Retracted: Antecedents and Consequences of Gender Swapping in Online Games

This study examines the reasons underlying gender swapping and its impacts on online gaming behavior. While previous studies considered gender swapping to be an abnormal or rare exception in one's self‐presentation, this study hypothesized that people swap genders as a rational choice based on practical benefits. An online survey was conducted with 318 male players of MMORPGs in Korea. Players swapped gender in games to gain benefits from other players under the condition of anonymity rather than to represent their own gender identity. Men playing female avatars displayed more socially amiable behaviors conventionally characterized as more feminine. Moreover, players were more willing to purchase virtual goods to decorate their gender swapped avatars, mediated by their emotional attachment to their avatar.     

Foveated Real‐Time Ray Tracing for Head‐Mounted Displays

Head‐mounted displays with dense pixel arrays used for virtual reality applications require high frame rates and low latency rendering. This forms a challenging use case for any rendering approach. In addition to its ability of generating realistic images, ray tracing offers a number of distinct advantages, but has been held back mainly by its performance. In this paper, we present an approach that significantly improves image generation performance of ray tracing. This is done by combining foveated rendering based on eye tracking with reprojection rendering using previous frames in order to drastically reduce the number of new image samples per frame. To reproject samples a coarse geometry is reconstructed from a G‐Buffer. Possible errors introduced by this reprojection as well as parts that are critical to the perception are scheduled for resampling. Additionally, a coarse color buffer is used to provide an initial image, refined smoothly by more samples were needed. Evaluations and user tests show that our method achieves real‐time frame rates, while visual differences compared to fully rendered images are hardly perceivable. As a result, we can ray trace non‐trivial static scenes for the Oculus DK2 HMD at 1182 × 1464 per eye within the the VSync limits without perceived visual differences.     

The effects of collective MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) play on gamers’ online and offline social capital

This study examines the impact of collective MMORPG play on gamers’ social capital in both the virtual world and the real world. Collective MMORPG play is conceptualized as the frequency of joint gaming actions and gamers’ assessment of the experience in MMORPG guilds and groups. Social capital at the individual level refers to the resources and support provided by bonding and bridging social networks; collective-level social capital refers to people’s civic engagement. A two-wave online survey was conducted to collect data from 232 Chinese MMORPG players.Two structural equation models were developed to test whether collective play influences offline social capital via the mediation of online social capital; the results did not demonstrate the existence of mediation effects. Specifically, collective play positively influences gamers’ online bonding social capital, online bridging social capital and online civic engagement. The effect of collective play on offline bonding and bridging social capital is not significant; the effect of online bonding/bridging social capital on offline bonding/bridging social capital is not significant either. The study finds a significantly positive impact of collective play on offline civic engagement. The effect of online civic engagement on offline civic engagement is not significant. In contrast with collective play, the time of gaming is found to negatively influence online and offline social capital.This study contributes to the knowledge of social capital because it tests the effects of new media on online and offline social capital in the Chinese culture. In addition, this study provides empirical evidence for the positive effects of online games and highlights the social experience in MMORPG play and how it influences gamers’ social networks and collective participation.     

Scalable Multi‐view Registration for Multi‐Projector Displays on Vertically Extruded Surfaces

Recent work have shown that it is possible to register multiple projectors on non‐planar surfaces using a single uncalibrated camera instead of a calibrated stereo pair when dealing with a special class of non‐planar surfaces, vertically extruded surfaces. However, this requires the camera view to contain the entire display surface. This is often an impossible scenario for large displays, especially common in visualization, edutainment, training and simulation applications. In this paper we present a new method that can achieve an accurate geometric registration even when the field‐of‐view of the uncalibrated camera can cover only a part of the vertically extruded display at a time. We pan and tilt the camera from a single point and employ a multi‐view approach to register the projectors on the display. This allows the method to scale easily both in terms of camera resolution and display size. To the best of our knowledge, our method is the first to achieve a scalable multi‐view geometric registration of large vertically extruded displays with a single uncalibrated camera. This method can also handle a different situation of having multiple similarly oriented cameras in different locations, if the camera focal length is known.     

Why We Distort in Self‐Report: Predictors of Self‐Report Errors in Video Game Play

Using Cognitive Dissonance and Balance Theory, this study investigates factors that predict how and why MMO players inaccurately report their game playing time. It was hypothesized that players belonging to categories other than the stereotypical game player (e.g. younger, less educated, male) would be likely to underreport playing time. It was also hypothesized that those players who held less positive attitudes toward the game would be more likely to underreport their playing time. Comparing people's self‐reported weekly usage of an MMO, EverQuest II, with their actual average weekly usage of the game, data showed that age, education, lack of enjoyment playing the game, and lack of an online sense of community predicted greater levels of underreporting.     

