Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 86-89). / Secrets are a ubiquitous part of contemporary videogame design, yet are largely unexplored within academic discourse and often dismissed as extras. I contend that secrets play a fundamental and influential role within a given gamespace in terms of the way they affect a videogame design and player experience. As such this paper will investigate the nature of secrets in videogames. I shall find where secrets exist in a game and how they function as moments of gameplay. Then I will explore secrets historically and look at how the meaning of secrets have changed and evolved over time. It will be shown that secrets create a window to an underlying structure of gameplay, a meta-level that subverts the regular play of a videogame. Further, I will argue that secrets are a space where players engage in unstructured play, free from the constraints of a game design. Finally I will demonstrate how secrets can be used to personalize or redesign the experience of a videogame and/or remake the game design itself. In order to make this argument I will break down what secrets can mean specifically to players through two very differently structured games: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Animal Crossing. Knowing why secrets matter in a gamespace will reveal a reason for why videogames are compelling as a brave new form of media. / by Kristina Lynn Drzaic. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2010. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 121-125). / The ubiquity of camera phones, coupled with the increasing mobility of citizens and the rise of digital production as an embedded technosocial practice, is creating incentives for many people around the globe to engage in media creation. Mobile phone users are beginning to explore personal broadcasting through live-streaming video, but little is known about the type of content being produced or how much of that content has civic or community value. At this technological and cultural moment, there is an opportunity to learn not only what is being created, but also how the medium can be embraced as a means of civic participation. This thesis analyzes overall production trends through a content analysis of 1,000 mobile videos on Qik.com, and goes on to investigate the motives and practices behind the production of civic content specifically. Looking at live-streaming mobile video production as a social practice through the lens of civic engagement, it analyzes how and why people are beginning to use this medium to become active citizens for the sake of educating or inspiring others. Research includes mobile production by general users but focuses more narrowly on those who self-identify as activists, journalists, educators and community leaders. / by Audubon McKeown Dougherty. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2009. / "June 2009." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-217). / In designing DwarfFortress as part roguelike and part simulation, Tarn and Zach Adams of Bay 12 Games drew on a tradition of game genres that used proceduralism and simulation to give players unique paths through the game. The specific choices in their design served their goal of "giv[ing] rise to some really awesome stories from the players themselves," I argue, because it took advantage of what Henry Jenkins calls "narrative architecture." Expanding on Jenkins' idea to examine narrative architectures of space, code, and player choice, the thesis shows how Bay 12 not only encouraged players to view the game as a world full of stories, but also gave players tools to craft their own kinds of tellable moments through the game. Tellable moments, as described by Marie-Laure Ryan and Lisbeth Klastrup, are events which, because they either create or break expected patterns, are well-suited to use in plots, and serve as resources for storytelling. As players became authors, they engaged in a sort of 'narrative play' through the game's affordances (and tools created in the community) in order to craft more elaborate and specific story arcs within the general confines of the game. This narrative play is a gameplay strategy in which players use the game's narrative architecture in order to goad the game's code into producing certain kinds of outcomes, outcomes which they aim to use for storytelling. Three different stories provide us with a set of tellable moments in which narrative play alternatively responds to gameplay challenge, creates an environment that embodied and staged story, and reconfigures code in order to create new types of tellable moments. / by Joshua Lindsay Diaz. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 84-87). / A close reading of two television shows, K-Street and Tanner '88, was performed to examine how one might become informed about real-life political news by viewing entertainment programs that combine fiction with actual current political events, issues, and figures. In his book The Good Citizen, Michael Schudson claims that mere factual recall does not necessarily indicate that one is "informed", but rather an "informed citizen" is one who actively reads the "information environment". According to Schudson, however, "the obligation of citizens to know enough to participate intelligently in governmental affairs [should] be understood as a monitorial obligation" where one scans rather than reads the "information environment". By indexing themselves as "hybrid", programs such as K-Street and Tanner '88 might encourage skepticism and therefore scanning of the "information environment", unlike "news programs" (i.e. "The News") that frame themselves as accurate and complete. In addition, fictional narrative has the power to foster viewers' personal investment in particular characters and, in this way, could provide additional incentive for active information gathering by creating narratives where characters stand to be directly affected by actual current political events and issues. Neither Tanner '88 nor K-Street appear to have harnessed this potential, however. / by Robert J. Bain, Jr. