ENG 225 Rhetoric and Gaming

Rachels and Rockinson determine the effectiveness of an Spanish learning game Doulingo. The following is my annotation of their paper. This study seeks to compare a gamification app that provides Spanish language instruction called Duolingo and a traditional classroom environment in order to determine both method’s effectiveness at teaching elementary students spanish. By exposing two different groups of students to the different methods of spanish learning and then comparing the knowledge gained by the students through a test and learning scales, the study found there is no significant difference in the results of both learning processes. This led to the conclusion that Duolingo can be a useful tool in elementary level spanish acquisition, as it is effective as traditional face-to-face instruction. This study was performed at a private school in florida. It randomly assigned 2 third-grade classes and 3 fourth-grade foreign language classes to be taught spanish through duolingo inst...

The purpose of this article was to analyze the gender differences in games and the ways in which popular games can be beneficial in an educational setting. The author divided this article into five parts in which the relevance of the research was introduced, how video games have changed over time, research on video games in education, approaches that could be used to introduce video games into education, and the problems that might arise in this introduction. It was stated that some games that take place in different eras in history can be useful as they contain information about the time period. The research was not only on computer games but much of what was found applies to computer games. There was little research on video games until the late 1990s. Many viewed video games negatively and it was not considered that they could be used in education. The main increase in research was on the structural aspects of games and the integration of games into schools. Over time many thought t...

Companies have profited over loot boxes , EA sports has been widely successful based on their model of loot boxes and grosses an average of 800 million dollars even though there is no control over who purchases those loot boxes, EA has been widely criticized for allowing players to spend wild queantity of money in order to have a bigger advantage and expand their experience on their sports game and have a pay to win experience. Gambling has been a very talked about subject in the video game world, the reason that loot boxes become so addictive is because the players become eager to widen their advantage with a pay to win model

The Ingredients of Twitch streaming: Affordances of Game Streams This study identifies practices & elements used by the most popular Twitch streamers. Results indicate a convergence of various broadcasting practices among practitioners. Supports previous streaming studies and indicates social affordances as highly important. Revenue affordances are identified as an important branch of affordances in social media. Sjöblom, M., Törhönen, M., Hamari, J., & Macey, J. (2018, October 12). The ingredients of Twitch streaming: Affordances of game streams. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563218304965

Loot boxes are increasing in popularity despite concerns over addictions Spending money on loot boxes , which originated in Japan, has been linked to problem gambling since they involve a high degree of chance and a risk-reward factor, mimicking slot machines and roulette.

A recent ban on Netherlands on videogame loot boxes may kill Fifa Ultimate Team as we know it. These probability-based ‘loot boxes’ have become an increasing feature of all kinds of games over the last decade, both in triple-A titles such as FIFA and as the financial bedrock underpinning free-to-play titles such as Fortnite . However, they’ve often been criticised for introducing young people to what many consider a form of gambling, and today a government committee has recommended restricting the sale of loot boxes to children. Children have been affected because they have no money awareness and sometimes they end up in tremendous debt because of lack of control

Zendle et al explain that excitement and and competitiveness contribute to a player’s desire to purchase loot boxes with real money, which contributes to gambling, based on the fact that the items may be random and may not necessarily enhance player’s enjoyment or enhance performance.  Both when gambling and when buying loot boxes, individuals stake money on the outcome of a future event, whose result is determined at least partially by chance in the hopes of receiving a valuable reward. Gambling has been seen as a big problem by governments and some have moved to get rid of it  especially in Netherlands and Germany

This article claims that game designers make games engaging through incorporating principles of learning that are often not found in schools and it argues that these principles should be integrated but first school needs to change. The author made this argument by stating the learning principle and explaining how it is beneficial in the learning process. He then described how this principle is found in games and how it makes the game more engaging. After describing how it appears in games, examples were provided of specific games that did a good job in incorporating this principle. The last thing he did was state whether or not this principle could be found in schools and how it could be integrated. Some detail was provided in how the integration of this principle would benefit the students as well as what the lack of this principle entails for the learning experience.There were thirteen principles split up under the headings of “Empowered Learners”, “Problem Solving” and “Understandin...

This is an interview with Jamie Dillion, a member of the child's play charity, a charity that acquires video game hardware and software for kids in need. This interview comes from a larger book called Thinking About Video Games: Interviews with the Experts by Heineman. This interview fails to answer any questions or prove anything other than gamers can do good things if they really feel like it and that videogame equipment such as the kinect can help to rehabilitate physical therapy patients. There is no methodology for this piece since no scientific research took place nor any kind of data collection “Technology associated with video games is becoming more useful in a large number of ways. For example, the Microsoft Kinect is now being used to help stroke victims regain movement” (Opening of interview). This article may be helpful for showing how games have gone beyond the basement dwelling stigma associated with them from the past and are now helping real world people. I ...

