Mental Health in 3D

There is a wealth of research on the depiction and impact of mental health representations in traditional media; however, less is known about video games. As the dominant form of media in the 21st century, video games uniquely portray mental illness in traditional ways as well as in ways unique to video games, such as in-game mechanics (e.g., sanity meters) and player-driven decision making. This paper outlines the importance of cultural messages relating to mental illness as conveyed through video games in terms of content and influence and presents a multi-dimensional model of analysis for the representation of mental illness in digital games. The aim of this paper is to provide a foundation for understanding how mental illness is represented in digital games, provide a new perspective for thinking critically about representation of mental illness in games, and overview a new framework for assessing video game content in this area.

The Impact of Sexualized Video Game Content and Cognitive Load on State Rape Myth Acceptance

The potential negative impact of sexualized video games on attitudes toward women is an important issue. Studies that have examined this issue are rare and contain a number of limitations. Therefore, it largely remains unclear whether sexualized video games can have an impact on attitudes toward women. This study examined the consequences of sexualized video game content and cognitive load (moderator) on rape victim blame and rape perpetrator blame (used as a proxy of rape myth acceptance), and whether the degree of humanness of the victim and of the perpetrator mediated these effects. Participants (N = 142) played a video game using sexualized or non-sexualized female characters. Cognitive load was manipulated by setting the difficulty level of the game to low or high. After gameplay, participants read a rape date story, and were then asked to judge the victim’s and the perpetrator’s degree of responsibility and humanness. Based on the General Aggression Model (GAM), it was hypothesized that playing the video game with a sexualized content would increase the responsibility assigned to the victim and diminish the responsibility assigned to the perpetrator. Further, degree of humanness of the victim and the perpetrator was expected to mediate this relation. The results were partially consistent with these predictions: Playing a video game containing sexualized female characters increased rape victim blame when cognitive load was high, but did not predict degree of humanness accorded to the victim. Concerning the perpetrator, video game sexualization did not influence responsibility, but partly influenced humanness. This study concludes that video games impact on attitudes toward women and this, in part, due to its interactive nature.

PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATION ADAPTATION OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE GAMING AAA PROJECTS

The article examines the problems of translation adaptation when localizing high-budget AAA-class video games. The author considers the chosen specialized field as a new discursive genre, identifies verbal components of video game content, and classifies denotative, linguistic and pragmatic violations in the translation of the studied video game projects. Based on the results of the study, the solution to the problem of making an error-free translation is seen in an individual approach; the ways to improve the translation localization of the final product of gaming industry are proposed.

Copyright law issues in the context of video game Let's Plays and livestreams

Video game content has grown increasingly popular on internet service providers such as YouTube and Twitch. This genre of uploaded material includes the gameplay of internet users, in the form of pre-recorded ‘Let's Play’ videos, as well as livestreamed playthroughs. However, the application of current copyright law principles to these kinds of content is still a grey area. This legal uncertainty can be attributed to the absence of binding judicial precedent on whether video game Let's Plays and livestreams constitute copyright infringement or fair use. More recent legislative provisions intended to update copyright law for current digital technology provide little assistance, as their implementation by internet platforms has perpetuated a practice of favouring the interests of game developers over users who produce Let's Plays and livestreams. This article discusses the problems of applying existing copyright law to video game playthroughs uploaded online, as well as the drawbacks of the automated tools YouTube and Twitch have developed to manage these types of content in their systems. In order to address these issues, suggestions for copyright law reform will be explored. However, in the absence of imminent legislative amendments, I conclude that compulsory licensing arrangements, and making modifications to YouTube's and Twitch's content scanning tools are the most viable means of achieving a better balance between the interests of game developers, the internet platforms, and Let's Play creators and game streamers.

Video Game Increases Depression in Students

Introduction The effects of exposure to violence in newspaper and electronic media to children and adolescents were being an awareness various parties, namely, researchers, health practitioners and policy makers. Depression is a mental problem that is always found due to exposure to video games. Method This study was an observational study with a cross-sectional research design. The subjects of the study were teenagers aged 15-18 years, students of Vocational School Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Data analysis was performed with IBM SPSS 16. Data analysis to assess the relationship between length and video game content with depression levels (Children’s Depression Inventory -2) used Independent student T-test analysis and linear regression analysis. Results The study subjects consisted of 4.3% men and 95.7% women. There were no significant differences between subjects with male and female sex related to CDI-2 score, p> 0.05. The sexes of men and women have CDI-2 scores of 26.92 ± 5.02 and 26, 42 ± 3.32, respectively. There is a significant relationship between the intensity of playing video games with a CDI-2 score. Research subjects who had the intensity of playing video games for more than 2 hours a day had a higher mean CDI-2 score (28.62 ± 2.62, p <0.05) when compared to research subjects who played video games for less than 2 hours per day (26.13 ± 3.38, p <0.05). There was a significant relationship between video game content and the average CDI-2 score. Research subjects who played violent video games had higher CDI-2 scores (29.91 ± 2.07, p <0.05) when compared to groups who played video games with non-violent game themes (26, 29 ± 3.37 , p <0.05). Based on linear regression analysis, there is a relationship between the intensity of playing video games with the average CDI-2 score (β = 1.87, SE = 0.72, p = 0.01). Meanwhile, for video game content there is no relationship between video game content containing violence and the average CDI-2 score (β = 1.91, SE = 1.21, p = 0.11). Conclusion There is a relationship between the intensity of playing video games with the average CDI-2 score.

Divergent meta-analyses do not present uniform evidence that violent video game content increases aggressive behaviour.

Whether violent games increase aggression is a contentious issue. The relatively enduring disagreement in the literature about whether violent video games cause increased aggression is reflected in divergent meta-analyses. Though we applaud Mathur and VanderWeele (2019) for attempting to synthesise such divergent meta-analyses to determine an overarching view on the effects of violent media, we argue that their interpretation of the evidence is misguided. Underpinning the notion that the evidence, in general, favours a “violent game effect” lie two problematic assumptions: (a) that the analyses conducted within these meta-analyses are equally methodologically and statistically rigorous and therefore equally valid, and (b) that even tiny effects are veridical. Here, we show that the effects reported by Anderson et al. (2010) appear to overstate the evidence in favour of a relationship between violent game content and aggression, and that bias-corrected models produce only tiny effects (Hilgard et al., 2017). We then compare these smaller effects estimated by Hilgard et al. (2017) and Ferguson (2015) to show that they appear to be in close agreement. Finally, as a reminder that non-zero meta-analytic effect sizes do not guarantee that an effect is meaningful, we compare these effect sizes to the sizes of (significant) yet nonsense effects of Extra Sensory Perception to show that the effects of violent game content on aggression are so small that we should dismiss them as practically meaningless.

SKAITMENINIO KŪRYBIŠKUMO TAIKYMAS GENERUOJANT ŽAIDIMO OBJEKTUS / COMPUTATION CREATIVITY USING PROCEDURAL GENERATION FOR GAME OBJECT GENERATION

One of the hardest task for a machine is creativity. Computational creativity defines creative task completion for a machine. Three main creative content generation methods are: exploratory, combinatorial and transformational. Video game content can be generated using procedural generation. Computational creativity, procedural generation, and application are explained in this paper. Procedural level generator is used as a base and additional features are built on top of it. The main goal of this research and modification is to increase application creative value, variety and expression. Additional functionality consists of tree and texture generation.