Casual Games

Este artigo apresenta o “Atelier Digital”, uma proposta diferenciada de acesso à tecnologia para terceira idade, que expressa a integração entre o “criar” e o “descobrir” percebendo a arte como a universalidade do saber. Tem como proposta perceber o idoso como único em sua necessidade, mas ao mesmo tempo integrado ao grupo e comunidade onde se insere, fazendo parte e interagindo socialmente, mas ao mesmo tempo sendo sujeito ativo de sua própria história, utilizando-se das Tecnologias da Informação para sua aprendizagem e desenvolvimento. Neste artigo é apresentado um relato de experiências com o que está sendo realizado nos encontros do Atelier Digital e nas oficinas criadas para complementar esse projeto inovador.

What Lead to the Successful Mobile Phone Game? – Story of birds who cannot fly but they have enough angriness Abstract: This article will consist of analyzing some factors which are the most important for the successful mobile phone game. There are going to be some common history of how mobile phone games are developed and how this whole game application business has started. Main focus in this article is based on analyzing and finding some key factors which are the most relevant for successful mobile phone game and how they can be designed. This article is not based on technical details of mobile phones and there is only some information which consists of a little bit of technical phrases. Angry Birds mobile phone game is excellent example of successful mobile game and it will be analyzed rather deeply in this article. Analyzing will not be based on only how to play game but whole Angry Birds phenomenon will be considered. Developments of mobile phone games have been very fast even...

This study sought to determine if certain personalities and uses are associated with various fonts. Using an online survey, participants rated the personality of 20 fonts using 15 adjective pairs. In addition, participants viewed the same 20 fonts and selected which uses were most appropriate. Results suggested that personality traits are indeed attributed to fonts based on their design family (Serif, Sans-Serif, Modern, Monospace, Script/Funny) and are associated with appropriate uses. Implications of these results to the design of online materials and websites are discussed.

Para que a aprendizagem seja efetiva e atraente para as gerações atuais, são necessários recursos interativos e engajadores semelhantes aos que os estudantes estão familiarizados em suas rotinas, fazendo com estes se interessem pelos conteúdos propostos. Nesse contexto, este estudo de natureza exploratória buscou, através de pesquisa bibliográfica, conhecer os estudos acadêmicos que tratam da aprendizagem baseada em jogos digitais, enfocando, principalmente, nos estudos relacionados ao desenvolvimento e implementação de jogos epistêmicos. Concluiu-se que a aprendizagem baseada em jogos digitais surge como uma tendência que está em plena consolidação em diversas partes do mundo e que os jogos epistêmicos, foco principal deste estudo, são jogos que utilizam epistemologias próprias das mais diversas áreas do conhecimento, dentro de jogos de simulação de práticas profissionais. Estes jogos visam estimular os estudantes a pensar de acordo com esses quadros epistêmicos, da mesma forma que...

Schön's model of design as a reflective conversation with the situation is one of the most important models in design research, but it is not often criticized. This paper questions Schön's vision of values by contrasting it with Dewey's vision. It presents a case study from the video game industry to show the difference between Schön's and Dewey's value system. Game designers were interviewed about their values concerning casual games. The results show that some designers have had a change of values during a project: they moved from a negative position on casual games to a positive one. In terms of Schön's fixed appreciative system, a change of values is unusual, and it risks jeopardizing the design project. But this fixedness is contradictory with the idea of conversation with the situation, and Dewey's vision of values, which is more flexible, demonstrates stronger coherence with the model.

While the casual game market is expanding, there are increasingly few research projects and explorations about the definition of this game style. Existing definitions are contradictory and some areas, like casual game design practice, remain under-explored. Using game designers' professional knowledge, this study aims to provide a new understanding and perspective towards definitions of casual games. Results contradict previous studies that have advocated for a radical shift in casual game design values. Outcomes indicate that certain traditional concepts like challenge are still valuable in understanding casual games. The discussion illustrates how different traditional concepts fit with the casual game trend and how some recent assertions about casual game definitions might be deceptive for game designers.

