Catálogo de publicaciones - revistas

<jats:p>The popularity of video games is at an all-time high among today’s population. Game designers and producers spend years on plot and character development, the creation of appropriate settings, and providing the player with a ludic experience that is both enriching and perplexing. This article looks at the creation of virtual utopian societies as the basis for contemporary video games. Just as the world today sees many conflicts over island rights, island sovereignties, and, sometimes, the creation of artificial islands that seek to escape governance of existing countries, video games have embraced the creation of a separate society for settings that explore new or extreme forms of individual, societal, and political development. Examining the BioShock series, this article looks at how video games and their designers have used utopic theories of society to create new experiences, potentialities, and ethical dilemmas for the players.</jats:p>

<jats:p> This study investigated problematic mobile gameplay. Adopting Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-style criteria for pathological gambling to identify cases of problematic play, the study compared the mobile gaming habits, preferences, and demographics of problematic and nonproblematic game players. Of the 1,950 mobile players sampled, 3% ( n = 58) demonstrated signs of possible pathological behavior. The nonproblematic players showed characteristics identifiable with the casual mobile game player, who plays as a quick distraction to pass time when waiting or out of boredom. By comparison, the problematic players were found to play as a means of avoiding responsibilities and as a possible distraction from pain and discomfort. The findings help substantiate claims that mobile gameplay is a casual activity at least for the majority of individuals. However, for some, mobile gaming can interfere with different aspects of life and, in worst cases, may lead to pathological dependence. </jats:p>

<jats:p> The present study brings personality research into the realm of computer games. We used a novel method—the Prison Tycoon computer game—to explore participants’ attitudes toward rehabilitation and punishment. Forty-two men and 48 women were asked to construct a virtual prison equipped with rehabilitation, correction, and neutral facilities. Financial investment spent on each respective type of facility was treated as an indicator of a participant’s particular attitudes toward punishment. Additionally, participants completed the NEO Five-Factor Personality Inventory. Results indicated that Neuroticism and Openness to experience may be reliable predictors of one’s willingness to rehabilitate prisoners (measured as the amount of money spent on rehabilitation/correction facilities). This novel experimental method sheds new light on the issue of reliably and ecologically measuring attitudes in the lab and provides further evidence that computer games offer a new, effective alternative to classical research methods in this area. </jats:p>

<jats:p>This article seeks to examine how the notions of belonging and nativeness are enacted in virtual communities. It draws from an ethnographically inspired study of the players of a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) that is explored through three key dimensions: space, time, and language. Drawing on concepts developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, I argue that the notion of nativeness, in the case of virtual communities, is best approached as a performance embedded in the process of becoming. In that sense, one is not but rather becomes a member of a virtual community. This process of becoming entails an exploration of smooth forms of space and the appropriation of a vernacular form of language.</jats:p>

<jats:p> Digital gameplay is enacted across many social platforms that can be described as affinity spaces, meaning informal learning environments where players share resources and knowledge. This article examines the ways that a young gamer stitches together several different spaces to play Minecraft. Our study focuses on the play of a single participant, collecting ethnographic data about how he enacts play across several different technologies as both a player and a server administrator. We find that Skype serves as the primary technology that enables gameplay between other spaces (e.g., building a server, playing on that server, and recording gameplay to upload onto YouTube). Relatedly, Skype’s prominence as a communication technology causes some difficulties with backgrounding personal identities during gameplay. Our findings show how everyday interactions in gaming spaces are carried out across affinity spaces and the implications that networked play has for access to the learning opportunities inherent in play. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This article examines the game Papers, Please to demonstrate how the aesthetic experience of gameplay resonates with the cultural logic of contemporary globalist paradigms. The author demonstrates how video games make their players undertake a synthesis of work and play via a process of psychological and physical self-modification. This interrelation between work, play, and subjectivity modification within gameplay experiences embodies the same ideological framework that governs many knowledge-based economies which thrive off of user-generated content. In using the work/play/subjectivity connection to locate similarities between video games and the logic of globalist paradigms, the author presents a revised understanding of what constitutes the political dimensions of video games and the experiences they elicit in their players. This article concludes with an analysis of how the mechanics and narrative of Papers, Please embodies the cultural mind-set of work-as-play while simultaneously challenging the discourses often applied to user-focused information technologies. </jats:p>

<jats:p>In the mid-1990s, a small group of video game designers attempted to lessen gaming’s gender gap by creating software targeting girls. By 1999, however, these attempts collapsed, and video games remained a masculinized technology. To help understand why this movement failed, this article addresses the unexplored role of consumer press in defining “gamers” as male. A detailed content analysis of Nintendo Power issues published from 1994 to 1999 shows that mainstream companies largely ignored the girls’ games movement, instead targeting male audiences through player representations, sexualized female characters, magazine covers featuring men, and predominantly male authors. Given the mutually constitutive nature of representation and reality, the lack of women in consumer press then affected girls’ ability to identify as gamers and enter the gaming community. This shows that, even as gaming audiences diversify, inclusive representations are also needed to redefine gamer as more than just “male.”</jats:p>

<jats:p>The postcolonial has still remained on the margins of Game Studies, which has now incorporated at length, contemporary debates of race, gender, and other areas that challenge the canon. It is difficult to believe, however, that it has not defined the way in which video games are perceived; the effect, it can be argued, is subtle. For the millions of Indians playing games such as Empire: Total War or East India Company, their encounter with colonial history is direct and unavoidable, especially given the pervasiveness of postcolonial reactions in everything from academia to day-to-day conversation around them. The ways in which games construct conceptions of spatiality, political systems, ethics, and society are often deeply imbued with a notion of the colonial and therefore also with the questioning of colonialism. This article aims to examine the complexities that the postcolonial undertones in video games bring to the ways in which we read them.</jats:p>

<jats:p> Within the study of video games, there is a burgeoning interest in the phenomenon of historical representation; nonetheless, few studies have centered on the reflection of particular eras of History, such as the Middle Ages and the effect of this on interpretations of culture and potential pedagogical applications with respect to this specific period of time. In this study, we present and discuss the compilation and content of a database of over 600 medieval titles released between 1980 and 2013, demonstrating the growing popularity, with producers and consumers, of what we could now refer to as a stand-alone genre. We discuss our categorization of the collection as purely historical or as hybrid and provide what could prove a very rich source of data for researchers on typical plot lines, most and least popular eras or events in history, genres commonly adopted within both types of game. </jats:p>

<jats:p>In this study, I use a revised approach of the Frankfurt School in order to critically assess a recent massively multiplayer online video game, Guild Wars 2. Starting with a brief historical overview of the Frankfurt School, I proceed by applying a revision of the school’s main contributions to analyzing Guild Wars 2. This includes an integration of processes of production and distribution, various levels of textual analysis, and audience reception. My main method of investigation is long-term participant observation, and throughout the article, I will argue for the use of such qualitative methods in the critical study of video games. Doing this, I have found that Guild Wars 2 offers a complex experience with enormous appeal and creative potential, while at other times being surprisingly restrictive, culminating in what Walter Benjamin would call a dialectical fairy scene.</jats:p>