VIdeo game magazine

SPECIAL EDITION 15 May 2015 DAYAE KIM

WHAT & WHY

LET’S TALK ABOUT

GAME

6

CONTENT 4 What games do you play?

16 Little bit of psychology

What type of player are you?

8

Bring your avatar to real world

10 Hypersexuality

12

18 Texting & Driving

20

14 2 2 Addiction in video game

Game evolution

Violence & Agreesion

Healthy games

Publisher: Dayae Kim Final Journal Project Video Game and Entertainment Issue 1. 15 May 2015 Favorite game: Crazy Arcade, Wii badminton or boxing Experience in game: Barely What type: The storyteller Motivation: I like interacting with friends while playing games.

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The best-selling action-ad-

venture games of 2001 and 2002 were the latest release in the Grand Theft Auto series. They also features a definitive goal. Part of the appeal of the series is the player’s ability to act out various antisocial bahaviors in a setting that rewards rather than punishes, such actions.

The desire to escape the limitations of an orderly life and society has been posited as one of the appeals of mediated entertainment (mendelsohn, 1966).

Shooting games are the

most graphically violent games on the market. Typically it is a first-person perspective in a 3-dimensional indepth virtual environment.

This most common game played has various weapons use in the game. And different weapons different horro scenes of people killed and killing. The way the blood get scattered or their bodies get chopped look the most realistic.

Shooting

Fighting

This is the most pupular game

WHAT & WHY?

Action-Adventure

These games are boxing or wrestling matches

and is usally presented on-screen from a side point of view. The player’s character and the opponet approach each other from opposite sides of the screen to engage in fighting. The goal is not to kill them like shooting game but to give certain phsical damage to win. Mortal Kombat is example of this genre. Each character has particular strengths and weakness and have uniques fighting techniques, ability. Kicks and punches are supplemented with lighting and fireballs.

Role-playing

It typically needs a

lot of time commimtment for the creation and development of a player’s virtual avatar. Because it needs time to evolve virtual resources,it may not necessarily have an ultimate goal.

Driving-simulation

Some driving games feature real-wrold char-

acters. They are exciting to play because it is a competition and fast-paced movements ofobejects in the visual field is arousing (Lang, Bolls, Potter, & Kawahara, 1999). Mario Cart could be one of the driving competition games. I didn’t like the game that much because whenever I play the game with friends who know how to drive I always lose. Somehow I always felt there is a huge connection in simulation games and practice in real life. In other words, if you are good at playing Mario Cart, that means you know basic idea how to drive and vice versa too.

genre on personal omputers.

Stretgy games focus on acquisition of resources to achieve long-term missions. The game usually ends when one society conquering other competing societies. Civilization is an example of this type of game.

Many of my strategy maniac player friends have stayed home for days and days putting so much effort to survive and win in the virtual world.

Strategy

Sports

Usually

this genre feature current athletes, sports celebrities and sports teams. Team sports as as football, baseball, soccer, hockey are number of individual-athlete sports that are most popular. My younger brother who also loves playing FIFA soccer game once had a dream to be a soccer commentator.

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compete with o the 4.To rs Competitive games

fantasy rela re the tion o l p sh x E i

y. safel

People are interested in the journey that they cannot get in real world. They learn different life experience in games. Also

they explore fantasy relationships safely.

start I like playing No games by myself

Yes

Rather than escaping extremely, people become actively involved in the world they ecape into.

They like feeling that their actions make a difference.

Yes

th

ant to esca eople w pe f P . e rom s a e l re

eal world. er

W

I want to show people I am good at this game

Yes I like being in charge

and orchesrate the game Yes

No I enjoy the feeling of existing in the play world

I like playing just for fun

nt.

2. T

trol their environm n o e oc

1.Stre ss

Q.

No

like meeting all the characters The important thing is to experience the Yes andI see what their strength is boundaries of the world.

Yes

I require the most stuff therough the game Yes

HY ?

Yes

E Type

You are the collector

No

No I have fancy skills to show Yes

B Type

You are the Performe r

No I need to discover first Yes

C Type

You are the Explore r

No

My goal is to get I play to be better in Yes the most championships rankings over time

AType

You are the Director

ps

3.T o

give people time to express their aggressive tendencies in a safe, socially acceptable way as they are enjoying it.

