In this response article, I revisit the idea of paratext in video games. I start, however, with the example of a book by Tolstoy, and the textual studies work of McKenzie and McGann, in order to make ...the point that paratextuality has never been limited to Genette’s rigid definition, even in the case of print texts. Video games foreground what has always been the case: the dynamic, volatile, multidirectional nature of paratexts, which can take you into but also out of the enclosure of the main text (or “game itself”) in unexpected ways. Illustrations include Animal Crossing: New Horizons and a mobile sneakerhead game, Aglet.
Full text
Available for:
NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Games for mobiles present strategies to monetize not only from selling a title but from financial exchanges that take place in the game. Those microtransactions motivate players to purchase random or ...surprise items (known as loot boxes) to customize game features or to overcome narrative obstacles necessary to progress to new levels. Researchers associate the practice with gambling if completing the transaction does not mean the acquisition of an item but the chance to receive it. This research quantified gambling-like features in games available for free, classified by Apple's marketplace as suitable for children from 4 to 8 years old, and from the top-downloaded list. The findings reveal normalization traces of chance-based mechanisms in most of the games. According to the research literature, early exposure to such features may result in problem gambling in adult life. This paper concluded that legal changes and more information provided by the marketplaces are needed to raise awareness of gambling-like practices in mobile games.
Full text
Available for:
EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Social factors play a critical role in motivating player participation and commitment to online multiplayer games. Many popular mobile massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) adopt social network ...embeddedness (SNE) functions to optimise players' social play experience. SNE changes the traditional pattern of MMOG social play by porting acquaintance relationships (e.g., Facebook friends) from social networking sites to the virtual game world. However, little understanding exists on how SNE impacts mobile MMOG players' game participation results such as play performance and play frequency. Drawing on the affordance framework and social capital literature, this research proposes a theoretical model that integrates the factors of SNE technology affordance (identity transparency and information transparency), players' social experience (social interaction, social support, shared vision, and social pressure), plus affordance effects (play performance and play frequency). The model was validated through a longitudinal field study, in which both subjective and objective data were collected from Game for Peace players. Our findings indicate that identity transparency and information transparency positively correlate with social interaction, social support, shared vision, and social pressure, which, taken together, significantly affect play frequency. The results also show that social interaction and shared vision positively impact players' play performance. The study enhances the theoretical understanding of social relationships in players' game participation results from the SNE aspect. Finally, we lend insights on how game operators can improve player game experience and stickiness.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
This paper introduces a serious mobile game to foster social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of the game is to reach younger audiences and engage them in social distancing ...practices. Younger people often have a lower compliance towards these types of practices, so we see a casual game that also aims to be fun as a solution to improve their compliance over time. We report our findings from the study that was conducted to assess an early access version of the game, where the game was tested remotely by 15 players.
Location-based games emerged in the early 2000s following the commercialisation of GPS and artistic experimentation with 'locative media' technologies. Location-based games are played in everyday ...public spaces using GPS and networked, mobile technologies to track their players' location. This book traces the evolution of location-based gaming, from its emergence as a marginal practice to its recent popularisation through smartphone apps like Pokémon Go and its incorporation into 'smart city' strategies. Drawing on this history and an analysis of the scholarly and mainstream literature on location-based games, Leorke unpacks the key claims made about them. These claims position location-based games as alternately enriching or diminishing their players' engagement with the people and places they encounter through the game. Through rich case studies and interviews with location-based game designers and players, Leorke tests out and challenges these celebratory and pessimistic discourses. He argues for a more grounded approach to researching location-based games and their impact on public space that reflects the ideologies, lived experiences, and institutional imperatives that circulate around their design and performance. By situating location-based games within broader debates about the role of play and digitisation in public life, Location-Based Gaming offers an original and timely account of location-based gaming and its growing prominence.
Full text
Available for:
FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
This paper we present the architecture and tools used in the development a 2D game that works on both Android and IOS. To do this we use the Cocos2DX, this tool allows to development 2D game with ...portability and power required to run on these two mobile environments used. It is important to note that the article also shows how modeled and implemented in Cocos 2DX a game, called 2D Labyrinth, this serves to illustrate how Cocos2DX handles all processing OpenGL graphics and thus no problems when running submitted in various mobile devices. And finally, we show the game operation using the proposed architecture and tools.
El presente artículo muestra la arquitectura y las herramientas usadas en el desarrollo de un juego 2D que funciona tanto en Android y IOS. Para ello se usa la herramienta Cocos2DX la cual permite el desarrollo de juegos 2D que tienen la portabilidad y potencia necesaria para ejecutarse en estos dos ambientes móviles. Es importante anotar que el artículo también muestra cómo se modeló e implementó un juego, llamado Laberinto 2D, en Cocos 2DX, esto sirve para ilustrar cómo Cocos2DX se ocupa de todo el procesamiento de gráficos OpenGL y de esta forma no se presenten inconvenientes al ejecutarse en diversos dispositivos móviles. Al final se muestra el funcionamiento del juego aplicando la arquitectura y las herramientas propuestas.
