Catálogo de publicaciones - revistas

<jats:p>The use of commercial video games in combination with other media can provide opportunities to learn skills related to critical thinking, digital literacy, and media production. These media tools offer opportunities for users to participate in the new emerging forms of participatory culture. By means of an ethnographic study carried out in a Spanish primary school, this article presents an analysis of the skills that can be developed through the use of the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire video game and movie and how education professionals can use them at school in order to change the way students learn. The results show how students can develop their critical capacity by comparing these two media, and that this enables them to develop processes geared to digital literacy at the same as it helps them become producers through the creation and publication of blogs.</jats:p>

<jats:p> Why do people spend time in massively multiplayer online games? This article aims to complement games studies’ analytical toolkit with a material causal perspective on players’ time spent in Chinese World of Warcraft ( WoW). I argue that the WoW gameworld is atypically rich in stimuli that have a strong, or supernormal, capacity to activate the moral cognition reasoning systems identified by Haidt and Joseph’s “moral foundations theory.” Testimonial data gathered during long-term fieldwork in Wuhan, China, and data from a survey of 545 Chinese WoW players, wherein combat role (healer, tank) predicts frequency and type of in-game moral experience, are presented in support of this argument. Finally, the causal perspectives outlined in this article are styled in a steampunk aesthetic ( Hornbeck, 2014 ), which I use as “playful” aid to interdisciplinary discourse. </jats:p>

<jats:p>This article investigates discursive procedures in From Software’s 2011 videogame Dark Souls. By combining procedural rhetorics, discourse analysis, and autoethnographical research play, it is argued that Dark Souls features post-Panoptical gameplay mechanics of both continuous surveillance and playful exhibitionism and a hybrid gameplay experience of both subjectivation and empowerment. Players randomly confront one another in a notoriously difficult and unforgiving game space that requires commitment and perseverance. The game, it is shown, provides a metaphor for online surveillance mechanics in which players/netizens are not just democratically gazing at each other but subjected to a procedural system determining who can see whom. Simultaneously, players are offered a number of procedural methods and moral archetypes to normalize and empower them.</jats:p>

<jats:p> When renowned game designer Will Wright designed and developed SimCity, the first “software toy” released by his company Maxis, he was strongly influenced by a 20-year-old text on urban planning written by Jay Forrester of MIT. I will argue in this article that we can only understand Wright’s actions if we think of the game model he developed as a fictional text. Yet Forrester’s work, which had been heavily criticized by urban planners, may also be considered as a work of fiction. I rely here on Gough’s theories concerning the utility of fiction in exploratory research as well as Smithers’ work on exploratory, freeform design work. Both of these models—Wright’s and Forrester’s—may be adapted, altered, or mined to create new fictional models. I will also cite Woolgar’s technology as-text paradigm to explain the ways in which these model texts differ. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Exergames aim to make exercise more enjoyable, especially for children and young adults who are accustomed to digital technologies. Calory Battle augmented reality (AR) is a mobile exergame that utilizes context awareness and AR to enable interaction with virtual content. Designing mobile exergames and AR interaction has received little scholarly attention. This article has several contributions to the design discussion: (1) implementation of a mobile AR exergame, (2) discourse on the game design process, (3) evaluation with 29 South Korean elementary school children and university students who suggested a good reception of the game and generated ideas for improvements of usability and AR interaction, (4) analysis of the game with respect to established game motivators and the Immersion, Scientificalness, Competitiveness, Adaptability, and Learning (ISCAL) exergame design model, (5) design principles and lessons learned, and (6) discussion of the flow experience in exergames. These results can be used by designers to create motivating and interactive mobile AR games. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Narrative has been a means by which to pass culture down through the generations, to help people understand their environments, and to provide a sense community and identity through telling and listening as well as the unique features of the characters and stories themselves. The most familiar surviving stories that connect us to our ancestors take the form of folklore and mythology. Games, too, have served many of the same functions as storytelling. In modern times, games and storytelling are no less prevalent, although the particular forms they take and functions they fulfill have been vastly expanded. Narrative gaming has become extremely popular, allowing for the consumption of both regional heritage and global multiculturalism. This essay will explore the roles of these contemporary narratives and provide an analysis of the transition from the traditional narrative to the live role-playing game. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This study analyzed the time adolescents spend on active video games, sedentary screen media, and conventional physical activity as well as the interrelationships between these variables. Data were collected from 570 Spanish adolescents (15–16 years old) who completed a self-report questionnaire. A path analysis was carried out to analyze the relationships among the different variables. Time in television, video games, and physical activity were higher in males than in females. The use of television and video games positively predicted the use of active video games, which positively predicted physical activity participation. The findings of this study show that sedentary screen media and physical activity are behaviors that can coexist. The promotion of active video games as part of general strategies for the promotion of physical activity could be desirable, but it is likely to contribute to physical activity levels in only a small way. This article finishes with some recommendations related to the use of active/inactive screen media and the promotion of physical activity. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This article examines the role of corruption, and its use as a rhetorical technique, within survival horror video games. As one of the founding examples of the survival horror genre, Resident Evil will be used as a case study example. Specifically, the game will be critically analyzed for its use of corruption in four forms: corruption of media, corruption of nature, corruption of architecture, and corruption of authority. These instances of corruption will be analyzed through two rhetorical theories, schema theory and expectation violations theory, in order to understand why Resident Evil’s design was so effective at evoking fear in the hearts of millions of gamers. The analysis is followed by a reflection on Resident Evil’s legacy and other future areas of research involving rhetoric and video games. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This article illustrates that the Narcissus myth can and has been interpreted as fundamentally about media. Surveying previous interpretations from Mulvey and McLuhan reveals that these rely upon assumptions based in a literate (Mulvey) and electronic (McLuhan) media environment. These interpretations offer insights into the desires and dangers of media, but they do not capture the unique desires of gaming, which are more about the play between self and other than love of self or other. Thus I offer an updated version for digital gaming. This interpretation portrays Narcissus as becoming entranced by the play between self and image, immediacy and hypermediacy, or control and conditions, leading to a better understanding of digital gaming and virtual space as operating via an economy between these pairs rather than an opposition. This economy produces unique desires not encapsulated by previous interpretations of Narcissus, which are frequently applied to gaming. </jats:p>

<jats:p> The thematic area covered by computer games is currently a widely discussed zone, analyzed from various research perspectives, yet then again, it still provides an interesting field for analysis. This domain remains quite dynamic, and this dynamic does not resemble slow transformations, which researchers in social studies have been previously used to, but it seems to be assuming the form of a multistage revolution. It is possible to outline several elementary issues representing the material of the analysis proposed within this text. In the first instance, the authors focus on the matter of change that occurs in thinking about what a computer truly is and then undertake an attempt to indicate the preliminary elements, which would determine the new character of games aimed at mobile computers. The Ingress game will constitute an example to depict the specification underlying this type of entertainment, as this will make it possible to delineate likely development scenarios for this particular area, especially based on the augmented reality concept and its influence on a modern approach toward entertainment that makes use of new mobile technologies. </jats:p>