WHAT WHAT TYPE TYPE OF OF PLAYER PLAYER ARE ARE

Yes

D Type

You are the achiever

Life being an avatar in real life

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Look doesn’t tell everything but it does say a lot about the person. Each morning we struggle with what clothes and jewelry to wear. We decide the hairstyle that matches the mood of the day. Sometimes people purchase expensive Dr.Dre shoes or Prada bag or even make extreme decision such as getting tattoos or cosmetic surgery. In online world, the avatar represents who we are and we put lots of effort to create or change it as our ideal selves. So people begin to live vicariously through their virtual representation by purchasing game items brands that they cannot afford in real life for avatars. But often times we found ourselves confronting the gap between the ideal appearance and the reality. How we identify our self with the ideal avatar is important. In many media such as movies, dramas, commercials, we find similarity between the characters and feel attachment. In playing games finding avatar for one’s identity increases the involvement in games. The more time is committed during the creation, and the more time is spent playing as the avatar, the attachment gets stronger.

Proteus Effect supports why people decorate their avatar to look good. The effect is the idea that people conform to their own digital self-representations independent of how others perceive them. The more attractive their avatar is, the more self disclosure the player become.

In other words, the player get more confident about themselves when their avatar is physically attractive. Also when their avatar is taller, the plater tended to be more confident and have more manner in playing game. Vice versa, if their character is short or not attractive or scary looking, the player become less confident with less manner with more aggressive behavior.

This supports that the avatar can change the individual even when the person doesn’t seem themselves in that light.

As the attachment to the character gets srtonger, sometimes the trial to bring the character to the real life happens. We call this “cosplay”. Before when I only heard about it, I thought it is only for the hard core game maniacs. Often times being maniac in video games or cartoons are not socially accepted and considered as nerd in the culture I was brought up with.

However, my roommates and their friends group totally broke down my stereotypes on it. They have been involved in cosplay for couple years since they were in high school. Around 10 people in one group choose different characters usually their favorite anime characters. I found lot of their pictures in the convention center and surprisingly, there were around more than thousands of people come and participate as various characters.

Some does it for stress relief, liking the feel of thril to meet different characters in real life, get inspiration on desigining. Most of them create their own attire and try their best to look as similiar as they can with the charater in the screen.

Two years ago when my roomates and friends were busy preparing for their grand participation for the convention in LA, I saw them creating their own armors and swords from the scratch. Without any exaggeration, it took them litterally more than 6 months. It seemed like a lot of work at first but by obseving them enjoying making everything and wearing, I also was able to see them as creator and designer not only as participants.

(Korean celebrity advertisement on PC room. It says IU (celebrity name) meets Imon(her avatar)).

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“Coke bottle shape”, “S line”, unrealistic women body in game

HYPER S

E

X U A

34,24,34. Ideal glamorous body size of women. Often times we see female characters that have gigantic breast almost twice bigger than her face, thin waist, enormous hip back flipping so easily. In real life it is even impossible to walk straight with extremely unreal body portion. This hypersexuality can be defined in two different ways: Conceptually and operationally. Conceptually, it is an excessive concern or indulgence in a sexualized appearance or activity while operational definition is measurements such as breast size, nudity and frequency of sexual behavior. According to the Gender Schema theory, if we continue to portray male and female in particular way, over the time it becomes a real stereotype. So the more games include extreme body portion characters the more players will conceive it as natural appearance. Women are misrepresented and have more than 10 times nudity over the men when they are over masculated.

In Korea, we have rooms called “PC room” where bunch of computers are set up and people could just go in and play any game they want with $1 per hour. This place is really popular in Korea and from age of 10 to 50 enjoys this place a lot. Sometimes we hear tragic addiction stories from this place by spending too much time there without any break time but it is mostly used as a stress relief place. Many times I have walked passed nearby the place, there is always a huge banner of a woman with unrealistically glamorous wearing extremely sexualized piece of cloth- barely could call it clothes-. As a child, I thought it as an appropriate women figure that is accepted by men. For example, Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider series has unrealistically large breasts and disproportionately small waist. Surprisingly, according to the researches, children now (2000) found that over a third of females (38%) had large breasts and approaching half (46%) had undersized waists.

