Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Part 1: Theoretical Concerns -- 1. Video Games: A Popular Culture Phenomenon -- 2. Narratives in the Electronic Age -- 3. Video Games as Cultural Indicators -- 4. A Bio-Psycho-Social Perspective on Video Games -- Part 2: Analyzing Representative Games -- 5. Myst, Riven, and the Adventure Video Game -- 6. Lara Croft and the Problem of Gender in Video Games -- 7. Half-Life and the Problem of Monsters -- 8. Conclusions -- Bibliography -- Index

Video game accessibility may not seem of significance to some, and it may sound trivial to anyone who does not play video games. This assumption is false. With the digitalization of our culture, video games are an ever increasing part of our life. They contribute to peer to peer interactions, education, music and the arts. A video game can be created by hundreds of musicians and artists, and they can have production budgets that exceed modern blockbuster films. Inaccessible video games are analogous to movie theaters without closed captioning or accessible facilities. The movement to have accessible video games is small, unorganized and misdirected. Just like the other battles to make society accessible were accomplished through legislation and law, the battle for video game accessibility must be focused toward the law and not the market.

"Video Games offers a highly visual, example-led introduction to the video game industry, its context and practitioners. Filled with full-color, illustrated interviews and case studies, Bossom and Dunning give insights into the creative processes involved in making games, the global business behind the big budget productions, console and online markets, as well as web and app gaming and the (re)emergence of the indie game scene. Video Games is supported by web-based resources, exemplar work and extended interviews. Finally, both in print and online, the authors have selected links to relevant content, such as TED talks, studio addresses and other websites/blogs to help place the book in the wider games' industry community.Interviewees include: Ian Livingstone, OBE Dylan Beale, Chief Production Officer, Born Ready Games Alex Williams, Head of Games, Miniclip Anna Marsh - Project Manager/ Game Designer Lady Shotgun Aram Bartholl, Digital Artist Peter Molyneux, Founder 22 Cans David Bowman, 3D Artist, Blue Zoo"--

Introduction -- Sporting Moustaches, Riding Bulls, Flashing Bums - Dorian Pavus's Queer Odyssey -- The Sissy & the Cyborg--or How to Set the World on Fire in Fabulous Robes -- "Gotta Smuggle them All!"--Queer Détournement, Drag, and Border Politics -- Wandering through Paths and Pixels--the Queer Meandering of the Gaming Flâneur -- Flawless in Defeat--In and For the Margins -- Conclusion.

Previous research has shown that playing violent video games increased aggressive tendencies. However, as pointed out by the General Learning Model (GLM) (Buckley & Anderson, 2006), depending on their content, video games do not inevitably increase but may also decrease aggressive responses. Accordingly, the present research tested the hypothesis that playing prosocial video games decreases aggressive cognitions. In fact, playing a prosocial (relative to a neutral) video game reduced the hostile expectation bias (Experiment 1) and decreased the accessibility of antisocial thoughts (Experiment 2). Thus, these results lend credence to GLMs assumption that the effects of video game exposure depend to a great extent on the content of the game played.

Art museums can be complex, confounding, boring, exciting, absurd, and breathtaking. They can be sad, enlightening, hurtful, alive, dead, mainstream and avant-garde. They can, at once, be all of these things. Or they can be any one of these things separately. Museums can be more. Art museums might provide a place for contemplation, a place for social commentary, a place for political discourse, a place for lunch. They can identify us, deconstruct us, or illuminate our experiences for everyone. They can be an index for the health and vibrancy of our culture and our time. The Smithsonian American Art Museum provides such an index. American Art's collections and exhibitions compile the permanent record of our aspirations, character and imagination. The museum has been a leader in identifying and collecting significant and sometimes unconventional aspects of American visual expression. One of the more vibrant artistic expressions of late, (not only nationally, but globally), has been in and around video gaming. Video games are an undeniably important contributor to our cultural discourse. They cannot be marginalized because they might be commercial, popular, or competitive. The creative and artistic expressions captured in video games are vital to our cultural heritage. Video games are art.

