On to Wisteria: Designing an Action-Adventure Role-Playing Game for the Empowerment of the Preteen Female Audience

This thesis document details the design for an original action-adventure role-playing game (AARPG) specifically targeted towards the preteen female audience, ages 10-12, as well as the production of a promotional trailer to communicate the design. This thesis aims to bring this untapped market to an already established video game genre in order to communicate to this young female audience that these games are not “just for boys” by providing a clear example of an empowering and inclusive game that is designed to appeal to their demographic. Given that there are currently no AAA action-adventure RPGs targeted towards this group as well as limited research into the relationship between video games and female youths, a broad net of research is cast in order to design a game that would celebrate this demographic without relying on stereotypes or being too narrow in defining what it means for a girl to be “strong.” Through this work I investigate female gender representation, the current gender biases in the video game medium, and what prevents young females from playing games in order to create a solution that inspires and engages this audience.The complexities of gender development in youths is considered, focusing on how media and other gendered products are marketed towards young audiences and how they can potentially influence their perceived identities. Television shows such as My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power are considered as examples of popular media aimed at the young female market acclaimed for their strong storytelling, themes, diversity, and female characters. It also examines games like Kingdom Hearts, well-known exemplars from this genre aimed at boys of the same age demographic. After breaking down the core components of the AARPG genre itself, this thesis presents a game design following this structure with original characters, story elements, and gameplay features that would especially appeal to the target market. From this design, it develops key moments in an animatic for a trailer designed to excite and capture the feeling of empowerment the game would hope to achieve for this audience if it were fully realized as a production

The Giant in a Thousand Years: Tracing Narratives of Gigantism in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond

This essay is an attempt to organize the Bible’s giants by category and to continue to elevate these figures as a rightful object of scholarly attention

The Labor of Play: the Political Economy of Computer Game Culture

This dissertation questions the relationship between computer game culture and ideologies of neoliberalism and financialization. It questions the role computer games play in cultivating neoliberal practices and how the industry develops games and systems making play and work indistinguishable activities. Chapter 1 examines how computer game inculcate players into neoliberal practice through play. In chapter 2, the project shows Blizzard Entertainment systematically redevelops their games to encourage perpetual play aimed at increasing the consumption of digital commodities and currencies. Chapter 3 considers the role of esports, or professional competitive computer game play, to disperse neoliberal ideologies amongst nonprofessional players. Chapter 4 examines the streaming platform Twitch and the transformation of computer gameplay into a consumable commodity. This chapter examines Twitch’s systems designed at making production and consumption inseparable practices. The dissertation concludes by examining the economic, conceptual, and theoretical collapses threatening game culture and the field of game studies

Replayability of Video Games

Our project was carried out in an attempt to better understand replayability and to help develop a structured approach to game design with it in mind. Forming a basis from the game studies field, we carried out a survey, an interview and performed market research to determine opinions and reactions to replayability that can be grounded with sales information. We found that aspects such as difficulty, completion, social aspects, randomization and The Experience contributed to replayability and should be strongly considered within this approach. We also concluded that the while replayability is important; it is not the sole factor that should drive our structured approach. Other factors such as marketing and playability also strongly affect the sales of a video game

Realist magic in the fiction of William Dean Howells

William Dean Howells was committed to determining what would inspire people from different economic, political, and religious backgrounds to imagine each other as respected members of a human community. Scholars have debated whether his realist aesthetic was suited to do that. Some have argued that realism works to contain the lower classes, and others have argued that it portrays a heterogeneous society in which social problems can be solved through human negotiation between the middle classes and others. Scholars have not, however, addressed how Howells performs the necessary shift in his fiction from a space in which characters focus on their own interests to a space in which they seek to enact justice through negotiating with disparate people. This article identifies and names what enacts that necessary shift: the literary device of accident. In Howells's fiction chance meetings, feelings of accidental connection, and injuries during travel force his middle-class characters into understanding labor politics, slum dwellers, and morally compromised millionaires. His use of accident changes over time, from The Undiscovered Country (1880) to Annie Kilburn (1889) and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890). This essay traces that change in order to reflect on the democratic and antidemocratic implications of Howells's realist aesthetic. © Regents of the University of California

Play Redux

Play Redux is an ambitious description and critical analysis of the aesthetic pleasures of video game play, drawing on early twentieth-century formalist theory and models of literature. Employing a concept of biological naturalism grounded in cognitive theory, Myers argues for a clear delineation between the aesthetics of play and the aesthetics of texts. In the course of this study, Myers asks a number of interesting questions: What are the mechanics of human play as exhibited in computer games? Can these mechanisms be modeled? What is the evolutionary function of cognitive play, and is it, on the whole, a good thing? Intended as a provocative corrective to the currently ascendant, if not dominant, cultural and ethnographic approach to game studies and play, Play Redux will generate interest among scholars of communications, new media, and film

The Taoist Fantasy and the Fantastic Taoism in The Earthsea Cycle

厄休拉·勒奎恩所著的《地海传奇》被盛誉为最成功的西方奇幻小说之一。它以东方道家思维的独特视角和笔韵勾勒构建出一个东方哲学和西方文学和谐交融的奇幻地海世界。过去针对《地海传奇》所进行的研究角度丰富、内容深刻，主要集中探讨作品人物的成长历程、语言的力量、女性的角色，并借助超验主义解读文本寓意等。然而，即使勒瑰恩多次于访谈和作品中强调道家思想对其自身与文学创作的深刻影响，除却几篇硕士论文外，仍鲜少见有学者借助道家哲思深入解析《地海传奇》的代表元素和主要意象。因此，本论文立足于道家哲思与《道德经》，通过解析小说中真名、魔法、龙等三个重要的意象元素，全面深入挖掘并探究《地海传奇》中蕴藏的深邃玄妙的东方道...The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin, regarded as one of the most successful Western fantasy novels worldwide, constructs for the readers a fantasy Earthsea world where the harmonious combination of Oriental philosophy and Western literature lays the pillar. The pervious academic research dedicated to The Earthsea Cycle bases on diversified perspectives and conveys profound messages, such as th...学位：文学硕士院系专业：外文学院_英语语言文学学号：1202014115269