Video Game Studies Research Articles

Interaction criticism

research-article Share on Interaction criticism: three readings of an interaction design, and what they get us Authors: Jeffrey Bardzell Indiana University Indiana UniversityView Profile , Jay Bolter Georgia Institute of Technology Georgia Institute of TechnologyView Profile , Jonas Löwgren Malmö University Malmö UniversityView Profile Authors Info & Claims InteractionsVolume 17Issue 2March + April 2010 pp 32–37https://doi.org/10.1145/1699775.1699783Published:01 March 2010Publication History 26citation2,151DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations26Total Downloads2,151Last 12 Months511Last 6 weeks101 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my Alerts New Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

Developing a methodology for corpus-based computer game studies

Video games have become a huge success in contemporary pop culture, both as ludic devices and as narrative instruments. Because of their immense popularity they are also the didactic means in which a number of social constructs are spread and perpetuated. This is particularly true in the case ofDiabloandWorld of Warcraft, two games produced by Blizzard Entertainment Inc. This study uses a hybrid method to study both games as texts, combining Fairclough's (2003) approach to critical discourse analysis and Corpus Linguistics. The main corpus was compiled by gathering texts about the characters in these two computer games, and their accompanying visual representations, from a) official Blizzard websites and b) user-edited websites and forums. Further data was gathered through the application of a questionnaire about male and female characters in these two games to fifty participants, and by playing each game and recording in-game interactions with non-playing characters and with other players. The linguistic data was examined using a concordancer, and then analysed following Fairclough's (2003) approach. The devised methodology places a strong emphasis in the correlation between linguistic and visual data. Through this correlation and analysis it was determined that there is a strong discourse of gender difference operating within these two games.

The Assemblage of Play

This article explores the notion of assemblage for computer game studies. Drawing on this framework, the author proposes a multifaceted methodological approach to the study of games and the play experience. Drawing on user-created mods (modifications) in the game World of Warcraft and an analysis of a raid encounter there, a discussion is undertaken about the relationship between technological artifacts, game experience, and sociality. Primary to the consideration is an argument for the centralizing the interrelation of a variety of actors and nodes when analyzing lived play in computer games.

Epistemic action: A measure for cognitive support in tangible user interfaces?

The quality of user interfaces is often measured in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction. In the area of tangible user interfaces, epistemic--or exploratory--action has been suggested as a fourth measure of quality. In computer game studies (Kirsh & Maglio, 1992, 1994), players used epistemic actions to modify the environment, which helped them determine the correct position of blocks with less mental effort. There, the researchers found that it might be easier to physically modify the external world and then interpret it than to compute and interpret a new state mentally. Specifically, epistemic action may be a relevant concept when researching tangible user interfaces incorporating physical handles. This article examines the potential relations between the three traditional measures of usability and epistemic actions using three spatial planning tools with different degrees of physicality. The results indicate that epistemic action is a measure that is independent of the three traditional usability measures: efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction. However, epistemic action does not increase linearly with the physicality of a user interface, and it probably is a more complex measure that is also related to the reusability of the interface. Further research is needed to fully understand the potential of this measure.

Technologies Between Games and Culture

This article introduces and situates the ensuing collection of four essays on the theme of games and technology. It argues the need for videogame studies to develop a more rigorous and focused perspective on the theorization of technology as it relates to research into games and culture. The ``and'' in games and culture cannot begin to be understood comprehensively without a thinking of the profound reliance of both terms on technology. Players and their cultural and collective involvements should be taken not as stable categories of research and development but as processes of becoming intertwined with lineages of technological development and disjunction which are the condition of these processes. Video games are not the least component and proponent of these technological lineages today. The essays collected in this section of the journal issue are described and characterized as offering such a focus on ludic technicity through their diverse but intersecting considerations of game hardware, software, game play, and other practices appropriating game technologies.

Twenty‐first century game studies in the academy: libraries and an emerging discipline

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore and emphasize the impact of academic computer game studies programs on library services and collections.Design/methodology/approachA review of the literature related to the relationship between gamers, game studies, and libraries, precedes discussion of the background of academic computer game studies programs. The potential challenges and opportunities concerning collection development, information literacy instruction, and reference within academic libraries are addressed along with highlights of emerging best practices.FindingsThe paper provides analysis of game studies as an emerging academic discipline and of the scholarly communication within this field. It also highlights emerging practices within academic librarians serving students and faculty in this field.Research limitations/implicationsBecause game studies is a new discipline, best practices to meet users' needs are just beginning to be established for academic libraries. Further research is needed in the area of information‐seeking behavior, perception of game studies' students and faculty, and their information literacy skills.Practical implicationsThis is an opportunity for librarians who serve students and faculty in game studies to learn about the history of this discipline and what several academic librarians are currently doing to meet their needs in collection development, information literacy instruction, and reference services.Originality/valueWhile discussing the history of game studies as an academic program, the paper also highlights the issues related to library services and collections for the emerging academic discipline of game studies in an effort to support academic librarians who work with game studies students and faculty.