It is surprising to see that these content or characters are found in many “T” rated games on Xbox or GameCube platforms. As a common sense, it is not appropriate content if the characters especially female characters expressing sexual behavior or too much revealing clothes with unrealistic body portion come out frequently. This could give wrong idea on realistic women body figure to both boys and girls.

Especially young children who may accept the characters easily as role models try to identify with them. In other words, the hypersexualized and disproportionately thin females may be teaching young girls ideals about beauty and thinness that are damaging to their socieoemotional or physical health.

L I T Y

I have been satisfied with my body but I have seen many of my friends print out game char acters or photoshopped celebrity pictures to try to be like them.Females, from age 15 to 25 get hugely influenced by the unrealistic image considering it as an ideal they need to follow. Some of my friends look themselves as “too small breast” when they are healthy good looking size and they are “too fat” because they don’t have 21 inch waist. This comes as stress to girls and give less confident on their body.

As I mentioned above earlier, the Gender Schema Theory says when the media, games and advertise ment express gender in specific way, over the time it becomes a real stereotypeThis is happening in our life in real world. If we want our future generation be physically and mentally healthy, aren’t we supposed to consider what they are growing with more carefully and cautiously?

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ADDICTION

91% of kids play video games

8.5 %

of American youth are addictive to video games

7SYMTOMS

Girls:

Boys :

*48% of gamers are girls * Choose puzzle or platform games

*52% of gamers are boys *generally choose violent or aggressive games

to check if you are addicted to games...

This not only applies to video games but also gamblings, drugs, alcohols. I was talking to my internship boss the other day, she mentioned her brother who is alcohol addicted. After their mom and his wife passed away couple years ago all he does is to drink and smoke whole day sitting on a chair. I told her to keep telling him to try new things that could keep his attention away from it.

This conversation made me recall one of my friends’ story. This guy got successfully enrolled at UMD and came here all the way from Korea. He was kind of weird but funny and had groups of friends to hangout. However, he got involved in League of Legend game which changed his life. He started to skip his classes, always gave excuses saying he has to play the game because his “team” needs him, he started to feel awkward talking to his roommates and friends. Then his parents find out about him and called him back to Korea.

Even right before he left he was in his room playing video game. Last time I saw him, he had long black hair, same clothes for a week and only been eating snacks and ramen noodles. After two years of serving military, he came back. Now he knows how to control himself. Also he got something that he want to spend time more with, his girlfriend. I know it is very hard to overcome the period especially when a person is really into something and it suddenly becomes everything. However, it not only ruins one’s life but also influences the important people nearby. Before, I was more of just an observance style because I didn’t want any conflict when even the person is fully aware of his addiction. However, plugging out or arguments may not cure the addiction at one time but it is better than just observing person being isolated from reall society.

62%

of gamers play with others either online or in person.

Sometimes we find our special indepth of interest in different things. However, it becomes a problem when it goes over the limit. So how do we diagnose if we are above or below the limit? There are seven criteria that we can psychologically diagnose whether we are addicted to gambling, smoking and here, we are talking about games.

1. Salience: This is when a game becomes the most important thing of a person’s life 2. Tolerance: As people play the game more ,they feel the need to play game more. They end up saying “I have to play it” 3. Mood modification : This is where a person gets buzz or high feeling and even relaxation when playing game.

The average game player is 30 years old and they have been playing for 12 years.

4. Withdrawal: When someone or something prevent them from playing video games, they feel irritability and moodiness. They want to be virtual all the time.

5. Relapse: A person may go back to a previous destructive patter after a certain non-use period.

6. Conflict: Because of excessive use a person lose interpersonal relationship.

7. Problems: A person gets school or work issues and isolates one from social gatherings.

National Institute of media and family

Q. Is it possible to make video game that will be good to be addicted?

I. Instinct Theory

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This throws us a questions whether human being is programmed for violence. In other words, are we born to harm others? This doesn’t fully support our violent behaviors because of several reasons: fighting doesn’t always lead to death, not all aggressions are physical, violence changes with social conditions and they are different from cultures.

“

AGGRESSION: Any behavior to harm another living being who is motivated to avoid such treatment

”

II. Drive Theory Human have internal motive to harm others but external conditions drive the arousal of aggression. i)Frustion-Aggression-Hypothesis This could be seen in daily life. My roommate Andy likes picking on the other roommate Kayla. Andy usually makes fun of her when all the roommates are home.When Andy makes fun of Kayla in front of people, Kayla gets angry and thefrustration makes her to grab pillow and start throwing it at Andy. ii)Excitation Transfer Theory Usually I am okay with my friend joking around. But when I had a bad day earlier in school because of doing bad in exam, I get angry when she jokes about something about me. Unless I was really frustrated before or the jokes that my friend made was really inappropriate, I don’t realize the level of arousal I am at.

