Screen and Media Studies

In this paper, we introduce and describe a new conceptual framework for the design and analysis of audio for immersive First-Person Shooter games and discuss its potential implications for the development of the audio component of game engines. The framework was created in order to illustrate and acknowledge the direct role of in-game audio in shaping player-player interactions and in creating a sense of immersion in the game world. Furthermore, it is argued that the relationship between player and sound is best conceptualized theoretically as an acoustic ecology. Current game engines are capable of game world spatiality through acoustic shading but the ideas presented here provide a framework to explore other immersive possibilities for game audio through real-time synthesis.

Described in the media as the first ‘documentary videogame’, JFK Reloaded represents a controversial game simulation of the Dallas location and key figures connected to events of US President J.F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22nd 1963. The web-based game was quick to produce critical reaction not only from a moral standpoint, but also for the attributes and focus of its interactivity levels. In this article we discuss the game’s significance as an original approach to on-line game design and also its function as a possible pathway to engaging with a tragic event in American history. However, we also move beyond these concerns and the game’s seemingly simple demands by subverting its agenda and utilizing the practice of play as a research methodology for thinking about virtual environments. As a vehicle for performative research, this paper reads the game, not solely as a closed space with hard boundaries, but a complex space in ways that elude conventional accounts of videogames. Our trajectories transgress the original intentions of the game as we play with its virtual possibilities, acting out a process that helped to conceptualize a less spatial approach to research within digital frontiers.

‘For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat … It fills the eye. It commands you. You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not’ [19]. The aim of this paper is to account for the experience of a two-year research project, funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand. This project sought to interrogate commonly articulated beliefs concerning the contribution of games to the ‘debauched innocence of our young’ [2]. Akin to the seemingly incompatible sentiments expressed in the opening quotation, the project broadly acknowledged the complexity of players’ relationship with violence as it is articulated in interactive digital games. To achieve this the project prioritized the experiences and perspectives of young people on the nature and function of what is commonly understood as ‘violent’ content within games. Despite forming the readership of popular culture, young people are commonly denied a voice by the very ‘authorities and opinion makers’ [23] that chastise their practices. This paper discusses how players variously contested the term ‘violence’ for its expansive nature and the appropriateness of the way it is unquestioningly and legitimately employed to express what happens in games.

To date, little has been written on digital game sound as
Games Studies has almost exclusively treated and discussed digital games as a visual medium. This paper explores how sound possesses the ability to create perceptions of a variety of spaces within the game world, thus constituting a significant contributing factor to player immersion. Focusing on First-Person Shooters (FPS), we argue that player(s) and soundscape(s), and the relationships betweenthem, may be usefully construed and conceptualized as anacoustic ecology. An argument is presented that, even though its sonic palette may be smaller, the FPS acoustic ecology emulates real world ecologies as players form avital component in its construction and maintenance. The process of building a conceptual framework for understanding and testing the function of game sound as an acoustic ecology is broadly outlined, involving the application and extension of a disparate range of media sound theories in addition to the construction of new concepts to account for the unique features of the interactive medium of FPS games.

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Designing for learning or designing for fun? Setting usability guidelines for mobile educational games Siobhan Thomas and Gareth Schott Institute of Education University of London 20 Bedford Way London WC1H OAL, UK E-mail: four@ nucleus. com; s. thomas@ ioe. ac. uk g. ...

This article analyses the player–avatar relation in Final Fantasy 7, drawing on multimodality theory to analyse textual structures both in the game and in the discourse of player–interviews and fan writing. It argues that the avatar is a two-part structure, partly designed in conventional narrative terms as a protagonist of popular narrative, and partly as a vehicle for interactive game-play. The former structure is replete with the traditions and designs of Japanese popular narrative, oral formulaic narrative and contemporary superhero narratives, and is presented to the player as an offer act – a declarative narrative statement. The latter is a construct of evolving attributes and economies characteristic of role-playing games; and is presented to the player as a demand act – a rule-based command. Though these two functions separate out in the grammar of player and fan discourse, it is their integration which provides the pleasure of gameplay and narrative engagement.

