Media Enjoyment as Need Satisfaction: The Contribution of Hedonic and Nonhedonic Needs

Most early research on entertainment defines media enjoyment in functional terms as the satisfaction of hedonic needs. Two studies demonstrate the value of including nonhedonic and hedonic need satisfaction in defining enjoyment. Both studies find support for a need‐satisfaction model showing that hedonic (arousal and affect) and nonhedonic (competence and autonomy) need satisfaction account for unique variance in enjoyment experienced during video game play. Study 2 extends the findings of Study 1 to account for noninteractive media entertainment enjoyment. Results show hedonic and nonhedonic need satisfaction to be distinct but complementary components of media enjoyment. Discussion focuses on the advantage of a needs‐based approach for understanding positive valuations of media and offers a new perspective on the enjoyment–appreciation distinction.     

First person paparazzi: Why social media should be studied more like video games

Video games are often thought of as a type of social media, yet social media are not often thought of as a type of video game. This essay provides an exploratory study of the gaps in research at the intersection of social media and video game research, specifically as they relate to user identity and concepts of reality. Social media and video games are explored through their similarities, including goals of becoming a hero/celebrity, exemplified in social media through users acting like their own paparazzi.     

关于科普游戏的思考 要要探寻科学普及与电子游戏的融合

目前科普游戏的研究尚处于初级阶段,开发理念相对滞后。论文从科学普及与电子游戏的互动关联出发,提出两者之间存在教育功能与娱乐功能上的冲突性;由于两者目标受众的重叠以及都强调受众主动参与所形成的亲和性;以及两者在科学规律和游戏规律尊重基础上的合成性。在此基础上探讨了科学普及和电子游戏如何实现有效融合,并对科普游戏的发展提出了建议。     

Causes of State Hostility and Enjoyment in Player Versus Player and Player Versus Environment Video Games

Video games have been under scholarly study since the 1980s, but few studies have blended the research areas of video games and aggression and video game enjoyment. This article seeks to determine how certain game play factors affect hostility, enjoyment, and the relationship between the 2 variables. A total of 289 students played games in player‐versus‐player (PvP) and player‐versus‐environment (PvE) situations. Findings indicate that outcome, competitive situation, and genre interact in their influence on state hostility and enjoyment. Results suggest that in some cases, game players are able to enjoy games despite negative experiences, such as losing, but players in PvP situations experience enjoyment‐reducing levels of hostility, contrary to P. Vorderer et al.'s (2004) complex entertainment model.     

Playing mobile games for stress recovery purposes: A survey of Chinese adolescents

Mobile gaming has become a popular leisure activity for adolescent students in China. However, little is known about the use of mobile games while adolescents are stressed and exhausted. Drawing on the framework of recovery experiences, this study examined: (a) which mobile game cluster can elicit the highest recovery experiences for adolescent players? And (b) what drives them to play mobile games for stress recovery purposes? To answer these questions, a probability sample of 638 adolescents was recruited from 14 high schools in Shenzhen, China. Results showed that social mobile games characterized by high sociability but low control complexity had the highest potential to elicit recovery experiences, as it was positively related to relaxation, mastery, and control experience. The recovery dimension of psychological detachment and relaxation were found positively related to the use of mobile games for stress recovery purposes, whereas mastery and control experiences were not. Among all five adolescent stressors, only peer pressure was found positively correlated with the use of mobile games while adolescents were stressed and exhausted. Theoretical implications for understanding the relationships among four recovery dimensions and practical implications for promoting the positive effects of mobile gaming for adolescent players were discussed.     

