The modern era of digital video cameras and cheap home computer editing systems (that are more powerful than the avid systems of six years ago and sell for one tenth the cost!) is often lauded as the great digital revolution of the cinematic form: the delivery of cinema-making tools into the hands of the masses. Read more...

The game chosen for the present research is developed by the American Army for the purpose of online training of the world wide public and recruitment. The America's Army game is an online game, a combination between entertainment and defence, being a result of the modelling and simulation ideas used by American Army after the 80'. The game is a model for transforming and turning the PC game into a communication medium, applying virtual environment and video-game technology to training tasks and recruitment and bridging the gap between these technologies and the operational-warfare environment. The present research proves that the America's Army game environment -by its means of presenting the military information- induces the same brain potential (P3b) as in the case of administration of powerful drug stimulants, as cocaine, methylphenidate. Read more...

With the recent advances in mobile networking, context-aware computing, and sensor-based computing, researchers and game designers are able to explore the potential of combining these new technologies to develop mobile, networked, context-aware, augmented reality multiplayer games. As part of new research collaboration between Lancaster University, Cisco Systems, Microsoft Research and Orange - MIPv6 Systems Research Lab, such a mobile context-aware multiplayer game is proposed and explored. The proposed game, Real Tournament, gathers real-time contextual information, e.g. physical location and orientation, from the players and injects them into the game engine to generate game events. Read more...

Computer games have not been adequately theorized within the humanities. In this paper a brief history of computer games is presented as a starting point for developing a topology of games and a theory of computer games as rhetorical artifacts suitable for critical study. The paper addresses the question of why games should be treated seriously and suggests a theoretical approach based on Bakhtin's poetics of the novel where the experience of time and space (the chronotope) provides a framework of questions for discussing computer games. Read more...

The relationship was examined between exposure to and preference for violent electronic games and aggressive norms as well as hostile attributional style. Following a pilot study to sample widely used electronic games varying in violent content, 231 eighth-grade adolescents in Germany reported their use of and attraction to violent electronic games. They also completed measures of hostile attributional style and endorsement of aggressive norms. There were significant gender differences in usage and attraction to violent electronic games, with boys scoring higher than girls. Significant relationships were found between attraction to violent electronic games and the acceptance of norms condoning physical aggression. Violent electronic games were linked indirectly to hostile attributional style through aggressive norms. The findings are discussed with respect to North American research on the aggression-enhancing effect of violent electronic games. Read more...

The relationship between media violence exposure and executive functioning was investigated in samples of adolescents with no psychiatric diagnosis or with a history of aggressive-disruptive behavior. Age-, gender-, and IQ-matched samples of adolescents who had no Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-fourth edition (DSM-IV: American Psychiatric Association, 19 94) diagnosis (N = 2 7) and of adolescents who had DSM-IV Disruptive Behavior Disorder diagnoses (N = 27) completed measures of media violence exposure and tests of executive functioning. Moderate to strong relationships were found between higher amounts of media violence exposure and deficits in self-report, parent-report, and laboratory-based measures of executive functioning. A significant diagnosis by media violence exposure interaction effect was found for Conners' Continuous Performance Test scores, such that the media violence exposure-executive functioning relationship was stronger for adolescents who had Disruptive Behavior Disorder diagnoses. Results indicate that media violence exposure is related to poorer executive functioning, and this relationship may be stronger for adolescents who have a history of aggressive-disruptive behavior. Read more...

Recent research demonstrates that videogames enhance literacy, attention, reaction time, and higher-level thinking. Several scholars have suggested that massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) such as Everquest and Second Life have educational potential, but we have little data about what happens when such tools are introduced in the classroom. This paper reports findings from two MMO- based courses in the context of situated learning theory. The first course, focused on the ethnography of on- line games, used the game Everquest as a vehicle for teaching research methods to 36 students in an undergraduate communication course. The second course used the game Second Life to teach the fundamentals of videogame design and criticism. Synthesizing comments from student web logs with data collected from followup surveys, the paper highlights key findings and offers concrete suggestions for instructors contemplating the use of multiplayer games in their own courses. Recommending that potential virtual environments be selected on the basis of genre, accessibility, and extensibility, it is suggested that game- based assignments are most effective when they build bridges between the domain of the game world and an overlapping domain of professional practice. Read more...

In this paper, we describe how geometrically correct and visually realistic shadows may be computed for objects composited into a single view of a target scene. Compared to traditional single view compositing methods, which either do not deal with the shadow effects or manually create the shadows for the composited objects, our approach efficiently utilizes the geometric and photometric constraints extracted from a single target image to synthesize the shadows consistent with the overall target scene for the inserted objects. In particular, we explore (i) the constraints provided by imaged scene structure, e.g. vanishing points of orthogonal directions, for camera calibration and thus explicit determination of the locations of the camera and the light source; (ii) the relatively weaker geometric constraint, the planar homology, that models the imaged shadow relations when explicit camera calibration is not possible; and (iii) the photometric constraints that are required to match the color characteristics of the synthesized shadows with those of the original scene. For each constraint, we demonstrate the working examples followed by our observations. To show the accuracy and the applications of the proposed method, we present the results for a variety of target scenes, including footage from commercial Hollywood movies and 3D video games. Read more...