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Journal articles on the topic 'Digital game worlds'
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1
Mendonça, Carlos Magno Camargos, and Filipe Alves de Freitas. "Game as text as game: the communicative experience of digital games." Comunicação e Sociedade 27 (June 29, 2015): 253–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.17231/comsoc.27(2015).2100.
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We propose to regard video game as text, but not by literally understanding it as a verbal expression, and instead recognizing that many assumptions of literary theory are relevant to its analysis. This option seems to put us in sync with the narratologists, who exalt games as new manifestations of narrative, but cling to a conception of text as world that values illusionist effects. Instead, we are interested in experiences that, against this perspective, recognize the possibility of regarding game as a text that is a game - an incomplete object that is to be updated by the reader in a self-reflective relationship with the signs that compose it, a central notion to theories such as Iser’s and Dewey’s. Then, instead of focusing on strategies of immersion on large virtual worlds, we favor small independent casual games (such as Small Worlds, Grey, The Beggar, and Dys4ia) analyzing how, in these, take place experiences that allow us to re-examine the aesthetic potential of the medium.
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Caselli, Stefano, Farah Polato, and Mauro Salvador. "Journeying to the actual World through digital games: The Urban Histories Reloaded project." Mutual Images Journal, no. 10 (December 20, 2021): 271–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.32926/2021.10.cas.urban.
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The paper aims at reflecting on the potential of digital games to convey meaning, tell stories and, most importantly, become a tool to discover and experience the actual world. Using as a case study the experience of the Urban Histories Reloaded. Creatività videoludica per azioni di cittadinanza (Urban Histories Reloaded. Digital Game Creativity for citizenship actions) project (UHR), we will discuss the role digital games can play in activating territorial processes, by favouring the engagement with the actual world as well as with playful approaches to city living. In particular, we will focus on the artist residency for game designers, game artists, and game programmers held in Padua between September and October 2020 within the frame of the project and on its main outcome, the mobile game MostaScene. MostaScene consists of a fifteen-minute mobile game set in District 5 Armistizio-Savonarola of Padua. Both its design and its overall content have intertwined with the urban space since the very beginning. Above all, we will inspect the use of digital games for city-making actions via two different paths: on the one hand, through the involvement of stakeholders (public institutions and specific groups, but also and most importantly citizens) as co-designers; on the other hand, using digital games as non-functional experiences that may encourage innovative interpretations of the urban space for player. From a theoretical perspective, this research requires us to look at digital games as both fictional worlds that involve imagination and interpretation, as well as digital worlds that are experienced as part of reality in a phenomenological sense. Once this is acknowledged, we can provide an overview of how games can tackle reality and engage with the actual world.
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Cermak-Sassenrath, Daniel. "On political activism in digital games." MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research 34, no. 64 (June 14, 2018): 29. http://dx.doi.org/10.7146/mediekultur.v34i64.96924.
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This project investigates how players of digital games apply their own play with the intent to transmit political messages to other players. Acts of activism are collected from a sample of commercial multiplayer online games; three taxonomies are proposed of which one is used to present the findings, and popular patterns or structures of activism are identified. It is found that in-game activism often takes its cue from activism in everyday life, but that some original topics emerge, for example, the ownership of virtual worlds and practices of in-game political activism such as novel forms of rallies. Current political activism often appears to utilize generic and widely-shared game mechanics, rather than mechanics specific to individual games or genres. Games are therefore selected for their topics, availability, and costs, and popularity with the target audience
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Denson, Shane, and Andreas Jahn-Sudmann. "Digital Seriality: On the Serial Aesthetics and Practice of Digital Games." Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture 7, no. 1 (December 23, 2013): 1–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.7557/23.6145.
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In this paper we are concerned to outline a set of perspectives, methods, and theories with which to approach the seriality of digital games and game cultures – i.e. the aesthetic forms and cultural practices of game-related serialization, which we see unfolding against (and, in fact, as a privileged mediator of) the broader background of medial and socio-cultural transformations taking place in the wake of popular media culture’s digitalization. Seriality, we contend, is a central and multifaceted but largely neglected dimension of popular computer and video games. Seriality is a factor not only in explicitly marked game series (with their sequels, prequels, remakes, and other types of continuation), but also within games themselves (e.g. in their formal-structural constitution as an iterative series of “levels” or “worlds”) as well as on the level of transmedial relations between games and other media (e.g. expansive serializations of narrative worlds across the media of comics, film, television, and games, etc.). Particularly with respect to processes of temporal “collapse” or “synchronization” that, in the current age of digitization and media convergence, are challenging the temporal dimensions and developmental logics of pre-digital seriality (e.g. because once successively appearing series installments are increasingly available now for immediate, repeated, and non-linear consumption), computer games are eminently suited for an exemplary investigation of a specifically digital type of seriality. In the following, we look at serialization processes in digital games and game series and seek to understand how they relate to digital-era transformations of temporally-serially structured experiences and identifications on the part of historically situated actors. These transformations range from the microtemporal scale of individual players’ encounters with algorithmic computation processes (the speed of which escapes direct human perception and is measurable only by technological means) all the way up to the macrotemporal (more properly “historical”) level of collective brokerings of political, cultural, and social identities in the digital age. To account for this multi-layered complexity, we argue for a decidedly interdisciplinary approach, combining media-aesthetic and media-philosophical perspectives with the resources of discourse analysis and cultural history. We approach the seriality of digital games both in terms of textual and aesthetic forms as well as in the broader context of serialized game cultures and popular culture at large.
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Valls-Vargas, Josep. "Narrative Extraction, Processing and Generation for Interactive Fiction and Computer Games." Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment 9, no. 6 (June 30, 2021): 37–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1609/aiide.v9i6.12600.
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Often, computer games require meaningful stories and complex worlds in order to successfully engage players. Developing a high-quality story and rich characters can be one of the hardest tasks in the game development process. Narrative is a key element in building game worlds for interactive digital entertainment. I am particularly interested in computational narrative algorithms that can analyze stories, model narrative, and generate plots to be used in various forms and game domains.
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Bettivia, Rhiannon. "Enrolling Heterogeneous Partners in Video Game Preservation." International Journal of Digital Curation 11, no. 1 (October 5, 2016): 17–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v11i1.339.
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This article extends previous work known as Preserving Virtual Worlds II (PVWII), funded through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The author draws on interview data collected from video game developers, content analysis of several long-running video game series, as well as the project’s advisory board and researcher reports. This paper exposes two fundamental challenges in creating metrics and specifications for the preservation of virtual worlds; namely, that there is no one type of user or designated video game stakeholder community, and that significant properties of games cannot always be located in code or platform. The PVWII data serve to explain why existing ideas about preservation of video games are inadequate when games are treated as digital cultural heritage. Preservation specialists need to bind nebulous and dynamic digital objects, a process that is necessary while inherently artificial.
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Gunova, Violla. "Mixed Reality Game YU-GI-OH." Journal of Software Engineering, Information and Communication Technology (SEICT) 3, no. 2 (January 4, 2023): 95–114. http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/seict.v2i2.34675.
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Mixed Reality is a technology that combines the real world with the virtual world. Merging these two worlds will form a new environment where each object from each world can interact with each other. This technology will offer a different user experience depending on how it is used, including digital games. This paper will discuss how to construct the card along with its mechanism of movement that used in YU-GI-OH game and its implementation on mixed reality technology using the HoloLens platform. The game be integrated to HoloLens until view stage.
