Are we raising the standards of language use or just playing games?

Given the current state of play with respect to literacy 'crises' in Western democracies, this article revisits the 'language games' that often inform these concerns, examining their rules and who benefits from them. It argues that to focus narrowly on the technical aspects of language, as the current emphasis does, misses the point of what is at stake for students: those who advocates claim to want to help. Drawing on twenty semi-structured interviews and observations of teachers in primary and secondary schools within Queensland (Australia), the article outlines four perspectives on language use and how these variously position students as literate and illiterate. It concludes that we now need a different game plan to address students' use of language, one that provokes a stance and praxis in keeping with a more inclusive politics and which provides real challenges to broader social constraints.

Should we teach an old game new tricks?

The Middle East Politics Simulation (MEPS) is a simulation of diplomacy and political tension in the Middle East. This online role-play exercise is aimed at providing students with an improved level of understanding of the political dimensions of the region. Having been run since 1993, the MEPS has not had any major updates to its platform in all those years. However, as such a mature online entity there is the question of whether the MEPS will continue to engage students as their expectations of what constitutes an online role-playing environment became steadily raised by their familiarity with more graphically immersive platforms. The reliance on social media tools for students and political figures to use as conduits for communication is also unrepresented in the MEPS and the subject of some student dissatisfaction in previous years. This research assesses student attitudes towards the MEPS with an eye to balancing the demands of technology, functionality, equity of experience, security and, most importantly, learning outcomes.

Impact of an active video game on healthy children’s physical activity

OBJECTIVE: This naturalistic study tests whether children receiving a new (to them) active video game spontaneously engage in more physical activity than those receiving an inactive video game, and whether the effect would be greater among children in unsafe neighborhoods, who might not be allowed to play outside.

METHODS: Participants were children 9 to 12 years of age, with a BMI >50th percentile, but <99th percentile; none of these children a medical condition that would preclude physical activity or playing video games. A randomized clinical trial assigned children to receiving 2 active or 2 inactive video games, the peripherals necessary to run the games, and a Wii console. Physical activity was monitored by using accelerometers for 5 weeks over the course of a 13-week experiment. Neighborhood safety was assessed with a 12 item validated questionnaire.

RESULTS: There was no evidence that children receiving the active video games were more active in general, or at anytime, than children receiving the inactive video games. The outcomes were not moderated by parent perceived neighborhood safety, child BMI z score, or other demographic characteristics.

CONCLUSIONS: These results provide no reason to believe that simply acquiring an active video game under naturalistic circumstances provides a public health benefit to children.

Playing Active Video Games may not develop movement skills: an intervention trial

Background: To investigate the impact of playing sports Active Video Games on children's actual and perceived object control skills. Methods: Intervention children played Active Video Games for 6. weeks (1. h/week) in 2012. The Test of Gross Motor Development-2 assessed object control skill. The Pictorial Scale of Perceived Movement Skill Competence assessed perceived object control skill. Repeated measurements of object control and perceived object control were analysed for the whole sample, using linear mixed models, which included fixed effects for group (intervention or control) and time (pre and post) and their interaction. The first model adjusted for sex only and the second model also adjusted for age, and prior ball sports experience (yes/no). Seven mixed-gender focus discussions were conducted with intervention children after programme completion. Results: Ninety-five Australian children (55% girls; 43% intervention group) aged 4 to 8. years (M 6.2, SD 0.95) participated. Object control skill improved over time (p=0.006) but there was no significant difference (p=0.913) between groups in improvement (predicted means: control 31.80 to 33.53, SED=0.748; intervention 30.33 to 31.83, SED=0.835). A similar result held for the second model. Similarly the intervention did not change perceived object control in Model 1 (predicted means: control: 19.08 to 18.68, SED=0.362; intervention 18.67 to 18.88, SED=0.406) or Model 2. Children found the intervention enjoyable, but most did not perceive direct equivalence between Active Video Games and 'real life' activities. Conclusions: Whilst Active Video Game play may help introduce children to sport, this amount of time playing is unlikely to build skill.

Tormentas e inimigos: relações dialógicas entre a literatura de fantasia e os role playing games

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Aspectos formais da trilha musical de Yasunori Mitsuda para o game Chrono Cross e sua interação com o enredo

This work has the aim of evince compositional tools used in the development of musical scores for role-playing videogames through the analysis of Yasunori Mitsuda’s music for Chrono Cross (1999). This research is divided in two main parts: the first traces a historic path of the RPG genre on videogame consoles, since its birth as a tabletop game in the decade of 1970 until its consolidation on 3D game machines released in the 1990’s. The focus of this historical study concentrates on the aesthetics of this kind of game and on the multiple relations it settles with sound throughout the years. The second part is an analytical work on an assortment of pieces by Mitsuda for the aforementioned game, bringing up the most interesting aspects of the connections established between these compositions and the whole game.

The creation and use of an international reference glossary specific for horror role-playing games

This thesis focuses on the technical approach to the translation of the Italian horror role-playing game Sine Requie into English. It aims to prove that both the role-playing and horror aspects of the genre are important to convey an enjoyable experience to the players, and that it is possible to create and international reference glossary to better translate the horror genre itself. Following a brief introduction of the history of role-playing games (RPGs), we will look at the RPG technical vocabulary in Sine Requie, and analyze which of these elements can be translated following the great models of the history of role-playing games. A brief introduction will follow regsrding the horror genre and its core characteristics based on the work of worldwide famous horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Lastly, a description on how the international reference glossary for the horror genre was created will be presented along with a few examples of its practical use.

