This study investigates how players experience psychological benefits, specifically in promoting resilience and positive behavior change, in Soulsborne games. It is important to note that this study does not suggest video games as a substitute for professional therapy or mental health treatment. This inquiry holds significance for game researchers and designers, and broadens the conversation on the psychological impacts of video games, particularly in unconventionally challenging games. The methodologies used include a close reading of common design elements and a content analysis of public online discussions, underpinned by the principles of the self-efficacy theory and Self-Determination Theory. The close reading highlights four design elements of these games and how they leveraged essential factors for developing self-competence and motivation. These elements overlap significantly with strategies used in professional resilience training programs. The content analysis reveals a strong connection between the difficulty and design philosophy of Soulsborne games and player experiences of coping with personal difficulties or challenges. The findings support the hypothesis that active engagement with Soulsborne games may boost player resilience and catalyze positive behavior alterations, with potential implications for real-life personal development. However, the potential for researcher bias in the detailed examination and content analysis techniques should be acknowledged.

The paper would focus on the game narrative and empathy, more specifically, the primary goal of this paper is to see how game narrative evokes players’ empathy and get some narrative design principles that can be used in future game design and research. To fulfill the research goal of the paper, I will analyze three role-playing games To the Moon(2011), A Bird Story(2014), and Finding Paradise(2017). They are all developed by a designer Kan Gao, and focus on storytelling, especially To the Moon, receiving praise for its narrative and was given the "Best Story" award by GameSpot(“To the Moon,” 2022). The result of the paper can complement the study on the intersection of game narrative and empathy, also it can supply some practical cases in the game field for Keen’s(2006) narrative empathy theory. And the study can help researchers to study deeper in this field, and provide more empathic narrative design strategies for game designers. And those devices about plot twists, flashbacks, camera angles, etc, may also apply to the literature and film creation for evoking the audience’s empathy.

This essay examines the subject-object dichotomy between men and women in Toni Morrison’s Jazz and the thesis of the essay is that this dichotomy develops into subject-object harmony. Through Simone de Beauvoir’s theory regarding the subject-object dichotomy and a close reading of the novel, this essay concludes that Jazz shows the possibility of reciprocal relationships built on friendship. In other words, the dichotomy changes into harmony, which makes it possible for both men and women to reach freedom and fulfilment in transcendence.

This thesis examines elements of the conceptualization of literature within literary studies and literary production in a UK context, considering the concept of exclusionary practices based on the negligence of intersectional categories of identity such as race, gender, class, sexuality, etc., in the practice of understanding and interpreting literature. The methodologies I employ are close reading of various narratives, such as literary texts, as well as a narrative analysis aimed at a holistic understanding of my material. The second part of this thesis envisions a decolonised approach to literature in which we situate our positionalities when we read and interpret literary works. I demonstrate this through the analysis of several poems, informed by decolonial concepts and sensibilities. The results show that the maintenance of these exclusionary practices advances a grand-narrative of Western civilisation, ignoring the multiple sites people inhabit both from within, and outside, the West and that these practices are effectively harmful. I argue that through the project of decolonising literature there is a possibility of disrupting the perpetual macro-narrative of Western domination and universality.

In the 300 years since the magazine originated, this mass medium has become synonymous with women and their worlds. Today, publications for, by and about women still dominate the global magazine market, and the selection and circulation of women’s magazines increase annually – indicative of the popularity of this mixed medium of information, instruction and entertainment. Since the 1980s, academics from different human sciences branches, such as Joke Hermes and Marloes Hülsken in the Netherlands and Angela Gough-Yates, Margaret Beetham, Ros Ballaster and Marjorie Ferguson in the United Kingdom, have proven the academic worth of women’s magazines, by using them as information sources about women’s social knowledge, positions and roles, their relationships and consumer behaviour in (amongst others) historical, sociological, psychological, mass media and women’s studies research. In South Africa, however, academic research on women’s magazines is still largely unexploited: apart from a few dissertations, information is mostly limited to single paragraphs in larger mass media studies. Magazines for black women have, for example, not been researched yet. In this study, South African and Dutch magazines from 2006 are studied as sociocultural journals: accounts or collections of the major trains of thought representative of a specific context and time frame. When magazine content is viewed as the textual distillation of the shared consciousness or culture of a particular audience, and discourse as ways of acting and thinking underlying this shared consciousness, magazines, by drawing on different discourses, report on the norms, values and habits particular to a specific era – yielding information that can be applied in reconstructing images of reality. This study aimed to research, within the context of current women’s magazines, the way in which women’s presence in the career world is accepted and legitimised as standard practice, and to explore the influence of the pursuit of a career on other female roles. It was assumed that the range of ‘superwoman’ roles (career woman, mother, wife, homemaker, lover, friend …) resonates in the ‘work discourse’ – and that all women experience similar frustrations, fears, dreams and expectations, irrespective of linguistic, cultural and socio-economic factors. A selection of sixteen magazines – two issues each of four South African and four Dutch magazine titles, aimed at diverse readerships – were singled out as primary research material. Magazine content was subsequently submitted to close reading, in order to examine as closely as possible the approaches towards women’s deployment in the career world, as made evident in the text. Theoretical concepts from mass media studies, cultural studies, discourse analysis and feminist criticism underpinned the identification of textual patterns, leading to the establishment of links between text and reality and meaningful interpretations of eventual findings. The results indicated that the work discourse in all the examined magazines is informed by three interpretative repertoires – that ultimately determine the way in which this discourse is developed and maintained, both in the magazine content and in everyday life. When the findings resulting from the textual analysis of the work discourse represented in these magazines were compared with actual statistics on the career world, it became obvious, however, that magazine content does not necessarily reflect reality – but that internalising the ambitious, larger-than-life dream aspects contained between a magazine’s covers is precisely the aspect from which readers derive pleasure and satisfaction. / Dissertation (MA (Afrikaans))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Afrikaans / unrestricted

