Suchergebnisse

Previous research shows that the influence of a computer game's task demand on the mood-repair capacity of game play follows a quadratic trend: mood repair increases as task demand goes from low to moderate levels, after which further increases in demand reduce repair. Applying selective exposure logic to this finding, we reasoned that familiarity with games known to vary in task demand should influence game choice among users experiencing negative moods. To test this, a 2 × 3 experiment was conducted, varying induced participant mood (boredom, stress) and computer game task demand (low, moderate, or high). Findings revealed a curvilinear association between task demand and game choice replicating the association between task demand and mood repair in previous research. Participants preferred moderate task demand over high and low task demand, and this preference was stronger for stressed participants. In addition and in line with mood management theory, resultant mood repair was greatest for stressed individuals choosing moderate demand, and bored individuals choosing high demand.

It is argued that computer game play has great potential to intervene in noxious mood states because it is a more demanding task than consuming other forms of media. From mood management theory, this increased intervention potential should make computer games particularly adept mood repair agents. To test this assertion, a study was conducted that varied levels of task demand (our operationalization of intervention potential) in a computer game to examine mood repair for bored and stressed individuals. Results show that increasing the amount of control an individual has over a mediated environment significantly increases that medium's intervention potential. This increase in intervention potential results in an enhanced ability to relieve boredom and stress, but too much task demand is detrimental to mood repair.

Decision-making theories have argued that many daily decisions are the result of heuristic rather than systematic processes. Given the ubiquity of smartphones as mobile communication and computing devices along with the vast smartphone app market, our exploratory study aimed to understand how heuristics guide smartphone app selection. Observing 49 smartphone users from the US and Germany viewing 189 total apps from three predetermined categories, the current study identified five decision-making heuristics used to download a variety of smartphone apps. Of these, four were variants of a "Take the First" (TtF) heuristic that allowed smartphone users to quickly navigate the app market, by passing a good deal of other informational cues in order to download apps that were simply highly rated or ranked. Reliance on heuristic processing is useful in helping navigate the app market, but it also results in smartphone users overlooking potentially important app information.

This study examines elderly people's innate moral foundations in influencing decisions, and their subsequent enjoyment in an interactive media environment. The Moral Foundation Questionnaire was used to distinguish between the moral intuitions of elderly US and German respondents, who were believed to have divergent yet stable moral codes that would be salient in a novel virtual world. In an experimental design, participants (N=116) were confronted with a computer simulation in which they could decide to violate or uphold each of five moral intuitions. Germans and Americans differed in their moral foundations, yet for both groups higher moral salience led to a decrease in decisions to commit moral violations in a virtual world. Results for enjoyment were mixed.

Digital games have evolved into a medium that moves beyond basic toys for distraction and pleasure towards platforms capable of and effective at instigating more serious, emotional, and intrapersonal experiences. Along with this evolution, games research has also started to consider more deeply affective and cognitive reactions that resemble the broad notion of eudaimonia, with work already being done in communication studies and media psychology as well as in human-computer interaction. These studies offer a large variety of concepts to describe such eudaimonic reactions - including eudaimonia, meaningfulness, appreciation, and self-transcendence - which are frequently used as synonyms as they represent aspects not captured by the traditional hedonic focus on enjoyment. However, these concepts are potentially confusing to work with as they might represent phenomenological distinct experiences. In this scoping review, we survey 82 publications to identify different concepts used in digital gaming research to represent eudaimonia and map out how these concepts relate to each other. The results of this scoping review revealed four broad conceptual patterns: (1) appreciation as an overarching (yet imprecise) eudaimonic outcome of playing digital games; (2) covariation among meaningful, emotionally moving/challenging, and self-reflective experiences; (3) the unique potential of digital games to afford eudaimonic social connectedness; and (4) other eudaimonia-related concepts (e.g., nostalgia, well-being, elevation). This review provides a conceptual map of the current research landscape on eudaimonic game entertainment experiences and outlines recommendations for future scholarship, including how a focus on digital games contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of eudaimonic media experiences broadly.

This article conceptually integrates research on the experience of nostalgia -defined as a predominantly positive, social, and past-oriented emotion- into the fold of video game research. We emphasize the role of nostalgia as an explanation for contemporary retro gaming trends, and suggest that nostalgia towards gaming events is a necessary area of research. To those ends, we broadly review existing literature on nostalgia before specifically focusing on media-induced nostalgia, and demonstrate how theoretical and empirical observations from this work can be applied to understand video game nostalgia. In particular, we argue that engaging in older gaming experiences indirectly (via memories) and even directly (via replaying or recreating experiences) elicits nostalgia, which in turn contributes to players' self-optimization and enhanced well-being. Moreover, as gamers and the medium mature together, nostalgic experiences with the medium are likely to become increasingly prevalent. The broad aim of this article is to offer future directions for research on video game nostalgia and provide a research agenda for research in this area.

9. "Pronger You Ignorant Ape ... I Hope You Fall Off Space Mountain!": A Study of the Institutional Work of Sport Fans / Mark Julien -- pt. Three Fans and Media -- 10. "Brett Favre is a God": Sports Fans' Perpetuation of Mythology on Newspaper Websites / Allison Harthcock -- 11. Communicating Organizational History to Sports Fans / Matthew Gill -- 12. The Many Faces of "Fans": How the NBA Reaches Out to Its Different Audience Segments / John A. Fortunato -- 13. From Good ol' Boys to National Spectacle: Motives and Identification among Young NASCAR Fans / John S.W. Spinda -- 14. Why Hispanic Fans Are the Lifeblood of Major League Soccer / Ric Jensen -- pt. Four Fans and Gender -- 15. From Football Widow to Fan: Web Narratives of Women and Sports Spectatorship / Lawrence A. Wenner -- 16. Football Fans Do Wear Pink: Game Day Broadcasts, Female Football Fans and Their NFL / Kathy Brady -- 17. Great Expectations: An Analysis of the Fan Base for WNBA's 2008 Expect Great / Katherine L. Lavelle -- pt. Five Fans and Fantasy Sports -- 18. Fantasy Sports and Sports Fandom: Implications for Mass Media Research / Tom Isaacson -- 19. Show Me the Numbers!: Media Dependency and Fantasy Game Participants / Jeff Boone.