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Identity, Identification, and Media Representation in Video Game Play: An audience reception study Abstract ABSTRACT IDENTITY, IDENTIFICATION AND MEDIA REPRESENTATION IN VIDEO GAME. Her identity was only further explored in the Wii Japan-only video game Captain Rainbow (2008), which delves into her gender and how she was imprisoned for using the woman's bathroom, with her asking the player to find proof of her being female so she could be set free.
The Power of Gameplay for Learning and GrowthVideo games have been at the forefront of interactive media and continue to be a significant part of the participatory media environment. The thought of a video game still may strike horror into the hearts of many, but video games are just a digital manifestation of a very basic human behavior: play. Playing is where we learn. Throughout history, games and gaming have been an integral part of human expression of culture and, facilitating. Play is vital to a child’s social and emotional development.
Play is where we work through emotions, learn to share, negotiate joining groups or ongoing play, experience the perspectives of others, learn to cope with our own emotions, and explore our self-perceptions (Piaget, 1962). It’s only the technology that is new.
The bulk of video game-related research has focused on the interactivity, cognitive resources, and impact of content. However, the experience of playing video games can impact in a number of ways. These include 1) the expansion and exploration of identity, 2) generation of and participation in communities of learning, 3) building social connections through collaboration and negotiation, 3) the promotion of problem-solving and in low-risk situations, 4) development of, and 4) the creation of positive emotions.
Video games allow people to adopt virtual identities. According to Przybylski, Weinstein, Murayama, Lynch, and Ryan (2012), the appeal of video games is in part due to the players’ ability to explore aspects of their ideal selves that might not find expression in real life. Gameplay experiences that were congruent with perceptions of a player’s ideal self were the most intrinsically motivating and emotionally engaging. Klimmt and Hartmann (2009) suggest that feelings of increased self-efficacy also enhance the motivation to play. Open-ended collaborative games, such as Wizard 101, encourage creativity and imagination.
Games in general provide a learning space that functions like Erikson’s (1956) concept of psychosocial moratorium — a safe place to think, take risks and explore. Similarly, Bruner (1973) suggested that the purpose of play is to practice and explore behavioral patterns that a child can later use in other situations. Others researchers believe that play enhances the ability to understand and identify causal elements amidst irrelevant information. Where traditional educational outcomes tend to be score- and grade-based, the learning in gaming environment, whether individual or collaborative, is focused on skill acquisition around an activity because the goal is mastery for future play (Steinkuehler, 2004). There is no sustained social or intellectual capital accumulation in short-term rewards.
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Gameplay success through mastery elicits commendations and validation from other players both within the magic circle of gameplay but also in the larger community of players who play that specific game. Games create communities of practice — groups of people who share a common competence and interest, whether it’s Farmville or Call of Duty. Participation creates a shared understanding and reinforces the social identity that comes from being included in the group.Game knowledge and skill is a social language that provides connection and context, like any other sport, art, or specialized endeavor. The shared knowledge of a popular game creates what James Paul Gee (2007) calls “affinity groups” provide a way to identify other group members. It works for Call of Duty the same way it works for NFL Football.
The common ground functions as a social bridge, allowing for social interaction with peers that has little to do with game content and a great deal to do with demonstrating competence, membership and social validation. Peer validation then reaffirms and reinforces the community-based identity and the social currency of learning as a community-valued asset. In multi-player games like World of Warcraft, the game culture often encourages players to ask questions of those more accomplished or to offer advice to those less experienced. Game producers recognize the value in promoting these types of collaborative cultures because rewarding play experiences translate into profitable commercial ones.
Thus, multiplayer games include built-in functionality to support player discourse, such as chat channels. Beyond demonstrating expertise or facilitating learning, game play with collaborative missions necessitate mastering a much more serious social skill, cooperation such as the negotiation of moral behaviors and trust relationships necessary to complete quests and challenges.
Games Encourage Comfort with Decision-MakingGames, like much of life, are a series of puzzles and decisions. Unlike life, however, games make easy. They often create situations where players not only must make decisions, they must make them quickly and must they must continually adapt to changing circumstances and rules. These circumstances encourage cognitive flexibility, the tolerance of ambiguity and comfort with decision-making without full information—excellent skills for dealing with real world situations on a daily basis at work, at school and at home. Reeves et al (2008) go so far as to say that World of Warcraft provides an excellent training ground for effective strategies, in large part because it teaching an understanding of the types of environments that facilitate adaptive decision-making.In Part 3, I will conclude with a discussion of how thoughtful development and implementation of game design principles can ignite problem-solving, creativity, and learning and create positive emotions. Positive emotions lay the foundations for enhanced self-efficacy and which also support a child’s ability to become a self-advocate for his or her own learning experience in an educational environment. ReferencesBruner, J.