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-89). / The design of information visualization, defined as the interactive, graphical presentation of data, is on the verge of a significant paradigm shift brought on by the continued maturation of the Information Age. Its traditional role as a scientific tool deployed by rigorous data analysts is in the process of expanding to include more mainstream uses and users, reflecting fundamental changes to the role of information and data in our increasingly digital society. However, visualization design theory remains rooted in earlier conceptions of its use, largely ignoring the needs of this new, non-expert audience. Accordingly, this thesis attempts to re-contextualize information visualization as a public-facing practice, and explores ways in which its design can shift from being described as "by experts, for experts" to a new characterization as "for the people." / by Michael Danziger. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-91). / The emerging field of fan studies has, until recently, been defined only by the research that has taken place within it. Almost universally, this research focuses on self-identified fans. However, scholars are beginning to examine and debate what the limits of the field should be. This study argues that self-identified fans are not the only group that ought to be examined under the heading of fan studies. It also highlights the fact that humor is rarely discussed in fan studies, and argues that this is a major lacuna. In order to accomplish these goals, this study turns to three examples. The first example is an online discussion community for the Twilight novels, Twatlight, which does not define itself as a fan community but nevertheless exhibits all the characteristics of a fan community and is in conversation with self-identified fan communities. The second example is humorous images produced by the Twatlight community, which use jokes to make serious arguments about the Twilight books. The third example is humorous fan vids produced within the mainstream media fandom vidding community; fan vids have been traditionally treated by fan studies as purely melodramatic artworks. The study concludes that fan studies should define itself as the study of people who are affectively engaged with texts in the context of critical communities. / by Madeline LeNore "Flourish" Klink. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, June 2003. / "May 2003." / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-103). / The Ars Electronica FutureLab is a thriving interdisciplinary research facility located in Linz, Austria. It is part of the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), a cultural institution which for over two decades has been a pioneer in exploring the interface between art, technology, and society and mediating public interaction with new technologies. As a nonprofit organization, the AEC is primarily supported by key public sector partners including local government and the state broadcast company, as well as corporations. This institutional framework, together with university affiliation, has facilitated the FutureLab's diverse activities from artistic to more commercially oriented projects exhibited in the AEC 'Museum of the Future' and at off-site venues. The FutureLab's team of artists and researchers has forged a unique hybrid research model focused on three core research areas (virtual reality environments, interactive installations, digital surfaces) which allows them to take prototypes developed from artistic projects and apply perfected solutions to industry projects, or vice versa. Increased demand especially from the private sector for the lab's cutting-edge technology developments and research expertise now threatens to upset the delicate balance of this model. Today, AEC management needs to address the issue of sustainability for both its FutureLab division, in face of heavy workloads, and the institution at large, given decreasing government funding for arts/culture. The AEC is devising a strategy for cultivating industry partnerships based on the FutureLab's experiments in corporate collaboration to date which have been successful namely because they are focused on mutually beneficial outcomes. Through this strategy, the AEC is eager to supplement corporate sponsorships with longer-term industry partnerships in order to ensure financial stability. FutureLab employees stand to gain additional resources and, therefore, the ability to sustain their current research model and continue doing cutting-edge work. With the AEC and the FutureLab, corporations have access to a dedicated arts community whose expert staff can help them develop and promote interesting projects as well as meet both their business needs and corporate affairs objectives. / by Stephanie Davenport. