The Distant Horizon: investigating the relationship between social sciences academic research and game development

Research in the social sciences devotes a great amount of attention to investigating the impact of video games on the individual and on society. However, results generated by this research often fail to inform game development. The present study investigated the outreach of research conducted by the academic community by interviewing 30 game developers and 14 researchers, highlighting critical aspects in the relationship between game research and game industry. Specifically, we found that the difference in priorities, speed cycles, and dissemination practices between these two contexts hinder communication. Subsequently, we carried out a focus group for a set of developers and researchers (N=6) with the aim of eliciting recommendation for improving communication between academics and developers. Among the recommendations to emerge were calls to diversify dissemination channels, promote joint conferences and develop research-production partnerships. It was felt such measures could strengthen the influence of research results outside the academic community

Editor’s Introduction

At regional honors conferences, which typically occur around the same time as the NCAA and NIT basketball tournaments, many of us have facetiously wondered aloud whether basketball teams and their coaches spend as much time talking about honors as we spend talking about basketball. Back on our home campuses, a more serious connection between honors and athletics programs often takes the form of mutual recruitment efforts, schedule coordination, arrangement of make-up tests, co-advising, and enthusiastic attendance at sports events when honors students are in the competition. Many honors programs and colleges also sponsor their own sports events, fielding intramural teams or hosting Frisbee tournaments. Academics’ attitudes toward sports programs are often complex; a faculty member might simultaneously play pick-up volleyball with her students, have season tickets to the school’s football games, and grumble loudly about how much attention and money are devoted to the athletic budget. Some of that complexity occurs among honors administrators as well. The complexity and diversity that we value in honors is well represented in this issue’s Forum on “Honors and Athletics,” where the range of perceptions fairly well covers the spectrum

The NCAA and the IRS: Life at the Intersection of College Sports and the Federal Income Tax

Few organizational acronyms are more familiar to Americans than those of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Although neither organization is particularly popular, both loom large in American life and popular culture. Because there is a tax aspect to just about everything, it should come as no surprise that the domains of the NCAA and the IRS overlap in a number of ways. For many decades, the strong tendency in those areas has been for college athletics to enjoy unreasonably generous tax treatment-sometimes because of the failure of the IRS to enforce the tax laws enacted by Congress, sometimes because Congress itself has conferred dubious tax benefits on college sports. In just the past year, however, there have been signs of what may be a major attitudinal shift on the part of Congress-although so far there have been no signs of a corresponding change at the IRS. This article offers an in-depth look at the history and current status of four areas of intersection between the federal tax laws and college sports. Part I considers the possible application of the tax on unrelated business income (UBI) to big-time college sports. It concludes that, even in the absence of any change in the statute, there is a strong argument that revenues from the televising of college sports should be subject to the UBI tax. Part II examines the tax status of athletic scholarships. It explains that athletic scholarships as currently structured are taxable under the terms of the Internal Revenue Code, and that the IRS seems to have made a conscious decision not to enforce the law. While the first two parts of the article address areas where the traditional sweetheart arrangement between the IRS and the NCAA remains in effect, the final two parts of the article consider areas where Congress has very recently intervened to increase the tax burden on college athletics. Part III describes how Congress, three decades ago, explicitly permitted taxpayers to claim charitable deductions for most of the cost of season tickets to college football and basketball games, and how Congress in 2017 to the surprise of many observers, including the authors of this article-repealed that special tax benefit. Finally, Part IV addresses issues of both statutory interpretation and policy raised by Congress\u27s creation, in 2017, of a 21 percent excise tax on at least some universities paying seven-figure salaries to their football and basketball coaches. The article\u27s conclusion suggests the IRS should follow the lead of Congress, and reconsider the administrative favoritism toward college sports described in Parts I and II

Olympic legacy and cultural tourism: Exploring the facets of Athens' Olympic heritage

This study examines the effects of the Olympic Games on Athens’ cultural tourism and the city’s potential to leverage the Olympic legacy in synergy with its rich heritage in order to enhance its tourism product during the post-Games period. In doing so, a qualitative and interpretive approach was employed. This includes a literature review on Athens’ 2004 Olympics to identify the sport facilities and regeneration projects, which constitute the Olympic legacy and heritage. Based on that, an empirical analysis was undertaken, by collecting official documents about the 2004 Olympics, and conducting five semi-structured interviews with tourism/administrative officials. The findings indicate that the Olympiad contributed significantly to Athens’ built and human heritage, revealing the dimensions of new venues/facilities, infrastructure, transportation and aesthetic image of the city, and human capital enhancement. Hence, the Games affected to the multifaceted representation and reconstruction of the city’s identity and cultural heritage. However, the potential afforded from the post-Olympic Athens remains unrealised due to lack of strategic planning/management. The study concludes that there is a need to develop cross-leveraging synergies between the Olympic legacy and cultural tourism for the host city. Finally, a strategic planning framework for leveraging post-Games Olympic tourism is suggested in order to maximise the benefits of Olympic legacy and heritage in a host city’s tourism development

