Journal articles on the topic 'State space exercises][Game theory'

AbstractA differential game model of a technological service industry is reformulated as an equivalent game over a function space by direct substitution of the solutions of the state equations. For this game, Nash equilibria are shown to exist under certain mild assumptions. A generalization is considered in which each firm has a choice of three different objective functions, which may reflect distinct management options in a technological service industry. Nash equilibria for the generalized version exist under similar mild assumptions.

The article examines the problem of modernization and the formation of new cultural institutions of the 21st century on the materials of the formation of media games on the Internet. The actual practice of expanding the game fields deserves attention from researchers for various reasons. First, the game is interesting in itself as a cultural phenomenon that had arisen in the history of humanity before culture itself, then entered into it and became an integral part of social practices. Second, during revolutionary technological changes in the field of the information interaction of people and the emergence of the so-called digital environment, games known to humanity turn from a class of physical and mental exercises into imagination games based on the technical power of computer devices and network communications. The nomenclature of games is expanding, their genre diversity is growing, the design is being fortified; games content is differentiated and deepened, their mythology is being formed. Thus, the “digital” space of our time is in the stage of continuous shaping. Its architectonics predetermines the formation on the Internet of the institution of the game as a newly-formed one, among the formation factors of which the decisive ones stand out – media and mythogenesis. Media determines a qualitatively different state of historically known game formats, while mythogenesis contributes to the accelerated institutionalization of the media games in the social practices. The study of the problems is based on the results of the work of the researchers on the social significance of the game in the “digital” space of the 21st century and the content analysis of the media games by their types. In this study, the formation of media games as the cultural intitution of the “digital” sphere is established. The functioning of the new formation takes place in the conditions and conventions of unlimited time and space. Keywords: cultural institute, media, digital space, games, mythogenesis

In the time since the merger of quantum mechanics and game theory was proposed formally in 1999, the two distinct perspectives apparent in this merger of applying quantum mechanics to game theory, referred to henceforth as the theory of ``quantized games'', and of applying game theory to quantum mechanics, referred to henceforth as ``gaming the quantum'', have become synonymous under the single ill-defined term ``quantum game''. Here, these two perspectives are delineated and a game-theoretically proper description of what makes a multiplayer, non-cooperative game quantum mechanical, is given. Within the context of this description, finding Nash equilibrium in a zero-sum quantum game is exhibited to be equivalent to finding a solution to a simultaneous distance minimization problem in the state space of quantum objects, thus setting up a framework for a game theory inspired study of ``equilibrium'' behavior of quantum physical systems such as those utilized in quantum information processing and computation.

Aiming to solve the optimal control problem for the pursuit-evasion game with a space non-cooperative target under the condition of incomplete information, a new method degenerating the game into a strong tracking problem is proposed, where the unknown target maneuver is processed as colored noise. First, the relative motion is modeled in the rotating local vertical local horizontal (LVLH) frame originated at a virtual Chief based on the Hill-Clohessy-Wiltshire relative dynamics, while the measurement models for three different sensor schemes (i.e., single LOS (line-of-sight) sensor, LOS range sensor and double LOS sensor) are established and an extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is used to obtain the relative state of target. Next, under the assumption that the unknown maneuver of the target is colored noise, the game control law of chaser is derived based on the linear quadratic differential game theory. Furthermore, the optimal control law considering the thrust limitation is obtained. After that, the observability of the relative orbit state is analyzed, where the relative orbit is weakly observable in a short period of time in the case of only LOS angle measurements, fully observable in the cases of LOS range and double LOS measurement schemes. Finally, numerical simulations are conducted to verify the proposed method. The results show that by using the single LOS scheme, the chaser would firstly approach the target but then would lose the game because of the existence of the target’s unknown maneuver. Conversely, the chaser can successfully win the game in the cases of LOS range and double LOS sensor schemes.

Existing approaches of cyber attack-defense analysis based on stochastic game adopts the assumption of complete rationality, but in the actual cyber attack-defense, it is difficult for both sides of attacker and defender to meet the high requirement of complete rationality. For this aim, the influence of bounded rationality on attack-defense stochastic game is analyzed. We construct a stochastic game model. Aiming at the problem of state explosion when the number of network nodes increases, we design the attack-defense graph to compress the state space and extract network states and defense strategies. On this basis, the intelligent learning algorithm WoLF-PHC is introduced to carry out strategy learning and improvement. Then, the defense decision-making algorithm with online learning ability is designed, which helps to select the optimal defense strategy with the maximum payoff from the candidate strategy set. The obtained strategy is superior to previous evolutionary equilibrium strategy because it does not rely on prior data. By introducing eligibility trace to improve WoLF-PHC, the learning speed is further improved and the defense timeliness is significantly promoted.

In a recent paper, Junge and Palazuelos presented two two-player games exhibiting interesting properties. In their first game, entangled players can perform notably better than classical players. The quantitative gap between the two cases is remarkably large, especially as a function of the number of inputs to the players. In their second game, entangled players can perform notably better than players that are restricted to using a maximally entangled state (of arbitrary dimension). This was the first game exhibiting such a behavior. The analysis of both games is heavily based on non-trivial results from Banach space theory and operator space theory. Here we provide alternative proofs of these two results. Our proofs are arguably simpler, use elementary probabilistic techniques and standard quantum information arguments, and also give better quantitative bounds.

To imagine that asset pricing is not dependant on behavioural heuristics and game theory, we are required to reduce the definition of the participants to that of utility maximising, risk-averse, uniform automata. This study examines this statement through an application of behavioural theory that speaks to the ability of investors to perceive risk, as well as the interactive effects of game theory to distort the perception of risk from exogenous variables to that of endogenous probability beliefs. We present a foundation for a state-space model, such as a Kalman filter, to be used in pricing risk.

SUMMARYIn this paper, nonlinear dynamic equations of a wheeled mobile robot are described in the state-space form where the parameters are part of the state (angular velocities of the wheels). This representation, known as quasi-linear parameter varying, is useful for control designs based on nonlinear∞approaches. Two nonlinear∞controllers that guarantee induced2-norm, between input (disturbances) and output signals, bounded by an attenuation level γ, are used to control a wheeled mobile robot. These controllers are solved via linear matrix inequalities and algebraic Riccati equation. Experimental results are presented, with a comparative study among these robust control strategies and the standard computed torque, plus proportional-derivative, controller.

Birds of a Feather is a single-player card game in which cards are arranged in a grid. The player attempts to combine stacks of cards under certain rules, with the goal being to combine all cards into a single stack. This paper highlights several approaches for efficiently classifying whether a randomlychosen state has a single-stack solution. These approaches use graph theory and machine learning concepts to prune a state’s search space, resulting in significant reductions in runtime relative to a baseline search.

The vector of industrial policy developmen aimed at the transition from the domination of the state to the involvement in its development of all stakeholders is relevant in developed countries. Such an approach requires an additional scientific justification, confirming its feasibility. The purpose and objectives of the paper is the development within the framework of game theory a model of relationships of subjects interested in the industrial policy based on their interests, strategies, areas of conflict and areas of consensus. The study used a multi-subject approach, which implies the existence of a number of independent stakeholders with their own goals and strategies. The methodology of evolutionary game theory (EGT) was used to analyze the interests of the stakeholders of their coincidences and conflicts. The process of formation of industrial policy identified three possible points of equilibrium. The interaction between the state and enterprises is formalized as a game in a normal form, the functions of utility of the players and the equation of replication dynamics are presented. To formalize the problem and finding the equations of the replicative dynamics, we have considered the problem in a general form for the continuous asymmetric games. In terms of content, the results and decisions can be used as a characteristic of the space for the creation of multiple mutually acceptable agreements between real and potential participants in the process of industrial policy formation. It is possible to further analyze the model to obtain a quantitative assessment of the factors that have the greatest impact on the motivation of the interaction participants.

The purpose of the study is to develop a model of the influence of state institutions on the enterpriseeconomic security system of using the provisions of game theory. For each of the two participants in the game -state institutions and enterprises - proposed indicators determine the strategy of the game participant and theirbehavior in such a game. The content of each of the proposed indicators is considered and it is shown how theirvalue can be obtained. The proposed indicators for both participants in the game are leveled to a single scale.The indicators of the model of the antagonistic game between the enterprise and state institutions aredetermined that became the basis for the construction of the game model, which is a tuple. The developedmodel of the influence of state institutions on the enterprise economic security system, represented by acombination of possible strategies for the behavior of both participants in the game in hyper cubic fivedimensional space, which are expressed by the values of indicators for each of these participants, as well as thecalculated “gain” for each of these combinations. Using this model allows to achieve different resultsdepending on the goal of the study. The main result of the model is the search for a balance of interests in the“enterprise-state” system. That is, the search for those points of stable choice that can be obtained using thedeveloped model, namely: search for a local or general extremum in the game field, which will determine themaximum win for one of the participants or the total win of two participants at the same time; research andquantitative estimation of the actual and maximum possible negative impact of state institutions on theeconomic security system of business entities; determining the expected change in the influence of stateinstitutions on the economic security system of business entities due to changes in its strategy; theestablishment of the best strategy for a business entity in existing conditions, which, according to the selectedcriterion, will ensure the stable functioning of the economic security system at an enterprise; determination ofthe limits of the negative impact of state institutions on the economic security system of an enterprise.

Specific to the NCSs where sensor signals can be processed centrally, a collaborative design scheme of dynamic game scheduling and advanced control theory was proposed in the present study. Firstly, by using the Jordan standard state space equation of the research object, the three elements of state noncooperative game were built, and the existence and uniqueness of Nash equilibrium solution were verified. In addition, the iterative equation of the scheduling matrix was derived by complying with the designed utility function. Secondly, refer to the number of restricted states the order of sliding mode was determined. And based on it, the corresponding sliding surface was designed. Subsequently, the quadratic optimization theory was adopted to regulate the control value following the implementation of the scheduling strategy to ensure that the control quality was further enhanced in the limited network service. Lastly, a TrueTime simulation example is established to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Wireless communication over networks often produces issues associated with delayed and missing data. In this paper, we consider one-step and two-step delays. The state space model is transformed to have no delay with new system and observation matrices. To mitigate the effect, we develop the unbiased finite impulse response (UFIR) filter, Kalman filter (KF), and game theory H∞ filter for Bernoulli-distributed delays with possible packet dropouts. A comparative study of the filters developed is provided under the uncertain noise and transmission probability. Numerical simulation is conducted employing a GPSbased tracking network system. A better performance of the UFIR filter is demonstrated experimentally

Evolution of distribution of strategies in game theory is an interesting question that has been studied only for specific cases. Here I develop a general method to extend analysis of the evolution of continuous strategy distributions given a quadratic payoff function for any initial distribution in order to answer the following question—given the initial distribution of strategies in a game, how will it evolve over time? I look at several specific examples, including normal distribution on the entire line, normal truncated distribution, as well as exponential and uniform distributions. I show that in the case of a negative quadratic term of the payoff function, regardless of the initial distribution, the current distribution of strategies becomes normal, full or truncated, and it tends to a distribution concentrated in a single point so that the limit state of the population is monomorphic. In the case of a positive quadratic term, the limit state of the population may be dimorphic. The developed method can now be applied to a broad class of questions pertaining to evolution of strategies in games with different payoff functions and different initial distributions.

In 1950, Nash proposed a natural equilibrium solution concept for games hence called Nash equilibrium, and proved that all finite games have at least one. The proof is through a simple yet ingenious application of Brouwer’s (or, in another version Kakutani’s) fixed point theorem, the most sophisticated result in his era’s topology—in fact, recent algorithmic work has established that Nash equilibria are computationally equivalent to fixed points. In this paper, we propose a new class of universal non-equilibrium solution concepts arising from an important theorem in the topology of dynamical systems that was unavailable to Nash. This approach starts with both a game and a learning dynamics, defined over mixed strategies. The Nash equilibria are fixpoints of the dynamics, but the system behavior is captured by an object far more general than the Nash equilibrium that is known in dynamical systems theory as chain recurrent set. Informally, once we focus on this solution concept—this notion of “the outcome of the game”—every game behaves like a potential game with the dynamics converging to these states. In other words, unlike Nash equilibria, this solution concept is algorithmic in the sense that it has a constructive proof of existence. We characterize this solution for simple benchmark games under replicator dynamics, arguably the best known evolutionary dynamics in game theory. For (weighted) potential games, the new concept coincides with the fixpoints/equilibria of the dynamics. However, in (variants of) zero-sum games with fully mixed (i.e., interior) Nash equilibria, it covers the whole state space, as the dynamics satisfy specific information theoretic constants of motion. We discuss numerous novel computational, as well as structural, combinatorial questions raised by this chain recurrence conception of games.

A two-pronged approach to interpreting field data through the use of models is presented. This approach builds upon both data- and theory-based models and their associated methods of system identification. It seeks to overcome their respective limitations: that theory-based models are not unambiguously identifiable from the observations, while a well identified data-based model may not be capable of a satisfactory theoretical interpretation. The purpose of the approach is thereby to gain a deeper understanding of complex environmental systems. Recursive methods of time-series analysis are used to identify the data-based models and the modified recursive prediction error algorithm is employed for parameter estimation of the theory-based models. The results of these identification exercises for the two classes of models can be compared in terms of the macro-parameters of the studied system's time constant and steady-state gain. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the overall performance of the two-pronged approach. It is found that: (1) more is to be gained through the joint application of the two classes of models than the exclusive use of either; (2) to some extent, identifying the structure and estimating the parameters of one type of model can be improved by recourse to the corresponding results for the other; and (3) reconciliation of the results from identifying the two classes of model in the parameter space has significant advantages over the more familiar process of evaluating a model's performance in the terms of its (observed) state space features.

The control problem by parameters in the course of the guaranteed state estimation of linear non-stationary systems is considered. It is supposed that unknown disturbances in the system and the observation channel are limited by norm in the space of square integrable functions and the initial state of the system is also unknown. The process of guaranteed state estimation includes the solution of a matrix Riccati equation that contains some parameters, which may be chosen at any instant of time by the first player (an observer) and the second player (an opponent of the observer). The purposes of players are diametrically opposite: the observer aims to minimize diameter of information set at the end of observation process, and the second player on the contrary aims to maximize it. This problem is interpreted as a differential game with two players for the Riccati equation. All the choosing parameters are limited to compact sets in appropriate spaces of matrices. The payoff of the game is interpreted through the Euclidean norm of the inverse Riccati matrix at the end of the process. A specific case of the problem with constant matrices is considered. Methods of minimax optimization, the theory of optimal control, and the theory of differential games are used. Examples are also given.

‘Provincialism’, or the separation of inferior spaces from normative ones, is seen in this essay as a key trope for interpreting modern Indian history. Provincialism, or provinciality, is a space recognizable instantly. It is marked by slowness, by absence of the new and recent, by what is seen on the national level as a brake-effect in an otherwise promising march forwards. Cities, which is what I concentrate on in this essay, are characterizable as provincial by a certain appearance: a topography of narrow streets, by the sloppy merger of the inside and outside, by an absence of discrimination between the jungle and the civilized as animal life proliferates on the roads. Their space is marked by a lack of discipline, and this lack is further exacerbated by an attitude almost aggressive, at any rate stubborn, that seems to embrace every other dimension of life. The provincial citizen is one whose body identifies with the provincial space. It revels in an indifference to the rules of obedience to arbitrary external exercises of power. The provincial space and its citizen are marked in the use of languages by the dominance of regional language over English. Overall, the provincial space is signified in the state as an obstacle, political, economic, and most of all cultural, to what could otherwise be the smooth march forward of unfettered forces of rationality and order. But it signifies itself by an alternative code. That which is indiscipline to the center is freedom to the margins; that which is coarse, is cultured; that which is backward, is rich; that which is alien is intimate; and that which is unable to keep step with a march forward is precisely the intelligent and crafty that refuses to play a non-reflexive, mechanical game.

Abstract This service aims to socialize and implement dhin dhon model exercises at the volleyball club in Bantaeng Regency. This community service is one part of the Tri darma of higher education that is required for Lecturer staff at Makassar State University. The object of this service is the volleyball athlete in Bantaeng Regency. The implementation technique of the socialization and application of dhin dhon training for athletes is through the provision of theory and practice of the forms of dhin dhon training model movements and other related sciences in this community service. The implementation of socialization activities under the model of passing exercises (dhindhon) in the volleyball game in Bantaeng Regency can be concluded as follows: (1) In general, the socialization participants were very enthusiastic in accepting the material provided both in theory and practice, (2) Participants could realize that for get maximum skills or skills required training programs with a variety of methods and models of training that are carried out systematically and programmed, and (3) The dissemination of the model of passing training (dhindhon) in the game of volleyball is very helpful to achieve technical skills to the maximum which is only done conventionally without the creativity and innovation of each exercise. Abstrak Pengabdian ini bertujuan untuk mensosialisasikan dan menerapkan latihan model dhin dhon pada klub bolavoli di Kabupaten Bantaeng. Pengabdian masyarakat ini adalah salah satu bagian dari pada Tri darma perguruan tinggi yang diwajibkan bagi staf Dosen di Universitas Negeri Makassar. Objek dari pengabdian ini adalah atlet bolavoli di Kabupaten Bantaeng. Teknik pelaksanaan dari pada sosialisasi dan penerapan latihan dhin dhon bagi atlet adalah melalui pemberian teori dan praktek tentang bentuk-bentuk gerakan latihan model dhin dhon serta ilmu pengetahuan lain yang terkait dalam pengabdian masyarakat ini. Pelaksanaan kegiatan sosialsiasi model latihan passing bawah (dhindhon) dalam permainan bolavoli di Kabupaten Bantaeng dapat ditarik kesimpulan sebagai berikut: (1) Pada umumnya peserta sosialisasi sangat antusias dalam menerima materi yang diberikan baik secara teori maupun praktek, (2) Peserta dapat menyadari bahwa untuk mendapatkan keterampilan atau skill yang maksimal dibutuhkan program latihan dengan berbagai metode dan model latihan yang dilakukan secara sistematis dan terprogram, dan (3) Adanya sosialisasi model latihan passing bawah (dhindhon) dalam permainan bolavoli sangat membantu untuk mencapai keterampilan teknik secara maksimal yang selama hanya dilakukan secara konvensional tanpa adanya kreatifitas dan inovasi setiap latihan.

Evolutionary game-theoretic models and, in particular, the so-called replicator equations have recently proven to be remarkably effective at approximately solving the maximum clique and related problems. The approach is centered around a classic result from graph theory that formulates the maximum clique problem as a standard (continuous) quadratic program and exploits the dynamical properties of these models, which, under a certain symmetry assumption, possess a Lyapunov function. In this letter, we generalize previous work along these lines in several respects. We introduce a wide family of game-dynamic equations known as payoff-monotonic dynamics, of which replicator dynamics are a special instance, and show that they enjoy precisely the same dynamical properties as standard replicator equations. These properties make any member of this family a potential heuristic for solving standard quadratic programs and, in particular, the maximum clique problem. Extensive simulations, performed on random as well as DIMACS benchmark graphs, show that this class contains dynamics that are considerably faster than and at least as accurate as replicator equations. One problem associated with these models, however, relates to their inability to escape from poor local solutions. To overcome this drawback, we focus on a particular subclass of payoff-monotonic dynamics used to model the evolution of behavior via imitation processes and study the stability of their equilibria when a regularization parameter is allowed to take on negative values. A detailed analysis of these properties suggests a whole class of annealed imitation heuristics for the maximum clique problem, which are based on the idea of varying the parameter during the imitation optimization process in a principled way, so as to avoid unwanted inefficient solutions. Experiments show that the proposed annealing procedure does help to avoid poor local optima by initially driving the dynamics toward promising regions in state space. Furthermore, the models outperform state-of-the-art neural network algorithms for maximum clique, such as mean field annealing, and compare well with powerful continuous-based heuristics.

Three player quantum Kolkata restaurant problem is modelled using three entangled qutrits. This first use of three level quantum states in this context is a step towards a $N$-choice generalization of the $N$-player quantum minority game. It is shown that a better than classical payoff is achieved by a Nash equilibrium solution where the space of available strategies is spanned by subsets of SU(3) and the players share a tripartite entangled initial state.

The challenges and risks to the human biological basis are related to the minimization of motor activity of the individual and the subsequent consequences of permanent hypodynamic. Regular use of physical exercises and loads in the modern information society is gaining new importance. Students, in theory, are aware of these risks and the positive impact of regular exercise on their body and life aspects in general. But this knowledge not always encourages a person to systemic efforts in the context of physical self-training. According to the authors, theoretical knowledge about physical development and improvement of the person’s motor function who has limited motor experience, enter into the cognitive dissonance with the whole list of contingent factors, such as laziness, phobias, negative emotions, etc. There is an assumption that in the area of physical activity, not only conscious cognitions occur, but also unconscious or partly-conscious, in mentioned above cognitive dissonance. The final choice is made by finding out the attitude to the perspectives of the state of one’s physical body and means of correcting unacceptable deviations of the personality in such a dissonance. Goal if our research is to reveal existence and correlation of conscious and unconscious in problematic area of shaping of the attitude to the exercising. Proposed goal of the research determines usage of interdisciplinary approach. During the research we used complex of methods, among which are: evaluation of the literature and practical experience, questionnaires, methods of mathematical statistics, explication of personal logical systems. During the research theoretical diagrams and developments were checked in accordance with the results of the questionnaire. 272 freshmen of the National Aviation University took part in this questionnaire. Results determined that 28,6% of students would use conscious cognitions relatively to physical training, and 71,4% would use unconscious. Students in the process of final selecting of attitude to personal physical state, unconscious (not controlled), is one of the main influential factors.

