Fandom, culture, and videogames: analysing what makes a successful videogame franchise through Final Fantasy

This study intends to validate the importance of discussing media in the modern world by exploring how the concepts of media, fandoms and culture are related, why fandoms exist and the power of media over culture. The object of study is videogames, and more specifically the videogame franchise ‘Final Fantasy’, There is also focus in understanding their appeal over other types of media, the history and evolution of videogames and the history and business model of Square Enix, the company behind ‘Final Fantasy’ products. Additionally, object of study includes how corporate practices and decisions affect the franchise, the evolution of the franchise throughout the years and what makes it a successful videogame franchise, taking into account all the previous information. In order to achieve its purpose, the methodology used was based on qualitative methods of investigation. Document research about the topic at hand, from bibliography, ludography, and other pre-existing materials was gathered and triangulated with an online questionnaire. The information gathered from 85 participants was analysed and it was possible to conclude how the target audience for Final Fantasy experiences the games and the fandom, how it perceives cultural elements and how do they feel about corporate decisions as frequent customers, as well as their opinions on the importance of discussing media

The Four Horsemen

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108391/1/anniech_1366881472.pd

Teach phenomenology the bomb: Starship Troopers, the technologized body, and humanitarian warfare

Paul Verhoeven's SF films are often concerned with how the future body will be reshaped as a technological device. Starship Troopers strangely departs from Verhoeven's own work, other SF films, and current directions in cultural theory by seeing the future body as one that is more organic than mechanical. Drawing upon and challenging ideas developed by Paul Virilio, this article argues that Starship Troopers' departure from the notion of the 'post-human' mechanized body needs to be understood not as a nostalgic reassertion of de-technologized subjectivity. Rather, Verhoeven's film sees the idea of the pure body as a dangerous anachronism. And, this article further argues, Starship Troopers suggests that narratives of human salvation - such as those that arose during Nato's interventions in the Balkans - often conceal an appetite for territorial conquest

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

Military surveillance

Military surveillance offers a crucial entry point into the study of surveillance. Historically, the importance of military organizations in state formation meant that many techniques of surveillance that would later migrate into the civilian sphere would bear the imprint of military origins. Moreover, military campaigns were instrumental in developing forms of discipline, communication and surveillance that were to have far-reaching implications for whole societies. Thus, both technologically and organizationally, military models and innovations informed new forms of social, commercial and industrial organization that mobilized principles of surveillance, coordination and control. More recently, scholars have argued that since the post Cold War era societies of the Global North have entered a state of perpetual war preparedness. Moreover, the post-war consolidation of a military-industrial complex in the US has stimulated a multitude of technological innovations with surveillance application. In recent times, technological advancement propelled by military surveillance fantasies have envisaged digitized battle and ‘virtuous war’ where casualties are eliminated and hostile forces rapidly subdued through superior command of information and high-tech weaponry. The blending and blurring of such fantasies through entertainment and media networks and into domestic policing domains has raised considerable concern about the dehumanizing consequences of remote killing, and the social implications of the militarization of everyday life

Foreword: Fair Use in the Digital Age, and \u3ci\u3eCampbell v. Acuff-Rose\u3c/i\u3e at 21

If Campbell had remained a narrow pop-culture case—a doctrinal one-hit wonder—it would not have possessed the capacity to generate so much enthusiasm, and such heated debate, among scholars and practitioners of high caliber. Yet gathered at the University of Washington School of Law for two days in April 2015 were forty of the leading and emerging experts in copyright law in the United States, to discuss the impact the case has had and to speculate about the directions fair use law will take in light of this watershed opinion. It remains, by many accounts, one of the three most important fair use opinions in American law. Reflecting on Campbell’s wide and deep footprint in the case law over the twenty-one years since the case was handed down forms the purpose for our Symposium and for this collection of excellent scholarly papers in the Washington Law Review

Rewriting the Game: Queer Trans Strategies of Survival, Resistance, and Relationality in Twine Games

This thesis explores how a selection of video games, created by transgender people using the free software Twine, create space for the survival and flourishing of queer and trans subjects through visions of transformative relationships. It deploys the lenses of queer theories of failure (Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure), disidentification (Muñoz, Disidentifications), and utopianism (Muñoz, Cruising Utopia) to perform close readings of the techniques of narrative and game mechanics used as strategies for survival, resistance, and relationality in anna anthropy’s Encyclopedia Fuckme and the Case of the Vanishing Entree and Queers in Love at the End of the World, Porpentine Charity Heartscape’s With Those We Love Alive, and ira prince’s Queer Trans Mentally Ill Power Fantasy. The analysis focuses on games produced in and around the moment of the “Twine revolution” (Harvey) that aimed in the early 2010s to radically re-envision video games as spaces for minoritized subjects to thrive. Even as the transformation of video games culture as a whole remains an unrealized ideal, this paper argues for the importance of revisiting the under-examined queer strategies these games depict and enact in order to imagine possibilities for “rewrit[ing] the game” (Halberstam in Halberstam and Juul), and through this for “rewrit[ing] the map of everyday life” (Muñoz, Cruising Utopia 25), possibilities which can allow for the flourishing of queer and trans modes of relationality within and against toxic and exclusive norms in game play and design

Методичні вказівки з розвитку навичок читання спеціальної літератури за фахом

Дані методичні вказівки призначені для самостійної та аудиторної роботи студентів І-ІІI курсів факультету КІТ. Вони мають за мету розвиток навичок читання літератури за фахом, з використанням типових завдань з технік анотування та реферування, спрямованих на краще оволодіння змістом. Матеріал вказівок містить 15 текстів, присвячених різним галузям інформатики та обчислювальної техніки, а також інформаційних технологій. Дані методичні вказівки складено на базі матеріалів автентичного курсу, розробленого Оксфордським університетом, а також з використанням матеріалів Інтернету