Orientador: Marcelo El Khouri Buzato / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-18T21:27:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DePaula_GustavoNogueira_M.pdf: 2882806 bytes, checksum: 642ba700c3611b5045218648ecb729ad (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: Este trabalho objetivou caracterizar a prática de jogar videogame como um novo letramento, apontando quais os principais saberes necessários para uma utilização crítica desse meio de comunicação, e delineando uma possível linha para a atuação da escola no intuito de aproximar os letramentos escolares daqueles praticados e apreciados pelos alunos em seu cotidiano. O componente teórico caracteriza o videogame enquanto objeto de pesquisa e tipo de mídia, resumindo as principais pesquisas realizadas sobre o tema até então. Estabelece também parâmetros para uma caracterização da prática de jogar videogames como um letramento específico. Argumenta-se a favor da necessidade de incorporar, na escola, para ação pedagógica consciente por parte dos professores, saberes sobre o videogame e sobre as maneiras como eles são lidos pelos alunos em suas práticas extra-classe em contraste com outros tipos de leitura. Tal argumento é ilustrado por meio de um estudo empírico que visou registrar e analisar os tipos de conhecimento e habilidades acionados por sujeitos jogadores em idade escolar ao utilizarem dois jogos de tipos diferentes que abordavam um mesmo tema de relevância histórica (o 11 de setembro) sobre o qual os sujeitos também obtiveram informações por meio de um texto escrito. O método empregado para a geração dos dados foi um protocolo de pensar alto complementado com entrevistas e questionários. Os resultados mostraram que os sujeitos não foram capazes de compreender o sentido semântico dos jogos, e, por conseguinte, não realizaram uma leitura minimamente crítica de seus conteúdos e dos argumentos veiculados pelos jogos, apesar de terem demonstrado plena capacidade e habilidade suficiente para jogá-los. Em vista de tais resultados, defende-se que a escola se engaje mais diretamente com a educação para este tipo específico de letramento e propõe-se que o conhecimento do objeto reunido neste trabalho seja útil como subsídio para tal tarefa / Abstract: This study aimed to characterize the practice of playing video games as a new literacy, pointing out that the key knowledge required for a critical use of this medium, and outlining a possible course of action for the school in order to bring the school literacies practiced and appreciated those by the students in their daily lives. The theoretical component characterizes the game as a research subject and media type, summarizing the key research on the topic so far. It also sets parameters for a characterization of the practice of playing video games as a specific literacy. It argues for the need to incorporate, in school, teaching conscious action by teachers, knowledge about the game and on the ways they are read by students in their extra-class practices in contrast to other types of reading. This argument is illustrated through an empirical study that aimed to record and analyze the types of knowledge and skills driven by subjects of school age players to use two different types of games that addressed the same topic of historical significance (Sept. 11) on which the subject also obtained information through a written text. The method used to generate the data was a think aloud protocol supplemented with interviews and questionnaires. The results showed that the subjects. children were not able to understand the semantic meaning of games, and therefore did not undergo minimally critical reading of its contents and arguments conveyed by games, despite having demonstrated full capacity and enough skill to play them. In view of these results, it is argued that the school engage more directly with education for this specific type of literacy and proposes that the knowledge of the subject gathered in this work is useful as an aid for this task / Mestrado / Linguagem e Tecnologia / Mestre em Linguística Aplicada

The idea that emergent content generation for video games will add depth to the gameplay experience is something often mentioned. With this article I want to make a connection between the science of complex systems and emergence, and the area of video game research and development. Not only does emergent content generation add depth to gameplay experience, it would also reduce the stress on developers, if diverse content could be generated automatically. I have conducted a keyword search on 412 articles from renown conferences with the following keywords: complex system", "emerg", and "spontaneous". The results show that while emergence is quite popular in the fi eld of video game research, complex system as a term is not.

Context: This is a study about investigating if playing video games can improve any skills and characteristics in a software engineer. Due to lack of resources and time, this study will focus on designing a study that others may use to measure the results and if video games actually can improve software engineers. Objectives: The main objectives are finding the benefits of playing video games and how those benefits are discovered. Meaning what types of games and for how long someone needs to play in order to be affected and show improvements. Another objective is to find out what skills are requested and required in a software engineer. Then it is time to design the study based on the information gathered. Methods: There is a lot of literature studying involved. The method is parallel research which is when reading about the benefits of playing video games, then also reading and trying to find corresponding benefits in what is requested and required in software engineers. Results: There are many cognitive benefits from video games that are also beneficial in software engineers. There is no recorded limit to how long a study can go on playing video games that it proves to have negative consequences. That means that the study designed from the information gathered is very customizable and there are many results that can be measured. Conclusions: There is a very high chance that playing video games can result in better software engineers because the benefits that games provide are connected to skills requested and required by employers and other expert software engineers that have been in the business for a long time and have a high responsibilities over other teams of software engineers.