Similar to the classification rating of films, screen depictions of violence within digital games are issued with an age restriction rating. Such approaches still fail to adequately incorporate players' experience of the screen, confounded by the medium's interactive nature, in their assessments. The current failure to account for, or describe subsequent interactions between player and game text leaves the classification process largely inferential. This paper presents a framework that forms the basis for an empirical assessment of the interactive experience of games. In it, we aim to account for the processes and outcomes of play and the extent to which play relates to the design of the game text. By operationalizing game studies' extensive theorization of the distinct quality of games, a new model of media 'usage' is sought to enhance regulation processes and better inform the public's perception of games (specifically within New Zealand). In this paper we draw specifically on data produced from one part of a mixed methodology research design (Schott & Van Vught 2011). A structured diary method was employed to allow game players to chronicle different elements of their gameplay experience with a single text as they progressed through it. By demonstrating the applied value of game studies' contribution to knowledge, the research project aims to contribute to a new paradigm that is capable of accounting for the 'actual' experience of play and the ways game texts are activated under the agency of players once they enter everyday life and culture.

In line with the conference theme for 2013, this paper introduces a research project that is seeking to 'defragment' research dealing with player experiences. Located at an intersection between humanities, social sciences and computer sciences, our research aims to achieve greater receptiveness for accounts of games that emphasise "the relationship between the structure of a game and the way people engage with that system" (Waern, 2012, p.1) in the context of game regulation. Working specifically within the context of the New Zealand classification system, which possesses a legally enforceable age-restriction system, the project seeks to strengthen regulators capacity to utilize Section 3(4) of the current Classification Act and support the employment of concepts such as 'dominant effect', 'merit' and 'purpose' when classifying games (OFLC, 2012). Extending an established appreciation within game studies for the way games produce polysemic performances and readings, this paper draws on our mixed methods approach in an exploration of the nature of a players' experience with Max Payne 3 (Rockstar Vancouver). In doing so, we illustrate the different dynamics at play in its expression and use of violence-dynamics that fail to achieve expression when games are considered more generally within political and social realms.

Cautionary frameworks continue to dominate evaluations of games within political contexts, obstructing consideration of the specific conditions and experiences offered by particular game texts. This paper challenges this tendency of prior government-instigated research to promote viewpoints that are not textually evaluative or play-derived when reporting on perceptions of games possessed by the public. Instead, it prioritizes Dovey and Kennedy’s (2006) argument that ‘we cannot have recourse solely to [games] textual characteristics; we have to pay particular attention to the moment of its enactment as it is played.’ More concretely, this paper describes research sparked by the NZ Classification Office’s interest in exploring ‘the extent to which the public’s perception of causal links between game playing and various social ills’ might be ‘moderated or even undermined by [knowledge of] how players actually respond to and negotiate their way through the content and ch...

As a complex and hybrid medium, games are at once a 'text' that can be read and an activity that demands that players participate in the construction of its structure. This article seeks to articulate the relationship and interactions between games and their players, with a specifi c focus on suspense as a type of player involvement. Previous studies lack a description of the specifi c qualities of game suspense or the participatory aspects that are responsible for triggering the emotion. By examining how the textual and structural characteristics of the game trigger specifi c types of suspense, this article explores the involvement of a player between the virtual world and the actual confi gurative act of play, where personal success and failure are at stake.

