This study investigates how game playing experience changes when a story is added to a first-person shooter game. Dependent variables include identification, presence, emotional experiences and motivations. When story was present, game players felt greater identification, sense of presence, and physiological arousal. The presence of story did not affect self-reported arousal or dominance. This study clearly demonstrates that story is something that video game players enjoy; it helps involve them in the game play, makes them feel more immersed in the virtual environment, and keeps them aroused. The greater character identification may be especially worrisome, as past research has shown that justified media violence disinhibits actual aggression on the part of the audience. Read more...

The purpose of this article is to determine the amount and context of gun violence across 2 electronic media. Study I focuses on the landscape of gun violence on television, including the number of high risk portrayals. Study 2 provides data on the attributes of gun violence in video games. Results for each study are reported in terms of amount per medium and context of portrayals. Finally, differences between televised gun violence and video game gun violence are reported to illustrate how each medium may contribute to problematic behavior. Read more...

Identification is regarded as an important aspect of beneficial online interaction. In addition to providing the individual with potential psychological benefits, identification with an online self or avatar can also increase individual and social understanding and tolerance of difference. The ability to create a character, or avatar, that can be identified with is the initial, and arguably the most important, step in the process of identification. However, this process has changed significantly with the advent and development of visually oriented games. Through participant-observation conducted in World of Warcraft and textual analysis of online forums associated with the game, this paper investigates the ways in which visual elements of online games affect the process of identifying with an online self. Ultimately, it argues that although interacting in a virtual environment where everything is immediately visible can ease the identification process, limits on character appearance, movement, and interaction imposed by visually rendering the game could simultaneously compromise this benefit. Read more...

This article discusses how console video games map televisual space as both simulated and contiguous with the non-virtual space of the gamers and their own bodies. Gamer identification, identity politics in video games, video game stars and video game violence are also explored here. Murphy argues that video games utilize televisual technology to produce interactive experiences for gamers, whose own bodies are physically impacted by game play in subtle ways. How video gamers interact with the virtual bodies of their player-characters is key to understanding how video games facilitate a different interaction with televisual space than that enacted through viewing television programming. Read more...

One factor that contributes to adolescent positive mental health is active engagement. Engagement is defined as any activity that is initiated to attain an outcome. In general, two forms of activities exist that correspond with engagement: solitary, non-structured, and non-cooperative pursuits, often without adult supervision (e.g., playing video games, watching television) and highly structured, collaborative activities that are under the guidance of a competent set of adults (i.e., structured extracurricular activities, or SEAs). Although large amounts of time spent in unstructured activities is related to negative psychosocial outcomes, participation in SEAs has been related to a variety of positive outcomes for students. This paper reviews current research regarding adolescent participation in SEAs and its effects on academic and personal-social variables (i.e., self-concept, life satisfaction), as well as potential preventive effects for youths considered to be "at-risk" for negative developmental outcomes. The paper also examines research investigating the potential benefits and shortcomings of different types of SEAs. Finally, suggestions for future research and school-based preventive intervention are presented. Read more...