La portée culturelle des jeux vidéo passe par le plaisir que les joueurs prennent à leurs pratiques. Cette étude propose d'analyser les régimes d'expérience vidéoludique. A partir d'entretiens qualitatifs et d'enquêtes anthropologiques, deux niveaux d'expérience ont été dégagés : la maîtrise et l'immersion. La maîtrise renvoie à des valeurs individualistes de discipline de soi, de compétition et de quête de reconnaissance sociale. De son côté, l'immersion apparaît davantage portée sur l'affect dans ses sollicitations sensorielles, ses rapports au récit et à la sociabilité. Le jeu vidéo est une « manière d'être au monde » en tant qu'il mobilise des sentiments d'adhésion à des valeurs symboliques partagées. La mise en relation de l'échelle micro-sociologique de la pratique de jeu observée sur le terrain et de l'échelle macro-sociologique de ses déterminations sociales permet de contextualiser les représentations sociales des joueurs et d'en évaluer la portée instituante. / The cultural impact of video games directly depends on the enjoyment experienced by players in their practices. This study analyses the modes of videogaming experience. Drawing from qualitative interviews and anthropological surveys, two modes of experience have been settled : control and immersion. The videogaming experience of control spreads individualistic values of self-discipline, competition and social recognition quest. Whereas immersion appears more in an affective way in its sensorial sollicitations, its narrative modes, and its networking sociabilities. Video gaming is a type of « presence to the world » as it conveys feelings of belonging to shared symbolic values. The connexion between the micro-sociological scale of the on-field observed game practice and the macro-sociological scale of its social determinations allow to contextualise the players' social representations and to evaluate their instituting reach.

An estimated 48.9 million Americans have a disability (Bernstein, 2012). Of those 48.9 million people, 24.1 million Americans have a severe disability and 34.2 million have a functional limitation (Bernstein, 2012). The U.S. Government Accountability Office reports an increase in students with disabilities in the post-secondary population (Ridpath, n.d.). Approximately 11% of post-secondary students’ report having a disability (Ridpath, n.d.). This trend has also been reflected within the athletic population at the NCAA Division I, II, and III level (Ridpath, n.d.). This study examined the average disability attitude of NCAA Division I athletes. The average disability attitude among NCAA Division I athletes was 73.99 out of 144. Recently, the physical and mental impact that video games have on video game players has been greatly researched (Oggins, & Sammis, 2012). It has been reported that 8% of U.S. adolescents and young adults are pathological gamers (Gentile, 2009). Additionally, it has been stated that video game play of over 20 hours per week is common, and that it is not unusual for males to engage in video games for over 40 hours per week (Bailey et al., 2010). This study examined the average video gaming tendencies of NCAA Division I athletes. The data collected reports the average video gaming tendencies of athletes based on behavioral functions (attention, escape, tangible, and sensory) to be: Attention = 12.71, Escape 4.64, Tangible = 11.01, and Sensory 7.46.

The video game industry in Sweden has experienced tremendous growth since 2009 with its revenue generation being compared to iron ore, an important revenue generator for the country. The ability of these firms to record recurrent increases in revenue is due to the innovativeness of the industry. External sources of knowledge affect firms’ innovative performance. However, the complexity of the knowledge acquired is influenced by the strength of ties between the firm and its counterparts. This study investigates how Swedish video game firms develop new products to stay competitive through their relationship with their strong ties counterparts, level of cooperation and firms’ absorptive capacity. We model strong ties relationship with latent constructs including closeness, commitment and trust. A nationally representative survey was conducted among selected video game firms across Sweden. Structural equation modelling was then utilized to assess the effect of strong ties on new product innovativeness. The results show that strong ties with external counterparts have a positive and statistically significant effect on new product innovation through the mediating channel of cooperation and absorptive capacity. Closeness, commitment and trust show a direct effect on cooperation, cooperation on absorptive capacity and absorptive capacity on new product innovativeness. The implications of these findings have been discussed.

Religiousness has been shown to have an inverse relationship with at least some types of addiction. The present study examined whether intrinsic religiousness predicts substance addiction and video game addiction in a sample of participants that included mostly undergraduate students from the Appalachian region, as well as some participants surveyed with the use of social media advertisements. Intrinsic religiousness has been defined as internalizing the tenets of one’s faith. Participants self-reported their religiousness using the Religious Surrender and Attendance Scale – 3 (RSAS-3), which has been shown to measure intrinsic religiousness. Religiousness as measured by the RSAS-3 predicted lower levels of substance use addiction. Statistical significance was not found for the relationship between religiousness and video game addiction. The present study extends findings regarding religiousness and addiction but future research should also take into account different theological and denominational beliefs and commitments related to health outcomes.

