Huggable Communication Medium Maintains Level of Trust during Conversation Game

There have been several attempts in recent years to develop a remote communication device using sensory modalities other than speech that would induce a user’s positive experience with his/her conversation partner. Specifically, Hugvie is a human-shaped pillow as well as a remote communication device enabling users to combine a hugging experience with telecommunication to improve the quality of remote communication.The present research is based on the hypothesis that using Hugvie maintains users’level of trust toward their conversation partners in situations prone to suspicion. Thelevel of trust felt toward other remote game players was compared between participants using Hugvie and those using a basic communication device while playing a modified version of Werewolf, a conversation-based game, designed to evaluate trust. Although there are always winners and losers in the regular version of Werewolf, the rules were modified to generate a possible scenario in which no enemy was present among the players and all players would win if they trusted each other. We examined the effect of using Hugvie while playing Werewolf on players’ level of trust toward each other and our results demonstrated that in those using Hugvie, the level of trust toward other players was maintained

People’s Trust in a Virtual Project Team: Results of a Game Experiment

This study aims to: (1) find out the variables that influence people’s trust in the virtual team in a project, (2) find out the relationship of these variables with people trust in the virtual team in a project, and (3) the relationship between the presence of experienced members on a virtual team in leading an organization to determine the success of a project. The experiment was conducted using online Werewolf game and collected questionnaires from 30 respondents that divided into 3 groups, i.e., (1) having experience of being leaders, (2) a combination of having and having no experience of being leaders, and (3) having no experience of being leaders. A correlation test and a comparative test were used to analyze the result. The results found four variables that could influence people’s trust, i.e., (1) ability, (2) benevolence, (3) integrity, and (4) task faithfulness. All variables had a positive effect, except for task faithfulness. There is a relationship between the presence of leaders in a virtual team to the success of the project