Third-Person Perceptions and Online Games: A Comparison of Perceived Antisocial and Prosocial Game Effects

The popularity of online games has inspired controversial discussion on the effects of game-play in both mass media and academia. However, we know little about ordinary people's opinions about the effects of game-play. The current study applies the theory of the third-person effect (TPE) to examine people's perceptions of game effects on self and on others, and detects significant third-person perceptual discrepancies. The results show that the magnitude of third-person perceptions is influenced by the social desirability of the message, the social distance between self and others, and by differential exposure to online games. The data supports the hypotheses that Internet efficacy and interdependent self-construal are significant antecedents of third-person perceptions, and partially supports the interaction effect of self-construal with Internet-efficacy and the interaction effect of self-construal with media social desirability.     

Online social networking and psychological experiences: The perceptions of young people with mental health difficulties

ObjectivesThis study explores the interaction between online social networking experiences and wellbeing in 12 young people accessing mental health services.MethodsData from semi-structured interviews was analysed using Grounded Theory methodology.Results“Threats and judgement” and “connection and support” were experienced by adolescents, facilitated by having continuous access to a vast social network. These experiences influenced adolescents' psychological wellbeing, mediated by their responses to threat and judgement and maintaining “safe sharing” with their network. Social network use was conceived as a gamble of balancing its potentially positive and negative impact in a culture in which social network use appears to be unavoidable.ConclusionsThe findings indicate the importance of routine assessment and formulation of social networking use in understanding adolescents' psychological distress. Furthermore, a range of opportunities exist for clinicians to utilise the anonymity and peer support that social networks offer to broaden the range of mental health services offered to young people.     

The effects of computer games on primary school students’ achievement and motivation in geography learning

The implementation of a computer game for learning about geography by primary school students is the focus of this article. Researchers designed and developed a three-dimensional educational computer game. Twenty four students in fourth and fifth grades in a private school in Ankara, Turkey learnt about world continents and countries through this game for three weeks. The effects of the game environment on students’ achievement and motivation and related implementation issues were examined through both quantitative and qualitative methods. An analysis of pre and post achievement tests showed that students made significant learning gains by participating in the game-based learning environment. When comparing their motivations while learning in the game-based learning environment and in their traditional school environment, it was found that students demonstrated statistically significant higher intrinsic motivations and statistically significant lower extrinsic motivations learning in the game-based environment. In addition, they had decreased focus on getting grades and they were more independent while participating in the game-based activities. These positive effects on learning and motivation, and the positive attitudes of students and teachers suggest that computer games can be used as an ICT tool in formal learning environments to support students in effective geography learning.     

The Effects of Anonymity on Self‐Disclosure in Blogs: An Application of the Online Disinhibition Effect

The connections between anonymity and self‐disclosure online have received research attention, but the results have been inconclusive with regard to self‐disclosure in blogs. This quantitative content analysis of 154 personal journal blogs tested some assumptions of the online disinhibition effect in order to examine the effect of types of anonymity on the amount, breadth, and depth of self‐disclosure in blog entries. Results showed that participants disclosed more information in their blog entries when they were more visually identified (sharing a picture of themselves), contrary to the assumptions of the online disinhibition effect. Overall, a trend emerged where visual anonymity led to less disclosiveness, and discursive anonymity (sharing one's real name) led to less disclosiveness for particular types of bloggers.     

“Highly Recommended!” The Content Characteristics and Perceived Usefulness of Online Consumer Reviews

The aim of the present study was to gain a better understanding of the content characteristics that make online consumer reviews a useful source of consumer information. To this end, we content analyzed reviews of experience and search products posted on Amazon.com (N = 400). The insights derived from this content analysis were linked with the proportion of ‘useful’ votes that reviews received from fellow consumers. The results show that content characteristics are paramount to understanding the perceived usefulness of reviews. Specifically, argumentation (density and diversity) served as a significant predictor of perceived usefulness, as did review valence although this latter effect was contingent on the type of product (search or experience) being evaluated in reviews. The presence of expertise claims appeared to be weakly related to the perceived usefulness of reviews. The broader theoretical, methodological and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Online identification of nonlinear multivariable processes using self‐generating RBF neural networks

