of relying on pre-existing ones, allowing us to design specific game mechanics to exploit users’ habits and monitor players’ behaviour in their home environments. Preliminary results seem to indicate that PC players do pay attention to control schemes and are able to quickly learn new ones, but they also prefer to make mistakes in favour of execution speed.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is considering the adoption of e-sports (i.e., organised competitive video gaming), which could be considered a radical innovation as it deviates in many areas from traditional sports (e.g., online game play format, lack of high physical exertion, complicated intellectual property rights for each game, etc.). However, collaboration with firms familiar with the innovation (e.g., National Association of Collegiate eSports-NACE) might mitigate risks surrounding the radical innovation. Thus, the purpose of this paper was to investigate whether a potential association between the NCAA and NACE would be advantageous to both organisations. Through a deductive qualitative content analysis underpinned by Rogers's (2003) innovation characteristics (e.g., complexity, compatibility and relative advantage), several themes emerged: physical exertion, e-sports structure, amateurism, eligibility, compensation, profitability, and diversity and ...

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In this paper, the different general motivations of gamers for playing video games are explored. Surprisingly, to date little research has been devoted to the characterization of the gamer, based on general game motivations. By means of an online survey, we questioned 2985 Flemish gamers on 11 general game motivations. K-means clustering was used to distinguish four distinctive gamer profiles: the overall convinced gamer, the convinced competitive gamer, the escapist gamer and the passtime gamer.

This paper focuses on the analysis of audiovisual materials according to the media circulation model of eSports-related content. Its aim is to assess the process of strengthening the commercial potential of formalized eSports enterprises in a relatively new, national market. This goal is achieved through looking at a case study of one of the leading media groups in the Eastern Europe taking interest in the eSports market and launching a multi-platform campaign to promote particular eSports titles, brands and initiatives in a short period of time. The methodological framework used for the analysis encompasses media circuit model developed through the work of British Cultural Studies. Paul du Gay and Stuart Hall’s concepts used in the text involve aspects such as production, consumption, regulation, identity and representation. Data concerning the multi-platform informational shows, websites, social media presence and the overall business model of supporting the local eSports scene ha...

Recently, a flash sintering method, which is one of field assisted sintering technique (FAST), has been developed. In the flash sintering method, lower sintering temperature and shorter sintering time can be realized using a flash event showing a spike of specimen electric current at a critical furnace temperature. The flash sintering method has been applied to many kinds of ceramics so far, its usefulness is being clarified. Improvement of techniques and theoretical analysis for the flash sintering method will be progressed. And it can be considered that the flash sintering method will be spreading as a new sintering one, as in spark plasma sintering (SPS) method, in near future. In this paper, we summarize the outline of the flash sintering method including control parameters and the recent researches on the elementary processes related to large-scale mass transfer occurring under application of electric fields.

As a yet small academic field, historical video game studies are in a crucial and interesting moment of development. The most recent contributions, looking at the re-validation of historical themed video games as proper historical narratives, are opening a door for new analysis on the discourses behind these portrayals of the past, and the role of historiography as a direct influence. In this context, the questions about the protagonists of such histories, as well as the perspective implied on these portrayals, appear as relevant for the future of video games and academia. This research is an attempt to answer such questions and bring some further considerations on the relation between the representation of the past and the characteristics of the medium. Applying comparative and critical discourse analysis, and focusing on the representation of non-Western societies, this research analyses the presence of Eurocentrism in two historical themed video games: Age of Empires II HD Edition and Total War: Rome II. The application of discursive devises within textual, visual, and game play elements are studied to clarify the approach and perspective of these games to the past, as well as the implications behind their portrayal of diverse societies and cultures. Linking back to postcolonial theory, discourse analysis, and video game studies, further considerations are made over multicultural representations, the conceptualization of history, and the capabilities of the medium to further explore the past in meaningful and complex ways. The expectation with this research is to open a path for future applications of the methodologies on video game studies, and deeper explorations of Eurocentrism and on the medium, as a most required subject to confront on the analysis of historiography and popular culture.

MA Thesis. MA in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies. University of Limerick.

This article uses Jacques Rancière's notion of aesthetic regime of art and Nicholas Bourriaud's idea of relational aesthetics to assess the role of aesthetics microtransactions in Path of Exile (2013-, Grinding Gear Games). Three main roles of aesthetics microtransactions are concerned: 1) signifiers in social, in-game interaction between players 2) awards which motivate specific practices of play and 3) tools of agency used outside the conventional play frame. The main claim of the paper is that the aesthetic layer of the game, while formally disconnected, nevertheless governs the practices of play and constructs underpinnings for game's post-release cycle.