Upon its release in July 2016, Pokémon Go, a Location Based Service game achieved astonishing popularity and became one of the world's most widely played mobile games. However, this wave of ...popularity soon peaked and the user base quickly lost interest. This study examines the lack of stickiness of the Pokémon Go application over time. The research model hypothesizes that intrinsic motivation, network externalities, and serendipity influence application stickiness, mediated by flow and user gratification. After surveying 600 samples, this proposed model was tested with a structural equation modeling approach. Unlike previous studies, the results reveal that gratification plays a more important role than flow in retaining users. Furthermore, over time the impact of network externalities and intrinsic motivation gradually disappeared, leaving only a weak serendipity-gratification-stickiness relationship. These findings might explain the game's drop off in popularity.
•Gratification is a more important factor than Flow to predict Stickiness.•The correlation between Flow and Stickiness is spurious in this study.•Gratification is a front predictor to Flow and Stickiness.•For average players, all independent variables are important.•For advanced players, only Serendipity is important.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
This study analyses the textual, visual and interactional modes employed in creating and representing Daenerys Targaryen in both Home Box Office TV show Game of Thrones and mobile game Reigns: Game ...of Thrones as a transmedia project to guide users’ construal of the notion of embodied power. The authors examine the structural, functional and semiotic elements that the two media orchestrate to represent how power is attained, developed and relinquished. The results indicate that the two texts/media put forward two different kinds of power (relations) and levels of users’ interactivity. The TV show employs a more linear and developmental conception of power characterizing Daenerys as a transferrable object of power while the game underlines a more dispersed and pervasive notion of power to decentre absolute power. The show deploys immersive cinematic representations/visual spectacle, converging/diverging serial narration that goes beyond the opulent mise-en-scène and complex scenes to attract users’ attention. As for the game, it deploys intellectual and emotional interactivity, choice and coherence that allow users to experience the story, mechanics and environment as users identify with Daenerys. While the show introduces a host of socipolitical tools to maintain longer reign as different forms of governmentality, the game characterizes disciplinary power where subjects/users are offered training opportunities under the designer’s gaze to internalize a series of procedures and sociopolitical tactics. The findings reiterate Foucault’s notion of power as a system of relations, a capillary power that circulates and subjectifies, whilst subjects/users are spaces where subtractive and productive power are wielded, enacted and/or resisted. Each medium deploys its semiotic-specific resources to create meaning differently. While the TV show relies heavily on visual resources and narrative techniques to make meaning, the game mobilizes certain verbo-visual and interactive resources to make meaning. With the growing attention given to transmedia projects as a social practice with social meanings, this article claims to offer critical implications for social semioticians, film creators and game designers through a systematic analytical framework with a special focus on visual meanings.
Full text
Available for:
NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar o jogo SAD Defense, do gênero Tower Defense, desenvolvido por equipe do Laboratório de Poéticas Fronteiriças (CNPq/UEMG - http://labfront.tk) para a quinta ...edição do Congresso Internacional de Arte, Ciência e Tecnologia: Seminário de Artes Digitais, edição de 2019. Através da pesquisa para o desenvolvimento do jogo, abordando o seu game design, apresentamos a jogabilidade e os elementos gráficos do advergame que remetem ao tema do evento em questão, ou seja, a “projeções e memória da arte”, bem como às edições anteriores. Desse modo, além de apresentar o campo de estudos dos mobile games, advergames e dos serious games, este artigo vai além da apresentação e discussão sobre um produto promocional, uma vez que propõe entendê-lo como um recurso que reforça a memória desse evento acadêmico.
Recent studies have increasingly investigated the effectiveness of both mobile and non-mobile digital game-based language learning. To gain an in-depth understanding of the differences in the ...effectiveness of mobile and non-mobile games, we compared studies from January 2000 to August 2020 investigating mobile game-based language learning (MGBLL) and non-mobile game-based language learning (NMGBLL). Sixty-four articles were analyzed from four aspects: game types, game elements, target languages, and learning outcomes. The results showed that (a) gamification, simulation games, and immersive games were applied most; (b) all games possessed the game elements of goals or rules; (c) the most investigated target languages were English and Chinese; and (d) the most discussed learning outcomes were language acquisition and psychological/affective state. The similarities and differences between MGBLL and NMGBLL were also identified. The current review provides an overview and in-depth analysis of mobile and non-mobile games for language learning, guiding practitioners to select appropriate digital games to cater to specific language teaching goals. Future directions of research are also discussed.
PDF
