Historiquement en matière de jeux d'argent en dur, il existe une homogénéité des législations nationales puisque la plupart des dispositifs s'articule autour d'un monopole d'Etat et/ou de la délivrance d'une licence d'exploitation exclusive. Le particularisme de cette activité économique a été reconnu par le juge européen ce qui lui permet de déroger, sous certaines conditions, aux principes de libre prestation de services et de liberté d'établissement. L'avènement des jeux d'argent en ligne a cependant modifié l'appréhension de ce secteur en raison du caractère transnationale de cette nouvelle activité. A cet égard, les Etats ont tenté d'apporter des réponses aux problématiques liées au blanchiment d'argent, à la protection du consommateur, à la manipulation des résultats sportifs et à l'existence de sites illégaux qu'elle pose. L'hétérogénéité des solutions proposées ne permet cependant pas de répondre efficacement à ces écueils ni de satisfaire aux exigences définies par les Traités. Dès lors, la Commission européenne a introduit des procédures d'infractions contre certains Etats puis a publié un livre vert afin de rechercher des pistes qui assureraient un consensus entre les Etats membres sans qu'elle n'ait à intervenir davantage par l'intermédiaire d'une législation européenne. Néanmoins, les nombreux obstacles issus des textes européens n'offrent à la Commission européenne qu'un espace restreint de propositions qui viseront surtout à renforcer les coopérations entre les autorités de régulation et ne permettront probablement pas de résoudre les questions susmentionnées. C'est dans cette perspective que nos travaux de recherches s'inscriront. Aussi, après avoir étudié le droit positif européen, nous nous attacherons, à partir d'une étude de droit comparé des principaux modèles juridiques existants sur le territoire de l'Union (droit belge, droit britannique, droit français et droit italien), à déterminer un instrument d'harmonisation européen qui d'assurer un haut niveau de protection des consommateurs et une concurrence équilibrée entre les opérateurs de jeux. / Historically as regards gambling, there is a homogeneity of national laws because most regulations are built around a state monopoly and / or grant of an exclusive license. The particularity of this economic activity has been recognized by the European Justice Court allowing it to derogate, under certain conditions, the principles of freedom to provide services and freedom of establishment. The advent of online gambling, however, changed the understanding of the sector due to the transnational nature of this new activity. In this regard, States have attempted to provide answers to issues related to money laundering, consumer protection, match fixing and the existence of illegal websites that pose. The heterogeneity of the solutions does not allow to effectively respond to these pitfalls or to satisfy the requirements defined by the Treaties. Therefore, the European Commission brought infringement proceedings against some states and has published a Green Paper to search for tracks that would ensure a consensus among Member States without it having to intervene more through of European regulation. However, many obstacles from European laws available to the European Commission a limited space of proposals that aim primarily at strengthening cooperation between regulatory authorities and probably will not help to solve the above issues. It is in this context that our research work will enroll. Also, having studied European positive law, we will focus, from a comparative law study of the main existing legal models on the territory of the Union (Belgian law, English law, French law and Italian law) to determine an instrument of European harmonization to ensure a high level of consumer protection and fair competition between gambling operators.

My thesis on contemporary animated documentaries links new media aesthetics with the documentary turn in contemporary visual culture. Drawing from the fields of Contemporary Art, Animation, Film Studies and Gaming Theory, my aim has been to explore the development of animated documentaries in the context of animation's intersection with other visual fields in a very specific technological moment of the past two decades in order to broaden the scope within which animation is analysed and understood. The starting point of my research was the widely accepted divide assumed to exist between animation and documentary. I, however, claim that the supposedly contradictory nature of animated documentaries can no longer be considered a given. Despite the potentially challenging reception of animated documentaries, it is important to identify what it is that the animated image contributes to documentary, which is the visualisation of what is otherwise un-representable. My thesis investigates a new area of the intangible, focusing on the virtualisation of culture rather than on subjective or imaginary aspects of documentary works and visual interpretations. This cultural shift consequently requires new aesthetics of documentation that exceed the capacities of the photographic. My main argument is that due to contemporary technological changes, animation has permeated real contexts of daily life to the extent that it has become disassociated from the realm of fiction. Rather, in altering the way viewers are becoming accustomed to observing, learning about and connecting with reality, animation has brought about a constitutive change in ways of seeing one's world. This change can be described as animation’s impact on the relation between visual signification and believability. It is this which necessitates a reconsideration of what shapes a sense of realism in documentaries today. My research therefore culminates with new conceptualisations concerning the cultural role of animation, introducing what I argue is the formation of the "animated document" and "documentary animation". In these contexts, animation is no longer an interpretive visualisation substituting for photography but a direct capturing of animated realities. Animation thus expands what is considered to constitute reality and, as a result, also destabilises assumptions about the perceived conflict between animation and documentary, widening the sphere of documentary aesthetics.