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Tor, Noam, and Goren Gordon. "Digital Interactive Quantitative Curiosity Assessment Tool: Questions Worlds." International Journal of Information and Education Technology 10, no. 8 (2020): 614–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.18178/ijiet.2020.10.8.1433.
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Curiosity is a 21st century skill and is of paramount importance in the digital age. However, the assessment of curiosity is often based on self-report or subjective observations. We present the development and evaluation of a digital quantitative assessment game for question-asking-based exploration. The student navigates a graphically presented question graph by selecting questions about a series of virtual alien worlds. The game extracts question-related quantitative measures, e.g., the breadth, depth and specificity of the answers to the questions. We conducted a study with Youth University students and administered a curiosity-based questionnaire to their class teachers as an external validation. Our results show that the measure of total question specificity in the last presented world is a significant predictor of children’s curiosity, as rated by their teachers. This suggests that curiosity can be quantitatively assessed by an entertaining digital question-based game.
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Root, Rachael. "Bridging anthropological theory: Accumulating and containing wealth in World of Warcraft landscapes." Critique of Anthropology 43, no. 1 (February 23, 2023): 66–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0308275x231156718.
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Human ingenuity responds to changing environments and resources with technological sophistication and variations in accumulative behaviors. While anthropologists look to the past and to processes of globalization to sketch these shifts in the natural world, there is a growing awareness that these transformations also occur in digital online worlds. I argue that archaeology’s attention to materiality provides useful analysis and directions for ethnographic video game analysis. I use research from the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, where players marshal social and economic resources in both the natural and digital worlds. In constructing reputations and accumulating prestige, players integrate online and offline resources, traversing the tangible/digital divide in their pursuit of achievement. Archaeological perspectives and theories of aggrandizement, containment, systems, landscapes, and ontological materiality provide opportunities to expand ethnographic video game research and debates into new directions.
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Durusoy, Murat. "In-Game Photography: Creating New Realities through Video Game Photography." Membrana Journal of Photography, Vol. 3, no. 1 (2018): 42–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.47659/m4.042.art.
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Computers and photography has had a long and complicated relationship throughout the years. As image processing and manipulating capabilities advanced on the computer front, photography re-birthed itself with digital cameras and digital imaging techniques. Development of interconnected social sharing networks like Instagram and Twitter feeds the photographers’/users’ thirst to show off their momentaneous “been there/seen that – capture the moment/share the moment” instincts. One other unlikely front emerged as an image processing power of the consumer electronics improved is “video game worlds” in which telematic travellers may shoot photographs in constructed fantasy worlds as if travelling in real life. While life-like graphics manufactured by the computers raise questions about authenticity and truthfulness of the image, the possible future of the photography as socially efficient visual knowledge is in constant flux. This article aims to reflect on today’s trends in in-game photography and tries to foresee how this emerging genre and its constructed realities will transpose the old with the new photographic data in the post-truth condition fostering for re-evaluation of photography truth-value. Keywords: digital image, lens-based, photography, screenshot, video games
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Fizek, Sonia. "Automation of play: Theorizing self-playing games and post-human ludic agents." Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 10, no. 3 (October 1, 2018): 203–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/jgvw.10.3.203_1.
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This article offers a critical reflection on automation of play and its significance for the theoretical enquiries into digital games and play. Automation has become an ever more noticeable phenomenon in the domain of video games, expressed by self-playing game worlds, self-acting characters, and non-human agents traversing multiplayer spaces. On the following pages, the author explores various instances of automated non-human play and proposes a post-human theoretical lens, which may help to create a new framework for the understanding of video games, renegotiate the current theories of interaction prevalent in game studies, and rethink the relationship between human players and digital games.
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Durmaz, Yakup, and Dilruba Gokalp. "Introduction of Metaverse to Our Lives and Unlimited Services in the World of Metaverse." International Business & Economics Studies 6, no. 1 (December 13, 2023): p1. http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/ibes.v6n1p1.
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Metaverse is a universe that combines our physical reality with the digital virtual world and goes beyond reality with multiple users with a permanent and lasting effect. The virtual world is based on digital people and objects and technologies that enable multi-sensory communication with people, such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). It provides highly professional communication in dynamic interactions between digital structures and real time. First, we encountered virtual worlds where avatars could teleport between them. Metaverse’s resurgence has come with social, immersive VR platforms compatible with multiplayer online video games, open game worlds, and AR co-working spaces. Metaverse is a concept that offers opportunities to create virtual communities in the commercial or beyond entertainment world; It is seen that it is a new generation platform that includes the three-dimensional sandbox where metaverse enthusiasts can interact through their avatars and is expressed as the “digital big bang” in cyberspace.
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Landa, Yesenia Rubi, and Amy E. Thompson. "Field Notes and Fictional Realms." Advances in Archaeological Practice 11, no. 2 (May 2023): 258–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/aap.2023.7.
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OverviewAs an escape from the day-to-day drudgery of our “real” world, video games allow us to leave reality and explore new fictional worlds. These worlds are more enjoyable when they are developed from various digital materials and presented as an official story, which is called “lore.” Lore invites the player to submerge into background stories of fictional worlds, including but not limited to those in video games. Video-game lore often provides historical narratives of these worlds, sometimes even drawing on archaeological themes in the creation of characters and places. The video game League of Legends (LoL), developed by Riot Games, has its own detailed lore, often revolving around individual characters. Riot has developed this lore not only through the video game itself but through accompanying media. Although the lore is separate from the game and not necessarily needed, the advantage is that it can orient individuals to the world and the background stories of the characters and players. Additionally, it allows people who are not interested in playing the game to interact with the fictional world, given that the stories are captivating on their own. Here, we briefly discuss Riot's interactive lore website and focus on the background of two places within the LoL fictional world: Ionia and Targon. We examine the presentation of these places through an archaeological framework. Then, we evaluate how archaeology is portrayed throughout the lore, focusing specifically on archaeological field notes and the methods that we are told are employed by one of the characters. In our analysis of the portrayal of Targon, the discussion centers on how archaeological perspectives are an integral framework for the LoL lore. Lore creates a sense of place (a connection between a person and a spatial setting) for the fan community, players, and even developers. Consequently, it is useful to focus on this idea of storytelling through lore, taking a critical view of its power and how it can impact various audiences.
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Imbierowicz, Eleonora. "Perma-dying Worlds and the Limit of Eternal Return in Digital Games." Homo Ludens, no. 1 (12) (December 15, 2019): 77–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.14746/hl.2019.12.4.
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The article discusses the types of death in selected digital and tabletop games, sorting them into two groups: ones that follow the pattern of eternal return and allow the player to endlessly respawn in their worlds, and ones that limit the possibility of coming back. The article focuses on the latter, and analyses the mechanics limiting the access to the game – from permadeath, through the randomness and unique character of the events happening in online multiplayer games, up to permapermadeath – and the effects of the application of these mechanics.
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Fizek, Sonia. "Automated State of Play." Digital Culture & Society 4, no. 1 (March 1, 2018): 201–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.14361/dcs-2018-0112.
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Abstract Automation of play has become an ever more noticeable phenomenon in the domain of video games, expressed by self-playing game worlds, self-acting characters, and non-human agents traversing multiplayer spaces. This article proposes to look at AI-driven non-human play and, what follows, rethink digital games, taking into consideration their cybernetic nature, thus departing from the anthropocentric perspectives dominating the field of Game Studies. A decentralised posthumanist reading, as the author argues, not only allows to rethink digital games and play, but is a necessary condition to critically reflect AI, which due to the fictional character of video games, often plays by very different rules than the so-called “true” AI.
