Bosses, Mobs, and Trash: A Transactional Approach to Videogame Narrative through Cooposition

This dissertation project presents a novel approach to videogame narrative studies through the lens of the active opposition of enemies, from boss monsters and villains down to the lowliest encounters with irritating “trash” enemies. Using transactionism—a theory of existence and aesthetics that claims all experience moves across a single physical plane—this dissertation coins and defines the concept of cooposition, a phenomenon in videogames that allows for narrative activity as co-constituted by the player and the game through active, productive antagonism. After identifying and exploring the lingering difficulties in accounting for videogame narrative in a complete and satisfying theory, this project establishes cooposition as an essential and powerful force of videogame experience before breaking down four permeable categories of videogame enemies. Through extensive examples, key texts, and gameplay experience, this project explores ideas related to how videogame narratives construct player identity, set aesthetic rhythms, and establish and manipulate narrative space and time. At issue is how games use enemies as narrative technique, how narrative in videogames emerge through cooposition, and how players co-create narrative phenomenon by “defeating” the game, productively. This is a first step towards a new theory of game narrative that emerges from gameplay experience, rejecting cognitive theories of literary narratology and suggesting new design strategies for game narrative that fully capitalize on coopositional dynamics

Hilary Putnam (1926-2016): A Lifetime Quest to Understand the Relationship between Mind, Language, and Reality

This is an extended intellectual obituary for Hilary Putna

Persönlichkeitsentwicklung und ihre bedingenden Faktoren in zwei zentralen Umweltkontexten des jungen Erwachsenenalters: Soziale Beziehungen und Arbeit

Despite the relative stability of personality, multiple studies were able to show that personality develops across the whole life span with unique developmental patterns occurring in the time of emerging adulthood. Rank-order consistency has been shown to increase substantially, mean-level changes in the direction of the maturity principle (i.e., increases in emotional stability, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) have been repeatedly demonstrated, and interindividual differences in change were shown to be most pronounced. Aiming to explain these findings, social relationships and work haven been shown to be important environmental contexts for personality development. However, some questions have remained open. First, little has been understood about the personality development of emerging adults undergoing a different educational pathway than college education. Therefore, study 1 investigated personality development in emerging adults undergoing 3-year vocational education and training. The study showed the young apprentices to develop counter the maturity principle. Second, innovative theoretical and methodological approaches to more adequately model dynamic transactionism theory in personality-social relationship transactions have been suggested to overcome the imbalance of effects. Thus, study 2 investigated personality-relationship transactions in a major life transition from high school to post-secondary education and beyond. However, the dominance of personality effects on subsequent social relationship development was reinforced for emerging adulthood. Third, following the ongoing debate on possibilities to psychologically assess environmental contexts, study 3 tested multiple hypotheses on the interplay between the importance ascribed to basic psychological need support (BPN), perceived BPN support, and personality development. The findings revealed the individual’s importance ascribed to BPN to primarily important for personality development.Eine Vielzahl von Studien konnte zeigen, dass sich Persönlichkeit über die gesamte Lebensspanne verändert. Besonderes Augenmerk gilt dabei dem jungen Erwachsenenalter, in dem die Rangordnungsstabilität substanziell ansteigt, Mittelwertveränderungen in Richtung des Reifungsprinzips (i.e., Anstiege in Emotionaler Stabilität, Verträglichkeit und Gewissenhaftigkeit) zu beobachten sind und sich interindividuelle Unterschiede in der Veränderung am größten zeigen. Als zentral gelten dabei insbesondere die Umweltkontexte der sozialen Beziehungen und der Arbeit. Allerdings sind auch einige Fragen offen geblieben. Erstens, bisher ist wenig über Persönlichkeitsentwicklung junger Erwachsener außerhalb des Bildungsweges der universitären Ausbildung bekannt. Deshalb hat sich Studie 1 der Persönlichkeitsentwicklung junger Erwachsener während der 3-jährigen beruflichen Erstausbildung gewidmet. Die Ergebnisse zeigen eine Persönlichkeitsentwicklung entgegen der Reifungsannahme. Zweitens, frühere Studien zeigen innovative theoretische und methodische Möglichkeiten, um den dynamischen Transaktionismus in der Untersuchung von Persönlichkeits-Beziehungstransaktionen adäquater abzubilden und die bisher beobachtete Disbalance der Effekte potenziell auszugleichen. Studie 2 untersuchte deshalb Persönlichkeits-Beziehungstransaktionen in der Transition aus dem Gymnasium in die weitere Ausbildung oder den Arbeitskontext. Allerdings zeigten sich auch in dieser Studie die Persönlichkeitseffekte auf die Entwicklung der sozialen Beziehungen dominant. Drittens, in Anlehnung an die Debatte zu den Möglichkeiten Umweltkontexte psychologisch zu erfassen testete Studie 3 mehrere Hypothesen zum Zusammenspiel zwischen Wichtigkeit der psychologischen Grundbedürfnisse, tatsächlich erfahrener Befriedigung der psychologischen Grundbedürfnisse und Persönlichkeitsentwicklung. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass insbesondere die Wichtigkeit der psychologischen Grundbedürfnisse für Persönlichkeitsentwicklung relevant ist

