Rerolling Boardgames: Essays on Themes, Systems, Experiences and Ideologies (Studies in Gaming)

Despite the advent and explosion of videogames, boardgames--from fast-paced party games to intensely strategic titles--have in recent years become more numerous and more diverse in terms of genre, ethos and content. The growth of gaming events and conventions such as Essen Spiel, Gen Con and the UK Games EXPO, as well as crowdfunding through sites like Kickstarter, has diversified the evolution of game development, which is increasingly driven by fans, and boardgames provide an important glue to geek culture. In academia, boardgames are used in a practical sense to teach elements of design and game mechanics. Game studies is also recognizing the importance of expanding its focus beyond the digital. As yet, however, no collected work has explored the many different approaches emerging around the critical challenges that boardgaming represents. In this collection, game theorists analyze boardgame play and player behavior, and explore the complex interactions between the sociality, conflict, competition and cooperation that boardgames foster. Game designers discuss the opportunities boardgame system designs offer for narrative and social play. Cultural theorists discuss boardgames' complex history as both beautiful physical artifacts and special places within cultural experiences of play

Decision-making and research gaming

The thesis is concerned with research in the field of human decision-making, concentrating on techniques of gaming for the pursuit of this research. Following an introduction to the work and a statement of the research programme as it was initially conceived, some current ideas in gaming are investigated. The Superior Commander system of game control is introduced. The content of research games is discussed, and the Organisational Control Game, a board war game designed for research, is described. It is shown that the Organisational Control Game and Superior Commander system successfully meet the requirements for a useful research game and gaming methodology. A detailed literature survey of the psychological secondary task technique for assessing mental processing load is presented. It is noted that the technique might be extended to the study of tasks which have a large problem-solving component. A secondary task experiment on such a task, a chess problem task, is described. It is demonstrated that the secondary task approach can provide techniques for the investigation of complex problem-solving and decision-making tasks. A series of plays of the Organisational Control Game, in which the players had had previous military experience, is described. These games are compared with an earlier series of games, in which the players were students. Certain differences in playing style are identified. The research programme is re-examined, and modifications to it are described. The need for a technique for elucidation and examination of an individual decision-maker's perceptions of his decision-making environment is identified. The technique of cognitive mapping is shown to be suitable for this purpose. A cognitive map analysis of a series of games in which the players were serving army officers is presented.<p

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) is a constraint-based or declarative approach to linguistic knowledge, which analyses all descriptive levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) with feature value pairs, structure sharing, and relational constraints. In syntax it assumes that expressions have a single relatively simple constituent structure. This volume provides a state-of-the-art introduction to the framework. Various chapters discuss basic assumptions and formal foundations, describe the evolution of the framework, and go into the details of the main syntactic phenomena. Further chapters are devoted to non-syntactic levels of description. The book also considers related fields and research areas (gesture, sign languages, computational linguistics) and includes chapters comparing HPSG with other frameworks (Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Construction Grammar, Dependency Grammar, and Minimalism)

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) is a constraint-based or declarative approach to linguistic knowledge, which analyses all descriptive levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) with feature value pairs, structure sharing, and relational constraints. In syntax it assumes that expressions have a single relatively simple constituent structure. This volume provides a state-of-the-art introduction to the framework. Various chapters discuss basic assumptions and formal foundations, describe the evolution of the framework, and go into the details of the main syntactic phenomena. Further chapters are devoted to non-syntactic levels of description. The book also considers related fields and research areas (gesture, sign languages, computational linguistics) and includes chapters comparing HPSG with other frameworks (Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Construction Grammar, Dependency Grammar, and Minimalism)

The student-produced electronic portfolio in craft education

The authors studied primary school students’ experiences of using an electronic portfolio in their craft education over four years. A stimulated recall interview was applied to collect user experiences and qualitative content analysis to analyse the collected data. The results indicate that the electronic portfolio was experienced as a multipurpose tool to support learning. It makes the learning process visible and in that way helps focus on and improves the quality of learning. © ISLS.Peer reviewe