Playing into the wild: A gesture-based interface for gaming in public spaces

Gestural-based interfaces have become one of the fundamental technologies that can determine the success of new computer games. In fact, computer games today offer interaction paradigms that go well beyond the use of remote controls, letting players directly perform exchanges with the objects and characters that compose the virtual worlds that are displayed in front of them. To perform such exchanges, new algorithms and technologies have been devised which include advanced visual recognition schemes, new video cameras and accelerometer sensors. At the same time, other important trends are also quietly emerging in the same domain: game designers, in fact, are slowly shifting their attention out of the walls of gaming fanatics homes, broadening their interests to computer games that can be played in public spaces, as exhibitions and museums. However, to the best of our knowledge, only a very limited amount of research experiences have taken into account the problem of producing computer games, based on gesture-based interfaces that well suit such settings. Hence, in this paper we address the problem of differentiating the design of a gesture-based interface for a console from the problem of designing it for a public space setting. Moreover, we will show that within a public space, it is possible to narrow down the vision algorithms that can well support the recognition of complex actions, whereas solely relying on a simple webcam. In particular, we will describe the design and implementation of an interface that well suits public immersive scenarios, since it is based on a simple and efficient set of algorithms which, combined with the intelligence given by the knowledge of the context of where a game is played, leads to a fast and robust interpretation of hand gestures. To witness this last aspect, we will report on the results obtained from the deployment of a computer game we specifically developed for public spaces, termed Tortellino X-Perience, which has been enjoyed by hundreds of visitors at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.     

Who won the social media March Madness bracket? Demand shifters for Twitter followers

Social media has become an essential set of platforms for sport teams and organizations to engage, interact, and connect with their fan bases. From an analytic approach to fan demand for sport tournaments, the authors examined the demand shifters motivating fans to follow social media accounts within the context of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Men's Basketball Championship. Changes in the number of followers of participating teams’ Twitter accounts were tracked daily during the tournament as a proxy for fan interest and demand. Independent variables regarding game performance, previous performance, and school performance were analyzed in a regression model. The findings indicated that, during the tournament, fans' social media following behavior was different from the behavior during the regular season games. Further, there were shifts in fans’ social media following behavior in the advanced rounds compared to earlier rounds in a tournament setting. A tournament setting has certain unique attributes that can arouse new consumers' interests, and thus practitioners can tailor their content to appeal to fans, increase follower interaction and reach, and provide better content to maintain the followership gains moving forward, using tournament settings.     

Convergence between the real and the augmented: Experiences and perceptions in location-based games

Location-based augmented reality (AR) games have recently become massively popular, generating billions of dollars in revenue during the past five years. These games augment geographical areas with playful content, which makes the playing experience dependent on both the game and the playing location. Existing games have employed various methods for increasing the connection between the game and the physical world, such as (1) an AR mode that lets players see virtual objects in the physical world through the lens of their mobile device; and (2) connecting the game’s virtual points of interest (PoIs) to physical world objects. To explore how these influence the playing experience, we surveyed players (N = 74) across four popular location-based AR games. We analyzed the data using a thematic clustering approach, which resulted in five central themes. Among our findings was that only 7% of the surveyed players regularly used or appreciated AR features that made use of the mobile device’s camera. The most often given reason for this was that they slow down progression. By contrast, players appreciated location-based features and the augmentation of digital content on a map interface. Connecting the virtual content to physical world objects was seen to have the benefits of (1) supporting social meetings; (2) enabling learning about the real world; and (3) increasing the meaningfulness of the virtual content.     

The Guilty Couch Potato: The Role of Ego Depletion in Reducing Recovery Through Media Use

This article addresses ego depletion as a mechanism influencing media‐based stress recovery processes. Using structural equation modeling, relationships between ego depletion, procrastination, guilt, enjoyment, vitality, and recovery experience were tested using data from an online survey (N = 471). Results suggest that ego depletion may increase the risk of negatively appraising the use of interactive (video games) and noninteractive (television) entertaining media as a form of procrastination. The resulting guilt is negatively related to the recovery experience associated with using entertainment. Therefore, ego‐depleted individuals may benefit less from the psychological recovery potential of entertainment media, despite their greater need for recovery. These findings are an important step in understanding the pivotal role of appraisal processes for media‐induced recovery and the entertainment experience.     