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Maj, Krzysztof M. "O strukturze świata w narracyjnych grach wideo." Images. The International Journal of European Film, Performing Arts and Audiovisual Communication 29, no. 38 (June 15, 2021): 43–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.14746/i.2021.38.03.
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The article On the structure of gameworld in narrative video games proposes to introduce the term ‘ludotopia’ to Polish game studies in order to further compartmentalise the structure of video gameworld. Having reflected on the consequences of so-called world-centered turn in contemporary digital humanities, the author proceeds to defining archetypal structures that compose realities designed for the purposes of narrative video games, namely: locations and clusters of locations, the latter divided further into biomes and anthromes. The hierarchy introduced thereby is presented as an alternative for already influential (though, arguably, in transmedial world-building studies rather than game studies) trichotomy of mythos, topos, and ethos, as defined by Lisbeth Klastrup and Susana Tosca. In the end, the article cross-references the new structural hierarchy of ludotopographical components with a matrix of popular fantastic settings, seeking to delineate possible similarities between ludotopias and allotopias that would inform both game scholars and game designers on the ways of rapid prototyping of aesthetically diverse imaginary worlds.
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de Wildt, Lars, Thomas H. Apperley, Justin Clemens, Robbie Fordyce, and Souvik Mukherjee. "(Re-)Orienting the Video Game Avatar." Games and Culture 15, no. 8 (July 17, 2019): 962–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1555412019858890.
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This article explores the cultural appropriation of the term avatar by Western tech culture and what this implies for scholarship of digital games, virtual worlds, social media, and digital cultures. The term has roots in the religious tradition of the Indian subcontinent and was subsequently imported into video game terminology during a period of widespread appropriation of Eastern culture by Californian tech industries. We argue that the use of the term was not a case of happenstance but a signaling of the potential for computing to offer a mystical or enchanted perspective within an otherwise secular world. This suggests that the concept is useful in game cultures precisely because it plays with the “otherness” of the term's original meaning. We argue that this indicates a fundamental hybridity to gaming cultures that highlight the need to add postcolonial perspectives to how issues of diversity and power in gaming cultures are understood.
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Gupta, Anisha, Dan Carpenter, Wookhee Min, Jonathan Rowe, Roger Azevedo, and James Lester. "Enhancing Multimodal Goal Recognition in Open-World Games with Natural Language Player Reflections." Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment 18, no. 1 (October 11, 2022): 37–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1609/aiide.v18i1.21945.
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Open-world games promote engagement by offering players a high degree of autonomy to explore expansive game worlds. Player goal recognition has been widely explored for modeling player behavior in open-world games by dynamically recognizing players’ goals using observations of in-game actions and locations. In educational open-world games, in-game reflection tools can help students reflect on their learning and plan their strategies for future gameplay. Data generated from students’ written reflections can serve as a source of evidence for modeling player goals. We present a multimodal goal recognition approach that leverages players’ written reflections along with game trace log features to predict player goals during gameplay. Results show that both the highest predictive performance and best early prediction performance are achieved by deep learning-based, multimodal goal recognition models that utilize both written reflection and gameplay features as input. These models outperform unimodal deep learning models as well as a random forest baseline. Multimodal goal recognition using natural language reflection data has significant potential to enhance goal recognition model performance, as well as player modeling more generally, to support the creation of engaging and adaptive open-world digital games.
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E, Edhaya Chandran, and Gnana Sanga Mithra S. "Digital Humanities and Game Ethics: Investigating the Impact of Representation in Gaming." Studies in Media and Communication 11, no. 7 (October 3, 2023): 159. http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/smc.v11i7.6266.
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“Digital humanities” is about the usage of computer-assisted tools to preserve knowledge and disseminate them through technological resources. An extension of these techniques can be seen in today’s hyper realistic games with high-concept storytelling. These games immerse the players in a world that enables them to experience a different reality and often ask them to make choices that have real-life social impact. They have empowered artists to create worlds that could become a testing ground for philosophical theories. This paper concentrates on the impact of gaming on real-world ethical and political questions. This paper primarily focuses on the impact of The Last of Us Part II- an action-adventure game developed by Naughty dog- on the discussion of the inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters on already existing IP (Intellectual Property). The response that the game received among the players can be used to understand the general perspective of these elite communities on LGBTQ+ issues. This paper also includes the positive impact of such inclusion and argues that the diversification of characters in already existing IP substantially contributes to inclusivity and equality.
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Newman, James. "(Not) Playing Games: Player-Produced Walkthroughs as Archival Documents of Digital Gameplay." International Journal of Digital Curation 6, no. 2 (August 19, 2011): 109–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v6i2.206.
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The subject of digital game preservation is one that has moved up the research agenda in recent years with a number of international projects, such as KEEP and Preserving Virtual Worlds, highlighting and seeking to address the impact of media decay, hardware and software obsolescence through different strategies including code emulation, for instance. Similarly, and reflecting a popular interest in the histories of digital games, exhibitions such as Game On (Barbican, UK) and GameCity (Nottingham, UK) experiment with ways of presenting games to a general audience. This article focuses on the UK’s National Videogame Archive (NVA) which, since its foundation in 2008, has developed approaches that both dovetail with and critique existing strategies to game preservation, exhibition and display.The article begins by noting the NVA’s interest in preserving not only the code or text of the game, but also the experience of using it – that is, the preservation of gameplay as well as games. This approach is born of a conceptualisation of digital games as what Moulthrop (2004) has called “configurative performances” that are made through the interaction of code, systems, rules and, essentially, the actions of players at play. The analysis develops by problematising technical solutions to game preservation by exploring the way seemingly minute differences in code execution greatly impact on this user experience.Given these issues, the article demonstrates how the NVA returns to first principles and questions the taken-for-granted assumption that the playable game is the most effective tool for interpretation. It also encourages a consideration of the uses of non-interactive audiovisual and (para)textual materials in game preservation activity. In particular, the focus falls upon player-produced walkthrough texts, which are presented as archetypical archival documents of gameplay. The article concludes by provocatively positing that these non-playable, non-interactive texts might be more useful to future game scholars than the playable game itself.
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Attebery, Stina. "Coshaping Digital and Biological Animals." Humanimalia 6, no. 2 (March 6, 2015): 56–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.52537/humanimalia.9912.
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This paper considers how video games featuring animals as biological resources are simulating the types of “messy coshapings” that Donna Haraway values in companion species relationships, despite relocating these coshapings to a digital environment. The two game franchises that I am using for this argument—Pikmin and Pokémon—feature animal-like digital creatures who can be situated alongside biological animals through their imbrication in similar biopolitical structures of pet ownership, breeding and genetic manipulation, and animal training. I argue that embodied relationships of dominance and biopower become recoded in these digital spaces through a process similar to Eugene Thacker’s “biological exchanges,” where biology becomes both material and immaterial through processes like bioinformatics. In these two game worlds, biological exchanges occur through the tension between the player’s instrumentalization of animal biopower and the depiction of these creatures as affective and vulnerable. By emphasizing the vulnerability of digital animals under a system of biopower, Pikmin and Pokémon invite the player to decode her experiences managing immaterial, digital animal populations in order to rethink her relationships with embodied, biological animals.
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Inwood, Heather. "Towards Sinophone Game Studies." British Journal of Chinese Studies 12, no. 2 (August 6, 2022): 1–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.51661/bjocs.v12i2.219.