Mobile phones have been game-enabled since 1997. However, it seems that mobile phone games are only taking off now, in the 2010s. With mobile phones and, specially, smartphones, reaching critical mass games, in their mobile form are accessible to more and more people, young and old, men and women. Angry Birds, first released for iOS in December 2009, was the best-selling mobile game in 2011 (Reisinger 2011). In order to understand who is playing Angry Birds, how, and why, the author conducted a series of interviews with a group of Angry Birds players. The results of those interviews are here analyzed according to perspectives arisen from those conversations. Two main axis of analysis resulted from the interviews: gender gap and gaming background. This study should be relevant to broaden the thinking about mobile games as meaningful experiences to players in different demographic groups.

The global diffusion of mobile devices-smartphones and tablets-has fundamentally changed the way consumers interact with brands and viceversa, how companies are using marketing strategies to position their products and services. On an average day, US consumers spend more time using mobile apps than they spend watching television. Tellingly, the two major digital advertising behemoths, Facebook and Google, derive the majority of their revenue from their mobile products, instead of their desktop services. As a subset of digital advertising, mobile marketing is a particular catalyst for growth. And within the wider mobile domain, app advertising is spearheading the transformation of advertising tools, technologies, and strategies. More so than Fortune-500 companies, the game industry (i.e., game studios, game publishers, and associated marketing service providers) is keen to leverage the accessibility and ubiquity of mobile devices. Game developers are widely considered to be ahead of the curve in terms of exploring and exploiting mobile marketing related innovations. On the one hand, mobile games are played by hundreds of millions of players on a daily basis and can therefore offer advertising inventory (i.e., highly trafficked in-app real estate for advertising banners and videos). On the other hand, the market for game apps is extremely competitive. As thousands of new mobile games are released every day, effective app advertising has become a key competitive advantage for game developers and publishers. This chapter focuses on this second instance of mobile marketing: game developers using in-app advertising for their freemium or "free-to-play" (f2p) games to generate new installs or in industry terms, to "acquire users." User acquisition as a form of mobile marketing raises important critical questions pertaining to the emergence of mobile platform-based advertising, the position of players, their data and, in the end, their play. To gain a deeper understanding of the political economy of app advertising my approach takes an institutional perspective on the advertising ecosystem and the commodification of audiences (Turow 2011; Meehan 2014; Napoli 2014). In the era of connective platforms (Van Dijck 2013), app advertising, one could say, closes the loop. As opposed to the inherent "waste" associated with mass-marketing campaigns, app advertising promises an ecosystem

F or decades, the game industry has been dominated, if only in terms of revenue and mindshare, by a tandem of globally operating game publishers and game console platform holders. Historically, these two small groups of industrial actors, primarily located in North America and Japan, have been 'dominant forces' in the game industry (Consalvo 2007, 123). Similarly, Johns (2006) notes that power relationships in the game hardware and software production networks are uneven and are affected by temporal and spatial dimensions. Driven by the cyclical introduction of new hardware platforms, the platform/publisher duo served a relatively stable, highly lucrative niche market (Williams 2002; Kerr 2006). Every fi ve to seven years, development and marketing budgets increase and, as a result, so do fi nancial risks and the distribution of capital and power (Schilling 2003). Geographically, the main centers for console game development have been North America, Western Europe and the Asia Pacifi c (Johns 2006). That is to say, the majority of the billions of dollars of value generated by the sale of video game hardware and software has been captured by a small number of globally operating fi rms who have a high rate of incumbency. The relationship between game

The goal of this article is to add a complementary perspective to the study of social network sites by surveying how the political economy of social media platforms relates to the structure of free-to-play games in their commodity form. Drawing on the theory of multisided markets and critical political economy, this article surveys the political economy of game apps and investigates how it is symbiotically related to the technological and economic logic underlying connective platforms operated by Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon. These social media platforms operate app stores that sustain the transformation of games as fixed, physically distributed products that follow a transaction logic, into digitally distributed, freely accessible, or “free-to-play” apps. Through a case study of the popular casual game Candy Crush Saga it is contended that the connective properties of social media platforms affect the form and format of game apps as cultural commodities. Candy Crush Saga dev...

Earth Girl: The Natural Disaster Fighter is an edutainment digital game featuring a girl who can save her family and friends from natural hazards. The scenario and game play are inspired by the challenges faced by communities living in the Asian regions prone to earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding and volcano hazards. The Earth Girl game is meant to help players to gain a better understanding of natural hazards through imaginative and fun game play. The game was developed in English and translated to Indonesian, Japanese and Chinese. It runs on any Flash-enabled browser and was usertested in Southeast Asia with positive results and feedback.

