657 research outputs found
Introduction: The Other Caillois: The Many Masks of Game Studies
The legacy of the rich, stratified work of Roger Caillois, the multifaceted and complex French scholar and intellectual, seems to have almost solely impinged on game studies through his most popular work, Les Jeux et les Hommes. Translated in English as Man, Play and Games, this is the text which popularized Cailloisâ ideas among those who do study and research on games and game cultures today, and which most often appears in publications that attempt to historicize and introduce to the study of gamesâperhaps on a par with Johan Huizingaâs Homo Ludens. The purpose of this article is to introduce the papers and general purposes of a collected edition that aims to shift the attention of game scholars toward a more nuanced and comprehensive view of Roger Caillois, beyond the textbook interpretations usually received in game studies over the last decade or so
The moving boundaries of social heat: gambling in rural China
Whilst gambling for money was prohibited during the Maoist era, since the 1980s it has become very common in many rural areas of central China. It is often the major communal activity in many villages, a focus point of daily gossip and an object of government campaigns. I describe several forms of gambling common in Bashan Township, Eastern Hubei Province, and relate them to local discourses on capability/skill and luck/fate. Gambling reproduces âsocial heatâ, which is a desired form of social effervescence as long as it remains within certain boundaries. But the boundaries of accepted gambling and social heat in local sociality as well as those given in official representations and state discourse, are contested, and both stand in an ambiguous relationship to each other; a relationship that is described in terms of âcultural intimacyâ. Using medium-range concepts such as âsocial heatâ and âcultural intimacyâ the article attempts to avoid the pitfalls of totalizing approaches which explain popular gambling as consequence of or resistance to âneoliberalismâ
Edging your bets: advantage play, gambling, crime and victimisation
Consumerism, industrial development and regulatory liberalisation have underpinned the ascendance of gambling to a mainstream consumption practice. In particular, the online gambling environment has been marketed as a site of âsafe risksâ where citizens can engage in a multitude of different forms of aleatory consumption. This paper offers a virtual ethnography of an online âadvantage playâ subculture. It demonstrates how advantage players have reinterpreted the online gambling landscape as an environment saturated with crime and victimisation. In this virtual world, advantage play is no longer simply an instrumental act concerned with profit accumulation to finance consumer desires. Rather, it acts as an opportunity for individuals to engage in a unique form of edgework, whereby the threat to oneâs well-being is tested through an ability to avoid crime and victimisation. This paper demonstrates how mediated environments may act as sites for edgeworking and how the potential for victimisation can be something that is actively engaged with
âItâs like my life but more, and better!â - Playing with the Cathaby Shark Girls: MMORPGs, young people and fantasy-based social play
This article is available open access through the publisherâs website at the link below. Copyright @ 2011 A B Academic Publishers.Digital technology has opened up a range of new on-line leisure spaces for young people. Despite their popularity, on-line games and Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games in particular are still a comparatively under-researched area in the fields of both Education and more broadly Youth Studies. Drawing on a Five year ethnographic study, this paper considers the ways that young people use the virtual spaces offered by MMORPGs. This paper suggests that MMORPGs represent significant arenas within which young people act out a range of social narratives through gaming. It argues that MMORPG have become important fantasy spaces which offer young people possibilities to engage in what were formally material practices. Although this form of play is grounded in the everyday it also extends material practices and offers new and unique forms of symbolic experimentation, thus I argue that game-play narratives cannot be divorced from the everyday lives of their participants
Co-opetition models for governing professional football
In recent years, models for co-creating value in a business-to-business context have
often been examined with the aim of studying the strategies implemented by and
among organisations for competitive and co-operative purposes. The traditional
concepts of competition and co-operation between businesses have now evolved,
both in terms of the sector in which the businesses operate and in terms of the type
of goods they produce.
Many researchers have, in recent times, investigated the determinants that can
influence the way in which the model of co-opetition can be applied to the football
world. Research interest lies in the particular features of what makes a good football.
In this paper, the aim is to conduct an analysis of the rules governing the âfootball
systemâ, while also looking at the determinants of the demand function within
football entertainment. This entails applying to football match management the
co-opetition model, a recognised model that combines competition and co-operation
with the view of creating and distributing value. It can, therefore, be said that, for a
spectator, watching sport is an experience of high suspense, and this suspense, in turn,
depends upon the degree of uncertainty in the outcome. It follows that the rules
ensuring that both these elements can be satisfied are a fertile ground for co-operation
between clubs, as it is in the interest of all stakeholders to offer increasingly more
attractive football, in comparison with other competing products. Our end purpose is
to understand how co-opetition can be achieved within professional football
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Everyday life and locative play: an exploration of Foursquare and playful engagements with space and place
Foursquare is a location-based social network (LBSN) that combines gaming elements with features conventionally associated with social networking sites (SNSs). Following two qualitative studies, this article sets out to explore what impact this overlaying of physical environments with play has on everyday life and experiences of space and place. Drawing on early understandings of play, alongside the flĂąneur and âphoneurâ as respective methods for conceptualizing play in the context of mobility and urbanity, this article examines whether the suggested division between play and ordinary life is challenged by Foursquare, and if so, how this reframing of play is experienced. Second, this article investigates what effect this LBSN has on mobility choices and spatial relationships. Finally, the novel concept of the âphoneurâ is posited as a way of understanding how pervasive play through LBSNs acts as a mediating influence on the experience of space and place
Career as a professional gamer: gaming motives as predictors of career plans to become a professional esport player
Increasing numbers of young video gamers view esports (i.e., competitive video gaming) as a career opportunity, rather than just a recreational activity. Previous studies have explored the motivational differences between esport and recreational gamers and the motivational changes through career journey to become a professional esport player. The present study explored the predictors of career plans to become a professional esport player, with a specific focus on gaming motivations. Gaming time, gaming motivations, and esport-related playing experience were also examined among Hungarian gamers with competitive gaming experience (N = 190), such as years spent in esports, medium and frequency of participating in esport tournaments, the effort put into training before the tournaments, and the plans to become a professional esport player. Binary logistic regressions were carried out and results showed that the gaming motivations of competition, skill development, and social motivations predicted career planning as a professional esport player. Additionally, results showed that younger players were more likely to seek career opportunity as professional esport players than older players. Future studies should focus on novice esport playersâ psychological exposure to the hypercompetitive scene of esports, such as high expectations or the risk of becoming problematic videogame users due to their motivational changes
Online Games
When we agreed to edit the theme on online
games for this Encyclopedia our first question
was, âWhat is meant by online games?â Scholars
of games distinguish between nondigital
games (such as board games) and digital games,
rather than between online and offline games.
With networked consoles and smartphones it is
becoming harder and harder to find players in
the wealthy industrialized countries who play
âofflineâ digital games. Most games developers
now include some element of online activity in
their game and the question is:What is the degree
to which the gameplay experience occurs online?
Is online gameplay more a multiplayer than an
individual experience? If we move beyond the
technological meaning of âbeing onlineâ we
should, as Newman (2002) argued, be concerned
with varying degrees of participation during
gameplay
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