1./1 Courtly Love in the context of ludic elements of courtly culture (Cantigas de Santa Maria and the troubadour chansonnier R) Matouš Jaluška Abstract Dissertation Courtly Love in the context of ludic elements of courtly culture (Cantigas de Santa Maria and the troubadour chansonnier R) strives to refine on the common notion that the me- dieval courtly poetry is a kind of game. It is based in the tradition of thinking about playing, which is based on the essay Homo ludens of Johan Huizinga and continues through works of Roger Cailloise, Jacques Henriot and Eugen Fink to the current trend of Game Studies. Close reading of the authorities in the introductory chapter shows that each of them assigns an im- portant role to the notion of discontinuity or rupture that enables them to establish the game as a non-binding and safe world. The concept of troubadour poetic creation as a safe activity is explored in the second chapter based on the works of the two founding figures of the trouba- dour tradition, Guilhem de Peitieu ("the Count of Poitiers") and Marcabru. The comparison shows that the safety of troubadour poetry is closely connected with the idea of binding or non-binding language. Binding speech is strongly linked to the image of female power and the ability of women to breed offspring and thus to keep...

This thesis looks at two invisible characters, the Kaernk from Amnesia: The Dark Descent and the Walrider from Outlast, to investigate how these characters are incorporated into and contribute to elements found within survival-horror games, and how their design affects the player. The thesis uses a close-reading methodology adapted for video-games to generate data used to first describe each of the characters and the scenario where they are first encountered, and later analyze and discuss the data, as well as compare the data from each character to one another. The thesis finds that the use of invisible enemies within these two survival-horror games seems to be an effective way to heighten the fear-factor felt by the players of these games, based on theory about horror. The thesis concludes by stating that these two enemies work very well within these two games, partly due to the absence of combat-mechanics, but questions whether the use of invisible enemies would work as well in all survival-horror games, including those with combat-mechanics. This research could be useful as designing and animating enemies in games is both time-consuming and potentially expensive, and if invisible enemies work within certain types of horror games developers could save both time and money when developing these types of games. For future research, this thesis suggests practice-based player studies to verify claims made based on theory, as well as looking at invisible enemies within horror-games featuring combat. / Detta examensarbete kollar på två osynliga fiender, Kaernk från Amnesia: The Dark Descent och Walrider från Outlast, för att undersöka hur dessa fiender är integrerade i och bidrar med de grunderna som finns inom överlevnadsskräck-spel, och hur deras design påverkar spelaren. Examensarbetet använder en närläsning-metod anpassad för dataspel för att skapa data som används för att först beskriva varje karaktär och det scenariot där de först möts, och senare analysera och diskutera datan, samt jämföra datan från varje karaktär med varandra. Examensarbetet finner att användandet av osynliga fiender inom dessa två överlevnadsskräck-spel verkar vara ett effektivt sätt att höja rädslan för spelaren av dessa spel, baserat på teori kring skräck. Examensarbetet drar slutsatsen att dessa två fiender är mycket effektiva inom dessa spel, delvis på grund av brist på stridsmekanik, men ifrågasätter om användandet av osynliga fiender skulle fungera lika bra inom alla överlevnadsskräck-spel, särskilt de med stridsystem. Detta examensarbete kan vara användbart därför att design och animering av fiender inom spel kan vara båda tidskrävande och kostsamt, och om osynliga fiender fungerar lika bra inom vissa typer av skräckspel kan utvecklare spara båda tid och pengar när de utvecklar dessa spel. För framtida forskning, föreslår detta examensarbete praxisbaserade spelar-studier för att verifiera antaganden baserade på teori, samt att kolla på osynliga fiender i skräckspel med stridsmekanik.

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