Contours of Virtual Enfreakment in Fighting Game Characters

Characters in fighting videogames1 such as Street Fighter V and Tekken7 typically reveal a phenomenon that we define as virtual enfreakment: their bodies, costumes, and fighting styles are exaggerated (1) in a manner that emphasizes perceived exoticism and (2) to enable them to be easily visually and conceptually distinguishable from one another. Here, using both quantitative and qualitative methods, including crowd-sourced surveys and analyses of game mechanics, we report on the contours of virtual enfreakment in those games. We specifically examine differences in character design across gender, national-origin, and skin-color lines. Disappointingly but not surprisingly, we find racism and sexism manifest as stark differences in character design by gender and skin color. This has strong implications because taking on the roles of these characters can have impacts on users in the physical world, e.g., performance and engagement, behavior, and understandings of others (Lim and Harrell 2015; Şengün 2015; Yee et al. 2012, Şengün et al. 2022a; Harrell and Veeragoudar Harrell 2012; Kao and Harrell 2015; Şengün 2014; Kocur et al. 2020). Although the differences are not always straightforward, female characters and darker-skinned characters (typically, characters of color) are enfreaked differently than their light-skinned male counterparts. Our results also reveal the strategic use of “unknown” as a country of origin for villainous characters. Through our mixed-methods analysis, we examine in detail how virtual enfreakment is influenced by sexism and racism, and our findings are compatible with information about the development history of the Street Fighter and Tekken franchises. However, we also find that recent characters designed in dialogue with developers from their regions of origin are some of the least enfreaked and most positively portrayed—suggesting the possibility of designing and deploying such characters for implementing anti-bias character designs within popular videos

Adventures in software engineering : plugging HCI & acessibility gaps with open source solutions

There has been a great deal of research undertaken in the field of Human-Computer Interfaces (HCI), input devices, and output modalities in recent years. From touch-based and voice control input mechanisms such as those found on modern smart-devices to the use of touch-free input through video-stream/image analysis (including depth streams and skeletal mapping) and the inclusion of gaze tracking, head tracking, virtual reality and beyond - the availability and variety of these I/O (Input/Output) mechanisms has increased tremendously and progressed both into our living rooms and into our lives in general. With regard to modern desktop computers and videogame consoles, at present many of these technologies are at a relatively immature stage of development - their use often limited to simple adjuncts to the staple input mechanisms of mouse, keyboard, or joystick / joypad inputs. In effect, we have these new input devices - but we're not quite sure how best to use them yet; that is, where their various strengths and weaknesses lie, and how or if they can be used to conveniently and reliably drive or augment applications in our everyday lives. In addition, much of this technology is provided by proprietary hardware and software, providing limited options for customisation or adaptation to better meet the needs of specific users. Therefore, this project investigated the development of open source software solutions to address various aspects of innovative user I/O in a flexible manner. Towards this end, a number of original software applications have been developed which incorporate functionality aimed at enhancing the current state of the art in these areas and making that software freely available for use by any who may find it beneficial.Doctor of Philosoph

Examination of interactive experience: Construction of physical and social presence in virtual environments

Interactivity seems to be a familiar concept, which partially explains its frequent use in discussions about new communication technologies and what they can bring to communication studies. However, interactivity research has yet to reach a comprehensive and concrete consensus concerning the antecedents and consequences of interactive experiences. The main objective of this research is to determine the factors responsible for fostering the interactivity experience in the multiuser virtual environments and to observe how this variance in interactivity will affect the formation of physical and social presence. The study also examines the possible relationship between physical and social presence via correlation analysis and uses a one-way ANOVA with Post-Hoc Tests to designate the effects of interactivity on physical and social presence

Overcoming adversity: a design framework for action melee combat systems

In the complex world of game design, there are many systems that are taken into account when it comes to convey the intended experience of the game or, as it is usually referred to, the fun. Of these systems, there are some that are treated in a different way for a handful of players and gamer designers alike. Whether the reason might be, they usually get a greater prestige both in the professional and user level; one of these systems is, undoubtedly, the Combat System. Although not all games in the market have systems dedicated to violent-traditional style combat, it has undeniable being a large part of video games since they were convicted as a medium; with titles like Doom or Pac-man still being relevant today. This is because, at its core, combat is conflict; which seems to be deeply attached to human beings, being most obvious in the stories we tell each other. In these stories, takes grand importance the overcoming of obstacles, which is a quality we intrinsically find remarkable and admirable when see it in someone else, fictional character or not. This translates to video games perfectly, whether it is smashing through enemies, kicking and punching an equal skill foe or, most notoriety, progressing through a campaign; there is some sort of conflict inherit within most video games. This conflict impulses players to overcome aforementioned obstacles, usually though the use of rewards the such as points for their score, ammunition for their weapons or the advancement of their skills. Furthermore, there are two major issues in the actual combat design field that you can easily spot when compare multiple sources of research. The first one being that it is very difficult for combat designers to migrate from making a type of combat system to another. For the second one, there is confusion when it comes to discuss combat design, since there is no taxonomy established. This paper will try to answer why do we find conflict in combat so fascinating, whether it is special or not and how can be develop a framework to apply a successful and taxonomical formula to game design. How we allow players to enjoy the battle

The translation of humor in video games: a case study

Over the last thirty years, the practice of game localization has become more and more widespread and has started to attract a growing academic interest. However, the translation of humor in games has received little scholarly attention, despite the fact that humor is a fundamental component of games and can be a difficult area to translate. In this view, the thesis is aimed at identifying and classifying the main types of humor in games and the way in which their translation from English into Italian has been tackled, highlighting how the interactive nature of games may affect translation. As the audiovisual features of games are incredibly varied and cannot always be assimilated to the established categories of audiovisual translation, the thesis also discusses how the various audiovisual modalities of games can have an impact on localization. Then, it examines three popular games that are particularly suitable for this analysis, as they feature plenty of humorous dialogues and situations: The Secret of Monkey Island (1990), Day of the Tentacle (1993) and Discworld (1995). The thesis pays particular attention to instances of humor based on cultural elements, as they are especially likely to cause disruptions in a translated text. The research looks at how often humor is intrinsically based on culture-specific references and analyses how translators deal with them. This issue appears particularly relevant in the case of games, as unfamiliar references can most easily damage the user’s experience. The final part of the thesis discusses the retranslation of games. By comparing the old and new translations of two games in the corpus, the thesis aims at seeing if and how translation choices have changed across time. As one of the retranslations was made by fans of the game, the thesis also aims at giving insight into the phenomenon of fan translation