Techno-Giants: The Giant, the Machine and the Human

The relationship between humankind and technology is fundamental, but also a longstanding source of unease, particularly as that relationship has become ever more intimate and irreversible. In this paper, I connect this age-old anxiety with the age-old figure of the giant, a monster similarly intertwined with ancient questions on the boundaries of humanity. I focus on two examples: the Human-Reaper larva in Mass Effect 2 and Liberty Prime in Fallout 3 and 4. Although different in approach, these examples demonstrate a use of a phenomenon I call the ‘techno-giant’ to explore and reflect the powerful anxieties in our cultures to do with the future of the human– technology relationship. In particular, both examples expose the human–nonhuman boundary as being exceeding difficult to define and place, despite a constant desire to. The figure of the giant offers a powerful focal point for these representations.

Uncovering Machine Vision in Videogames

Star Ocean: Till the End of Time; a Nietzschian approach to games

The Toy is the Message: materiality, imagination and play objects

Defragmentation and Mashup: Ludic Mashup as a Design Approach

The history of technological progress has involved a repeated application of abstraction, of encapsulation, specialization and composition. Film, for example, has moved from a specialized field of equipment and concepts only available to trained professionals, into a field which has been commoditized and composited, and made available to almost everyone with basic equipment. New media has become more modular and thus passes into the hands of users who rely less on crafting from scratch and rely more on pre-built, readymade components that can be assembled. This “pulling together”, i.e. this “mashup” or “remix” approach is already trivially true in the field of games in the modding community, which may introduce new 3D models, images, music or even new code blocks which change behaviors. These are very important, but signal a future move toward more sophisticated, pre-packaged modular blocks which players might assemble on their own in a more controlled manner. This might include swappable A.I. algorithms, interchangeable in-game weapons, interoperable “rulesets” and other key game entities that are normally thought of as being integral to a specific, single game. While mashup, assemblage and perhaps actor-network-theory has highlighted the ways in which a game played in context is more than the sum of its parts, this paper looks to the future of game design, in which players can assemble (on-the-fly) a set of game components. Such a situation is a defragmenting of ready-made ludic chunks, resulting in unpredictable and chaotic games created by players, and forces designers to consider their role less as a creator of a game in toto, but also as designers of interoperable ludic components.

“A Totally Different World”: Playing and Learning in Multi-User Virtual Environments

This study examines children’s perceptions of their experiences in two science-oriented multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs), River City and Whyville. Sixth-grade students were asked how they would rate and compare different features of these environments. The children rated River City as providing greater educational benefits but preferred communicating with real people in Whyville as opposed to River City’s computer-based agents. They felt more integrated into the community in Whyville, where they enjoyed equal participation with other members, than as guests to the virtual town of River City. Finally, children rated their enjoyment at customizing their unique Whyville avatars higher than when selecting a pre-constructed avatar in River City; however, they rated both MUVEs highly when asked about seeing their avatars onscreen.

“A Totally Different World”: Playing and Learning in Multi-User Virtual Environments

This study examines children’s perceptions of their experiences in two science-oriented multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs), River City and Whyville. Sixth-grade students were asked how they would rate and compare different features of these environments. The children rated River City as providing greater educational benefits but preferred communicating with real people in Whyville as opposed to River City’s computer-based agents. They felt more integrated into the community in Whyville, where they enjoyed equal participation with other members, than as guests to the virtual town of River City. Finally, children rated their enjoyment at customizing their unique Whyville avatars higher than when selecting a pre-constructed avatar in River City; however, they rated both MUVEs highly when asked about seeing their avatars onscreen.

It’s no videogame: news commentary and the second gulf war

This study analyzes U.S. news media coverage of the second Gulf War, to determine how individuals used the term ‘videogame’ in reference to the war. By studying how the news media itself sought to praise or criticize coverage of the war as being un/like videogames, we can see how videogames continue to be constructed in popular media in troublesome ways. Analysis, for example, shows that use of the term “videogame” points to coverage that (1) focuses on sophisticated technologies, (2) is devoid of human suffering, and/or (3) seems somehow fake or non-serious. Use of the term is largely pejorative and dismissive, reflecting (and reinforcing) popular views of videogames as lacking context and seriousness. Finally, the study examines the military’s own history of game-related activities, and how that context creates striking paradoxes in such usages.

Play: A Procrustean Probe

The brigand Procrustes dispatched his victims by stretching or trimming their bodies in order that they be made to fit his bed. Considered as a scientific theory, McLuhan’s four “laws of media” risk violating research in a dangerously Procrustean manner. Conceived as an exploratory probe, however, his “tetrad” can provide illuminating insights into the social and psychological effects of individual technologies. Applied to digital games, the tetrad reveals the particular ways in which this distinctive cultural form enhances diverse modes of play, obsolesces traditional television viewing, retrieves lost means of participation, and reverses into pervasive and persistent play. The tetrad helps us to situate play within the broader technological and cultural environment.

The Effects of a Consumer-Oriented Multimedia Game on the Reading Disorders of Children with ADHD

Certain interventions that ameliorate impairments in reading and attention disorders operate on the physiological level and, therefore, lend themselves to technology-based applications. This study investigates the effects of Dance Dance Revolution (DDR)—a consumer-oriented, multimedia game—on the reading disorders of sixth-grade students with ADHD. It was hypothesized that by matching movements to visual and rhythmic auditory cues, DDR may strengthen neural networks involved in reading and attention and thereby improve student outcomes. Sixty-two students, randomly assigned to treatment and control groups, participated in the test-retest study using the Process Assessment of the Learner: Testing Battery for Reading and Writing as a measure of reading impairment. The results suggest that the treatment may have had an effect on participants’ ability to perform on the Receptive Coding subtest. Furthermore, the results suggest a positive relationship between the number of treatment sessions a student completed and gains made on Receptive Coding and Finger Sense Recognition subtests.