This thesis aimed to explore factors, which players consider when choosing their protagonist's gender and what impact that choice has on gameplay. We used two popular games as reference: “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey“ (Ubisoft Quebec, 2018) and “Baldur's Gate 3” (Larian Studios, 2023). This study was conducted by interviewing participants and sending out surveys among the two games’ communities with a total of 493 participants sharing their answers. The sample group mainly consisted of players from several European countries and the United States of America, with 280 identifying as male, 181 as female, and 32 as non-binary. It was found that the majority of players agreed that visual character customization and gender choice did provide them a greater sense of immersion. Furthermore, the storyline seemed to be a framing factor influencing player choices by offering a setting players carefully considered when designing/choosing their protagonists. These results can be of use to game designers who wish to gain an understanding of players’ gender choices and impacts on their role-playing-game gameplay experience. Additionally, further research is suggested to get a deeper understanding of outlying factors that players might consider when choosing a character.

Este trabalho discute a incorporação de novos materiais pela escola através do estudo da leitura de impressos de RPG (role-playing games, ou jogos de interpretação de papéis). Estes impressos (livros e revistas) começaram a surgir no país por volta de 1990 e no decurso da década se diversificaram bastante, inclusive graças a uma volumosa produção de títulos nacionais. Em 2001, quando uma estudante foi assassinada em Ouro Preto e o crime foi associado à prática dos role-playing games, dois aspectos aparentemente contrários tornaramse evidentes por um lado, a presença de jogos que parodiam temas religiosos e aos quais se atribuiu influência sobre o comportamento criminoso, e por outro, a existência de livros dedicados a assuntos do currículo escolar. Com base numa aliança entre preceitos da História Cultural, da Lingüística e da Psicanálise, este trabalho procura compreender esse trajeto, pensando particularmente no problema de como surgem novos sentidos na leitura e como esses sentidos passam a ser negociados uma vez que se instauram no discurso. Através da descrição de impressos de RPG e da análise de diversos aspectos da sua leitura, manuseio e circulação, o trabalho visa discutir as formas como a linguagem não apenas manifesta, mas efetivamente sustenta e realiza as relações de poder através das quais um determinado tipo de material pode se constituir como objeto de relevância para a escola. / This work discusses the adoption of new materials in school by studying the reading of RPG (role-playing game) publications. These publications (books and magazines) first appeared in Brazil around 1990 and throughout that decade became very diverse also due to a voluminous production of national titles. By 2001, when a student was murdered in the city of Ouro Preto and the crime was reputed to role-playing game pratices, two apparently contrary aspects became evident: on the one hand, the presence of games that parody religious themes and to which an influence upon criminal behavior was attributed, and on the other hand the existence of books dedicated to school subjects. Based on concepts from Cultural History, Linguistics and Psychoanalysis, this work attempts to explain this trajectory, considering particularly the problem of how new meanings occur in reading and how these meanings are dealt with once they are installed in a discourse. By describing RPG publications and analysing how they might be read, handled and passed on among readers, this works discusses how language not only manifests, but rather supports and effects power relations by which a certain type of material may become an object of relevance from the schools perspective.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:23:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 MARCIA REGINA BOSCARIOL-BERTOLINO.pdf: 7688545 bytes, checksum: 8aba6cbcb5c0c2e20ad3f15d29e474ee (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-12-01 / Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo / The present interdisciplinary research is aimed at analyzing the most frequent verbs, its collocates and lexical patterns found in the texts of videogames, specifically the Digital Role Playing Games. It is proposed based in the results of the research, a material using the patterns for English Teaching using the patterns found in study corpus. There are many researches about characterization though there isn t any that make a description of the language of Digital RPGs following the theories of Corpus Linguistics and linked it to English teaching. The present aims fill in such gap. The research is based on the Corpus Linguistics theoretical frame. We use Task Based Learning how pedagogocal support. Two corpora were applied in this research : 1- the study corpus made of Digital RPGs texts with a total of about 600.000 words and the Contemporary Corpus of American English (COCA) with a total of 360 million tokens as the reference corpus used to help preparing the teaching