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Developments in video games over the last few decades have opened up many new kinds of musical experiences that pose substantial challenges to traditional understandings of music and musical agency. Virtual spaces grant us opportunities and freedoms to interact with music in manners that might not be prudent, practical, or even possible in the physical world. Players and creators of games have considerable license to play with music – to push the boundaries of music’s signifying and sensational potential within far-reaching narrative, ludic, and social contexts. This dissertation investigates how modern technologies of digital gaming enable and motivate such transgressive modes of musical engagement. Video game players, composers, and designers frequently employ (or otherwise interact with) music, noise, and speech in ways that deliberately or inadvertently violate technical rules, social expectations, cultural conventions, aesthetic norms, and ethical codes. Just as creators of games are constantly surprising gamers with innovative concepts and progressive designs, so gamers often come up with forms of emergent play that creators themselves might not have anticipated or intended. Though gameplay isn’t always explicitly transgressive, I argue here that it can be productively conceptualized as an activity that is largely bound up in potentialities for transgression. Play isn’t simply about make-believe, but additionally about re-making belief – about redrawing the limits of the imagination through accomplishments of acts previously unimaginable (or believed to have been outright impossible). The particular liberties that can be taken with (and in) games may ultimately teach us some profound things about what (we think) music is (and isn’t), how it works, what it’s good for, and why and to whom these questions should matter in broader social, cultural, and intellectual contexts. / Music

Στόχος της εργασίας ήταν η ανάπτυξη και αξιολόγηση ενός διαδραστικού ηλεκτρονικού παιχνιδιού με αφηγηματικό περιεχόμενο. Για την μελέτη αυτή, αναπτύχθηκε ένα ηλεκτρονικό παιχνίδι περιπέτειας Point And Click τρίτου προσώπου σε γραφικό περιβάλλον (Third Person Point And Click Graphic Adventure Game), το οποίο υποστηρίζει την χρήση του από έναν παίκτη. Το παιχνίδι αυτό ανήκει σε ένα κλασσικό είδος παιχνιδιών που γνώρισαν μεγάλη άνθιση σε μία περίοδο από τα τέλη της δεκαετίας του 1980, μέχρι και τις αρχές της δεκαετίας του 2000, στα οποία ο παίκτης καλείται να λύσει γρίφους διαφόρων ειδών με στόχο την εξέλιξη της ιστορίας του παιχνιδιού. Το παιχνίδι που αναπτύχθηκε χρησιμοποιεί σαν βασικά στοιχεία την εξερεύνηση, την συλλογή στοιχείων και αντικειμένων από το περιβάλλον και τη συνομιλία με χαρακτήρες του παιχνιδιού με στόχο την επίλυση των γρίφων και τη συνέχιση της ιστορίας του παιχνιδιού. Η ανάπτυξη της εφαρμογής συνετελέσθη σειριακά ξεκινώντας με την συγγραφή της ιστορίας και ύστερα του σεναρίου του παιχνιδιού, πάνω στα οποία δημιουργήθηκαν οι γρίφοι. Ακολούθως άρχισε ο σχεδιασμός του παιχνιδιού ακολουθώντας ένα επαναληπτικό μοντέλο το οποίο περιελάμβανε τον προγραμματισμό, τη δημιουργία του καλλιτεχνικού κομματιού και τον επανασχεδιασμό διαφόρων σταδίων ανάπτυξης βασιζόμενοι μεταξύ άλλων και σε τεχνικές και μεθόδους αξιολόγησης. Η υλοποίηση πραγματοποιήθηκε για προσωπικού υπολογιστές με λειτουργικό σύστημα Windows της Microsoft, OS X της Apple και Linux. / The goal of the thesis was the development and evaluation of an interactive video game with narrative content.

This study sought to determine the principles of interface rhetoric through a review of the relevant history and theory involved in imagetext media. Defining interface as the surface that limits the view of an artifact’s content, it focuses on the media of the illustrated book, comics, and the video game, particularly artifacts of those media inspired by the content of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books. Methodologically, it used the history of aesthetics and technology related to imagetext and the theories of these media in order to discern the rhetorical principles of interface distinctive to each medium. It takes the perspective of W. J. T. Mitchell’s concept of "imagetext," Umberto Eco’s sense of semiotics, Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception, and Don Ihde's phenomenology of technology in its analysis of the media’s artifacts. The results of the analyses are a group of rhetorical principles for each medium that explain the operation of logos, pathos, and ethos in each medium’s interface. The explanations refer to Wayne Booth’s “implied author” and Kenneth Burke’s "terminological screens." In the final analysis, this study argues for understanding the relative ubiquity of imagetext in media stemming from the 1830s to present. It takes the stance that changes in aesthetics and technology enabled the rise of imagetext interfaces and the media that had them. More importantly, it formulates the architectonic principles of interface rhetoric regardless of the specific media.

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The relationships between violent content and aggression have not been fully understood and explained in video game research literature. This study sought to determine if video game players" flow experience--a psychological absorption—explains the aggression that can follow video game playing. Employing a survey, this project sought to determine if relationships existed among degrees of violence portrayed in video games, degrees of flow experience, and subsequent aggressive attitudes after gaming. In this study, it was determined that a player's flow experience is more strongly correlated with aggression than is the violent content of video games. Moreover, contradicting the common belief that the video game companies make more profit by increasing the quantity of violent content, there is actually no significant relationship between violence and purchase of video games. However, along the same lines of Hoffman and Novak (1977), this study discovered an increase in purchasing intent related to flow experiences in video games. / Department of Telecommunications

The purpose of this study was to examine if video game usage was influenced by family structure. Family structure was measured in two ways; the first, the amount of time one spends with their family, and second, family disruption. The amount of time one spends with their family was measured with specific amounts of time; for example, the number of weekly days one would engage with his or her family. Family disruption was broken into four categories; parental marriage, parental divorce, adoption, and guardian death. Video game usage was measured in two categories; weekly days one plays video games, and daily hours one plays video games. The evidence from the 701 surveys suggests there is no correlation between video game usage and the amount of time one spends with their family. The evidence also suggests that family disruption does not influence whether or not one plays video games either. / Department of Sociology

This thesis identifies and explores the types of communication modes that exist in video games. Different types of communication are identified and discussed based on Frye's audience centered theory of modes. The inferior communication mode, the mimetic communication mode, the leader-centered communication mode, the romantic communication mode, and the mythical communication mode are all explained. A convenience sample of six video game players were interviewed about video games. An analysis of their self-identification statements revealed that players seek a high level of romantic communication when playing video games. The romantic communication mode makes the video game world an idealized place where the players are able to manipulate their circumstances or show more intelligence than the user in reality. Uses of the communication modes are also explained. / Department of Telecommunications

In this paper, I argue that there are some video games which are art. I begin my paper by laying out several objections as to why video games could not be art. After laying out these objections, I present the theory of art I find most persuasive, Berys Gaut’s cluster concept of art. Because of the nature of Gaut’s cluster concept, I argue that video games, as a medium of expression, do not need to be defended as a whole. Rather, like all other media of expression, only certain works are worthy of the title art. I then introduce and defend several games as art. After, I return to the initial objections against video games and respond in light of my defended cases. I conclude that video games, as a medium of expression, are still growing, but every day there are more examples of video games as art.