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- Volume 4, Issue 2, 2012
Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2012
Volume 4, Issue 2, 2012
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Modonomics: Participation and competition in contention
More LessThis article considers user participation in 3D development practices, known as mod development, in the commercial setting of the 3D software industry. By drawing on two prominent developer firms, i.e. Valve Inc.® and Linden Lab®, this article is designed to learn more about the increasing importance attributed to user participation in this context by exploring the ways in which these software developer firms facilitate or invite users to participate in development practices. The results of interviews conducted with employees of these firms, and an online survey with their respective user base, are used as evidence. The article demonstrates that, to various extents, interdependencies develop between the firm, users and technologies, directing our attention to the boundaries of participation and competition. It extends our understanding of how certain participatory designs provide a structure to how game development is informed and organized across firm boundaries based on the moderating role of product and user characteristics.
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Death of an avatar: Implications of presence for learners and educators in virtual worlds
More LessVirtual worlds such as Second Life® offer learners and educators environments in which they can engage in activities that would be too difficult, dangerous or impossible in the physical world. Increasingly, these settings provide learners with a sense of presence – an impression that their mediated presence is not mediated. Presence includes realistic representations, sophisticated social interaction and immersive experiences. What are the implications for learners when death is introduced into an immersive, but apparently safe and protected, educational environment? To answer this question, this article draws on a virtual ethnographic study carried out over four years in Second Life and Teen Second Life™. It finds that there are different types of death within Second Life, some permanent and some transient, some wholly virtual, others reflecting a situation in the physical world. Analysis of the theme of death in different settings and subject categories shows that learners and educators make use of some of these types of death to help with exploration of subjects as diverse as Roman history, military training and classic literature. In order to make use of these types of death, educators vary levels of realism, immersion and social interaction, thus altering the levels of presence available within an environment. Other types of Second Life death are not typically explored in educational settings but nevertheless raise a series of legal, social and ethical issues that will need to be addressed by future curricula.
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Aren’t you a doll! Toying with avatars in digital playgrounds
More LessAs recognized play theorist Brian Sutton-Smith points out, we have entered a ‘ludic age’ in which a playful attitude is embraced at all ages and play has increasingly come to mean play with toys. Documentations of the material, creative and social dimensions of toy play are increasingly seen in the playgrounds of digital media such as the photo management application Flickr. Dolls are considered as one of the earliest playthings, and in contemporary dolls, fantasy and reality blend into each other as their materialness and the design-storytelling are challenged by adult players/prosumers. A doll may play a part in self-expression and style; owners may customize, photograph and display the toy or share the visual documentations of their play sessions in various digital spaces. In some cases a doll might even become an avatar for the player himself or herself. This article examines how adults use doll characters as avatars by exploring visual narratives in social media environments. This is done through a visual analysis of doll images shared on the Internet-based Flickr and by analysing player created content on websites dedicated to the popular doll Blythe. Through examining the ways of toying with contemporary dolls in the playgrounds of social media, the aim is to build a new understanding of adult creation of second lives online.
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With or as avatars? The semiosis of avatars in actor-networks of human and non-human actors
More LessThis research sets out to examine the ways in which actors relate to choices regarding the design of avatars. The empirical data of the analysis is found in three case studies: one case from EverQuest®, the guild leader Sia with her shaman avatar Gelinu, and two cases from Second Life®, the businessman Thomas with his avatar DC Aspen and the businesswoman Helle with her avatar Helle. Virtual ethnography and iterative video interviews with actors were conducted while they acted with their avatars during 2006–2010. Findings from the video interviews of the case studies suggest that we extend the representational and psychological analysis to explicate the multiple, fluid and emergent relationships between human actors and non-human avatars. Semiotics and actor-network theory are some of the theoretical references contained within the analyses of the three cases mentioned. The article concludes that the relationships of actors with their avatars can be seen as instances of semiosis, i.e., triadic … -relations that mutually and continuously translate the actor-networks of actors and their avatars. It is suggested that this understanding of avatars as interpretants and mediators in ‘companionate’ relationships, characterized by acting ‘with’ rather than ‘as’ the avatars, will help us interpret and understand avatars as transformative phenomena in flux with blurred boundaries and not only as bounded representations of actors in relation to projection, identification, self-construal and identity-making.
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REVIEW
By Mark MullenA Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and their Players, Jesper Juul (2010) Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 256 pp. ISBN 978-0-2620-1337-6, Hardback, $24.95 (USD)
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