In previous work, attention was restricted to tracking the net using a backward method that knows the target point beforehand (Bellmans's equation), this work tracks the state-space in a forward direction, and a natural form of termination is ensured by an equilibrium point . We consider dynamical systems governed by ordinary difference equations described by Petri nets. The trajectory over the net is calculated forward using a discrete Lyapunov-like function, considered as a distance function. Because a Lyapunov-like function is a solution to a difference equation, it is constructed to respect the constraints imposed by the system (a Euclidean metric does not consider these factors). As a result, we prove natural generalizations of the standard outcomes for the deterministic shortest-path problem and shortest-path game theory.

The visualisation and the level of abstraction of complicated organic relations within an urban setting still remains a major problem with regard to urban discipline. This paper captures the dialectic relation within the urban network, in which the interaction between the spatial process of becoming and the temporal state of being is fundamental. ‘Envelopment’ is developed from and based upon Giddens’ structuration theory. It enables visualisation of ‘relations’ and, as problem-setting matrices, allows the fundamentals of the urban network to be itemised within forms of relationships: modalities. Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy of deterriorialisation is also adopted into urban studies to support further investigations in respect of decoding and Translating ‘modalities’ as fundamentals in achieving continuous reproduction of Envelopment-as a topological space. Generally, topological space is defined in terms of processes and relations, Vocabularies are accepted as essences of urban dialog embodied in the system, needs to be visualised and meanings to be assigned according to their role and position in the system. In envelopment, system will be considered as macro-scale, multi-scalar topology, where all other modes of relations (amongst people, space and time) can be elaborated. The language game of Wittgenstein, as a metaphoric tool allows us to explore and group the modes of relations as vocabularies; “set of modalities”, enabling dialog upon their role and position in the system. Although the approach of Envelopment can be used as a tool, in enabling the representation of the equilibrium of state and process characteristics of system; it also helps as a tool in enabling the representation of macroscopic space-time scale; enabling representation of urban development and enabling representation of change in urban narrative. The various implementation of the Envelopment will be represented as a final discussion of the paper.

Behavioral game theory seeks to describe the way actual people (as compared to idealized, "rational" agents) act in strategic situations. Our own recent work has identified iterative models, such as quantal cognitive hierarchy, as the state of the art for predicting human play in unrepeated, simultaneous-move games. Iterative models predict that agents reason iteratively about their opponents, building up from a specification of nonstrategic behavior called level-0. A modeler is in principle free to choose any description of level-0 behavior that makes sense for a given setting. However, in practice almost all existing work specifies this behavior as a uniform distribution over actions. In most games it is not plausible that even nonstrategic agents would choose an action uniformly at random, nor that other agents would expect them to do so. A more accurate model for level-0 behavior has the potential to dramatically improve predictions of human behavior, since a substantial fraction of agents may play level-0 strategies directly, and furthermore since iterative models ground all higher-level strategies in responses to the level-0 strategy. Our work considers models of the way in which level-0 agents construct a probability distribution over actions, given an arbitrary game. We considered a large space of alternatives and, in the end, recommend a model that achieved excellent performance across the board: a linear weighting of four binary features, each of which is general in the sense that it can be computed from any normal form game. Adding real-valued variants of the same four features yielded further improvements in performance, albeit with a corresponding increase in the number of parameters needing to be estimated. We evaluated the effects of combining these new level-0 models with several iterative models and observed large improvements in predictive accuracy.

Radicalisation of Muslim youth is a hot item in the Netherlands. Deradicalisation is therefore high on the agenda. In our view, however, the deradicalisation processes begin at a moment ‘when it is too late to lock the stable door, because the horse has already bolted’. That is why our focus is on the prevention of radicalisation. In our contribution, we explore the concept of ‘radicalisation’ and inform the reader about deradicalisation programmes developed in the Netherlands and in Europe. The lack of success of these programmes challenges us to focus on ‘prevention’. In our view, a playful dialogical encounter in a safe space is a must in the approach of young people who are on the verge of radicalisation. The above-mentioned concepts of radicalisation, deradicalisation and prevention are presented in the first paragraph, followed by a discussion of de- and counter-radicalisation programmes in paragraph two. The third paragraph focuses on the prevention of radicalisation in education. Crucial here is a dialogical relationship between teachers and students, between the students themselves and within the students’ inner selves. This latter aspect is inspired by the theoretical framework of the dialogical self-theory, with its core concept of ‘multi-voicedness’ and ‘positioning of voices’. Special attention in the positioning process is given to resilience. The heart of this publication is dedicated to the re-invention of an age-old Islamic game: shaṭranj al-ʿārifīn’. In the fourth paragraph, we describe its origins and our adapted version of this game. Playing the game in pilot studies—a ‘serious play session’—increases young people’s awareness of religion and its positioning, resulting in strengthening resilience in their life orientation. In the concluding fifth paragraph, we state that our innovative, playful and theoretically well-framed approach is a promising module to be implemented in formal and informal education.

AbstractThe ways in which languages have come to divide the visible spectrum with their color terminology, in both their variety and the apparent universal tendencies, are still largely unexplained. Building on recent work in modeling color perception and categorization, as well as the theory of signaling games, we incrementally construct a color categorization model which combines perceptual characteristics of individual agents, game-theoretic signaling interaction of these agents, and the probability of observing particular colors as an environmental constraint. We also propose a method of transparent evaluation against the data gathered in the World Color Survey. The results show that the model’s predictive power is comparable to the current state of the art. Additionally, we argue that the model we suggest is superior in terms of motivation of the principles involved, and that its explanatory relevance with respect to color categorization in languages is therefore higher. Our results suggest that the universal tendencies of color categorization cannot be explained solely in terms of the shape of the color space induced by our perceptual apparatus. We believe that only by taking the heterogeneity of the phenomenon seriously can we acquire a deeper understanding of why color categorization takes the forms we observe across languages.

The article highlights that provision of a person with the ability to quickly adapt and solve problems in new, unusual situations is challenge of today. Its implementation starts being provided by the school of the first degree and represents not only filling of knowledge sphere, but also formation of key competences of schoolchildren which promote their activity as participants of effective development and dynamic development of the state. Performed analysis of the possibilities of primary education in the implementation of the competency approach, which contributes to the organization of educational activities of primary school students with a predominance of cognitive activity to achieve their independence is provided in the process of acquiring new knowledge and skills. The development of students' self-dependence, their manifestation of initiative, creativity, cognitive interest, etc., is provided by various didactic tools that allow to make learning interesting and exciting not only at the creative and exploratory level, but also in the daily study of subjects. It is stated that achieving the required level of education and personal development is impossible without systematic independent work, the need in it lies in the school years. Therefore, the school should pay much attention to self-dependent learning activities of students, this concept means a generalized personality trait, which is manifested in initiative, critical thinking, adequate self-esteem and a sense of personal responsibility for their activities and behavior, which is manifested in thinking, willpower. In view of this, only now is a holistic theory and methodology of this process for educational activities being created. It is established that the importance of self work in the educational process is difficult to overestimate, it forms independence, which is a quality of each person and contributes to the achievement of a truly conscious and strong mastery of information. Based on this, it is confirmed that the level of self-dependence is formed in all primary school lessons gradually. That is, this characteristic is the result of constant, persistent, long-term work of teachers, students and all interested participants in the didactic process. It is proved that the development of self-dependence is facilitated by a gradual increase in the amount of self work in the classroom, a variety of tasks, the introduction of creative work, combining them with work of a training nature. The ratio of creative and training work in the educational activities of primary school children depends on the stage of study, its content and purpose of the lesson. An essential condition for success is a clear statement of questions, tasks to students. Awareness of their students directs mental activity. The didactic game in the classroom, which not only provides maximum satisfaction to the child is of great importance, but is a powerful means of its development, a means of forming a full-fledged personality. This form promotes the self-dependence of educational activities, promotes the level of skills and knowledge, activates the creative thinking of students and the reserves of their memory, develops interest in the subject, cultivates the ability to work. The selection of games and game situations for activation of different types of perception and comprehension at all stages of the lesson is offered. Their use was the most timely and effective compared to other methods, the organization of which does not require, on the one hand, time for the teacher to develop them, and on the other hand, memorizing cumbersome rules by students. The results of their application in the educational process provide a higher level of self-dependence in the experimental groups than in the control and are characterized by emotionality, accessibility, cognitive information. Such work should be based on the proposals of such didactic games, the implementation of which does not allow students to act on ready-made templates, but requires the use of knowledge in new situations.

The experience of working with chronic trauma in the framework of children’s psychodrama, which allows exteriorization, acting out and understanding of internal drama in the external space of group play interaction, is presented in the article. The dynamics of roles and game behavior of a 10-year-old girl with communicative, cognitive and psychosomatic difficulties is traced and analyzed. The content of 13 psychodramatic sessions is presented. The observed evolution is considered from the point of view of Melanie Klein’s theory in terms of the development of elements of the depressive position against the background of the predominance of the paranoid-schizoid platform, the microdynamics of fluctuations between these two positions and their consequences for the experience of the “I” and the object. Gradually, the group’s work has seen a reduction in the manifestations of anxiety and the need to protect against a dangerous, intruding and attacking world. There has been a transformation of the security object, acceptance of a state of scarcity, easing control over the object, acceptance of the connections of dependence, compassion and reparation, although the period of 13 meetings was not sufficient for permanent changes, which led to pronounced fluctuations in the prevailing position. The conclusion is made about the importance and fruitfulness of timely psychological work with the consequences of chronic traumatization, despite the apparent “normativity” of the child, the adaptability of his seemingly normal part of the personality.

The author explored the concept of "childhood culture" through the prism of the new European paradigm of culture and domestic cultural creation in the modern humanities. The revision of the concept of "childhood culture" is carried out in the context of polydisciplinarity, which combines anthropological, psychological, sociological, philosophical, aesthetic, art, ethnographic, pedagogical aspects of the analysis of the childhood phenomenon. The semantic polyvalences of "childhood culture" within the classical and non-classical paradigms were revealed. The new European paradigm of childhood culture is considered. The concept of "childhood" is substantiated, which is presented as a cultural phenomenon in which value, figurative, conceptual markers are accumulated, and at the same time a special semantic space is formed, defined by lexemes "child world", "children's creativity", "childhood culture", "children's communication". etc. The dynamics of the relationship between the concepts: "children's culture" — "children's creativity" — "children's festival" is highlighted. It is argued that the concept of "childhood culture" in the theory of culture is transformed into interdisciplinary tools, combining the perspective of cultural and historical dynamics of childhood and the theory of childhood in one methodological complex-concept. The concept of childhood culture is investigated through the prism of anthropological projection (V. Tabachkovsky, M. Mead), game concept of culture (J. Geizinga), cultural concept of aesthetic education (T. Krivosheya), existential point of wiev (J.-P. Sartre), psychoanalytic approach (Z. Freud), in the focus of everyday school "Annals" (F. Aries), hermeneutic pattern (P. Reeker), etc. The topology of children’s culture of the American researcher D. Kennedy is analyzed, which allowed to state the child-creator as a subject of cultural creation within its non-classical comprehension. Articulated phenomenon of "child-centeredness", which is based on even greater infantilization of society and totally affects all cultural practices (fashion, consumption, education, entertainment, etc.).

While the first two chapters of Doucas's historical work present a meagre outline of world history - a sketch which becomes a little more detailed from 1261 on, when the narration reaches the history of the Turks and their conquests in Asia Minor - the third chapter deals with the well-known battle of Kosovo, which took place in 1389. From that point on, the Byzantine historian gives much important information on Serbia, as well as on the Ottoman advances in the Balkans, and thus embarks upon his central theme - the rise of the Turks and the decline of Byzantium. Doucas considers the battle of Kosovo a key event in the subjugation of the Balkan peoples by the Turks, and he shows that after the battle of Kosovo the Serbs were the first to suffer that fate. At the beginning, Doucas says that after the death of Orhan, the ruler (o archgos) of the Turks, his son and successor Murad conquered the Thracian towns, Adrianople and the whole Thessaly, so that he mastered almost all the lands of the Byzantines, and finally reached the Triballi (Triballous). He devastated many of their towns and villages sending the enslaved population beyond Chersonesus, until Lazar, son of King Stefan of Serbia (Serbias), who ruled (kraley?n) in Serbia at that time decided to oppose him with all the might he could muster. The Serbs were often called Triballi by Byzantine authors. For the fourteenth century writers Pachymeres, Gregoras, Metochites and Kantakouzenos the Serbs were Triballi. However, Pachymeres and Gregoras refer to the rulers of the Triballi as the rulers of Serbia. Fifteenth century writers, primarily Chalcondyles and Critobulos, use only that name. It seems, nevertheless, that Doucas makes a distinction between the Triballi and the Serbs. As it is known, the conquest of the Serbian lands by the Turks began after the battle on the river Marica in 1371. By 1387. the Turks had mastered Serres(1388) Bitola and Stip (1385), Sofia (1385), Nis (1386) and several other towns. Thus parts of Macedonia, Bulgaria and even of Serbia proper were reduced by the Turks by 1387. For Doucas, however, this is the territory inhabited by the Triballi. After the exposition of the events on Kosovo, Doucas inserts an account of the dispute of John Kantakouzenos and the regency on behalf of John V, which had taken place, as it is known, long before 1389. At the beginning of his description of the civil war, Doucas says that by dividing the empire Kantakouzenos made it possible for the Turks to devastate not only all the lands under Roman rule, but also the territories of the Triballi Moesians and Albanians and other western peoples. The author goes on to narrate that Kantakouzenos established friendly relations with the king Stefan Du{an, and reached an agreement with him concerning the fortresses towns and provinces of the unlucky Empire of the Romaioi, so that, instead of giving them over to the Roman lords, he surrendered them to barbarians, the Triballi and the Serbs (Triballoys te kai Serbous). When he speaks later how the Tatars treated the captives after the battle of Angora in 1402, Doucas points out that the Divine Law, honored from times immemorial not only among the Romaioi, but also among the Persians, the Triballi and the Scythians (as he calls Timur's Tatars), permitted only plunder, not the taking of captives or any executions outside the battlefield when the enemy belonged to the same faith. Finally, when he speaks of the conflict between Murad II and Juneid in Asia Minor, Doucas mentions a certain Kelpaxis, a man belonging to the people of the Triballi, who took over from Juneid the rule over Ephesus and Ionia. It seems, therefore, that Doucas, when he speaks of the land of the Triballi he has in mind a broad ethnical territory in the Balkans, which was obviously not settled by the Serbs only or even by the Slavs only. According to him Kelpaxis (Kelpaz?sis) also belonged to the Triballi, although the name can hardly be of Slavonic, i.e. Serbian origin. On the other hand, he is definitely aware of Serbia, a state which had left substantial traces in the works of Byzantine authors, particularly from the time when it usurped (according to the Byzantine view) the Empire. Writing a whole century after Dusan's coronation as emperor, Doucas is not willing, as we shall see later to recognize this usurpation. Although he ascribes to Serbia, in conformity with the Byzantine conception of tazis, a different rank, he considers Serbia and the Serbs, as they are generally called in his work (particularly when he describes the events after the Battle of Kosovo) an important factor in the struggle against the Turks. Therefore he makes a fairly accurate distinction between the Serbs and the other Triballi. In his case, the term may in fact serve as a geographical designation for the territory settled by many peoples, including the Serbs. When he uses specific titles and when he speaks of the degrees of authority conveyed by them in individual territories Doucas is anxious to prove himself a worthy scion of the Romaioi, who considered that they had the exclusive right to the primacy in the Christian hierarchy with the Roman emperor at its top. He makes distinctions of rank between individual rulers. The Emperor in Constantinople is for him the only emperor of the Romans (basileys t?n R?mai?n). King Sigismund of Hungary is also styled emperor, but as basileys t?n R?man?n, meaning Latin Christians. The last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI Dragas Palaleologus is not recognized as an emperor, and the author calls his rule a despotic rule (despoteia). He has a similar view of the Serbs. Thus he says, erroneously that Lazar was the son of King Stefan of Serbia (yios Stefanoy toy kral? Serbias) and that he ruled Serbia at that time (o tote t?n Serbian kraley?n). Elsewhere, Doucas explains his attitude and says that o t?n Serb?n archgos etolm?sen anadusasthai kratos kai kral?s onomazesthai. Toyto gar to barbaron onoma exell?nizomenon basileys erm?neyetai. Lazar exercises royal power (kraley?n) in Serbia, which is appropriate, for the author thinks erroneously that Lazar was the son and successor of King Stefan Du{an. It is significant that he derives the werb kraley? from the Serbian title 'kralj', i.e. from the title which never existed in the Byzantine Empire. Moreover, there is no mention of this werb in any other Byzantine text. When he narrates how Serbia fell under the Turkish rule in 1439, Doucas says that Despot Djuradj Brankovic seeing his ravaged despotate (despoteian), went to the King of Hungary hoping to get aid from him. There can be no doubt that the term despoteia here refers to the territory ruled by Despot Djuradj Brankovic. Doucas correctly styles the Serbian rulers after 1402 as despots. The space he devotes to Serbia in his work, as well as the manner in which he speaks of it, seems to indicate, however, that he regarded it, together with Hungary as a obstacle of the further Turkish conquests in the Balkans. Doucas's text indicates that Serbia, though incomparably weaker than in the time of Dusan's mighty empire, was in fact the only remaining more or less integral state in the Peninsula. The riches of Serbia and, consequently, of its despots, is stressed in a number of passages. Almost at the very beginning Doucas says that Bayezid seized 'a sufficient quantity of silver talents from the mines of Serbia' after the Battle of Kosovo. When Murad II conducted negotiations with Despot Djuradj for his marriage with the Despot's daughter Mara, Doucas writes, no one could guess how many 'gold and silver talents' he took. Doucas also says that the Despot began to build the Smederevo fortress with Murad's permission. The building of a fortress has never been an easy undertaking and if we bear in mind that Despot Djuradj built the part of the Smederevo fortress called 'Mali Grad' (Small fortress) in two years only, we realize that his economic power was really considerable. When Fadulah, the counselor of Murad II, sought to persuade his lord to occupy Serbia, he stressed the good position of the country, particularly of Smederevo, and the country's abundant sources of silver and gold, which would enable Murad not only to conquer Hungary, but also to advance as far as Italy. After Mehmed II captured Constantinople, the Serbs undertook to pay an annual tribute of 12.000 gold coins, more than the despots of Mistra, the lords of Chios Mitylene or the Emperor of Trebizond. Already in 1454 the Despot's men brought the tribute to Mehmed II and also ransomed their captives. Critobulos's superb description of Serbia is the best testimony that this was not only Doucas's impression: 'Its greatest advantage, in which it surpasses the other countries, is that it produces gold and silver? They are mined everywhere in that region, which has rich veins of both gold and silver, more abundant than those of India. The country of the Triballi was indeed fortunate in this respect from the very beginning and it was proud of its riches and its might. It was a kingdom with numerous flourishing towns and strong and impregnable fortresses. It was also rich in soldiers and armies as well as in good equipment. It had citizens of the noblest rank and it brought up many youths who had the strength of adult men. It was admired and famous, but it was also envied, so that is was not only loved of many, but also disliked by many people who sought to harm It'. It is no wonder that George Sphrantzes once complains that Christians failed to send aid to Constantinople and that he singles out for particular blame that 'miserable despot, who did not realize that once the head is removed, the limbs, too disappear'. It may be said, therefore, that Doucas regarded Serbia as one of the few remaining allies of at least some ability to stem the Turkish advances, and that this opinion was primarily based on its economic resources. Serbia was clearly distinguished as a state structure, as opposed to most of the remaining parts of the Peninsula, inhabited by peoples which Doucas does not seem to differentiate precisely. According to him, the authority over a particular territory issued from the ruler's title, the title of despot, which was first in importance after the imperial title, also determined the rank of Serbia in the Byzantine theory of hierarchy of states. Doucas's testimony also shows that this theory not only endured until the collapse of the Empire, but that it also persisted even in the consciousness of the people who survived its fall.