This paper addresses the problem of online model identification for multivariable processes with nonlinear and time‐varying dynamic characteristics. For this purpose, two online multivariable identification approaches with self‐organizing neural network model structures will be presented. The two adaptive radial basis function (RBF) neural networks are called as the growing and pruning radial basis function (GAP‐RBF) and minimal resource allocation network (MRAN). The resulting identification algorithms start without a predefined model structure and the dynamic model is generated autonomously using the sequential input‐output data pairs in real‐time applications. The extended Kalman filter (EKF) learning algorithm has been extended for both of the adaptive RBF‐based neural network approaches to estimate the free parameters of the identified multivariable model. The unscented Kalman filter (UKF) has been proposed as an alternative learning algorithm to enhance the accuracy and robustness of nonlinear multivariable processes in both the GAP‐RBF and MRAN based approaches. In addition, this paper intends to study comparatively the general applicability of the particle filter (PF)‐based approaches for the case of non‐Gaussian noisy environments. For this purpose, the Unscented Particle Filter (UPF) is employed to be used as alternative to the EKF and UKF for online parameter estimation of self‐generating RBF neural networks. The performance of the proposed online identification approaches is evaluated on a highly nonlinear time‐varying multivariable non‐isothermal continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) benchmark problem. Simulation results demonstrate the good performances of all identification approaches, especially the GAP‐RBF approach incorporated with the UKF and UPF learning algorithms. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

Varieties of user‐centredness: an analysis of four systems development methods

Based on an extensive literature analysis, this paper examines user‐centredness in the context of systems development as a multidimensional concept composed of four aspects: user focus, work‐centredness, user involvement and system personalization. Each dimension loads user‐centredness with different meanings. The four dimensions can be used for evaluating systems development methods and approaches as to what extent and in what sense they adhere to the ideals of user‐centredness. To illustrate this, the dimensions are applied to the analysis of four allegedly user‐centred systems development methods: Goal Directed Interaction Design, Contextual Design, Scenario‐Based Design and Human‐Centred Systems Development Life Cycle. The analysis shows considerable variation in how these methods address the four dimensions of user‐centredness.     

The Virtual Director: a Correlation‐Based Online Viewing of Human Motion

Automatic camera control for scenes depicting human motion is an imperative topic in motion capture base animation, computer games, and other animation based fields. This challenging control problem is complex and combines both geometric constraints, visibility requirements, and aesthetic elements. Therefore, existing optimization‐based approaches for human action overview are often too demanding for online computation. In this paper, we introduce an effective automatic camera control which is extremely efficient and allows online performance. Rather than optimizing a complex quality measurement, at each time it selects one active camera from a multitude of cameras that render the dynamic scene. The selection is based on the correlation between each view stream and the human motion in the scene. Two factors allow for rapid selection among tens of candidate views in real‐time, even for complex multi‐character scenes: the efficient rendering of the multitude of view streams, and optimized calculations of the correlations using modified CCA. In addition to the method's simplicity and speed, it exhibits good agreement with both cinematic idioms and previous human motion camera control work. Our evaluations show that the method is able to cope with the challenges put forth by severe occlusions, multiple characters and complex scenes.     

Predictors of Online Health Information Seeking Among Women with Breast Cancer: The Role of Social Support Perception and Emotional Well‐Being

This study attempts to examine the role of social support perception and emotional well‐being on online information seeking among cancer patients within the context of CHESS, a well‐established Interactive Cancer Communication System (ICCS). Factor and regression analyses conducted among 231 breast cancer patients revealed that social support perception and emotional well‐being interacted with each other to influence online health information seeking. Patients with low social support perception and high emotional well‐being were most likely to seek health information, whereas patients with high social support perception and high emotional well‐being sought out the same information least. Practical implications of the study findings are further discussed.     

Design and development of a semi‐autonomous agricultural vineyard sprayer: Human–robot interaction aspects

This article presents the design aspects and development processes to transform a general‐purpose mobile robotic platform into a semi‐autonomous agricultural robot sprayer focusing on user interfaces for teleoperation. The hardware and the software modules that must be installed onto the system are described, with particular emphasis on human–robot interaction. Details of the technology are given focusing on the user interface aspects. Two laboratory experiments and two studies in the field to evaluate the usability of the user interface provide evidence for the increased usability of a prototype robotic system. Specifically, the study aimed to empirically evaluate the type of target selection input device mouse and digital pen outperformed Wiimote in terms of usability. A field experiment evaluated the effect of three design factors: (a) type of screen output, (b) number of views, (c) type of robot control input device. Results showed that participants were significantly more effective but less efficient when they had multiple views, than when they had a single view. PC keyboard was also found to significantly outperform PS3 gamepad in terms of interaction efficiency and perceived usability. Heuristic evaluations of different user interfaces were also performed using research‐based HRI heuristics. Finally, a study on participants’ overall user experience found that the system was evaluated positively on the User Experience Questionnaire scales.     

