Visual Identity as a Form of Communication in MMORPG

The Visual identity of an in game simulated world (virtual reality) is a factor defined and established by the visual identity of all elements of the environment. Each of the (cultural, social, biological) visual elements is part of a system defining all levels of experience within the virtual reality world. Communication forms are crucial in defining the specifics of any particular element which in turn designs specific experience (for each of the agents immersed in the virtual reality). Specific experience is dependent on visual communication rules emerged through the construction of definite visual identity elements of an in game simulated world, and an understanding of particular game requests that both the visual elements and the visual identity structure as a whole must satisfy. The theme of Visual identity is very important for future development of convincing virtual reality in MMORPG and as a part of communication research for further development of Information science

A platform for otakus to gradually learn and adapt to social conventions

It is believed that good design should not only satisfy users’ needs, but also improve their overall quality of life. Nowadays, with the rapidly increasing amounts of time spent on the internet, more and more people, the majority of them youngsters, claim themselves as otakus since they cut themselves off from face-to-face communication. From my primary and secondary user studies, most otakus have difficulties interacting with strangers in real world contexts, but some do want to expand their social networks. This design hypothesis is to provide opportunities for otakus to meet people and build friendships in real life. The purpose of this thesis is to use design methodologies to accomplish this hypothesis. The objective is to adopt design approaches to enhance the connections among otakus in face-to-face scenarios by incorporating what is learned from research on and with the target group. Based on the analysis of the user group who regard themselves as otakus, my final design adopts a user-centered approach in order to accurately address the problems. Previous otaku studies are valuable and inform this interaction design. Yet with such general information as a guide, it is still essential to identify the otakus users’ needs and problems they face in their daily routines. Therefore, I conducted a survey to learn about otakus’ social-phobias techniques skills and needs. The interview data provided more detailed information to identify user requirements and needs. According to the survey data, 79% of otakus are willing to meet more friends in real life, which indicated that most otakus wanted to meet more people in real belief as long as they are able to choose where and when to meet, as if they were playing a game. They lack the face-to-face communication practice with live people in various scenarios. The mobile phone is the best medium to reach out to otakus; cell phones are the most highly-used electronic device of all screen technologies. Thus, this design thesis developed the mobile app “Say Hey,” a social app with a role-playing game format. “Say Hey” a social app with a role-playing game platform. Using this app, otakus will act as game characters and finish a set of tasks, which involves offline entertainments, including interacting with their physical surroundings. In this way, participating otakus will start to connect the virtual world (mobile application) and the real world (offline activities). By using this app, they will have to collaborate with other people to finish tasks, which will connect them with other players and people in real life, starting a trivia challenge. As a result, the objective is that Say Hey will improve their interpersonal communication skills. The ultimate design goal of this thesis project is to help otakus gradually get involved in real society and frequent interpersonal communications in daily life

Framing Strategies in Role-Playing Games. 'My Pleasure': Toward a Poetics of Framing in Tabletop Role-playing Games

The dissertation discusses the use and impact of “literary” framing (as by Werner Wolf) in generating and negotiating fictional spaces, narratives and meanings within the medium of tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs). In a second step, the text describes some of the specific and most salient framing features and strategies used by players during game sessions. By analyzing these through actual gameplay it is possible to identify the ‘transceptional’ border (Bunia) between reality and fiction to be the constitutive moment of role-play where players are both aware of, and immersed in, the fiction they collaboratively construct. Finally, the dissertation adapts Wolf’s theoretical framework in order to discuss and analyze the often overlooked category of “storytelling” TRPGs - one that, as the text argues, rather than focusing on narrative as such, aims at creating gameplay texts with heightened aesthetic and literary value while also enabling players to experience particular forms of immersion and deep emotional involvement. In the conclusion, the dissertation proposes re-conceptualizing literary framing as a defining characteristic of the fictional practice in general across media. In this regard, the dissertation argues, TRPGs reveal how framings are used and adapted in order to enable a specific mode of human interaction which is based on the figuration of emotional complexes via fictional “masks.