The relevance of the article is determined by the appeal to the debatable issues of stylistic differentiation of the works by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel as the French musical culture leading representatives of the late 19th and the first third of the 20th centuries. The research reflections about the connections betwen Debussy and Ravel on the principle “for / against” have not subsided for more than a hundred years. This testifies to the special urgency of this problem and the need to search for modern approaches to understanding the artistic identity of two brilliant contemporaries.Scientific novelty. For the first time, the multidirectionality of the composing strategies by Debussy and Ravel is indicated through the the concept of style in its interdisciplinary philosophicalcategorical status and the explanationof its functions of identification and communication in the general cultural understanding (O. Ustyugova). For the first time the difference between the cultural phenomena processes integration in the era of modernism into the new artistic wholes, with unique properties, which is appropriate to define as “Debussy’s style” and “Ravel’s style”, is revealed.The purpose of the article is to reveal the multidirectionality of the composing strategies of Debussy and Ravel through an appeal to the main stylistic functions of identification and communication in general cultural understanding (O. Ustyugova); to designate the non-coincidence of channels of integration of cultural phenomena in the era of modernism into new artistic wholes, which have unique properties such as “Debussy’s style” and “Ravel’s style”.The research methodology includes the use of historical, stylistic, comparative methods.Main results and conclusions. The existing musicological literature emphasizes the influence of romanticism, post-romanticism, impressionism, symbolism, neoclassicism, Art Nouveau, moderne style on the formation of the individual style of Debussy and Ravel. Each of these directions had a certain reflection in the work of composers. However, let us try to highlight in the conceptual space of the many-sided “isms” of the cultural context of the era of modernism the hidden sources of the deployment of the creative intentions of the both brilliant contemporaries. We will choose the fundamental work of E. Ustyugova “Style and Culture: Experience of Building a General Theory of Style” (2003) as a methodological basis for this. E. Ustyugova proposes to go beyond the understanding style as a “migratory structure” (term by J. Rebane) and a convenient “classification tool” (J. Burnham) in structural and typological studies of art and move on to a comprehensive study of the essence of this phenomenon. For this, according to the researcher, it is necessary to carry out two analytical procedures. The first is based on the awareness of the experience of the mismatch between the object and the subject. The second involves considering the style in the aspect of intersubjective communication.With this view on the problem of identifying the patterns of formation and development of cultural phenomena, it is not the nominative parameters and the “herbarization” of genrelinguistic units that come to the fore, but the comprehension of the multilevel subject-object relations that formed these phenomena; “live reproduction” of the matrix of the world perception as channels of communication between the “I” and everything that appears as “not-I”.The creative paths of Debussy and Ravel represent diferent creative strategies. The “pure meaning”, unspeakable by words and free from all earthly, to which Debussy aspired, creates parallels with the texts of symbolist poets and destroy the boundaries between “I” and “not-I”. In the fundamental monographs of French researchers dedicated to the composer an idea has long been entrenched: the composer’s creative laboratory was poetry, and Debussy’s address to the poetic word throughout all his creative decades constantly expanding the semantic horizons of his “artistic realities”.Debussy’s spiritual intentions merged into a single sound-glow in the indivisible space of being. The word in all its dimensions (from literal to metaphysical) indicated the stages of the process of dissolving the personal “I” and going beyond (au-délà) the established forms of artistic expression. Therefore, various kinds of the names (or “afterwords”, as in the Preludes), epigraphs, numerous super-detailed directions remained an integral part of an integral sound structure. His musical language, destroying the connections in time between the past and the future (rejection of the system of functional gravities that should be “stretched” in musical memory), created a certain correspondence (“here and now”) with the phenomenon of being.Hence the following characteristics of the composer’s musical works: 1) the impeccable construction of the whole, which is “thought out to the smallest detail” (E. Denisov), subtle multilevel “correspondences” and symmetries; 2) total thematization of texture (K. Zenkin); 3) selfsufficient semantic expressiveness of the “pure sound forms” (K. Zenkin), which became the embodiment of “an agonizing thirst for undeniably pure” (S. Velikovsky).These properties of Debussy’s style open up the possibility to get into the spiritual dimensions filled with pure beauty, which so attracted the followers of Baudelaire. Using the typology of teh subject-object relations proposed by E. Ustyugova, Debussy’s style can be attributed throughout the paradigm of hidden subjectivity. Debussy was well aware of his “non-romantic” position.The artistic aspirations of Maurice Ravel more clearly resonate with the creative attitudes of Art Nouveau artists, who were looking for new forms of plastic expressiveness mainly in spatial forms of art. It seems that it is with this direction that a special feeling of the plasticity of the musical material and the entire musical composition as a unique phenomenon is associated, which determines the composer’s creative credo.The concept of “plasticity” indicates such a connection between coordinated phenomena, which appears through the reincarnation (transformation) of a certain material substance, when we keep in memory its output characteristics. Ballet works and the reliance on dance genres (and more broadly, various types of plasticity of gesture and movement) reveal the hidden basis of the composer’s thinking. This approach allows one to re-evaluate Ravel’s connections with the ancient heritage (it is symptomatic that the composer called his first “adult” work, devoted to the press, “Antique Minuet”) and to understand the meanings of constant antique reminiscences with which he filled his life.Like a real dandy who lets the vibrations of the world pass through himself, Ravel is sensitive to them and “cuts off” random, “ugly”, “unnecessary” ones. Hence — the special beauty of the artistic structures created by the composer. They are built not in a “filtered” ideal-beautiful dimension, but in the space of shimmering opposites (the corporeal — free from the corporeal, the familiar — the unknown). Ravel’s inherent tendency towards the graphic relief of the melodic line creates parallels with the “famous lines of Art Nouveau” (Fahr-Becker Gabriele) and is especially distinct, characterizes the composer’s later works.The non-everyday register of semantic reverberations of what is happening in the process of metamorphosis in the composer’s music (his plastic questioning about the existential nature of the source material) demanded a special listener’s responsiveness. Mistifications, hiding behind a mask, playing with the listener are Ravel’s usual communication strategies. Therefore, according to the typology of the subject-object relations proposed by E. Ustyugova, we can speak here of the paradigm of “open subjectivity”, which is characterized by the direct orientation of the subject towards himself. Hence — the principle of auto-citation characteristic of Ravel. The quintessence of its use are the composer’s later works — the opera Child and Magic, as well as the Piano Concerto in G major — the Dandy summa summarum of the composer’s previous career.The game of “correspondences” (Baudelaire) was manifested by composers in various ways and conditioned various channels of communication. Debussy makes the semantics of sound education a semantic unit, appeals to the listener with the expressiveness of the structure itself. Therefore he always emphasizes, appeals to the elite listener. Ravel, on the other hand, hides behind masks and theatrical illusions. He needs a listener who has a culture of distance (who owns wide meaning contextual fields). The contextual layers associated with musical texts express that “degree of distance” from the object of attention, which the composer himself chooses and whose parameters are constantly changing. Therefore, Ravel never turns twice in the genre, style or stylistic model he has already used.So, if the works by Debussy can be perceived “from scratch” because of their structural completeness and semantic tightness, then the works by Ravel require the listener to know the musical context and readiness to lay it out “fold by fold” (J. Deleuze) in new semantic projections.At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, French culture was looking for a means of creating a “state of resonance” (G. Bachelard) as an extraordinary impression, “awakening”, without which a person cannot take place. Debussy and Ravel moved in this direction. Therefore, only through the identification of all the “correspondences” of the era of a total change of creative guidelines and a departure from unambiguous stylistic “avatars” can one feel its essential discoveries. The study of the lines of intersection of the Debussy music and the Ravel music with various artistic phenomena of the past and the present illuminates certain reflections of the “style of the era”. However understanding the deep patterns of the creative manner of the two contemporaries requires differentiating the definitions of “Debussy’s style” and “Ravel’s style” and their further studying.

The computer game is perhaps the fastest growing and most quickly evolving cultural leisure technology in the western world. Invented as a form just under 40 years ago with the creation of Space War at MIT, computer and video games collectively account for hundreds of billions of dollars in sales across the world. And yet critical analysis of this cultural form is still in its infancy. Perhaps the sheer speed of the development of games may account for this. Thirty years ago, strategy games were screens of text instructions and a prompt where you could type a weather forecast. Today pretty much all games are flawlessly shaded and rendered polygons. The technology of film has barely changed at all in the same period. In any case, the critical study of games began in the eighties. The focus initially was on the psychology of the gamer. Most game players were children and teenagers during this period, and the focussing of their leisure time on this new and strange computer technology became a source of extreme moral panic for educators, parents and researchers alike. Later, research into the cultures of gaming would become more nuanced, and begin to detail the semiotics and narrative structures of games. It is in that kind of frame that this article is positioned. I want to look closely at a particular strategy game series, The Settlers. Firstly, however, a description of the strategy game genre. Strategy games put the player into a simulated inhabited environment and give the player almost total control over that environment and its simulated inhabitants. The strategy game has many genres, including the simulation game and the god game, but the sub-genre I will focus on in this paper is the real-time strategy game. The game requires the player to develop a functioning economy, geared around the production of weapons and armies, which are sent out to combat neighbouring tribes or armies. Real-time games typically give greater tactical control of the armies to the player, and slightly less detailed economic control. The aim is basically to amass as much gold or whatever as possible to buy as many troops as possible. However, the game I am about to discuss is, in addition to being a simple game of war, a very interesting simulation of economic and logistical constraints. The Settlers is series of fantasy computer strategy games developed by the German game design firm Blue Byte. The three extant Settlers games can be considered an evolution of game design rather than a continuing narrative, so, given the time constraints, for the purposes of this paper I will address only one game in the series, the most recently released title, The Settlers 3. The Settlers 3 tells the story of three expansionist empires, the Romans, the Egyptians, and the Asians, who have been thrust onto an uninhabited continent by the gods of their peoples to determine who is the fittest to survive. In other words, the game is founded from the beginning on a socio-Darwinian premise. In each level of the game, the settlers of each tribe must, under their player's direction, build an efficient and well maintained colony with a fully operating economy in order to achieve a set objective, which is usually to wipe out the opposing tribes by building up a large army, though it may be also to amass a predetermined level of a particular resource. Each level begins with about twenty settlers, a small guard hut to define the limits of the borders and a barely adequate supply of wooden planks, stone slabs and tools with which to begin to construct the economy. The player chooses building types from a menu and places them on the screen. Immediately the appropriate number of settlers walk across the landscape, leaving visible tracks in their wake, to pick up tools and supplies in order to construct the building. Typically, the player will order the construction of a woodcutter's hut, a sawmill, a stone cutter and a forester to ensure the steady flow of the basic construction materials to the rest of the colony. From this point more guard huts and towers are constructed to expand into new territory, and farms are built to feed the miners. Once constructed, the mine produce coal, gold and ore, which is sent down to the smelters to make iron bars (to make swords and tools) and gold bars (to pay the troops). Luxuries such as beer and wine are produced as a sacrifice to the gods. This results in rewards such as magical spells and promotion of the soldiers. Occasionally, incursions of enemy troops must be dealt with -- if they take a guard tower in battle, the borders, represented by lines of coloured flags, shrink, leading to the collapse and destruction of any building outside the boundaries. Finally, sufficient swords, bows and spears are produced, the soldiers are promoted, and they set off to pillage and destroy their neighbours' territory. If the previously mentioned enemy incursions were frequent enough, the final conflict where the player's warriors brutally annihilate the enemy is tremendously satisfying. The problematics of that particular game construct are left as an exercise for the audience. When territory is taken, the villages of the enemy go up in smoke and their resources are left lying on the ground, for the settlers to pick up and use for the benefit of the player. One of the things that make the game so fascinating to play is the complexity of the simulation. It must be said right away that the game employs many abstractions to make it playable and not utterly boring. For instance, only the miners out of all the settlers actually need food, and the mechanism by which new settlers are actually created is a bit vague (you construct a building called a "residence", and when it's completed, new setters simply troop out. And there only seem to be male settlers, unless you play the Amazons). Nonetheless, the game still quite explicitly details things most games of its type gloss right over. Unlike most games, pulling out all the stops in production just leads to bottlenecks where the transportation infrastructure can't get the goods to their destinations. Production levels have to be carefully monitored and throttled back where necessary to ensure the smooth flow of resources from A to B, C and D. Resources themselves -- coal lumps, gold bricks, fish, loaves of bread, swords --are modelled individually: you can actually track the process whereby an individual sheaf of wheat is harvested, picked up by a settler, carried off to the mill, turned into flour, sent to the bakery, made into a loaf of bread, and delivered to the coal miner for consumption. With its attention to the gritty detail of getting stuff from one place to the next, The Settlers is one of the very few truly logistically precise strategy games. Before I begin the analysis proper, I want to introduce some key terms that I'll be using a bit idiosyncratically in this paper. I'll be talking about gameplay quite a bit. Gameplay is a bit of a sliding signifier in the discourse of gaming theory -- loosely speaking it's that indefinable something that gets a player heated up about a game and keeps them playing for days on end. But here I want to be more precise. I'll offer a strategic definition. Gameplay is a way of quantifying the operations of a kind of economy of desire that operates between the player and the game itself. This economy has, as its constitutive elements, such factors as attention span, pleasure, ratio of novelty to repetition. These elements are in constant circulation in a game and the resulting economy is responsible for a good deal of the dynamism of the experience: in other words, the gameplay. What I want to focus on in this paper is what comes from the precise moment where two, quite central impulses of gameplay are in perfect balance, just before the first surrenders its grasp and the second takes over. The first impulse of play consists of two elements -- the visual presentation of the game, i.e. the pretty pictures that draw you in, and the narrative pretext of the story, the thing that gives what you are doing some kind of sense. It is on these two elements that classical ideological analysis of gameplay is typically founded. For instance, the archetypal platform game where all the female characters are helpless maidens who only exist as a way of getting the masculine protagonist into the action. The second impulse of gameplay is what might be called the "process", the somewhat under-theorised state where the visual trappings of the game and the motivating story line have slipped into the background, leaving only the sense of seamless integration of the player into the game's cybernetic feedback loop. The visual presentation and narrative pretext of The Settlers draws the player into a familiar fantasy of pre-modern existence. Presented to the player is a beautifully rendered virgin wilderness, filled with rolling hills, magnificent mountain ranges and vast forests, resounding with the sounds of the stream and brook, and the rustling of the wildlife. Into this wilderness the player must project an empire. That empire will consist of an elaborately detailed network (and I use the term deliberately) of cottage industries, labourers, paths, commodities, resources, defensive structures and places of worship. Real-world economic activities are consummately simulated as complex flows of information. The simulation is always fascinating to watch. Each node in this network, be it a fisherman's hut, a bakery, or a smelter, is exquisitely rendered, and full of picturesque, yet highly functional, animation. For instance, the process of a fisherman leaving his hut, going to a stream, setting his line, and catching a fish is visually expressive and lively, but it also is a specific bottleneck in the production process -- it takes a finite time, during which the carrier settlers stand around waiting for produce to deliver. This, then, is the game's crucial dialectic. What is depicted is a visually sumptuous, idyllic existence, but on closer inspection is a model of constant, uninterrupted, backbreaking labour. There are not even demarcations of day and night in the game -- life is perpetually midday and the working day will last forever. To put it less simply, perhaps, the game purposefully reifies the human social condition as being a reflexively structured mechanism of economic production under the guise of an ideologically idyllic pastoral paradise. It positions the player as not merely complicit in this mechanism but the fundamental point of determination within it. The balancing moment then is the point where the player begins to ignore or take for granted the visual lushness of the game's graphics and to focus instead on the underlying system, to internalise the lessons of the game -- the particular ideological and discursive assumptions about how economic and political systems successfully operate -- and to apply these lessons to the correct playing of the game, almost like a transition between REM dream-state sleep and deep sleep. And the analogy to sleep is not entirely specious -- critics and players alike have noted the way time stops when you play a game, with whole nights and days seemingly swallowed up in seconds of game time. The type of focus I am describing is not an interpretative one -- players are not expected to gain new insights of meaning from the act of playing at this new level of intensity, instead they are simply to blend their thoughts, actions and reactions with the dynamic processes of the game system. In a sense, a computer game is less a textual form than it is a kind of tool: in the same way proficient word processor users becomes so fluent in the operations of their software that the trappings -- toolbars, menus, mouse -- become secondary to the smooth continuous process of churning out words. Such a relationship does not exactly inspire thoughtful contemplation about the repressive qualities of Microsoft's hegemonic domination of office software, and the similar relationship with the computer game makes any kind of reflexivity about the gameplay's cultural referents seem simply counterproductive. It's an interesting dilemma for the theorist of gaming -- the point at which the underlying structure comes most clearly into focus during the state of play/analysis is also the moment when one is most resistant to the need to draw the wider connections. In this paper, I've tried to take a suggestive approach, to point out some of the ways that ideological assumptions about culture and production can be actualised in a simulated environment. And hopefully, I've also pointed out some of the pitfalls in a purely ideological analysis of games. Games are never just about the ideology. A nuanced analysis from a cultural studies point of view must also take into account the quite complex ways games not only articulate certain ideologies but they also complicate them. Beyond that, analysis must take into account the ways that games go beyond the paradigm of textuality and begin to take on the aspect of being whole systems of symbolic manipulation and transmission. It is only at this point that any kind of comprehensive and theoretically precise engagement with games as cultural texts and processes can be seriously begun. References Crawford, Chris. The Art of Computer Game Design. Berkeley, California: Osborne / McGraw-Hill, 1984. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: HarperCollins, 1990. Fleming, Dan. Powerplay: Toys as Popular Culture. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1996. Freidman, Ted. "Making Sense of Software: Computer Games and Interactive Textuality." CyberSociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Ed. Steven G. Jones. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995. 73-89. Virilio, Paul. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. Trans. Patrick Camiller. London and New York: Verso, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Nick Caldwell. "Settler Stories: Representational Ideologies in Computer Strategy Gaming." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.5 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/settlers.php>. Chicago style: Nick Caldwell, "Settler Stories: Representational Ideologies in Computer Strategy Gaming," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 5 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/settlers.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Nick Caldwell. (2000) Settler Stories: Representational Ideologies in Computer Strategy Gaming. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(5). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/settlers.php> ([your date of access]).

