A study by Markey and Markey (2010) indicates that persons with high neuroticism, low agreeableness, and low conscientiousness personality traits are more likely be influences violent video games. Interestingly, in conclusions, they write:

Although the incidences of violence, particularly school violence, linked to video games are alarming, what should perhaps surprise us more is that there are not more VVG-driven violent episodes. Given the number of youths who regularly engage in VVG play and the general concern regarding this media, it would seem likely that resulting violent episodes would be a regular occurrence. And yet, daily reports of mass violence are not reported. It appears that the vast majority of individuals exposed to VVGs do not become violent in the “real world.” (pp. 90.)

Is there hope for more nuanced media effect studies?

Markey & Markey 2010. Vulnerability to Violent Video Games: A Review and Integration of Personality Research. Review of General Psychology, 14: 2, 82–91. http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/gpr-14-2-82.pdf (DOI=10.1037/a0019000).

Note for myself: read this:

Fernandez Vara, C. (2009). The tribulations of adventure games: integrating story into simulation through performance. Doctoral Dissertation, Georgia Institute of Technology. URL=http://hdl.handle.net/1853/31756.

Tavinor, Grant (2009). The Art of Videogames. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Tavinor looks at games using tool-set from the analytical philosophy of art,using especially the philosophy of fiction.

As the book is drawing on analytical philosophy, the discussion of the definition of videogame is inevitable. Fortunately, Tavinor does not just start a definition project, but discuss the different kinds of definitions and their uses. Definition offered is well-developed, but it trust the idea of intended use that makes skeptical (this is not fully though-out, but a hunch).

A big part of the book deals with games as fiction and character-based games. Again, the treatment of fiction start with a closer look of concepts used in game research. Aarseth’s argument that functional game objects are virtual, not fictional, is rejected. Tavinor present a compelling argument why the game objects are fictional and videogames are usually virtual fictions (I have criticized  Aarserth’s fictional–virtual–real dichotomy earlier, see http://mlab.taik.fi/~plankosk/blog/?p=6). After that Tavinor discusses what kind of fiction games are using Walton¹ theory as a stepping stone:

Modern, fictively rich video games … allow their players to step into a visuospatial fictional world in the guise of a player-character. The player character is the player’s epistemic and behavioral  proxy in the game world, allowing them to discover the many facts of the fictional world, and to act in the world. (p. 84.)

Tavinor also discusses narrative in, emotions in, and ethics of videogames, as well as games as art. Tavinor’s emotion theory seems rather close to what I have proposed in my paper Goals, Affects, Empathy in Games.  Tavinor writes:

Big Daddies in BioShock are so threatening that the players must steel themselves before encounter. … This is because, fictionally, the player-character and the BigDaddy do “exist” in the same ontological game world. (p. 142.)

I partly agree with this, but I see that BigDaddy can be frightening, because it threatens the players real goals at the same time BigDaddy fictionally threatens the  player-character.

This is a book worth of reading. The arguments are well-presented, and hopefully we will see this same kind of rigor in argumentation more in game research.

References

1. Walton, Kendal (1990). Mimesis as Make-Believe. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

The Digra Conference 2009 Proceedings, Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Play, Practice and Theory, is now available at digra digital library.

Annakaisa Kultima: Ajatuskokeista (On thought experiments), MA thesis, available at http://gameslices.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/theoretical-philosophy-and-thought-experiments/.

• the thesis is looking at thought experiment method

Compagno & Coppock (eds.) Computer Games between Texts and Practices. Available at http://www.ec-aiss.it/monografici/5_computer_games.php.

• a compilation studies games using semiotics

Juul & Marleigh writes about game interfaces.

Abstract:

In video game literature and video game reviews, video games are often divided into two distinct parts: interface and gameplay. Good video games, it is assumed, have easy to use interfaces, but they also provide difficult gameplay challenges to the player. But must a good game follow this pattern, and what is the difference between interface and gameplay? When does the easy-to-use interface stop, and when does the challenging gameplay begin? By analyzing a number of games, the paper argues that it is rare to find a clear-cut border between interface and gameplay and that the fluidity of this border characterizes games in general. While this border is unclear, we also analyze a number of games where the challenge is unambiguously located in the interface, thereby demonstrating that “easy interface and challenging gameplay” is neither universal nor a requirement for game quality. Finally, the paper argues, the lack of a clear distinction between easy interface and challenging gameplay is due to the fact that games are fundamentally designed not to accomplish something through an activity, but to provide an activity that is pleasurable in itself.

http://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/?p=657

Olli Sotamaa’s PhD thesis The Player’s Game: Towards Understanding Player Production Among Computer Game Cultures is available online: http://acta.uta.fi/teos.php?id=11176.

GIC’08 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games papers are available online: http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/cig08/acceptedPapers.html.

http://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/issue/view/7/showToc

Articles:

• Games and Self-Imagining, a Comparative Media Perspective by Jan Van Looy
• ‘I am Trying to Believe’: Dystopia as Utopia in the Year Zero Alternate Reality Game by Alexander Charles Oliver Hall

Issue also includes seven smaller persective pieces and five reviews.

An open access journal has published an issue about games, Games as Transformative Works.

TOC

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