Catálogo de publicaciones - revistas

<jats:p> In the cultural controversy surrounding “violent video games,” the manufacturers and players of games often insist that computer games are a form of harmless entertainment that is unlikely to influence the real-world activities of players. Yet games and military simulations are used by military organizations across the world to teach the modern arts of war, from how to shoot a gun to teamwork, leadership skills, military values, and cultural sensitivity. We survey a number of ways of reconciling these apparently contradictory claims and argue that none of them are ultimately successful. Thus, either military organizations are wrong to think that games and simulations have a useful role to play in training anything other than the most narrowly circumscribed physical skills or some recreational digital games do, in fact, have the power to influence the real-world behavior and dispositions of players in morally significant ways. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This article discusses the application of a phenomenological framework to inform research in computer game worlds like massively multiplayer online games. Based on the phenomenological sociology of Alfred Schutz, this article examines some of the key problems facing researchers in online spaces, such as the absence of the corporeal “Other.” In discussing these issues using the vocabulary of Schutz’s phenomenology, this article attempts to clarify some key concepts to contribute to a useful framework for conducting social research in computer game worlds. This article examines how the transcendent nature of online social experiences in game environments like World of Warcraft contribute to a distinct context of meaning. An understanding of the ways in which social game worlds can be constituted as sites of unique experience may be useful for researchers wishing to examine these spaces from ethnographic or similar perspectives. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Welcome to the Adult Play Special Issue. In this introduction, we (the editors) explain the origin of the collection and our unique take on what adult play means as a term. Rather than be specifically about sexual play, the term adult is taken here to reference the age of players. The article included how adults play, what they play with, and when they play. This of course includes, but is not limited to, play of a sexual nature. We hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed editing it. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Drawing on ethnographic and interview data collected from the United States and Finland on lifestyle (“swinging”) events, this article explores the implicit and explicit rules influencing negotiations for group sex as a type of play. Participants maintain a sense of freedom and spontaneity while acting within situational constraints—ethical expectations, preexplicated rules, implicit rules, and complex negotiations that occur during the play itself either openly or more subtly. Because it has implications for the participants’ everyday lives, lifestyle group sex is a phenomenon on the border between games and adult play. Through an analysis of the rules and social contracts arising in group sex, we demonstrate how participants learn to read interactions at group sex events in the way that players learn game systems and how they can and do become “good players” in such situations. </jats:p>

<jats:p>The article aims to present, analyze, and discuss the attitudes of the three groups of adults—theorists, hobbyists and “everyday players”—toward play(ful) behavior and activities in relation to character toys. The rhetoric of play theorists is mirrored against the rhetoric of organized players (hobbyists) and (nonorganized) everyday players through in-depth interviews and participatory observation. Questions guiding the exploratory path this article takes include the following: First, what has led to the dominant ideas of the toy as a collectable item and of adult toy consumers as toy collectors? Second, why is the manipulation of toys that happens at adult age considered hobbying and not playing? The results of the analysis indicate that the uses of toys at adult age represent more complex and multifaceted actions and relationships to play than the terms “collecting” and “hobbying” imply.</jats:p>

<jats:p> The social meanings of play sit at odds with norms of responsible and productive adult conduct. To be “caught” playing as an adult therefore risks embarrassment. Still, many designers want to create enjoyable, nonembarrassing play experiences for adults. To address this need, this article reads instances of spontaneous adult play through the lens of Erving Goffman’s theory of the interaction order to unpack conditions and strategies for nonembarrassing adult play. It identifies established frames, segregated audiences, scripts supporting smooth performance, managing audience awareness, role distancing, and, particularly, alibis for play: Adults routinely provide alternative, adult-appropriate motives to account for their play, such as child care, professional duties, creative expression, or health. Once legitimized, the norms and rules of play themselves then provide an alibi for behavior that would risk being embarrassing outside play. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Hobby board gaming is a serious leisure pastime that entails large commitments of time and energy. When serious hobby board gamers become parents, their opportunities for engaging in the pastime are constrained by their new family responsibilities. Based on an ethnographic study of serious hobby board gamers, we investigate how play is constrained by parenting and how serious board gamers with these responsibilities create opportunities to continue to play board games by negotiating the context, time, location, and medium of play. We also examine how these changes influence the enjoyment players derive from board games across the key dimensions of sociality, intellectual challenge, variety, and materiality. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Are shaggy seats which make cute noises playful or disruptive in a conference setting? This article pushes the limits of game scholars’ lusory attitude by breaching an academic seminar with a playful experiment. Five MurMur Moderator seats, interactive and interruptive furniture prototypes, were set up at a game research seminar where they were used as ambient elements during the presentations. The experience was evaluated by observation, accompanied with seminar tweets, and by conducting a small survey after the seminar. The experiences of the participants varied from enthusiastically positive to strong negative feelings. Through this experiment, we were able to explore the important issue of polarized attitudes of adults toward play and provide some food for thought for the future design of adult play. </jats:p>

<jats:p>Commercial games are rarely studied for their links to civic behavior. Yet small-group games online can affect the social networks that spill into civic life (and vice versa). This study examined players of the world’s most popular personal computer game, League of Legends. Such games are theorized as mirrors that reflect civic tendencies and help some players to retain social resources. Using models of civic voluntarism, the attitudes and behaviors of more than 9,000 gamers were investigated. Gamers were shown to have relatively typical civic lives, except for unusually high rates of peaceful protest. Which gamers protest? As predicted, models for protest improved when considering how players approach their gaming (including recruiting and collaboration preferences). Dispelling some civic fears, there was no evidence that video games distracted from civic life when played in moderation. The findings support an emerging notion of protest as a playful and “expressive” civic mode.</jats:p>

<jats:p> In recent methodological scholarship on digital games, a strong connection is noted between “platform studies” and media archaeology. While platform studies has its critics, who primarily lament the limitations of the project, a recent spate of publications in the field suggests considerable dynamism in platform studies as the concept is further developed. This article argues that by examining platform studies from the perspective of media archaeology, it becomes apparent that platform studies establishes an “epistemic threshold”. Additionally, platform studies is a historical method which both establish continuities and mark breaks with previous platforms and technologies. From the perspective of this threshold, this article explores epistemic questions that arise from how platform studies forms an archive, and how media archaeology can enrich the method’s explicit concerns and engagements with technology and culture. </jats:p>