This report draws from the 2008 Pew Teens, Video Games, and
Civics Survey, a national survey of youth and their experiences
with video games done in partnership with Amanda Lenhart at
the Pew Internet and American Life Project, with funding from
the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. That
survey led to the report, "Teens, Video Games, and Civics,"
which examines the nature of young people's video game play
as well as the context and mechanics of their play. In addition
to examining the relationship between gaming and youth civic
engagement, "Teens, Video Games, and Civics" also provides a
benchmark for video and online gaming among young people
on a national level and the first broad, impartial look at the size
and scope of young people's general gaming habits.

This study examined the effects of playing video games (Super Tetris) on the reaction time, cognitive/perceptual adaptability, and emotional well-being of 22 noninstitutionalized elderly people aged 69 to 90. Volunteers in an elderly community in the Netherlands were randomly assigned
to a videogameplaying experimental group or a nonplaying control group. The televisions of the 10 videogame players were provided with Nintendo SuperNes systems. Participants played Super Tetris 5 hours a week for 5 weeks, and maintained a log of their play. Before and after this play period,
measures of reaction time (Sternberg Test; Steinberg, 1969), cognitive/perceptual adaptability (Stroop Color Word Test; Stroop, 1935), and emotional well-being (self-report questionnaire) were administered. Playing video games was related to a significant improvement in the Sternberg reaction
time task, and to a relative increase in selfreported well-being. On the Stroop Color Word Test, both the experimental and control groups improved significantly, but the difference between groups was not statistically significant. The videogame-playing group had faster reaction times and felt
a more positive sense of well-being compared to their nonplaying counterparts. Consistent with previous research on video games and the elderly, the present study finds the strongest effects on measures of reaction time, and the weakest effects on cognitive performance measures. Explanations
and alternative interpretations of these findings are discussed.

Part of the Volume on the Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning Bogost's chapter offers an introduction to rhetoric in games. First he looks at the way games and their rules embody cultural values, following the work of Brian Sutton-Smith and looking in particular at a few examples from international sports. Then he discusses the relationship between games and ideology, showing how game play can unpack and expose deeply engrained social, cultural, and political assumptions. Finally he discusses the ways videogames make arguments. Drawing on the history of rhetoric, Bogost introduces a notion he calls "procedural rhetoric," the art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions.

This paper addresses the issue of video game localisation focusing on the different strategies to be used from the point of view of Translation Studies. More precisely, the article explores the possible relation between the translation approaches used in the field and the different genres or textual typologies of video games. As the narrative techniques and the story lines of video games have become more complex and well-developed, the adaptation of games entails a serious challenge for translators. Video games have evolved into multimodal and multidimensional products and new approaches and insights are required when studying the adaptation of games into different cultures. Electronic entertainment provides an interesting and barely explored corpus of analysis for Translation Studies, not only from the point of view of localization but also concerning audiovisual translation. ; Este artículo analiza el campo de la localización de videojuegos centrándose en las diferentes estrategias utilizadas desde el punto de vista de los Estudios de Traducción. En concreto, el artículo estudia la posible relación entre los enfoques traductológicos utilizados en este campo y los diferentes géneros y tipologías textuales de los videojuegos. La mayor complejidad en las técnicas narrativas y el argumento de los videojuegos ha provocado que su adaptación proporcione un reto considerable para los traductores. Los videojuegos han evolucionado hasta convertirse en productos multimodales y multidimensionales, por lo que nuevos enfoques son necesarios cuando se estudia su adaptación a diferentes culturas. El entretenimiento electrónico proporciona un corpus de análisis interesante y apenas explorado para los Estudios de Traducción, no solo desde el punto de vista de la localización sino también en lo que respecta a la traducción audiovisual. ; This research is supported by the grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation FFI2009-08027, Subtitling for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and Audio Description: objective tests and future plans, and also by the Catalan Government funds 2009SGR700.

From the middle-20th century to today, video games have grown from an idiosyncratic interest of computer programmers and engineers to a globally dominant form of media entertainment. Advances in technology and creativity have combined to present players with interactive experience that vary in their cognitive, emotional, physical, and social complexity. That video games constitute co-authored experiences - dialogues between the player and the system - is at least one explanation for their appeal, but this co-authorship brings with it an enhanced set of requirements for the player's attention. For this thematic issue, researchers were invited to debate and examine the cognitive, emotional, physical, and social demands of video games; their work (as well as the impetus for this work) is summarized below.