About Jason Rutter
Thu, 18/01/2007 - 16:54 | 
Jason Rutter
Dr Jason Rutter
Jason Rutter is a Marie Curie Research Fellow in the School for Mass Communication Research at Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. He specialises in games, digital media and counterfeiting and is currently funded by The European Commission's People programme through the STEVO Project (‘The Socio-Technical EVOlution of intellectual property online: Creating counterfeit culture’).
He has published widely including the books Understanding Digital Games (2006, Sage) and special editions of Game Studies and Information, Communication and Society. Working primarily in the areas of Leisure Technologies (especially digital gaming and mobile telecoms) and counterfeiting and piracy of digital content he has been involved in projects funded by the European Commission, Northern Ireland Office, DTI and ESRC. His recent projects have included COUNTER [Socio-economic and cultural impacts of the consumption of counterfeit goods], mGain [Mobile Entertainment Industry and Culture (EC)] and IPTOC [Intellectual Property Theft and Organised Crime (NIO)]. He chaired the European Commission Marie Curie Conference "Putting the Knowledge Based Society into Practice" (April 2006) and the international conferences "Mobile Entertainment: User Centred Perspectives" (2004) and "Playing with the Future" (2002) as well as running the ESRC-funded seminar series "DigiPlay: Experience and Consequence of Technologies of Leisure". Over recent years has chaired the evaluation panels for the European Commission's Economics and Social Science panels for the Marie Curie programme's Initial Training Network (ITN) and Industry-Academia Partnerships and Pathways (IAPP) schemes. He was the inaugural vice-president of the international Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA).
13396 reads
Triadic Game Design: Balancing Reality, Meaning and Play
Fri, 21/10/2011 - 18:30 | primacassie
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Many designers, policy makers, teachers, and other practitioners are beginning to understand the usefulness of using digital games beyond entertainment. This has led to an increasing number of attempts to apply games meaningfully. Games have been developed from teaching students about history, making patients adhere in taking their medicine, to recruiting personnel for the military and collecting data to improve search engines. Yet, little is known on how to design such games. This book is one of the first to look into the fundamentals of designing any game with a serious purpose and provides a way of thinking on how to design one successfully. Drawing on the personal design experience of the author as well as dozens of examples, the reader will be introduced to a design philosophy called “Triadic Game Design.” This argues that all games involve three worlds: the worlds of Reality, Meaning, and Play. Each world is affiliated with different people, disciplines, aspects, and criteria. The philosophy also posits that a balance needs to be found within and between the three worlds. Such a balance is difficult to achieve, during the design many tensions will arise, forcing designers to make trade-offs. To deal with these tensions and to ensure that the right decisions are made to create a harmonic game, a frame of reference is needed. This is what Triadic Game Design offers. And this is what makes it an invaluable tool for practitioners and researchers who are interested in using and designing games that have a real world impact.
437 reads | 
Tags: Architectural design, Arts, author, Casper Harteveld
Source, Culture, Design, educational games, game design, Game design, London, pedagogy, Serious game, serious games, simulation, simulation and modeling, Visual arts
Minecraft as Web 2.0: Amateur Creativity & Digital Games (draft)
Thu, 13/10/2011 - 13:54 | greglas
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This chapter considers how the digital game Minecraft has both enabled and benefited from various Web 2.0 practices. I begin with an explanation of the concept of Web 2.0 and then consider how that concept applies to the space of digital games. I then look at Minecraft specifically. As I explain, Minecraft’s surprise success as an “indie” game is largely attributable to the ways in which it draws upon amateur creativity. I conclude the chapter by suggesting that more games like Minecraft may be socially desirable, but noting that current intellectual property laws discourage the creation of these sorts of games.
601 reads | Tags: Contact Details, Greg Lastowka
Source, Legal Perspectives, Neologisms, Social information processing, Web 2.0, World Wide Web
The edge of virtual communities? An explorative analysis of clans and computer games
Sun, 25/09/2011 - 10:38 | Jeff
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
The field of online games discloses a high number of self-organising processes of community building. Ego-Shooters are the home of so-called clans, which are one of the most popular and also most interesting types of game communities. With a qualitative approach the structural characteristics, communication processes and interpretational patterns of collective gaming from the perspective of a clan member were researched. The results clearly illustrate the interconnections between real world and virtual world processes of communication and interaction. Clans can be classified as something in-between a hobby and a semi-professionally played sport, whereas the latter better corresponds to the self-concept of most of the interviewees. It was repeatedly noticed that many clans still have a virtual pioneer status. This allows active and committed clan members the possibility for individual design not only of game play, but also of the social and communicative organisation of the clan.
610 reads | Tags: Appropriation, Clan, Clans, communities, Community, Game Culture, Jeffrey Wimmer, Kristin Vogel
Source, Sociology, Vienna, Virtual community, World Wide Web
Digital pitchforks and virtual torches: Fan responses to the Mass Effect news debacle
Thu, 01/09/2011 - 12:42 | Jason Rutter
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
In early 2008, what started as a small report in an online conservative outlet on the Xbox 360 videogame Mass Effect was picked up by a number of news outlets and blogs. In particular, Fox News’s ‘Live Desk with Martha MacCallum’ produced a segment on the game, claiming it was fully interactive digital pornography. One of the show’s guests, pop psychologist Cooper Lawrence, argued that the game’s sexual content was harmful, but did so with no firsthand knowledge of the game, incensing fans of the game. Those fans proceeded to respond in various ways, particularly on the internet. The present research examines three distinct areas of these fan responses — forum discussions, YouTube videos, and the ‘review bombing’ of Cooper Lawrence’s books on Amazon.com. The various ways in which fans expressed their anger at, displeasure with, and opinions on the story and how the game was treated in the media present a chance not only to look into the mindset of these fans toward the various institutions involved in but also paint a picture of fan and gamer cultures in general.
