Catálogo de publicaciones - revistas

<jats:p> After the Lead Content Designer of World of Warcraft (WoW), Tigole, deemed a new set of rewards ‘‘welfare’’ epics, the WoW player community responded in a multitude of fascinating ways. Using rhetorical analysis, gaming studies literature, and a critical analysis of welfare discourse, four rhetorical strategies can be seen in the discourse produced by the playing community. From directly confronting Tigole’s statements to lamenting a loss of avatar capital and analyzing the role the changes have on the multiplayer aspects of the game, the rhetoric of ‘‘welfare’’ epics offers unique insights into the importance of balance and scarcity in the normative structures of WoW, how players accept and perpetuate the belief that rewards in online games should be ‘‘earned,’’ and how WoW’s system of rewards has been fundamentally altered since the game’s launch. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Serious games use instructional and video game elements for nonentertainment purposes. Serious games attempt to create instructionally sound and relevant learning experiences for a wide variety of audiences and industries. The author contends that for serious games to be effective, instructional designers and video game designers need to understand how the game characteristics, competition and goals, rules, challenges, choices, and fantasy, used in both edutainment and serious games, can influence motivation and facilitate learning. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Scholars, educators, and media designers are increasingly interested in whether and how digital games might contribute to civic learning. However, there are three main barriers to advancing understanding of games’ potential for civic education: the current practices of formal schooling, a dearth of evidence about what kinds of games best inspire learning about public life, and divergent paradigms of civic engagement. In response, this article develops a conceptual framework for how games might foster civic learning of many kinds. The authors hypothesize that the most effective games for civic learning will be those that best integrate game play and content, that help players make connections between their individual actions and larger social structures, and that link ethical and expedient reasoning. This framework suggests an agenda for game design and research that could illuminate whether and how games can be most fruitfully incorporated into training and education for democratic citizenship and civic leadership. </jats:p>

<jats:p> The actual meanings computer game modders attach to their actions and practices remain heavily underresearched. This article takes a look at the attitudes and everyday practices of the people who make game modifications, with special focus on the forms and consequences of collaboration between hobbyists. The case discussed in the article is the shooter-game Operation Flashpoint (OFP) and the modding scene around it. The article proposes that there is no such thing as an average computer game modder. It is suggested that the distinctions can be drawn based on the objective of projects (missions, add-ons, mods), modder motivations (playing, hacking, researching, self-expression, cooperation), and notions on the ownership and potential commercialization of their work. Given the forecasts concerning the growing significance of player-made content, this study can offer some down-to-earth findings from the long established tradition of game modding. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Drawing on empirical research conducted with U.K. games design students, games design course tutors, and professional designers alongside broader careers advice and guidance from industry representatives, this article will explore the changing relationships games design students describe with digital games and games technologies. Opening with accounts of their childhood pastimes and passions, the discussion will move to consider closely students’ development within a higher education context and the associated, emerging shifts in their engagements with games technologies. Through exploring the transition from hobby to career and the overlapping player/student/designer positions, questions concerning human and technological interactions, identity, and wider career and skills contexts are highlighted. In drawing out such questions and issues, this article will seek to outline how exploring the practices and understandings of students prompts reflection on both located and specific and more broadly applicable engagements between digital games technologies, industry, and individuals. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This article looks at a genre of games that most frequently appears on the Nintendo DS and discusses how they use multiple techniques drawn from several different sources to gain popularity. The desert island simulation blends a series of familiar game genres with those of popular television, specifically serial television, to produce a genre that deliberately appeals to non-traditional users (although this definition relies more on preconceptions than actuality, as games continue to develop in scope). This article examines the techniques that these games use, including the shrewd marketing tools of the DS, the ways in which the games borrow from existing games genres, how they draw the player into a narrative web through a reconstruction of player agency, and the linkage with serial television. By specifically examining The Sims 2 Castaway (S2C, 2007), this article discusses how the changing of ludic objectives during these games influences player expectation and how this is increasingly reflected in other texts such as long-haul television series. These developments indicate not only an evolving canon within games but argue for their growing influence elsewhere in cultural production. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Playing online entails far more than dragon-slaying, identity experimentation, communication, and elaborate synchronized aggression. Letting other players affect your experience means placing yourself—if ever so slightly—at their mercy. In other words, you need to trust them, evoking a concept that has divided philosophers for millennia. This article describes how trust is an important factor in multiplayer gaming, how it can be approached theoretically, and how it may be favorably affected by game design. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This article explores the construction of Silent Hill—Konami’s survival horror video game series—as art. Adopting a discursive approach to the notion of ‘‘art,’’ the extent to which traditional formations of cultural value are mobilized is explored across three aspects of the series’ first four installments. The Silent Hill game texts are examined as evoking formal devices of art cinema, including realism, ambiguity, psychological complexity, and self-reflexivity. Next the games’ advertising is considered as emphasizing these qualities, privileging narrative over ludic gaming aspects. Finally the games’ representation in the documentary ‘‘The Making of Silent Hill 2’’ is discussed as positioning the series within frameworks of artistry and authorship. </jats:p>