Which way from here? The spatiality of maps & navigation in first-person single-player video games

Player experience of spatiality in first-person, single-player games is informed by the maps and navigational aids provided by the game. This project uses textual analysis to examine the way these maps and navigational aids inform the experience of spatiality in Fallout 3, BioShock and BioShock 2. Spatiality is understood as trialectic, incorporating perceived, conceived and lived space, drawing on the work of Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja. The most prominent elements of the games’ maps and navigational aids are analysed in terms of how they inform players’ experience of the games’ spaces. In particular this project examines the in-game maps these games incorporate, the waypoint navigation and fast-travel systems in Fallout 3, and the guide arrow and environmental cues in the BioShock games.

The experiences of African women giving birth in Brisbane, Australia

Our purpose in this research was to uncover first-person descriptions of the birth experiences of African refugee women in Brisbane, Australia, and to explore the common themes that emerged from their experiences. We conducted semistructured interviews with 10 African refugees who had given birth in Brisbane. Essences universal to childbirth such as pain, control, and experiences of caregivers featured prominently in participants’ descriptions of their experiences. Their experiences, however, were further overshadowed by issues such as language barriers, the refugee experience, female genital mutilation (FGM), and encounters with health services with limited cultural competence.

Fictionalising oral history : narrative analysis, voice and identity

Details of a project which fictionalises the oral history of the life of the author's polio-afflicted grandmother Beth Bevan and her experiences at a home for children with disabilities are presented. The speech and language patterns recognised in the first person narration are described, as also the sense of voice and identity communicated through the oral history.

The voices of the exegesis

In a recent journal article, Luke Jaaniste and I identified an emergent model of exegesis. From a content analysis of submitted exegeses within a local archive, we identified an approach that is quite different from the traditional thesis, but is also distinct from previously identified forms of exegesis, which Milech and Schilo have described as a ‘context model’ (which assumes the voice of academic objectivity and provides an historical or theoretical context for the creative practice) and a ‘commentary’ model’ (which takes the form of a first person reflection on the challenges, insights and achievements of the practice). The model we identified combines these dichotomous forms and assumes a dual orientation–looking outwards to the established field of research, exemplars and theories, and inwards to the methodologies, processes and outcomes of the practice. We went on to argue that this ‘connective’ exegesis offers clear benefits to the researcher in connecting the practice to an established field while allowing the researcher to demonstrate how the methods have led to outcomes that advance the field in some way. And, while it helps the candidate to articulate objective claims for research innovation, it enables them to retain a voiced, personal relationship with their practice. However, it also poses considerable complexities and challenges in the writing. It requires a reconciliation of multi-perspectival subject positions: the disinterested perspective and academic objectivity of an observer/ethnographer/analyst/theorist at times and the invested perspective of the practitioner/ producer at others. The author must also contend with a range of writing styles, speech genres and voices: from the formal, polemical voice of the theorist to the personal, questioning and sometimes emotive voice of reflexivity. Moreover, the connective exegesis requires the researcher to synthesize various perspectives, subject positions, writing styles, and voices into a unified and coherent text. In this paper I consider strategies for writing a hybrid, connective exegesis. I first ground the discussion on polyvocality and alternate textual structures through reference to recent discussions in philosophy and critical theory, and point to examples of emergent approaches to texts and practices in related fields. I then return to the collection of archived exegeses to investigate the strategies that postgraduate candidates have adopted to resolve the problems that arise from a polyvocal, connective exegesis.

Doing new things with texts : multimodality and Mao’s Last Dancer

This paper describes a senior, multimodal task developed by Shauna O’Connor and the English staff at Brigidine College after consultation in the form of media workshops with Anita Jetnikoff. Gunther Kress (2006) suggested recently that due to the affordances of media platforms such as Web 2.0, “we need to be doing new things with texts”. The year 11 unit’s Finding a Voice parent text was the memoir, Mao’s last Dancer. The summative assessment task morphed over time from an ‘identity portrait’, into ‘a multimodal, first person narrative’.