In a recent gaming anthology, Henry Jenkins cannot help contrasting his son's cramped, urban, media-saturated existence with his own idyllic, semi-rural childhood. After describing his own Huck Finn meanderings over "the spaces of my boyhood" including the imaginary kingdoms of Jungleoca and Freedonia, Jenkins relates his version of his son's experiences: My son, Henry, now 16 has never had a backyard He has grown up in various apartment complexes, surrounded by asphalt parking lots with, perhaps, a small grass buffer from the street… Once or twice, when I became exasperated by my son's constant presence around the house I would … tell him he should go out and play. He would look at me with confusion and ask, where? … Who wouldn't want to trade in the confinement of your room for the immersion promised by today's video games? … Perhaps my son finds in his video games what I found in the woods behind the school, on my bike whizzing down the hills of suburban backstreets, or settled into my treehouse with a good adventure novel intensity of experience, escape from adult regulation; in short, "complete freedom of movement". (Jenkins 1998, 263-265) Games here are connected with a shrinking availability of domestic and public space, and a highly mediated experience of the world. Despite his best intentions, creeping into Jenkins's piece is a sense that games act as a poor substitute for the natural spaces of a "healthy" childhood. Although "Video games did not make backyard play spaces disappear", they "offer children some way to respond to domestic confinement" (Jenkins 1998, 266). They emerge, then, as a palliation for the claustrophobic circumstances of contemporary urban life, though they offer only unreal spaces, replete with "lakes of fire … cities in the clouds … [and] dazzling neon-lit Asian marketplaces" (Jenkins 1998, 263), where the work of the childish imagination is already done. Despite Jenkins's assertion that games do offer "complete freedom of movement", it is hard to shake the feeling that he considers his own childhood far richer in exploratory and imaginative opportunities: Let me be clear I am not arguing that video games are as good for kids as the physical spaces of backyard play culture. As a father, I wish that my son would come home covered in mud or with scraped knees rather than carpet burns ... The psychological and social functions of playing outside are as significant as the impact of "sunshine and good exercise" upon our physical well-being. (Jenkins 1998, 266) Throughout the piece, games are framed by a romantic, anti-urban discourse: the expanding city is imagined as engulfing space and perhaps destroying childhood itself, such that "'sacred' places are now occupied by concrete, bricks or asphalt" (Jenkins 1998, 263). Games are complicit in this alienation of space and experience. If this is not quite Paul Virilio's recent dour contention that modern mass media forms work mainly to immobilise the body of the consumer--Virilio, luckily, has managed to escape the body-snatchers--games here are produced as a feeble response to an already-effected urban imprisonment of the young. Strikingly, Jenkins seems concerned about his son's "unhealthy" confinement to private, domestic space, and his inability to imaginatively possess a slice of the world outside. Jenkins's description of his son's confinement to the world of "carpet burns" rather than the great outdoors of "scraped knees" and "mud" implicitly leaves the distinction between domestic and public, internal and external, and even the imagined passivity of the domestic sphere as against the activity of the public intact. For those of us who see games as productive activities, which generate particular, unique kinds of pleasure in their own right, rather than as anaemic replacements for lost spaces, this seems to reduce a central cultural form. For those of us who have at least some sympathy with writers on the urban environment like Raban (1974) and Young (1990), who see the city's theatrical and erotic possibilities, Jenkins's fears might seem to erase the pleasures and opportunities that city life provides. Rather than seeing gamers and children (the two groups only partially overlap) as unwitting agents in their own confinement, we can arrive at a slightly more complex view of the relationship between games and urban space. By looking at the video games arcade as it is situated in urban retail space, we can see how gameplay simultaneously acts to regulate urban space, mediates a unique kind of urban performance, and allows sophisticated representations, manipulations and appropriations of differently conceived urban spaces. Despite being a long-standing feature of the urban and retail environment, and despite also being a key site for the "exhibition" of a by-now central media form, the video game arcade has a surprisingly small literature devoted to it. Its prehistory in pinball arcades and pachinko parlours has been noted (by, for example, Steven Poole 2000) but seldom deeply explored, and its relations with a wider urban space have been given no real attention at all. The arcade's complexity, both in terms of its positioning and functions, may contribute to this. The arcade is a space of conflicting, contradictory uses and tendencies, though this is precisely what makes it as important a space as the cinema or penny theatre before it. Let me explain why I think so. The arcade is always simultaneously a part of and apart from the retail centres to which it tends to attach itself.1 If it is part of a suburban shopping mall, it is often located on the ground floor near the entrance, or is semi-detached as cinema complexes often are, so that the player has to leave the mall's main building to get there, or never enter. If it is part of a city or high street shopping area, it is often in a side street or a street parallel to the main retail thoroughfare, or requires the player to mount a set of stairs into an off-street arcade. At other times the arcade is located in a space more strongly marked as liminal in relation to the city -- the seaside resort, sideshow alley or within the fences of a theme park. Despite this, the videogame arcade's interior is usually wholly or mostly visible from the street, arcade or thoroughfare that it faces, whether this visibility is effected by means of glass walls, a front window or a fully retractable sliding door. This slight distance from the mainstream of retail activity and the visibility of the arcade's interior are in part related to the economics of the arcade industry. Arcade machines involve relatively low margins -- witness the industry's recent feting and embrace of redemption (i.e. low-level gambling) games that offer slightly higher turnovers -- and are hungry for space. At the same time, arcades are dependent on street traffic, relentless technological novelty and their de facto use as gathering space to keep the coins rolling in. A balance must be found between affordability, access and visibility, hence their positioning at a slight remove from areas of high retail traffic. The story becomes more complicated, though, when we remember that arcades are heavily marked as deviant, disreputable spaces, whether in the media, government reports or in sociological and psychological literature. As a visible, public, urban space where young people are seen to mix with one another and unfamiliar and novel technologies, the arcade is bound to give rise to adult anxieties. As John Springhall (1998) puts it: More recent youth leisure… occupies visible public space, is seen as hedonistic and presents problems within the dominant discourse of 'enlightenment' … [T]he most popular forms of entertainment among the young at any given historical moment tend also to provide the focus of the most intense social concern. A new medium with mass appeal, and with a technology best understood by the young… almost invariably attracts a desire for adult or government control (160-161, emphasis mine) Where discourses of deviant youth have also been employed in extending the surveillance and policing of retail space, it is unsurprising that spaces seen as points for the concentration of such deviance will be forced away from the main retail thoroughfares, in the process effecting a particular kind of confinement, and opportunity for surveillance. Michel Foucault writes, in Discipline and Punish, about the classical age's refinements of methods for distributing and articulating bodies, and the replacement of spectacular punishment with the crafting of "docile bodies". Though historical circumstances have changed, we can see arcades as disciplinary spaces that reflect aspects of those that Foucault describes. The efficiency of arcade games in distributing bodies in rows, and side by side demonstrates that" even if the compartments it assigns become purely ideal, the disciplinary space is always, basically, cellular" (Foucault 1977, 143). The efficiency of games from Pong (Atari:1972) to Percussion Freaks (Konami: 1999) in articulating bodies in play, in demanding specific and often spectacular bodily movements and competencies means that "over the whole surface of contact between the body and the object it handles, power is introduced, fastening them to one another. It constitutes a body weapon, body-tool, body-machine complex" (Foucault 1977,153). What is extraordinary is the extent to which the articulation of bodies proceeds only through a direct engagement with the game. Pong's instructions famously read only "avoid missing ball for high score"--a whole economy of movement, arising from this effort, is condensed into six words. The distribution and articulation of bodies also entails a confinement in the space of the arcade, away from the main areas of retail trade, and renders occupants easily observable from the exterior. We can see that games keep kids off the streets. On the other hand, the same games mediate spectacular forms of urban performance and allow particular kinds of reoccupation of urban space. Games descended or spun off from Dance Dance Revolution (Konami: 1998) require players to dance, in time with thumping (if occasionally cheesy) techno, and in accordance with on-screen instructions, in more and more complex sequences on lit footpads. These games occupy a lot of space, and the newest instalment (DDR has just issued its "7th Mix") is often installed at the front of street level arcades. When played with flair, games such as these are apt to attract a crowd of onlookers to gather, not only inside, but also on the footpath outside. Indeed games such as these have given rise to websites like http://www.dancegames.com/au which tells fans not only when and where new games are arriving, but whether or not the positioning of arcades and games within them will enable a player to attract attention to their performance. This mediation of cyborg performance and display -- where success both achieves and exceeds perfect integration with a machine in urban space -- is particularly important to Asian-Australian youth subcultures, which are often marginalised in other forums for youthful display, like competitive sport. International dance gamer websites like Jason Ho's http://www.ddrstyle.com , which is emblazoned with the slogan "Asian Pride", explicitly make the connection between Asian youth subcultures and these new kinds of public performance. Games like those in the Time Crisis series, which may seem less innocuous, might be seen as effecting important inversions in the representation of urban space. Initially Time Crisis, which puts a gun in the player's hand and requires them to shoot at human figures on screen, might even be seen to live up to the dire claims made by figures like Dave Grossman that such games effectively train perpetrators of public violence (Grossman 1995). What we need to keep in mind, though, is that first, as "cops", players are asked to restore order to a representation of urban space, and second, that that they are reacting to images of criminality. When criminality and youth are so often closely linked in public discourse (not to mention criminality and Asian ethnicity) these games stage a reversal whereby the young player is responsible for performing a reordering of the unruly city. In a context where the ideology of privacy has progressively marked public space as risky and threatening,2 games like Time Crisis allow, within urban space, a performance aimed at the resolution of risk and danger in a representation of the urban which nevertheless involves and incorporates the material spaces that it is embedded in.This is a different kind of performance to DDR, involving different kinds of image and bodily attitude, that nevertheless articulates itself on the space of the arcade, a space which suddenly looks more complex and productive. The manifest complexity of the arcade as a site in relation to the urban environment -- both regulating space and allowing spectacular and sophisticated types of public performance -- means that we need to discard simplistic stories about games providing surrogate spaces. We reify game imagery wherever we see it as a space apart from the material spaces and bodies with which gaming is always involved. We also need to adopt a more complex attitude to urban space and its possibilities than any narrative of loss can encompass. The abandonment of such narratives will contribute to a position where we can recognise the difference between the older and younger Henrys' activities, and still see them as having a similar complexity and richness. With work and luck, we might also arrive at a material organisation of society where such differing spaces of play -- seen now by some as mutually exclusive -- are more easily available as choices for everyone. NOTES 1 Given the almost total absence of any spatial study of arcades, my observations here are based on my own experience of arcades in the urban environment. Many of my comments are derived from Brisbane, regional Queensland and urban-Australian arcades this is where I live but I have observed the same tendencies in many other urban environments. Even where the range of services and technologies in the arcades are different in Madrid and Lisbon they serve espresso and alcohol (!), in Saigon they often consist of a bank of TVs equipped with pirated PlayStation games which are hired by the hour their location (slightly to one side of major retail areas) and their openness to the street are maintained. 2 See Spigel, Lynn (2001) for an account of the effects and transformations of the ideology of privacy in relation to media forms. See Furedi, Frank (1997) and Douglas, Mary (1992) for accounts of the contemporary discourse of risk and its effects. References Douglas, M. (1992) Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory. London ; New York : Routledge. Foucault, M. (1979) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin,. Furedi, F.(1997) Culture of Fear: Risk-taking and the Morality of Low Expectation. London ; Washington : Cassell. Grossman, D. (1995) On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. Boston: Little, Brown. Jenkins, H. (1998) Complete freedom of movement: video games as gendered play spaces. In Jenkins, Henry and Justine Cassell (eds) From Barbie to Mortal Kombat : Gender and Computer Games. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Poole, S. (2000) Trigger Happy: The Inner Life of Videogames. London: Fourth Estate. Raban, J. (1974) Soft City. London: Hamilton. Spigel, L. (2001) Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and the Postwar Suburbs. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Springhall, J. (1998) Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics : Penny Gaffs to Gangsta-rap, 1830-1996. New York: St. Martin's Press. Young, I.M. (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Websites http://www.yesterdayland.com/popopedia/s... (Time Crisis synopsis and shots) http://www.dancegames.com/au (Site for a network of fans revealing something about the culture around dancing games) http://www.ddrstyle.com (website of Jason Ho, who connects his dance game performances with pride in his Asian identity). http://www.pong-story.com (The story of Pong, the very first arcade game) Games Dance Dance Revolution, Konami: 1998. Percussion Freaks, Konami: 1999. Pong, Atari: 1972. Time Crisis, Namco: 1996. Links http://www.dancegames.com/au http://www.yesterdayland.com/popopedia/shows/arcade/ag1154.php http://www.pong-story.com http://www.ddrstyle.com Citation reference for this article MLA Style Wilson, Jason A.. "Performance, anxiety" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.2 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/performance.php>. Chicago Style Wilson, Jason A., "Performance, anxiety" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 2 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/performance.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Wilson, Jason A.. (2002) Performance, anxiety. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(2). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/performance.php> ([your date of access]).

This study investigates how the use of visual facilitation and representations, e.g. visualisations and video productions, combined with peer‑feedback sessions can create exploratory approaches to game design in online teaching. The article analyses an iterative game development process in an online learning context. The empirical data is primarily based on an explorative case study of “Games for change”; a course held in 2018 in which master students from the international Nordic Visual Studies and Art Education (NoVA) design games that address issues in society. Throughout the course, the students from universities in Finland, Sweden and Denmark engaged in a cross‑cultural collaboration across campuses. The purpose of the study was to explore how to establish an online space for joint design inquiry in the context of ‘games for change’ across time and space as well as cultural and professional barriers. The data used for analysis includes teaching observations, videos of play sessions, photos and visual representations, students’ reflection papers and students’ written and oral evaluations after completion of the course. The analysis is based on different problem‑based learning (PBL) activities; lectures, video instructions, presentation‑ and feedback sessions, reflexive exercises and students’ self‑directed design and learning processes in groups. As part of the game course, teachers presented game theory and exercises through videos and visualisations to support the students’ iterative game design processes. The analysis of the PBL activities shows that teachers’ video instructions relating theoretical game concepts to the students’ actual group work supported the introduction to the game field as well as their design processes. The balance between the value of video instructions with specific feedback and teachers’ time for preparation is a relevant issue for further exploration in online teaching. Moreover, findings show that the students’ visualisations and video productions exemplifying game situations created a visible reference point for further discussions in feedback sessions across campuses, which guided game development. Thus, the combination of inquiry approaches, critical game theory and design processes combined with students’ visualisations and video productions provides interesting connections for bridging gaps between cultures and professions, e.g. in art and games. By the rich and visual descriptions of PBL activities, student work and reflective evaluations, the exploratory case study can function as inspiration for applying similar approaches to new local contexts in higher education.

The Issue of Gaming in Contemporary Culture "Are we still in the game?" This banal phrase gains a terrifying meaning in the last scene of Cronenberg's film eXistenZ, when a puzzled character, on the verge of being murdered, asks his potential killer if they are still inside a virtual reality game. The scene denotes the crucial place the issue of gaming is occupying in contemporary culture. If we take sci-fi movies less as an exercise of future divination and more as symptom of our current feelings projected into the future, we can easily see how games are becoming a frequent metaphor that sums up our fear of a world dominated by technology. Matrix, eXistenZ and quite a few other films draw on this haunting idea that technology can be evil and that reality may be just a high-tech game of which we are not aware. In fact, life has often been thought of as a kind of 'divine play', with God either playing dice to decide our destiny or acting almighty over millions of voodoo dolls. The key difference in contemporary imaginary is that it is no longer God, but human beings (or machines and creatures designed by them) in charge of the game. Moreover, it is interesting to notice that this attachment of nightmarish meanings to games is happening exactly at a time when computers are becoming more than an ubiquitous tool for any purpose, and are acquiring an astonishing ability to accurately describe our environments and convincingly reproduce our bodily senses. The prospect of having a full, working, machinic simulation of the now-called 'real world', no matter how unattainable it might be, is giving a new face to the old free will dilemma: to what extent is life predeterminate and what is our space for creativity inside God's plot? In this context, the otherwise ancient and apparently innocent cultural activity of playing games has turned into this biased metaphor, in which the blurring of the borderline between life and game becomes a sinister menace. The Nature of Games, Their Cultural Role and the Four Categories of Games The question that crops up is why games were chosen to re-enact this ever-present human fear before the mysteries of the given world of nature. We know for sure that there is a convergence between game and culture, and that game principles are at the foundation of social institutions, as Huizinga has shown (46). He does not propose that culture is derived from games, but maintains that play is a key element at the beginning of culture, and continues to be an important feature as culture develops. But it is the French sociologist Roger Caillois who has devised a framework in which to approach play and games that can help us, contemporary gamers, to shed light on this question. Caillois proposed four categories in which every known game can fit: games of chance, where the outcome results from fate rather than player's skills; games of vertigo, that aim to impose a disorder in the bodily senses; games of competition, in which adversaries are provided with an artificial equality at the outset and compete to show their superiority; and games of simulation, in which players create an imaginary universe and see themselves as someone else. However, games don't have to fit into one category only. Several games present a combination between the different types, though they always present one fundamental aspect that overshadows the others. These four categories can easily be extended to the field of computerised games: games of chance -- random devices are simulated in the computer (dice, roulette etc); games of vertigo -- games that draw on the use of metaphors such as the labyrinth and detective role-play, in which the player has to pursue a task through winding ways. Browsing and surfing are also frequent metaphors for this type of game; games of competition -- the usual fighting and 'shoot-and-kill' games; games of simulation -- use of development and management metaphor scenarios in which the player can nurture and manage the development of a system such as a town, a civilisation, or even a child as in some Japanese games. A psychoanalytic interpretation of these four categories helps to get an even clearer picture of the role of games in contemporary culture. According to this theory, playing is a response to unconscious motivations, and games could fulfil a function similar to that of dreams, slips of the tongue and actions alike. Abadi proposes a direct psychoanalytic correlation for Caillois's categories: games of chance symbolise the death drive since it is a bet against destiny; games of vertigo, by pushing the senses to a radical level of disarrangement and ecstasy, denote the symbolisation of sexual intercourse; games of competition are related to the Oedipus complex -- the rivalry between parents and children, or amongst siblings; and games of simulation refers to the construction of identity, an occasion when players work out a way to shape their own identity roles (Abadi 85-93). While Caillois's classification organises games in a more legible way, to read them through a psychoanalytic framework is to bring them into the realm of desire, or we could say, to the realm of language, or yet to be more precise, to the realm of language as the discourse of a desiring subject. But as an inhabitant of language "the subject is not; he makes and unmakes himself in a complex topology where the other and his discourse are included" (Kristeva 274). So as game and language converge, with this underlying presence of the Other, we can paraphrase Julia Kristeva and consider games as a signifying system in which, through demarcation, signification and communication, the player makes and unmakes him- or herself; in other words, a kind of radical rehearsal terrain where players can experiment with a playful reinvention of themselves. In this light it is no surprise that games in general, and more specifically games of simulation, have acquired such a paramount role in our 'electronic age'. Confronted with a strange new technology, which is hard to understand because it works mainly at a microscopic level, and which brings up uneasy concepts such as 'virtual reality' and 'cyberspace' (a quasi-mythical ethereal space -- Wertheim 18), we seem to be going through an identity crisis. In the wilderness of this technological 'newfoundland', an uncomfortable paradise of simulation and cloning, the very essence of human identity, our free will, seems to be mercilessly seized in uncontrolled games, since we are unable to differentiate between computers as the Other and computer as a means to the Other. Games as Scenarios for the Interplay of Determinism and Non-Determinism However, the same metaphor of game can shift this scenario and revert itself into a tool to rethink the identity problem within our technological daily life, for what is at stake in a game is always the question of free will. The game is essentially a framework for uncertainty, allowing the co-existence of determinism and non-determinism: games of chance by definition include the idea of indeterminacy; games of vertigo deal with indeterminacy by inducing an uncontrollable confusion of the senses; games of competition include indeterminacy in the form of the unpredictable abilities of the competitors; games of simulation present a particular type of interplay between rule and indeterminacy, where the gap between the scripts/rules and the interpretation/gaming provides the sense of uniqueness each time it is performed/played. Thus, if games and their probabilistic features are put to work in our favour, it would be an answer to a much searched metaphor, a theoretical ground to pervade contemporary culture allowing for creativity in a pre-determined technological environment. Then, the idea of life as gaming, instead of inspiring fear, can serve as a way to escape the false tyranny of a machine based on logic algorithms, without falling into the nihilism of a romantic refusal of a true information age. Precisely because computers are based in coherent and logical algorithms, coupled with game principles they can be a milieu for the delicate and complex interplay of determinism and non-determinism (Bijl). Computers would cease being this monstrous 'big Other', and simply would stand as an ethical tool, a technological mediated way for touching the Other (Cabral Filho and Szalapaj). We then may be compelled not simply to rebuild or re-shape our identity, but to experiment and question the very idea of such a concept. By exploring the ambiguous and intricate gap between life as gaming and gaming as life, identity can be something that deals with the unknown, based on the always challenging idea of Otherness. As we leave the duty of coherence anchored in non-desiring machines (as Baudrillard has called computers), we are liberated to wander in auspicious new territories. Then, personality, gender, race, colour, and other aspects that were formerly associated with an ideal and immutable image, can become rather playful zones of experimentation. As an open field, identity may be just a nuance in a multitude of flipping horizons. Yet, as freedom is never an easy place to dwell, a disturbing question arises: will it after all be less scary? References Abadi, Mauricio. "Psychoanalysis of Playing." Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics 15 (1967): 85-93. Baudrillard, Jean. The Transparency of Evil. London: Verso, 1993. Bijl, Aart. Ourselves and Computers. London: Macmillan, 1995. Cabral Filho, J. S., and P. Szalapaj. "Otherness and Computers: Uniform Cyberspaces and Individual Cyberplaces." The Journal of Design Sciences and Technology (Special Issue: Philosophy of Design and Information Technology) 4.1 (1995): 29-43. Caillois, Roger. Man, Play, and Games. New York: Free Press, 1961. Huizinga, J. Homo Ludens. New York: Roy Publishers, 1950. Kristeva, Julia. Language -- The Unknown: An Initiation into Linguistics. New York: Columbia UP, 1989. Wertheim, Margaret. The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace -- A History of Space from Dante to the Internet. London: Virago, 2000. Citation reference for this article MLA style: José dos Santos Cabral Filho. "Flip Horizontal: Gaming as Redemption." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.5 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/flip.php>. Chicago style: José dos Santos Cabral Filho, "Flip Horizontal: Gaming as Redemption," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 5 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/flip.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: José dos Santos Cabral Filho. (2000) Flip horizontal: gaming as redemption. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(5). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/flip.php> ([your date of access]).

Objective: To assess the evidence of general transfer from training on abstract computer-based exercises and video games to driving and flight control. Background: Many believe that training on abstract computer-based exercises and video games enhances cognitive capacities to the benefit of performance in operational contexts. The basic research in this area is controversial. Method: We summarize reviews of the basic research data on transfer from training on abstract computer-based exercises and video games and undertake a detailed methodological review of flight and driving transfer studies. Results: Reviews of basic transfer research fail to reveal evidence of general transfer, although a few applied studies are said to show general transfer to driving or flight control. Our review of these applied studies identifies issues with research methods and data interpretation that compromise the credibility of their results to an extent that they do not provide robust evidence of general transfer from abstract computer-based exercises or video games. Conclusion: The state of cognitive training and video game training in relation to transfer has failed to meet early expectations. Much of the research in this area suffers from inadequate experimental control and flawed interpretation of results. We call for adherence to robust experimental design, critical evaluation of data patterns, and replication of keystone results. We also call for a theoretically grounded research effort, and we outline relevant theoretical conceptions of transfer. Application: A robust theory of transfer and better understanding of transfer effects can guide development of principles for design and use of training simulators.

AbstractThis paper provides several theoretical results for empirical game theory. Specifically, we introduce bounds for empirical game theoretical analysis of complex multi-agent interactions. In doing so we provide insights in the empirical meta game showing that a Nash equilibrium of the estimated meta-game is an approximate Nash equilibrium of the true underlying meta-game. We investigate and show how many data samples are required to obtain a close enough approximation of the underlying game. Additionally, we extend the evolutionary dynamics analysis of meta-games using heuristic payoff tables (HPTs) to asymmetric games. The state-of-the-art has only considered evolutionary dynamics of symmetric HPTs in which agents have access to the same strategy sets and the payoff structure is symmetric, implying that agents are interchangeable. Finally, we carry out an empirical illustration of the generalised method in several domains, illustrating the theory and evolutionary dynamics of several versions of the AlphaGo algorithm (symmetric), the dynamics of the Colonel Blotto game played by human players on Facebook (symmetric), the dynamics of several teams of players in the capture the flag game (symmetric), and an example of a meta-game in Leduc Poker (asymmetric), generated by the policy-space response oracle multi-agent learning algorithm.