Cet article se concentre sur les séries originales destinées à un public adolescent conçues pour la plateforme Club Illico de Vidéotron. Pour ce faire, l’article propose une analyse textuelle des séries originales L’Académie (2017-2020) et La Dérape (2018-2020), en cherchant plus précisément à mettre en lumière l’orientation discursive et idéologique de ces récits du point de vue du genre. L’analyse montrera comment la volonté de proposer un récit contre-stéréotypé concernant l’adolescence au féminin mène néanmoins à la reproduction d’une structure narrative relativement classique, infléchie idéologiquement par certaines conceptions de la féminité et une survalorisation du relationnel. En distinguant la construction syntaxique et sémantique des séries télévisées, l’analyse permettra donc de mettre en lumière certains enjeux représentationnels des séries pour ados à l’ère de la télévision par contournement.

This paper focuses on original TV series aimed at teenage audiences and distributed by Videotron’s Club Illico platform. Through a textual analysis of two original series, L’Académie (2017-2020) and La Dérape (2018-2020), this paper highlights the discursive and ideological orientations of these stories from a gender perspective. The analysis shows how counter-stereotypical narratives surrounding female adolescence nevertheless lead to the reproduction of a relatively classic narrative structure, ideologically influenced by some conceptions of femininity and an emphasis on interpersonal relationships. By distinguishing the syntactic and semantic construction of television series, the analysis therefore sheds light on teen series’ representational issues in the era of VOD services.

The article describes some of the rhetorical strategies and traces of reception around Féminin/Féminin, a series whose first season was delivered on the community site Lez Spread the Word (LSTW) and whose second season was initially conceived for linear television, but will eventually be broadcast on the tou.tv platform. This migration of forms onto different platforms will enable us to highlight the instability, intermediality and constraints of new televisual narratives, particularly in terms of the paradox between representing themes and identities that are not yet very present on the small screen and the desire to reach a large audience.

L’article décrit quelques-unes des stratégies rhétoriques et des traces de la réception autour de Féminin/Féminin, série dont la première saison est livrée sur le site communautaire Lez Spread the Word (LSTW) et dont la deuxième saison est d’abord pensée pour la télévision linéaire, mais sera diffusée finalement sur la plateforme tou.tv. Cette migration de formes sur de plateformes différentes nous permettra de souligner l’instabilité, l’intermédialité et les contraintes de nouveaux récits télévisuels, notamment en termes du paradoxe entre la représentation de thèmes et identités encore peu présentes au petit écran et la volonté de rejoindre un grand public.

Playing casual games is a wildly popular activity on smartphones. However, designing casual games is done by a smaller group of people, usually on desktop computers, using professional development tools. Our goal is to bring these activities closer together, in terms of who does them and how they do them. Our Gamika Technology platform is a 2D physics-based mobile game design environment. It comprises a 284dimensional parametric design space, and poses mobile game design as the problem of navigating this space. We have built three mobile apps thus far to experiment with on-device, mixed-initiative navigation of the Gamika design space and some of its subspaces. We describe these apps here in terms of the initiatives that go into making a game with them, and how these are split between people and underlying AI software. Our overall goal is to democratise game design, so that anyone and everyone can make casual games directly on their mobile phones or tablets.

We introduce rapid game jams, a style of game jam that takes only 1-2 hours and is focused on design experimentation rather than on programming and technical implementation. To support that kind of rapid game-design experimentation, we have designed a class of games that we call fluidic games. These are mobile games in which the game mechanics and other aspects of the games are editable on the fly, directly on the device, allowing for frequent play/design context shifts. We have conducted four rapid game jams with 105 participants from a local Girlguiding organisation, in order to gain real-world experience with this concept. We analyse results from a survey instrument completed by 69 participants in two of these rapid game jams. In order to guide future work in addressing questions left open by this study, we did a qualitative analysis of the designed games to gain additional insights into participants' design practice.