Playing with the Real World

In this paper we provide a framework that enables the rapid development of applications using non-standard input devices. Flash is chosen as programming language since it can be used for quickly assembling applications. We overcome the difficulties of Flash to access external devices by introducing a very generic concept: The state information generated by input devices is transferred to a PC where a program collects them, interprets them and makes them available on a web server. Application developers can now integrate a Flash component that accesses the data stored in XML format and directly use it in their application.

Listening to your heart and feeling yourself: effects of exposure to interoceptive signals during the ultimatum game

The ultimatum game (UG) is commonly used to study the tension between financial self-interest and social equity motives. Here, we investigated whether experimental exposure to interoceptive signals influences participants' behavior in the UG. Participants were presented with various bodily sounds--i.e., their own heart, another person's heart, or the sound of footsteps--while acting both in the role of responder and proposer. We found that listening to one's own heart sound, compared to the other bodily sounds: (1) increased subjective feelings of unfairness, but not rejection behavior, in response to unfair offers and (2) increased the unfair offers while playing in the proposer role. These findings suggest that heightened feedback of one's own visceral processes may increase a self-centered perspective and drive socioeconomic exchanges accordingly. In addition, this study introduces a valuable procedure to manipulate online the access to interoceptive signals and for exploring the interplay between viscero-sensory information and cognition.

Integrated Disaster Reduction Approach: LforS Learning and Simulation Game

Main objective of the game is to increase the coping capacity of players and familiarise them with the Integrated Disaster Reduction Approach. The game is intended to prepare for and introduce the players to a subsequent Learning for Sustainability capacity building workshop for community leaders. The game represents a typical emergency situation resulting from a natural disaster. Before and after the event, adequate measures help to prevent or minimise potential damages. Once a disaster has occurred, concerted actions and immediate measures need to be taken to rescue as much as possible (human lives, livestock, material) and safeguard the village against further damage and losses. In the course of the game, each playing team can proof its knowledge on adequate measures that have to be taken in order to avoid or reduce losses related to natural disasters. Such measures relate to assessment and monitoring of risks, prevention and mitigation measures, preparedness and response as well as recovery and reconstruction.

Effects of team Knowledge and ecological constraints on decisional processes in customized football game scenarios

Several theories assume that successful team coordination is partly based on knowledge that helps anticipating individual contributions necessary in a situational task. It has been argued that a more ecological perspective needs to be considered in contexts evolving dynamically and unpredictably. In football, defensive plays are usually coordinated according to strategic concepts spanning all members and large areas of the playfield. On the other hand, fewer people are involved in offensive plays as these are less projectable and strongly constrained by ecological characteristics. The aim of this study is to test the effects of ecological constraints and player knowledge on decision making in offensive game scenarios. It is hypothesized that both knowledge about team members and situational constraints will influence decisional processes. Effects of situational constraints are expected to be of higher magnitude. Two teams playing in the fourth league of the Swiss Football Federation participate in the study. Forty customized game scenarios were developed based on the coaches’ information about player positions and game strategies. Each player was shown in ball possession four times. Participants were asked to take the perspective of the player on the ball and to choose a passing destination and a recipient. Participants then rated domain specific strengths (e.g., technical skills, game intelligence) of each of their teammates. Multilevel models for categorical dependent variables (team members) will be specified. Player knowledge (rated skills) and ecological constraints (operationalized as each players’ proximity and availability for ball reception) are included as predictor variables. Data are currently being collected. Results will yield effects of parameters that are stable across situations as well as of variable parameters that are bound to situational context. These will enable insight into the degree to which ecological constraints and more enduring team knowledge are involved in decisional processes aimed at coordinating interpersonal action.

Enhancing skills in solving open-ended problems using game-based exercises

Some requirements for engineering programmes, such as an ability to use the techniques, skills and modern engineering tools necessary for engineering practice, as well as an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility or an ability to communicate effectively, need new activities designed for measuring students’ progress. Negotiations take place continuously at any stage of a project and, so, the ability of engineers and managers to effectively carry out a negotiation is crucial for the success or failure of projects and businesses. Since it involves communication between individuals motivated to come together in an agreement for mutual benefit, it can be used to enhance these personal abilities. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the adequacy of mixing playing sessions and theory to maximise the students’ strategic vision in combination with negotiating skills. Results show that the combination of playing with theoretical training teaches students to strategise through analysis and discussion of alternatives. The outcome is then more optimised.

Negotiation Games: Acquiring Skills by Playing

This paper shows the research done at the School of Industrial Engineers (ETSII) of the Technical University of Madrid (UPM), in two consecutive academic courses. In this negotiation game each team is formed by three students playing different roles, with a different degree of complexity. The game is played three different times changing the conditions and doing the Zones of Possible Agreement (ZOPA) smaller so the negotiation is going “harder” and it was more difficult for the team to achieve an agreement. Roles were distributed according to the student’s experience, since it was understood that difficulty of the roles was different, especially when there was set a time limit for negotiation. The combination of playing and training has shown that students without particularly good negotiating skills at the beginning of the experiment attained better final results than those who have natural negotiating skills, but no benefit of training.