In Mardi and a Voyage Thither, novelist Herman Melville writes of the peculiar and startling confluence of memory, objects, valuation, and disfigurement that mark the collector of obsoletia. The story’s antiquary is the picture of perverse depletion, with a body “crooked, and dwarfed, and surmounted by a hump, that sat on his back like a burden” (328), his hut in shambles, and “the precious antiques, and curios, and obsoletes”—the objects of his collection—“strewn about, all dusty and disordered” (329). This unkempt display cum impromptu museum turns out to present a mere fraction of the curator’s collection, the rest of which is host to countless subtle molds and ravenous worms in a vast catacomb below ground. Traversing this darkened vault, one visitor says, is “like going down to posterity” (332). As inveterate accumulators ourselves, we can certainly relate to Mardi’s "extraordinary antiquarian": pursuing obsolete things has transformed us too (though hopefully not quite so hideously), as well as the work we do and the spaces we do it in. Since 1999, we have been collecting—and subsequently lending out to scholars the world over—computer games, systems, and game-related paraphernalia. By recent estimates, our Learning Games Initiative Archive contains more than 20,000 artifacts, from Venezuelan Pong clones to Mario-themed lollipops. Archival work at this scale and with this diversity is not easy, and it constantly butts up against a host of intractable questions. For example, what does it mean to isolate a thing that no longer has its original value but has taken on a new one? When researchers hold such transmuted artifacts up for inspection, what are they looking for and how might archivists help them to find it? Is the primary work of computer game archivists (and indeed archivists of all types) to protect artifacts from the elements, to enjoin them upon their kin, and to guard over the collection for the sake of some abstract posterity, or is it something more collaborative and communal? Finally, is it possible for research-oriented collectors to engage the process of collection without suffering the deformations of skin and soul (not to mention pocketbook) that often plague the more solipsistic acquirer? We offer this article as an entrée to these questions, as a way to begin to attend to some of the theoretical and practical complexities of obsolescence and its negotiation. We do so primarily by focusing on where those complexities intersect with computer games, the new media we collect and study. Circuitous Obsolescence Melville finished Mardi in 1849, almost fifty years after Joseph Marie Jacquard invented the programmable loom and twelve years after Charles Babbage theorised the possibility of a programmable mechanical computer. The subsequent history of the development of the modern computer and its applications (including computer games) typically gets told as a narrative of technological novelty followed by ineluctable obsolescence—Herman Hollerith’s tabulator to Konrad Zuse’s Z3 to the US Army’s Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) and so on. This kind of monumentalised and narrativised history exemplifies an onward march much fetishised by the marketplace: once introduced, a given technology will be developed then updated, upgraded, and improved, inevitably producing a staggering wake of tired-and-true archaeological assemblages. These cast-offs, however, are only useless to those who prefer to consume at the cutting edge, and even that is an illusory experience. Like a well-designed knife whose business end is supported by the stout spine behind it, the edgiest of today’s computer games and peripherals—from the most non-directive sandbox titles to the most obscene add-ons—are merely vanguards to a half-century of industrial history. In etymological terms, “obsolete” captures the conundrum well. A combination of ob (away) and solere (to be used to, accustomed), the word “obsolete” has at least four distinct meanings: “no longer used or practiced”; “worn away, dilapidated, atrophied”; “indistinct, hardly perceptible, vestigial”; and as a noun, “A thing which is out of date or has fallen into disuse.” In each usage, present and past are both integral and palpable. As archivists, we appreciate this temporal distillation because it illustrates how seamless yet discernable is the paradoxical binding between old and new. “Obsolescence” thus functions like a rhetorical ouroboros, ensuring that reflection on the antique reveals the avant-garde and vice-versa. Consider, for example, the Atari 2600 paddle. Compared to a PlayStation 3 controller, with its variety of buttons, sticks, and pads—and the re-mapability of all these input elements—the single potentiometer and button of the paddle seem downright antiquated. Moreover, because Atari hardware in general has largely faded from mainstream use (though it has a remarkable half-life in collectible markets), the paddle is mostly neglected by contemporary players and pundits alike, in the process revealing another obsolescence: the static state that accompanies disuse—the waiting nonlife of discarded technology. The paddle's first obsolescence—the supplantation of the state of the art—signifies a moment of loss. An obsolete computer game controller is one that no longer holds or is capable of provoking the novelty necessary to stake a claim on wonder, or at least that part of wonder engendered in the playing of the newest game on the newest console—the farthest distance from technological obsolescence. The paddle's second obsolescence—disuse—signifies potential: when a newer system (e.g., PlayStation 3) supersedes an older one (e.g., Atari 2600), the older one will often sit like a fact in benighted spaces such as attics, thrift stores, garages, and closets—all prime hunting grounds for computer game collectors. The ephemera that for most people drift toward oblivion get picked up by archivists and cleaned off, catalogued, stored, studied, used, and reused. Trash becomes treasure, obsolescence newness and utility. And yet, obsolescence is not solely in the eye of the beholder, as it were; it is also in the hand, which further complicates the concept. Because obsolescence calls on the familiar in a pejorative sense—the obsolete thing has become too familiar (it now lacks novelty and surprise)—it is easy to overlook the necessity of familiarity (and thus obsolescence) to computer game development and play. After all, play demands familiarity as well as novelty; deeply complex and satisfying tasks—the kind the best play sets out and rewards generously—can only be accomplished with a level of mastery, of skill born of familiarity born of practice. Just as metaphors, in order to be successful, must merge the known with the unknown in an instantaneous insight that reveals fresh understanding, so too must computer games blend the tried and true with a twist to provoke profound and prolonged play. Computer games must always be the same, only different, familiar enough to be recognisable as forms, but new enough to create wonder as ludica. In the elegant prose of game scholar Roger Caillois, [games] must be like the leaves on the trees which survive from one season to the next and remain identical. Games must be ever similar to animal skins, the design on butterfly wings, and the spiral curves of shell fish which are transmitted unchanged from generation to generation. However, games do not have this hereditary sameness. They are innumerable and changeable. They are clad in thousands of unequally distributed shapes, just as vegetable species are, but infinitely more adaptable, spreading and acclimating themselves with disconcerting ease. (81) All this is what makes computer games so difficult to collect and study, to preserve and produce. They are always already both obsolete and pioneering. Memory as the Arbiter of Obsolescence Despite its plasticity, the concept of obsolescence offers a kind of security to its invoker: in theory, functionality and use follow a clean, linear progression. Accordingly, obsolescence can be seen not only as a thin pretext to justify a rabid consumerist desire for newness, but also as a brief memorial, a marker of passing, one that reaffirms an orderly universe and transfers a degree of security to those who witness its passing. As Aristotle explains, “the criterion of ‘security’ is the ownership of property in such places and under such conditions that the use of it is in our power; and it is ‘our own’ if it is in our power to dispose of it or keep it” (1341). Security is thus the power of alienation, and calling on the concept of obsolescence encourages the exercise of that power. Indeed, as theorist and collector Walter Benjamin argues, “The most profound enchantment for the collector is the locking of individual items within a magic circle in which they are fixed as the final thrill, the thrill of acquisition, passes over them” (62). This magic circle is really no different from the one play sociologist Johann Huizinga uses to describe the “temporary worlds” that can be carved out of the workaday one, worlds created and encapsulated by the rules and possibilities of play. There is, in fact, a powerful parallel between play and collecting, with each territorialising and deterritorialising the practice of materiality and its pleasures. For the collector, the magic circle not only encompasses the library or archive, but potentially the world, harboring as it does the possibility of a "complete collection," however obscured or damaged such a collection might be. This magic circle can also be constructed anywhere, and out of anything because the collector is a playful, nearly absurd, hunter of things whose best work occurs on the road: “I have made my most memorable purchases on trips, as a transient. Property and possession belong to the tactical sphere” (Benjamin 64). For computer game collectors especially, the circumference of the magic circle grows not with the size of a collection but with the imaginative ability to learn how to unsee what she or he has been taught to see as obsolete by industry and popular culture both: industrial, ludic, aesthetic, narratological, and ideological design. It is thus memory—in its alembic ability to make and unmake, to be made and unmade—that is the ultimate arbiter of obsolescence. From this perspective, all that is obsolete fashions a kind of infinite immemorial compendium of “what has been” that makes “what is” possible. Benjamin calls this a “magic encyclopedia,” an expansive tome for the archivist that contains “The period, the region, the craftsmanship, the former ownership—for a true collector the whole background of an item” that constitutes its being both in and beyond its present time and place (62). Vivacious Obsolescence Memory notwithstanding, the crux of computer game collection—the problematic that makes both body and mind “crooked and dwarfed”—is the timelessness of play itself. What is "old" play, for example? The kind found in Missile Command (Atari, 1980) or other golden age arcade game? Perhaps, but is this play still old when it is brought to a new platform and new audiences (e.g., http://macmost.com/iphonegames/MissileCommand.html)? What of the computer game consoles that facilitate play? Surely they grow obsolete, replaced every several years by newer, more advanced incarnations. And yet in the homebrew, retro, and collectible markets, it is the new things, the new playables that are strangely obsolete and undesirable. They are merely extant, whereas reconfigurations of old machines require imaginative new remediations in order to work and to satisfy. Older technologies and the play they enable are what are very much alive and on the cusp; these things, not their newer cousins, are the source of interest, value, experimentation, discourse, and play, that is, they are the cutting edge. So what, then, does it mean to collect and study obsoletia when the play intrinsic to them thwarts obsolescence at every turn? For computer game collectors, the answer is that ultimately there can be no difference between fad and fashion, prototype and stereotype. Obsolescence is a dynamic and incomplete designation because computer games do not age in quite the same way as do other things. The power and potential of a game archive is therefore overwhelming as well as invigorating, offering the rare but challenging chance not only to tame something wild (temporarily at least), but also to perform resurrections, bringing the old dead into new life. Computer game archivists thus trade daily in vivacious obsolescence, reveling in the defiance of moribundity in which their artifacts partake. Still, this liveliness creates other problems. How, for instance, does one organise the contents of an archive that can be categorised in so many ways (e.g., age, developer, play styles, content genres, system, audio-visual aesthetic, and so on)? What is the appropriate taxonomic way of seeing technological and ludic history when the artifacts that embody this history are constantly being made and remade, not only by scholars and historians, but also by subcultures, franchise agents, and myriad avenues of pop culture reappropriation? What does it mean for knowledge work when newness and obsolescence persist in equal measure in the same artifact? The answers to such questions are, of course, only ever temporary and never more than rickety. In the words of Benjamin, “[T]his or any other procedure is merely a dam against the springtide of memories which surges toward any collector as he contemplates his possessions” (61). The art of collection itself is one of defiance in the face of insurmountable complexity and multiplying articulations, which in the end is perhaps the real pleasure of collecting. The trial before computer game collectors is to have a sturdy boat at the ready, one capable of enduring that surging springtide to which Benjamin refers, when the well-disciplined dam of categorical judgments and explanatory structures—itself always already obsolete—inevitably breaks apart.References Aristotle. Rhetoric. Trans. W. Rhys Roberts. In The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon. New York: Random House, 2001. 1325-1451. Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. London: Pimlico: 1999. Caillois, Roger. Man, Play and Games. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2001. Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon, 1955. Melville, Herbert. Mardi and a Voyage Thither. Ed. Nathalia Wright. Putney: Hendricks House, 1990.

Metaphors of 'game' and 'play' are increasingly popular in academic writing, partly because games themselves are becoming increasingly important to media experience, and partly because something in the 'game' idea seems to describe the post-modern experience. However, the metaphor sometimes forgets what games can be like in practice. What I want to do, then, is go a round or two with the term, to question what the metaphor invokes. Round I: 'Game'? Games are played on a dedicated field -- a board, a screen, a playing-ground -- which is marked off so that in some sense it becomes a separate 'space', Huizinga's "magic circle". Play begins, and then, Huizinga argues, it is over, its effects lost (13). Players choose to play, agreeing to arbitrary rules controlling the game 'world'; goals and penalties are agreed in advance. Thus the gameworld provides an oasis of order in a chaotic, unruly world (Huizinga again); despite (sometimes) volumes of rules, games themselves are less complex and more clearly defined than "the casual and confused reign of everyday existence" (Berger, qtd. in Holquist 122). The sanctity of the game-space offers something more than mere order. The construction of order through arbitrary rules temporarily dissolves the significance of the outside world. Players concentrate wholly on the game -- on the dice or the puck or the pawn; good gameplay (to use Banks's expression) makes you forget yourself and the passage of time, not operating consciously but going with the flow. Play, writes Csikszentmihalyi, "is going. It is what happens after all the decisions are made -- when 'let's go' is the last thing one remembers" (45). It is a difficult state to attain but it seems valuable, from academia's overly rationalistic perspective, to get out of our heads and let some other sense drive for a while. Games engage different senses. Players use skills not ordinarily valued, striving for self-fulfilling perfection. Mundane time is linear, but games are full of diversionary, goal-deferring loops -- "the movement which is play has no goal which brings it to an end; rather it renews itself in constant repetition" (Gadamer 93). Gameplay is unpredictable; it shuttles back and forth, unsettled, dynamic, open to chance. You cannot surely predict the outcome. And then you play again. We like, too, the superficiality of games. They are useless, wilfully inefficient, pursued solely for the pleasures they provide. Games can be seen as representative -- of power struggles, of unspeakable impulses -- but the action is distanced from the self. Imbued in an (in)animate piece or a disguised self, games license performance, freedom from the mundane self. Most importantly, game goals aren't 'really' important; we don't 'really' care; "no chains of causes and effects, means and ends, are supposed to connect the isolated area of play with the real world or ordinary life (Riezler 511). Thus, reasons the theorist, the gameworld is a privileged space. Having freely chosen to play and consented to pre-determined constraints, players slip the controlling lead of the superego in pursuit of mastery. Difficult impulses are exorcised -- cathartically, if you like -- in the safety of the gamespace, the temporary "otherwhere" of experience where nothing really matters; no lives are actually sacrificed; no deaths are permanent; no loss is irreversible. Games are interactive, simultaneously controlled and risky. If one excels, one is celebrated; if one loses -- ah well, it was only a game. Afterwards it ceases to matter: handshakes all round and down to the pub. Or so the theorists tell us. Round II: The Magic Circle My brother and his friends liked to play Skirmish. But afterwards, they were stiff and sore, with bruises lasting for months or longer. Players are regularly injured, permanently maimed, or even killed while playing those games we call 'sport'. True, you might forget yourself while playing, but what about afterwards? The embodiedness of players -- the constancy of muscle memory, bruises and scars -- imprints lasting effects on minds and flesh, inextricably binding the game world to the mundane. Besides physical injuries, however, are the continuity of memory and the excess of feelings (affect). Games, after all, are played by people, "who only indirectly and ambiguously share in the perfect order of their games" (Holquist 115), stuck as we are with irrational feelings. Losers feel sore, disgruntled; someone else has proven cleverer or faster or trickier; they never quite got in the flow; it wasn't fun. So when Stephenson writes, "play is enjoyed, no matter who wins" (46) -- well, no. People sulk, they cry, they become vengeful: people don't like losing -- witness the origins of football hooliganism. Perhaps the cost of being rationally detached from the outcome of a game, of leaving the mundane, ratiocinatic world behind, is an irrational, affective investment that sometimes matters when it shouldn't. To describe games as discrete, then, assumes that people are disembodied, completely rational and extremely forgetful: these are the only terms under which gameplay can be "detached". Huizinga and Caillois posit such players when they describe games as 'separate', 'unproductive', 'unreal'. They let the metaphor take over, mistaking form for practice. Somewhat extremely, Gadamer argues, "the real subject of the game ... is not the player, but instead the game itself" (95). No game, however, exists prior to or without players, and no players are free from the 'irrational' of their bodies and senses. Round III: Representation John Banks's "Controlling Gameplay" reminds us of the 'other senses' invoked in play. Games, he argued, are never simply representational. Gameplay is a forward momentum, engrossing and unselfconscious. He was right, but I want to recall, momentarily, the representativeness of games. It is, after all, partly their commitment to symbols that makes people willing to (be) hurt in a game, even to risk their lives. Besides the irrational commitment to the symbol engendered by the affective gameworld, is the representational content. The violence debate hinges around the detachment of the gameworld: theorists argue that in gamespace, it's 'not real; we're 'just playing'; "things within this area mean what we order them to mean. They are cut off from their meanings in the so-called real world or ordinary life" (Riezler 511). The game frame theoretically negates commitment to content and underlying meanings (see Bologh). Fink reminds us, though, that content always draws on the world of experience: it "is always partly, but never wholly, the creation of fantasy. It always has to do with real objects [or ideas], which fantasy transforms into play objects" (qtd. in Anchor 92). Hodge and Tripp argue that, although play modality undermines or inverts meanings, symbols retain their mundane meaning: "the surface content of the image coexists as part of the content. An image of violence is still an image of violence, and viewers who enjoy it are still endorsing those impulses in themselves" (117). Games invoke the imaginary, the symbolic and the sensual in ways beyond ordinary 'consciousness', but that never makes it insignificant. Memory and affect again. Structural anthropology provides ample evidence that games represent society (see, for example, Cheska). Clifford Geertz showed how games structurally reflect (often backwards) the values of a society. The game, he argued, reminds players of the overlap between their own and their society's values (27). Thus games function as social ritual (see Bakhtin, Caillois or Huizinga). But ritual, Handelman shows, is "how society should be" (189) -- in which case he is arguing that society should be ordered, rigidly rule-bound, oriented towards arbitrary goals and values, competitive, and simplistically representational. People -- and indeed, existence -- are complex, messy, defiant and irrational. "Not recognising the bounds between stylised game and causal reality is to do violence to the complexity of existence" (Holquist 121). Round IV: Structure Another remove from content, is structure. In Western society games are agonistic. Huizinga explicitly argued that their value lay in striving for glory over one's fellows, in proving oneself superior: that is what winning is. Although theorists now value the process more than the goals, gameplay nevertheless consists in trying to beat your opponent. Games are about conquest. Even those games featuring teamwork only require cooperation to vanquish opponents -- to inflict on them the humiliation, disappointment and (however infinitesimally) diminished social status that inevitably accompany losing. Moreover, there are hierarchies within teams. A good point guard is never as well paid as a good forward; the Dungeon Master or GM determines the 'fate' of the other players. Just as players and teams are hierarchised, so are leagues, reflecting Western society's valorisation of hierarchy. Many must be conquered for the individual to triumph. While players may freely accede to rules, they don't decide them -- they are governed conservatively. Rules may evolve organically but become reified, regulated top-down, detailed knowledge itself becoming a source of hierarchical authority. Game rules are not folk-knowledge; they are dictated, published, refereed: another source of contest. Time The game metaphor has its uses. Certainly what happens when one disappears or is lost in gameplay is worth serious attention. But to pretend that games are microcosmic, free, without affect, effect or meaning, and that they end with the final bell, is to forget the player, who lives on in the society reflected by the game. References Anchor, Robert. "History and Play: Johan Huizinga and his Critics." History and Theory 17 (1966): 63-93. Banks, John. "Controlling Gameplay." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.5 (1998). 15 Oct. 2000 <http://www.api-network.com/mc/9812/game.php>. Bologh, Roslyn Wallach. "On Fooling Around: A Phenomenological Analysis of Playfulness." The Annals of Phenomenological Sociology 1 (1976): 1113-25. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, and Stith Bennett. "An Exploratory Model of Play." American Anthropologist. 44 (1974): 45-58. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. "The Ontology of the Work of Art and Its Hermeneutical Significance. Play as the Clue to Ontological Explanation." Truth and Method. (1960). Trans. and ed. Garrett Barden and John Cumming. London: Sheed and Ward, 1975. 91-119. Geertz, Clifford. "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight." Daedalus 101.1 (1972): 1-37. Handelman, Don. "Play and Ritual: Complementary Frames of Meta-Communication." It's a Funny Thing, Humor. Ed. Anthony J Chapman and Hugh Foot. Oxford: Pergamon, 1976. 185-92. Holquist, Michael. "How to Play Utopia: Some Brief Notes on the Distinctiveness of Utopian Fiction." Game, Play, Literature. Ed. Jacques Ehrmann. Boston: Beacon, 1968. 106-23. Hodge, Robert, and David Tripp. Children and Television: A Semiotic Approach. Cambridge: Polity, 1986. Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Trans. anonymous. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949 [1944]. Riezler, Kurt. "Play and Seriousness." The Journal of Philosophy. 38 (1941): 507-17. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Rebecca Farley. "Game." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.5 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/game.php>. Chicago style: Rebecca Farley, "Game," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 5 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/game.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Rebecca Farley. (2000) Game. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(5). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/game.php> ([your date of access]).

Conway's Game of Life has inspired enthusiasts to search for a wide range of patterns for this classic cellular automaton. One important challenge in this context is finding the smallest Garden of Eden (GoE), a state without a predecessor. We take up this challenge by applying two techniques. First, we focus on GoEs that contain a symmetry. This significantly reduces the size of the search space for interesting sizes of the grid. Second, we implement the search using incremental satisfiability solving to check thousands of states per second. By combining these techniques, we broke several records regarding GoEs: the fewest defined cells, the smallest bounding box, and the lowest living density. Furthermore, we established a new lower bound for the smallest GoE.