How variation in internet access,digital skills,and media use are related to rural student outcomes: GPA,SAT, and educational aspirations

Some have pointed to divides in the availability of fixed home broadband Internet access as a contributor to rural students’ lower levels of educational attainment. Based on standardized exams (SAT Suite) and a survey of rural Michigan students in grades 8–11, we find that rural students with broadband home Internet access are more interested in school and leave homework incomplete less often. However, the relationship to classroom grades (GPA) is relatively trivial. Yet, we find that students who are not dependent on a cell phone for Internet access and those with higher digital skills, especially social media skills, rank considerably higher on the SAT. Rural students with broadband Internet access are able to participate in a more diverse array of online media activities, which supports building digital skills. Any negative relationship between time spent on social media, video games, other digital media and educational outcomes is outweighed by the benefit to digital skills. However, aspects of rural culture; including the emphasis on activities such as sports, as a path to postsecondary schooling and upward, social mobility; may be stunting the positive relationship between access, digital skills, and educational aspirations. Whereas extra-curricular sports have no direct relationship to SAT performance, students who spend more time on sports receive higher grades and have higher educational aspirations than those with more digital skills. We discuss the implications for rural students’ access to human capital and how the unequal relationship between digital skills and performance in the classroom and on the SAT may perpetuate inequalities.     

Extending the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to explain online game playing among Malaysian undergraduate students

As the world moves into the web 2.0 era, everyone can connect virtually, and online game playing has become a trend. Online games are played over computer networks, usually over the Internet. Online games entail a number of advantages, such as the ability to connect to multiplayer games, although single-player online games are also rather popular. This exploratory study focused on modeling the determinants of actual use of online game playing. Many researchers have shown perceived enjoyment and flow experience as important drivers of actual use of online game playing. The theory of planned behavior has been used in this study. Data were collected from 1584 Universiti Sains Malaysia students with different backgrounds using a structured questionnaire. The findings show that perceived enjoyment has the strongest influence on actual use. Other variables found to influence actual usage include the level of perceived behavioral control, subjective norms, attitude, perceived enjoyment, and flow experience. Implications of this research for future researchers will also be discussed. We hope this research will increase researchers’ interest in further development in this sector and that the model will assist the games industry to identify factors that increase actual use by players.     

Design and Implementation of a Reconfigurable Mobile Game Controller on Smartphone

Expansion of games industry came in modern life, accompanied with innovative features in a game controller. Nowadays mobile industry is booming with the expansion of the variety of novel technologies, such as the use of 3D accelerometer sensors, high resolution cameras, the capability of connecting to wireless networks and so on. Therefore, a smartphone can be added with the game control functions to become a mobile game controller. In this paper, we propose the design and implementation of making a mobile phone as a game controller using User Datagram Protocol socket programming. This system is developed by Java 2 Standard Edition and Google Android Software Development Kits which has already provided sensor and multi-touch APIs. We successfully realize a reconfigurable mobile game controller on a mobile smartphone to interact with the existing digital games by mapping control functions on the server. Acceptable performance is shown to validate the effectiveness of our solution.     

Bottleneck Routing Games in Communication Networks

We consider routing games where the performance of each user is dictated by the worst (bottleneck) element it employs. We are given a network, finitely many (selfish) users, each associated with a positive flow demand, and a load-dependent performance function for each network element; the social (i.e., system) objective is to optimize the performance of the worst element in the network (i.e., the network bottleneck). Although we show that such "bottleneck" routing games appear in a variety of practical scenarios, they have not been considered yet. Accordingly, we study their properties, considering two routing scenarios, namely when a user can split its traffic over more than one path (splittable bottleneck game) and when it cannot (unsplittable bottleneck game). First, we prove that, for both splittable and unsplittable bottleneck games, there is a (not necessarily unique) Nash equilibrium. Then, we consider the rate of convergence to a Nash equilibrium in each game. Finally, we investigate the efficiency of the Nash equilibria in both games with respect to the social optimum; specifically, while for both games we show that the price of anarchy is unbounded, we identify for each game conditions under which Nash equilibria are socially optimal.     

Play the game [multimedia research]

Children easily cope with the technology and user interfaces of games. For them, digital entertainment is a fact of life, not some futuristic dream. Moreover, their experiences with entertainment technology shape their expectations for digital media-based technology. The author considers why the advances in games and digital entertainment are or seem to be swifter than in multimedia research. It seems that the underlying question behind the development effort is different. In digital entertainment, the customer is king. Developers constantly assess who their customers are and whether their products meet consumers' needs. Multimedia researchers, however, seem to focus on how to solve a particular problem and ignore the real-world applicability part of the equation. Perhaps we should play computer games more often and put ourselves in the consumers' seat to find out what is happening out there     

The Effects of a Serious Game on Role‐Taking and Willingness to Help

Serious games are emerging as a new medium for social change. This study investigated the influence of presentation mode afforded by different media on willingness to help in the context of humanitarian aid. Two online experiments were conducted. The first experiment demonstrated that playing the Darfur is Dying game elicited greater role‐taking and resulted in greater willingness to help the Darfurian people than reading a text conveying the same information. The second experiment deconstructed the variable presentation mode in more detail by adding a game watching condition. Similar results were found such that game playing resulted in greater role‐taking and willingness to help than game watching and text reading. Implications for researchers and game developers are also discussed.     