With the growing integration of smartphones into our daily lives, and their increased ease of use, mobile games have become highly popular across all demographics. People listen to music, play games or read the news while in transit or bridging gap times. While mobile gaming is gaining popularity, mobile expression of creativity is still in its early stages. We present here a new type of mobile app -- fluidic games -- and illustrate our iterative approach to their design. This new type of app seamlessly integrates exploration of the design space into the actual user experience of playing the game, and aims to enrich the user experience. To better illustrate the game domain and our approach, we discuss one specific fluidic game, which is available as a commercial product. We also briefly discuss open challenges such as player support and how generative techniques can aid the exploration of the game space further.

Many location-based games have a multiplayer aspect; however, this is typically inconsequential to the actual gameplay, which is usually geared toward a single-player experience. Thus, we present Fit to Draw, a multiplayer location-based exergame that combines simple picture-guessing gameplay with physical movement. While other location-based games have the gameplay elements tangentially related to physical movement, Fit to Draw requires players to walk outdoors to draw a picture based on a given word. Companion players then guess what other players drew to earn points, providing a multiplayer and social experience that many other location-based games do not have. The goals of Fit to Draw are to motivate users to exercise, enjoy the outdoors, socialize, and have an opportunity to be creative. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Collaborative and social computing devices; Ubiquitous and mobile devices; Collaborative and social computing devices; • Applied computing → Computer games.

Le présent document contient des informations qui sont la propriété du pôle de compétitivité Images & Réseaux et des partenaires du projet Mobim@ges. L'acceptation de ce document par son destinataire implique, de la part de ce dernier, la reconnaissance du caractère confidentiel de son contenu et l'engagement de n'en faire aucune reproduction, aucune transmission à des tiers, aucune divulgation et aucune utilisation commerciale sans l'accord préalable écrit des propriétaires.

Slot machine wins and losses have distinctive, measurable, physiological effects on players. The contributing factors to these effects remain under-explored. We believe that sound is one of these key contributing factors. Sound plays an important role in reinforcement, and thus on arousal level and stress response of players. It is the use of sound for positive reinforcement in particular that we believe influences the player. In the current study, we investigate the role that sound plays in psychophysical responses to slot machine play. A total of 96 gamblers played a slot machine simulator with and without sound being paired with reinforcement. Skin conductance responses and heart rate, as well as subjective judgments about the gambling experience were examined. The results showed that the sound influenced the arousal of participants both psychophysically and psychologically. The sound also influenced players' preferences, with the majority of players preferring to play slot machines that were accompanied by winning sounds. The sounds also caused players to significantly overestimate the number of times they won while playing the slot machine.

Para que a aprendizagem seja efetiva e atraente para as gerações atuais, são necessários recursos interativos e engajadores semelhantes aos que os estudantes estão familiarizados em suas rotinas, fazendo com estes se interessem pelos conteúdos propostos. Nesse contexto, este estudo de natureza exploratória buscou, através de pesquisa bibliográfica, conhecer os estudos acadêmicos que tratam da aprendizagem baseada em jogos digitais, enfocando, principalmente, nos estudos relacionados ao desenvolvimento e implementação de jogos epistêmicos. Concluiu-se que a aprendizagem baseada em jogos digitais surge como uma tendência que está em plena consolidação em diversas partes do mundo e que os jogos epistêmicos, foco principal deste estudo, são jogos que utilizam epistemologias próprias das mais diversas áreas do conhecimento, dentro de jogos de simulação de práticas profissionais. Estes jogos visam estimular os estudantes a pensar de acordo com esses quadros epistêmicos, da mesma forma que...

Many location-based games have a multiplayer aspect; however, this is typically inconsequential to the actual gameplay, which is usually geared toward a single-player experience. Thus, we present Fit to Draw, a multiplayer location-based exergame that combines simple picture-guessing gameplay with physical movement. While other location-based games have the gameplay elements tangentially related to physical movement, Fit to Draw requires players to walk outdoors to draw a picture based on a given word. Companion players then guess what other players drew to earn points, providing a multiplayer and social experience that many other location-based games do not have. The goals of Fit to Draw are to motivate users to exercise, enjoy the outdoors, socialize, and have an opportunity to be creative. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Collaborative and social computing devices; Ubiquitous and mobile devices; Collaborative and social computing devices; • Applied computing → Computer games.