Computer games application within alternative classroom goal structures: cognitive, metacognitive, and affective evaluation

This article reports findings on a study of educational computer games used within various classroom situations. Employing an across-stage, mixed method model, the study examined whether educational computer games, in comparison to traditional paper-and-pencil drills, would be more effective in facilitating comprehensive math learning outcomes, and whether alternative classroom goal structures would enhance or reduce the effects of computer games. The findings indicated that computer games, compared with paper-and-pencil drills, were significantly more effective in promoting learning motivation but not significantly different in facilitating cognitive math test performance and metacognitive awareness. Additionally, this study established that alternative classroom goal structures mediated the effects of computer games on mathematical learning outcomes. Cooperative goal structure, as opposed to competitive and individualistic structures, significantly enhanced the effects of computer games on attitudes toward math learning.

Remembering (Forgetting) Baudrillard

Baudrillard, the “most famous theorist of simulation,” exists on the margins of the emerging field of computer game studies where he most often appears as a perfunctory reference to “postmodern” theory that the emerging discourse supercedes in its passage to specificity. By turns strange and symptomatic, the relegation of his thought to marginality where it could have been considered as central enables the unfolding of orthodox positions in game studies of both instrumental and conventionally critical hue. This article remembers the profound challenge to conceptual work in the era of computer simulation that Baudrillard posed in his writings, a challenge perhaps too quickly forgotten in the model-building race of games studies' early years.

An exploration of adolescents’ perceptions of videogame realism

An attempt is made to translate the concept of perceived realism from the domain of general media studies to the domain of videogame studies. In order to make such a translation, a thorough knowledge and integration is required of the simulation aspects that distinguish videogames from older media such as film or television. The different meanings adolescents attribute to videogame realism were assessed by means of a series of semi‐structured in‐depth interviews. Thirty‐two moderate to heavy videogame players were interviewed, whose age ranged between 16 and 19 years. Five dimensions of observed videogame realism were identified: factuality, authenticity, character involvement, virtual experience and perceptual pervasiveness.

Book Review: Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds; ; The Handbook of Computer Game Studies

Book Review: Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds; ; The Handbook of Computer Game Studies

Handbook of computer game studies

Review of Joost Raessens and Jeffrey Goldstein: Handbook of computer game studies. Cambridge, Massachusetts – London, England: MIT Press 2005. By more than 450 large-format pages the publishers offer a view of current research in the field of “game studies”. With almost no exception, the 27 articles are of high quality. Readers, however, who are familiar with the works of the single authors are offered only little new information. Unfortunately, the authors mostly focus on western, particularly US-American games and players. But still the book can be recommended both as a consolidating introduction and a textbook.

Ludology

Ludology

Vertiginous Mediations: Sketches for a Dynamic Pluralism in the Study of Computer Games

There is much to be learnt if we situate the study of computer games in a broader ‘ecology’, combining media ecologies with sensory, political and other ecologies in a ‘transdisciplinary metamethodology’ (Genosko, 2003). This methodology enables a better understanding of both games themselves and of what games can tell us more generally about our new hyper-mediated lives. The paper departs from Félix Guattari's concept of ‘three ecologies’ (here taken to include the technical aspects) of self, socius and environment. Sketches are drawn from recent research into computer games that allows for the diverse, often experimental, ecological niches of games. The first is a sketch of games’ historical contexts, crucially the concurrent rise of capital, aesthetics as a problem of judgment, and industrial technics. Further sketches are of games’ activation of ‘relational histories’ (Harley, 1996: 108), the dizziness of their mediations, and what Guattari called a ‘transdisciplinary metamethodology’ as a response to games’ vertiginous mediations.

Computer game studies at Northumbria University

At Northumbria University we have set up what we believe is the only dedicated Master of Arts degree in Computer Game Studies. People who have played games for a long time, or have worked in the industry might see an opportunity here to reflect on their activities and to use humanities tools (literary analysis; cultural theory etc.) to explore its significance in their lives and in society as a whole.

"You Have Unleashed a Horde of Barbarians!": Fighting Indians, Playing Games, Forming Disciplines