Implementation of digital role-playing games in Higher Education classrooms to accomplish learning outcomes

Industries have expectations that university graduates possess well-rounded theoretical and practical knowledge to be successful in their jobs. While effective teaching and learning are essential goals in higher education institutions, lessons and learning activities in traditional classroom settings are often out of context, presented to students with much theoretical generality and abstract representations. This leads to a disconnection between academia and industry, where students struggle to apply abstract principles and knowledge in a real-world context to perform effectively in their workplace. Live role-play has been traditionally used as an educational technique to engage students and provide them the opportunity to learn with a real-world context within classroom settings. While role-playing in the classroom encourages transfer of learning, one of its limitation is traditional role-play often does not provide an authentic and believable real-world experience to participants. The primary aim of this study is to converge the pedagogical benefits of role-playing, educational technology and digital games to investigate the effectiveness of using digital role-playing games in classrooms to achieve learning outcomes. Qualitative data were collected from digital media lecturers of a transnational university based in Vietnam and Australia to identify desirable learning outcomes and describe teaching and learning challenges of digital media courses. Through interviews, lecturers also discussed their perceptions of digital RPGs and their level of acceptance in using this educational technology as part of their teaching practice to accomplish learning outcomes. The results highlighted three key desirable learning outcomes: The first learning outcome is students should develop solid understanding of theoretical and foundational design knowledge, enabling effective application of theoretical knowledge to produce creative digital media outputs. The second learning outcome - students should speak the "design language". Students should develop the ability to articulate, critique and explain creative works using appropriate design vocabularies and terminologies, which are used by design practitioners in the industry. The third learning outcome indicated that students should be resourceful and self-sufficient to conceptualise and generate creative ideas. Using Bloom’s taxonomy categories, game characteristics and identified learning outcomes, a conceptual framework was developed for the design and use of digital RPGs to achieve learning outcomes for digital media education. In validating this conceptual framework, a 3d digital role-playing game, Virtual Designer was developed and implemented in classroom environment. A pre/post-test experimental setup was implemented, in which performance gains were measured and compared between control (conventional learning methods) and treatment group (played digital RPG) to determine the learning effectiveness of digital RPGs. Opinion-based survey and focus group interview was also conducted. Based on collected feedback, students find Virtual Designer an effective tool to assess their state of knowledge in different areas of design and apply theoretical knowledge into practical contexts. Students find the game to be an engaging alternative to conventional learning methods, but some have commented the game to be too difficult and at times frustrating to play. Lecturers have also play-tested Virtual Designer and provided favorable views on the overall feasibility of using similar digital RPGs as a teaching and learning tool to sustain students’ interest in learning their subjects – and successfully accomplishing learning outcomes

Tabletop Roleplaying Games as Procedural Content Generators

Tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) and procedural content generators can both be understood as systems of rules for producing content. In this paper, we argue that TTRPG design can usefully be viewed as procedural content generator design. We present several case studies linking key concepts from PCG research -- including possibility spaces, expressive range analysis, and generative pipelines -- to key concepts in TTRPG design. We then discuss the implications of these relationships and suggest directions for future work uniting research in TTRPGs and PCG.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, FDG Workshop on Procedural Content Generation 202

Of Dice and Men: An Ethnography of Contemporary Gaming Subculture

Tabletop roleplaying is a dynamic and flourishing hobby that has become increasingly accessible to a wide variety of participants. The games themselves, as well as the gaming subculture, offer players a number of personal and Social benefits that continue to enrich their lives long after they leave the table. Using Goffman\u27s theories of Dramaturgy and Frame Analysis, this paper seeks to examine the positive impact of gaming in three key areas. The first is an analysis of the subculture which includes the evolution of the games, the growth and diversification of the roleplaying community, and the current shift in stereotypes about gaming. The second section discusses the ways in which microcultural worlds are created, with an emphasis on the systematic alignment of group frames, different types of emotional and Social crossover that occurs, and the conveyance of status. The final segment describes the processes that create engrossment and identification in the games. It focuses on the balance of the three frameworks used in fantasy creation, types of physical aids used to bridge fantasy and reality, relationships that exist between players and their characters, and the negotiation of role conflict that arises from maintaining multiple roles simultaneously. The benefits players gain from roleplaying are diverse. It provides Socialization and recreational enjoyment, improves role negotiation and impression management, allows players to experience elements that are beyond their reality, creates a safe environment to test new elements of identity, promotes creative problem solving, and builds critical thinking