Abstract: This article discusses the processes involved in the construction of group membership and cohesion in a semiprofessional team of esports in the city of Belém, the capital of the state of Pará, in the Brazilian Amazonian territory. This effort discusses what characterizes the progression and union of a particular team in a local competitive scenario in which ephemeral teams predominate. Based on an eleven-month ethnography with a set of players engaged in professional competitive practice, and through observations from field research, we compiled a set of 12 essential characteristics filled out by the team. Also, this study points to the development of an ethos of professionalism in a peripheral context, indicating the existence of an Amazonian esports scenario – in the North Region of the Brazil, with emphasis in Belém, Pará. The results indicate the subsistence of a social fabric composed of a variety of other elements that, in turn, constitute an ethos of group camaraderie that plays a central role in the competitive dynamics that underlie the team as a group.

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Facial animation is an important aspect to make character more life in virtual world. Early stage to make facial animation is facial rigging. Facial rigging is the process of creating the animation controls for a facial model and the animator's interface to those controls. Facial feature points which associated with facial skeleton makes process of rigging easy to do. Weighting feature points on the face makes facial skeleton used as the basis of the manufacture of facial control to manual or automatic animation with motion data.

World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) supporting complex social interactions among over 12 million players. While the -lone gamer‖ stereotype still persists, there is little data on gaming with other players with whom one shares a -real life‖ (RL) social relationship. Our work departs from previous studies in focusing on the hybrid of online and offline sociality, rather than only one or the other. We provide perhaps the first systematic quantitative characterization of MMO play with RL friends, family and other social connections. A large online survey collected data from 2865 WoW players from the US, Europe, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The findings overwhelmingly support the view that playing WoW may often serve to enhance, not diminish, RL social interactions. In addition, we present benchmark results on demographics and WoW play practices in world regions previously not studied. The consistency of the patterns of findings across East/West and gender groupings suggests fascinating issues for further research.

As a nature parable, THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD involves players in a dreamlike gameworld in which their unconscious desires for an ecological sustainable Utopia and a romantic imagery of nature are evoked, exposed to distress, and eventually saturated. By sending players on the journey of a hero to restore order in a polluted but majestic world, the game evokes a bewildering variety of affects in them. These oscillate between positive and negative ones—such as curiosity and fear, excitement and distress, startle and anger, pleasure and terror—and are outlined by the game’s structural peculiarities (its implied player) in different ways, depending on the region of the gameworld. The players’ affective responses then culminate in the tumultuous emotion of astonishment and in the aesthetic response of the sublime. The experience of play—in the interaction between (eco)game, player, and world (culture)—is thus a regenerative one on an affective and subsequent aesthetic level. It resensitises players to the beauty of the natural world, while granting them a different point of view on ecosystems and ecological issues that plague their contemporary surroundings.

This paper broaches the issue of exploration as a virtual fictional strategy and critical agent to immerse players in vast open world games. Complex networks of places, quests and spatial arrangements are built for simulating a freely explorable environment full of diverse and dense atmospheres. The non-linear multipath landscape is the core gameplay experience and leaves it to the player where to go, what to accomplish and in which order. Narration then mostly is embodied by the environmental storytelling of evocative landscapes and architectures with multiple nuances communicating the world’s story. The core thesis is, that classical strategies like dialogue or text as well as stringent quest chains or story arcs are neglected in favor of a landscape experience and the player’s individual ludic creation of meaning by the urge for discovery.
The paper differentiates between urban and rural open world game intrinsic space and analyzes current open world franchises in order to verify the above thesis. Exploration needs the simulation of vastness which means the dichotomy of free roaming and helplessness at the same time. In order to analyze the exploration and structure of non-linear landscapes in open world games an interdisciplinary approach is used merging methods and terms from research fields such as architecture, art history, urbanism, philosophy, game studies, landscape gardening, geography and theory of space. Thus not only the players’ courses of action, play patterns, agency and embodiment with the avatar are thematized, but also the concepts of wilderness, landscape and navigation. Critical to the latter points are modular treaties on European landscape gardens as modular and atmosphere creating areas as well as Jay Appleton’s prospect-refuge theory (1975). For the game intrinsic distillation of former survival instincts and navigation habits of men, which nowadays are used or experienced for entertainment, the term prospect pacing is coined. Thus open world games with a focus on exploration simulate a distinct, rhythmized environment in order to immerse the players into a vast network of places and points of interest.

