scholarly journals Vocal Imitation and Linguistic Processing of Super Mario Theme Music by Yorùbá Gamers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Akinbo
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Background Music ◽  
Similar Function ◽  
Linguistic Processing ◽  
Situational Context ◽  
Vocal Imitation ◽  
Situational Contexts ◽  
Social Expectation ◽  
Gaming Culture ◽  
Acoustic Analyses

An aspect of gaming culture among Yorùbá millennials is the linguistic interpretations of the background music that accompanies the popular video game called Super Mario. The themes of the interpretations are comparable to those of music texts at traditional Yorùbá events. Drawing on the Yorùbá tradition, the account is that the gamers assumed that the background music of the game has a similar function as the music at traditional Yorùbá events. The choice of words in the interpretation is conditioned by the situational contexts where the music is heard in the video game. The results of acoustic analyses show that the interpretations are also determined by mapping the pitch trajectories of the music melodies to the tones of the gamers’ language. Notably, the results of this study suggest that the linguistic processing of music may not only involve phonetic iconicity (Steinbeis and Koelsch, 2011) but situational context and social expectation.

scholarly journals User-Agent Bond in Generalizable Environments: Long-Term Risk-Reduction via Nudged Virtual Choices

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liyuan Wang ◽  
John L. Christensen ◽  
Benjamin J. Smith ◽  
Traci K. Gillig ◽  
David C. Jeong ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Behaviors ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Risky Behaviors ◽  
Risky Sexual Behaviors ◽  
Behavior Changes ◽  
Social Expectation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Subsequent Behavior ◽  
The Media ◽  
Sex With Men

Avatars or agents are digitized self-representations of a player in mediated environments. While using agents to navigate through mediated environments, players form bonds with their self-agents or characters, a process referred to as identification. Identification can involve automatic, but temporary, self-concept “shifts in implicit self-perceptions” (Klimmt et al., 2010, p. 323) of the media user by adopting or emphasizing the action choices on behalf of the social expectation of the avatar in the mediated environment. In the current study, we test the possibility that users' identification with video game avatars–a bond built between avatars and players- would account for subsequent behavior changes. We did so by using 3-month longitudinal data involving a narratively-based serious game: Socially Optimized Learning in Virtual Environments (SOLVE), a 3D-interactive game designed to reduce risky sexual behaviors among young men who have sex with men (n = 444). Results show that video game identification predicts both the reduction of risky sexual behaviors over time, and reduction in the number of non-primary partners with whom risky sex occurs. And when players identify with the game character, they tend to make healthier choices, which significantly mediates the link between video game identification and reduction of risky behaviors.

Gaming Sexism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda C. Cote
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Video Game ◽  
The Other ◽  
Video Gaming ◽  
Changing Environment ◽  
Full Participation ◽  
Gaming Culture ◽  
Game Industry ◽  
And Gender

In 2012, video gaming culture saw an interesting, paradoxical divergence. On one hand, game journalists and trade organizations testified that gaming had significantly diversified from its masculine roots, with women comprising nearly half of all gamers. On the other hand, gaming spaces witnessed increasing, public incidents of sexism and misogyny. Gaming Sexism analyzes the video game industry and its players to explain the roots of these contradictory narratives, how they coexist, and what their divergence means in terms of power and gender equality. Media studies scholar Amanda C. Cote first turns to video game magazines to assess how longstanding expectations for “gamers” are shifting, how this provokes anxiety in traditional audiences, and how these players resist change, at times employing harassment and sexism to drive out new audience members. She follows this analysis by interviewing female players, to see how their experiences have been affected by games’ changing environment. Interviewees reveal many persistent barriers to full participation in gaming, including overtly and implicitly sexist elements within texts, gaming audiences, and the industry. At the same time, participants have developed nuanced strategies for managing their exclusion, pursuing positive gaming experiences, and competing with men on their own turf. Thus, Gaming Sexism reveals extensive, persistent problems in achieving gender equality in gaming. However, it also demonstrates the power of a motivated, marginalized audience, and draws on their experiences to explore how structural inequalities in gaming spaces—and culture more broadly—can themselves be gamed and overcome.