Christopher John Ferguson analyzes several articles about violent video games for both negative and positive effects. Ferguson found that violent video games have no correlation with increased aggression but instead found that games do have a positive correlation with increased visuospatial cognition. “Results from the current analysis supported the conclusion that violent video game exposure is associated with increased visuospatial cognition. However, results of the current meta-analysis did not support a relationship between violent video game exposure and aggressive behavior” (Conclusion). The articles analyzed were gathered from PsycINFO and the articles were written from 1995 to april 2007. The articles were analyzed for both positive and negative results to the human psyche. Articles that discussed violent video games had to have discussed the difference between violent and non violent video games or else they were omitted from the meta analysis. I would use this resear...

Andrew Przybylski and Netta Weinsteins’ study shows that violent video games have a null effect on aggressive behavior in adolescents. The study was done in 2019 and was authorized by University of Oxford. Although Przyblski and Weinstein initially predicted that adolescents who played violent video games would be more aggressive. The data collected from the psychological form used showed that aggression increases were null. “Despite the null findings identified in the present study, history gives us reason to suspect the idea that violent video games drives aggressive behaviour will remain an unsettled question for parents, pundits and policy-makers. Although our results do have implications for these stakeholders, the present work holds special significance for those studying technology effects, in general, and video games, in particular.” (Conclusion). This study used 1000 adolescents (500 male and 500 female) as the study group. This group would then play video games that ei...

Konjin and company argue that violent video games lead to boys exhibiting more aggressive behavior. Through extensive testing, they found that in most cases, when playing a violent videogame, the subject would display more aggressive behavior (administering a violent, loud sound to another that did them non wrong) than they would before they played the game. Should the boy playing violent video games also relate to the main character of said game, then they would display further aggressive behavior. “Boys in our study who identified strongly with violent characters were willing to administer noise loud enough to permanently damage the ears of another boy who had done nothing to anger them” (Discussion/conclusion). The testing involved selecting 122 boys from the Dutch education system (roughly aged 15) and having them either play a violent videogame (either a realistic depiction of violence or a fantasy) or a non violent video game (either realistic or fantasy). After which, two...

Gray, K. L. (2011). Deviant bodies, stigmatized identities, and racist acts: examining the experiences of African-American gamers in Xbox Live This article claims that minority gamers, mainly male African-American, are labeled deviant within the gaming community of Xbox Live arguing the stigma of blackness through profiling and identifying the process that leads to racisms. The author examined the process that leads to African-American gamers as being labeled deviant within Xbox Live. The researcher found it useful to the experiment to interact as an observer and participant in the community which allowed for “open-ended format of interviewing where the participants could tell their stories as well as provide direct evidence when the labeling, stigma, and deviance process”, to occur. Interviews with a semi-structured schedule allowing for conversational dialogue and observations took place over a period of 8 months. The participants were selected through snowball sampling, due to Xbox ...

The purpose of this article was to explore whether using games in library instruction helps students to become more motivated to participate and retain more information. This article proved that using games in library instruction can be helpful through exploring what Millennials expect having grown up with technology: good customer service, fast results, being able to interact, and working in groups. The article then looked into the ways in which video games can meet these needs. While the author of this article didn’t conduct any research of their own they did compare the research that has been done by academics and the results that they found. It was stated that it has been agreed that the traditional lecture does not meet the needs of tech-savvy students but information still has to be taught to the class. Through incorporating games in the lesson students become more engaged because these are active learning rather than passive listening. In being more active in the learning proce...

Thesis/Purpose: Greitmeyer and Osswald analyze how empathy might increase by playing video games and decrease the pleasure for someone else’s misfortunes, as well as testing the idea that the more exposure to prosocial video games someone has the more their “schadenfreude” will decrease. Methods: There were 56 students that participated in this study. There were 28 men and 28 women exactly. Each was randomly assigned to play either a prosocial or neutral video game. The participants were all tested individually as opposed to testing together. Each participant was a part of two different studies in order to get the best results to analyze whether the purpose of the study is affective. One of the studies was about the “enjoyment of classical computer games” and the other was about “impression formation.” The participants either played Lemmings which went under the category of a prosocial video game or they played Tetris which fell under the neutral game. They were told to play the g...

Gumulak and Webber determine the link between gaming and types of literacy. The following is my annotation of their paper. This article gives a study and analysis of the link between gaming and types of literacy, mainly information literacy. Information literacy is defined as "knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner" which is essentially the efficient collection and use of knowledge. By interviewing several school age students, researchers determined that young people like to be challenged and entertained in the games that they play. A majority of interviewees agreed that they learn from games and that young gamers are able to read and interpret textual information to make sense of games. Finally, the study was able to find evidence that the students were able to identify gaps in their knowledge, imagine how they might bridge that gap, and actively search out the necessary information. An...