Losses disguised as wins (LDWs) appear to reinforce gambling persistence. However, little research has examined this phenomenon with real gamblers in natural gambling settings. We aimed to examine the relationship between within-session outcome size and subsequent gambling persistence. Account-based gambling data of individuals playing LDW games over a randomly selected day (2,035,339 bets made by 8636 individuals) was examined. We used a logistic mixed effects model to examine the relationship between the outcome of the previous bet (loss, LDW and real wins) and the odds of continuing betting in a game session. The odds of continuing betting in a game session were positively associated with the outcome of the previous bet. Compared to LDWs, losses lowered the odds of continuing a game session. In contrast, real wins implied greater odds of continuing a game session compared to LDWs. It is concluded that LDWs increase the likelihood of continuing betting compared to losses, but decrease the likelihood of continuing to gamble compared to real wins. As LDWs increase the number of bets made within a gambling session, and hence within-session gambling persistence, LDWs may potentially play an etiological role in the development of gambling problems over time.

The social dimensions can take many forms in games and play cultures. The phenomenon of social network games, especially the historical evolution of Facebook games, provides an interesting opportunity to explore of the social aspects of game creation and play cultures. The social and cultural frames of social play and networks have become increasingly central areas to explore in game research. Around years 2006-2007, games distributed through social network services became known as 'social games', even though their actual characteristics do not necessarily rely primarily on social interaction, or real-time social play, for example. Nevertheless, social play and social network services have had a central role for the design and use of these games, and it is important to understand how they have operatedas games, and as playful elements in particular kind of social media environment. This chapter draws upon a decade of research in the field of casual and social games, and highlights the interrelations between player experiences, game and service design features, as well as industry business models in this area. Finally, the chapter also reflects on the future directions of social game play, and its research.

Loading…'s first theme issue invites a first-pass at theorizing and starting to come to terms with the change in controllers currently revolutionizing input devices used to play digital games. In the call for papers, we asked for submissions to Loading…'s first theme issue, namely, on the new varieties of controllers that have begun to revolutionize gameplay and game design. With amazing speed, relative to how long we have submitted to the constraints of the 'joystick' in its various mechanical and increasingly complex redesigns , we have moved from the joystick and a range of button-based controllers, to a plethora of alternative forms. The stylus for Nintendo's DS significantly altered handheld games and play, but these changes now seem relatively innocuous compared to the more 'embodied' controllers like the Dance Dance Revolution dance pad, the karaoke-type mikes of Singstar and its relations, the kinetic action elicited by the Wii or even the highly imitative play of Rock Band drumming.

We encounter questions concerning other senses of place within contemporary media environments through an examination of mobile and locative media in a classic social practice: gaming. Mobile Gaming has become widespread with the rapid technical developments and increasing use of mobile phones which have become smartphones. We will show how recent developments in mobile technologies shape gaming practices, how these practices lead to a recreation of new senses of place, and how these other senses of place are being encountered. To do so, we will first outline the interdependency of technological developments of mobile devices and new forms of gaming practices. Then we will discuss how smartphones pervade social life and create new sociospatial formations with regard to casual and location-based games. Finally we will draw on a case study on a location-based, urban casual game that we developed in a transdisciplinary project together with game designers and computer scientists. We wi...

The term "alt-right" entered mainstream discourse for first time during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. It describes a loosely connected and illdefined "collection of internet-based radicals," 2 who share some beliefs, including white supremacy, ethno-nationalism, and anti-feminism. Described as "an outgrowth of internet troll culture," 3 the online alt-right is large and diverse in membership, ideology, and interests. But these communities do have one thing in common: they make memes prolifically. The distinct meme culture of these online forums shapes the alt-right discourse. Simply put, meme culture occurs when users disseminate cultural content that other users consume and reproduce to create new, mutated content. Alt-right communities depend on this structure, and unique cultural norms developed around this process, to engage in their discourse. This paper examines the alt-right's distinct meme culture to better understand the alt-right's attractiveness to its primarily young male followers and its strengths as a political force.

imprisonment and the death penalty, the dark legacy of childhood abuse as well punishment as a flawed form of social control. From a technical standpoint, the book's strengths are its accessible and fluid writing style, generous use of comic art, and creative paralleling of superhero plot lines with those of ''great works'' of literature. While the authors rightfully query whether their narratives perhaps ''read too much into the comic book action'' (135), over-rely upon comics for footnote documentation, and do not actually instruct in composition as the book's subtitle suggests, this volume will nevertheless be equally welcomed on college quads, in comic book conventions and at scholarly conferences with appeal to students and faculty in the areas of history, literature, political science, religion, economics, psychology, sociology, communications, gender, and cultural studies.