Stories from the Frontier: Bridging Past and Present at Hadrian’s Wall

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-160
Author(s):  
Claire Stocks
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Similar Function ◽  
Pedagogical Tool ◽  
School Aged Children ◽  
Parallel Processes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Simulated Environment ◽  
Measuring Vessel ◽  
Hadrian's Wall

Abstract A corn modius, excavated in 1915 at Carvoran Roman fort, survives as an enduring testament to the memory sanctions applied to the emperor Domitian after his death. Domitian’s name has been hammered out, even though the rest of the engraved text – which reveals the capacity of this measuring vessel – has been preserved. Taking this case study as its springboard, this article reflects on how artefacts act as battlegrounds for the parallel processes of commemoration and censorship. It exemplifies, moreover, how a modern video-game for school-aged children which Stocks co-designed about Vindolanda, an Imperial-era Roman fort at Hadrian’s Wall, can serve a similar function. By translating the physical realities of that site into virtual images, and challenging players to solve a fictional murder mystery within this simulated environment, the game creates a new means through which students might be led into the past: it allows them to co-create history by selecting narrative paths and engaging intermedially with ancient Vindolanda. Far from being all ‘fun and games’, this process is especially effective as a pedagogical tool: players experience history not as readers, spectators, or listeners, but as visitors, endowed with first-person access to the stories and places of Britain’s Roman past.

One Year of #GamerGate: The Shared Twitter Link as Emblem of Masculinist Gamer Identity

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (8) ◽  
pp. 982-1003
Author(s):  
David O. Dowling ◽  
Christopher Goetz ◽  
Daniel Lathrop
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Boundary Work ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Gaming Culture ◽  
One Year ◽  
Gaming Communities

Since the #GamerGate controversy erupted in 2014, anti-feminist gamers continue to lash out at feminists and supporters of progressive and inclusive gaming content. A key strategy in this discourse is the sharing of content via links on Twitter, which accompany messages positioning the sender on either side of the debate. Through qualitative analysis of a data set drawn from 1,311 tweets from 2016 to 2017, we argue that tweeted links are a salient tool for signaling affiliation with gaming communities. For anti-feminist gamers, the tweeted link defines masculinist gamer identity and constructs social boundaries against the increasing diversification of video game culture reflected in higher overall rates of feminist tweets. Links can be construed as revelatory of boundary work and thus can help shed insight on the extent to which #GamerGate discourse was intended to defend gaming culture as an exclusively masculine space.

scholarly journals Use of Progressive Rock in Donkey Kong Country (1994)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Background Music ◽  
Sound Design ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Video Game Music ◽  
Strong Focus ◽  
Progressive Rock ◽  
Oxford University Press

Whereas most of Nintendo’s music from the 1990s used basic looping structure and simple chiptune-reminiscent sounds, Donkey Kong Country (1994), composed by British composer David Wise rather than by Nintendo’s in-house composition team, featured texturally more complex music, including features characteristic of the 1970s/80s progressive rock style such as short repeated melodies and chord progressions with layering (Collins 44).  For example, in “Fear Factory” (Figure 1), we hear a repeated chord progression of (VI, iv, i) underneath a faster eighth-note melody. Very little harmonic movement occurs and the focus is more on the melodic layers that occur in this top voice. In addition, “Fear Factory” includes unconventional punk, “mechanic/industrial”, and “glitch” noises that emphasize melodic content (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v18pEFQb3EM&t=45s). As William Cheng discusses in Sound Play, the use of such unconventional sounds often contribute to a feeling of dissociation and alienation in the player, and create a divide between diegetic (that is, music the characters are aware of) and non-diegetic (that is, “background” music) soundscapes (Cheng 98-9). While this is not a direct element of prog-rock, both industrial and prog-rock music styles feature a strong focus on texture. Collins speculates that this may have been an attempt by Nintendo to capitalize on the ‘edgier’ market of other game producers such as Sega (Collins 46). In this paper, an analysis of form, melodic structure, and instrumentation from Donkey Kong Country’s “Treetop Rock” and “Fear Factory” will demonstrate features atypical of Nintendo style, which normally features catchy tunes, simple instrumentation, and pop-inspired harmonies. Figure 1: e-:  VI               iv                      I                                       VI                    ivBibliography Cheng, William. Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination. The Oxford Music/media Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Collins, Karen. Game Sound an Introduction to the History, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008.