“You Have Unleashed a Horde of Barbarians!”: Fighting Indians, Playing Games, Forming Disciplines Christopher Douglas Abstract We are about four or five years into the formation of a new discipline, that of digital game studies. At this early stage, digital game studies is necessarily and self-consciously concerned with its own formation, and recent commentators have differed over whether digital games should become part of an already existing discipline like cinema, literary, new media, or cultural studies or whether it needs to resist such "colonizing" attempts and develop into a discipline of its own, with a coherent object of study and institutional support. This essay agrees with the warnings against the kind of methodological blindnesses likely to result from such colonizations--that games will be understood as just a more interactive kind of film or narrative--but argues nonetheless that each of these disciplines (and others) is likely to have valuable conceptual tools that we need to carefully adapt for game studies. Moreover, it's sometimes precisely the historical baggage of the old disciplines that provides insight into the structure of game use. This essay argues that the ideological content of one series of influential games, Sid Meier's Civilization series, comes to light when the historical, disciplinary blindness to forms of American imperialism in American literary studies are considered. The Civilization games transform and display the symbolic Native presence in the land whose accidental, terrestrial effects in the games must be destroyed in order for the player to win the game; however, and moving beyond the kind of ideological representations found in film or narrative, in these games the users must perform their logic, a logic which is coded into the very rules of the game. Games like Civilization thus rehearse a series of lessons about national destiny, race and colonization, and the moral fitness of civilizations and individuals. --cd We are about four or five years into the formation of a new discipline, digital game studies. Though by one account computer games have been around for more than four decades (Aarseth), and by another computer and video game sales in the United States are rivaling movie box office sales (Frauenfelder), academic attention to the medium has come relatively recently. At this early stage, digital game studies is necessarily and self-consciously concerned with its own formation, and is heavily engaged with an argument about whether this new phenomenon is to be swallowed by already existing disciplines, or whether it needs to and could develop into a discipline of its own, with a coherent object of study and institutional support. 2001 was an interesting year in this regard. Espen Aarseth, whose Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature aims to unseat “hypertext” as the paradigm for studying electronic literature, editorializes in the inaugural issue of the new online journal Game Studies that “2001 can be seen as the Year One of Computer Game Studies as an emerging, viable, international, academic field.” As editor of Game Studies, Aarseth notes “the very early stage we are still in, where the struggle of controlling and shaping the theoretical paradigms has just started.” His editorial both invites and warns, however, as he cautions against the “colonizing attempts” of other disciplines: “Making room for a new field usually means reducing the resources of the existing ones, and the existing fields will also often respond by trying to contain the new area as a subfield. Games are not a kind of cinema, or literature, but colonizing attempts from both these fields have already happened, and no doubt will happen again.” The problem, Aarseth argues, is the kind of methodological blindnesses that would be imported into digital game studies along with other baggage. While “we all enter this field from somewhere else, from anthropology, sociology, narratology, semiotics, film studies, etc., and the political and ideological baggage we bring from our old field inevitably determines and motivates our approaches,” Aarseth envisions “an independent academic structure” (of which Game Studies would surely stand as one institution) as the only viable way for digital game studies to avoid obscuring its object through inappropriate lenses borrowed from other fields. Also in 2001, the October issue of PMLA contained an article on the...

Towards computer game studies

It is relatively stress-free to write about computer games as nothing too much has been said yet, and almost anything goes. The situation is pretty much the same when it comes to writing about games and gaming in general. The sad fact with alarming cumulative consequences is that they are under-theorized; there are Huizinga, Caillois and Ehrmann of course, and libraries full of board game studies,in addition to game theory and bits and pieces of philosophy – most notably those of Wittgenstein – but they won't get us very far with computer games. So if there already is or soon will be a legitimate field for computer game studies, this field is also very open to intrusions and colonisations from the already organized scholarly tribes. Resisting and beating them is the goal of our first survival game in this paper, as what these emerging studies need is independence, or at least relative independence.

PILOT-SPION: A Computer Game for German Students

Exploiting for educational purposes the motivational possibilities of games has been a goal of teachers since Classical times.2 In our own day, the marriage of computers and games seems, if anything, likely to heighten the fascination humans feel for games. There are a number of reasons why this should be so, aside from the novelty of the machines. Computers are an always-patient, accurate partner to their human users; can play their games at varying speeds according to the wish of the designer and player; never forget or change rules; and will play as often and for as long as the human likes. In addition they can nowbe programmed to mimic intelligence; to repond to, and answer in, ordinary language; and altogether to offer a most satisfying illusion that one is playing with another human. Paradoxically, the satisfaction may come more from the knowledge that it is an illusion than from any possible belief that the illusion is reality. Computer games are especially clear illustrations of how the unique capabilities of computers can be used to create motivating environments, writes Thomas W. Malone in a study of computer games used in education.3 While the arcade games involving fast-moving visuals seem of slight interest to the foreign-language teaching profession,4 adventure games,5 in which words and situations are the currency, seem a promising avenue for educational application. The SPION project, in which I am involved as part of a research group, has been described in detail elsewhere.6 Briefly, SPION is the first game in a computer game system we are designing and implementing for learners of German. It uses techniques of artificial intelligence to create a model of language understanding by computer in an adventure game set in Berlin. We have chosen games as our research vehicle because a game offers a conveniently delimited world with a manageable number of words and contexts. A game structure can be enlarged incrementally by adding language structures and situations, thus enabling us to enlarge our language analysis incrementally also. Applied in foreign language teaching, games offer the possibility of testing the language understanding model concretely, as well as the possibility of being a useful, because highly motivating, learning mode.