Doctor of PhilosophyCurriculum and Instruction ProgramsBradley BurenheideThe primary purpose of this focus group study was to explore how learning occurs during iterative experiences within a singular games-based environment. Using constructivist learning theories as a foundation, this study sought to identify how those processes were used in games-based settings. This qualitative study included eight undergraduate participants primarily in education-based fields. Over the span of six weeks, participants learned the game of Magic the Gathering, its rules, mechanics, and systems. Research questions sought to identify what was learned, how it was learned, and why the learning was effective. Four total focus group interviews were conducted, which were recorded and subsequently transcribed. Initial coding, axial coding, and analytic memoing were employed during data analysis, resulting in a tiered approach that refined data into patterns and then further into potential themes. Additiona...

A educação, que se pretende democrática, precisa atender a todos os educandos. Para apoiar este processo de inclusão, considerando a utilização de Ambientes Virtuais de Ensino e Aprendizagem (AVEA), diferentes diretrizes de acessibilidade vêm sendo criadas para orientarem a criação de cursos e recursos educacionais virtuais. No entanto, o que se observa é uma carência no que se refere a uma relação mais próxima entre as diretrizes e sua aplicabilidade em tais ambientes. Considerando o AVEA Moodle, este artigo tem como objetivo mostrar a criação de um guia de diretrizes de acessibilidade para apoiar os professores na elaboração de suas disciplinas ou cursos, quando estes necessitarem de auxilio para disponibilizarem materiais para alunos com deficiência visual e apresentá-las em um Objeto de Aprendizagem no Moodle. Após avaliação, foi possível concluir que este recurso pode contribuir para que os docentes tenham facilidade na organização e elaboração de conteúdos educacionais acessíveis.

This paper presents a study on urban data crowdsourcing driven by Geo-Zombie, a multimedia mobile application we designed and developed to engage pedestrians in taking note of urban architectural impediments and facilities by documenting them through pictures and multimedia data. Geo-Zombie aims at transforming the civic activity of contributing into a virtual gamified experience where players attempt to escape from horrific situations in which zombies are ready to cannibalize unsuspecting walkers. In some sense, walkers that kill zombies deeply reconnect with the concept of imminent danger which can be fought resorting to appropriate civic actions. To challenge our initial hypotheses we conducted a design process, starting with a concept generation where three different concepts were discussed which gave rise to five different multimedia mobile apps including the one with zombies. Then, focus group, experience prototyping, application design and implementation, and finally field trials were exploited to refine the design and to select the best apps out of the five that better responded to the need of involving common people in collecting urban accessibility data. It is worth noting that the experiences of use with 50 avid walkers have demonstrated that a multimedia mobile app with maps and zombies can be a concrete step towards a social inclusion strategy while inviting new reflections and discussions on the issue of urban data crowdsourcing.

This paper starts by reporting the findings of a survey of Portuguese university students concerning their game habits and preferences. An online questionnaire was developed and 1101 answers were collected, 626 were mobile game players. The results from the survey indicate that the games most played by university students are essentially casual and puzzle games, existing differences between female and male students' preferences. Then, learning principles were identified according to Gee (2003) and game mechanics on the students' preferred games. Finally, based on these results we propose a framework for gamified interactive activities to university students, to get them engaged in learning with their mobile devices.

The content of games is an understudied area in social scientific research about video games. The purpose of the present study is to contribute to the understanding of the portrayal of gender and race in games. Previous research on game content has revealed that stereotypical masculine characters dominate video games and that those characters are generally White. Nowadays, quite a few video games have women in leading parts; Tomb Raider's Lara Croft is the prototypical example. In our study we investigated the so-called 'Lara phenomenon,' that is, the appearance of a competent female character in a dominant position. We also studied the portrayal of men and the race of both male and female characters. We did a content analysis on the introductory films of 12 contemporary video games. Our results show that female characters appeared as often in leading parts as male characters did. They were portrayed with a sexualized emphasis on female features. Most game characters belonged to the dominant White race, the heroes exclusively so.

