An Entertainment Machine of filial piety

Starting with the Nintendo Wii craze in 2007, a new media trend and public discourse are taking shape in which the Wii replaced the traditional image of “parents-to-children game machine” with a new image of “machine for filial piety”. Grown-ups bought Wii as a gift for their parents to fill in their own absence in the family life, or to carry out unfulfilled duty in taking care of elderly parents. In this study, the meaning of such phenomenon is analyzed as more than just a successful market development strategy to incorporate unlikely gamers. The new game machine is used in the adult children’s struggle to reconcile the traditional cultural values of filial care with fast-changing family structure and contemporary life style.Dans la foulée de l'engouement pour la Nintendo Wii en 2007, l'idée selon laquelle la console de jeux est traditionnellement un "appareil offert par les parents pour les enfants" se voit supplantée dans les médias et le débat public par celle, nouvelle, d'un "appareil de support de piété filiale". Des adultes se mirent à offrir des Wii à leurs parents de façon à combler leur propre absence dans la vie familiale, ou pour remplir leur devoir – inaccompli – de prendre soin de parents âgés. Dans cette étude, le phénomène n’est pas simplement envisagé comme la réussite d’une stratégie de marketing consistant à toucher un public de joueurs jusque là considéré improbable. La nouvelle console de jeux est mobilisée par des enfants adultes dans l’objectif d’articuler les valeurs traditionnelles de l’attention filiale avec les transformations rapides de la structure familiale et les styles de vie contemporains

The “White-Eyed” Player Culture: Grief Play and Construction of Deviance in MMORPGs

One popular phenomenon in Taiwan’s massively multiplayer online role-playing gaming world (MMORPG) is the so-called ‘white-eyed’ players. The “white-eyed” refers to players who act in ways similar to that are known as ‘griefers’ in some online gaming communities. Grief players engage in playing that intend to disrupt or distress other players’ gaming experiences, and derives his/her enjoyment from such behavior. Although the ‘white-eyed’ playing in Taiwanese gaming culture seems to include a wider range of activities than that of “grief play”, both terms refer to a popular phenomenon that is at the core to the MMORPGs culture. Grief players are the deviants in gaming societies; they break the law (codes and rules of conduct) of their game worlds, violate the norms and etiquettes of their communities. This study is an attempt to analyze the white-eyed/griefer culture as a deviant subculture and explore its functions and meanings in maintaining the social order of online game world. Current studies on grief play are limited in quantity and scope. Usually, grief play is descriptively discussed from the perspectives of players’ anti-social behavior or alternative ways of bringing satisfaction. In other words, grief play is treated as a phenomenon engaging the griefers only and is relatively independent of other players’ action. However, the making and circulation of the “white-eyed” (or the griefer) as a popular concept and a widely recognizable category among game players suggest that it requires collective recognition and corresponding social reaction by all players, griefers or non-griefers alike. Game management also plays a role in shaping the grief play culture by defining and enforcing specific rules. Bring all players and game management into the focus of research allows us to see a complete deviance-making process in virtual communities and the roles varied agents of social control play in it. Following the issue of social control, the study of grief players can also contribute to our understanding of power emerged in social interaction. In online gaming world, power takes several forms: techno-power that is written in system design and embodied in codes of the game, administrative power held by the game master, and normative power enforced by social discipline from all participating agents. Among the three, the last one is the least explored dimension. Thus, we would like to take a close look on following questions in accordance with the normative power negotiation in online gaming communities: what are the processes involved in identifying certain act as grief play and an avatar as a griefer? What are the consequences of being labeled as a griefer? How players interact with griefers, individually and collectively? And how griefers react to social punishments and disciplines from others? This study explores the social process governing the nature, emergence, application, and consequences of the griefer label of the “white-eyed” players. Although the definitions and key components of grief playing are not without ambiguity and disagreement (Foo & Koivisto 2004), it usually covers a very broad range of disruptive and annoying activities ranging from verbal rudeness, ninja looting, scamming, to player killing (Salen& Zimmerman 2004; Mulligan & Patrovsky 2003). Some of the behaviors are clearly unacceptable by social standards, yet some others are harder to judge. How do players learn to draw the line of acceptable behaviors? And when the line is crossed, what players do to disciple the violator? Calling some avatar “the white-eyed” is not the end of the story. It is often followed by further actions of posting the griefer’s name on related forums, or other means of passing the words so as to make the griefer visible to the public. When a griefer is identified and made well known, further sanctions may follow, such as punishments from the game master, refusal of cooperation, interaction or transaction by other players, even direct retaliation. We believe that the whole process of identifying the griefer as a deviant and applying the rule to him/her serves important functions. First of all, by identifying what are bad and inappropriate behaviors, the norms of good and acceptable behaviors are confirmed and made clear. And thus, reduces the ambiguity of the moral “grey zone” in social interaction of virtual gaming communities. Secondly, by labeling the griefers, the bad players are distinguished from the good players. In so doing a group of “outsiders” is created, which not only makes special treatments upon the deviant legitimate, but also make them visible targets for social sanction. Finally, the grief play culture contributes to the collective knowledge of a community. Constructing, passing and practicing such knowledge help to uphold the order of social life. Besides, the griefer counter-culture serves as a fine illustration of the deviant group. The clans of the griefers develop their own identities and distinctive norms against that of the mainstream game community. Their self-perceptions and group identities offer us rich materials on another side of the deviance formation story. In addition to the griefer and players, the game master is another important agent for social control. How do they perceive the boundary of their administrative power in terms of imposing and reinforcing the rules is crucial to the understanding of a deviant culture in virtual community. To explore the above issues, the two most popular MMORPG games in Taiwan, namely “Lineage” and “Ragnarok Online” (RO), are chosen as our major targets of study. Data used for analysis are collected from several sources, including (1) interviews with griefers and non-grief players of the two games on their attitudes toward, and strategies regarding grief play; (2) interviews with the game masters as well as data of regulation policies and the Rules of Conduct announced in the official websites of the games; (3) website self-representation and the action reports of the griefer clans; (4) grief play related postings from discussion forums of the two games. Reference Foo, Chek Yang, & Koivisto, Elina. (2004). Defining Grief Play in MMORPGs: Player and Developer Perceptions. Paper presented at the International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (ACE) 2004, Jun 3~5, 2004. Singapore. Mulligan, Jessica, & Patrovsky, Bridgette. (2003). Developing Online Games: An Insider’s Guide. Indiana: New Riders. Salen, Katie, & Zimmerman, Eric. (2004). Rules Of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge: MIT Press