materials. The research questions guiding the present study were: (1) what are the most frequent verbs found in the study corpus? (2) what are the typical lexicogrammar patterns found in the Digital RPG genre? (3) how is it possible to apply the patterns found in the texts to prepare task based activities? The results show many lexico-grammatical patterns that characterize the games and can be useful in English learning as foreign language, in Private and public schools, in different grade levels / O trabalho aqui desenvolvido é interdisciplinar e teve como objetivo a análise dos verbos mais freqüentes no corpus de estudo, seus colocados e os padrões lexicais que aparecem nos textos de videogames, especificamente os Role Playing Games Digitais (RPGs). Propomos, com base nos resultado, um material didático para o ensino de inglês utilizando os padrões encontrados no corpus de estudo. Embora haja uma série de pesquisas sobre caracterização de linguagem, e jogos e educação, não se conhece até o momento nenhuma que trate exatamente da descrição da linguagem dos RPGs Digitais sob a ótica da lingüística de Corpus e a alie ao ensino de Inglês. A presente pesquisa pretende colaborar para preencher essa lacuna. O arcabouço teórico da pesquisa se baseia em Lingüística de Corpus. Como suporte pedagógico utilizamos Task Based Learning. Dois corpora foram empregados na pesquisa: o corpus de estudo, que é composto por textos de RPGs Digitais, totaliza mais de 600 palavras, e o de referência, o Contemporary Corpus of American English (COCA), com mais de 360 milhões de palavras, foi usado como auxiliar na elaboração do material didático. Foram propostas as seguintes questões de pesquisa: (1) Quais são os verbos mais freqüentes no corpus de estudo? (2) Quais padrões léxico-gramaticais são típicos no gênero RPG Digitais? (3) De que forma é possível aplicar os padrões encontrados nos textos na elaboração das atividades baseadas em tarefas? Os resultados mostraram diversos padrões léxicogramaticais que caracterizam os jogos e que podem ser úteis no aprendizado de inglês como língua estrangeira, na escola pública, em vários níveis

Este trabalho discute a incorporação de novos materiais pela escola através do estudo da leitura de impressos de RPG (role-playing games, ou jogos de interpretação de papéis). Estes impressos (livros e revistas) começaram a surgir no país por volta de 1990 e no decurso da década se diversificaram bastante, inclusive graças a uma volumosa produção de títulos nacionais. Em 2001, quando uma estudante foi assassinada em Ouro Preto e o crime foi associado à prática dos role-playing games, dois aspectos aparentemente contrários tornaramse evidentes por um lado, a presença de jogos que parodiam temas religiosos e aos quais se atribuiu influência sobre o comportamento criminoso, e por outro, a existência de livros dedicados a assuntos do currículo escolar. Com base numa aliança entre preceitos da História Cultural, da Lingüística e da Psicanálise, este trabalho procura compreender esse trajeto, pensando particularmente no problema de como surgem novos sentidos na leitura e como esses sentidos passam a ser negociados uma vez que se instauram no discurso. Através da descrição de impressos de RPG e da análise de diversos aspectos da sua leitura, manuseio e circulação, o trabalho visa discutir as formas como a linguagem não apenas manifesta, mas efetivamente sustenta e realiza as relações de poder através das quais um determinado tipo de material pode se constituir como objeto de relevância para a escola. / This work discusses the adoption of new materials in school by studying the reading of RPG (role-playing game) publications. These publications (books and magazines) first appeared in Brazil around 1990 and throughout that decade became very diverse also due to a voluminous production of national titles. By 2001, when a student was murdered in the city of Ouro Preto and the crime was reputed to role-playing game pratices, two apparently contrary aspects became evident: on the one hand, the presence of games that parody religious themes and to which an influence upon criminal behavior was attributed, and on the other hand the existence of books dedicated to school subjects. Based on concepts from Cultural History, Linguistics and Psychoanalysis, this work attempts to explain this trajectory, considering particularly the problem of how new meanings occur in reading and how these meanings are dealt with once they are installed in a discourse. By describing RPG publications and analysing how they might be read, handled and passed on among readers, this works discusses how language not only manifests, but rather supports and effects power relations by which a certain type of material may become an object of relevance from the schools perspective.