Identification Matters: A Moderated Mediation Model of Media Interactivity,Character Identification,and Video Game Violence on Aggression

This study examined the effects of interactivity in violent video games on aggression and tested identification as the moderated mediating mechanism. A total of 169 male undergraduate students participated in a 2 media interactivity (enactive mediation vs. observational mediation) × 2 violence (violent vs. nonviolent) experiment. Results supported a moderated mediation model in which the effect of media interactivity on aggressive affect through identification was moderated by violence. When violence was present, interactive play resulted in higher short‐term aggressive affect through higher character identification than when violence was not present. Additionally, an interaction effect between media interactivity and violence was found for automatic self‐concept in which players associated themselves more with the game character's traits than video viewers.     

Understanding Why Scholars Hold Different Views on the Influences of Video Games on Public Health

Despite decades of research, no scholarly consensus has been achieved regarding the potential impact of video games on youth aggression or other public health concerns. In recent years, hypotheses have been raised that scholarly opinions on video games may resemble past moral panics, with attitudes reflective of generational conflicts. These hypotheses are tested in a sample of 175 criminologists, psychologists, and media scholars, examining both overall negative attitudes about video games and perceived linkages with youth assaults specifically. Results reflected continued lack of scholarly consensus on the issue of video game influences with only 15.3% of scholars endorsing the view that violent video games contribute to youth assaults. As hypothesized, older scholars endorsed more negative views of video games generally, although this appeared to be related to experience with games rather than age per se. Scholars with more negative attitudes toward youth themselves were also more negative about games. Criminologists and media scholars were more skeptical of violent video games contributing to youth assaults than were psychologists. These results are discussed in relation to Moral Panic Theory.     

融媒体时代——乙女游戏中的女性主义和沉浸式传播研究

市场中针对女性用户玩家的游戏都有其特殊性,在视觉和听觉等直接感官方面、游戏中NPC的设置方面、游戏的情节方面以及主题游戏里面所嵌套的小游戏方面,都与一般性的手机游戏有所不同。自2017年《恋与制作人》为代表的乙女游戏风靡中国成为现象级事件之后,女性向手游不断发展——数量大幅度提升,种类多样化,游戏产品的设计流程也逐渐完善,但总体来说在理论研究方面,无论是针对此现象级事件背后所蕴含的社会因素的研究还是针对女性玩家情感心理活动的研究都相对较少,多数研究还是从游戏产业发展的角度出发,因此旨在从女性主义发展的角度出发,去研究针对女性用户玩家的游戏中所蕴含的文化修辞。除此之外,以人为核心的“沉浸式传播”贯穿生活中的方方面面,在女性手游中也将其充分体现。传播实践中,“沉浸”与“场景”常常相辅相成,在乙女游戏中,通过不同游戏场景、游戏人物的设置,玩家在玩游戏的过程中也在有意识或者无意识地接受着游戏中传递出来的价值观念和文化内容。     

Digital Games Research: A Survey Study on an Emerging Field and Its Prevalent Debates

Digital games have become a popular form of media entertainment. However, it remains unclear whether a canon of accepted knowledge and research practices has emerged that may define an independent field of research. This study is a collaborative effort to analyze the outlines of digital games research (DGR) through a survey among the membership of 3 institutionalized structures focusing on the study of digital games (International Communication Association Game Studies Interest Group, European Communication Research and Education Association Temporary Working Group DGR, and Digital Games Research Association). The study reveals relatively homogeneous viewpoints among games researchers, even regarding controversial aspects of digital games. It mirrors the mainstream scholarly views on contentious issues of a recently emerged field within communication studies.