New Forms and Interactions is a collection of eleven articles highlighting the controversial relation between the two traditionally opposed realms. By determining the forms, conditions and consequences of interaction between fiction and reality, the texts in this book refute this opposition. They also reflect on the status of the deconstructed and reconstructed boundary that separates the two ontological realms and strive toward multiple possible applications of both terms. This volume features studies of various works of literature, film, photography, video and performance art, television, fan fiction and computer games and discusses their various interrelations and hybrid forms. The diversity of media and the plurality of approaches and academic traditions build the keystone of these discussions while opening them up to the non-canonised, formerly peripheral fields of comparative literary studies. The articles are grouped into three sections which focus on (1) forms of ‘interacting with fictions’, (2) the complexity of ‘indicating realities’ and the reality status of fiction, and (3) different methods involved in the ‘realisations of fictions’.

This book is about the three identities of the videogame, the gamer, and Game Studies. I write that there are no definitive truths but rather discourses and constructions; ideas, actions, beliefs, and practices related to videogames are discourses that merge and shape our perception of videogames as an area of study of its own right. These discursive responses meet and clash creating what we call truths, which are temporary and negotiable.

This perspective is inspired by Foucauldian ideas and present few questions about videogame-related identities in and outside of academe. Does Game Studies have a conceptual core? What makes game studies difficult to be disciplined in academe? What do we learn from the scholarly and popular discourses on videogames that would help understand the identity questions related to games?

I go on to describe what makes the videogame identity according to game studies: aesthetics, fictions, meaning-making, performance, transformation, etc. and what makes it difficult for game studies being an open market of ideas and an academic "un-discipline". This leads me to the gamer's identity: an aficionado first, and a connoisseur of fictional worlds.

The contemporary video game market is more and more crowded with titles that are expanded by digital contents that can be downloaded for free or payment: from annexing additional costumes to the characters, to implementing large portions of narrative, today expansion packs represent a phenomenon potentially and concretely capable of redefining the lifespan of each video game initially sold as a standalone creation, to then prove to be partial when new contents are released. This essay will try to group the variety of these digital contents into two essential sets, and then it will try to understand if the video games expanded by future downloadable contents can be included among the canons of serial gaming, now explicitly represented by the advent of episodic video games.

Figuren sind ein zentrales Attraktionsmoment aktueller Computerspiele, doch ihre medienwissenschaftliche Erforschung ist bislang nur in Ansätzen erfolgt. Diese Arbeit schließt diese Forschungslücke, indem sie allgemeine Gestaltungsprinzipien und Wirkungsweisen von Computerspielfiguren in figurenzentrierten Mainstreamspielen untersucht. So trägt sie im Rahmen ihrer Beschäftigung mit der Darstellung, Ontologie und Rezeption von Computerspielfiguren dazu bei, die verstreuten Forschungsbefunde zu systematisieren und in einen einheitlichen Theorierahmen einzuordnen.

Dabei werden Ansätze der kognitiven Film- und Medientheorie, der transmedialen Narratologie und der Game Studies zusammengeführt, um Figuren als fiktive Wesen, Spielfiguren und Repräsentationen von Spielerinnen zu beschreiben. Die systematische Herleitung und Ausdifferenzierung unterschiedlicher Modi der Darstellung und Rezeption von Computerspielfiguren erlaubt, die Ästhetik spielergesteuerter, computergesteuerter und Mitspieler-gesteuerter Figuren theoretisch fundiert und begrifflich präzise zu  beschreiben. So erweisen sich Figuren als Kulminationspunkt für körperlich-affektive Erfahrungen von Subjektivität und Embodiment, als Objekt vielfältiger Formen emotionaler Anteilnahme und als Element ‚strukturierter Sozialität‘ in Mehrspieler-Kontexten. Ihre Analyse wirft dadurch auch ein Licht auf den Zusammenhang ästhetischer Gestaltung und ästhetischer Wahrnehmung im Computerspiel generell.

"Lo que diferencia al videojuego de otros medios audiovisuales para la divulgación científica reside en su capacidad de transmitir conocimiento sobre sistemas complejos a través de la experimentación y la experiencia. Además, como forma de cultura popular, el videojuego constituye un vehículo especialmente interesante para la divulgación científica. El objetivo del presente artículo es analizar el potencial y las limitaciones de divulgación científica de los videojuegos. Para ello, se analizan las reglas de juego y la experiencia interactiva del jugador (gameplay) en cuatro videojuegos comerciales relacionados con un referente científico. La muestra seleccionada incluye: Crayon Physics, un laboratorio de mecánica clásica; Trauma Center, donde el jugador adopta el rol de cirujano; SimCity 4, sobre la planificación urbana, y Civilization IV, un recorrido por la historia universal."