Producing Affection : Affect and Mediated Intimacy in Pokémon

Pokémon is a global multimedia franchise formed around a core series of videogames and a variety of characters to collect, learn about, and play with. Throughout its decades of development, Pokémon has grown into a media mix comprising of digital and analog games, animations, comics, toys, and a plethora of branded merchandize, all centering on the Pokémon characters and the audience’s relationship with them. In this thesis, I explore how affection is formed and distributed in Pokémon. I view the relationship with Pokémon characters as a form of mediated intimacy, theorizing it as feelings of affection and closeness expressed through and aimed at technology. Through this, I discuss how technological and fantastical bodies wield agency and actively participate in the formation of everyday affects. By drawing primarily on game studies and affect studies, I develop an interdisciplinary method for playing and reading media texts for their affects and use it to analyze the media mix of Pokémon and the affective relations therein. I focus primarily on the Pokémon videogames that serve as the core product of the entire media mix. I examine what it means to construct an entire media mix based on videogames and play and suggest this as a key interpretive arrangement for understanding the mediated intimacy of Pokémon. This study presents the mediated intimacy of Pokémon as the result of the ludic and technological foundations of the Pokémon media mix, at the heart of which is the role-playing form of the original videogames and the way they have positioned audiences as participants and characters in the world of Pokémon. In this playful environment that overlaps fiction and everyday reality, the media mix guides its players to conduct a form of affective labor to access and traverse the textual whole of Pokémon and furthermore aligns this effort with the diegetic theme of caretaking as captured on the transmedia bodies of Pokémon. Additionally, this work contributes to the theorization and rethinking of intimacies by exploring affection in human and non-human networks as an entanglement of biological and technological actors.Tuotettua kiintymystä. Pokémonin affekti ja medioitu intiimiys Pokémon on globaali monimediakokonaisuus. Sen keskiössä on joukko videopelejä sekä niiden hahmoja, joita kerätään, joista opitaan ja joiden kanssa leikitään. Pokémonista on vuosikymmenten mittaan kasvanut mediatuotteiden rypäs, media mix: monista tuote- ja julkaisukanavista koostuva kokonaisuus, joka sisältää digitaalisia ja analogisia pelejä, animaatioita, sarjakuvia, leluja ja brändituotteita, joissa kaikissa korostuvat Pokémon-hahmot sekä yleisön suhde niihin. Väitöskirjassani tarkastelen, miten kiintymystä rakennetaan ja levitetään Pokémonissa. Tutkin Pokémon-hahmoihin muodostettuja suhteita medioidun intiimiyden käsitteen kautta. Tutkimuksessani suhteet näyttäytyvät kiintymyksellisten tunteiden tiivistyminä sekä läheisyytenä, jota ilmaistaan teknologian avulla ja sitä kohtaan. Näin tarkastelen, miten teknologisten sekä fantastisten kehojen toimijuus näkyy arkipäiväisten affektien muodostumisessa. Ammentamalla pelitutkimuksesta ja affektitutkimuksesta kehitän monitieteisen metodin mediatekstien pelaamiseen ja lukemiseen, ja käytän sitä Pokémonin media mixin, sen affektien ja sen piirissä muodostettujen kiintymyssuhteiden analysointiin. Keskityn erityisesti Pokémon-videopeleihin, jotka toimivat koko media mixin ydintuotteena. Tutkin, miten Pokémonin media mix on rakennettu ensisijaisesti pelilliselle ja leikilliselle pohjalle, ja ehdotan tätä tulkintamallia keskeiseksi Pokémonin medioidun intiimiyden ymmärtämiselle. Tutkimuksen tuloksena esitän Pokémonin medioidun intiimiyden muodostuvan Pokémonin media mixin leikillisistä ja teknologisista juurista, joiden perustana on alkuperäisten Pokémon-videopelien roolipelillinen rakenne sekä se, miten sen avulla pelaajat on asemoitu hahmoiksi Pokémonin maailmaan. Fiktiota ja todellisuutta sekoittavassa leikillisessä ympäristössä Pokémonin media mix ohjaa pelaajia hoivan ja huolenpidon teemojen kautta tekemään tunnetyötä tuoteperheen mediatekstien parissa ja piirtää tämän työn tulokset Pokémon-hahmojen monimediakehoille. Lisäksi väitöstutkimukseni osallistuu intiimiyden laajempaan teoretisointiin ja uudelleenmäärittelyyn tarkastelemalla elollisten ja leikillisesti elävien toimijoiden suhteita biologisena ja teknologisena yhteenliittymän

Writing Emotions: Theoretical Concepts and Selected Case Studies in Literature

After a long period of neglect, emotions have become an important topic within literary studies. This collection of essays stresses the complex link between aesthetic and non-aesthetic emotional components and discusses emotional patterns by focusing on the practice of writing as well as on the impact of such patterns on receptive processes. Readers interested in the topic will be presented with a concept of aesthetic emotions as formative both within the writing and the reading process. Essays, ranging in focus from the beginning of modern drama to digital formats and theoretical questions, examine examples from English, German, French, Russian and American literature

The Utility of Resistance in Environments for Live Performance with Electronics as Part of a Compositional Strategy

The portfolio of compositions and accompanying commentary presented here deal with three key themes: resistance, liveness, and studioness. In the introduction, resistance is split into two forms: aesthetic and practical. Aesthetic resistance is established as a productively disruptive relationship with a perceived set of musical conventions, building on theoretical work by Kohn (1997), Hegarty (2008) and Thompson (2017). Practical resistance is identified in the relationship between performers and their performance environments, inspired by Noise performance practice and Ferguson’s (2013) writing on the subject, where performers perceive unpredictability and instability in their performance environments as resistant to their authorial control. Following Phelan (2005) and Auslander (2012), liveness is found in real-time public renderings of music where performers look to take advantage of the unique affordances of their live performance situation. Studioness is identified in situations where performers make use of the unique affordances of the studio to make work where the studio’s presence is clearly evident.The portfolio of compositions (comprising two projects: ‘Spectra’ and ‘Slow Loris’) seeks to investigate the relationship between live performance and studio practice in Experimental Electronica. It employs the idea of resistance to help cultivate a condition of liveness within this context. This live practice is then examined in the studio, asking how the resistant qualities of the live material might be expressed in the studio practice? Can these artefacts of resistance be translated into something with an idiomatic studioness? The possibilities of this approach are the focus of both music and commentary. The commentary also deals with resistance in historical and contemporary theorisations of improvisation and live performance with electronics, and expressions of liveness and studioness in Noise and Experimental Electronica, reflecting upon the effectiveness of the author’s compositional methodology and the ongoing relationship between his live practice and studio work

