Cyberbullying in \u27Left 4 Dead 2\u27: a Study in Collaborative Play

This study sought to further our understanding of the role of cyberbullying in the cooperative team-based game Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2). A sample of 41 4-person groups generated a total n = 415 messages used for evaluating the behavioral content of game play. Four hypotheses were advanced assessing cyberbullying behavior and game outcome (success vs. failure), group cohesion, target participation, and perceptions of bullies. Out of the 41 groups 25 groups had cyberbullying behavior present and 16 groups had prosocial behavior. Overall, cyberbullying behavior had little effect on game outcome, group cohesion and target participation. Groups using only prosocial messages were more successful than groups with cyberbullying messages and had a significantly better survival score when prosocial messages occurred late in the game. Additionally, cyberbullying behavior and prosocial behavior increased a sense of belonging compared to groups where cyberbullying occurred earlier in the game. Furthermore, the amount of cyberbullying in groups generated no effect on target participation. Finally, players considered leaders influence the game more than non-leaders and players identified as both leader and cyberbully generate no effect on game influence compared to players not identified as both cyberbully and leader. Results are discussed in terms of study limitations and possible conceptual and operational applications

Militarism and opposition in the living room: the case of military videogames

This article explores the importance of videogames and their associated promotional media for both militarism and the resulting opposition. It focuses on the games Medal of Honor and Medal of Honor Warfighter - two mainstream, commercially successful military combat games which purport to offer an 'authentic' experience of post 9/11 military action to the player - to develop a framework to explore the role of videogames in this area. First, in terms of the military industrial and military entertainment complex, it shows the close association between the game developers and the military, with the military providing consultancy services, access to military hardware and openly celebrating their mutual associations. Second, these associations take on an important spatial dimension with the developers and weapons makers producing promotional materials which literally show both parties 'enjoying one anothers company' in the same physical space; games also 'transport the player' into the virtual battlefield and allow them to embody the soldier. Finally, gendered militarism is shown in the gameplay and narratives within these games, alongside their associated promotional materials, all of which place significant emphasis on the links between militaristic values and masculinity. In both games, the celebration of militarism was highly controversial, prompting heated debate and active opposition - albeit varying in the two cases - from the military, politicians and players on the appropriateness of using videogames for militaristic entertainment. This suggests that there are limits to society's acquiescence in militarism and a continuing capacity to critique militaristic popular culture

Counter strike 1.6 calls to play: a multimodal analysis of the game couver

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente, Florianópolis, 2010Vídeo jogos, considerados um fenômeno de entretenimento de massa contemporâneo, vem sendo estudados e utilizados nas mais diversas áreas. Na Educação, cada vez mais docentes se aderem a esta prática como um meio de interação com as tecnologias de informação (Aarseth, 1997, Lemke, 2002) e os utilizam como uma ferramenta potencial para promover pensamento crítico (Frasca, 2001). No Brasil, o uso de vídeo jogos na Educação é ainda uma prática nova e restrita. Contudo, o rico conteúdo semiótico destes jogos e a familiaridade generalizada dos estudantes com este meio fazem com que sejam incluídos entre as fontes de material para o multiletramento (Unsworth, 2007, 2001; Christie, 2005; Gee, 2005; Jenkins & Squire, 2003). Esta situação levanta questões referentes às representações semióticas dos vídeo jogos, como assim também, à criação de aplicativos adequados ao multiletramento. Esta pesquisa tem por objetivo compreender e interpretar a representação multimodal do discurso de guerra como entretenimento, na capa do jogo de tiro Counter Strike 1.6. O estudo, baseado principalmente nos trabalhos de Kress e van Leeuwen (1996), Unsworth (2001; 2006) e Machin e van Leeuwen (2009), revela que: 1) o propósito ou função da capa sugere ter influenciado nas escolhas feitas para a composição da mesma. Nela se dá ênfase à representação glamurizada do soldado da força antiterrorista e são abstraídas possíveis representações explicitas de guerra; 2) as funções Representacional, Interativa e Composicional (GDV) articulam-se através dos modos de representação e realizam o trabalho conjunto de tentar fundir, visualmente falando, as fronteiras entre a representação da guerra na realidade da vida e na realidade do jogo; 3) efeitos de áudio e som contextualizam o jogo em um determinado gênero como assim também, a espacialização dos ambientes criados em mapas locais; 4) o tipo de letra escolhido para facilitar a compreensão de textos enquanto se joga sob pressão de tempo, pode espelhar uma mudança nos hábitos de leitura na era da computação. Concluo o presente trabalho refletindo sobre o uso de vídeo jogos, mesmo quando o tema for controvertido, e, sugiro possíveis atividades que incluam vídeo jogos como material para uma abordagem critica ao letramento multimodal