Thesis/Purpose: Schemk tests the idea that playing video games has a connection to the many cognitive benefits of imagery and problem solving. Video games may lead to better performance results due to the knowledge that comes from playing video games; due to the “hippocampus-dependent learning and memory processes.” The purpose was to investigate what kind of video games would positively enhance learning in the hippocampus due to the strong enrichment of specific video game designs. Methods: The study began by differentiating right handed people from left handed people. Ambidextrous people were not included in the study. The mean age for male and females who were right handed and participating in the study was 24.6 years. The total number of healthy right handed video gamers was 15. The other 15 were healthy right handed non-gamers and the mean age was 27.5 years. The subjects were found through advertisements in local newspapers. They were screened using a questionnaire. Video gamers...

Prescott, Sargent, and Hull use meta analysis to determine the links between video game violence, aggression, and ethnicity. The following is my annotation of their paper. This study seeks to determine the reliability and effects of the claim that exposure to video game violence causes aggression. It also seeks to find the effect, if any, that ethnicity has on exposure to video game violence and aggression. Aggression in the study is categorized as “overt physical aggression” in order to avoid false inflations of results for minor increases in aggression. As a result, a weak link was found between video game violence and aggression. In addition, this result varied by ethnicity. The strongest correlation was for white participants, and the weakest correlation was for Hispanic participants. In order to gain studies for meta analysis, this study sorted through a collection of databases with combinations of relevant keywords such as video games and aggressive behavior. All studies were ...

Balana, R. (2019) Over Half Of US Online Gamers Experience Some Form Of Harassment, Survey Reveals The article claims that the online gaming industry has “become a breeding ground for toxic behavior and online hate”. In the United States, where 64 percent of the online population plays video games, the majority of gamers say they have experienced harassment while playing online. The study was conducted by the civil rights group, Anti-Defamation League's Center on Technology and Society. The surveyed 1,045 adults aged 18 to 45. However it does not specify how they reach out to the people they surveyed. The results show that 74% experienced some form of harassment while playing online games. 65% percent claimed to experience "severe harassment," such as physical threats, sustained harassment, and stalking. Of the women in the survey, 38% of the women encountered harassment due to their gender, and 35% of LGBTQ players were harassed due to their sexual orientation. 53...

The purpose of this research was to find whether or not educational games could be both fun and useful in improving students’ abilities to find information. Two games were designed for this study: Citation Tic Tac Toe and Magnetic Keywords. Citation Tic Tac Toe was a computer game that had the same set-up as a regular tic tac toe game but each box had a citation in it. The computer asked players to choose a type of citation for a journal, book, etc. If the player chose the correct box it would be marked with an X, but if they didn’t it would be marked with an O. If the player managed to get three adjacent Xs they would win the game. The effectiveness of this game was assessed through choosing some classes to use this game and others that wouldn’t be playing it and then comparing their results. First both classes took a pretest on identifying citations. Then, the classes selected to play the game would play Citation Tic Tac Toe. Lastly, all students would take a post test and the resul...

Adrienne Staw and Elizaveta Friesem 2016. explores the ways in which LGBTQ+ identities are portrayed and shown in video game media. Shaw & Friesem collected data from 300 hundred games with over 500 examples of queer characters or plot lines and placed them into nine categories. These games have been made over the last thirty years. The categories are characters which also has character gender as a part of this section. Relationships/romance/sex this section includes stereotypes that code a character as LGBTQ+. Actions are any actions that let you challenge hetro-normative actions. Locations these are just queer coded locations such as a gay nightclub or other location. Mentions are subtle hints that these issues exist in the world but are not the primary focus. This section is combined with the artifacts and traits. Queer games/narratives focus on queer narratives and the experiences of queer people. The final section focuses on homophobia/transphobia. This is a categorization m...

Thesis/Purpose: Gonzales talks about promoting ways of developing healthy lifestyles and overcoming obesity in children by finding motivations within playing video games brings awareness and insight to the issue. The specific objectives of the study itself were purposeful in analyzing the before and after habits and lifestyles that children and families that are overweight practice on a daily basis. The study was created in order to accumulate accurate results of information on habits of healthy behaviors and health myths. My doing this study, the data and article bring awareness to the effectiveness and importance of intervening in order to promote healthy lifestyle habits. The study consists of measuring the amounts of motivation that video games and motor games may have to promote physical activity. Methods: The study was conducted and arranged into three separate phases. The first phase consisted of selecting a sample of people. Each person in the sample took measurements and were...