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The editor’s introduction discusses progress so far and possible future directions in the emerging field of Sinophone game studies, taken to mean the study of games – in this case, specifically video, computer, digital, or electronic games – in a Sinophone context, including mainland China and the broader Chinese-speaking world. Recent industry figures and news stories related to video gaming in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) paint a picture of continued expansion and growing global ambitions, albeit tempered by the regular introduction of fresh government regulations surrounding game content, gaming permissions for under-18s, game streaming, and game license approval. The eleven contributions to this issue, however, reflect the diversity of possible approaches to the study of Sinophone gaming, focusing not just on the often-conflicting politics and economics of the PRC games industry, but also exploring Taiwan’s flourishing indie game scene, political uses of games in Hong Kong, game-based representations of online and offline realities, issues in the transnational adaptation and localisation of games, and more besides. Sinophone game studies is a highly fruitful area of academic research that is intrinsically inter- and cross-disciplinary in nature and well placed to respond to some of the most pressing issues of our time, whether they be international conflict, ecological crisis, identity politics, minority rights, or even the development of disparate virtual worlds into a cross-platform ‘metaverse’ in which many of us may one day live our lives.
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Solberg, Ragnhild. "(Always) Playing the Camera: Cyborg Vision and Embodied Surveillance in Digital Games." Surveillance & Society 20, no. 2 (June 15, 2022): 142–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.24908/ss.v20i2.14517.
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As the increasingly ubiquitous field of surveillance has transformed how we interact with each other and the world around us, surveillance interactions with virtual others in virtual worlds have gone largely unnoticed. This article examines representations of digital games’ diegetic surveillance cameras and their relation to the player character and player. Building on a dataset of forty-one titles and in-depth analyses of two 2020 digital games that present embodied surveillance camera perspectives, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Square Enix 2020) and Watch Dogs: Legion (Ubisoft Toronto 2020), I demonstrate that the camera is crucial in how we organize, understand, and maneuver the fictional environment and its inhabitants. These digital games reveal how both surveillance power fantasies and their critique can coexist within a space of play. Moreover, digital games often present a perspective that blurs the boundaries between the physical and the technically mediated through a flattening of the player’s “camera” screen and in-game surveillance cameras. Embodied surveillance cameras in digital games make the camera metaphor explicit as an aesthetic, narrative, and mechanical preoccupation. We think and play with and through cameras, drawing attention to and problematizing the partial perspectives with which worlds are viewed. I propose the term cyborg vision to account for this simultaneously human and nonhuman vision that’s both pluralistic and situated and argue that, through cyborg vision, digital games offer an embodied experience of surveillance that’s going to be increasingly relevant in the future.
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Rowe, Jonathan P., Eleni V. Lobene, Bradford W. Mott, and James C. Lester. "Play in the Museum." International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations 9, no. 3 (July 2017): 96–113. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/ijgcms.2017070104.
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Digital games have been found to yield effective and engaging learning experiences across a broad range of subjects. Much of this research has been conducted in laboratory and K-12 classrooms. Recent advances in game technologies are expanding the range of educational contexts where game-based learning environments can be deployed, including informal settings such as museums and science centers. In this article, the authors describe the design, development, and formative evaluation of Future Worlds, a prototype game-based exhibit for collaborative explorations of sustainability in science museums. They report findings from a museum pilot study that investigated the influence of visitors' individual differences on learning and engagement. Results indicate that visitors showed significant gains in sustainability knowledge as well as high levels of engagement in a free-choice learning environment with Future Worlds. These findings point toward the importance of designing game-based learning exhibits that address the distinctive design challenges presented by museum settings.
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Mystakidis, Stylianos. "Metaverse." Encyclopedia 2, no. 1 (February 10, 2022): 486–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia2010031.
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The Metaverse is the post-reality universe, a perpetual and persistent multiuser environment merging physical reality with digital virtuality. It is based on the convergence of technologies that enable multisensory interactions with virtual environments, digital objects and people such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). Hence, the Metaverse is an interconnected web of social, networked immersive environments in persistent multiuser platforms. It enables seamless embodied user communication in real-time and dynamic interactions with digital artifacts. Its first iteration was a web of virtual worlds where avatars were able to teleport among them. The contemporary iteration of the Metaverse features social, immersive VR platforms compatible with massive multiplayer online video games, open game worlds and AR collaborative spaces.
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Knez, Igor, and Simon Niedenthal. "Lighting in Digital Game Worlds: Effects on Affect and Play Performance." CyberPsychology & Behavior 11, no. 2 (April 2008): 129–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/cpb.2007.0006.
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Krampe, Theresa. "Rewriting rules, changing worlds: Diegetic and ludic forms of metareference in The Magic Circle." Frontiers of Narrative Studies 9, no. 1 (July 1, 2023): 137–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/fns-2023-2010.
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Abstract In addition to transmedial techniques such as metalepses, allegories, or obtrusive narrators, contemporary videogames also use medium-specific forms, including game rules, mechanics, or interfaces, to create metareference. Similarly, metareferential games seem not only concerned with questions of their fictionality but show particular interest in their own technological infrastructure and embeddedness in digital culture. In this article, I propose a systematic approach to analysing metareference in videogames, distinguishing between the gameworld and the game system as the two main layers of communication from which metareference emerges. In a case study of the indie metagame The Magic Circle (Question 2015), I show that the game’s distinctive metareferential style is the result of interactions between what I call diegetic and ludic forms of metareference, and which are produced at the level of the gameworld and the game system, respectively.
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Ekpe, Bassey, and Israel Wekpe. "Interactivity and Ecomedia in the Digital Age." Interactive Film & Media Journal 3, no. 1 (June 6, 2023): 126–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.32920/ifmj.v3i1.1696.
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Interactivity is a fundamental aspect of contemporary digital media and communication, playing a crucial role in the synergistic relationship between filmic representation and video games. This paper examines the interplay between Jeta Amata's eco-film Black November and the video game Niger Delta Commando, focusing on the narratives, themes, and imaginary worlds that define their relationship. In the context of Nigeria's Niger Delta challenges, these media forms provide alternative approaches for addressing environmental issues while maintaining relevance and competing for attention in the entertainment landscape. Nigeria's rapidly growing video game industry holds significant potential for entertainment and economic development. This study acknowledges the integral part played by film in influencing the development of video games, as both mediums share aspects such as camera techniques, narrative structures, visual representation technologies, special effects, and thematic concerns. In this case, Niger Delta Commando allows players to determine the narrative through interactivity, offering a unique and innovative way to address the Niger Delta's environmental challenges. Adopting a dual analytical and descriptive methodology, this paper explores the interrelatedness of the narratives linking Black November and Niger Delta Commando, reconciling leading arguments in ecomedia, and assessing the Nigerian narrative's notions of interactivity, immersion, and environment. The analysis also considers the environmental impacts of media product life cycles and addresses the differential experiences of affected populations. The eco-film Black November is recreated in the interactive video game medium Niger Delta Commando, emphasizing the military action storyline and visual style reminiscent of the Niger Delta region's activist struggles. However, the video game primarily adopts an action-thriller plot without addressing the underlying factors contributing to violence in the region or the environmental degradation detailed in Black November. Media products, including films and video games, have demonstrated their utility as tools for engaging with and analyzing human concerns. With video games becoming increasingly popular and accepted as an artistic medium, adaptations like Niger Delta Commando can provide more immersive representations of environmental issues. The paper proposes that future video games addressing the Niger Delta region should feature complex and nuanced intersections reflecting the region's ecological challenges, moving beyond violence and towards a more constructive engagement with the environment.