Agential Fantasy: A Copenhagen Approach to the Tabletop Role-Playing Game

In 1974, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson published the world’s first commercial role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons. The tabletop roleplaying game provoked a new form of textual engagement: it entangled the fantastic tales of early 20th Century pulp fiction with the practice of play. The tabletop role-playing game initiated new perspectives on how classic texts could not only be read but also played. Our contemporary world is becoming increasingly gamified: digital media applications (from mobile phones to the personal home computer) have embedded game elements, structures, processes, and lexicons in our modern lives. Tabletop role-playing was a herald for, and catalyst, of this contemporary phenomenon. Espen Aarseth notes that tabletop role-playing games can be considered as an early from of the “cybertext,” a text that requires “non-trivial” effort for its engagement, and is “the oral predecessor to computerized, written, adventure games.”The project of this dissertation offers an approach of examining and understanding the practice of tabletop role-playing through Karen Barad’s concept of agential realism. Agential realism is based on concepts of Niels Bohr’s “Copenhagen Interpretation” of quantum phenomenon and its premise that nothing can be observed without changing what is observed. Agential realism requires us to accept and acknowledge our complicity in the creation, physical and sociocultural, of the realities which surround, bound, and interpellate us. This dissertation complicates the notion of singular authorship of isolated texts and realities by examining all the relationships necessary to produce a tabletop roleplaying game text. The first chapter of this dissertation introduces the concepts of agential realism while the second offers the historical context for the emergence of tabletop role-playing games. The third chapter analyzes the affective and aesthetic inspirations for Dungeons & Dragons to consider the conditions for the emergence of the first commercial tabletop role-playing game and how it would reconfigure the pulp and classic mythologies that inspired it. In the fourth chapter, I examine the rules for Traveller, an early science fiction tabletop role-playing game directly inspired by the practice of Dungeons & Dragons play, to consider how the procedural mechanics of games impact their authorship. The fifth chapter analyzes another mode of authorship for the role-playing game by analyzing its actual play; in this chapter, I examine specific game sessions from a campaign of the tabletop role-playing game, Call of Cthulhu. Throughout these chapters, we understand how the tabletop role-playing game text, like our physical and sociocultural realities, exist within states of radical possibility. Each mode of authorship, through a text’s inspiration, mechanical construction, and subjective interpretation are observations that fix the tabletop role-playing text into a specific manifestation – thought it may exist within any a priori of an observation. This dissertation advocates for an approach to consider realities, within and beyond the games we play, not as isolated moments of objective experience, but as the inevitable consequences of entanglements with all the authors (and players) that share them

Examining The Implications Of Tabletop Roleplaying Games For Use In Leadership Development: An Integrative Review

Role-playing games are frequently used within the social sciences to study several aspects of the human experience and development. Existing research suggests that role-playing games encourage the development of critical and strategic decision-making, teamwork, and creative thinking, all behaviors integral to the development of lasting leadership competencies. This integrative review theorizes using TRPG roleplay games as unconventional tools for skill development and examines the implications for leadership applications. This inductive approach revealed a comprehensive picture of the importance of TRPGs integration into leadership development programs. It is at the intersection between creativity and leadership where organizational leaders have the potential to develop creativity training interventions to enhance and increase leaders’ creative potential and emotional creativity. Keywords: Dungeons and Dragons, leadership development, change management, TRPGs, creativity

A Qualitative Investigation of Users’ Video Game Information Needs and Behaviors

Video games are popular consumer products as well as research subjects, yet little exists about how players and other stakeholders find video games and what information they need to select, acquire, and play video games. With the aim of better understanding people’s game-related information needs and behaviors, we conducted 56 semi-structured interviews with users who find, play, purchase, collect, and recommend video games. Participants included casual and avid gamers, parents, collectors, industry professionals, librarians, and scholars. From this user data, we derive and discuss key design implications for video game information systems: designing for target user populations, enabling recommendations on appeals, offering multiple automatic organization options, and providing relationship-based, user-generated, subject and visual metadata. We anticipate this work will contribute to building future video game information systems with new and improved access to games