Virtual Psyche in Play and Tending the Collective Unconscious

Author(s):  
Susan Marie Savett

Knowingly or unknowingly, games manifest archetypal forces from the unconscious. Through play and fantasy, unconscious content of the psyche is able to express its deep longings. Hypnogogic landscapes of videogames provide immersive realms in which players enact psychological dramas. Game designers reside on a unique axis from which their work with the imaginary realm can create profound psychic containers. At this pivotal point in our culture, digital games hold tremendous influence over the creation of new myths, lore, and possibilities. This chapter investigates archetypal psychology concepts of Carl Jung and James Hillman for insight into 21st century realm of virtual play and its relationship to the collective unconscious. It focuses on how games provide a means for bringing individual and cultural unconscious impulses into consciousness through personification, pathologizing and meaning making within virtual play. It aims to introduce an alternative lens to bridge psychological dynamics with the video game design.

2018 ◽  
pp. 629-646
Author(s):  
Shawn Y. Holmes ◽  
Brandi Thurmond ◽  
Leonard A. Annetta ◽  
Matthew Sears

Situated in the video game design literature to foster problem-based learning, this chapter illustrates the application of educational theories to create Serious Educational Games (SEGs). SEGs present a learning condition where students can be engaged in standard-based STEM concepts and incorporate these concepts into a fun, interactive challenge where the goal is to solve a problem. This chapter explores a theoretical research investigation of such a learning environment. Students researched standard-based STEM concepts then used design techniques (i.e., story creation, flow chart, decision trees, and storyboarding techniques) and proprietary software to develop their own SEGs. This work sheds light on the process and encourages others to partake in creating similar learning environments, while providing insight into how to design for sustainability.


Author(s):  
Anna Åkerfeldt ◽  
Staffan Selander

The aim of this chapter is to explore two educational video games as a repository for action and meaning-making. Rixdax and El Patron feature two different game genres and designs. Through a comparative analysis, it will be shown how these two games actually address very different learning goals and also seem to miss a crucial aspect of learning: reflective action. This chapter will investigate how the layout on the screen is composed and how knowledge is represented. To do so, six structuring factors introduced by Prensky (2001), some of the organizing principles of learning design developed by Selander (Selander, 2008a-b; 2009, Selander & Åkerfeldt, 2008) and the multimodal framework developed by Kress and van Leeuween (Kress & van Leeuween, 2006; Kress, 2010; van Leeuween, 2005) are used. The chapter analyses the individual elements as semiotic resources in the educational video game and show how these elements are represented, especially from the points of view of information value, salience and framing, but also how the information is sequenced, the tempo of the games and how they accommodate meta-reflection by the users.


Author(s):  
Shawn Holmes ◽  
Brandi Thurmond ◽  
Leonard A. Annetta ◽  
Matthew Sears

Situated in the video game design literature to foster problem-based learning, this chapter illustrates the application of educational theories to create Serious Educational Games (SEGs). SEGs present a learning condition where students can be engaged in standard-based STEM concepts and incorporate these concepts into a fun, interactive challenge where the goal is to solve a problem. This chapter explores a theoretical research investigation of such a learning environment. Students researched standard-based STEM concepts then used design techniques (i.e., story creation, flow chart, decision trees, and storyboarding techniques) and proprietary software to develop their own SEGs. This work sheds light on the process and encourages others to partake in creating similar learning environments, while providing insight into how to design for sustainability.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-132
Author(s):  
Martine Mussies

From September 2018 to February 2019, the famous Victoria and Albert Museum in London hosted Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt, a major exhibition on contemporary video game design and culture. Announced as “a unique insight into the design process behind a selection of groundbreaking contemporary videogames,” this immersive exhibition was the end presentation of a project that took four years to undertake. Dutch PhD student Martine Mussies went over the Channel to take a look and write down her experiences for this first issue of the Journal of Sound and Music in Games.


2021 ◽  
pp. 193229682110175
Author(s):  
Valéria de Cássia Sparapani ◽  
Sidney Fels ◽  
Noreen Kamal ◽  
Rebecca Ortiz La Banca ◽  
Lucila Castanheira Nascimento

Background: Video games are interactive technologies able to support children in health promotion, behavior changes, and chronic disease self-management. The use of health behavior change determinants in video game design can increase its effectiveness. This study describes the process of designing a video game for Brazilian children with T1D clarifying the use of health behavior change determinants that may influence self-management behaviors. Methods: This was a methodological study based on health behavior change theories and the user-centered design approach. The results of a qualitative study conducted with children aged 7 to 12 years identified learning needs about knowledge on diabetes and self-care tasks which contribute to inappropriate behaviors. A Behavioral Diagnosis presented health behavior change determinants, capable of influencing children’s learning needs and behaviors, that were considered to design The Heroes of Diabetes—the power of knowledge. Results: The results presented the process of designing 4 mini games with its description and theory foundation to reach children’s lack of understanding about T1D, insulin’s role, SMBG requirements, food groups and physical activity’s role in glycemic control. Knowledge, goal settings, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation determinants were related with video games design features. Conclusions: The findings support the use of health behavior change determinants into video game design as a guide to achieve children learning needs and that might influence self-management behaviors.


Author(s):  
Italo Felipe Capasso-Ballesteros ◽  
Fernando De la Rosa-Rosero

Machinations Ruleset Generator (MaruGen) is a semi-automatic system for the generation of mechanics, rules, spaces (environments), and missions for video games. The objective of this system is to offer an expression mechanism for the video game designer role based on the definition of rules, and the ability to explore the concepts of progression and emergence in video games by using a formal, usable, and defined tool to design games with innovative and complex elements, and behaviors defined from combinations of basic elements. Based on the expressed designs and with the participation of programmers and video game artists, MaruGen allows the generation of agile video game prototypes in the Unity game engine. These prototypes can be analyzed by the entire workgroup to look for games with diverse complexities that make them attractive to their users. MaruGen is based on the expression of rules on elements of interest in video games and the rewriting mechanism using L-Systems for the generation of procedural content. MaruGen was evaluated in the construction of the Cubic Explorer video game and tested by gamers and video game developers during the Game Jam Ludum Dare 38.


Mechademia ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark J. P. Wolf

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