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:43:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Adriana Kei Ohashi Sato.pdf: 1422574 bytes, checksum: 540e2341a2b34d4eca47c4af926c8a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-09-14 / This work intends to analyze design as the object that generates answers to the user's (gamer's) expectations based on the collective imaginarium. In turn, this imaginarium originates in a specific social-cultural context. Considering men as symbolic beings, they look for the reason of their existence by attribuing meaning to objects. Those meanings are interpreted by society, creating values, behaviors and cultural references. This work presents fundamental concepts about design and its presence in the social-cultural context, being design the language that interprets and re-signify the electronic game based on the collective imaginarium. / A presente pesquisa procura analisar o design como objeto gerador de respostas às expectativas do usuário (jogador) a partir do imaginário coletivo. Por sua vez, este imaginário, tem a sua origem em um determinado contexto sócio-cultural. Considerando o homem como um ser simbólico, este busca o sentido para sua existência por meio da atribuição de significados aos objetos. Tais significados são interpretados pela sociedade criando seus valores, comportamentos e referenciais culturais. Ao longo deste trabalho são apresentados conceitos fundamentais sobre o design e sua presença no contexto sócio-cultural, sendo o design, a linguagem que interpreta e resignifica, a partir do imaginário coletivo, um jogo eletrônico.

Through more than five years of extensive, participatory research the writer became a fully integrated member of the World of Warcraft community he set out to study. By actually living the grounded practices that constitute the everyday life he concludes that the mundane, often repetitive practice has very little to do with the cyber-utopian claim that one can flee the body and become who they want on the Internet. Instead this doctoral thesis argues that the constant transitions of the borders between offline and online, virtual and real, body and avatar, play and work, player and producer are best described with the concept of leakage. Using leakage to describe the perforated borders that surrounds the game not only allows an understanding of World of Warcraft as a powerful site for production of meaning and culture but also places it far from the traditional understandings of separated fun, play and games. Play as an activity has traditionally been described with three intrinsic features: it is separable from everyday life, in particular from work; it is safe, meaning that it isn’t productive nor does it carry consequence and finally that play is pleasurable or fun. World of Warcraft doesn’t easily admit to these features and should not be understood as neither innocent utopia nor as a devoured mimesis, but rather as an expansion of the life space where players repeatedly and deliberately stretch beyond the producer’s intentions and create a world consisting of work, unwritten social norms, creativity and friendship. Players are social laborers that produce the core of what makes World of Warcraft what it is: a serious game.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-18T21:39:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 3 Lia Carrari Rodrigues1.pdf: 2007869 bytes, checksum: 5127705a8183cb3056356f8cba16af6a (MD5) Lia Carrari Rodrigues2.pdf: 1875473 bytes, checksum: 48cfbdbc52e6db38b63fd8d1622c69ed (MD5) Lia Carrari Rodrigues3.pdf: 2987315 bytes, checksum: 7dacd97c56a6b31303f12c62c9657e92 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-02-11 / Fundo Mackenzie de Pesquisa / The current worldwide popularity of on-line games has resulted in the formation of virtual communities with hundreds of people. This is due to the daily interaction of people in games called Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). These communities are culturally diverse and permeated by social ties estabilished through different ways in the game s virtual world. The present research held a study on the communities found in World of Warcraft through social network analysis. The goal of this approach was to define a typology of social ties and study the behavioural patterns related to the structure of these networks. This involved the construction of an efficient data collecting system, as well as analysis tools. That particular methodology verified that this kind of organization can be characterized as an emergent adaptive complex system. To that end, different theories were utilized, such as graph theory, Kohonen networks algebra and software engineering. / Atualmente a popularidade mundial de jogos on-line tem resultado na formação de comunidades virtuais com centenas de pessoas. Isso se deve à interação diária das pessoas em jogos chamados Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). Estas comunidades são culturalmente diversificadas e permeadas por laços sociais estabelecidos de diferentes maneiras no ambiente virtual do jogo. A presente pesquisa realizou um estudo de comunidades do jogo World of Warcraft por meio da abordagem da análise de redes sociais. O intuito desta abordagem foi definir uma tipologia de laços sociais e estudar padrões de comportamento vinculados à estrutura destas. Isso envolveu a construção de um sistema de coleta de dados eficiente desta rede, assim como ferramentas de análise. Com esta metodologia, verificou-se que este tipo de organização pode ser caracterizada como um sistema complexo adaptativo emergente. Para isso, foram utilizadas diferentes teorias, como a teoria dos grafos, redes de Kohonen, álgebra e engenharia de software.