A sweetspot for innovation:developing games with purpose through student-staff collaboration

Within industry as well as academia, developing games that have wider impact on society has been of particular interest in the last decade. The increasing use of terms such as ‘games with purpose’, ‘serious games’ and gamification’ has been mirrored in a flurry of activity in games research. Broader applications of games beyond entertainment are now well-understood and accepted, with universities and companies excelling in creating games to serve particular needs. However, it is not explicitly clear how undergraduates of game design and development courses can be directly involved in serious game creation. With most undergraduates inspired by commercial games development, and the games industry requiring that universities teach specific technical skills in their courses, balancing the research aspirations of academics with the educational requirements of an appropriate undergraduate course can be a difficult balancing act. In this paper, the authors present three case studies of games with purpose developed through collaboration between undergraduate students and academic staff. In all cases, the educational value of the projects for the students is considered in relation to the research value for the academics, who face increasing demands to develop research outcomes despite a necessity to provide a first-rate learning experience and nurture future game developers

Exploring the Use of Virtual Worlds as a Scientific Research Platform: The Meta-Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA)

We describe the Meta-Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA), the first professional scientific organization based exclusively in virtual worlds (VWs). The goals of MICA are to explore the utility of the emerging VR and VWs technologies for scientific and scholarly work in general, and to facilitate and accelerate their adoption by the scientific research community. MICA itself is an experiment in academic and scientific practices enabled by the immersive VR technologies. We describe the current and planned activities and research directions of MICA, and offer some thoughts as to what the future developments in this arena may be.Comment: 15 pages, to appear in the refereed proceedings of "Facets of Virtual Environments" (FaVE 2009), eds. F. Lehmann-Grube, J. Sablating, et al., ICST Lecture Notes Ser., Berlin: Springer Verlag (2009); version with full resolution color figures is available at http://www.mica-vw.org/wiki/index.php/Publication

What does generation Y want from conferences and incentive programmes?

This article examines the particular characteristics of Generation Y, such as their high expectations, their desire for ongoing education and their technological aptitude. It investigates the ways in which conferences and incentive programmes can be designed in such a way that they appeal to this youngest, but fastest-growing, segment of employees. Approaches include effective use of technology, involvement at the design stage, consideration of CSR and sustainability and effective use of speakers. The recommendations will be of interest to all intermediaries and suppliers in the conference and incentive travel industry, including convention bureaux and other destination marketing organisations, destination management companies, professional conference organisers and incentive travel houses, venues and speakers

Assessing the probability of patients reoffending after discharge from low to medium secure forensic mental health services: An inductive prevention paradox

Citizens of developed societies are troubled by those who commit ‘irrational' crimes against the person. Reoffending by ex-patients following their release from secure mental health services triggers particularly intense angst when amplified by media and political scrutiny. Forensic mental health service providers are expected to minimise the occurrence of such transgressions by releasing only those patients who are judged acceptably unlikely to reoffend. However, reoffending probabilities can only be estimated by observing behaviour in secure institutional settings designed specifically to prevent patients from transgressing. The article explores this ‘inductive prevention paradox' which arises when the implementation of measures designed to avoid an adverse event obscures direct observation of what might have happened if prophylaxis had not been attempted. The analysis presented draws on data obtained in 1999–2003 from two qualitative studies in medium to low secure UK institutions, one providing forensic mental health services and the other forensic learning disability services. We explored the views of 56 staff members and 21 patients about risk management in forensic services and undertook additional 25 staff interviews for case studies of the 21 patients. The wider applicability of the inductive prevention paradox will be considered in the Discussion. We argue that the prognostic limitations arising from prevention have been underestimated by policy makers and in official inquiries; and that the prevailing personal risk assessment framework needs to be complemented by greater attention to the environments which patients will be discharged into

Malicious User Experience Design Research for Cybersecurity

This paper explores the factors and theory behind the user-centered research that is necessary to create a successful game-like prototype, and user experience, for malicious users in a cybersecurity context. We explore what is known about successful addictive design in the fields of video games and gambling to understand the allure of breaking into a system, and the joy of thwarting the security to reach a goal or a reward of data. Based on the malicious user research, game user research, and using the GameFlow framework, we propose a novel malicious user experience design approac