Art Imitating ArtThis article discusses the global, historical and literary references that are present in the video game franchise Bayonetta. In particular, references to Dante’s Divine Comedy, the works of Dr John Dee, and European traditions of witchcraft are examined. Bayonetta is modern in the sense that she is a woman of the world. Her character shows how history and literature may be used, re-used, and evolve into new formats, and how modern games travel abroad through time and space.Drawing creative inspiration from other works is nothing new. Ideas and themes, art and literature are frequently borrowed and recast. Carmel Cedro cites Northrop Frye in the example of William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. These writers created stories and characters that have developed a level of acclaim and resonated with many individuals, resulting in countless homages over the years. The forms that these appropriations take vary widely. Media formats, such as film adaptations and even books, take the core characters or narrative from the original and re-work them into a different context. For example, the novel Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson published in 1883 was adapted into the 2002 Walt Disney animated film Treasure Planet. The film maintained the concepts of the original narrative and retained key characters but re-imaged them to fit the science fiction genre (Clements and Musker).The video-game franchise Bayonetta draws inspiration from distinct sources creating the foundation for the universe and some plot points to enhance the narrative. The main sources are Dante’s Divine Comedy, the projections of John Dee and his mystical practices as well as the medieval history of witches.The Vestibule: The Concept of BayonettaFigure 1: Bayonetta Concept ArtBayonetta ConceptsThe concept of Bayonetta was originally developed by video game designer Hideki Kamiya, known previously for his work including The Devil May Cry and the Resident Evil game series. The development of Bayonetta began with Kamiya requesting a character design that included three traits: a female lead, a modern witch, and four guns. This description laid the foundations for what was to become the hack and slash fantasy heroine that would come to be known as Bayonetta. "Abandon all hope ye who enter here"The Divine Comedy, written by Dante Alighieri during the 1300s, was a revolutionary piece of literature for its time, in that it was one of the first texts that formalised the vernacular Italian language by omitting the use of Latin, the academic language of the time. Dante’s work was also revolutionary in its innovative contemplations on religion, art and sciences, creating a literary collage of such depth that it would continue to inspire hundreds of years after its first publication.Figure 2: Domenico di Michelino’s fresco of Dante and his Divine Comedy, surrounded by depictions of scenes in the textBayonetta explores the themes of The Divine Comedy in a variety of ways, using them as an obvious backdrop, along with subtle homages and references scattered throughout the game. The world of Bayonetta is set in the Trinity of Realities, three realms that co-exist forming the universe: Inferno, Paradiso and the Chaos realm—realm of humans—and connected by Purgitorio—the intersection of the trinity. In the game, Bayonetta travels throughout these realms, primarily in the realm of Purgitorio, the area in which magical and divine entities may conduct their business. However, there are stages within the game where Bayonetta finds herself in Paradiso and the human realm. This is a significant factor relating to The Divine Comedy as these realms also form the areas explored by Dante in his epic poem. The depth of these parallels is not exclusive to factors in Dante’s masterpiece, as there are also references to other art and literature inspired by Dante’s legacy. For example, the character Rodin in Bayonetta runs a bar named “The Gates of Hell.” In 1917 French artist Auguste Rodin completed a sculpture, The Gates of Hell depicting scenes and characters from The Divine Comedy. Rodin’s bar in Bayonetta is manifested as a dark impressionist style of architecture, with an ominous atmosphere. In early concept art, the proprietor of the bar was to be named Mephisto (Kamiya) derived from “Mephistopheles”, another name for the devil in some mythologies. Figure 3: Auguste Rodin's Gate of Hell, 1917Aspects of Dante’s surroundings and the theological beliefs of his time can be found in Bayonetta, as well as in the 2013 anime film adaptation Bayonetta, Bloody Fate. The Christian virtues, revered during the European Middle Ages, manifest themselves as enemies and adversaries that Bayonetta must combat throughout the game. Notably, the names of the cardinal virtues serve as “boss ranked” foes. Enemies within a game, usually present at the end of a level and more difficult to defeat than regular enemies within “Audito Sphere” of the “Laguna Hierarchy” (high levels of the hierarchy within the game), are named in Italian; Fortitudo, Temperantia, Lustitia, and Sapientia. These are the virtues of Classical Greek Philosophy, and reflect Dante’s native language as well as the impact the philosophies of Ancient Greece had on his writings. The film adaption of Bayonetta incorporated many elements from the game. To adjust the game effectively, it was necessary to augment the plot in order to fit the format of this alternate media. As it was no longer carried by gameplay, the narrative became paramount. The diverse plot points of the new narrative allowed for novel possibilities for further developing the role of The Divine Comedy in Bayonetta. At the beginning of the movie, for example, Bayonetta enters as a nun, just as she does in the game, only here she is in church praying rather than in a graveyard conducting a funeral. During her prayer she recites “I am the way into the city of woe, abandon all hope, oh, ye who enter here,” which is a Canto of The Divine Comedy. John Dee and the AngelsDr John Dee (1527—1608), a learned man of Elizabethan England, was a celebrated philosopher, mathematician, scientist, historian, and teacher. In addition, he was a researcher of magic and occult arts, as were many of his contemporaries. These philosopher magicians were described as Magi and John Dee was the first English Magus (French). He was part of a school of study within the Renaissance intelligensia that was influenced by the then recently discovered works of the gnostic Hermes Trismegistus, thought to be of great antiquity. This was in an age when religion, philosophy and science were intertwined. Alchemy and chemistry were still one, and astronomers, such as Johannes Kepler and Tyco Brahe cast horoscopes. John Dee engaged in spiritual experiments that were based in his Christian faith but caused him to be viewed in some circles as dangerously heretical (French).Based on the texts of Hermes Trismegistas and other later Christian philosophical and theological writers such as Dionysius the Areopagite, Dee and his contemporaries believed in celestial hierarchies and levels of existence. These celestial hierarchies could be accessed by “real artificial magic,” or applied science, that included mathematics, and the cabala, or the mystical use of permutations of Hebrew texts, to access supercelestial powers (French). In his experiments in religious magic, Dee was influenced by the occult writings of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486—1535). In Agrippa’s book, De Occulta Philosophia, there are descriptions for seals, symbols and tables for summoning angels, to which Dee referred in his accounts of his own magic experiments (French). Following his studies, Dee constructed a table with a crystal placed on it. By use of suitable rituals prescribed by Agrippa and others, Dee believed he summoned angels within the crystal, who could be seen and conversed with. Dee did not see these visions himself, but conversed with the angels through a skryer, or medium, who saw and heard the celestial beings. Dee recorded his interviews in his “Spiritual Diaries” (French). Throughout Bayonetta there are numerous seals and devices that would appear to be inspired by the work of Dee or other Renaissance Magi.In these sessions, John Dee, through his skryer Edward Kelley, received instruction from several angels. The angels led him to believe he was to be a prophet in the style of the biblical Elijah or, more specifically like Enoch, whose prophesies were detailed in an ancient book that was not part of the Bible, but was considered by many scholars as divinely inspired. As a result, these experiments have been termed “Enochian conversations.” The prophesies received by Dee foretold apocalyptic events that were to occur soon and God’s plan for the world. The angels also instructed Dee in a system of magic to allow him to interpret the prophesies and participate in them as a form of judge. Importantly, Dee was also taught elements of the supposed angelic language, which came to be known as “Enochian” (Ouellette). Dee wrote extensively about his interviews with the angels and includes statements of their hierarchy (French, Ouellette). This is reflected in the “Laguna Hierarchy” of Bayonetta, sharing similarities in name and appearance of the angels Dee had described. Platinum Games creative director Jean-Pierre Kellams acted as writer and liaison, assisting the English adaptation of Bayonetta and was tasked by Hideki Kamiya to develop Bayonetta’s incantations and subsequently the language of the angels within the game (Kellams).The Hammer of WitchesOne of the earliest and most integral components of the Bayonetta franchise is the fact that the title character is a witch. Witches, sorcerers and other practitioners of magic have been part of folklore for centuries. Hideki Kamiya stated that the concept of” classical witches” was primarily a European legend. In order to emulate this European dimension, he had envisioned Bayonetta as having a British accent which resulted in the game being released in English first, even though Platinum Games is a Japanese company (Kamiya). The Umbra Witch Clan hails from Europe within the Bayonetta Universe and relates more closely to the traditional European medieval witch tradition (Various), although some of the charms Bayonetta possesses acknowledge the witches of different parts of the world and their cultural context. The Evil Harvest Rosary is said to have been created by a Japanese witch in the game. Bayonetta herself and other witches of the game use their hair as a conduit to summon demons and is known as “wicked weaves” within the game. She also creates her tight body suit out of her hair, which recedes when she decides to use a wicked weave. Using hair in magic harks back to a legend that witches often utilised hair in their rituals and spell casting (Guiley). It is also said that women with long and beautiful hair were particularly susceptible to being seduced by Incubi, a form of demon that targets sleeping women for sexual intercourse. According to some texts (Kramer), witches formed into the beings that they are through consensual sex with a devil, as stated in Malleus Maleficarum of the 1400s, when he wrote that “Modern Witches … willingly embrace this most foul and miserable form of servitude” (Kramer). Bayonetta wields her sexuality as proficiently as she does any weapon. This lends itself to the belief that women of such a seductive demeanour were consorts to demons.Purgitorio is not used in the traditional sense of being a location of the afterlife, as seen in The Divine Comedy, rather it is depicted as a dimension that exists concurrently within the human realm. Those who exist within this Purgitorio cannot be seen with human eyes. Bayonetta’s ability to enter and exit this space with the use of magic is likened to the myth that witches were known to disappear for periods of time and were purported to be “spirited away” from the human world (Kamiya).Recipes for gun powder emerge from as early as the 1200s but, to avoid charges of witchcraft due to superstitions of the time, they were hidden by inventors such as Roger Bacon (McNab). The use of “Bullet Arts” in Bayonetta as the main form of combat for Umbra Witches, and the fact that these firearm techniques had been honed by witches for centuries before the witch hunts, implies that firearms were indeed used by dark magic practitioners until their “discovery” by ordinary humans in the Bayonetta universe. In addition to this, that “Lumen Sages” are not seen to practice bullet arts, builds on the idea of guns being a practice of black magic. “Lumen Sages” are the Light counterpart and adversaries of the Umbra Witches in Bayonetta. The art of Alchemy is incorporated into Bayonetta as a form of witchcraft. Players may create their own health, vitality, protective and mana potions through a menu screen. This plays on the taboo of chemistry and alchemy of the 1500s. As mentioned, John Dee's tendency to dabble in such practices was considered by some to be heretical (French, Ouellette).Light and dark forces are juxtaposed in Bayonetta through the classic adversaries, Angels and Demons. The moral flexibility of both the light and dark entities in the game leaves the principles of good an evil in a state of ambiguity, which allows for uninhibited flow in the story and creates a non-linear and compelling narrative. Through this non-compliance with the pop culture counterparts of light and dark, gamers are left to question the foundations of old cultural norms. This historical context lends itself to the Bayonetta story not only by providing additional plot points, but also by justifying the development decisions that occur in order to truly flesh out Bayonetta’s character.ConclusionCompelling story line, characters with layered personality, and the ability to transgress boundaries of time and travel are all factors that provide a level of depth that has become an increasingly important aspect in modern video gameplay. Gamers love “Easter eggs,” the subtle references and embellishments scattered throughout a game that make playing games like Bayonetta so enjoyable. Bayonetta herself is a global traveller whose journeying is not limited to “abroad.” She transgresses cultural, time, and spatial boundaries. The game is a mosaic of references to spatial time dimensions, literary, and historical sources. This mix of borrowings has produced an original gameplay and a unique storyline. Such use of literature, mythology, and history to enhance the narrative creates a quest game that provides “meaningful play” (Howard). This process of creation of new material from older sources is a form of renewal. As long as contemporary culture presents literature and history to new audiences, the older texts will not be forgotten, but these elements will undergo a form of renewal and restoration and the present-day culture will be enhanced as a result. In the words of Bayonetta herself: “As long as there’s music, I’ll keep on dancing.”ReferencesCedro, Carmel. "Dolly Varden: Sweet Inspiration." Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 2.1 (2012): 37-46. French, Peter J. John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus. London: London, Routledge and K. Paul, 1972. Guiley, Rosemary. The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology. Infobase Publishing, 2009. Howard, Jeff. Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives. Wellesley, Mass.: A.K. Peters, 2008. Kamiya, Hideki.Bayonetta. Bayonetta. Videogame. Sega, Japan, 2009.Kellams, Jean-Pierre. "Butmoni Coronzon (from the Mouth of the Witch)." Platinum Games 2009.Kramer, Heinrich. The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger. Eds. Sprenger, Jakob, or joint author, and Montague Summers. New York: Dover, 1971.McNab, C. Firearms: The Illustrated Guide to Small Arms of the World. Parragon, 2008.Ouellette, Francois. "Prophet to the Elohim: John Dee's Enochian Conversations as Christian Apocalyptic Discourse." Master of Arts thesis. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2004.Treasure Planet. The Walt Disney Company, 2003.Various. "Bayonetta Wikia." 2016.

This paper aims to discuss the idea of creating a zero-gravity theatre, pioneered by Dragan Živadinov, a Slovenian conceptual artist. In order to do so, the author turns to Russian philosophical (N. Fyodorov, K. Tsiolkovsky, A Chizhevsky) and artistic sources (K. Malevich), as well as the space exploration envisioned by Slovenian scientist Herman Potocnik Noordung, who influenced Živadinov's cosmokinetic art. Resisting the legacy of cosmists and supremacists, Živadinov designs his objectless antimimetic theatre with a void actor, freed from weight and expected to be replaced by a technical substitute, which emits the actor’s memory from near-equatorial orbit. This article examines the foundations of post-gravity theatre, which are based on three algorithms with the digital memory of the actor: biological (recording of body coordinates), biographical (recording of professional biography), and biomechatronic (recording of genetic structure). These will be controlled by the “umbot” both on stage and in space after the death of the actors. The author focuses on the Biomechanics Noordung production, performed in the stratosphere on board an IL‑76 MDK aircraft. Due to sudden free-fall moments, the performers experienced a state of weightlessness, interpreted as a rehearsal for the future liberation of the body from gravity. In conditions which made it possible to create a dozen modes of weightlessness, the actors could perform in a state of levitation, which was perceived as a unique abstract theatrical performance. Combining Meyerhold’s theory of biomechanics, conceived in the 1920s as a system of exercises for the actor’s body, with Noordung’s research on gravity and ways to overcome it, represented by drawings of a rotating space station, Živadinov realised the idea of theatricalising the cosmos. With this performance, Živadinov shows that an abstract work of art can become truly abstract only if it triumphs over gravity, i. e. if it loses its gravitational orientation (up, down, left, right) and manifests itself in zero gravity.

The pioneering work by Trivers (1971), Axelrod (1984) and Axelrod & Hamilton (1981) has stimulated continuing interest in explaining the evolution of cooperation by game theory, in particular, the iterated prisoner’s dilemma and the strategy of tit-for-tat. However these models suffer from a lack of biological reality, most seriously because it is assumed that players meet opponents at random from the population and, unless the population is very small, this excludes the repeated encounters necessary for tit-for-tat to prosper. To meet some of the objections, we consider a model with two types of players, defectors (D) and tit-for-tat players (T), in a spatially homogeneous environment with player densities varying continuously in space and time. Players only encounter neighbours but move at random in space. The analysis demonstrates major new conclusions, the three most important being as follows. First, stable coexistence with constant densities of both players is possible. Second, stable coexistence in a pattern (a spatially inhomogeneous stationary state) may be possible when it is impossible for constant distributions (even unstable ones) to exist. Third, invasion by a very small number of T-players is sometimes possible (in contrast with the usual predictions) and so a mutation to tit-for-tat may lead to a population of defectors being displaced by the T-players.

AbstractWe study subgame $$\phi $$ ϕ -maxmin strategies in two-player zero-sum stochastic games with a countable state space, finite action spaces, and a bounded and universally measurable payoff function. Here, $$\phi $$ ϕ denotes the tolerance function that assigns a nonnegative tolerated error level to every subgame. Subgame $$\phi $$ ϕ -maxmin strategies are strategies of the maximizing player that guarantee the lower value in every subgame within the subgame-dependent tolerance level as given by $$\phi $$ ϕ . First, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a strategy to be a subgame $$\phi $$ ϕ -maxmin strategy. As a special case, we obtain a characterization for subgame maxmin strategies, i.e., strategies that exactly guarantee the lower value at every subgame. Secondly, we present sufficient conditions for the existence of a subgame $$\phi $$ ϕ -maxmin strategy. Finally, we show the possibly surprising result that each game admits a strictly positive tolerance function $$\phi ^*$$ ϕ ∗ with the following property: if a player has a subgame $$\phi ^*$$ ϕ ∗ -maxmin strategy, then he has a subgame maxmin strategy too. As a consequence, the existence of a subgame $$\phi $$ ϕ -maxmin strategy for every positive tolerance function $$\phi $$ ϕ is equivalent to the existence of a subgame maxmin strategy.

The article contains an attempt to determine the strategy of research of the army of the modern state in the context of analyzing the evolution of the institutional approach in Western social and political discourse. The emphasis is on the content of changes that allowed institutional theory not only to transform into a non-institutional, but also to become the leading methodological basis for modern political research at all levels. It is about a change: in the categorical and conceptual apparatus of the research (for example, the new interpretation of the content of the main concepts (from the institute to the rational choice and the introduction into the scientific circulation of the concepts institutional space, institutional practice, rules of the game and etc.); principles of research; levels of research (identification of institutional, organizational and individual levels); subject field of research (first of all, introduction of individual behavior of actors into it); methods and procedures of analyze (use of tools of rational choice theory, structural and functional analysis, behavioral approach). It is substantiated that the perspective of using the main provisions of this approach to analyze the problem field of the modern army is based on such moments as: the existence of a fairly successful practice of considering the army as a specific political institution in modern scientific discourse; development of a new (more constructive) version of the interpretation of the concept of political institution; the formation, within the framework of neoinstitutionalism, of a basic research set, which allows considering collective, organizational, and mental structures and procedures, as well as individual behavior from a unified analytical position.

Postmodern theory, quite rightly I think, warns us against the grand narratives of modernism; the stories that purport to show history as a progression to a present or future enlightened state. Such narratives are problematic because they produce the idea that history is somehow inevitable and fixed and perfectly knowable. I want to apply this notion of the grand narrative to a highly specific case study -- a certain genre of computer strategy games: the 'god' game, which utilises the grand narrative as a innate structuring principle. The god game is a sub-genre of the strategy game -- a genre that grew out of an analogue hobby: warfare simulations and board games. When transferred to the computer, the genre took with it many of its built-in restrictions -- "playing fields" composed of hex grids, elaborate tables charting vital statistics, and a "turn-based" playing regime. The advantages of the computer were that it could automate a machine opponent for the human player to compete against -- and it also automated the various dice rolls and charts that made the games tedious to the uninitiated. Most of these warfare simulations limited their subject matter to specific historical settings -- great battles and so on --, but the transfer to the digital medium enabled more ambitious aims. Simply put, to chart and direct the course of human history. The two first and still most famous attempts to do this were Sim City and Populous. The former put the player in the role of mayor and town planner, and charged them to build and maintain a city. The latter conferred on the player Godhood -- and placed them in charge of a small band of worshippers who had to be looked after by changing the landscape and calling down volcanoes and earthquakes on rival tribes. These games look primitive today, but they developed and refined the conceptual and visual vocabulary (particularly the "gods-eye-view" -- the sense of viewing and manipulating the events on screen from a great distance that paradoxically imparted perfect detail) that virtually all their successors would utilise. It was a game (portentously) called Civilization that would first marry the god game elements and the strategic warfare elements with a codified and modular map of human history. In it the player was directed to lead a tribe (the English, the French, the Egyptians etc) throughout human history, researching new technologies, exploring, fighting, conquering, until the space age. The final goal, the telos, was to construct a spaceship that could successfully transport the player's chosen tribe to the Alpha Centauri solar system. The choice of tribe affected a few initial starting conditions -- principally the number of beginning technologies. But other than that it assumed no overriding cultural differences or imperatives and imposed on all an ahistorically westernised path of conquest and colonialism. Historical changes and events were rendered into discrete, abstracted symbols -- monuments to build and place in a player's city. And these symbols were resolutely western -- Shakespeare's Globe, Darwin's voyage on the Beagle, the Manhattan project. I don't think it is too much to suggest that computer games such as this are highly effective tools of the hegemonic apparatus, through their seductive encoding of specific historio-political models through an entertaining front end. The time is ripe to begin to develop more sophisticated and resistant reading strategies to respond to these most beguiling of games. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Nick Caldwell. "Games R US -- and Most of the Western World as Well: The Hegemony of the Strategic Computer Game." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.5 (1998). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/strat.php>. Chicago style: Nick Caldwell, "Games R US -- and Most of the Western World as Well: The Hegemony of the Strategic Computer Game," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 5 (1998), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/strat.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Nick Caldwell. (1998) Games r US -- and most of the western world as well: the hegemony of the strategic computer game. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(5). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/strat.php> ([your date of access]).