The Death of Contract

The Death of Contract collects Professor Gilmore\u27s lectures given at Ohio State University Law School in 1970, with footnotes added to provide further explanation, qualification, and documentation. It is easy to tell that these were lectures, not because of their tone of urbane chattiness (Gilmore\u27s gift of style makes some of his most technical work sound like Talleyrand\u27s table talk), but because of the looseness of their design and casualness of their execution. The speaker frequently drops the thread of his narrative to break into anecdote or digression and, when he again picks up the narrative, it is not always by the same thread. But for all their informality these lectures are of extraordinary interest. They tell us how a great commercial lawyer (who is also a legal historian and contracts casebook editor) views what happened to the law of contract in the 20th century. Though expounded with rare felicity and supported by an unusual breadth of historical learning, this perspective is, I believe, a common one among scholars of contract law. I shall be arguing here that it is also a fundamentally distorted one-not so much erroneous as myopic. But first, a summary of the book

Private Property Rights Not to Use, Earn from or Trade Land in Urban Planning and Development: a Meeting between Coase and Buchanan

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Predictors of Placement Satisfaction for Foster Youth

Youth in the foster care system are often removed from their biological families because of challenges to their safety and wellbeing and are often at risk for further placement disruption and poor socio-emotional development. Placement stability is a crucial component to establishing permanency and placement satisfaction might be a contributing factor. This study uses an ecological framework to explore the impact of the foster youth’s ecosystem, such as the foster child, foster parent, child welfare worker, and the placement environment on placement satisfaction. This quantitative study uses secondary data to determine the predictability of these factors on placement satisfaction of foster youth (10-17) in care for at least a year. Results from cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses show that the youth’s perception of their relationship with the caregiver, and type of placement are important contributors to placement satisfaction. The study has important implications for theory, research, and practice

Children's interactions in the city : the interplay of mobility, affordances and urban space

The main goal of this dissertation was to discuss child-place relationships by exploring interplay of mobility, affordances and use of urban spaces. A cross-sectional exploratory and descriptive research was carried out, adopting SoftGISchildren methodology. Participants of this study were 145 children, sixth to ninth graders, from three schools located in different zones of Lisbon Metropolitan. Through a reliable child-friendly web-map survey, participants selected and marked meaningful places according a set of pre-established social, functional leisure and emotional affordances; and reported on actual and ideal mobility to these places and to school. Car transportation and non-independent travel was adopted by more participants in schoolhome journey. Active and independent travel was the most frequently used travel mode to meaningful places, namely within neighbourhood area. Children’s territorial range varied from1.3 -2.2 Km, and they would like to be more active and more autonomous on urban travelling. A total of 1632 multidimensional affordances were marked, with more categorical expression on social affordances, followed by leisure, functional and emotional ones. “Being with friends” was the most expressive affordance of all and neighborhood built environment was found to be socially meaningful. Generally, “green space”, “housing space”, “commercial space” and “school” were more often used to actualize affordances.O principal objetivo desta dissertação foi discutir a relação criança-lugar através da exploração da acção recíproca entre amobilidade, affordances, e uso de espaço público. Um estudo transversal de natureza exploratório-descritiva foi levado a cabo adotando metodologia SoftGISchildren. Os participantes desta investigação foram 145 crianças, do 6º ao 9º ano, de três escolas localizadas em zonas diferentes da área metropolitana de Lisboa. Através de um questionário-mapa-web fidedigno, amigo-da-criança, os participantes selecionaram e marcaram lugares significativos de acordo com um conjunto de affordances preestabelecidas; e reportaram a mobilidade real e ideal para esses lugares e para a escola. Transporte de automóvel e deslocação não-independente foi adotado pela maioria dos participantes no trajeto escola-casa. Deslocação ativa e independente foi mais frequentemente utilizada para lugares significativos, nomeadamente dentro da área de vizinhança. A extensão territorial independente das crianças variou entre 1.3-2.2 Km, e estas gostariam de ser mais ativas e autónomas nas deslocações urbanas. Um total de 1632 affordances multidimensionais foram marcadas, com maior expressividade categórica nas affordances sociais, seguidas pelas de lazer, funcionais e emocionais. “Estar com os amigos” foi a affordance mais expressiva. Globalmente, “espaço verde”, “espaço habitacional”, “espaço comercial” e a “escola” foram mais frequentemente usados para a realização de affordances

Crisis Overstated? Knowledge Gaps and the Aging Water Workforce

ABSTRACT Beginning in 1946 fertility in Canada and other Western countries increased to rates unequaled throughout the rest of the 20th century. Sixty five years since the beginning of the baby boom, as this generation was labelled, workers are retiring or nearing retirement on scale not previously witnessed. This workforce exodus has signalled concern among scholarly, professionals and government sources alike. The public sector has been identified as particularly at risk with both and older average worker age and a low average retirement age. Within the public sector, jobs relating to the Canadian water workforce have similarly been identified for retirement concerns, specifically among senior positions. Retirements have highlighted aspects of concern for the future: knowledge leaving the workplace, and recruiting talent for the future. Among primary concerns is for knowledge that has no place in traditional documentation methods, tacit knowledge. Although transferring this knowledge presents difficulties, strategies include retaining knowledgeable employees and creating programs that facilitate knowledge exchange. Mentorship programs are one such strategy identified specifically for tacit knowledge transfer. This thesis considers how retirements would affect the water workforce including positions centred on conservation and policy efforts, as well as the water utilities industry. Although a few studies have focused on water utilities, this area of the public workforce had largely been ignored. Conducting fourteen interviews within three case study municipalities, primary data was gathered to determine how the water workforce would be affected by retirements, if retirements created concerns with respect to inter-organizational networks, and what strategies would be most suited to the needs of participating organizations.