Digital Library Publication Archives

Search results for: http://www.digra.org/dl/db/11312.13136.pdf

- 1506 articles or papers

 

Adolescent thinking and online writing after the use of commercial games in the classroom

Lacasa Pilar Martínez Rut del Castillo Héctor
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This study focuses on the connections between young people’s everyday experiences with video games and social networks, and the formal high school curriculum. We assume that digital literacy combines elements of traditional literacy and media education with other dimensions founded on the idea of a participatory culture. The research has been designed from an ethnographic point of view. It has been carried out in a secondary school environment. The main dimensions of the study were the following: participants, 18 boys and girls, the teacher and the research team; the school and, the activities which were organized around the video game, Spore. Our data are discussed taking into account some of Diana Kuhn’s (2005) contributions when raising the issue of education for thought. Intellectual skills related to scientific knowledge must be referred to abilities of inquiry and argumentation both of which are carried out in a social context and associated to contextual values.

 

Just a Cyberplace The rules in videogames: between Ontology and Epistemology

Mosca Ivan
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

In this essay you will find a theory about the relation of videogames and rules. The analysis illustrates the Social Ontology Project founded by John Searle and introduces some new concepts, such as Gameframe, Cyberplace and Interactive Figmentum. After some theoretical arguments you will find a double grill to categorize player types regarding to rules.

 

The professional identity of gameworkers revisited. A qualitative inquiry on the case study of German professionals

Wimmer Jeffrey Sitnikova Tatiana
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

The phenomena of computer games and the plethora of game cultures have already been drawing attention of researchers for many years, whereas the people behind computer games – the gameworkers – undeservingly remained in the shadows until quite recently. The lack of information about this workforce and its professional identity makes this research object especially interesting. The analysis relies on a pilot study about the issue of the professional identity of gameworkers, which aimed to dig deeper with the means of qualitative research. During that project nine German gameworkers were interviewed and an attempt to give an in-depth description of their professional identity was made. The study shows that the respondents have a very strong coherence with their profession and perceive themselves as a part of their profession and the team/studio they work with/at. The most salient reason for this is the deep interest the respondents have in computer games (for both making and playing games).

 

MUsE – A Framework for Reception-based Gaming Research

Schultheiss Daniel
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

Game studies are approached from very different faculty cultures and research perspectives. As the reception based view usually examines the process of game usage and its environment, there are still several different entries into the field. Many theoretical approaches and empirical studies concentrate on single phases or theoretical constructs of game reception. Sometimes this is done very detailed, sometimes in a more superficial way. This article delivers a more holistic model for reception based gaming research called MUsE, which describes a whole cycle of game usage and also can be used in longitudinal study designs. Additionally, results of a first prototype study are presented at a glance.

 

Understanding Player Experience using Sequential Analysis

Soppitt Michael Mcallister Graham
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

Video game user researchers use many methods to help understand the player experience. Most of these methods involve asking the player to describe how they felt either during gameplay (causing interruption), or after the session (biased by self-report). Such methods are not ideal as they required the player to (1) have been aware of the experience, (2) recall it accurately, and (3) communicate these feelings to the moderator. This paper presents a new method which aims to better understand the player experience by using Sequential Analysis. The advantages of using this technique are that it uses unconscious natural behaviour (player’s facial state) as an indicator of internal player experience, and importantly, it shows how the player’s state changes over time.

 

Games and machinima in adolescents’ classrooms

Lacasa Pilar Martínez Rut Méndez Laura
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This presentation identifies innovative educational practices when commercial video games, combined with other new or traditional technologies are present in the secondary education classrooms. The major goal of the project was to generate new knowledge about how to design scenarios, using commercial video games as the starting point, which may contribute to the development of new literacies when students work with specific curriculum contents. Our data has been analyzed exploring the machinima productions in order to analyze the relationships between the video productions, the game and, the gamers’ perspective about his/her own activity. To examine these strategies several dimensions have been considered in order to compare different approaches to machinima.

 

‘Can’t Stop The Signal?’ The Design of the Dutch Firefly LARP

Lamerichs Nicolle
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

In this paper, I analyze the design of a Dutch live-action role-playing game (LARP), based on the television series Firefly. I discuss it as part of the recent participatory culture in which fans mediate existing fiction into other products such as games. Game studies have often bypassed types of gaming that are initiated by players themselves by taking professional and digital games as their starting points. By focussing on a local example of a fan game, I hope to provide new insights in game design and play. After disseminating between fan and game practices, and sketching some of the previous research thereof, I shall elaborate upon the design of the game in four ways by focussing on the designer, the context, the participants and its construction of meaningful play. I argue that the fan LARP displays a particular design perspective based on the co-creative ethos of role-playing and fandom itself. Whereas existing research isolates the actors that are relevant in game practices, designer, player and fan modes clearly interrelate here.

 

Kairotopos: A reflection on Greek space/time concepts as design implications in Minecraft

Lenhart Isaac
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

The game of Minecraft provides an open virtual environment which is somewhere between game and pseudo-game framework (at the current level of development) in which the player is free to explore, investigate and change the world around them. The “virtual environment” of Minecraft naturally involves a description and participation of a spatial and temporal framework in which the player is placed, and presents a unique set of qualities that cross into several categories of Greek notions of the meaning of space and time This paper first describes the historical concepts that the ancient Greeks used for space and time and discusses their links to the concepts of theoretical and technical skills. These concepts are then examined in combination and individually. Finally, this paper describes the mechanics and affordances within the Minecraft environment that are either affected by these spatiotemporal terms or which have impact on the spatiotemporal experiences of the player.

 

Forbidden or Promising Fruit? An experimental study into the effects of warning labels on the purchase intention of digital gamers

Decock Jan Van Looy Jan
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

Using a forced choice paradigm, in a 2 (age: -18, +18) x 4 (label: no label, 18+, violence label, extreme label) x 2 (cover type: soft, hard) mixed factorial design, this study was able to experimentally show the effects of warning labels on the preference of game covers. Warning labels made these game covers more desirable. This effect was only found for subjects of minor age (12 to 17 years old) and not for adult subjects (aged 18 and more). No difference was found in effects of evaluative or descriptive ratings: both age label and content label had the same attracting effect on game covers. Given these results a revision of the process behind the forbidden fruit effect, and the role of reactance in it, seems in order.

 

Playful Crowdsourcing for Energy- Efficient Automotive Navigation

Niesenhaus Joerg Muenter Daniel Hussein Tim Ziegler Juergen
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

In this paper, we describe the work-in-progress state of a playful simulation using crowdsourcing to gather data of efficient routes for automotive navigation in the context of electro mobility. Users will contribute well-known routes of their local area by playing the simulation. The routes will be evaluated with regard to height structure, traffic volume, and traffic signal frequency in the context of the daytime, season, and further time-dependent events. Based on this data, the simulation will be able to calculate the most energy-efficient route.