Denna studie undersöker hur avsaknaden av ljud i digitala spel påverkar spelarens upplevelser av spelet, påverkan på spelförmåga och allmänna skillnader mellan att spela ett spel med och utan ljud. Undersökningen utfördes i form av två spelsessioner med och utan spelets ljud, följt av semistrukturerade intervjuer. Åtta respondenter fick uppleva spelet Mario Kart 8 och dela med sig av sina tankar kring avsaknaden av ljud samt hur ljudet påverkat deras spelupplevelse. Studien kom fram till att avsaknaden av ljud i Mario Kart 8 påverkade spelaren på ett flertal sätt, såsom att spelet upplevdes som mindre underhållande och svårare att interagera med.

The Digital Logic of Death analyzes recent reconfigurations in our relationship to death which have emerged in response to the rupture of the digital, as glimpsed through the films, television shows, and digital games which so often inform and influence our understanding of mortality. Considered as both a series of technological advancements and a new set of cultural assumptions, this project argues that the digital cannot but shift our understanding of death in general, and our recognition of our own finiteness in particular. As such, it presents four observations about the appearance, function, and conception of death in contemporary moving images. First, that our dissatisfaction with inaccurate representations of death and increased interest in autonomous simulations reveals an attempt to reinstate the knowledge and painful pleasure once found only through witnessing the death of others. Second, that the seemingly inconsequential nature of death in digital games – where the traumatic is easily rewound and re-animated – serves not to deny death but rather to make it more present, providing an opportunity for gameplayers to contemplate and craft their own unique ‘path to death.’ Third, that contemporary society, engulfed in the binary logic of the digital, has come to fetishize the frightening possibility of death at the expense of recognizing its potential impact on our lives and culture, leading to experiential relays through which we attempt to reencounter that potential, namely a narrative Being-towards-death and a splitting of subjectivity into actual and virtual components with their own relationship to mortality. And fourth, that contemporary narratives of seemingly ‘immortal,’ artificially-intelligent machines are concerned less with the fantasy of immortality than they are with what it means to be mortal, thereby positioning death as the most essential and fundamental component of the human experience. Together, these observations look to renew an existential undercurrent of critical theory, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and metaphysics, which has the potential to greatly inform key conversations in film and media studies, cultural studies, and posthumanism, as well as the capacity to reveal the essential argument of the digital logic of death: that to be human is to know that you will die.

Lara Croft, the heroine of the hugely popular Tomb Raider videogame series, is a representative of femininity in contemporary popular culture. The newest Lara Croft game, Rise of the Tomb Raider (released in 2015/2016) presents a new version of Lara Croft (new Lara), who is a departure from the postfeminist action hero archetype that Lara Croft exemplified before the character’s reboot in 2013 (old Lara). Lara Croft has undergone a significant transformation since her first incarnation in Tomb Raider I in 1996. Some aspects of Lara Croft’s characterisation that have changed are her wardrobe, her body shape, and the character’s emotional complexity. Narratological aspects of Lara Croft that have changed are her relationships with other female characters, as well as her relationship with her deceased parents. And finally, some of the ludological elements of the game that have changed are Lara Croft’s weapons, and the way in which she navigates her environment. The study relates Lara Croft’s transformation to the changing structures in the videogame industry, such as the number of women currently playing videogames and the number of women currently involved in creating videogames. It is found that the number of female gamers has increased significantly from 1996 to 2017 and that where women are more involved in the creation of videogames, the female heroines’ representation tends to be more in line with that of new Lara. The study identifies a new female heroine archetype, which I term ‘the new Lara phenomenon’, that is increasingly displayed in female videogame heroines after the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Visual Arts / MA Visual Studies / Unrestricted