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Bosman, Frank G. "Finding Faith between the Sciences: The Cases of ‘The Outer Worlds’ and ‘Mass Effect: Andromeda’." AUC THEOLOGICA 11, no. 1 (September 27, 2021): 145–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.14712/23363398.2021.8.
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Science fiction, as a genre, has always been a place for religion, either as an inspirational source or as a part of the fictional universe. Religious themes in science fiction narratives, however, also invoke the question of the relationship, or the absence thereof, between religion and science. When the themes of religion and science are addressed in contemporary science fiction, they are regularly set in opposition, functioning in a larger discussion on the (in)comparability of religion and science in science fiction novels, games, and films. In the games The Outer Worlds and Mass Effect Andromeda, this discussion is raised positively. Involving terminology and notions related to deism, pantheism, and esoterism, both games claim that science and religion can co-exist with one another. Since digital games imbue the intra-textual readers (gamer) to take on the role as one of the characters of the game they are reading (avatar), the discussion shifts from a descriptive discourse to a normative one in which the player cannot but contribute to.
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Bonner, Marc. "How sf is embodied in level structures." Science Fiction Film & Television: Volume 14, Issue 2 14, no. 2 (June 1, 2021): 209–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/sfftv.2021.14.
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The experience of game intrinsic space is an architectural mode of perception more congruent to actual experiences of physically real architecture than to filmic space. This paper thus centres on the aesthetics of production, concerning the game worlds’ geometry, level structures and game mechanics, within the broader context of how sf and computer games are inextricably merged. This is to investigate how game intrinsic spaces communicate properties of sf or a media-specific ‘science fiction-ness’ through their aesthetics and digital condition. By first building a foundation on the topic of singular space and its liminality, I will then proceed with a few remarks on sf theory, sf imagery and the staging of (im)possible worlds in relation to the concept of ontological possibility space. For this purpose, I refer to two authors of sf theory: Vivian Sobchack and Simon Spiegel. Based on these two sections, I will give an introductory overview on game intrinsic space, its non-linear properties and the incorporation of the player. Here, differences between filmic and game intrinsic space will also be emphasised through a brief discussion. Thus, sf theory and film theory are interwoven with spatial theory and game studies in order to analyse the ontological possibility space that goes beyond the player-character’s everyday experience in actuality. Several examples clarify the theoretical groundwork while Portal 2 (2011) and Echo (2017) function as case studies.
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Shree, Dr Tanu. "City Of Dreams: An Open-World Games." International Scientific Journal of Engineering and Management 03, no. 04 (April 23, 2024): 1–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.55041/isjem01622.
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In recent years, the gaming industry has witnessed a remarkable evolution, with open-world games emerging as a dominant genre that captivates players with expansive virtual worlds, intricate narratives, and immersive gameplay experiences. Among these innovative titles, "City of Dreams" stands out as a pinnacle of open-world game design, offering players a richly detailed urban landscape to explore, inhabit, and shape according to their desires. This research paper provides a comprehensive analysis of "City of Dreams," examining its technical development, player engagement dynamics, societal impact, and broader implications within the gaming industry and digital culture. The technical development of "City of Dreams" is explored in detail, encompassing various aspects such as game engine selection, character animation, environment design, and physics implementation. By delving into the technical intricacies of game development, this research sheds light on the creative processes and technological innovations that underpin the creation of immersive gaming experiences. Furthermore, the paper investigates the player engagement dynamics of "City of Dreams," exploring how its diverse gameplay mechanics, immersive world design, and compelling narrative drive player engagement and immersion. Through an analysis of player behavior, feedback, and interaction patterns, insights are gained into the factors that contribute to the game's success and longevity. Keywords—open-world games, player experience, player behavior, game development, immersive environments, Non-Playable Characters (NPCs).
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Annarumma, Maria, Riccardo Fragnito, Ines Tedesco, and Luigi Vitale. "Video Game, Author and Lemming." International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence 6, no. 1 (January 2015): 49–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/ijdldc.2015010104.
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Many studies show that video games require attentive and interpretive capacity to generate complex cognitive skills in the gamer and they can be transferred to other contexts, such as school. In this paper, the authors do not aim to investigate the contents of the player's thinking, but rather his/her way of thinking. In this scenario the teacher becomes a worlds' maker, who provides his/her students with the tools allowing them to partake in the co-building of multi-tiered worlds, which requires not only the ability to get access to intangible information but also a skillful management of media interfaces. In this way, the click of the mouse becomes the action par excellence that allows each individual to contribute synergistically to the realization of the digital habitats. The ultimate goal is to search, in the learning processes activated by the video games in both the authors and the lemming, those features that make the learner a self-knowledge builder. Such “socio-cultural grammar” influences the writing and interpretation of messages, turning every individual into an author, who's often unaware of the “scriptwriting culture” that inhabits all the possible media worlds.
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Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, Jens. "A Conceptual Critique of the Use of Moral Disengagement Theory in Research on Violent Video Games." Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture 10, no. 1 (April 21, 2020): 233–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.7557/23.6180.
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Moral disengagement refers to cognitive processes of misrepresenting immoral acts in order to justify them. Research on moral disengagement factors in violent video games assumes that the digital representation of violence in video games is meaningfully similar to the cognitive misrepresentation of immoral acts that defines moral disengagement. Thus, the story worlds of violent video games are thought to misrepresent violence as being justified in order that players may morally disengage from their violent actions. This article challenges the moral disengagement perspective on violent video games by demonstrating its empirical reliance on a conceptual misunderstanding: The story worlds of most video games are not representational; they do not deviously misrepresent an underlying reality against which players ought rightfully to judge their own in-game conduct. Rather, video games simply present a story world that is as real or unreal as the violence that occurs within it. Therefore, moral disengagement theory is not readily applicable to the story worlds of video games. The article proceeds to show how this misconception leads researchers to draw empirically false and topically fraught conclusions about how players perceive and respond to violence in video games. Thus, the article challenges the moral disengagement literature’s claim to meaningfully inform the pervasive debates surrounding violent video games.
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De Sena, Ítalo Sousa, and Zdeněk Stachoň. "Designing Learning Activities in Minecraft for Formal Education in Geography." International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET) 18, no. 04 (February 23, 2023): 32–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v18i04.36307.
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Digital technology has shaped the way humans interact with information and create knowledge. These conditions have in turn shaped a generation of people who experienced virtual environments very early in their lives and are often referred to as digital natives. This group of people has a particular way of communicating and interacting. It characterizes their affinity spaces and the many experiences with virtual worlds and digital games. In digital games, the separation between entertainment and learning is becoming less pronounced. Many game titles have been used for educational purposes. An iconic example is Minecraft, which has been used formally in some schools to teach topics on the environment. However, studies on formal topics in Geography are conspicuously absent, and we therefore selected Minecraft to understand how digital natives learn about Geography given the character of its virtual environment. To this aim, we developed a learning task scenario for global climate zones. The scenario was tested in two pilot studies with two different groups of participants. The results indicate that participants already share some degree of knowledge about the game environment, despite differences within the digital native group. Using the results of several pilot studies, we discuss the design choices to engage players in the game’s learning activity.
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COSTINA, Andrei. "Typologies of social structures in virtual communities – case study on mobile platforms." Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Ephemerides 67, no. 1 (June 30, 2022): 43–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.24193/subbeph.2022.1.02.