According to the Hostile Attribution Bias Thoery, aggressive people tend to interpret socially ambiguous situations more hostily. My younger brother who used to love playing FIFA online game got really mad at the computer player whenever his charater misses the ball. Not only FIFA but whatever other games he plays, he considers as an attack if someone or other game character kills his character. He wanted to conquer other characters but he thought people are being mean to him specifically when they kill his character. He perceived others action as more intentional than accidental or having no negative meaning in.

III. Modern Theory of Aggression i) Cognitive Neoassociation Model Virtual aggression primes aggressive thoughts and feelings which enable real-world violence. Exposure to violence in video games acts as a prime. ii) General Affective Aggression Model Aggression occurs or doesn’t occur based on personal interpretation of the current situation and on possible restraining factors.

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Little

*Individual level

*Societal level

Personal Determinants -age, gender, educaton level, IQ, personality traits

Behavioral Determinants -reward/punishment, motivation, proficiency

Know About We Psychology in games 1. Attention : Learning requires attention Color, graphic, attractiveness, controller 2. Retention : Ability to remember Visual and audio 3)Production : Make something occur in real world ex) Golf game player can play well in actual golf play in track.

Environmental Determinants -resources, tools, controllers

* Self-efficacy : Your belief in your ability This is an important psychological concept because it is a basic thinking that allow us to perform well in real life. For example, Tiger Woods knows he will score well in real game because he has played the golf simulation game thousands and millions of times.

This could be used very pro-social curement with Proteus Effect. Even I was not good at playing soccer, with continuous practice with simulations and FIFA game for strategies, I will be confident in games and familiar with many strategies in the field. Besides, if I had a phobia on certain things like being in front of many people, playing in the big field where thousands of people are watching as simulations will help overcome the phobia.

4) Motivation :encouragement when behavior repeated is met with validation Sex, better weapon, trophy

It is somewhat scary to think about the knowledge that we gained unintentionally. We already know how to kill or shoot people when we have no experience in it. We purposly learn some knowledge which is called Explicit Learning but we also learn by accident which is Implicit Learning. We have been gaining information even when we do not know. This learning process can be used both anti social and pro social. Players can choose to be violent when they want to use the knowledge they got from games by using “skills” they learned through games.

Sometimes we hear news of extreme players who ended up having horrible ending because they wanted to enact the “skill” they gained. But most of people don’t use violent behavior or aggressive socially not acceptable behavior because we know it is not motivated enough to make us do it. Also as a common sense, we know what we will get as punishment when we perform socially not acceptable behaviors in real world that cannot be return and play again as game.

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Texting & Driving, is it okay?

T Human processin ginvolves three groups of resources: Perceptual, cognitive and motor. These require a sequence of resource that they need to succedd the task.

Cognitive resource include procedural knowledge that requires following each steps to compete the task and after repetitive practice it becomes natural and become declarative knoweldge. Perceptual resource is based on senses such as visual, auditory and tactile. Motor is actual vehicle that performs the senses.

People are motivated to be successful when they are multitasking and this is called Threaded Cognition. Each goal has a sequence of resources and if it is performed one by one, it is possible to inact the process concurrently.

But the problem evolves when the tasks require more than one sequence.

The sequence shapes bottleneck shape when individual task demands compete for the same resource at the same time. This is when texting while driving becomes a problem. Let’s look at the pro and con sides on the issue.

“What really struck me, what I have to live with, is that I used to text and drive in front of her,” - Dietrich, 39,whose daughter has died in car crash because she was texting and driving.

USAToday http:// www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/03/12/ texting-driving-dangerous-behavior/70147834/

Texting and driving cause 8 times more risks to have an accident than drink and drive.

“ I know it is dangerous to text while I am driving but I just can’t wait long enough when someone text me.”

-Megan, 20

“It only takes few seconds to see the text and send it back.”

-Jamie H, 22

“I have been driving for almost 7years now. I think I can handle sending few text messages when I am driving.”