Adapting Bernard Suits' account of game-play, we can show that, in games, competition can be converted into cooperation. Suits says that to play a game is to voluntarily take up unnecessary obstacles for the sake of overcoming them. Thus, in games, we can become each others' desired obstacles. Others in the philosophy of sport have argued for such cooperation, but typically but the weight of conversion on player consent or player intention. I argue for a more distributed model of conversion, in which player consent, proper match-ups of player temperament and skill, features of game-design, and psychological fit of players with game design all contribute to the conversion process. As a result, conversion isn't guaranteed, even when all players have consented. Finally, I use the conversion model to argue against the popular view in philosophy of sports that the purpose of sport is the display or development of excellence; instead, the social function of converting competition into cooperation is just as plausible an account of the purpose of sport.

É AUTORIZADA A REPRODUÇÃO INTEGRAL DESTA TESE APENAS PARA EFEITOS DE INVESTIGAÇÃO, MEDIANTE DECLARAÇÃO ESCRITA DO INTERESSADO, QUE A TAL SE COMPROMETE. Guimarães, 26/03/2012 Assinatura: iii Agradecimentos A Jason Rohrer, pelos jogos, pela inspiração, pelo exemplo, pela generosidade pessoal. À Inês Afonso, por ter colocado o seu enorme talento ao dispor da prototipagem e desenvolvimento do meu jogo. Ao Professor Paulo Almeida por ter aceite este desafio transdisciplinar e por toda a disponibilidade e tolerância demonstradas na orientação do processo de investigação e escrita desta dissertação. Ao Professor Pedro Branco, pela co-orientação e pelo trabalho quotidiano em prol dos alunos e do Mestrado. A todos os meus professores e colegas do MTAD, com quem pude aprender tanto, em especial aos meus colegas Rodrigo Medeiros, pela partilha dos seus conhecimentos, pela energia contagiante, por nunca me ter deixado desistir de nada e por uma amizade transatlântica; e Sérgio Ferreira, pela singular mistura de talento e humildade, apenas ao alcance dos grandes e verdadeiros mestres. À Gui Castro Felga por ter sido a estrela do meu Norte e o centro emocional e humano da minha descoberta do Porto, a mais bela das cidades. Aos communards da Mansão invicta: Nuno Tiago, António Silva, Luís Patrão, Marta Borges, Ana Lúcia e os lovecats Fellini&Kodak. Ao João Bonito e Ruben Freitas pelas afinidades electivas, agora e sempre. pela amizade e incentivos constantes à escrita. Ao Pedro Ludgero, pela revisão do abstract. Aos meus amigos e antigos professores Euclides Sousa e António-Pedro Vasconcelos, pelas cartas de recomendação de acesso ao Mestrado. À Ana Carina Reis, por um encontro excepcional e que vale bem a última vida de um gato moderadamente vadio. À minha família, aos meus irmãos e aos meus pais, António e Maria Isabel.

This paper addresses the lack of solid historical information concerning early computer game sales and preferences. Two consistent data series from the magazines Softalk and Computer Gaming World (CGW) are analyzed to give an overview of the best selling and best rated games by players for the period of 1980-1984. A “genre palette ” is inferred from the sources, giving a snapshot of how contemporaries framed and interpreted the offer in computer games. A comparison of the series reveals the CGW readership constitutes a distinct “hardcore ” play community amongst general computer game players. It is also observed that genre preferences vary in time: arcade games peak in 1982 and then recede in favor of computer-native genres. A brief comparison with Atari 2600 best sellers reveal the inadequacy of the computer game genre palette to describe home console games. The historical and constructed nature of genres as “horizons of expectations ” is discussed.

Player immersion is the holy grail of computer game designers particularly in environments such as those found in firstperson shooters. However, little is understood about the processes of immersion and much is assumed. This is certainly the case with sound and its immersive potential. Some theoretical work explores this sonic relationship but little experimental data exist to either confirm or invalidate existing theories and assumptions.

The multiplatform Ni no Kuni (Bandai Namco, 2010/2013) represents anime studio Studio Ghibli's first dedicated video game project. Although Japanese video game company Level-5 developed Ni no Kuni, Ghibli contributed to the story and was responsible for its visual design. The game demonstrates not only Ghibli's distinct visual style, but it also shares with the studio's films similar themes (loss of innocence, youth empowerment, the relationship between nature and technology) and storytelling characteristics (a young hero and a synthesis of Eastern and Western elements). Beyond its aesthetic and narrative contributions, Studio Ghibli also provided Level-5 a means of differentiating itself within the contemporary Japanese video game industry, as several companies attempt to expand into the West in response to shifts in the domestic market. Likewise, Ghibli has been adjusting to its own shifts, including co-founder Hayao Miyazaki's retirement from feature films and the studio's subsequent hiatus on film productions. As such, Ni no Kuni represents a particularly significant example of convergence between the anime and video industries, as it suggests paths for both Studio Ghibli and Level-5, as they each look to diversify into new markets and revenue streams.