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"This study (originally published in Romanian) aims to define certain typologies of individuals involved in virtual communities, more specifically in persistent online worlds. In this case the focus is on a case study applied to the platform called state of survival dedicated to the mobile devices segment. it is a platform that combines in one application various types of gaming with several ways of communicating and socializing. The fact that this game has become extremely popular at the beginning of the pandemic correlated with periods of severe lockdown puts it in a unique socio-cultural context which makes it extremely interesting from the point of digital anthropology research. The methodology in use is rather traditional as a set of ethnographic and anthropological tools but adapted to contemporary necessities for studying virtual communities. The aim is to develop a form of social group taxonomy outlining their specific characteristics and eventually even the social norm. The results do not just shape the parameters described above but also involve game mechanics and behavioral patterns as well as the way in which individuals perceive this activity and or their involvement with the virtual world that is correlated with their level of immersion. In this particular context qualitative methods are suitable, but they also have some limitations, it is almost impossible to carry out any statistical research at the level of the general population due to the structure of the platform and the way it functions. On the other hand, one can cover very well certain segments on a very detailed level in order to point out relevant aspects of such virtual worlds. Keywords: Digital anthropology, virtual communities, social structures and networks, online platforms, persistent worlds, massively multiplayer online, mobile, digital ethnology, games"
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Mago, Zdenko, Łukasz P. Wojciechowski, Magdaléna Balážiková, and Amiee J. Shelton. "Learning by Playing. A Case Study of the Education in Photography by Digital Games." Journal of Education Culture and Society 14, no. 1 (June 20, 2023): 465–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.15503/jecs2023.1.465.479.
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Aim. The study aims to explore the current state of digital game-based learning to reflect the extent, possibilities, opportunities, and limitations of its implementation in the specific field of education as visual art, especially photography. Method. The explorative study employed the method of theoretical analysis of available literature and other secondary sources related to the issue, and subsequently applied the method of an illustrative (descriptive) case study. Results. Photo modes of commercially available digital games, originally intended to increase the players’ retention and participation, have led to the birth of a new art form, virtual photography. The technology of photo modes in a larger variety of recent games has made virtual photography available to significantly more players. Photo modes provide artistic control and creative options alongside a whole catalogue of lenses, camera parameters, and other features, reducing the financial burden associated with the purchase of photographic equipment. Furthermore, photo modes offer more than just a substitutable alternative to traditional photography, as added artistic value is found within virtual worlds. Conclusions. Despite some limitations regarding the overall implementation of digital game-based learning in photography classrooms, photo modes of commercially available digital games are a suitable tool for educational efforts in photography through both self-development and measurement of outcome-based learning.
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Andrejevic, Mark. "Productive Play 2.0: The Logic of In-Game Advertising." Media International Australia 130, no. 1 (February 2009): 66–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1329878x0913000109.
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Online video games are helping to pioneer the use of interactive advertising that targets consumers based on information about their behaviour, consumption patterns, and other demographic and psychographic information. This article draws on the example of in-game ads to explore some of the ways in which advertisers harness virtual worlds to marketing imperatives, and equate realism and authenticity with the proliferation of commercial messages. Since video games have the potential to serve as a model for other forms of marketing both online and off, the way in which they are being used to exploit interactivity as a form of commercial monitoring has broader implications for the digital economy.
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Brownell, Cassie J. "Writing as a Minecrafter: Exploring how Children Blur Worlds of Play in the Elementary English Language Arts Classroom." Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education 123, no. 3 (March 2021): 1–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/016146812112300306.
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Background/Context Educators have considered how Minecraft supports language and literacy practices in the game and in the spaces and circumstances immediately surrounding gameplay. However, it is still necessary to develop additional conceptualizations of how children and youth's online and offline worlds and experiences are blurred by and through the games. In this study, I take up this call and examine how the boundaries of the digital were blurred by one child as he wrote in response to a standardized writing prompt within his urban fourth-grade classroom. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Through snapshots of Jairo's writing, I illuminate how he muddled the lines between his physical play experiences and those he had in the virtual world of Minecraft. In doing so, I argue that he carried over his personal interest as a fan of Minecraft into the writing curriculum through creative language play. As Jairo “borrowed” his physical play experiences in the virtual world of Minecraft to complete an assigned writing task, he exemplified how children blur playworlds of physical and digital play in the elementary ELA classroom. Research Design Drawing on data generated in an 18-week case study, I examine how one child, Jairo, playfully incorporated his lived experiences in the virtual world of Minecraft into mandated writing tasks. Conclusions/Recommendations My examination of his writing is meant to challenge writing scholars, scholars of play, and those engaged in rethinking media's relation to literacy. I encourage a rethinking of what it means for adults to maintain clear lines of what is digital play and what is not. I suggest adults might have too heavy a hand in bringing play into classrooms. Children already have experiences with play—both physical and digital. We must cultivate a space for children to build on what was previously familiar to them by offering scaffolds to bridge these experiences between what we, as adults, understand as binaries. Children do not necessarily see distinctions between “reality” and play worlds, or between digital and physical play. For children, play worlds and digital worlds are perhaps simply worlds; it is we as adults who harbor a desire for clear boundaries.
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Olszewski, Robert, Mateusz Cegiełka, Urszula Szczepankowska, and Jacek Wesołowski. "Developing a Serious Game That Supports the Resolution of Social and Ecological Problems in the Toolset Environment of Cities: Skylines." ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information 9, no. 2 (February 20, 2020): 118. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijgi9020118.
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Game engines are not only capable of creating virtual worlds or providing entertainment, but also of modelling actual geographical space and producing solutions that support the process of social participation. This article presents an authorial concept of using the environment of Cities: Skylines and the C# programming language to automate the process of importing official topographic data into the game engine and developing a prototype of a serious game that supports solving social and ecological problems. The model—developed using digital topographic data, digital terrain models, and CityGML 3D models—enabled the creation of a prototype of a serious game, later endorsed by the residents of the municipality, local authorities, as well as the Ministry of Investment and Economic Development.
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Wills, John. "Mechanisms of time in video game Westerns from Gun Fight to Red Dead Redemption 2." European Journal of American Culture 42, no. 2 (September 1, 2023): 197–214. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00105_1.
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This article explores the video game Western and its relationship with ideas of temporality surrounding the American West. The fledgling video game industry first put ‘Cowboys and Indians’ on arcade screens in the 1970s, creating a playable digital West for gamers. Content and aesthetics proved decidedly simple, with game worlds reliant on prior filmic presentations. By the 2000s, thanks largely to technological advances, video game Westerns began to offer quantifiable depth and complexity, with Rockstar Games’s Red Dead Redemption series (2004–18) being a leading example. Video game Westerns represent the next technological as well as cultural representation of the ‘Wild West’ in all its complexities. In this article, I explore how both old and new video game Westerns have toyed with notions of ‘time’ and how we experience ‘the frontier’ a century on from the lived historic period. I argue that games not only invite players to (re)visit a distinctive ‘frontier time’, but also, by their coding and mechanics, actively encourage players to subvert the temporal flow of Western history on-screen and even disrupt the West’s larger cultural meaning.
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Marttinen, Heta. "”Ystävät on hetkellisiä, mutta levelit ikuisia”." Nuorisotutkimus 41 (October 26, 2023): 29–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.57049/nuorisotutkimus.9138188.