Student gaming behavior in intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) has been correlated with lower learning rates. The goal of this work is to identify such behavior, produce interventions to discourage this behavior, and by doing so hopefully improve the learning rate of students who would normally display gaming behavior. Detectors have been built to identify gaming behavior. Interventions have been designed to discourage the behavior and their evaluation is discussed.

O presente estudo tem como objetivo pesquisar as condições de possibilidade para o surgimento e sustentação de uma cena cultural independente de criadores/as de jogos digitais queer. Levando em consideração que os jogos digitais têm como público reconhecido principalmente homens, cissexuais, heterossexuais e brancos – e de que a manutenção de uma exclusividade é importante tanto para a indústria de jogos quanto para a manutenção de uma “identidade nerd” centrada nessas características - interrogo de que maneira seria possível uma produção nessa culturas fora dessas posições de sujeito. Compreendendo que a cis-heteronormatividade é uma entidade organizadora de discursos e visibilidades, que os dispõe e organiza em nossa cultura, produzindo assim processos de subjetivação e possibilidades materiais que compõem como legítimos e privilegia sujeitos cissexuais e heterossexuais. Contudo, sendo essas organizações contingentes, as possibilidades de sujeitos que se estabelecem à margem dessa é de negociar com suas regras e ao mesmo tempo subverte-las, podendo assim produzir subjetivações e materializações diferenciais. Dessa maneira, investigo contextualmente como jogos produzidos dentro da cena de jogos digitais da Baía de San Francisco negociam, resistem, deslocam e desarticulam a cis-heteronormatividade e as próprias singularidades dos jogos digitais, compreendendo uma produção que legitimaria sujeitos, vivências e coletivos que não se enquadram na cis-heteronormatividade. Por fim, enfoco nos impactos que essas produções diferencias tem nas organizações de coletivos dentro dessas culturas – tanto queer quanto na mainstream - promovendo então novas potencialidades éticas, estéticas e políticas. / This dissertation’s objective is to research the conditions of possibility for the existence of a digital gaming indie queer cultural scene. Taking into consideration that white, straight cisexual men are recognized as the digital games’ public – and that this exclusivity gaming is an important statement for the industry and the maintenance of a “nerd identity” alike – this project inquiries about viable possibilities for access and production of other subject positions within this cultures. The cis-heteronormativity is an organizing entity that regulates discourses and visibilities, creating subjectivation processes and material possibilities that produce heterosexuality and cissexuality as the only legitimate and privileged subject positions. However, being these processes and possibilities contingent positions, the possibility of living at its margins is to both negotiate and subvert the legitimacy gender / sexuality norms. Being so, this project investigates the San Francsico Bay Area queer gaming scene, and how this scene negotiates, resists, desidentifies and rearticulates both the cis-normativity and digital gaming customs, producing non-normative gaming collectives and experiences. At least, this project focus on the impacts of these productions in the queer and mainstream digital gaming, and how they can promote new reflections about ethics, aesthetics and political meanings in the culture.

Nowhere fast.

No description available.