605 reads | Tags: Fan, Fandom, fans, Fox News, Games, Internet, Martha MacCallum, Mass Effect, mass effect, Mass media, Nathan Dutton, online, Person Career, Role-playing video games, Technology, Technology, the International Journal, the Mass Effect news, Todd Harper
Source, Video game controversies, Video game culture, videogames, War, War
Doing gender in cyberspace: The performance of gender by female World of Warcraft players
Thu, 01/09/2011 - 12:22 | Jason Rutter
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This explorative study focuses on the performance of gender and sexuality in World of Warcraft (WoW), an online game, following Butler’s performance theory. Through interviews with female WoW players, gender and sexuality is analysed. The article argues that we cannot study gender online without also looking at sexuality. Gender performances are discussed within the framework of four themes: the avatar; strategies; sexuality, and the contextual importance of WoW. Results show that gender identity construction in WoW is an ongoing process highly dependent on the social context of play. The women interviewed created gendered and sexualized identities constrained and empowered by the rules of the game and the opportunities it offers as well as of their social relations. Although a heterosexual norm rules, there are possibilities hitherto unrecognized for queer performance within the gendered role play in WoW and the game offers the possibility of multiple and alternative performances of the self.
Upgrading the self: Technology and the self in the digital games perpetual innovation economy
Thu, 01/09/2011 - 12:17 | Jason Rutter
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This article explores the upgrade and perpetual innovation economy of digital gaming as it informs understandings and practices of the ‘self’. Upgrade is situated in terms of digital gaming as a globalized techno-cultural industry. Drawing on accounts of governmentality and cultural work, research with digital games design students is drawn on to explore the overlapping twin logics of technological upgrade and work-on-the-self. The games industry-focused higher education context is examined as an environment for becoming a games designer and involving processes of upgrading the self. Having examined processes and practices of upgrading the self in terms of technological skills and personal development/enterprise, the article turns to some of the critical issues around anxiety, industry conventions and working practices.
523 reads | Tags: Academia, Daniel
Source, Design, designer, Digital Gaming, Geography, Globalization, Governmentality, governmentality, Innovation, New media, perpetual innovation, Political philosophy, Science, Sociology, Technology, Technology, the International Journal, the self, upgrade culture, Visual arts
Games are not convergence: The lost promise of digital production and convergence
Thu, 01/09/2011 - 12:13 | Jason Rutter
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This article critically examines the notion of ‘convergence’ as it applies to videogames and videogame development. Drawing on data from more than five years of ethnographic fieldwork amongst ‘AAA’ videogame development studios, the specific case of Spider-Man 3’s development is used as a lens for understanding the complexity of modern media production practice. This case sheds light on our understandings of cross-media development practice and the labor involved in the effect of media ‘flow’ from platform to platform. Actor-Network Theory serves as a guiding analytic framework for understanding how videogame production in this context, given the sheer number of actors, has significant implications for the kinds of cross-media products created and the labor involved in bringing these projects to fruition.
Rules, Rhetoric, and Genre: Procedural Rhetoric in Persona 3
Thu, 01/09/2011 - 11:53 | Jason Rutter
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Released in 2008 for the Playstation 2, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 is a roleplaying game with a diverse genre pedigree. It is a combination of dungeon-crawling RPG and social interaction ``datesim,'' all wrapped up in the thematic trappings of occult mystery and Japanese popular culture. Using Ian Bogost's (2007) concept of procedural rhetoric, this article examines how Persona 3's use of genre conventions and gameplay-based rhetorical frames construct the game's message, as well as how those structures can inform our understanding of genre for the digital game form.
435 reads | Tags: Games, Games, Genre, Ian Bogost, Mass media, Megami Tensei, Persona, persona, Persuasive Games, persuasive games, PlayStation 2, procedural rhetoric, Revelations: Persona, Rhetoric, role-playing, Role-playing video games, RPG, Shin Megami Tensei, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, Todd Harper
Source
Flow Experience and Mood States While Playing Body Movement-Controlled Video Games
Thu, 01/09/2011 - 11:53 | Jason Rutter
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Body movement-controlled video games (BMCVGs) are a genre of video gaming utilizing body movement to control game play that is becoming increasingly popular. Despite the popularity and widespread interest in BMCVGs, there is limited information available about the nature of the players' experiences when they engage in BMCVG play. A total of 14 young adults played 6 different BMCVGs for 6 min each and performed traditional cycling exercise in a randomized order. After two familiarization sessions, on a third occasion, subjects rated their enjoyment and completed the Flow State Scale-2 questionnaire. The BMCVGs were rated more enjoyable than traditional cycling exercise and the Flow dimensions Challenge-Skill Balance and Merging of Action and Awareness scored significantly higher than the norms for exercise activity and instead corresponded more closely to the norms for sporting activity. These findings suggest that BMCVGs could therefore act as a gateway for sedentary individuals to become involved in sporting activities.
461 reads | Tags: Action, Awareness, Cognition, Dance Dance Revolution, Danny
Source, Exercise, Exercise, Exergaming, Exergaming, Experience, flow, Flow, Human behavior, Merger, MOOD, Obesity, Personal life, physical activity, Physical exercise, Self-care, SPORT, Technology, Technology, Video game genres, Video Games
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