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Tässä artikkelissa tarkastellaan sitä, millä tavoin pelaamista ja pelikulttuuria representoidaan ja millaisia merkityksiä ne saavat kotimaisessa 2010- ja 2020-luvulla ilmestyneessä nuortenkirjallisuudessa. Analysoitavan kaunokirjallisen aineiston muodostavat valitut osat Aleksi Delikouraksen Nörtti-kirjasarjasta (2012–2017) sekä Annukka Salaman nuortenromaani Ripley: nopea yhteys (2022). Kontekstualisoivan ja tematisoivan lähiluvun avulla artikkelissa selvitetään 1) millä tavoin pelaajuus ja nörttiys teoksissa määrittyy, 2) millaisia merkityksiä pelaamiselle annetaan ja 3) millaisia mahdollisuuksia pelaaminen kohdeteosten nuorille henkilöhahmoille avaa. Lisäksi artikkelissa tarkastellaan kertomusteoreettisesta näkökulmasta itse pelaamisen representoitumista. Pelaamisen rooli ja merkitykset painottuvat tarkastelluissa teoksissa eri tavoin. Yhteistä teoksille kuitenkin on pelaamisen keskeisyys henkilöhahmojen identiteettiä rakentavana elementtinä. Teoksissa toisinnetaan peli- ja nörttikulttuuriin liittyviä stereotypioita, mutta niitä pyritään myös kyseenalaistamaan ja murtamaan. Lisäksi pelaamisen ja pelimaailmojen representaatiot ovat keskeinen osa kertomuksia. Artikkelissa argumentoidaan, että näillä representaatioilla on merkittävä funktio, sillä ne luovat teoksiin tarttumapintaa tehden niiden maailmoista samastuttavia lukijoille.
Asiasanat: nuortenkirjallisuus, digitaalinen kulttuuri, pelikulttuuri, representaatio
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“Friends are temporary, but levels are forever”. Meanings and representations of gaming in Aleksi Delikouras’ Nörtti book series and Annukka Salama’s YA novel Ripley: Nopea yhteysHeta MarttinenThe Finnish Journal of Youth Research (Nuorisotutkimus) Vol 41 (3), 29–43
The article examines representations of gaming and game culture in Finnish young adult literature published in the 2010s and 2020s. The main corpus consists of selected parts of the Nörtti book series (“The Nerd”; 2012–2017) by Aleksi Delikouras, and Ripley: nopea yhteys (“Ripley: a fast connection”; 2022), a young adult novel by Annukka Salama. Through contextual and thematic close reading, the article aims to answer the following questions: 1) How are gamer and nerd identities defined in the novels? 2) What meanings and functions are associated with video games and gaming? 3) What opportunities does gaming offer to the characters in the novels? Additionally, the article analyzes representations of gaming and game worlds from the point of view of narrative theory.
The novels portray gaming with varying degrees of significance, ranging from a meaningful and rewarding hobby to a goal-oriented and competitive activity. However, a common aspect among these novels is the emphasis on gaming and game culture as an integral part of the teenage characters’ identity. Although both Delikouras’ and Salama’s novels reproduce stereotypes associated with game and nerd culture, they also aim to update and diversify the image of a (stereo)typical gamer and/or nerd character. Moreover, the analysis shows that representations of game worlds play a crucial role in the narratives. These representations are significant not only at the level of the story, as they carry the plot forward but, more importantly, because they create story worlds that are familiar and therefore relatable to young readers, as they are representations of real-world phenomena.
Keywords: youth literature, digital culture, game culture, representation
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Arkhipov, Vladislav V., Anton A. Vasiliev, Nikolai Yu Andreev, and Yulia V. Pechatnova. "Computer games in legal research: On the prerequisites of the regulation model." Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Law 14, no. 1 (2023): 5–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.21638/spbu14.2023.101.
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Games in general and computer games in particular have long been a subject of research in legal research starting from the focus on the analogy between law and games (known inter alia from the works by A. Ross). However, by the beginning of the 21st century computer games and, above all, multiplayer computer games (virtual worlds) became an independent subject of legal research, both because of the interest in private legal problems and based on the methodological premise in the spirit of L. Lessig, according to which the study of the legal dimension of multiplayer game worlds, just as it was earlier with the Internet, can provide new knowledge about the law in general. Computer games are a commercially successful type of media, reflecting the acute problems of “digital law” and one of the significant theoretical and legal problems of determining the reasonable limits of law intervention in “non-serious” or “virtual” relationships. To understand the peculiarities of computer games, including for the purposes of legal research and improvement of the model of legal regulation, a broad interdisciplinary view that takes into account the approaches developed in media studies (M. McLuhan, L. Manovich et al.) and in studies of games as such (J. Huizinga and R. Caillois et al.). As a result, computer games can be considered as a kind of new media the qualities of which are reflected in their main legal qualifications — as the results of intellectual activity, information, means of communication and, actually, games. These qualities can be considered as basic for the development of the model of regulation of computer games and the game industry, taking into account the balance of interests of developers, publishers and the game community, as well as taking into account national interests.
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Keating, Elizabeth, and Chiho Sunakawa. "Participation cues: Coordinating activity and collaboration in complex online gaming worlds." Language in Society 39, no. 3 (May 17, 2010): 331–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0047404510000217.
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AbstractThe development of digital communication technologies not only has an influence on human communicative practices, but also creates new spaces for human collaborative activity. In this article we discuss a technologically mediated context for interaction, computer games. Closely looking at interactions among a group of gamers, we examine how players are managing complex, shifting frameworks of participation, the virtual game world and the embodied world of talk and plans for action. Introducing the notion of participation cues, we explain how interactants are able to orient to, plan, and execute collaborative actions that span quite different environments with quite different types of agency, possible acts, and consequences. Novel abilities to interact across diverse spaces have consequences for understanding how humans build coordinated action through efficient, multimodal communication mechanisms. (Computer-mediated communication, language and technology, gaming, gesture, participation, multimodality)*
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ZORIN, ARTEM N., and DANIIL A. YAKHAMOV. "Performing Capture in Video Games and New Acting Practice in the Post-Digital Era." Art and Science of Television 19, no. 2 (2023): 171–213. http://dx.doi.org/10.30628/1994-9529-2023-19.2-171-213.
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Motion capture technology for creating an animated image of an artist is becoming increasingly widespread in animation, cinema, and computer games. The motion capture methodology allows translating the acting into different virtual worlds and implementing creative data such as plasticity, voice, drama, in completely unexpected forms, which expand the boundaries of traditional artistic anthropology and the psychology of art. The most multilevel and multi-variant form of motion capture, performing capture, can reflect the plasticity of the artist in the finest details. This article raises the question of the need to study new aspects of the methodology of acting creativity. This question arises in the process of creating images of computer games, against the background of scientific understanding of various forms of motion capture technology and their modeling in the digital environment. The ways the artist exists during the implementation of scenarios of high-budget computer game projects are characterized by multivariance in the development of the image when setting the most important tasks in a situation of multiplicity of game strategies, by an expansion of understanding the original event, and by the dynamics of the role pattern. The interactive nature of gaming projects requires an understanding of the categories of actor existence in the synthesis of classical (Stanislavsky system) and post-dramatic theatrical approaches.
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Pearson, Luke. "Architectures of deviation: exploring the spatial protocols of contemporary videogames." Architectural Research Quarterly 19, no. 3 (September 2015): 269–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1359135515000512.