Since the birth of the New Hollywood blockbuster out of the Hollywood Renaissance in the 1970s, popular moving image media has continually exhibited an intense interest in play with Newtonian physics and tactile, immediate experience. As the entertainment industry has moved further away from analog and celluloid and deeper into a digital media space, we have begun to see new a new breed of media project that differently engages with our sensorium in order to newly use (and abuse) this interest. I term this digital media project “corporealized media.” Corporealized media, as I define it, refers to media that includes, but is not limited to, the current undertaking in virtual reality technology and other media that has the primary focus of calling attention to or recognizing the user’s physicality, corporeal form, and embodiment. Through phenomenological readings of contemporary corporealized works, I suggest that current popular use of corporealized media is potentially dangerous and inhibiting to society. It has the ability not just to inform aesthetics, but also to shape our greater understanding of our potential connections to others. Instead of embracing physical contraction, we should aim to collectively accept the possible expansion that abstraction in media allows.

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are growing in popularity and use worldwide. This study seeks to explore the motivations and experiences of MMORPG players through an extensive online survey with more than a thousand participants (n=1,422). The findings support a complex relationship between the variables, including the direct effects of motivations and flow on the time invested by players in MMORPG play, as well as the mediated effects of motivation via flow. Causal relationships are examined in addition to the significance of direct and indirect effects on frequency of play, yielding several significant results, including (1) the overwhelming importance of relationships as a motivation for MMORPG players, (2) the lack of motivation for manipulating players and elements of the game experienced by players, (3) the significance of achievement motivators when mediated by flow, (4) the significance of the direct effects of the mechanisms of flow (challenge, skill, and play) on MMORPG play behaviors, and (5) the recognition of the intricate network of connections between the variables in their effects on MMORPG players' habits.

From an organisational perspective, the potential benefits of enhancing workplace cohesion are many, amongst which an increase in employee performance would be the most tangible and possibly the most desirable. The primary aim of the present research was to explore the capacity to increase levels of cohesion, and therefore facilitate team building, through the use of cooperative multiplayer computer gaming (CMCG). Study 1, involving 26 male and 23 female university students, required participants to play two, twenty minute, games of the commercially available computer game QUAKE(tm) as teams of 3 or of 4, against an equal number of computer generated artificial intelligence opposition. The interpersonal attraction and task focus facets of Cohesion, as well as Stress and Mood State, were measured using self-report questionnaires at both the pre- and post-test stages of the experiment. Results supported the prediction that exposing individuals to a computer game of a cooperative and interdependent nature would increase self-rated levels of cohesion, on both the interpersonal attraction and task focus sub-scales. Study 2 aimed to expand upon the findings of study 1, increasing the generalisability of the study 1 findings by surveying existing teams engaging in CMCG via the Internet. Those surveyed were individuals who currently played the Team Fortress module of QUAKE�, and who belonged to a Team Fortress Clan - the CMCG equivalent of a social sporting team. Individuals playing QUAKE(tm) via the Internet were found to be as cohesed with their team members as were the laboratory participants after the CMCG intervention. Further, important group dynamic factors evident in Team Fortress Clans, such as success being linked with higher levels of cohesion, were consistent with literary considerations regarding conventional, non-CMCG teams. Additional research exploration is required regarding the utility of CMCG, however, the present research indicates that such an exploration is warranted and should produce positive and practical results.

<p>Previous research has shown both positive and negative effects of gaming on academic and cognitive performance. The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of gaming on development of working memory (WM), inattention, reading and math ability using a longitudinal design. A randomly chosen sample of 335 (168 girls) 6–25 year olds performed tests of visuo-spatial and verbal WM, reading and math ability twice, with a two year interval. Gaming and inattention were assed with questionnaires. Time spent gaming did not affect development of any of the variables. However, game category did correlate with development of visuo-spatial WM, with action-gamers having a more favourable development. There was, however, no positive interaction with more time spent gaming for action-gamers. These results suggest that gaming should not be regarded as a damaging leisure activity. There could instead be some positive effects of gaming, but future research should try to identify the aspects of gaming contributing to this effect.</p>