Expanding the magic circle in pervasive casual play

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em InformáticaIn this document we present proposals for merging the fictional game world with the real world taking into account the profile of casual players. To merge games with reality we resorted to the creation of games that explore di-verse real world elements. We focused on sound, video, physiological data, ac-celerometer data, weather and location. We made the choice for these real world elements because data, about those elements, can be acquired making use of functionality already available, or foreseen in the near future, in devices like computers or mobile phones, thus fitting the profile of casual players who are usually not willing to invest in expensive or specialized hardware just for the sake of playing a game. By resorting to real world elements, the screen is no longer the only focus of the player’s attention because reality also influences the outcome of the game. Here, we describe how the insertion of real world elements affected the role of the screen as the primary focus of the player’s attention. Games happen inside a magic circle that spatially and temporally delimits the game from the ordinary world. J. Huizinga, the inventor of the magic circle concept, also leaves implicit a social demarcation, separating who is playing the game from who is not playing the game [1]. In this document, we show how the insertion of real world elements blurred the spatial, temporal and social limits, in our games. Through this fusion with the ordinary world, the fictional game world integrates with reality, instead of being isolated from it. We also present an analysis about integration with the real world and context data in casual en-tertainment.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia - grant SFRH/BD/61085/200

The cultural-economic logic of contemporary action heroine cinema: (Post) Feminism, Postmodernism, and the Consumption of Spectacles

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Writing Emotions

After a long period of neglect, emotions have become an important topic within literary studies. This collection of essays stresses the complex link between aesthetic and non-aesthetic emotional components. Against this background, emotional patterns are discussed by focusing on the practice of writing as well as on the impact of emotional patterns on receptive processes. Readers will be confronted with a concept of aesthetic emotions as formative both within the writing and the reading process. Essays, ranging in matter from the beginning of modern drama to digital formats and theoretical questions, discuss examples from English, German, French, Russian and American literature

Intermedial Studies

Intermedial Studies provides a concise, hands-on introduction to the analysis of a broad array of texts from a variety of media – including literature, film, music, performance, news and videogames, addressing fiction and non-fiction, mass media and social media. The detailed introduction offers a short history of the field and outlines the main theoretical approaches to the field. Part I explains the approach, examining and exemplifying the dimensions that construct every media product. The following sections offer practical examples and case studies using many examples, which will be familiar to students, from Sherlock Holmes and football, to news, vlogs and videogames. This book is the only textbook taking both a theoretical and practical approach to intermedial studies. The book will be of use to students from a variety of disciplines looking at any form of adaptation, from comparative literature to film adaptations, fan fictions and spoken performances. The book equips students with the language and understanding to confidently and competently apply their own intermedial analysis to any text

Machine Sensation

Emphasising the alien qualities of anthropomorphic technologies, Machine Sensation makes a conscious effort to increase rather than decrease the tension between nonhuman and human experience. In a series of rigorously executed cases studies, including natural user interfaces, artificial intelligence as well as sex robots, Leach shows how object-oriented ontology enables one to insist upon the unhuman nature of technology while acknowledging its immense power and significance in human life. Machine Sensation meticulously engages OOO, Actor Network Theory, the philosophy of technology, cybernetics and posthumanism in innovative and gripping ways