Modeling player-like behaviour for game Al design

The design of artificial intelligence in computer games is an important component of a player's game play experience. As games are becoming more life-like and interactive, the need for more realistic game AI will increase. This is particularly the case with respect to AI that simulates how human players act, behave and make decisions. The purpose of this research is to establish a model of player-like behavior that may be effectively used to inform the design of artificial intelligence to more accurately mimic a player's decision making process. The research uses a qualitative analysis of player opinions and reactions while playing a first person shooter video game, with recordings of their in game actions, speech and facial characteristics. The initial studies provide player data that has been used to design a model of how a player behaves.

Narrative : family trauma or challenge and resilience in the Galapagos Archipelago

The chapter is a "here and now" narration in the first person as witnessed and experienced by the author during field work in the Galapagos Islands in 1976-79. The story begins on the most remote volcanic island of Fernandina where the breeding biology of Flightless cormorants was being studied. A small selection of the many potentially life threatening situations and challenges is described including stories related to the birth of their son.

Mediating identity narratives : a case study in queer digital storytelling as everyday activism

Digital Stories are short autobiographical documentaries, often illustrated with personal photographs and narrated in the first person, and typically produced in group workshops. As a media form they offer ‘ordinary people’ the opportunity to represent themselves to audiences of their choosing; and this amplification of hitherto unheard voices has significant repercussions for their social participation. Many of the storytellers involved in the ‘Rainbow Family Tree’ case study that is the subject of this paper can be characterised as ‘everyday’ activists for their common desire to use their personal stories to increase social acceptance of marginalised identity categories. However, in conflict with their willingness to share their personal stories, many fear the risks and ramifications of distributing them in public spaces (especially online) to audiences both intimate and unknown. Additionally, while technologies for production and distribution of rich media products have become more accessible and user-friendly, many obstacles remain. For many people there are difficulties with technological access and aptitude, personal agency, cultural capital, and social isolation, not to mention availability of the time and energy requisite to Digital Storytelling. Additionally, workshop context, facilitation and distribution processes all influence the content of stories. This paper explores the many factors that make ‘authentic’ self-representation far from straight forward. I use qualitative data drawn from interviews, Digital Story texts and ethnographic observation of GLBTQIS participants in a Digital Storytelling initiative that combined face-to-face and online modes of participation. I consider mediating influences in practice and theory and draw on strategies put forth in cultural anthropology and narrative therapy to propose some practical tools for nuanced and sensitive facilitation of Digital Storytelling workshops and webspaces. Finally, I consider the implications of these facilitation strategies for voice, identity and social participation.

Mutual enlightenment : augmenting human factors research in surgical robotics

This discussion has outlined a theoretical and pragmatic framework to demonstrate that future research involving the analysis of human performance in surgical should encourage the use of phenomenology to enhance the knowledge base of this area of study. Merging experiential (first-person) and experimental (third-person) methods may possibly help improve research designs and analyses in the investigation of robotics in surgical performance. By relying solely on third-person techniques, the current methodology and interpretation used to analyze human performance in surgical robotics is limited. Recent advances in cognitive science and psychology have also recognized this limitation and have now begun to shift to neurophenomenology. Finally, discussion on recent robotics research presented here demonstrates the potential phenomenology holds for augmenting the methodological and analysis techniques currently used by researchers of human performance in surgical robotics.

Spotting the difference : identifying player opponent preferences in FPS games

This paper describes a study designed to understand player responses to artificially intelligent opponents in multi-player First Person Shooter games. It examines the player's ability to tell the difference between artificially intelligent opponents and other human players, and investigates the players' perceptions of these opponents. The study examines player preferences in this regard and identifies the significance of the cues and signs players use to categorise an opponent as artificial or human.