The contemporary video game market is as recognisable for its brands as it is for the characters that populate their game worlds, from franchise-leading characters like Garrus Vakarian (Mass Effect original trilogy), Princess Zelda (The Legend of Zelda franchise) and Cortana (HALO franchise) to more recent game icons like Miles Morales (Marvel's Spiderman game franchise) and Judy Alvarez (Cyberpunk 2077). Interactions with these casts of characters enhance the richness of games and their playable worlds, giving a sense of weight and meaning to player actions, emphasising thematic interests, and in some cases acting as buffers to (or indeed hindering) different aspects of gameplay itself. As Jordan Erica Webber writes in her essay The Road to Journey, “videogames are often examined through the lens of what you do and what you feel” (14). For many games, the design of interactions between the player and other beings in the world—whether they be intrinsic to the world (non-playable characters or NPCs) or other live players—is a bridging aspect between what you do and how you feel and is thus central to the communication of more cohesive and focussed work. This essay will discuss two examples of game design techniques present in Transistor by Supergiant Games and Journey by thatgamecompany. It will consider how the design of “playful” interactions between the player and other characters in the game world (both non-player characters and other player characters) can be used as a tool to align a player’s experience of “intent” with the thematic objectives of the designer. These games have been selected as both utilise design techniques that allow for this “playful” interaction (observed in this essay as interactions that do not contribute to “progression” in the traditional sense). By looking closely at specific aspects of game design, it aims to develop an accessible examination by “focusing on the dimensions of involvement the specific game or genre of games affords” (Calleja, 222). The discussion defines “intent”, in the context of game design, through a synthesis of definitions from two works by game designers. The first being Greg Costikyan’s definition of game structure from his 2002 presentation I Have No Words and I Must Design, a paper subsequently referenced by numerous prominent game scholars including Ian Bogost and Jesper Juul. The second is Steven Swink’s definition of intent in relation to video games, from his 2009 book Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation—an extensive reference text of game design concepts, with a particular focus on the concept of “game feel” (the meta-sensation of involvement with a game). This exploratory essay suggests that examining these small but impactful design techniques, through the lens of their contribution to overall intent, is a useful tool for undertaking more holistic studies of how games are affective. I align with the argument that understanding “playfulness” in game design is useful in understanding user engagement with other digital communication platforms. In particular, platforms where the presentation of user identity is relational or performative to others—a case explored in Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures (Frissen et al.). Intent in Game Design Intent, in game design, is generated by a complex, interacting economy, ecosystem, or “game structure” (Costikyan 21) of thematic ideas and gameplay functions that do not dictate outcomes, but rather guide behaviour and progression forward through the need to achieve a goal (Costikyan 21). Intent brings player goals in line with the intrinsic goals of the player character, and the thematic or experiential goals the game designer wants to convey through the act of play. Intent makes it easier to invest in the game’s narrative and spatial context—its role is to “motivate action in game worlds” (Swink 67). Steven Swink writes that it is the role of game design to create compelling intent from “a seemingly arbitrary collection of abstracted variables” (Swink 67). He continues that whether it is good or bad is a broader question, but that “most games do have in-born intentionality, and it is the game designer who creates it” (67). This echoes Costikyan’s point: game designers “must consciously set out to decide what kind of experiences [they] want to impart to players and create systems that enable those experiences” (20). Swink uses Mario 64 as one simple example of intent creation through design—if collecting 100 coins did not restore Mario’s health, players would simply not collect them. Not having health restricts the ability for players to fulfil the overarching intent of progression by defeating the game’s main villain (what he calls the “explicit” intent), and collecting coins also provides a degree of interactivity that makes the exploration itself feel more fulfilling (the “implicit” intent). This motivation for action may be functional, or it may be more experiential—how a designer shapes variables into particular forms to encourage the particular kinds of experience that they want a player to have during the act of play (such as in Journey, explored in the latter part of this essay). This essay is interested in the design of this compelling thematic intent—and the role “playful” interactions have as a variable that contributes to aligning player behaviours and experience to the thematic or experiential goals of game design. “Playful” Communication and Storytelling in Transistor Transistor is the second release from independent studio Supergiant Games and has received over 100 industry accolades (Kasavin) since its publication in 2014. Transistor incorporates the suspense of turn-based gameplay into an action role-playing game—neatly mirroring a style of gameplay to the suspense of its cyber noir narrative. The game is also distinctly “artful”. The city of Cloudbank, where the game takes place, is a cyberpunk landscape richly inspired by art nouveau and art deco style. There is some indication that Cloudbank may not be a real city at all—but rather a virtual city, with an abundance of computer-related motifs and player combat abilities named as if they were programming functions. At release, Transistor was broadly recognised in the industry press for its strength in “combining its visuals and music to powerfully convey narrative information and tone” (Petit). If intent in games in part stems from a unification of goals between the player and design, the interactivity between player input and the actions of the player character furthers this sense of “togetherness”. This articulation and unity of hand movement and visual response in games are what Kirkpatrick identified in his 2011 work Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game as the point in which videogames “broke from the visual entertainment culture of the last two centuries” (Kirkpatrick 88). The player character mediates access to the space by which all other game information is given context and allows the player a degree of self-expression that is unique to games. Swink describes it as an amplified impression of virtual proprioception, that is “an impression of space created by illusory means but is experienced as real by the senses … the effects of motion, sound, visuals, and responsive effects combine” (Swink 28). If we extend Swink’s point about creating an “impression of space” to also include an “impression of purpose”, we can utilise this observation to further understand how the design of the playful interactions in Transistor work to develop and align the player’s experience of intent with the overarching narrative goal (or, “explicit” intent) of the game—to tell a compelling “science-fiction love story in a cyberpunk setting, without the gritty backdrop” (Wallace) through the medium of gameplay. At the centre of any “love story” is the dynamic of a relationship, and in Transistor playful interaction is a means for conveying the significance and complexity of those dynamics in relation to the central characters. Transistor’s exposition asks players to figure out what happened to Red and her partner, The Boxer (a name he is identified by in the game files), while progressing through various battles with an entity called The Process to uncover more information. Transistor commences with player-character, Red, standing next to the body of The Boxer, whose consciousness and voice have been uploaded into the same device that impaled him: the story’s eponymous Transistor. The event that resulted in this strange circumstance has also caused Red to lose her ability to speak, though she is still able to hum. The first action that the player must complete to progress the game is to pull the Transistor from The Boxer’s body. From this point The Boxer, speaking through the Transistor, becomes the sole narrator of the game. The Boxer’s first lines of dialogue are responsive to player action, and position Red’s character in the world: ‘Together again. Heh, sort of …’ [Upon walking towards an exit a unit of The Process will appear] ‘Yikes … found us already. They want you back I bet. Well so do I.’ [Upon defeating The Process] ‘Unmarked alley, east of the bay. I think I know where we are.’ (Supergiant Games) This brief exchange and feedback to player movement, in medias res, limits the player’s possible points of attention and establishes The Boxer’s voice and “character” as the reference point for interacting with the game world. Actions, the surrounding world, and gameplay objectives are given meaning and context by being part of a system of intent derived from the significance of his character to the player character (Red) as both a companion and information-giver. The player may not necessarily feel what an individual in Red’s position would feel, but their expository position is aligned with Red’s narrative, and their scope of interaction with the world is intrinsically tied to the “explicit” intent of finding out what happened to The Boxer. Transistor continues to establish a loop between Red’s exploration of the world and the dialogue and narration of The Boxer. In the context of gameplay, player movement functions as the other half of a conversation and brings the player’s control of Red closer to how Red herself (who cannot communicate vocally) might converse with The Boxer gesturally. The Boxer’s conversational narration is scripted to occur as Red moves through specific parts of the world and achieves certain objectives. Significantly, The Boxer will also speak to Red in response to specific behaviours that only occur should the player choose to do them and that don’t necessarily contribute to “progressing” the game in the mechanical sense. There are multiple points where this is possible, but I will draw on two examples to demonstrate. Firstly, The Boxer will have specific reactions to a player who stands idle for too long, or who performs a repetitive action. Jumping repeatedly from platform to platform will trigger several variations of playful and exasperated dialogue from The Boxer (who has, at this point, no choice but to be carried around by Red): [Upon repeatedly jumping between the same platform] ‘Round and round.’ ‘Okay that’s enough.’ ‘I hate you.’ (Supergiant Games) The second is when Red “hums” (an activity initiated by the player by holding down R1 on a PlayStation console). At certain points of play, when making Red hum, The Boxer will chime in and sing the lyrics to the song she is humming. This musical harmonisation helps to articulate a particular kind of intimacy and flow between Red and The Boxer —accentuated by Red’s animation when humming: she is bathed in golden light and holds the Transistor close, swaying side to side, as if embracing or dancing with a lover. This is a playful, exploratory interaction. It technically doesn’t serve any “purpose” in terms of finishing the game—but is an action a player might perform while exploring controls and possibilities of interactivity, in turn exploring what it is to “be” Red in relation to the game world, the story being conveyed, and The Boxer. It delivers a more emotional and affective thematic idea about a relationship that nonetheless relies just as much on mechanical input and output as engaging in movement, exploration, and combat in the game world. It’s a mechanic that provides texture to the experience of inhabiting Red’s identity during play, showcasing a more individual complexity to her story, driven by interactivity. In techniques like this, Transistor directly unifies its method for information-giving, interactivity, progression, and theme into a single design language. To once again nod to Swink and Costikyan, it is a complex, interacting economy or ecosystem of thematic ideas and gameplay structures that guide behaviour and progression forward through the need to achieve a single goal (Costikyan 21), guiding the player towards the game’s “explicit” intent of investment in its “science fiction love story”. Companionship and Collaboration in Journey Journey is regularly praised in many circles of game review and discussion for its powerful, pared-back story conveyed through its exceptional game design. It has won a wide array of awards, including multiple British Academy Games Awards and Game Developer’s Choice Awards, and has been featured in highly regarded international galleries such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Its director, Jenova Chen, articulated that the goal of the game (and thus, in the context of this essay, the intent) was “to create a game where people who interact with each other in an online community can connect at an emotional level, regardless of their gender, age, ethnicity, and social status” (Webber 14). In Journey, the player controls a small robed figure moving through a vast desert—the only choices for movement are to slide gracefully through the sand or to jump into the air by pressing the X button (on a PlayStation console), and gracefully float down to the ground. You cannot attack anything or defend yourself from the elements or hostile beings. Each player will “periodically find another individual in the landscape” (Isbister 121) of similar design to the player and can only communicate with them by experimenting with simple movements, and via short chirping noises. As the landscape itself is vast and unknown, it is what one player referred to as a sense of “reliance on one another” that makes the game so captivating (Isbister 12). Much like The Boxer in Transistor, the other figure in Journey stands out as a reference point and imbues a sense of collaboration and connection that makes the goal to reach the pinprick of light in the distance more meaningful. It is only after the player has finished the game that the screen reveals the other individual is a real person, another player, by displaying their gamer tag. One player, playing the game in 2017 (several years after its original release in 2012), wrote: I went through most of the game by myself, and when I first met my companion, it was right as I walked into the gate transitioning to the snow area. And I was SO happy that there was someone else in this desolate place. I felt like it added so much warmth to the game, so much added value. The companion and I stuck together 100% of the way. When one of us would fall the slightest bit behind, the other would wait for them. I remember saying out loud how I thought that my companion was the best programmed AI that I had ever seen. In the way that he waited for me to catch up, it almost seemed like he thanked me for waiting for him … We were always side-by-side which I was doing to the "AI" for "cinematic-effect". From when I first met him up to the very very end, we were side-by-side. (Peace_maybenot) Other players indicate a similar bond even when their companion is perhaps less competent: I thought my traveller was a crap AI. He kept getting launched by the flying things and was crap at staying behind cover … But I stuck with him because I was like, this is my buddy in the game. Same thing, we were communicating the whole time and I stuck with him. I finish and I see a gamer tag and my mind was blown. That was awesome. (kerode4791) Although there is a definite object of difference in that Transistor is narrated and single-player while Journey is not, there are some defined correlations between the way Supergiant Games and thatgamecompany encourage players to feel a sense of investment and intent aligned with another individual within the game to further thematic intent. Interactive mechanics are designed to allow players a means of playful and gestural communication as an extension of their kinetic interaction with the game; travellers in Journey can chirp and call out to other players—not always for an intrinsic goal but often to express joy, or just to experience and sense of connectivity or emotional warmth. In Transistor, the ability to hum and hear The Boxer’s harmony, and the animation of Red holding the Transistor close as she does so, implying a sense of protectiveness and affection, says more in the context of “play” than a literal declaration of love between the two characters. Graeme Kirkpatrick uses dance as a suitable metaphor for this kind of experience in games, in that both are characterised by a certainty that communication has occurred despite the “eschewal of overt linguistic elements and discursive meanings” (120). There is also a sense of finite temporality in these moments. Unlike scripted actions, or words on a page, they occur within a moment of being that largely belongs to the player and their actions alone. Kirkpatrick describes it as “an inherent ephemerality about this vanishing and that this very transience is somehow essential” (120). This imbuing of a sense of time is important because it implies that even if one were to play the game again, repeating the interaction is impossible. The communication of narrative within these games is not a static form, but an experience that hangs unique at that moment and space of play. Thatgamecompany discussed in their 2017 interviews with Webber, published as part of her essay for the Victoria & Albert’s Video Games: Design/Play/Disrupt exhibition, how by creating and restricting the kind of playful interaction available to players within the world, they could encourage the kind of emotional, collaborative, and thoughtful intent they desired to portray (Webber 14). They articulate how in the development process they prioritised giving the player a variety of responses for even the smallest of actions and how that positive feedback, in turn, encourages play and prevented players from being “bored” (Webber 22). Meanwhile, the team reduced responsiveness for interactions they didn’t want to encourage. Chen describes the approach as “maximising feedback for things you want and minimising it for things you don’t want” (Webber 27). In her essay, Webber writes that Chen describes “a person who enters a virtual world, leaving behind the value system they’ve learned from real life, as like a baby banging their spoon to get attention” (27): initially players could push each other, and when one baby [player] pushed the other baby [player] off the cliff that person died. So, when we tested the gameplay, even our own developers preferred killing each other because of the amount of feedback they would get, whether it’s visual feedback, audio feedback, or social feedback from the players in the room. For quite a while I was disappointed at our own developers’ ethics, but I was able to talk to a child psychologist and she was able to clarify why these people are doing what they are doing. She said, ‘If you want to train a baby not to knock the spoon, you should minimise the feedback. Either just leave them alone, and after a while they’re bored and stop knocking, or give them a spoon that does not make a sound. (27) The developers then made it impossible for players to kill, steal resources from, or even speak to each other. Players were encouraged to stay close to each other using high-feedback action and responsiveness for doing so (Webber 27). By using feedback design techniques to encourage players to behave a certain way to other beings in the world—both by providing and restricting playful interactivity—thatgamecompany encourage a resonance between players and the overarching design intent of the project. Chen’s observations about the behaviour of his team while playing different iterations of the game also support the argument (acknowledged in different perspectives by various scholarship, including Costikyan and Bogost) that in the act of gameplay, real-life personal ethics are to a degree re-prioritised by the interactivity and context of that interactivity in the game world. Intent and the “Actualities of (Game) Existence” Continuing and evolving explorations of “intent” (and other parallel terms) in games through interaction design is of interest for scholars of game studies; it also is an important endeavour when considering influential relationships between games and other digital mediums where user identity is performative or relational to others. This influence was examined from several perspectives in the aforementioned collection Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures, which also examined “the process of ludification that seems to penetrate every cultural domain” of modern life, including leisure time, work, education, politics, and even warfare (Frissen et al. 9). Such studies affirm the “complex relationship between play, media, and identity in contemporary culture” and are motivated “not only by the dominant role that digital media plays in our present culture but also by the intuition that ‘“play is central … to media experience” (Frissen et al. 10). Undertaking close examinations of specific “playful” design techniques in video games, and how they may factor into the development of intent, can help to develop nuanced lines of questioning about how we engage with “playfulness” in other digital communication platforms in an accessible, comparative way. We continue to exist in a world where “ludification is penetrating the cultural domain”. In the first few months of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Nintendo released Animal Crossing: New Horizons. With an almost global population in lockdown, Animal Crossing became host to professional meetings (Espiritu), weddings (Garst), and significantly, a media channel for brands to promote content and products (Deighton). TikTok, panoramically, is a platform where “playful” user trends— dances, responding to videos, the “Tell Me … Without Telling Me” challenge—occur in the context of an extremely complex algorithm, that while automated, is created by people—and is thus unavoidably embedded with bias (Dias et al.; Noble). This is not to say that game design techniques and broader “playful” design techniques in other digital communication platforms are interchangeable by any measure, or that intent in a game design sense and intent or bias in a commercial sense should be examined through the same lens. Rather that there is a useful, interdisciplinary resource of knowledge that can further illuminate questions we might ask about this state of “ludification” in both the academic and public spheres. We might ask, for example, what would the implications be of introducing an intent design methodology similar to Journey, but using it for commercial gain? Or social activism? Has it already happened? There is a quotation from Nathan Jurgensen’s 2016 essay Fear of Screens (published in The New Inquiry) that often comes to my mind when thinking about interaction design in video games in this way. In his response to Sherry Turkle’s book, Reclaiming Conversation, Jurgensen writes: each time we say “IRL,” “face-to-face,” or “in person” to mean connection without screens, we frame what is “real” or who is a person in terms of their geographic proximity rather than other aspects of closeness — variables like attention, empathy, affect, erotics, all of which can be experienced at a distance. We should not conceptually preclude or discount all the ways intimacy, passion, love, joy, pleasure, closeness, pain, suffering, evil and all the visceral actualities of existence pass through the screen. “Face to face” should mean more than breathing the same air. (Jurgensen) While Jurgensen is not talking about communication in games specifically, there are comparisons to be drawn between his “variables” and “visceral actualities of existence” as the drivers of social meaning-making, and the methodology of games communicating intent and purpose through Swink’s “seemingly arbitrary collection of abstracted variables” (67). When players interact with other characters in a game world (whether they be NPCs or other players), they are inhabiting a shared virtual space, and how designers articulate and present the variables of “closeness”, as Jurgensen defines it, can shape player alignment with the overarching design intent. These design techniques take the place of Jurgensen’s “visceral actualities of existence”. While they may not intrinsically share an overarching purpose, their experiential qualities have the ability to align ethics, priorities, and values between individuals. Interactivity means game design has the potential to facilitate a particular kind of engagement for the player (as demonstrated in Journey) or give opportunities for players to explore a sense of what an emotion might feel like by aligning it with progression or playful activity (as discussed in relation to Transistor). Players may not “feel” exactly what their player-characters do, or care for other characters in the world in the same way a game might encourage them to, but through thoughtful intent design, something of recognition or unity of belief might pass through the screen. References Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Video Games. MIT P, 2007. Calleja, Gordon. “Ludic Identities and the Magic Circle.” Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures. Eds. Valerie Frissen et al. Amsterdam UP, 2015. 211–224. Costikyan, Greg. “I Have No Words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games.” Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings 2002. Ed. Frans Mäyrä. Tampere UP. 9-33. Dias, Avani, et al. “The TikTok Spiral.” ABC News, 26 July 2021. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-26/tiktok-algorithm-dangerous-eating-disorder-content-censorship/100277134>. Deighton, Katie. “Animal Crossing Is Emerging as a Media Channel for Brands in Lockdown.” The Drum, 21 Apr. 2020. <https://www.thedrum.com/news/2020/04/21/animal-crossing-emerging-media-channel-brands-lockdown>. Espiritu, Abby. “Japanese Company Attempts to Work Remotely in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.” The Gamer, 29 Mar. 2020. <https://www.thegamer.com/animal-crossing-new-horizons-work-remotely/>. Frissen, Valerie, et al., eds. Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures. Amsterdam UP, 2015. Garst, Aron. “The Pandemic Canceled Their Wedding. So They Held It in Animal Crossing.” The Washington Post, 2 Apr. 2020. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/04/02/animal-crossing-wedding-coronavirus/>. Isbister, Katherine. How Games Move Us: Emotion by Design. MIT P, 2016. Journey. thatgamecompany. 2012. Jurgensen, Nathan. “Fear of Screens.” The New Inquiry, 25 Jan. 2016. <https://thenewinquiry.com/fear-of-screens/>. Kasavin, Greg. “Transistor Earns More than 100+ Industry Accolades, Sells More than 600k Copies.” Supergiant Games, 8 Jan. 2015. <https://www.supergiantgames.com/blog/transistor-earns60-industry-accolades-sells-more-than-600k-copies/>. kerode4791. "Wanted to Share My First Experience with the Game, It Was That Awesome.”Reddit, 22 Mar. 2017. <https://www.reddit.com/r/JourneyPS3/comments/60u0am/wanted_to_share_my_f rst_experience_with_the_game/>. Kirkpatrick, Graeme. Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game. Manchester UP, 2011. Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York UP, 2018. peace_maybenot. "Wanted to Share My First Experience with the Game, It Was that Awesome” Reddit, 22 Mar. 2017. <https://www.reddit.com/r/JourneyPS3/comments/60u0am/wanted_to_share_my_f rst_experience_with_the_game/>. Petit, Carolyn. “Ghosts in the Machine." Gamespot, 20 May 2014. <https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/transistor-review/1900-6415763/>. Swink, Steve. Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation. Amsterdam: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers/Elsevier, 2009. Transistor. Supergiant Games. 2014. Wallace, Kimberley. “The Story behind Supergiant Games’ Transistor.” Gameinformer, 20 May 2021. <https://www.gameinformer.com/2021/05/20/the-story-behind-supergiant-games-transistor>. Webber, Jordan Erica. “The Road to Journey.” Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt. Eds. Marie Foulston and Kristian Volsing. V&A Publishing, 2018. 14–31.

