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Most of the studies on violence in digital games have investigated its effects on arousal or aggression. Little attention has been paid to how in-game violence is actually perceived and evaluated. To investigate this issue we conducted two experimental studies (N = 30 and N = 74) in which participants either played or watched a violent shooter game and reported how they perceived and evaluated the violent content. Results showed that playing the games led to an increased awareness for in-game violence, but also to less-negative subjective evaluations of the violent content. Gaming frequency had a negative effect on both the perception and evaluation of in-game violence, suggesting a desensitization effect. The results of our studies illustrate that individual perceptions and evaluations of violence in digital games have to be taken into account when studying their effects. Implications for further research and the system of age ratings are discussed based on our findings.

Computer games have now been around nearly forty years. The pace at which computer games have transformed has been so fast that at times it is exceeding thoughtful evaluation and criticism. Since the beginning of the 2000's, academic understanding of this phenomenon has been trying to catch up with this pace. Feminist studies has also been observing computer gaming, theorizing it as another male-dominated cultural domain. Most of the feminist inquiries in this area have focused on representations of gender and violence in games. Focus on gender and identity relationships between the game players and game characters, has been relatively small. What mostly missing from the current research, is the gender transgressions and alternative subjectivities that might hold political meanings besides the personal ones. Virtual reality communities and massively multiplayer role-playing online games challenge the ideas of identity and gender. As the computer gaming world grows larger, gender representations are becoming more fluid and ambiguous; the possibilities of subversive readings of gender and alternative subjectivities expand.

Inwiefern spiegeln Videospiele und ihre Kultur gesellschaftliche Machtverhältnisse? Vor welchen Herausforderungen steht die Spieleindustrie und welche strukturellen Mechanismen prägen sie? Wie können virtuelle Welten utopische Möglichkeitsräume eröffnen? Erstmalig im deutschsprachigen Raum versammeln die Beiträger*innen kritische Perspektiven auf herrschende Ideologien sowie die Produktion und die Nutzung eines Mediums, dessen gesellschaftliche Relevanz stetig wächst. Dabei finden sie Zugänge über Kunst, Wissenschaft sowie Journalismus, um Videospiele im Spannungsfeld von Kapitalismus, Patriarchat und Kolonialismus unter die Lupe zu nehmen.

Inspiriert von den Vordenkern des amerikanischen Pragmatismus - William James, John Dewey und Richard Rorty - entwickelt Mike Sandbothe ein normativ nachhaltiges Konzept von Medien und Philosophie. Anhand exemplarischer Fallstudien zeigt er auf, wie sich dies in den Kultur- und Medienwissenschaften, den Bildungs- und Sozialwissenschaften sowie in der Psychologie nutzen lässt. Seine pragmatische Medienphilosophie kann dazu beitragen, die Betriebssysteme unserer Bildungsanstalten mit Hilfe von achtsamkeits- und körperbasierten sowie spirituellen Praktiken gesundheitsförderlich zu transformieren.

Welche Qualität haben Medien? Sind sie es "wert", ausgezeichnet zu werden? Nachdem es in den 1960er Jahren sensationell war, mit dem Grimme-Preis Qualität im Fernsehen zu würdigen, kam als große Innovation vor 20 Jahren der Grimme Online Award hinzu, um hochwertige Internetangebote auszuzeichnen - und seit zehn Jahren würdigt der Deutsche Radiopreis Qualität und Stärken von Hörfunkprogrammen. Die Beitragenden des Bandes beleuchten erstmals übergreifend die Hintergründe rund um Qualität und Medien aus Sicht des Grimme-Instituts, mit Blick auf seine Jurys sowie aus wissenschaftlicher Warte.

Digital networks are transforming the way in which our built environment is planned, designed, and developed. Whilst many have heralded this technology as a solution to the problems of citizen engagement and participation in planning and design processes, the state of public participation in this field still arguably leaves much to be desired. In the last decade, academics and practitioners have explored the possibilities of 3D, multi-user, digital environments in planning and urban design contexts. These "inhabited virtual spaces", where stakeholders are represented through digital avatars, hold the possibility of engaging a much wider audience in participatory processes, creating a more democratic and bottom-up process, and improving the outcome of community consultations. These multi-user environments can take many forms - and among the most promising are game environments. The benefits of using play and games in creative tasks and decision-making have been widely recorded, leading to the developing field of "serious games", games which have been designed to accomplish a serious task. Despite this, there has been a reluctance to entertain the idea of appropriating more commercial and widely played games for serious tasks, rather than designing ones from scratch. One game in particular, Minecraft, has shown promising results as part of a participatory design methodology pioneered by UN-Habitat and the Block by Block Foundation. Through an analysis of this program, I will explore how the videogame Minecraft might be used as an innovative tool to improve public participation in urban design, whilst offering a virtual alternative to traditional models of consultation.

How to study a media object on the web that is at the same time a documentary, a reportage, and a game which combines both fiction and non-fiction elements? The author digs into the discursive and material structures and infrastructures of serious games, text-adventures, newsgames, interactive maps, and data visualizations, in which refugees and migrants become the subject of humanitarian discourse. Although the goal is to arouse empathy towards migrants, these "interactive practices" distinguish who is vulnerable and who is not. It supports the idea of a "migratory crisis", which, the author argues, is actually the symptom of a deeper crisis of the humanitarian system itself.