Problematic Internet use (PIU) and problematic video gaming (PVG) are associated with various negative health outcomes and are increasingly concerning behavioral health issues among youth. While market research indicates that US Latinx use the Internet and video games more frequently than non-Latinx US youth, research on PIU and PVG among this historically understudied population is lacking. Accordingly, data on PIU, PVG, parental monitoring, sleep quality, substance use, anxiety, depression, parental attachment, acculturation, and positive future orientation were collected using validated standardized measures from three separate samples of US Latinx and non-Latinx youth. The aims of this research were to explore the associations between PIU, PVG, and family, cultural, and individual wellbeing outcomes in a community sample of US Latinx and non-Latinx black adolescents. The first study (N = 159) examined the incidence of PVG among youth and found that younger elementary school aged males (ages 6-11) had the highest PVG scores, followed by middle school aged males (ages 12-14), and high school aged males (ages 15-18). Building off previous research, the second study collected data (N = 247) examined PIU as a mediator of the association between parental monitoring and academic achievement, sleep quality, substance use, anxiety, and depression. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to estimate the relationships between the variables, controlling for adolescent’s age, sex, and race/ethnicity. Results revealed that PIU is a significant mediator between parental monitoring and low academic achievement, sleep quality, substance use, anxiety, and depression. A third study was conducted to examine if PIU and PVG mediate the relation between family, cultural, individual constructs and academic achievement. Two separate simple mediation models were tested using PROCESS© macro v3.0 for SPSS 25. Results from the hypothesized mediation models were not significant. Suggestions for future research to examine critical Latinx cultural values and their influence on behavioral health is discussed.

This study investigates how video gaming experience influences performance in simulation tasks on an ophthalmoscope simulator among premedical and medical students. Participants were categorized based on their gaming habits, and completion times for simulation tasks were recorded. Results indicate that individuals with greater gaming experience, both casual and hardcore gamers, demonstrated quicker and more accurate performance compared to non-gamers across all skill levels assessed. However, no significant difference was found between casual and hardcore gamers. These findings suggest that moderate engagement in video gaming may enhance visuospatial skills and hand-eye coordination relevant to simulation-based training, with potential implications for medical education and /or choice of specialty. Further research is needed to explore the long-term effects of gaming on simulation performance and to optimize its integration into medical training curricula.

Playing violent video games may provoke aggression. Psycho-physiological methods may provide knowledge about the underlying psychological processes. Most previous studies have been performed in laboratory settings at daytime with adults. Thus the aim of this thesis was to investigate psycho-physiological (autonomic and HPA related reactions), sleep-related and emotional responses in teenage boys to playing a violent and a non-violent video game at home before going to sleep. In Study I the autonomic responses differed between the violent and the non-violent game during playing and more distinctly during sleep. In Study II the HPA axis was not affected by video gaming at all. In Study III, the effect of habits of playing violent games was assessed (≤ 1h/day and ≥ 3h/day). High versus low experience of violent gaming were related to different autonomic, sleep-related and emotional processes at exposure to a violent and a non-violent game, during playing and during sleep. The present thesis demonstrated that violent and non-violent games induce different autonomic responses during playing and – more distinctly – during sleep. Frequent gaming seems to influence physiological, sleep-related and emotional reactions, possibly as an expression of desensitization processes.

This thesis is concerned with the fact that people routinely appropriate interactivetechnology. Much of the work in this project was conducted at The Public, aninteractive art gallery in West Bromwich. Examples of appropriation that arepresented range from interactive art, the game Minecraft™, to mundane objectsencountered in daily life. Research Questions posed in this study are: • What are the dynamics of appropriation? • What is the relationship of appropriation to affordance? • How do individuals experience appropriation? Appropriation is the mechanism by which we make objects in the world relevant and personal. This PhD has revealed three dimensions of appropriation namely: • Control: both in terms of ownership and virtuosity. • Ensoulment: the mechanism through which we ascribe personal significance to artefacts. • Affordance: the experiential relationship to artefacts concerned with action on and with them. Appropriation is revealed as a mechanism through which people understand potential action with technology. A traditional view is that people learn how to use a system and once its canonical use is established new uses or appropriations are discovered. What is revealed in this study is that appropriation is bound to our perception of action with technology, commonly explained through the concept of affordance. Appropriation is revealed as the initial act in human encounters with technology.

Background: Harassment is defined and labelled differently in different studies. In the context of video games it has been investigated multiple ways: diary studies, interviews, surveys and screen recordings. Methods: Video data through participating observation were conducted from the end of February 2024 to the beginning of April 2024. A total of 24 matches, with 219 participants, were recorded. The questions of how often harassment occurs, which of the five defined types of harassment occur, whether there are differences between game modes, what differences there are in terms of the reaction to harassment, and whether there are gender differences in terms of the victims, were investigated. Results: One third of the matches contained harassment. Offensive harassment occurred most frequently, with harassment occurring more frequently in competitive game mode and demonstrating a wider range of harassment. In most cases, harassment is focussed either on the player's own team or on the opposing team. The range of harassment within a team is also greater than when harassment is directed at the opposing team. In competitive game mode, harassment is mainly focussed on the own team. Conclusions: The results of the study support the findings of other studies. They also indicate that harassment in video games should be investigated with a larger number of influencing factors. In particular, the methodology used closes a research gap and could ensure a better insight into the different types of harassment without collecting the data through third parties and thus presumably causing bias.

Competitive video gaming is experiencing exponential growth. Advances in technology and global Internet penetration has created highly dedicated fan bases for games played at a competitive level. Game developing companies are beginning to focus their attention on making games for the new eSports market. How avid eSports fans view competitive gaming is disrupting traditional consumption models. Twitch.TV a site that streams live gaming content is seeing massive growth. Now, more than ever, dedicated gamers can live off of playing games – whether by competing in tournaments as sponsored players or running ads on their Twitch.TV live stream while they play. The communities that have developed around different genres of competitive games are as varied as traditional sports such as Major League Baseball or the National Football League. A new industry with a complex infrastructure is developing in this new market. / text