Features of speech in German and US-American mother–toddler dyads during toy play and book-reading

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-131
Author(s):  
Elena DOERING ◽  
Kevin SCHLUTER ◽  
Antje von SUCHODOLETZ
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Book Reading ◽  
Situational Context ◽  
Situational Contexts ◽  
The Us ◽  
Toy Play ◽  
Language Variables

AbstractPrevious research indicates that features of speech during mother–toddler interactions are dependent on the situational context. In this study, we explored language samples of 69 mother–toddler dyads collected during standardized toy play and book-reading situations across two countries, Germany and the United States (US). The results showed that features of speech differed across situational contexts. However, situational differences were mostly found among the sample from the US but not from Germany. Few significant associations between mothers’ and toddlers’ language variables were found. Findings are discussed with regard to variations in language across situations and countries.

Bridging the Gap

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Nicoll
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Video Game ◽  
North American ◽  
Domestic Environment ◽  
Home Video ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Object ◽  
Gaming Culture ◽  
Cultural Tensions

This article recovers the popular imaginaries surrounding an obsolete video game platform, the Neo Geo Advanced Entertainment System (AES), through a thematic discourse analysis of British and North American gaming magazines from the 1990s. Released in Japan in 1990, the Neo Geo AES was marketed as a home video game system capable of bridging the gap between the public space of the gaming arcade and the domestic environment of the home. “Imaginaries” in this context refer to the dreams and fantasies that accompanied the Neo Geo AES’s negotiation of arcade and home spaces as well as the discourses, images, ideas, and beliefs that helped mold its identity as a cultural object. Gaming magazines, I argue, help articulate how the system’s failure was tied to its unsuccessful navigation of cultural tensions during a period when gaming culture underwent a rapid relocation from the arcade to the home.

Gaming-value and culture-value: Understanding how players account for video game purchases

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 868-883 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark R Johnson ◽  
Yinyi Luo
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Use Value ◽  
Crucial Element ◽  
Consumer Capitalism ◽  
Exchange Value ◽  
Gaming Culture ◽  
Entertainment Value ◽  
Theoretical Issues ◽  
Shed Light

In most writing on video games, whether within or beyond the academy, the availability of gaming media is implicitly taken for granted. However, we propose that the act of video game purchase should be seen as an important aspect of the player–video game relationship. Drawing on original interview data, this work explores two types of video game purchasing that are common in contemporary Western gaming culture – the ‘pre-order’ (paying for a game before its release), and what we term ‘backlog purchasing’ (buying a cheap game unlikely to ever be played). Through Marx and Adorno’s theorizations of value, specifically exchange-value and use-value, we argue that, according to players, the meaningful aspects of those purchases are more than simply obtaining the entertainment value realized through gaming. Instead, different kinds of purchases activities are themselves imbued with varied and powerful values, by both players and the industry. We call these ‘gaming-value’ and ‘culture-value’. Furthermore, drawing on Lewis’ conceptualization of consumer capitalism, this article also traces the ideological root of, and the flow of power beneath, these two particular types of consumption. Through analysing video game purchases, we aim to shed light upon a crucial element of the audience–media relationship, as well as other theoretical issues, most notably adapting and updating Marxist concepts for the purpose of researching modern video games.

Gamers and Video Game Culture

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rochelle Cade ◽  
Jasper Gates
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Population Characteristics ◽  
Gaming Culture ◽  
Growing Population

Gamers are a growing population and video game culture remains unfamiliar to the majority of counselors. Little scholarship exits that would aid counselors in gaining awareness and knowledge about gamers and video game culture. Such information has implications for counselors to better meet the needs of gamers, their partners, and families seeking counseling. The authors discuss elements of gaming culture including a brief history, population characteristics, terminology, healthy and unhealthy gaming, and implications for counselors.

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