Computer and video games are one of the primary uses of personal computer technologies, and yet despite an increasing interest in cultural practices that are organised around computer and information technologies cultural studies has paid very little attention to this phenomenon. In the War of Desire and Technology Allucquére Roseanne Stone comments "that there seems no question that a significant proportion of young people will spend a significant and increasing proportion of their waking hours playing computer-based games in one form or another, and so far the implications of this trend have yet to be fully addressed in academic forums" (26). This Christmas will undoubtedly follow the trend of the last few years, with video game consoles and software being the biggest toy sellers. In the lead-up to this Christmas Nintendo shipped 5,000,000 units of the much-anticipated Shigeru Miyamoto-designed game, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The Zelda series of adventure games made its first appearance in 1987 on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) with The Legend of Zelda (which sold 6.5 million units worldwide). It is increasingly evident that whether it is in games arcades, on console systems such as the Nintendo 64, or on personal computers, the playing of computer games is a crucial component of the popular cultural terrain. In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the fifth installment in the series, the player controls a young boy, Link, through his adventures in the 3D-rendered fantasy world of Hyrule. By defeating various monsters, solving puzzles, and discovering magical items the player progresses through the game with the aim of saving Hyrule and rescuing Princess Zelda by defeating the evil Ganondorf. Yup, once you get past all of the 3D polygon graphics enabled by the Nintendo 64 platform this game is your basic rescue-the-princess quest with all of the troubling gender implications that this raises. Cultural theorists such as Stone and Dan Fleming raise the concern that this rapidly expanding industry that is an increasingly significant component of many young people's cultural lives is limited to the problems associated with a narrowly defined masculine identity. Stone asks should things like computer games, which are so terrifically absorbing and which take up so much waking time -- so much precious, irreplaceable waking time -- be expected to possess a modicum of invention, to be able to stretch players' imaginations and skills beyond the ability to hit targets and dodge obstacles? (163-64) Fleming observes that "this remarkable technology could support a much richer play space and with it a position less rigidly tied to a simplistically projected male identity" (57). But the narrative content of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time does not come even close to explaining what it is about playing the game that hooks the gamer into this 30-50 hour experience, and keeps us coming back for more -- just one more session until I finish that Dungeon. Fleming makes the important point that an analysis of the symbolic content of games tells us very little about what it is actually like to play them. He takes the step of shifting our attention from the meanings of cultural objects to their status as events (11-16). The criticism that computer and video game content is dominated by a constraining masculine identity is important, but is no more than a starting point. Is this all that can be said about games such as Zelda? I would argue that the activity of playing computer games cannot simply be approached through a textual analysis of the symbolic content of games. If we tentatively accept that gaming is not simply a content, but an activity, then, how can we analyse or describe this activity? Does cultural studies provide us with the tools necessary to describe it as a cultural experience? How is this experience organised, and what ramifications does it have for cultural studies' understanding of contemporary cultural technologies? An initial avenue of inquiry is provided by the term gameplay. Gameplay is a term that constantly emerges in my discussions with both gamers and game designers. It is a quite ephemeral and at moments incoherent concept that is used to describe the experience of a player's visceral immersion in and interactive engagement with a particular game's environment. It is an aspect of computer gaming that resists or at least would seem to be excessive to representation or symbolising. The very ephemeral and rather vague ways in which it is used have made it tempting to reject any serious analysis of it as an incoherence which may well function to simply side-step or avoid criticism of games' very obvious problem with representations of gender. However, as a player of computer games I recognise the experience that gamers are attempting to describe with the term gameplay and find it difficult to reject it out of hand simply because my theoretical vocabulary as a cultural analyst has difficulties in accommodating it. Where is the problem -- with the cultural experience or the theoretical vocabulary? In many of my discussions with gamers the term gameplay functions as something of a shared horizon or assumed knowledge. If I ask what gameplay is or does I will often receive a response such as the following: "Gameplay is what makes a game fun. It is the fun factor". If I then query what elements or features in particular make a game fun the response will invariably be, "well good gameplay is what is important. Graphics and stuff can be good, but often are just eye-candy". The discussion will generally end with a comment such as "you've played [Game X], you know what I mean, it has great gameplay". This term seems to function as something of a marker for how the cultural experience of gameplay exceeds our symbolic vocabulary. It opens out onto the event status of playing. (But I think exchanges such as the above are also about the event of a research relation.) In email discussions Cameron Brown, a lead game designer employed by Auran (a Brisbane, Australia based game software company -- Auran and Activision co-developed the real-time strategy game Dark Reign) described gameplay in the following terms: I was made 'lead tester' for 'Radical Rex', a SNES [Super Nintendo Entertainment System] platformer.... It got to the point where I could finish the game (10 levels plus bonus 8 levels) in 27 minutes -- about 40 minutes if I held the controller upside down. I could literally play the first level with my eyes closed, using only muscle memory! Anyway, Mario Kart: sometimes, playing it, I lost all sense of everything except the game. My hands moved without conscious intervention on my part.... I believe the MK 'trance state' short circuits this delay not requiring the brain to be aware of something before the hands have responded." The term gameplay appears throughout gamers' discussions of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on newsgroups (rec.games.video.nintendo) and fan WWW sites, for example Nintendojo. The Next-Generation review of Zelda describes a gaming experience "beyond the superficialities of graphics, sound, and controls (which are all excellent) ... that sucks the player into a mystical world that has never been seen or felt before". Eric Enrico Mattei, a reviewer on Nintendojo, asserts that the quality of gameplay in Zelda is such "that you are COMPLETELY IMMERSED in Zelda's world". Writing in anticipation of Zelda's release Mikey Veroni comments that "ease of control is important in Zelda 64 (not to mention any game) because only then can the player feel like Link is acting and responding exactly to the player's actions. Perfect gameplay is so simple yet terribly crucial at the same time". Miyamoto, the designer of Zelda, said in a recent interview that in creating game environments such as Zelda he is concerned with "how players feel when they are touching the controller, so that is the way I'm always making the video game. I'm always thinking of the player's feelings". These various ways of talking about and describing the experience of playing computer and video games are not exactly new or mysterious. They draw on well-established conventions and metaphors for understanding the human interface with technology or equipment in general. When I asked Cameron about his use of the phrase "muscle memory", for example, he responded that it came from a guitar player magazine and was used in the context of explaining exercises to teach your fingers how to play a scale. Other sources for this technological sublime relation include science fiction texts such as William Gibson's descriptions of the experience of jacking into the matrix of cyberspace in Neuromancer. Dan Fleming's careful distinction between the symbolic content of games and the experience of playing them would seem to apply to the above descriptions of gameplay. He asserts that playing a game like Nintendo's platform adventure Mario Brothers is an intriguing experience that involves "the replacement of the gameworld's thematics by its geometry, which is where the fully engaged action really is" (191). Fleming sums up by commenting that "at their best computer games simply operate elsewhere for much of the time" (193). Although I have reservations about the tendency to position gameplay and representation in an almost strict opposition the foregrounding of this elsewhere of playability is useful in that it suggests the status of computer gaming as an event rather than a text or content to be interpreted. In his recent essay, "The Being of Culture, Beyond Representation", Alec McHoul argues, against representationalist understandings of cultural objects, for an approach that takes into account the movements and dynamics of "event-ness or eventality" (2). This shift away from a representational framework towards what McHoul calls "eventalistic experiencing" is where I head in my engagement with gameplay. This spectral dynamic of computer gaming calls us to change our modes of engaging with research objects. The issues of control and controllers appear in many of the gamers' discussions of playing Zelda. Fleming refers to this experience: "the player feels the responsiveness of the controller, the forward momentum, the onset of a relaxed energy, a feeling of competence" (192). Entering into the world of the game is also a skill or competence; it involves the ability to effectively use the game control system or interface to navigate through the play environment. This game control would seem to function within the terms of a traditional controlling masculine subjectivity. It appears to be about enjoying a sense of ease, empowerment and control in a technologically mediated environment. Relations between the human and the technological are from the outset caught up in fantasies of control. But the event of playing, the elsewhere of gameplay, exceeds the limits of our stories about an autonomous self in control of and using technology. When we play games like Zelda we are being positioned in those regions of cultural experience that involve a transformation in the mode of our relation to technological equipment. Our assumptions regarding the relation and separation between the human and the technological -- and perhaps also the gender implications of these relations -- are increasingly transformed, subverted, and questioned. Computer gaming is at least in part about the enjoyment gamers derive from the blurring and confusion of the boundaries between the technological and the self: techno-enjoyment. This element of enjoyment exceeds both the symbolic and the corporeal. But it should not be understood as some kind of more real or immediate bodily experience posited outside of and in opposition to the representational. It invokes another materiality of the technological object that is other than a reduction to technics or the human. It is a spectral interspace: the relation between the human and nonhuman. This relation with technology is not simply or only at the level of representation, nor at the materiality of the technological object or the bodily experience and sensations of the gamer. Gaming opens onto this domain of materialised techno-enjoyment. And in this region of cultural experience it is no longer clearly decidable who or what is in control. This experience of gameplay radically undermines notions of equipmentality grounded in a controlling human subject. Cultural Studies academics -- and I include myself in this group -- should be cautious about rushing to reduce the experience of gameplay to a problem or issue of representation. This is not to argue that representational effects are not operative in the practices of computer gaming. It is to argue the careful consideration of other important effects and processes. References Fleming, Dan. Powerplay: Toys as Popular Culture. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1996. Gamecenter.com. "An Interview with Shigeru Miyamoto." 1998. 10 Dec. 1998 <http://www.gamecenter.com/News/Item/0,3,0-2305,00.html?st.gc.ttn.si.gn>. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Game cartridge. Nintendo. 1998. McHoul, Alec. "The Being of Culture, Beyond Representation." 1998. 15 Oct. 1998 <http://kali.murdoch.edu.au/~mchoul/being.php>. Mattei, Eric Enrico. "Review of Zelda 64." 1998. 12 Dec. 1998 <http://www.nintendojo.com/reviews/staff/zeldaem.htm>. Next Generation. "Review of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time." 24 Nov. 1998. 13 Dec. 1998 <http://www.next-generation.com/jsmid/reviews/437.php>. Stone, Allucquére Roseanne. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 1995. Veroni, Mikey. "Legendary." 1998. 10 Dec. 1998 <http://www.nintendojo.com/specials/zelda2/index.htm>. Zelda-related WWW sites -- Nintendojo -- Zelda Central -- Zelda 64 Central -- Zelda 64 Headquarters -- Zelda Headquarters -- Zelda's Shrine -- Hyrule: The Land of Zelda Citation reference for this article MLA style: John Banks. "Controlling Gameplay." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.5 (1998). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/game.php>. Chicago style: John Banks, "Controlling Gameplay," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 5 (1998), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/game.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: John Banks. (1998) Controlling gameplay. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(5). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/game.php> ([your date of access]).

Researchers increasingly exercise reflexivity with regard to their personal locations, research participants or chosen methodology. However reflexivity about the process of researching as a group, about what shapes research relations between researchers that are often colleagues and friends, seldom happens (Bryan 335, McGinn 559). This may be because writing one’s interpretation of what happened during the collaborative process is risky: as I critically assess the strategies we used inside the semi-private space of collaboration, I also publicly expose the power relations inside and outside of our collaborative practice. The context of our collaboration in a western academic institution as well as the differences between collaborate members (experiential, hierarchical, pedagogical) both structured and enriched our collaboration in specific ways as I will discuss later. The transformative potential of collaboration was critically emphasised in an article that ensued from our research (WASS Collective) and this led me to consider how the alternative forms of student/staff interaction that took place in our project can be seen as simultaneously challenging and reinforcing the disciplinary and hierarchical boundaries that structure higher education. This article, then, focuses on analytical reflections about the ways in which the powerful structures of higher education (enacted here through hierarchies of expertise) and practices of academia (particularly publication procedures) concurrently shape the transformative potential of ‘collaboration’ both as a research and a pedagogic strategy. The collaborative project this article draws on took place in and was funded by the Reinvention Centre, University of Warwick during October-December 2005 and was concerned with feminist activism in Higher Education. We were investigating the transformative potential of gender activism inside the ‘Warwick Anti-sexism Society’. As members of that society ourselves, we were sometimes researching ourselves. The initial decision to make the project collaborative was partly linked to the aims of the Reinvention Centre, which encourages students to become research active and, where possible, to reinvent the spaces in which learning takes place, but was also a reflection of our commitment to feminist ways of working. (Luke and Gore, Peck and Mink) The research collaborate was constituted of staff (2), postgraduates (4) and undergraduates (4) from a range of disciplines (English History, Sociology, Philosophy, Politics) who contributed to the research design, data gathering and analysis of the materials. The end of the project culminated in the submission of an article about our findings to an online sociology journal. As feminist activists, our understanding of ‘collaboration’ was rooted in principles of shared responsibility, equal participation, and a commitment to dialogic exchange as a strategy for change. The rationale for opting for a collaborative strategy was twofold: firstly to contest the usual practices of higher education research and secondly to enrich the research process through engaging multiple voices. This was reflected in how the research was conducted: tasks of data gathering were divided and agreed on according to personal preferences and skills-based expertise so that the workload was equalized and meetings were arranged on a weekly basis to share feedback on the research process and findings, as well as our thoughts on emergent themes, in a challenging yet supportive atmosphere. The final period of collaboration involved analysing data during a day-long group work session, and the writing-up stages included suggested amendments to the final draft from collaborating members. Our collaborative project, as an alternative learning and research strategy, challenged higher education hierarchies and practices in many ways, however, here we will focus on two of its most significant achievements. Firstly, our joint participation in a project regardless of our different locations, both disciplinarily and hierarchically, was disrupting the usual ways in which academic learning usually takes place (mostly through lectures or seminars), thus contesting the structural divide between students and academics, and therefore challenging the institutional framework of the university. Moreover, this challenge to the pedagogic exchange also disrupted the unequal power relations usually at play in typical classroom interaction: in our group discussions opinions were taken into account outside of the framework of reporting to, or seeking approval from an educator, but more in the context of dialogue as a learning strategy (Morley and Walsh). This was especially apparent in the last analytical phase of the project, where our creative voices were both in creative tension with another, whilst seeking to find ways to articulate our differences without losing the essence of the argument. Our egalitarian vision of collaboration was adhered to through to the last stage of our research and impacted on decisions about the authorship of the article we were submitting for publication. Although our names all appear on the paper, we opted for a collaborative name that reflected our affiliation with the student society that we were also researching: thus, the author of the paper became the Warwick Anti-Sexism Society Collective. We considered the option of listing our names alphabetically with et al. next to the first name, but felt that it would not reflect adequately our conceptualization of collaboration. Acquiring credit for research and publications is key to gaining academic achievement and is often a resource that is scarce for junior researchers and even more so for undergraduates. Our project, and particularly the decisions made with regard to authorship, successfully challenged the hierarchies of academia: our strategy of sharing credit uniformly for the research between academic staff and students enabled us to contest the prevalent practice of senior researchers being credited as the main authors. This also allowed us to shift the power distribution in the university in general by introducing and advocating a research practice whose rationale centres around students and junior researchers being recognised as authors on their own terms. As suggested, our collaboration was also constrained by the organisation and practices of higher education and in this sense, our research can be seen as highlighting the power structures of academia: ‘Throughout this research project, we have been forced to reflect on how we develop and implement praxis within and through the powerful hierarchies of academia.’ (WASS Collective 8) Reflecting on the wider constraints that structured our research output also helps to identify which factors are still limiting the transformative potential of collaboration. The first way in which our collaboration reinforced existing structures within academia was reflected in our collaborative discussions. Although power relations are inherent within any research process, considering how they are organised can shed light on how certain types of expression come to be privileged. The dialogic learning exchange that took place during group sessions enabled certain types of ‘dominant’ skills that are prevalent in higher education to become the main communicative strategy; this in turn allowed group members who were familiar with certain academic practices and therefore proficient in these skills to have more input in the generation of knowledge from the data. The hegemony of ‘dominant’ skills such as assertiveness, leadership, and rhetorical expertise continues to be part of the ways in which academia is structured through “the replication of taken-for-granted forms of dialogue and exclusion” (Knights 136). This is played out in day-to-day pedagogic practices where students are judged, and sometimes assessed on, their participation in seminars and performance in presentations (Fejes 31), but where listening and facilitating skills continue to be undervalued. In this sense the limits of our collaboration in creating innovative learning strategies lie right at the centre of our practice so that the communicative tools we used to collaborate were instrumental in partly reinstating the hierarchies of knowledge production (Mahony et al.). Our project can, however, also be seen as reinforcing existing hierarchies within academia because of the allocation of tasks during the research process. While all students (undergraduate and postgraduate) were involved in gathering data for the research, the members of staff were involved in the writing of the article and the production of a final draft that was open to amendments by all members of the collaborate before submission. This meant that responsibility was not divided equally between us, and that participation was not as egalitarian as we had hoped. While I am not implying the superiority of some part of the research process, it is clear that the development of high quality writing skills is key to establishing one’s position within academia. It could be argued that allowing for participants to develop and improve certain skills by matching them to specific tasks appeared to be connected to an already existing hierarchy. However, the writing strategy we adopted managed to partly resolve this division of labour issue. All members could suggest amendments to a draft crafted by the two staff members, changes were then discussed by all collaborate members via e-mail and eventually some agreed revisions were included into a later draft by the academic staff. This strategy not only allowed all members to have dialogic input into the article, but also formed part of a pedagogic exchange where junior researchers were part of the process of developing writing skills for publication purposes and gained insights into the craft of academic writing. This was developed through modelling best practice of the writing process: crafting notes of a joint thinking session into a first coherent draft of the article. The most significant constraint to the transformative potential of collaboration was the pressure of working towards a publishable piece of research. This was partly because of the contrast between the quite independent data gathering stages of the research and the more intensely collaborative writing-up stage. Most importantly publishing constraints impacted on our project in powerful ways. Firstly, we found that both the word limit and the format of the article restricted and sometimes erased the interesting complications and differences that were at the heart of our collaboration. For example, our different analyses of the data gathered were partly simplified into one consistent story, to preserve the coherence of our argument but also because of space issues. The stylistic demands of traditional academic journals could not fully capture the messiness and creative tensions arising from collaborative work. Disordered exchanges and mixed up thoughts were at the heart of the collaboration and in many ways created the fuel for the article. For instance, the process of collaboratively crafting a theoretical framework for the article proved a challenging and complex exercise whose strength lay in its emergence from differences and disorder, we were not able to render this fully in writing. The enterprise of publishing our research was also connected to and strengthened already existing academic structures and practices. For example, the likelihood of the article being accepted for publication relied at least partly on the expertise of academic staff and their familiarity with publication standards and procedures. The deadline-meeting pressure of producing an article meant that time constraints prevented us from producing the article through a joint writing session as we had initially planned. Even though we placed a high value on doing the research itself, as our project was geared towards a publication from the outset it was necessarily very much shaped by its demands. However, ways to alleviate these constraints could have been explored by employing alternative methods of reporting our research such as performances, fiction writing and diaries that may have allowed for a more comprehensive and multiple account of our research. Collaborative work between students and teachers is an empowering and difficult exercise that both strengthens and challenges the powerful hierarchies and practices of academia. In our case students’ learning and expertise have benefited from this project further through the continuation of the collaboration: members are currently involved in jointly revising the article according to referees’ report and are preparing papers that will be jointly presented at various UK postgraduate conferences this summer. Our project also revealed that practicing alternative strategies inside a single collaboration allowed for both expertise-led and student-led forms of work and enabled skills and merit to be more evenly distributed within academia. Most importantly, as we learnt through the production of an academic article, the incompatibility of this hierarchical vestige of academic practice with collective ways of working had powerful implications on our finished work. Hopefully this will constitute the site of future challenges to traditional practices in academia and will encourage alternative ways of producing publishable academic work. Notes Thank you to all members of the Wass collaborate for being supportive of my writing reflections about our project, and also for their insightful comments and encouragements about this piece. Thank you to Danny Beusch for his constructive and honest comments on an earlier draft of this article. References Bryan, L., et al. “Processing the Process: One Research Team’s Experience of a Collaborative Research Project.” Contemporary Family Therapy 24.2, (2002): 333-353. Fejes, Andreas et al. “Learning to Play the Seminar Game: Students’ Initial Encounters with a Basic Working Form in Higher Education.” Teaching in Higher Education 10.1(2005): 29-41. Knights, Ben. “Group Processes in Higher Education: The Uses of Theory.” Studies in Higher Education 20.2 (1995): 135-146. Luke, Carmen, and Jennifer Gore, eds. Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy. New York: Routledge, 1992. Mahony P., et al. “Threshold Assessment and Performance Management: Modernizing or Masculinizing Teaching in England?” Gender and Education 16. 2 (2004): 131-149. McGinn, Michelle, et al. “Living Ethics: A Narrative of Collaboration and Belonging in a Research Team.” Reflective Practice 6.4 (2005): 551-567. Morley, Louise, and Val Walsh. Feminist Academics: Creative Agents for Change. London: Taylor & Francis, 1995. Peck, Elizabeth, and Joanna Stevens Mink, eds. Common Ground: Feminist Collaboration in the Academy. Albany: State U of New York P, 1998. WASS Collective. “Gender Transformations in Higher Education.” Sociological Research Online 27.1 (2006). Citation reference for this article MLA Style Perrier, Maud. "Reflections on Practicing Student-Staff Collaboration in Academic Research: A Transformative Strategy for Change?." M/C Journal 9.2 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/08-perrier.php>. APA Style Perrier, M. (May 2006) "Reflections on Practicing Student-Staff Collaboration in Academic Research: A Transformative Strategy for Change?," M/C Journal, 9(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/08-perrier.php>.