Kennis- en innovatieagenda : creatieve industrie 2018-2021

De creatieve industrie versterkt het innovatievermogen van Nederland. Met haar innovatie- en verbeeldingskracht kan zij mensen verbinden, in beweging krijgen en vertrouwen geven in de wereld van morgen. De sector is een onmisbare schakel in het geven van antwoorden op grote maatschappelijke vraagstukken en het bieden van een zinvolle betekenis aan nieuwe technologische mogelijkheden. Om deze impact te realiseren, maakt de creatieve professional gebruik van een kennisbasis van Key Enabling Methodologies; strategieën, methoden en modellen die structuur geven aan het creatieve proces en deze valideren. In deze methodologieën stelt de professional de mens centraal en is hij in staat om nieuwe werelden en visies te verbeelden en technologieën en actoren uit verschillende hoeken bij elkaar te brengen. De samenleving is het speelveld van de creatieve professional. In deze tijd, waarin transities in de maatschappij gaande zijn, verandert de manier waarop de professional werkt en samenwerkt. De rol van de creatieve professional is meer fluïde dan voorheen. Tegelijkertijd wordt er meer verwacht van de onderbouwing van ontwikkelde interventies en neemt de complexiteit van vraagstukken en oplossingen toe. Om de creatieve professional hierin te ondersteunen, is samenwerking tussen creatieve industrie en kennisinstellingen cruciaal

I’d like to have a house like that

This qualitative interview study explores the practices of adult female gamers who play the videogame The Sims, focusing on the motivations they have for playing and how playing a video game might influence their digital competence. We address the wider context of leisure and the household, investigating to what extent playing videogames has become domesticated in the daily life of the family. It is found that female gamers play The Sims because they enjoy the particular way it allows them to take control, fantasize, and be challenged. For some, it is clear that playing this video game has increased their digital skills. We notice that there is an interesting similarity between the pleasures of playing this videogame and more traditional ways of female media engagement such as reading women’s magazines or romance novels and watching soap operas. Our gamers similarly enjoy The Sims as leisurely moments for themselves, clearly and intentionally separated from domestic and family duties. We conclude that playing a videogame can be seen as a highly modern and liberating practice, as both playing in general and using ICT have tra

Urban Influencers: An Analysis of Urban Identity in YouTube Content of Local Social Media Influencers in a Super-Diverse City

Influencers belong to the daily media diet of many adolescents. As role models, they have the potential to play a crucial role in the identity construction of their viewers. In the age of social media, such role models may now be found more locally – in the same city – and perhaps with more diverse backgrounds. This may be particularly valuable to adolescents growing up in super-diverse cities, as they are surrounded by a multitude of groups and identities during a life phase in which they have to make sense of who they are and where they belong. Despite the heterogeneity of these identities, there is one thing all have in common: the city they live in. With the city as a common framework, local influencers may be important role models for these adolescents, particularly in negotiating their urban identity. This paper aims toward mapping the ways in which social media can play a role in the negotiation of urban identity among youngsters by investigating how YouTube influencers from a super-diverse city are related to each other online, and how their content relates to the (super-diverse) city of Rotterdam. Findings show that in their videos and on their channel pages, influencers mainly affiliate themselves with the city through having the city as the background and context of the videos, through their involvement with cultural trends (e.g., soccer, hip-hop) that link to the city, and through their affiliation with other local influencers. We argue that influencers may therefore provide their viewers with

Replaying Today’s Wars? A Study of the Conceptualization of Post-1989 Conflict in Digital “War” Games

Commercial “war” games in a post-1989 setting are popular among a large audience. They offer players an enjoyable gameplay experience, while also referring to contemporary “war” scenarios. As such, they have been studied in several ways, e.g., concerning the “realistic” nature of how they depict warfare. However, little is still known about the way in which the notion of “war” is conceptualized in these games. To fill this gap, this article offers a systematic analysis of the narrative content of 15 popular “war” games set after 1989, as well as their promotional descriptions, as these provide insight into how publishers respond to the interests of players. This is done based on the conceptual framework of conflict/war offered by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP)

Free your ‘most open’ Android: a comparative discourse analysis on Android

Through this paper, we convey a comparative analysis of how Google Inc. and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) discursively construct and contest Android, a dominant mobile operating system. Methodologically, we use political discourse theory to engage in the textual analysis; identify and compare key signifiers and nodal points across the exemplary texts from the two actors, and interpret their meaning vis à vis contextual insights about the political economy of Android’s production. Albeit being marketed as ‘the first truly open platform’ for mobiles, through our analysis we find Google’s definition of open source practices strictly conditional. We argue that Google’s usage of compatibility rhetorically as well as techno-legally justifies the conglomerate’s control over the platform. By contrast, the discursive moment by free software activists, through a campaign ‘Free Your Android’ deconstructs the discourse on open source and attempts to politicize the access to code in the mobile domain. This is done by extending from the well-known developer’s four freedoms onto users’ privacy, due to personal character of mobile devices. Such articulation of free software in relation to privacy of user data is a new development and arguably has a potential to contribute to widening support to the movement

The Players' Experience of Immersion in Persuasive Games: A study of My Life as a Refugee and PeaceMaker

Game studies has seen an increasing interest in serious games with a persuasive goal. Yet, empirical research about the impact of these persuasive games is still limited. This paper aims to advance the field by reporting on an explorative, qualitative study, investigating player experiences in My Life as a Refugee and PeaceMaker, games that address pressing socio-political issues. Theoretically, our research was based on immersion theory and Calleja’s account of player involvement. We conducted in-depth interviews with twelve participants. Our results showed that players experienced the two games in a similar way. With respect to immersion, our results highlight its different aspects by showing that the games’ narratives had the largest impact on feeling immersed. Our participants also experienced ludic, affective, and spatial immersion, which partly deepened their narrative immersion. Finally, we found that perceived realism, narrative depth, and identification contributed to the immersive experience. The major contribution of this paper is showing that immersion heightened participants’ susceptibility to persuasion within the gaming environment, while adding that the roles of emotion and identification in immersion warrant further research

Playing in school or at home?

The goal of this study is to gain insight into the effects of context on educational game experience. Using a quasi-experimental setup, it compares the playing and learning experiences of adolescent players of the awareness-raising game PING in a domestic (N=135) and a school (N=121) context. Results indicate that both gaming (identification, enjoyment) and learning experiences are more intense in a home compared to a school context. However, all of the variance in gaming and part of that in learning experience are caused by longer playing times and better computer equipment. Moreover, the overall impact of context on perceived learning is significantly smaller than that of other experiential factors such as identification and enjoyment. Thus context should be considered as a significant yet relatively small determinant of learning experience

Persuasive Gaming in Context

The rapid developments in new communication technologies have facilitated the popularization of digital games, which has translated into an exponential growth of the game industry in recent decades. The ubiquitous presence of digital games has resulted in an expansion of the applications of these games from mere entertainment purposes to a great variety of serious purposes. In this edited volume, we narrow the scope of attention by focusing on what game theorist Ian Bogost has called 'persuasive games', that is, gaming practices that combine the dissemination of information with attempts to engage players in particular attitudes and behaviors.This volume offers a multifaceted reflection on persuasive gaming, that is, on the process of these particular games being played by players. The purpose is to better understand when and how digital games can be used for persuasion by further exploring persuasive games and some other kinds of persuasive playful interaction as well. The book critically integrates what has been accomplished in separate research traditions to offer a multidisciplinary approach to understanding persuasive gaming that is closely linked to developments in the industry by including the exploration of relevant case studies