Organization of early skilled action., 44, 1-11.Cunliffe, A., & Coupland, C. From hero to villain to hero: Making experience sensible through embodied narrative sensemaking. Human Relations, 65(1), 63-88. Doi: 10.11711424321Dagirmanjian, S., Eron, J., & Lund, T. Narrative solutions: An integration of self and systems perspectives in motivating change.
Journal; Peer Reviewed Journal. Journal of Integration, 17(1), 70-92. Doi: 10.1037/1053-0479.17.1.70. Thanks so much for this article, Pamela. Well referenced and a very thorough look at how games can be of benefit; something that I agree is overlooked. I particularly feel this is the case in the psychotherapy business where gaming is often talked about as a crutch or failing on the client's behalf.I would point you, unless you have already found them, to Mike Langlois's ebook and website, and to Jane MacGonigal (look her up on TED) and the huge topic of gamification. These thinkers and ideas tie in very well with what you've talked about!Thanks again!.
Mario is a simple guy. He wears overalls and a spiffy cap. He's got a brother and a couple of close friends.
He can run fast and jump high. In his various quests to save princess Peach, he makes use of all of these attributes and relationships, yet none of them tell us anything about who Mario really is.As Super Mario Odyssey has shown us, if you take away the overall, what remains is still Mario, a guy with a fluffy moustache and a pair of delightful nips. What he wears does not define him. Yet most of Mario's essential properties, the things that make him who he is, are actually purely cosmetic - we would feel weird if Mario shaved off his moustache and spoke to us in a baritone, but we don't care about the exact nature of his relationship with his brother or if he ever wonders what his life has come to when he has to rescue Peach for the umpteenth time.With increasing frequency however, games explore the inner turmoil of their protagonists and how their experiences change them.
Words to practice includes orange, apple, peach, pear, strawberry, mango etc. This is an excellent game for teaching vocabulary. You can practice spelling, reading, listening and word recognition with this memory fun game as it has audio, images and text. It can be used by Teachers and ESL, EFL Learners to practice these words or to review English Vocabulary. Rooms of memory game online free play.
Video game heroes need a reason for doing what they do, and often this leads to them questioning their values and beliefs as well as their relationships with others.Night in the Woods is all about its protagonist. Throughout the game, we uncover Mae's identity - the relationship she has with herself and the different roles she fulfils. This examination is triggered by several events, most prominently her dropping out from university.Mae's identity is linked to other people in several ways. Mae has a good relationship with her parents, for example, she can engage with them on multiple occasions: she can talk to her mum in the morning or visit her at work, and watch TV with her dad in the evening.
Her unwillingness to talk about the reason she left university shows she's afraid that her failure as a student means failure as a daughter, too, after all Mae was the first in her family to go to university and as a result her parents are undergoing significant financial strain.We learn a lot about Mae through talking to other people. Everyone seems to have a story about her, and most of them take place during high school - a seemingly simpler time. In order for Mae to identify with Possum Springs and its inhabitants, she hopes to find the town exactly as she left it.
Having failed to adapt, or to 'grow up' during her time away, her identity hinges on her past and the person she was before her assault of a fellow pupil changed both the public perception of her as well as the way she thinks about herself.Throughout the game however, Mae turns out to be somewhat of an unreliable narrator. Her friends remember some incidents differently or let her know their true feelings on her devil-may-care attitude.
In reality, Mae cares very much about her image and other people's opinions of her. A large part of her identity is constructed from what others think of her. When it becomes clear she can't continue the way she has before, Mae finds herself at a loss.According to the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, this happens to all of us at some point. He proposed we are 'too free', overwhelmed by choice and different ways to live our lives, which leads constant re-evaluation.Existentialists like Sartre believe there is ultimately no meaning to life - there is no higher power holding us accountable, no jurisdiction that couldn't fail us, no destiny we need to fulfil. Mae struggles with existential questions: she dreams of a god that tells her they don't care about her and has difficulty going the way society prescribes, leading from school to work to a family and hopefully some kind of legacy.Instead, at twenty Mae is the embodiment of a quarter-life crisis as she learns that she has to accept all of herself and let go of some people and stories she thought of as integral to who she is so that she can lead a happy life.Uncharted's Nathan Drake is also trying to build a new identity for himself.
While Mae in many ways still tries to articulate who she is, Nathan is seemingly a step ahead of her: he needs to combine new and old aspects of himself as his life continues to change.Nathan needs to examine what his essential and accidental properties are - the things that undeniably make him who he is and those he can let go of and still remain himself.
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