-Youngsa, 25

T

hree years ago in public speaking class, each one of us chose one topic and gave a speech in order to persuade others.

One of my classmate had a speech about texting and driving.

She told us about her friend’s story who was her best friend and passed away while texting and driving. It was very sad and almost made everyone tear in their eyes. I still remember her saying that one small neglect action can cause a scar to others that will never be forgetten. It not only happens to you but when you think about your loved ones who will suffer with your absence, it comes to heart that we need to try hard to change our habit.

Recently, I caught my friend using phone while he was driving. He wasn’t even texting but he was playing phone video game. I was shocked because I was also in the car. When all the people in the car yelled at him to stop it he took it not seriously. Eventually he turned off his phone but he didn’t understand why we were so anxious when he is “good driver” who has been driving for 7 years now. We were all shocked of his too much confident and also very worried about his later life.

Many sur veys and researches tell us that most of phone users already know there is a huge risk of using phone while they are driving. But it is the thought ‘ it won’t happen to me’ or ‘ just for one second will be okay’. People who have experienced a lost because of texting and driving know in their heart that they should really stop the habit.

But why not stop it before your hear tears apart with tears and prevent it before it happens?

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GAME

ION

GENERATION EVOLUT

Controller design gets attention. Becomes colorful and hasvarious shape.

Nintendo NES

The first console Magnavox Odyssey

Intellivision 1980 -Could accept a keyboard and be used as a home computer.

1972

1976 Atari Pong -Mass marketed & prodcued

(Pingpong box game)

Nintendo NES -Great relationships with 3rd party software vendors

Nintendo 64 -Started a controller boom

1986

1980

1982 Coleco Vision -Bundled with nintenod’s Donkey Kong

1996

1995 Playstation -Used CDs instead of cartridges

Microsoft Xbox 2001 -It goes live and offers gamers ability to download games and add to internal hard drive 2001

1999 Sega Dreamcast -First console with built in modern and on-line play

2006 Nintendo Wii kinesthetic motion controller devices.Wireless battery operated controllers

20 Physical Physical health health

Nintendo Wii came out in 2006 brought us new concept that the game can be something more interactive and physical than it is something just to play sitting down whole day in dark room. I remember seeing many advertisement on TV about different games available with Wii. The very first time I tried my Wii was when I went to public Wii multi game room in Korea. I did not expect a game be such interactive and a workout resource that made me sweat so much. As me and my avatar became one-self and played the game, I swung my arms and legs higher and stronger than usual to win.

The players with chronic health conditions (diabetes or asthma) improved their selfcare skills and their prevention and self-care bahviors, and this led to improved diabetes or asthma outcomes (Lieberman, 2001a). Also when a game is used in children’s education, it increase children’s consumption of fruits and vegetables. A randomized study in 26 elementary schools research found that fourth grader participants consumed more fruits and vegetables than who did not participate for five weeks (Baranowski et al., 2003).

Healthy games

Wii multi game room

Mental Mental health health

ophily.

1. Hom rm sociPeople fo irtual ev ety in th at they world th g. belongin feel interact They ilar peowith sim ple.

2. W i help shful id e s prob to solv ntificati on lems e re on in . Th al li r d f temp ividual d ough wh e ich ts to esire perso s or atn or be like a find c solut haracter nother ion t , peo lems o p i ple, n real lif solve pr le when obe. Fo r exa sport they m s of th game, th are play eir fa ing ey ca vorit er’s n thi st e n to pl rategy in soccer pl k an in a y real FIFA ga life g m ame. e

3. Parasocial interaction.

It is a relationship of friendship between a viewer and a character. This happens a lot in TV shows not only games.

The great example is comedy Friends and novel Harry Potter. Many people who grew up watching Friends or Harry Potter couldn’t hold sadness when the series were done. I think when they already have strong connection with the character it leads to more familiarity when the medium becomes game than traditional media, TV. There are lot of Harry Potter games in the market and the player can actually feel the relationship with the other characters as well. Player actually feel like they are friend with Ron and Hermione when they are playing Harry Potter game.

Bring your favorite game charater in the world and ...

LET THE WAR BEGIN!

The biggist cosplay convention in the history

WHO

BRINGS AVATAR TO REAL LIFE THE BEST? YOU CAN BE ANYTHING WINNER GETS

$15000

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