Video games have long been seen as the exclusive territory of young, heterosexual white males. In a media landscape dominated by such gamers, players who do not fit this mold, including women, people ...of color, and LGBT people, are often brutalized in forums and in public channels in online play. Discussion of representation of such groups in games has frequently been limited and cursory. In contrast,Gaming at the Edgebuilds on feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories of identity and draws on qualitative audience research methods to make sense of how representation comes to matter.
InGaming at the Edge, Adrienne Shaw argues that video game players experience race, gender, and sexuality concurrently. She asks: How do players identify with characters? How do they separate identification and interactivity? What is the role of fantasy in representation? What is the importance of understanding market logic? In addressing these questions Shaw reveals how representation comes to matter to participants and offers a perceptive consideration of the high stakes in politics of representation debates.
Putting forth a framework for talking about representation, difference, and diversity in an era in which user-generated content, individualized media consumption, and the blurring of producer/consumer roles has lessened the utility of traditional models of media representation analysis, Shaw finds new insight on the edge of media consumption with the invisible, marginalized gamers who are surprising in both their numbers and their influence in mainstream gamer culture.
A força mental é um construto importante para no contexto do desporto, sendo o Índice de Resistência Mental (MTI) um dos instrumentos mais utilizados neste contexto. Nos últimos tempos, os jogos ...eletrônicos cresceram consideravelmente e, como em qualquer desporto, a força mental é essencial para um bom desempenho. Assim, o objetivo deste estudo foi examinar as propriedades psicométricas do MTI em espanhol, uma vez que não foi validado nesta língua. O único estudo existente na população espanhola foi com com adultos mexicanos, mas seu objetivo foi analisar a invariância em função de atletas adultos dos Estados Unidos. Para isso, recolheu-se uma amostra intencional e não probabilística de 550 jogadores de e-sports (80% do sexo masculino) com idade média de 22 anos (DP = 3,91) de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Ao dividir a amostra em dois grupos ao acaso, os resultados - tanto da análise fatorial exploratória e confirmatória produziram uma estrutura unifatorial semelhante à postulada pelos autores do questionário. A consistência interna foi adequada com valor de 0,85. Foi detectada a validade de constructo do questionário com ansiedade e motivação no desporto, o que demonstra que o instrumento apresenta propriedades psicométricas adequadas para a avaliação do constructo em estudo.
There is an increasing interest to develop a next generation of touch pads that require stretchability and biocompatibility to allow their integration with a human body, and even to mimic the ...self‐healing behavior with fast functionality recovery upon damage. However, most touch pads are developed based on stiff and brittle electrodes with the lack of the important nature of self‐healing. Polyzwitterion–clay nanocomposite hydrogels as a soft, stretchable, and transparent ionic conductor with transmittance of 98.8% and fracture strain beyond 1500% are developed, which can be used as a self‐healing human–machine interactive touch pad with pressure‐sensitive adhesiveness on target substrates. A surface‐capacitive touch system is adopted to sense a touched position. Finger positions are perceived during both point‐by‐point touch and continuous moving. Hydrogel touch pads are adhered to curved or flat insulators, with the high‐resolution and self‐healable input functions demonstrated by drawing, writing, and playing electronic games.
There is an increasing interest to develop the next generation of touch pads, requiring stretchability, biocompatibility, and self‐healing, to allow integration with the human body. As a stretchable and transparent ionic conductor, polyzwitterion–clay nanocomposite hydrogels are developed as human–machine interactive touch pads with pressure‐sensitive adhesiveness on target substrates with high‐resolution and self‐healable input functions demonstrated by drawing, writing, and playing electronic games.
Introdução/Problematização: No contexto da inovação, usuário avançado é o que desenvolveu um grau de conhecimento elevado sobre determinado produto. Na indústria de games, de curto ciclo de ...lançamentos, é crucial identificar rapidamente e aproveitar efetivamente os usuários avançados para aumentar as chances de sucesso. A questão problema abordada no artigo é: como implementar uma rápida identificação e o pleno aproveitamento de Lead Users em uma empresa brasileira desenvolvedora de games?Objetivo/proposta: Modelar um processo para a empresa desenvolvedora de games selecionada identificar, de forma ágil, e aproveitar melhor a contribuição potencial dos usuários avançados. Tal objetivo geral foi desdobrado nos objetivos específicos de analisar as práticas atuais da empresa em identificação e aproveitamento de usuários avançados; identificar os pontos de melhoria; e elaborar um novo fluxograma para o processo.Procedimentos Metodológicos: O estudo tem caráter qualitativo e descritivo, aplicando técnicas de coleta de dados em fontes bibliográficas, documentais e em entrevistas não estruturadas. Quanto à análise dos dados, foi empregada a análise de conteúdo.Principais Resultados: Quanto à identificação rápida de usuários avançados, foi constatado que a empresa apenas realizava a formulação de palavras-chave, tendo sido criado um fluxograma novo para este processo. Quanto à participação do usuário avançado no processo de desenvolvimento de novos jogos, observou-se que eles participavam apenas da promoção dos jogos, tendo sido revisado o fluxograma correspondente para abranger também as etapas de seleção de ideias, desenvolvimento do produto.Considerações Finais: Mesmo uma empresa bem-gerenciada e com produtos premiados pode melhorar o processo de desenvolvimento de novos produtos, identificando os usuários avançados e incorporando o conhecimento que eles possuem. A iniciativa demanda a revisão dos procedimentos internos.