Digital games receive an age-restriction rating based on t he depiction of harmful content and its possible impact on players. Following on from film, the relationship between media content closing and its psychological impact on audiences is assumed to be Arguments further heightened by the interactive nature of the medium as it Acknowledgermakes players responsible for constructing the moving-image on References screen. Wh ile classification processes continue to serve as an exercise in caution, there remains little eva luation of a particular rating decision's accuracy via any subsequent examination of t he interactions between player and game text. This paper argues for the benefits of researched accounts detailing t he interactive experience of games for its capacity to challenge public understanding of the medium. In doing so, the paper w ill Search this webs

In line with the ICMC|SMC|2014 conference theme "from digital echos to virtual ethos", and the conference interdisciplinary main objective; the present paper is seeking to demonstrate that the sound feedback stream produced by videogames when activated by players (echos) can be automatically analyzed in order to study how sound can, not only, describe a gameplay performance, but also help to understand player experience and emotions (ethos). To do so, the present paper illustrates how sound processing algorithms can be applied in the game studies discipline in order to assess and understand better how players engage with videogames. The present paper proposes to adapt the Feedback-based Gameplay Metrics method, successfully applied to the analysis of gameplay footage video stream [17], to the sound stream, via the automatic detection of musical sequences and speech segment.

He ara hou ka tū mai means “A new pathway before (us)”. This Māori phrase succinctly summarises the position in which NZ educational institutions find themselves. As digital literacy continues to increase in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession (New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, 2011, p. 3), so the demands of our students and the demands of education precipitate us along this new pathway into virtual worlds.

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To date, little has been written on digital game sound as Games Studies has almost exclusively treated and discussed digital games as a visual medium. This paper explores how sound possesses the ability to create perceptions of a variety of spaces within the game world, thus constituting a significant contributing factor to player immersion. Focusing on First-Person Shooters (FPS), we argue that player(s) and soundscape(s), and the relationships between them, may be usefully construed and conceptualized as an acoustic ecology. An argument is presented that, even though its sonic palette may be smaller, the FPS acoustic ecology emulates real world ecologies as players form a vital component in its construction and maintenance. The process of building a conceptual framework for understanding and testing the function of game sound as an acoustic ecology is broadly outlined, involving the application and extension of a disparate range of media sound theories in addition to the construction of new concepts to account for the unique features of the interactive medium of FPS games.

Young peoples' voices have been considered irrelevant or unreliable when it comes to discussing the influence and impact of their engagement with screen-mediated depictions of violence. Historically, such viewpoints have been derived from the controlled experimentation of modernist psychology, which constitutes the most sustained and prominent enquiries into the consequences of individual participation in, and viewing of, simulated violence. In espousing an impersonal approach, psychological research has opted not to demonstrate any understanding of the properties of the particular games or the medium its findings have been used to denigrate. Neither does its research possess broader awareness of the social dimensions of play or the productivity inherent in the practices of its surrounding cultures. This paper introduces findings taken from a two-year project that attempted to draw together what have essentially remained separate lines of inquiry-the critical and analytical scrutiny of Game Studies applied to understanding the pleasures of engagement with game violence. The aim of this research was to achieve a more contextual understanding of texts that utilise violence from the perspective of young people that opt to experience them as an entertainment form. In doing so, a range of qualitative methods were employed to encourage game players to present their viewpoints and offer a voice that is all too often absent from the 'one-way debate' attached to the representation of violence within games.

For all its horror, you can't help but gape at the awful majesty of combat … It fills the eye. It commands you. You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not' [19]. The aim of this paper is to account for the experience of a two-year research project, funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand. This project sought to interrogate commonly articulated beliefs concerning the contribution of games to the 'debauched innocence of our young' [2]. Akin to the seemingly incompatible sentiments expressed in the opening quotation, the project broadly acknowledged the complexity of players' relationship with violence as it is articulated in interactive digital games. To achieve this the project prioritized the experiences and perspectives of young people on the nature and function of what is commonly understood as 'violent' content within games. Despite forming the readership of popular culture, young people are commonly denied a voice by the very 'authorities and opinion makers' [23] that chastise their practices. This paper highlights how players variously contested the term 'violence' for its expansive nature and the appropriateness of the way it is unquestioningly and legitimately employed to express what happens in games.