The content of games is an understudied area in social scientific research about video games. The purpose of the present study is to contribute to the understanding of the portrayal of gender and race in games. Previous research on game content has revealed that stereotypical masculine characters dominate video games and that those characters are generally White. Nowadays, quite a few video games have women in leading parts; Tomb Raider's Lara Croft is the prototypical example. In our study we investigated the so-called 'Lara phenomenon,' that is, the appearance of a competent female character in a dominant position. We also studied the portrayal of men and the race of both male and female characters. We did a content analysis on the introductory films of 12 contemporary video games. Our results show that female characters appeared as often in leading parts as male characters did. They were portrayed with a sexualized emphasis on female features. Most game characters belonged to the dominant White race, the heroes exclusively so.

Earth Girl: The Natural Disaster Fighter is an edutainment digital game featuring a girl who can save her family and friends from natural hazards. The scenario and game play are inspired by the challenges faced by communities living in the Asian regions prone to earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding and volcano hazards. The Earth Girl game is meant to help players to gain a better understanding of natural hazards through imaginative and fun game play. The game was developed in English and translated to Indonesian, Japanese and Chinese. It runs on any Flash-enabled browser and was usertested in Southeast Asia with positive results and feedback.

Le présent document contient des informations qui sont la propriété du pôle de compétitivité Images & Réseaux et des partenaires du projet Mobim@ges. L'acceptation de ce document par son destinataire implique, de la part de ce dernier, la reconnaissance du caractère confidentiel de son contenu et l'engagement de n'en faire aucune reproduction, aucune transmission à des tiers, aucune divulgation et aucune utilisation commerciale sans l'accord préalable écrit des propriétaires.

P. Deshayes & V. Gautheron-Small Computers Play Mankala. In this study of awele no optimal strategy could be defined-which keeps the game interesting. However a number of 'advantageous attitudes' were defined as statistically preferable to a random playing of the game.

La présente étude est une compilation des travaux réalisés par l’auteur dans le cadre d’un ouvrage consacré au jeu Elden Ring. Des différends avec l’éditeur en charge de l’ouvrage ont amenés l’auteur à être déchargé dudit projet. Le manuscrit n’ayant pas été complété avant éviction, la présente étude demeure par conséquent incomplète. Il s’agit avant tout d’une ébauche de recherches rédigée, consacrée à la genèse de l’œuvre, aux influences culturelles qui la nourrissent ainsi qu'à son gameplay.

T he hugely successful mobile game Angry Birds , and subsequent franchise built around it by Finnish company Rovio, is synonymous with the new and growing market of app-based games played on smartphones and tablets. These are often referred to as 'casual games', highlighting their design which rewards short bursts of play, usually on mobile media devices, rather than the sustained attention and dedicated hardware required for larger PC or console games. Signifi cantly, there is enormous competition within the mobile games industry, while the usually very low cost (free or just one or two dollars) makes a huge range of choices available to the average consumer. In 2013 when Apple celebrated the 50 billionth app download from the App Store, their charts revealed that at that time Angry Birds was the most downloaded paid iPhone app of all time, with three other Angry Birds variants making the top twenty-fi ve list, and all four of these Angry Birds games also featuring in the top twenty-fi ve paid downloads for the iPad as well (Viticci 2013). By May 2015 there were approximately 1.68 million apps in Apple's App Store, with over 366,000 of those being games ('Count of Active Applications in the App Store' 2015). Choice between these games is usually framed by just one standardized interface, such as the Google Play store for Android-powered devices or the Apple App store for iOS devices. Within this plethora of options, I will argue that in addition to being well-designed

The increasing necessity of engaging in social interaction through online commercial providers such as Facebook, alongside the ability of providers to extract, aggregate, analyse and commercialise the data and metadata such activities produce, have attracted considerable attention amongst the media and academic commentators alike. While much of the attention has been focussed on the data mining of social networking services such as Facebook, it is equally important to recognise the widespread adoption of large-scale data mining practices in a number of realms, including social games such as the well-known Farmville and its sequels, created by Zynga. The implicit contract that the public who use these services necessarily engage requires them to trade information about their friends, their likes, their desires and their consumption habits in return for their participation in the service. This paper will critically explore the realm of social games utilising Zynga as a central example, with a view to examine the practices, politics and ethics of data mining and the inherent social media contradiction. In determining whether this contradiction is accidental or purposeful, this paper will ask, in effect, whether Zynga and other big data miners behind social games are entrepreneurial heroes, more sinister FarmVillains, or whether it is possible at all to draw a line between the two? In doing so, Zynga's data mining approach and philosophy provide an important indicator about the broader integration of data analytics into a range of everyday activities.