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This essay attempts to outline the ways in which contemporary videogames produce spatial experiences, and how architects might interrogate their unique media form. Framing videogames as both computational constructions and cultural artefacts, the paper places the study in a lineage of architectural thinkers examining ‘pop-culture’ and technology. This draws from the Smithson's writings on advertisements as technical images, Venturi Scott-Brown's studies on symbolism, through to Reyner Banham's definition of mass produced gizmos. The paper first outlines the importance of videogames on society and their Smithsonian impulses towards architectural design. To support this, I examine the work of game theorists such as Espen Aarseth and Ian Bogost. Aarseth argues that game spaces sever certain ties and ‘deviate’ from reality in order to become playable spaces. Bogost contends that game rules produce ‘procedural rhetoric’ - games may advance arguments through the playing of their rules. Reading from these theories I argue that these rule-based breaks from the real are a potent site for architectural speculation.The second section comprises design case studies scrutinising existing game worlds and producing new videogames as architectural experiments. I begin by examining the significance of symbolism in videogame worlds, and how this might provide alternative trajectories for digital architectural design. I subsequently explore Atkinson and Willis’ concept of the ludodrome, slippages between virtual and real, and discuss Ubiquity, a game I produced to explore this condition. I return to Banham's Great Gizmo, alongside PW Singer's writings on military robotics, to see the gamepad as a new order of gizmo for colonising space. And I discuss ‘Grand Theft Auto V’'s loading screen as a manifestation of satellite imagery aesthetics that collapse space. The paper concludes that games are powerful media for spatial experimentation and we must prepare for new generations of designers highly influenced by such ‘deviated’ architectures.
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Mustafa, Bahaa. "Analyzing education based on metaverse technology." Technium Social Sciences Journal 32 (June 9, 2022): 278–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.47577/tssj.v32i1.6742.
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The Metaverse is a post-reality universe, a perpetual multi-user environment that combines physical reality and digital virtuality. It is based on the convergence of technologies that enable multisensory interactions with virtual environments, digital objects, and people, such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). As a result, Metaverse is a web of social, networked immersive environments on persistent multi-user platforms. It allows for real-time, embodied user communication and dynamic interactions with digital artifacts. Its first incarnation was a web of virtual worlds between which avatars could teleport. The modern Metaverse includes social, immersive VR platforms that are compatible with massive multiplayer online video games, open game worlds, and AR collaborative spaces.
The aim of the research is to thoroughly examine the perceptions and educational requirements of Metaverse-based education and to investigate its educational applicability. Using a mixed research method, the study investigated instructors' and students' perceptions of the use of the Metaverse in education, as well as the support system for classes that use the Metaverse. And determining the implications for action. plans and directions for its application in education.
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Grimes, Sara M. "Penguins, Hype, and MMOGs for Kids: A Critical Reexamination of the 2008 “Boom” in Children’s Virtual Worlds Development." Games and Culture 13, no. 6 (March 29, 2016): 624–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1555412016638755.
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According to various media and academic sources, the virtual worlds landscape underwent a profound transformation in 2008, with the arrival of numerous new titles designed and targeted specifically to young children. Although a growing body of research has explored some of the titles involved in this shift, little remains known of its overall scope and contents. This article provides a mapping of the initial “boom” in children’s virtual worlds development and identifies a number of significant patterns within the ensuing children’s virtual worlds landscape. The argument is made that while the reported boom in children’s virtual worlds has been exaggerated, a number of important shifts for online gaming culture did unfold during this period, some of which challenge accepted definitions of “virtual world” and “multiplayer online game.” The implications of these findings are discussed in light of contemporary developments and trends within children’s digital culture and within online gaming more broadly.
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Lee, Jung Yeop, Chong Un Pyon, and Jiyoung Woo. "Digital Twin for Math Education: A Study on the Utilization of Games and Gamification for University Mathematics Education." Electronics 12, no. 15 (July 25, 2023): 3207. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/electronics12153207.
Full textAbstract:
Gamification has emerged as a promising strategy for engaging students and enhancing learning outcomes across various disciplines, including education. It involves incorporating game-like elements into non-game contexts to motivate and engage users. Extensive research has demonstrated the positive impact of gamification on student engagement, motivation, and learning outcomes in diverse subjects, including mathematics. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of research on the effectiveness of gamification in mathematics education. To bridge this gap, we investigated the effects of gamification in college mathematics education, with a specific emphasis on students from liberal arts backgrounds who may lack foundational mathematical knowledge. In this work, we designed and implemented a gamified mathematics course tailored for liberal arts students in a Korean university. Leveraging digital twin technology for game and gamification, we created an immersive learning environment that allows students to visualize mathematical concepts through games, pair gamification factors on physical and virtual worlds, and engage in interactive problem-solving activities. The effectiveness of this gamified course in improving students’ engagement, motivation, and learning outcomes was thoroughly evaluated. Digital twin technology, in conjunction with gamification, holds immense potential to revolutionize the way mathematics is taught and learned, making it more accessible, interactive, and engaging for students from diverse educational backgrounds.
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Aarseth, Espen. "Game or Supernovel? Playing and Reading Massive Game Novels." European Review 31, S1 (October 2023): S66—S76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1062798723000443.
Full textAbstract:
For half a century, digital machines have lent their computational power to mediate text-based, diegetic worlds, in the shape of software that we call games, video games, or sometimes interactive fiction. Perhaps the first such was Gregory Yob’s simple labyrinth-monster game Hunt the Wumpus (1973), but ever since then the games (if that is what they should be called) have become larger and far more complex, and, in recent decades, a single such work can contain more text than, say, Shakespeare’s collected plays. Given this massive textual content, as well as the often experimental and innovative nature of these works, they can also be considered a new form of novel; a kind of text that has much more in common with literature than with other digital games such as Candy Crush Saga, Age of Empires or Counterstrike. In these ‘games’, we find complex characters, difficult ethical choices (left to the player), imaginative landscapes and mythologies, and thousands if not millions of lines of carefully crafted prose. Teams of writers work collectively to stich these textual universes together, under production conditions that might remind us of multi-season TV series, but which are structured and consumed very differently – in fact, more like literature than TV. The claim made in this article is that the perspective of the novel (or supernovel) is a productive one for understanding the nature of these artistic works of ludic software. Should they be considered Literature? Through a discussion of the notions of literature, novel, and fiction and through a close ludic reading of Fallout: New Vegas (2010) I will argue that these textual games are in fact Literature, a new kind of novelistic genre, and discuss the wider cultural implications of this assessment.
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Bakioğlu, Burcu. "Lore of mayhem: Griefers and the radical deployment of spatial storytelling." Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 11, no. 3 (October 1, 2019): 231–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/jgvw.11.3.231_1.
Full textAbstract:
Griefing is a term frequently used to derisively characterize a wide set of activities on digital platforms that yield atypical or undesirable outcomes. This article offers a fresh perspective on the phenomenon of griefing by resituating it as a form of cultural production derived from a transgressive and often agonistic approach to spatial storytelling. Considering griefing as an expressive performative activity along these lines allows us to better understand its repercussions across digital platforms and increasingly in the real world. It promises to shed light on the process through which subversive meanings take hold as game lore in a true folkloric sense despite the best efforts of game companies and other controlling interests. As such, griefing activities typically point to and reveal an underlying story problem around which power is negotiated by different virtual communities or stakeholders. Using two cases studies drawn from Second Life, I illustrate how contested meanings develop into full-fledged game lore through the innovative mash-up language of spatial storytelling. Such stories leverage an alternative model of narrativity and open up immersive worlds to a plethora of generative meanings that are full of magic, intrigue and irony.