Challenging notions of gendered game play: teenagers playing `The Sims`

This paper challenges notions of gendered game playing practice implicit in much research into young women's involvement with the computer gaming culture. It draws on a study of Australian teenagers playing The Sims Deluxe as part of an English curriculum unit and insights from feminist media studies to explore relationships between gender and game playing practices. Departing from a reliance on predetermined notions of “gender”, “domestic space”, and “successful game play”, it conceptualizes The Sims as a game in which the boundaries between gender and domestic space are disturbed. It argues that observing students' constructions of gender and domestic space through the act of game play itself provides a more productive insight into the gendered dimensions of game play for educators wishing to work computer games such as The Sims into curriculum development.

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.

Comparative effects of TV watching, recreational computer use, and sedentary video game play on spontaneous energy intake in male children. A randomised crossover trial.

To compare the effects of three screen-based sedentary behaviours on acute energy intake (EI) in children. Normal-weight males aged 9-13 years participated in a randomised crossover trial conducted in a laboratory setting between November 2012 and February 2013 in Auckland, New Zealand. EI during an ad libitum meal was compared for three 1-hour conditions: (1) television (TV) watching, (2) sedentary video game (VG) play, and (3) recreational computer use. The primary endpoint was total EI from food and drink. Mixed regression models were used to evaluate the treatment conditions adjusting for age, BMI, and appetite at baseline. A total of 20 participants were randomised and all completed the three conditions. Total EI from food and drink in the TV, computer, and VG conditions was estimated at 820 (SE 73.15), 685 (SE 73.33), and 696 (SE 73.16) kcal, respectively, with EI being significantly greater in the TV versus computer condition (+135; P = 0.04), a trend towards greater intake in the TV versus VG condition (+124; P = 0.06), but not significantly different between the computer and VG conditions (-10; P = 0.87). TV watching was associated with greater EI compared with computer use, and a trend towards greater EI compared with VG play.

Are the profiles of past-year internet gamblers generalizable to regular internet gamblers?

 Research generally classifies internet gamblers as those who have gambled online at least once in the previous year. This classification system has been criticised on the grounds that it fails to consider the frequency of internet gambling. This study aimed to contrast the demographic, gambling, and psychosocial profiles of regular internet gamblers (at least monthly in the previous year) with those of past-year internet gamblers. Computer-assisted telephone interviews were conducted with 4303 adult respondents from Tasmania, Australia. The findings revealed that 3.3% were past-year internet gamblers and 2.1% were regular internet gamblers. Both past-year and regular internet gambling were significantly associated with several variables (younger age, dependent children, paid employment, higher annual income, higher gambling frequency and expenditure, younger age of first gambling, challenge and positive feelings gambling motives, and positive reinforcement gambling triggers). However, several variables were significantly associated only with past-year internet gambling (male gender, living with partner, number of gambling activities, regulate internal state gambling motives, hazardous alcohol use, cannabis use, and other illicit drug use) or regular internet gambling (higher education). Only gambling for positive feelings was a significant independent predictor of both past-year and regular internet gambling. These findings suggest that the classification of past-year internet gambling that is normally employed in research produces profiles that are not fully generalizable to regular internet gamblers.

Undergraduate sports students' perceptions of a change to game sense pedagogy

This paper contributes to research in the scholarship of teaching by reporting on undergraduate sports students perceptions of their own learning when exposed to a Game Sense learning approach and reflections on my experience of teaching it. A multiple methods approach was utilised to gather data from a four-week games component of a 10-week unit of study with all participants (n = 20; aged 18-21) in their first year of a three-year sports-related undergraduate degree. The games classification system was used to plan session content over the four weeks with each week focusing on a different games classification. Data were organised and coded via inductive coding procedures with analysis conducted concurrently to identify three prominent themes: 1) positive experiences of competition and game play, 2) the range of cognitive and emotional learning opportunities provided by Game Sense pedagogy facilitated improved student engagement and learning, and 3) the challenge of effective teacher questioning to stimulate game play knowledge construction.

Young people, online gaming culture, and education

The capacity of video games to engage and challenge players through increasingly complex and demanding stages and the range of cognitive, linguistic, and sociocultural practices generated by games and game play have led to increased interest in the use and study of video games in schools. Views of digital games as “hard fun” or “serious play” have important implications for education, problematizing assumptions about what students can and might be asked to do, about teaching and learning, and about the ways in which curriculum is resourced and organized. To fully capitalize on games’ potential to enrich learning, the nature of play, the kinds of play entailed in playing games of varying genres, the experience of game play in and out of school, and the relationship between them all need to be carefully considered and explored.

Establishing Competitive Domination Cycles for Peer-to-peer Game Combat

Games require balance to be fair and enjoyable. In two player combat settings balance can be achieved by ensuring that both units are equally capable. The possibility of alliances changes the nature of balance when additional players are introduced. One approach to achieving balance is to use a domination loop between agents in a rock, scissors, paper style approach. This paper investigates whether such loops exist within the existing rules of game combat. Search processes within the attribute space of the game units are used to identify loops within an existing game architecture. A dominance metric is used to identify cycles where the victory is achieved by a clear threshold. Cycles with up to 5 players are demonstrated, although larger cycles require more effort to find. Use of models of game play and attribute space search are recommended as a mechanism for balancing games of this format.

Modelling attribute dependencies in single unit game combat settings

The relative strengths of individual units, described as attributes, determine the outcome during unit conflicts involving units in the armies of opponents in large strategy games. We describe a process for developing predictive models of the outcome for such conflicts where combat involves single unit adversaries where each unit is defined in terms of 4 fundamental attributes. These attributes: range, speed, health and damage are common to unit descriptions in many successful real-time strategy games. Our analysis process identifies three phases of game play with invariant properties that hold throughout each phase. We demonstrate the utility of this analysis by creating a model that predicts game outcomes. Predictions are validated against the game simulation. The game outcomes are explicitly related to the attributes of the two units involved, highlighting the significance and role of each attribute.