Alternatives to Punishment: The power to annul an economic exchange promotes self- rather than other-regarding preferences in fairness and trust games

Fairness and trust appraisals that engender economic exchange rely on thoughts about another person’s mind to satisfy self- (profit maximising) and other-regarding (social motives) preferences. Punishment should promote fairness and trust within economic exchange, guarding against free-riding and trust violations, but depends on other-regarding preferences concerned with the violator. Here, we explore an alternative to punishment that may instead promote self-regarding preferences—the opportunity for the decision-maker to annul (veto) the economic transaction. We test this veto approach by having participants assume the role of investor(s) in modified versions of the public goods (Studies one and three) and trust games (Studies two and four). Across four studies both online and in laboratory with two economic games, investor(s) could veto a transaction—annul a previous exchange—if the return from the other player(s) was deemed unsatisfactory. We find that this manipulation increased investment by the investor(s), consistent with games where second-party punishment is possible. Moreover, self-regarding preferences predicted veto behaviour, while other-regarding preferences predicted punishment behaviour. We argue that this veto approach can be an alternative to punishment that can safe-guard fairness and trust during economic exchange.

Playful Trajectories and Experimentations

The main goal of this work is to discuss the place and role of video games in contemporary societies and their impact on individual relationships. It analyses how the development of video games is a sign of and a factor in the democratization of modern societies. It explores how video games contribute to the moral and political socialization of children and teenagers. The work is structured into two parts. The first explores the methodological, ethical and epistemological implications of Games Studies, and shows how the development of an independent field of research on video games can be analyzed as a sign of democratization. The second part focuses on youth identity experimentations and how video games can contribute to the democratization of social relations. Play inequalities are discussed, but it is also shown how video games are reconfiguring family and peer relationships, thereby influencing the movement of democratization of societies.

Reprogramming the History of Video Games: A Historian’s Approach to Video Games and Their History

This paper explores the need and opportunities for historians to recognize the importance of video games to their research in modern American history. While this paper is rooted in examples specific to United States history, the call for historians to examine video games, engage with the rich field of games studies, and explore video games as sources in historical scholarship is a universal one, applicable to all fields of history. In this paper we argue that digital games are an essential part of media and cultural history and while media scholars and others interested in game studies have taken up the mantel of video games history, historians have been slow to respond to the medium and even slower to engage with video games as historical sources.

Videogames, imersão e experiência sensível: um paralelo das reverberações na educação tecnológica

Resumo: O artigo discute a experiência de jogar e a imersão em narrativas de universos primorosamente simulados (MURRAY, 2003) dos videogames como força-motriz da alteridade no mundo do jogo e na vida cotidiana a partir de processos de aprendizagem. Elencando conceitos como experiência deweyana, comunicação sensível de Marcondes Filho (2010) e reverberações do uso de tecnologias educacionais como processos formativos, formulações de juízos e mobilizações afetivas nos jogadores, o artigo traz uma discussão teórica sobre afetos, usos, percepções e relações humano-maquínicas na Educação e Comunicação enquanto campos multidisciplinares. Emprega, nesse sentido, um percurso metodológico marcado por proposta de discussão teórica a partir de levantamento bibliográfico e observação participante (TRAUTH; O’CONNOR, 1991), que resulta em considerações marcadas pela evidência de que o uso das tecnologias é capaz de mudar o modo como nos vemos, possibilitando novas formas de experimentar o mundo, garantindo um cenário de aprendizado pela multidimensionalidade do conceito atual de letramento. Palavras-chave: Games Studies. Imersão. Experiência sensível. Educação tecnológica.

Las bases politológicas de la trans-gamificación: aproximaciones a un fenómeno gaming radical

La Gamificación se ha convertido en de los últimos años en una tendencia. Y con ello no solo hablamos de una “técnica”, sino de un fenómeno de gaming de carácter radical. En los tiempos de hoy urge instaurar una discusión profunda de su impacto social más que de su mera intención de generar espacios de compromiso o aprendizaje, debido justamente a su expansión hacia ámbitos antiguamente “consagrados a lo productivo”. A este fenómeno extra-productivo le denominamos Trans-gamificación. En este artículo presentaremos las influencias politológicas más profundas de este fenómeno cultural y hablaremos de su expansión molecular hacia campos considerados socialmente como “inocentes” como lo es la “cotidianidad”. En definitiva, se trata de una profundización filosófico-política de un fenómeno que está cambiando el significado discursivo de lo “productivo “o lo “lúdico” y, que a su vez, invitan a los Games Studies a re-pensar y re-significar el denominado “círculo mágico” de Johan Huizinga.

