Pretty good for a girl: gender, identity and computer games

Young people’s participation in online digital culture is one of the most efficient means by which they become proficient in the management of Information and Communications Technologies and the new literacies emerging there. This paper reports on a small project investigating the
gendered dimensions of teenagers’ engagement in and out of school with stand-alone and multiplayer computer games. The study explored the game playing practices of a group of students in an English curriculum unit and the social and game playing practices of a group of young women of South East Asian backgrounds in a LAN café who had formed their own Counterstrike clan. It found that expertise is not just a matter of specific skills, strategies and familiarity, but is more broadly located within the complex dynamics of in- and out-of-school discourses and contexts that need to be factored in to the construction of gender-equitable pedagogy and curriculum.

Technologies and considerations for developing internet and multiplayer computer games: a tutorial (extended abstract)

Games are universal and probably as old as humankind. Today the development of computer technology, especially the development of fast networks and the Internet, brings games a faster growth than ever before. Game design and development is now a fast-growing entertainment field, with a lot to offer professionally and creatively. In fact, from IT professional’s point of view, creating computer games provides us with all the usual technical challenges associated with software development, such as requirement analysis, architectural design, rapid prototyping, HCI, parallel and distributed processing, code reuse, programming, performance evaluation, testing and maintenance. It also provides challenges on other exciting aspects, such as storyboarding, screenplays, illustration, animation, sound effects, music, and social impact. By developing a computer game from start to finish, one would be able to acquire multi-disciplinary knowledge to become an IT professional for the modern era.

RTS and RPGs : New literacies and multiplayer computer games

Technopopular culture such as computer games immerses young people in highly complex and engaging worlds, worlds in which literacy and communicative practices are significantly reconfigured and extended by the contexts in which they occur. This paper reports on a study exploring the textual engagement, pleasures and literacies entailed in playing on line computer games amongst a group of young people aged 15-16. It explores the ways in which these young people read and utilised intersections between traditional print-based text, visual images, symbols, sound, interactivity and other elements to play and make sense of a range of Real Time Strategy and Role Playing Computer Games; the place of games and gaming amongst other text-based leisure activities in their lives; and issues of interpretation, representation and response entailed in playing with real or virtual partners in cyberspace.

Literacy in the digital age : learning from computer games

The need for literacy and the English curriculum to attend to digital literacies in the twenty-first century is well established. Although studies in digital literacies have examined the inclusion of computer games in schools, there has not been an extended study of English teachers incorporating computer games into their teaching and learning through action research projects. This paper outlines the structure and progress of a research project exploring the uses of computer games in English classrooms. We argue that much can be learned about the teaching of both print and digital literacies from examining computer games and young people's engagement in online digital culture in the world beyond school.

Energy expenditure in adolescents playing new generation computer games

Objective: To compare the energy expenditure of adolescents when playing sedentary and new generation active computer games.

Design: Cross sectional comparison of four computer games. Setting Research laboratories.

Participants: Six boys and five girls aged 13–15 years.

Procedure: Participants were fitted with a monitoring device validated to predict energy expenditure. They played four computer games for 15 minutes each. One of the games was sedentary (XBOX 360) and the other three were active (Wii Sports).

Main outcome measure: Predicted energy expenditure, compared using repeated measures analysis of variance.

Results: Mean (standard deviation) predicted energy expenditure when playing Wii Sports bowling (190.6 (22.2) kl/kg/min), tennis (202.5 (31.5) kl/kg/min), and boxing (198.1 (33.9) kl/kg/min) was significantly greater than when playing sedentary games (125.5 (13.7) kl/kg/min) (P<0.001). Predicted energy expenditure was at least 65.1 (95% confidence interval 47.3 to 82.9) kl/kg/min greater when playing active rather than sedentary games.

Conclusions: Playing new generation active computer games uses significantly more energy than playing sedentary computer games but not as much energy as playing the sport itself. The energy used when playing active Wii Sports games was not of high enough intensity to contribute towards the recommended daily amount of exercise in children.

Comparison of energy expenditure in adolescents when playing new generation and sedentary computer games: cross sectional study

Objective : To compare the energy expenditure of adolescents when playing sedentary and new generation active computer games.

Design : Cross sectional comparison of four computer games.

Setting : Research laboratories.

Participants : Six boys and five girls aged 13-15 years.

Procedure : Participants were fitted with a monitoring device validated to predict energy expenditure. They played four computer games for 15 minutes each. One of the games was sedentary (XBOX 360) and the other three were active (Wii Sports).

Main outcome measure : Predicted energy expenditure, compared using repeated measures analysis of variance.

Results : Mean (standard deviation) predicted energy expenditure when playing Wii Sports bowling (190.6 (22.2) kJ/kg/min), tennis (202.5 (31.5) kJ/kg/min), and boxing (198.1 (33.9) kJ/kg/min) was significantly greater than when playing sedentary games (125.5 (13.7) kJ/kg/min) (P<0.001). Predicted energy expenditure was at least 65.1 (95% confidence interval 47.3 to 82.9) kJ/kg/min greater when playing active rather than sedentary games.

Conclusions : Playing new generation active computer games uses significantly more energy than playing sedentary computer games but not as much energy as playing the sport itself. The energy used when playing active Wii Sports games was not of high enough intensity to contribute towards the recommended daily amount of exercise in children.

Researching kids and computer games : games, game play and literacy in the twenty first century

Videogames, and young people's engagement with them, are of growing interest to education. This paper reports on initial find ings from the study: Literacy in the Digital World of the Twenty First Century: Leaming from computer games, focussing on the opportunities offered by studying young people's immersion in game play for understanding more about contemporary forms of  engagement and textuality, new forms of literacy,community and identity multimodality, and the implications of such forms and changes for contemporary literacy and English education. Taking videogames as examples of global, ICT-based popular culture, where meaning is built from muhimodal elements, and where young players have to he actively teaming and involved in order to play, the project asks how English and literacy education might benefit from examining videogames, as rich exemplars of contemporary digital culture, and the ways in which young people make use of them, to improve the teaching of print and multi modal forms of literacy.

Computer games – pushing at the boundaries of literacy

The need to expand traditional, print-based versions of literacy to also incorporate attention to multimodal forms of text and literacy in the English curriculum is now well established. Much can be learnt about students and their literacy practices from the exploration of their engagement with digital culture – particularly videogames – from their out-of-school lifeworlds. However, the emerging set of skills and competencies or, the ‘new’ literacies and literacy practices associated with multiple and ever-emerging genres generated through information and communications technologies, present challenges in terms of how they might be conceptualised as literacy (or not) and how the multiple dimensions entailed in gameplay are increasingly a part of what it means to be literate in the 21st century. Drawing on two case studies of classroom work, the paper describes approaches to conceptualising the complexity of digital texts and their access, production and distribution and the opportunity to create spaces where students could interact, socialise and learn in both the real and virtual world. Dimensions such as play, interactivity, action, movement and time raise challenging questions about the limits and possibilities of constructing games and gameplay as texts and literacy practices that push the boundaries of literacy.