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 147-156). / This thesis challenges the common social construction of game development, which perceives the activity only within its commercial, corporate realm. As an exemplar of the many thriving amateur development communities, the self-identified "homebrew" Nintendo Game Boy Advance (GBA) development community is analyzed in-depth. This unique community is brought to the attention of scholars as an important intersection of game studies and amateur media studies, challenging the focus of game studies on commercial production. The GBA homebrew community is studied from the personal motivational level to the social dynamics of the group. The analysis considers the blend of technological and cultural motivations brought to bear on the production and the content of the amateur games, and how amateur development facilitates skill acquisition outside of canonical academic structure, and opens access to professional mobility. The case study advances both historical and contemporary comparisons to other independent media communities. The thesis also examines discussions in the community around peer-judged competitions as a form of vernacular theory. The content of homebrew GBA games released into the community are further analyzed, with the construction of useful categories spanning genre, fan games, remakes, remixes, and tech demos. Nostalgia and parody in relation to game history are especially considered, as are demonstrations of technical skill ("tech demos") as a uniquely amateur practice. The legal context of amateur GBA development is also examined. Nintendo maintains the GBA as a closed, proprietary system, and thus for homebrew developers access to information and legitimacy is blocked. / (cont.) Comparisons are advanced to historical examples of intellectual property enforcement in the emergence of corporate media in the 20th century. Amateur practice is found to be tangential to corporate interests, ignored both by the disinterest of corporations, and in blanket policies targeting piracy. Historical cases that legitimate reverse engineering of software are discussed for context. Thesis concludes that one cannot cleanly construct categories of amateur and professional as separate practices, and remarks upon the constant renewal and shifts in amateur development communities as new game platforms are released in the commercial market. / by Brett Bennett Camper. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2006. / I explore two core concepts in today's youth entertainment culture that will increasingly become central in future attempts to design affordable foreign language learning materials that hope to bridge the chasm between education and foreign popular culture. In the process, I outline a series of example applications that apply these concepts to developing rich foreign language materials -- starting with more experimental/long-term approaches such as using video game modding techniques to make language learning friendly video games and ending with more concrete, ready-to-go, applications like extending open source content management applications. The first concept I look at is that of "Remix culture." In short, Remix culture describes the way in which youth culture today more visibly orients itself around creating media by extracting component pieces from other people's media creations, then connecting them together to form something new. In the video game world this phenomena is more specifically termed 'modding.' In this process, amateur fans take a professional commercial game title and then modify it in creative ways that the original designers may not have considered. / (cont.) Outside of video games, we see terms like "web 2.0" used to describe technologies that allow website viewers to play a role in authoring additions to the sites they are reading, or "mashups" where users use programming interfaces to rapidly create web content by mashing together pieces from different sources. The second emerging concept critical for curricular designers to follow is that of transmedia storytelling. Traditionally, one might assume a model in which distinct media forms are used to serve distinct cultural practices: television or novels tell stories, video games are for play, blogs for socializing and textbooks for learning. While initially this may have been the case, as each of the media forms above have evolved, they have expanded to cover multiple other cultural practices, often by extending across other media forms. By following the evolution of the interactions between these various media forms and activities within entertainment industries, we can find valuable insight when forecasting their possible interactions in the education industry. / by Ravi Purushotma. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2009. / "February 2009." / Includes bibliographical references (p. 94-101). / This thesis probes into current American makeover culture, thorough three detailed case studies that represent an increasing confluence of commerce, entertainment, and, at times, spirituality. Each of the chapters is devoted to a niche media property, or genre, dedicated to the domestic sphere. The first chapter focuses on the genre of home decorating TV shows and practices of their consumption. The second centers on a single television program - TLC's What Not to Wear, and the interpretative activities it provokes among viewers. The third chapter examines the FlyLady - a transmedia property with a strong internet base, described by its founder as a "behavior modification system" that coaches its subscribers in getting their houses in order. This study was driven, among other things, by the following questions: as the 'commodity frontier' gets increasingly intermingled with our daily lives, with the help of increasingly pervasive media, how do certain communities respond, and with what methods of meaning-making? What draws audiences to engage with media properties so intermingled with commerce in the first place? And, what constitutes these properties' entertainment value as well as the other values audiences find in them? The answers vary with each case study, yet, there are many commonalities pertaining to meanings associated with consumer goods in late capitalism. The media properties described here capitalize on the movement of meaning from culture through consumer goods to individuals. At the same time these three chapters exemplify many cases of redirecting, filtering, and damming up the flow of meaning on the part of viewers and subscribers. / by Orit Kuritsky. / S.M.