Playable Personas: Using Games and Play to Expand the Repertoire of Learner Personas

This article explores how playing and co-creating games in higher education contexts contributes to expanding learner personas and facilitating a multimodal learning experience. Working from the interdisciplinary perspectives of media/games studies, pedagogy, and linguistic anthropology, we conceptualize in-class learning as the making and playing of games, reporting on game experiments and playful practices targeted at learning key theoretical concepts in our disciplines. Game-based modifications to established educational practices involved: replacing lectures with Educational Live Action Role Play (Bowman 2014) sessions, using acting/performance games (Flanagan 2009) to critically reflect on ideas of community and collective identity, and introducing Twine (Werning 2017; Wilson & Saklofske 2019) to defamiliarize the expected structures and media modalities of academia. Based on evidence from participant reflections and classroom ethnographies, we argue that games can serve as a resource for extending the expressive spectrum of learner personas, for enabling embodied, participatory learning of theory, and for empowering students and educators to reflect on our internalized rules of the game of education.

Mapping Persona and Games

For those new to games studies, the most important primer is the recognition that, as a field of research, it is at its most revealing when in conversation with perspectives from other fields and domains of inquiry. Espen Aarseth (2001) announced that the first issue of Game Studies, the international journal of computer game research, marked the commencement of computer game studies. Aarseth's editorial launched the trajectory for the following two decades of game research, obscuring much of the previous work examining digital and analogue games that had contributed to the tipping point at which the fields' coalescence could become a reality. Emerging from media studies, sociology, and a particular tradition of textual analysis in cinema and literature studies, games studies has since had a reputation for being the latest kid on the block. Like persona studies, game studies features key moments in which intersections between it and other fields and their theoretical and analytical perspectives prove enlightening, enriching, and even entertaining.

Gaming the Publishing Industry: Exploring Diverse Open Scholarship Models in Digital Games Studies

The emergent field of digital game scholarship has developed along unique communicative lines, illuminating alternative models and diversified potentials for scholarly communication. Following the decline of print-based magazine journalism, the rise of moderated aggregator sites, such as Kotaku, Polygon, and Rock Paper Shotgun has exposed many independent voices to larger audiences. Much of the scholarship cited in current academic work can be found online at sites like Critical Distance (which uses “roundups, roundtables, podcasts, and critical compilations” to encourage dialogue between “developers, critics, educators and enthusiasts”), First Person Scholar, a middle-state publication that combines “the timeliness and succinctness of a blog, while retaining the rigor and context of a conventional journal article” (Hawreliak), highly polished and curated online zines such as Heterotopias, and from quality video bloggers such as Noah Caldwell Gervais and short-form documentary creators such as Gvmers. These heterogeneous alternatives collectively model a publishing plasticity and adaptiveness, establishing a culture of open scholarship practices, inclusive and diverse voices, and a rapid deployment of ideas and perspectives. This paper argues that emergent models of scholarly communication explored by the game studies community include but also moderate the reactive energies of social media and the toxicity of “gamer” culture.

Video games through the refrain: Innovation and familiarity

The video game market is dominated by numerous franchises and many players lament that games are becoming boring and repetitive. However it is evident that players desire these games, which sell well. This article suggests that Deleuze and Guattari’s refrain can help explain why players desire repetition in games, and what kinds of risks and potentials it can provide. Specifically, in regard to gameplay I consider elements including genre and mechanics, and player’s desire to re-experience games. To explore repetition in players I consider game communities and the gamer identity, which can open up players to difference or encourage restriction. I argue that understood through the refrain, repetition in video games has the potential to generate difference, innovation and connections, but also possibly a closing off. The refrain is a useful tool for games studies and industry workers who are interested in understanding how new experiences can emerge from repetition.

2K-Reality and the Compliant Sports Augmentation Framework for Grassroots Sports

In this paper, we introduce the Compliant Sports Augmentation Framework (CSAF), which aims to promote a sociocultural approach to the design of sports technology for grassroots sports. The CSAF design criteria advocate enhancing the experiential qualities of grassroots sports by respecting, protecting and cultivating existing practices, meanings and values. We developed the CSAF by synthesising the theory, practice and evaluation components of our 2K-Reality design research project that sought to enhance the enjoyment of playing and watching pickup basketball with digital technology. The disciplines that contributed to our development of the CSAF include sports philosophy, sports psychology, games studies, public health and sports management.