Während sich die motivischen Parallelen zwischen Artusepen und Computerrollenspielen förmlich aufdrängen, erwartet man mediale Gemeinsamkeiten eher nicht. Doch im agonalen Handlungsschwerpunkt mittelalterlicher Texte scheint eine ludonarrative Logik auf, die mit der Interaktivität von Rollenspielen korrespondiert. Protagonist*innen werden Avatare, Lesende zu Spielenden. Totgeglaubtes mittelalterliches Erzählen kehrt wieder im neuen Medium. Ob Witcher oder Wigalois - Franziska Ascher webt ein dichtes Netz an Querverbindungen zwischen den historisch disparaten Gegenständen. Game Studies und Germanistische Mediävistik treten dabei in Dialog und profitieren voneinander.

With an emphasis on virtual engagement, creativity, and diverse competitive platforms, eSport is being explored as a new activity to achieve development outcomes within the Sport for Development (SfD) movement (Kidd, 2008). Research has shown the potential of eSport to provide opportunities for social interaction, bonding, and building social capital (Trepte, Reinecke, & Juechems, 2012). This exploratory research, conducted in 2019, examines the current eSport landscape and utility of eSport as a space to enact social inclusion and more specifically, in-line with SfD agendas and goals, positive experiences for women and girls. Three interactive focus groups were conducted in the UK and USA (N = 65) involving key stakeholders, including game publishers, SfD organisations, eSport teams, tournament organisers, and gamers. Supplementary interviews (N = 16) were conducted to allow for richer accounts and perspectives to be examined. Findings exposed the contested notion of social inclusion within online gaming communities as evidenced by the dominant masculine dynamics of digital spaces. Consistently those engaged in eSport claimed social inclusion and inclusivity were the most significant features and offering to the SfD movement. Yet, simultaneously the same voices exposed toxicity in the form of gender inequality and discrimination as the challenge embedded within eSport among its rapidly growing participants and spectators. This article empirically examines gender dynamics within eSport spaces, using Bailey's social inclusion theory and Lefebvre's spatial theory, and critically presents new opportunities to the field of SfD.

"Die Studie untersucht mittels Cross-Lagged-Panel-Design längsschnittliche Zusammenhänge zwischen gewalthaltiger Bildschirmspielnutzung und Cyberbullying. Zur Erklärung dieser Zusammenhänge werden die Selektions- und die Sozialisationshypothese überprüft. Traditionelles Bullying, Viktimisierung, offene und relationale Aggression werden als mögliche Kovariaten von Cyberbullying mitberücksichtigt. Im Zeitabstand eines Jahres wurden Selbsteinschätzungen von 271 Jugendlichen (10-13 Jahre) zu zwei Messzeitpunkten erhoben. Mittels Strukturgleichungsmodellen konnte gezeigt werden, dass die Nutzung gewalthaltiger Bildschirmspiele ein Risikofaktor für Cyberbullying, traditionelles Bullying und offene Aggression (Sozialisationseffekt) ist. Zudem ist traditionelles Bullying ein Risikofaktor für gewalthaltige Bildschirmspielnutzung (Selektionseffekt)." (Autorenreferat)

Die Verbreitung von privaten Computern und schnellen Breitband-Internetanschlüssen ermöglicht den rasanten Aufschwung von internetbasierten Hobbies und dem eSport. Teamorientierte Onlinespiele erfreuen sich dabei enormer Beliebtheit. Dieses Paper widmet sich den motivierenden und kompetenzfördernden Aspekten von teamorientierten Onlinespielen. Exemplifiziert am Spiel League of Legends, und maßgeblich orientiert anhand struktureller Kopplungen, werden die Motive der Spieler auf verschiedenen Ebenen entfaltet, Bildungen von Kompetenzen aufgezeigt und in ein soziokulturelles Verhältnis gestellt.

Alle Menschen sind Astronaut*innen - nachzulesen nicht nur bei Buckminster Fuller, sondern auch bei Michel Serres. Aber was bedeutet es, die Raumfahrt als gesellschaftliches Projekt zu reflektieren? Dieser Frage gehen die Beiträger*innen des Bandes im Hinblick auf die zwei wichtigen Dimensionen Wirtschaft und Kultur nach, die in Verbindung miteinander betrachtet werden. Die Analysen verdeutlichen, wie sich das technische Großprojekt der Raumfahrt in die Gesellschaft eingeschrieben hat, und lassen schlussfolgern, dass die Raumfahrt kein reines Elitenprojekt bleiben kann.

How can videogames portray love and loss? Games and Bereavement answers this question by looking at five videogames and carrying out a participatory design study with grievers. Sabine Harrer highlights possible connections between grief and videogames, arguing that game design may help make difficult personal feelings tangible. After a brief literary review of grief concepts and videogame theory, the book deep-dives into examples of tragic inter-character relationships from videogame history. Building on these examples, the book presents a case study on pregnancy loss as a potential grief experience that can be validated through game design dialogue.

Three decades of societal and cultural alignment of new media have yielded a host of innovations, trials, and problems, accompanied by versatile popular and academic discourse. New Media Studies crystallized internationally into an established academic discipline, and this begs the question: where do we stand now? Which new questions are emerging now that new media are being taken for granted, and which riddles are still unsolved? Is contemporary digital culture indeed all about 'you', the participating user, or do we still not really understand the digital machinery and how this constitutes us as 'you'? The contributors to the present book, all employed in teaching and researching new media and digital culture, assembled their 'digital material' into an anthology, covering issues ranging from desktop metaphors to Web 2.0 ecosystems, from touch screens to blogging and e-learning, from role-playing games and cybergothic music to wireless dreams. Together the contributions provide a showcase of current research in the field, from what may be called a 'digital-materialist' perspective.