Understanding player threat responses in FPS games

This paper describes the results of a study designed to understand the components contributing to a participant's assessment of threatening situations in a competitive First Person Shooter (FPS) game Quake III: Arena. The analysis process described compares theoretical, questionnaire based data with that of actual game play footage and identifies how skill and experience can affect a player's ability to accurately assess threat. This research also identifies relationships between variables contributing to a participant's threat assessment process which are not usually acknowledged in game AI design. A suggestion for integrating player-like threat based decision making processes is proposed.

'I wouldn't say that' : finding a young adult, female voice in a Queensland mining town

This is a practice-led project consisting of a Young Adult novel, Open Cut, and an exegesis, 'I Wouldn't Say That': Finding a Young Adult, Female Voice in a Queensland Mining Town. The thesis investigates the use of first person narration in order to create an immediate engaging, realist Young Adult Fiction. The research design is bound by a feminist interpretative paradigm. The methodology employed is practice-led, auto-ethnography, and participant observation. Particular characteristics of first person narration used in Australian Young Adult Fiction are identified in an analysis of Dust, by Christine Bongers, and Jasper Jones, by Craig Silvey. The exegesis also contains a reflection on the researcher's creative work, and the process used to draft, edit, plot and construct the novel. The research contributes to knowledge in the field of Young Adult Literature because it offers a graphic portrayal of an Australian mining town that has not been heard before.

Paired back

Research Statement from dancer: "This research is situated within my ongoing praxis, which explores the dancer’s role within the production of contemporary choreography through an elucidation of the first person perspective. This was a collaborative investigation with a group of artists and my specific research question focused upon the autopoietic unfolding of choreography and how the dancer is situated within this... " Research statement from choreographer: "This research is situated in the field of practice-led research, investigating choreographic practice. ‘The choreographic processes of many twentieth-century dance pioneers and innovators have been documented (Carter & O’Shea 2010; Foster 2010). In stark contrast, although seemingly primary to the act of choreography, the dancers’ experiences of the choreographic process have not been explored fully’ (Risner 2000, 156). The stock of choreographic literature is biased toward the choreographer-genius and the creative product (Penty 1998) and overlooks the dancer’s voice in the creative process (Risner 1992)..."

Shared material on dying

Shared Material on Dying is a trio/solo work commissioned by Jenny Roche and the Dublin Dance Festival in 2008 from choreographer Liz Roche. Touring widely since its creation, it continues to be a rich research environment for the interrogation by Jenny Roche of the dancer’s first-person perspective in choreographic production and performance. The research perspective drawn from the live performance of this iteration was how the exploration of the same dancing moment might be expressed from multiple perspectives by three different dancers and what this might reveal about the dancer’s inner configuring of the performance environment. Erin Manning (2009) describes the unstable and emergent moment before movement materialises as the preacceleration of the movement, when the potentialities of the gesture collapse and stabilize into form. It is this threshold of potentiality that is interesting, the moment before the dance happens when the configuring process of the dancer brings it into being. Cynthia Roses Thema (2007), after neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, writes that embodied experience is mapped as it unfolds and alters from moment to moment in line with a constantly changing internal milieu. As a performer in this piece, I explored the inner terrain of the three performers (myself included) by externalizing these inner states. This research contributed to a paper presentation at the Digital Resources for the Arts and Humanities Conference, UK 2013.

Lying in all honesty : capturing truth in women’s confessional memoir

This paper explores the slippery nature of illness and diagnosis in Lauren Slater’s memoir, Lying: a Metaphorical Memoir (2000). Speaking from the shadowy intersection of childhood and adolescence, Slater’s narrator, Lauren, uses the metaphor of epilepsy to describe her own predilection for exaggeration. In exploiting the fallibility of the first-person narrator, Slater insists on the legitimacy of metaphor in accounts of childhood illness that are more concerned with narrative truth than historical accuracy. The result of this playfulness and general misrule is that Slater writes herself into a double bind: on one side, she is the child narrator who inadvertently misrepresents events and misdirects readers, and on the other side, she is the untrustworthy author who employs metaphor as a licence to lie.