Stepping out of the Magic Circle: Regulation of Play/Life Boundary in MMO‐Mediated Romantic Relationship

Massively multiplayer online role‐playing games (MMOs) are spaces of socialization and relationship formation and maintenance. This qualitative study seeks to understand how MMO players delineate the boundary between play and life when it comes to their game‐originated romance. A typology of players was devised to understand players' constructions of boundaries, and players' strategies against perceived stigma when moving their relationship offline were discussed. The findings call for a shift towards a more player‐centric and pluralist conceptualization of the magic circle of play.     

“What South Park Character Are You?”: Popular Culture, Literacy, and Online Performances of Identity

In this essay, I study MySpace and Facebook pages, as well as interviews with the university students who created them, in order to address how online literacy practices of contemporary convergence culture both use and are filtered through popular culture. Though their answers to questions of intent, audience, and rhetorical choices varied, students shared a common reliance on popular culture content and references appropriated from other sites to compose their identities and read the identities of others. They used popular culture icons, catch phrases, music, text, and film clips in postmodern, fragmented collages that seem simultaneously sentimental and ironic. The construction of these pages illustrates how popular culture practices that predate online technologies have been adopted and have flourished with new technologies that allow content to flow across media as well as increase the ease of audience participation. Online technological changes have changed what it means to be part of an “audience” by changing how individuals respond to and adapt popular culture texts to their own ends, such as the construction of identities on web pages. By creating potentially global audiences for any web page, these online technologies have changed the relationship of the popular culture audience members and their peers. The intertextual nature of popular culture texts creates opportunities for multiple readings of social networking web pages in ways that destabilize the identities students believe they have created.     

Surveying the extent of involvement in online academic dishonesty (e-dishonesty) related practices among university students and the rationale students provide: One university’s experience

This study reports data from a Midwestern university, investigating the extent of involvement in online academic dishonesty practices (e-dishonesty) among students and the rationale they provided. Involvement in and rationale for e-dishonesty was studied across individual variables including academic level, primary field of study, taking the university’s academic integrity tutorial, and taking online and hybrid courses. A total of 1153 students participated in the study by completing a 44 item questionnaire. The findings indicate that the extent of involvement in e-dishonesty practices was significantly greater among freshmen than graduate students in most of the subscales of the survey. In addition, the primary field of study demonstrated a significant relationship between involvement in e-dishonesty and the rationale for e-dishonesty. Students in education and the social sciences reported of the least involvement in e-dishonesty; engineering and physical sciences the most. Completing the university’s academic integrity tutorial did not significantly affect e-dishonesty practices while taking online or hybrid courses had some significant effect on e-dishonesty. The results highlight the need for early intervention concerning academic integrity followed by an ongoing and consistent effort throughout students’ undergraduate and graduate experience.     

Effects of information layout,screen size,and field of view on user performance in information‐rich virtual environments

This paper describes our recent experimental evaluation of Information‐Rich Virtual Environment (IRVE) interfaces. To explore the depth cue/visibility tradeoff between annotation schemes, we design and evaluate two information layout techniques to support search and comparison tasks. The techniques provide different depth and association cues between objects and their labels: labels were displayed either in the virtual world relative to their referent (Object Space) or on an image plane workspace (Viewport Space). The Software Field of View (SFOV) was controlled to 60° or 100° of vertical angle and two groups were tested: those running on a single monitor and those on a tiled nine‐panel display. Users were timed, tracked for correctness, and gave ratings for both difficulty and satisfaction on each task. Significant advantages were found for the Viewport interface, and for high SFOV. The interactions between these variables suggest special design considerations to effectively support search and comparison performance across monitor configurations and projection distortions. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of game‐based learning on students' mathematics achievement: A meta‐analysis

This meta‐analysis investigated the effects of learning video games on mathematics achievement of PreK‐12th‐grade students compared with traditional classroom instructional methods. Results from the 24 collected studies showed heterogeneity among effect sizes, both in magnitude and direction. Using a random effects model, a small but marginally significant overall effect ( ) suggested that mathematics video games contributed to higher learning gains as compared with traditional instructional methods. In addition, moderator analyses were mixed in terms of statistical significance and explored effect‐size heterogeneity across effects using grade level, instrument type, length of game‐based intervention, country, publication type, and study year characteristics. Overall findings indicate that video games are a slightly effective instructional strategy for teaching mathematics across PreK‐12th‐grade levels.