Ways of spectating: unravelling spectator participation in Kinect play

We explore spectating on video game play as an interactional and participatory activity. Drawing on a corpus of video recordings capturing 'naturally occurring' Kinect gaming within home settings, we detail how the analytic 'work' of spectating is interactionally accomplished as a matter of collaborative action with players and engagement in the game. We examine: spectators supporting players with continuous 'scaffolding'; spectators critiquing player technique during and between moments of play; spectators recognising and complimenting competent player conduct; and spectators reflecting on prior play to build instructions for the player. From this we draw out a number of points that shift the conversation in HCI about 'the spectator' towards understanding and designing for spectating as an interactional activity; that is, sequentially ordered and temporally coordinated. We also discuss bodily conduct and the particular ways of 'seeing' involved in spectating, and conclude with remarks on conceptual and design implications for HCI

TFH Mixing Patterns, Large θ13\theta_{13} and Δ(96)\Delta(96) Flavor Symmetry

We perform a comprehensive analysis of the Toorop-Feruglio-Hagedorn (TFH) mixing patterns within the family symmetry $\Delta(96)$. The general neutrino mass matrix for the TFH mixing and its symmetry properties are investigated. The possible realizations of the TFH mixing in $\Delta(96)$ are analyzed in the minimalist approach. We propose two dynamical models which produce the TFH mixing patterns at leading order. The full flavor symmetries are $\Delta(96)\times Z_3\times Z_3$ and $\Delta(96)\times Z_5 \times Z_2$ respectively. The next to leading order terms introduce corrections of order $\lambda^2_c$ to the three mixing angles in both models. The allowed mixing patterns are studied under the condition that the Klein four subgroups and the cyclic $Z_N$ subgroups with $N\geq3$ are preserved in the neutrino and the charged lepton sector respectively. We suggest that the deformed tri-bimaximal mixing is a good leading order approximation to understanding a largish reactor angle.Comment: 43 pages, 2 figure

First measurement of neutrino oscillation parameters using neutrinos and antineutrinos by NOvA.

