|
|
Experience
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This article reconceptualizes the psychological concept of "flow" as it pertains to media entertainment. Our goal is to advance flow theory in ways that highlight the necessity of reliable and valid operationalization. We posit flow as a discrete, energetically optimized, and gratifying experience resulting from a cognitive synchronization of specific attentional and reward networks under condition of balance between challenge and skill. We identify video-game play as a context in which flow is likely to occur, and where we can observe our neurophysiological conceptualization of flow using measurement techniques (functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI]) without disrupting the experiential state. After presenting preliminary evidence consistent with our synchronization theory of flow, we suggest ways to advance this research.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Modern psychophysiological game research faces the problem that for understanding the computer game experience, it needs to analyze game events with high temporal resolution and within the game context. This is the only way to achieve greater understanding of gameplay and the player experience with the use of psychophysiological instrumentation. This paper presents a solution to recording in-game events with the frequency and accuracy of psychophysiological recording systems, by sending out event byte codes through a parallel port to the psychophysiological signal acquisition hardware. Thus, psychophysiological data can immediately be correlated with in-game data. By employing this system for psychophysiological game experiments, researchers will be able to analyze gameplay in greater detail in future studies.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Designing and evaluating gameplay experience comes to life after measures for player experience have been found. This paper describes a pilot study measuring game experience with a set of game stimuli especially designed for different player experiences. Gameplay experience is measured using self-report questionnaires after each play session. Results of the questionnaires are then separately compared to design intentions and player evaluations. Our experiment shows that gameplay experience can be assessed with a high reliability for certain gameplay features.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Schema theory provides a foundation for the analysis of game play patterns created by players during their interaction with a game. Schema models derived from the analysis of play provide a rich explanatory framework for the cognitive processes underlying game play, as well as detailed hypotheses for the hierarchical structure of pleasures and rewards motivating players. Game engagement is accounted for as a process of schema selection or development, while immersion is explained in terms of levels of attentional demand in schema execution. However, schemas may not only be used to describe play, but might be used actively as cognitive models within a game engine. Predesigned schema models are knowledge representations constituting anticipated or desired learned cognitive outcomes of play. Automated analysis of player schemas and comparison with predesigned target schemas can provide a foundation for a game engine adapting or tuning game mechanics to achieve specific effects of engagement, immersion, and cognitive skill acquisition by players. Hence, schema models may enhance the play experience as well as provide a foundation for achieving explicitly represented pedagogical or therapeutic functions of games.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Researchers interested in the associations of gender with spatial experience and spatial ability have not yet focused on several activities that have become common in the modern digital age. In this study, using a new questionnaire called the Survey of Spatial Representation and Activities (SSRA), we examined spatial experiences with computers and videogames in a sample of nearly 1,300 undergraduate students. Large gender differences, which favored men, were found in computer experience. Although men and women also differed on SAT scores, gender differences in computer experience were still apparent with SAT factored out. Furthermore, men and women with high and low levels of computer experience, who were selected for more intensive study, were found to differ significantly on the Mental Rotations Test (MRT). Path analyses showed that computer experience substantially mediates the gender difference in spatial ability observed on the MRT. These results collectively suggest that the "Digital Divide" is an important phenomenon and that encouraging women and girls to gain spatial experiences, such as computer usage, might help to bridge the gap in spatial ability between the sexes.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Objective. To investigate the effectiveness of computerized virtual reality (VR) training of the hemiparetic hand of patients poststroke using a system that provides repetitive motor reeducation and skill reacquisition. Methods. Eight subjects in the chronic phase poststroke participated in a 3-week program using their hemiparetic hand in a series of interactive computer games for 13 days of training, weekend breaks, and pretests and posttests. Each subject trained for about 2 to 2.5 h per day. Outcome measures consisted of changes in the computerized measures of thumb and finger range of motion, thumb and finger velocity, fractionation (the ability to move fingers independently), thumb and finger strength, the Jebsen Test of Hand Function, and a Kinematic reach to grasp test. Results. Subjects as a group improved in fractionation of the fingers, thumb and finger range of motion, and thumb and finger speed, retaining those gains at the 1-week retention test. Transfer of these improvements was demonstrated through changes in the Jebsen Test of Hand Function and a decrease after the therapy in the overall time from hand peak velocity to the moment when an object was lifted from the table. Conclusions. It is difficult in current service delivery models to provide the intensity of practice that appears to be needed to effect neural reorganization and functional changes poststroke. Computerized exercise systems may be a way to maximize both the patients' and the clinicians' time. The data in this study add support to the proposal to explore novel technologies for incorporation into current practice.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This article proposes a theoretical explanation for the popularity of violent video games among adolescent male gamers. The author uses theories about media and emotion as well as theories about emotion as a process to develop a model for the unfolding of emotion in violent video games. It is argued that violent video games provide a gratifying context for the experience of emotions. The fact that gamers are largely in control of the game implies that they can voluntarily select the emotional situations they confront. This freedom is attractive for adolescents who are in the midst of constructing an identity. For them, the violent game is a safe, private laboratory where they can experience different emotions, including those that arc controversial in ordinary life. Gamers may deliberately select emotions that sustain dominant masculine identity (e.g., anger), as well as emotions that are at odds with dominant masculinity (e.g., fear).
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This paper presents a gameplay experience model, assesses its potential as a tool for research and presents some directions for future work. The presented model was born from observations among game-playing children and their non-player parents, which directed us to have a closer look at the complex nature of gameplay experience. Our research led into a heuristic gameplay experience model that identifies some of the key components and processes that are relevant in the experience of gameplay, with a particular focus on immersion. The model includes three components: sensory, challenge-based and imaginative immersion (SCI-model). The classification was assessed with self-evaluation questionnaires filled in by informants who played different popular games. It was found that the gameplay experiences related to these games did indeed differ as expected in terms of the identified three immersion components.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This study examined gender differences in perceptions of school computing by asking girls and boys at early and late stages in secondary education what they liked best and least about using computers at school. Overall age differences were very marked and reflected the different skill levels of the pupils and the increase in the sophistication of their computer use at the later stage of the curriculum. Gender differences were found in both age groups. These included a greater work orientation and liking for e-mail apparent in girls' responses. Boys showed a greater affinity with computer games and mentioned limitations upon their access to machines more. These gender differences are a further demonstration that girls approach computers as tools for accomplishing tasks, while boys approach them as technology for play and mastery. Such differences are important for understanding how computers are approached in educational settings.
|