Not unlike the video game industry, which has grown exponentially over the past three decades and is expected to generate worldwide revenues exceeding $300 billion five years from now, the academic study of video games has developed tremendously since the first social scientists began researching their effects on users beginning in the early 1980s. And yet, despite this explosion of scholarly interest in a subject that, only a few years earlier, had been looked down upon as either a corrupting influence on the nation’s youth or an innocuous plaything lacking the artistic merits of other forms of mass entertainment (such as motion pictures), the field has largely remained rooted to longstanding debates between narratologists and ludologists about the distinguishing features of this relatively new medium. In other words, the ontological question of what a video game essentially “is,” as seen from opposing but oddly consonant formalistic perspectives (which replaced earlier functionalist attempts to answer the question of what a video game essentially “does”), has been so central to academic work in this area that other approaches have been slow to come. However, in recent years, several important critical explorations of video games have been published by scholars with a vested interest in the politics of representation — work that builds upon yet diverges considerably from the story-centered and play-centered methodologies of earlier generations.

In this course, we will dive into some of those publications, looking at how the authors confront the commercial logics of mainstream representations while proposing alternatives to the conceptual frameworks that, until recently, have dominated video games studies. Using their work as a springboard, we will investigate why certain representational schemas related to ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and social class have remained in place throughout much of the medium’s history. But we will also learn how video games, to quote Bo Ruberg, “have always been queer,” and have presented a far more diverse spectrum of hermeneutic possibilities and agential opportunities for players who are themselves neither monolithic in their tastes nor reducible to a single identity. To be sure, homophobic, misogynist, and racist imagery — a recurring feature of some of the biggest-selling, most violent AAA releases over the past twenty years — will be all-too-familiar to many of the estimated 212 million Americans who call themselves “gamers.” However, a host of smaller indie games, including titles produced outside the United States and in the Global South, have given us counter-hegemonic views on different cultures and lived experiences that are as innovative and refreshing in their quirkiness as they are vital to our own negotiated or resistant readings of digital media texts. Ranging widely across philosophical and theoretical traditions, from affect theory and phenomenology to cultural studies, our discussions this semester will hopefully be as immersive and interactive as the best, most challenging and life-enriching video games.

The social and cultural phenomena related to Internet gaming have received their fair share of attention, particularly through numerous studies of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Also mobile games have their own research and developer communities, but the research work related to mobile games has so far been dominated by their technical and design challenges and researchers have not been particularly interested in their social aspects–in contrast to the numerous studies that have focused on mobile ...

As use of Internet from broadband-enabled mobile devices is becoming more common, studying the particular characteristics of mobile usage gains new importance. This paper discusses the role of services like Flickr and Facebook from the perspective of “contextual gaming ” – the appropriation of mobile and networked media for playful purposes in a social context. Applying Roger Caillois ’ distinction between paidia and ludus, the paper will introduce both free-form and improvised, as well as more rule-bound and competitive developments into playful, social media. The paper will conclude with both some criticism of the increasingly pervasive and continuous entanglement in socially charged technologies, while also welcoming the empowering and liberating potentials in this process.

Resumo. Vivemos hoje um momento em que se explora cada vez mais o consumismo excessivo e em que muitas pessoas gastam mais do que ganham, vivendo em um constante endividamento. A educação financeira se mostra extremamente necessária desde a infância, para que decisões sensatas e planejadas possam ser tomadas. Diante desse cenário, este artigo apresenta um jogo educativo de apoio à educação financeira, que objetiva apoiar a tomada de decisões visando o equilíbrio financeiro e a qualidade de vida. Para seu desenvolvimento foi utilizada a metodologia XisOA. O jogo foi bem avaliado por uma especialista da área de educação, que também apontou aspectos a serem melhorados, e, da mesma forma, foi bem avaliado na opinião de algumas crianças que o jogaram.