The NOvA experiment has seen a 4.4σ signal of ν[over ¯]_{e} appearance in a 2 GeV ν[over ¯]_{μ} beam at a distance of 810 km. Using 12.33×10^{20} protons on target delivered to the Fermilab NuMI neutrino beamline, the experiment recorded 27 ν[over ¯]_{μ}→ν[over ¯]_{e} candidates with a background of 10.3 and 102 ν[over ¯]_{μ}→ν[over ¯]_{μ} candidates. This new antineutrino data are combined with neutrino data to measure the parameters |Δm_{32}^{2}|=2.48_{-0.06}^{+0.11}×10^{-3}  eV^{2}/c^{4} and sin^{2}θ_{23} in the ranges from (0.53-0.60) and (0.45-0.48) in the normal neutrino mass hierarchy. The data exclude most values near δ_{CP}=π/2 for the inverted mass hierarchy by more than 3σ and favor the normal neutrino mass hierarchy by 1.9σ and θ_{23} values in the upper octant by 1.6σ

Observation of seasonal variation of atmospheric multiple-muon events in the NOvA Near Detector

Using two years of data from the NOvA Near Detector at Fermilab, we report a seasonal variation of cosmic ray induced multiple-muon (Nμ≥2) event rates which has an opposite phase to the seasonal variation in the atmospheric temperature. The strength of the seasonal multiple-muon variation is shown to increase as a function of the muon multiplicity. However, no significant dependence of the strength of the seasonal variation of the multiple-muon variation is seen as a function of the muon zenith angle, or the spatial or angular separation between the correlated muons

Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) and Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) Conceptual Design Report Volume 2: The Physics Program for DUNE at LBNF

The Physics Program for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) at the Fermilab Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) is described

Search for slow magnetic monopoles with the NOvA detector on the surface

We report a search for a magnetic monopole component of the cosmic-ray flux in a 95-day exposure of the NOvA experiment’s Far Detector, a 14 kt segmented liquid scintillator detector designed primarily to observe GeV-scale electron neutrinos. No events consistent with monopoles were observed, setting an upper limit on the flux of 2 × 10−14 cm−2 s−1 sr−1 at 90% C.L. for monopole speed 6 × 10−4 < β < 5 × 10−3 and mass greater than 5 × 108 GeV. Because of NOvA’s small overburden of 3 meters-water equivalent, this constraint covers a previously unexplored low-mass region

Measurement of the double-differential muon-neutrino charged-current inclusive cross section in the NOvA near detector

We report cross-section measurements of the final-state muon kinematics for νμ charged-current interactions in the NOvA near detector using an accumulated 8.09×1020 protons on target in the NuMI beam. We present the results as a double-differential cross section in the observed outgoing muon energy and angle, as well as single-differential cross sections in the derived neutrino energy, Eν, and square of the four-momentum transfer, Q2. We compare the results to inclusive cross-section predictions from various neutrino event generators via χ2 calculations using a covariance matrix that accounts for bin-to-bin correlations of systematic uncertainties. These comparisons show a clear discrepancy between the data and each of the tested predictions at forward muon angle and low Q2, indicating a missing suppression of the cross section in current neutrino-nucleus scattering models

Limits on active to sterile neutrino oscillations from disappearance searches in the MINOS, Daya Bay, and bugey-3 experiments

Searches for a light sterile neutrino have been performed independently by the MINOS and the Daya Bay experiments using the muon (anti)neutrino and electron antineutrino disappearance channels, respectively. In this Letter, results from both experiments are combined with those from the Bugey-3 reactor neutrino experiment to constrain oscillations into light sterile neutrinos. The three experiments are sensitive to complementary regions of parameter space, enabling the combined analysis to probe regions allowed by the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) and MiniBooNE experiments in a minimally extended four-neutrino flavor framework. Stringent limits on sin^2 2θμe are set over 6 orders of magnitude in the sterile mass-squared splitting Δm^2 41. The sterile-neutrino mixing phase space allowed by the LSND and MiniBooNE experiments is excluded for Δm^2 41 < 0.8 eV^2 at 95% CLs