Towards understanding balancing in exertion games

Playing exertion games with others can be engaging. However, players with different physical skill levels competing against each other can experience reduced engagement because they are either not challenged enough, or challenged too much. Balancing methods can address this; however, there is only limited understanding of balancing in exertion games. In this paper, we identify two distinct dimensional balancing techniques: "internal adjustment" and "external adjustment". We report results from a study where we measured player engagement after applying these adjustments to a digital table tennis game and the traditional table tennis game, finding two disengagement factors: "unexpected physical challenges" and "unacceptable competitive advantage". Based on these factors we derived a set of exertion game design considerations. We conclude that applying digital technology to a physical game can change the required skill level to play the game, and this can affect the impact of these adjustments on player engagement. These results enhances our understanding of balancing in exertion games, supporting the benefits of playing exertion games with others

Match-fixing: working towards an ethical framework

How does match-fixing, or other unfair manipulation of matches, that involves under-performance by players, or refereeing and umpiring that prevents fair competition, be thought of in ethical terms? In this article, I outline the different forms that match-fixing can take and seek to comprehend these disparate scenarios within Kantian, Hegelian and contractualist ethical frameworks. I tentatively suggest that, by developing an ethical opposition to match-fixing in sport, we can give much greater substance to popular phrases such as ‘respect for the game’, encompassing the value of sport itself and respect for other players, fans, sponsors and organisers. Arguing that match-fixing denies recognition to these ‘others’ demonstrates how fundamentally match-fixing ‘hollows out’ sport because a fixed match is of no worth: the whole value of the game has literally been evacuated

Christianity as Public Religion::A Justification for using a Christian Sociological Approach for Studying the Social Scientific Aspects of Sport

The vast majority of social scientific studies of sport have been secular in nature and/or have tended to ignore the importance of studying the religious aspects of sport. In light of this, Shilling and Mellor (2014) have sought to encourage sociologists of sport not to divorce the ‘religious’ and the ‘sacred’ from their studies. In response to this call, the goal of the current essay is to explore how the conception of Christianity as ‘public religion’ can be utilised to help justify the use of a Christian sociological approach for studying the social scientific aspects of sport. After making a case for Christianity as public religion, we conclude that many of the sociological issues inherent in modern sport are an indirect result of its increasing secularisation and argue that this justifies the need for a Christian sociological approach. We encourage researchers to use the Bible, the tools of Christian theology and sociological concepts together, so to inform analyses of modern sport from a Christian perspective

Examining student-designed games through Suits' theory of games

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Sport, Education and Society on 02/01/2015, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13573322.2014.994174.This paper documents how a unit of student-designed games can create a more meaningful version of physical education (PE) for disengaged students, a version that enhances the educational legitimacy of the subject matter by affording it worth in and of itself rather than being justified for other, extrinsic or instrumental reasons. Furthermore, it seeks to develop new knowledge relating to the conduct of game instruction within PE, by using Suits’ theory of games. Drawing on Suits’ theory, we develop a conceptual model that is intended to represent the hierarchical processes that occur in gameplay through student-designed games. This model is then tested via examination of the experiences of a cohort of teachers and their year 10 students from a mixed secondary school in the greater London area. From our discussions with the students, it is argued that the key focus of the games that these students were used to playing was the need to ‘play the game well’. By contrast, we suggest that it is possible to provide more meaningful experiences to students if a more philosophically driven and less efficiency-driven approach to games is taken, following Suits’ lead more closely. By exploring the loop between and around lusory means, lusory goals and constitutive rules (the aspects of Suits’ theory that have been shown to represent student-designed games), students engage with a more meaningful games experience than simply playing the game well. This ‘new’ approach to games may offer counterbalance to the ideological tendencies now emphasized in countries and contexts that celebrate instrumental outcomes of performative PE and sport rather than affording worth in and of itself to the curriculum’s subject matter