Unified Description for Network Information Hiding Methods

Until now hiding methods in network steganography have been described in arbitrary ways, making them difficult to compare. For instance, some publications describe classical channel characteristics, such as robustness and bandwidth, while others describe the embedding of hidden information. We introduce the first unified description of hiding methods in network steganography. Our description method is based on a comprehensive analysis of the existing publications in the domain. When our description method is applied by the research community, future publications will be easier to categorize, compare and extend. Our method can also serve as a basis to evaluate the novelty of hiding methods proposed in the future.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures, 1 table; currently under revie

Virtual Worlds: Social Interactions Among Online Gamers Through Voice Chat

Online gaming scholarship has rarely focused on the micro sociological aspects of virtual worlds as much of the research on online games is undertaken by psychologists and scholars in other fields. When a sociological lens is employed in analyzing social interactions that occur in virtual worlds, new understandings of social phenomena in virtual worlds can come to light. My research draws upon multiple sociological theories to make sense of data collect via in-depth interviews and participant observations in an attempt to understand how voice chat influences relationship formation and maintenance, gender relations among online gamers, and how online gamers use the label noob to regulate gamer masculinity in virtual worlds. Findings indicate the voice chat has a both a positive and negative impact on the social interactions of online gamers

Video Games, Influence, and Identification: The Perpetuation of Culture Through Digital Worlds

Video games, through their widespread popularity and appeal, transmit meaningful ideas, beliefs, and attitudes via the use of digital worlds, narratives, characters, and play. Play has always held a key role in human life, but the video game medium accentuates and accelerates the reach and impact of play on human users. Jacques Ellul’s philosophy of social propaganda and Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical theory each offer important implications to the persuasiveness of video games; however, when placed in conversation with one another, the union of Ellul and Burke leads to a more complete understanding of how video games have such an effect and what can be done when complications are found. That video games are influential is not troubling, but it is worth exploring the ways in which video games are changing players’ actions, attitudes, and ideals through covert persuasion. Video games have the capacity and potency to transmit and instill prejudicial attitudes in players through covert persuasion, and these attitudes can lead to destructive actions. Many groups suffer from stereotypical depictions in video games, but one particular group under threat from the video game industry in the current political climate of the United States are Hispanic and Latino populations and cultures. If video games have the power to spread prejudice, then they also have the power to correct those problematic attitudes

Synthetic steganography: Methods for generating and detecting covert channels in generated media

Issues of privacy in communication are becoming increasingly important. For many people and businesses, the use of strong cryptographic protocols is sufficient to protect their communications. However, the overt use of strong cryptography may be prohibited or individual entities may be prohibited from communicating directly. In these cases, a secure alternative to the overt use of strong cryptography is required. One promising alternative is to hide the use of cryptography by transforming ciphertext into innocuous-seeming messages to be transmitted in the clear. ^ In this dissertation, we consider the problem of synthetic steganography: generating and detecting covert channels in generated media. We start by demonstrating how to generate synthetic time series data that not only mimic an authentic source of the data, but also hide data at any of several different locations in the reversible generation process. We then design a steganographic context-sensitive tiling system capable of hiding secret data in a variety of procedurally-generated multimedia objects. Next, we show how to securely hide data in the structure of a Huffman tree without affecting the length of the codes. Next, we present a method for hiding data in Sudoku puzzles, both in the solved board and the clue configuration. Finally, we present a general framework for exploiting steganographic capacity in structured interactions like online multiplayer games, network protocols, auctions, and negotiations. Recognizing that structured interactions represent a vast field of novel media for steganography, we also design and implement an open-source extensible software testbed for analyzing steganographic interactions and use it to measure the steganographic capacity of several classic games. ^ We analyze the steganographic capacity and security of each method that we present and show that existing steganalysis techniques cannot accurately detect the usage of the covert channels. We develop targeted steganalysis techniques which improve detection accuracy and then use the insights gained from those methods to improve the security of the steganographic systems. We find that secure synthetic steganography, and accurate steganalysis thereof, depends on having access to an accurate model of the cover media