Contribuições do Trabalho: O artigo contribui com um exemplo detalhado de aplicação da teoria dos usuários avançados (lead users) como fonte de inovação. A aplicação é feita em uma empresa da indústria de jogos eletrônicos, de reconhecida dinâmica inovativa e de expressivo crescimento econômico no momento, explorando as possibilidades geradas pelas mídias sociais.
BackgroundHandball is one of the most traumatic Olympic sports, with a growing number of participants. Large sample size epidemiological studies across various playing levels are lacking in this ...sport.ObjectiveTo determine injury incidence over one season of the French championship and according to sex, level of play and time schedule as well as the most common injury locations.DesignProspective total cohort study.SettingFrench Handball championship over the whole 2016–17 season.Participants323 628 amateur and professional French handball players.InterventionsThe injuries that occurred during matches of the French handball championship were recorded by the officials of each team with the help of a specific medical questionnaire of the electronic match report.Main Outcome MeasurementsThe number of injuries as well as injury rate expressed per 1000 Athlete Exposure (AE). The relative risks (RRs) were calculated and compared across the different categories.Results78 147 TE were recorded from the 202 394 official championship matches. The overall incidence was 23.5 TE/1000AE. Incidence rate was higher for national-level players (RR=1.22; CI 95% 1.19 to 1.25) compared to regional level, and 1.52 (CI 95% 1.50 to 1.54) at regional level compared to county level. Males were at lower risk of injury (RR=0.78; CI 95% 0.77 to 0.79). Three main injury incidence peaks were observed (October, February and April) corresponding to the academic holidays. The most common injury locations were Foot/Ankle (19.8%), Knee (15.5%), Hand/Wrist (15.2%) and Head/Neck (14.6%).ConclusionsHandball is a sport with a high injury rate during matches, especially among female players from high level of play. The scheduling of matches during the season also appears to influence the number of injuries. Electronic databases could be considered as a promising tool to assess injury distribution in the context of epidemiological studies and sports prevention.
A partir de ensaio gerado durante a dissertação de Mestrado “Atores em ação: O jogo no Psicodrama e os jogos eletrônicos”, retratamos as mutualidades entre os enredos que fluem no palco ...psicodramático e as teias que emanam da plataforma digital. Nas articulações entre os jogos psicodramáticos e eletrônicos encontramos entrelaçamentos dos contextos de representação da fantasia-realidade em cenários lúdicos de dramatização, em que protagonistas, egos auxiliares e objetos intermediários são equivalentes a atores de papéis, avatares e objetos não humanos.
This research provides an empirical test of the “Twitter effect,” which postulates that microblogging word of mouth (MWOM) shared through Twitter and similar services affects early product adoption ...behaviors by immediately disseminating consumers’ post-purchase quality evaluations. This is a potentially crucial factor for the success of experiential media products and other products whose distribution strategy relies on a hyped release. Studying the four million MWOM messages sent via Twitter concerning 105 movies on their respective opening weekends, the authors find support for the Twitter effect and report evidence of a negativity bias. In a follow-up incident study of 600 Twitter users who decided not to see a movie based on negative MWOM, the authors shed additional light on the Twitter effect by investigating how consumers use MWOM information in their decision-making processes and describing MWOM’s defining characteristics. They use these insights to position MWOM in the word-of-mouth landscape, to identify future word-of-mouth research opportunities based on this conceptual positioning, and to develop managerial implications.
Finnish preschoolers' screen time increased dramatically between 18 months and 5 years of age and was associated with hyperactivity and emotional/internalizing symptoms.
Firms increasingly use games to interact with their customers. Yet, surprisingly little is known about whether, when, and how such “gamified” interactions engage consumers with a firm’s brand, ...thereby facilitating self–brand connections. Building on flow theory, we show that gamified interactions that are highly interactive and optimally challenging facilitate self–brand connections, because such games lead to emotional and cognitive brand engagement. A field study and three experiments across various product domains and game designs support our theory. We also identify conditions under which consumers do not become engaged with a brand, namely when firms restrict their decisional control either to voluntarily participate in the game (i.e., compulsory play) or to spend as much time as desired playing the game (i.e., time pressure). Our findings advance existing knowledge about the use of games in marketing and provide important implications for how marketers can harness their potential to build self–brand connections.
Electronic games are now an everyday part of childhood and adolescence. The debate has moved from whether children should play video games to how to maximize potential benefits and to identify and ...minimize potential harms. To do this, we must understand what motivates children to play electronic games and what needs the games meet. Drawing on a survey of 1,254 middle school children, focus groups with boys and their parents, and findings from other quantitative and qualitative research, the author describes a variety of motivations for video game play (including games with violent content) and how these may vary based on factors such as mood, environment, personality, and developmental stage. The findings are put into the context of normal development, and suggestions are given for parents, educators, and researchers.
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