Video games as an entertainment form are very popular. Understanding what video games do to us in a long-term and short-term manner is therefore of interest. Attention is a widely studied field and research into how attentional networks are affected by video is a research field on the rise. Here, I will be investigating how video game play affects our attentional networks and if it is possible for elderly individuals to train their attentional networks with video games. Video game players have high performance in reaction time and accuracy in different attentional, working memory, and cognitive control tasks. As the difficulty of video games increase video game players seem to more efficiently utilize their attentional networks. Whilst some articles cannot replicate findings in other articles this irregularity might be explained with by level of difficulty or load during task performance. Studies see group differences only when the task difficulty is high. Therefore, an important part of video game research is to find an effective and replicable standard for video game research. Measuring video game play with EEG shows that players better can forgo distracting stimuli in central and peripheral view and discriminating stimuli giving video game players more confidence when making decisions. Video game players also seem to have more efficient processes and functional connectivity in attentional networks but utilizing these networks more as non-video game players as mental load increases. Not only does video game players have more efficient attentional networks, but attentional benefits from video games is also something that can be trained with those who do not play video games. Suggesting that older individuals can utilize video games to train attentional networks.

This paper analyzes the appropriateness of the localization practices utilized in the Japanese video game series Final Fantasy and Pokémon. Its argument is informed by survey responses from players of both series. Immersion, the ability of the player to remain in the game-world without distraction, is believed to be an important goal for successful localization. In this paper, the appropriateness of the localization of the Final Fantasy series is judged based on player immersion and enjoyment. This study finds that immersion is not essential to player enjoyment and therefore is not essential for a successful localization. In regard to the Pokémon series, the appropriateness of the heavy alteration and censorship of elements in the American localization is analyzed via player response to the changes. This localization practice proves to be appropriate and an effective model for future localization of Japanese video games targeted toward children in America. In addition, this paper explores immersion in Pokémon strategy guides released in America and Japan. The aim of this thesis is to expand the dialogue on Japanese video game localization for America and to display successful, creative localization practices which can also be utilized in other media.

The goal of this thesis is to examine the changing influence and role of the audience in the localization of Japanese video games. I examine the history of Japanese video game translation, honing in on Japanese Role-Playing Games, including the influence of Nintendo of America’s polices and how they shifted from translating games to localizing games. I also explore the shift in which the internet and social media has allowed for increased interaction between localizers and fan bases. This can allow for localizers to have a more in-depth knowledge of the expectations of the intended audience of the video game, but has also further fueled the debate of whether or not localization constitutes censorship. Lastly, I do a close analysis of two long running game series and how they are adapting to the new changes with the introduction of social media.

Designing games around complex emotions and experiences can be seen as quite difficult for game designers. Therefore, this paper sought to research how to convey the emotional state of an individual through design based on a chosen experience. The chosen experience was the feeling of loneliness with connection to the fear of rejection. This paper will be using Rusch’s (2017) method of designing deep games as a way of modeling an experience of loneliness as perceived by one of the authors. This model will be based on a conversation between the two authors with one acting as an experience expert and the other one as a listener. The results from this method seek to gain a catalog of experiences and thoughts about the experience expert’s feelings of loneliness that can be used to construct metaphors. These metaphors are then used to create game mechanics that combined hope to achieve a sincere recreation of the experience expert feelings of loneliness. This paper will go into depth on the design decisions made during the production of the deep game modeling the emotion loneliness. / Att designa spel kring komplexa känslor och upplevelser kan ses som en svårighet för speldesigners. Därför försökte denna uppsats undersöka hur man förmedlar en individs emotionella tillstånd genom design baserat på en vald upplevelse. Den valda upplevelsen var känslan av ensamhet med koppling till rädslan av förkastelse. Denna uppsats kommer att använda Ruschs (2017) metod för att designa djupa spel som ett sätt för att modellera en upplevelse av ensamhet som uppfattas av en av författarna. Denna modell kommer att baseras på en intervju mellan de två författarna med en som tar rollen av en erfarenhetsexpert och den andra som en lyssnare. Resultaten från denna metod försöker få en katalog med upplevelser och tankar om erfarenhetsexpertens känslor av ensamhet som kan användas för att konstruera metaforer. Dessa metaforer används sedan för att skapa spelmekaniker som kan kombineras med hopp om att uppnå en uppriktig rekreation av den individuella känslan av ensamhet som erfarenhetsexperten uplever. Denna uppsats kommer att gå djupare in på de designbeslut som fattas under produktionen av det djupa spelet som modellerar känslan av ensamhet.