This creative project explores some major issues about visual communication in digital games. The project will continue to address new questions and invite questions from my visual and communication design colleagues. My hope is that, through this document, designers will see digital games like photography was seen around the turn of the century, and movies in the 1950's and 60's. In other words, as a rich new medium that offers creative people a virtually unexplored environment in which to work and create.�

This study examines the social organization of Gaiscíoch, a large online gaming community that exists within the simulated world of a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). It provides an ethnographic account of an online gaming community that is open to any player without skill or time commitment requirements, but still maintains high status within the game world. This project identifies eight elements that make this inclusive, friendly, and casual community successful in virtual worlds that tend to be dominated by communities that have a competitive, strict, and exclusive approach to online gaming (social interaction, code of values, leadership, rank system, events, community building, population size, gameplay). Lastly, this project briefly inquires about the nature of the border between the virtual and the physical and establishes that gamers can be considered pseudo-border-inhabitants that are in control of the community they place adjacent to them in the cyber world. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

[pt] Este trabalho registra e analisa criticamente uma experiência de inserção dos jogos de RPG (Role Playing Game) como parte integrante do currículo de uma escola particular da zona sul do Rio de Janeiro, com o objetivo de se trabalhar a expressividade e a criatividade dos alunos por meio do uso de múltiplas linguagens e também como meio de se promover o desenvolvimento de variadas competências dentro de sala de aula. Ao todo, 69 crianças e jovens dos 9 aos 17 anos, alunos da 5ª série do Ensino Fundamental ao 2º ano do Ensino Médio, participaram das oficinas focalizadas nesta pesquisa. A metodologia utilizada no trabalho de campo incluiu tanto a observação, apoiada em cadernos de campo e fotografias, quanto a análise dos artefatos produzidos pelos alunos durante (e para) as sessões de jogo, sob a forma de descrições dos personagens, histórias, textos diversos, desenhos, mapas, maquetes etc, além da participação na montagem de mostras dos trabalhos, visitadas por pais, professores, familiares e demais membros da comunidade escolar. Ao lado do teatro, da música, da dança, do vídeo, dos desenhos animados e de outras linguagens e meios de expressão artística e cultural, a prática de jogos como o RPG, que reúnem ludicidade e criatividade, pode servir como forma de se aproximar o ambiente da escola do mundo complexo, múltiplo e multi-midiático no qual as crianças e os jovens das grandes cidades se encontram imersos em seu dia- a-dia. / [en] This work documents an experiment in which Role Playing Games were part of the curriculum in a private school in Rio de Janeiro. The game was used as a tool to promote expression and creativity among the students and also the development of several competencies inside the classroom. Sixty-nine children and adolescents (ages 9 to 17, from the 5th to the 10th grade) took part in the workshops studied here. The filedwork methodology included observation, supported by field notes and photos, along with the analysis of artifacts produced by the students during (and for) the game sessions, such as character profiles, stories, assorted texts, drawings, maps, schetches, mock ups and others, and also their engajement in the preparation of a show, visited by parents, teachers, family membres and other members of the school community. As with theater, music, dace, video-production, animation and other forms of artistic and cultural expression, games like RPGs, that unite creativity and fun, might serve as a way to straighten the ties between the school and the complex, multiple and multimidiatic world where children and adolescents in major cities are imersed in day-to-day basis.