Brock (2011). ‘‘When keeping it real goes wrong’’: Resident Evil 5, racial representation, and gamers The article claims that game developers often use people of color in ways that are insensitive. This article examines gamers’ reactions to a developer’s use of Africans as enemies in a survival horror video game, Resident Evil 5. The observations hope to give insight into how videogames represent Whiteness and White privilege. The researcher analyzed Resident Evil 5 while completing the game once on normal difficulty. Then he conducted a discourse analysis of the post, ‘‘Black Looks on RE5 Racism’’ (Fahey, 2007) and the discussions that were left in the comments about the post that illustrate the debate over RE5’s racial depictions. Their articulation of RE5’s racial approach rests upon their visualization of game mechanics, genre conventions, and cultural beliefs about gaming, technology, and race rather than their experiences of the actual game. Keywords: Black, race and ethnic...

Conn, M. (2015). Gaming’s Untapped Queer Potential as Art.  QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking,   2 (2), 1-5. doi:10.14321/qed.2.2.0001 Matt Conn argues that before games can be seen as an art form, developers and players have to be open to the idea of allowing games that discuss gender and sexuality .  Conn describes he came to this conclusion by drawing from past experiences. Being the founder of GaymerX, an LGBTQ event revolving around gaming, Conn was able to hear about so many different stories revolving around games and gender/ sexuality . Conn argues that the prices of developing video games forces developers to play it safe in terms of storytelling and appealing to the masses. Conn has founded a studio that will focus on LGBTQ-centric games to hopefully show that they can be successful. Conn believes this success will allow for developers to open up to the idea of LGBTQ-centic games. Conn credits games like LIM, Portal, and Dys4ia for showcasing a positive ...

This article “An Examination of Violence and Gender Role Portrayal in Video Games: Implications for Gender Socialization and Aggressive Behavior.” discusses the problem of gender portrayal and violence’s presence in video games. The article studies various video games and collects percentages of women versus men avatars and percent of violence contained in the game. This study concluded that women are less represented than men in video games and that violence in video games is seen to be directed at women in the game.  Dietz studied a sample of 33 video games from Nintendo and Sega Genesis to study gender roles in these games as well as violent content amounts. This study also analyzed behavior outcomes from playing video games and how gender and violence affected them. Deitz talks a lot about gender roles and how even before birth, gender roles are assigned, this includes the stereotype that boys play video games and girls do not. Dietz also studied how violent video games a...

Author's purpose:To prove that playing video games leads to improved performance in regions of the brain. The authors created two groups consisting of gamers and non-gamers based on if they played video games for more than fifteen hours a week for gamers or less than four hours a week for non-gamers. The mean age for the gamer group was 24.6 years and it consisted of thirteen males and four females. The mean age of the non-gamer group was 27.5 years and it also consisted of thirteen males and four females. In order to test the brain activity of these participants they took the WPT assessment while inside an MRI machine. The WPT, or The Weather Prediction Task, is an assessment that asks participants to “classify one to three (out of four) different cue cards into one of two weather categories (rain or sun) based on feedback they receive for their actions” (Schenk, Lech, Suchan 208). While inside the MRI the participants were equipped with goggles and keyboards that were MRI com...

This article “Sex, Lies, and Video Games: The Portrayal of Male and Female Characters on Video Game Covers.” discusses the ways genders are portrayed in video games. The authors of this article observed that male characters are portrayed four times as often as women characters, who are portrayed sexually when they do appear. They discuss the impacts of this statistic and how it can negatively impact some audiences.  The authors source Dietz’s study of Nintendo games and the percentage of female representation within the game. Dietz found that “the most common portrayal of women within the games was actually a complete absence; 41% of the games contained no women, and fully 30% of the games did not have any female characters, human or otherwise. In the games that did contain women 21% of the time they were portrayed as needing aid from a male (Dietz 1998 ).” The authors concluded that even in these percentages, the women that did appear either were portrayed as provocative....

Thesis/Purpose: Bour explores how some existing game developers claim that the full extent of potential that can be made out of video games has not been touched on, players are already presenting evidence of significant impact and daily effects in their lives due to video games; therefore, video games contribute to the “social institutionalization (Stöber, 2004: 484–485) of gaming.” Sometimes it can become evident that a game is seen as “a site of struggle (McAllister, 2004).” To build on the matter further, media scholars should separate themselves from the norm and take on a different perspective where they can better understand rhetorical positions in a game. Methods: The study was conducted by looking at games that were on forums that were ranked the most popular using Alexa.com. Each individual forum was scanned using Google search. Google search was used by typing in a variety of keywords that had any sort of connection towards the impact of video games. The very first 100 words...

Yang, S. (2014). Effects of avatar race in violent video games on racial attitudes and aggression The article claims that the media frequently portrays Black characters as violent in video games. These characters reinforce racial stereotypes and aggression perpetuating racist or prejudice tendencies amongst White gamers. There were 126 White college students, which is 60% male and 40% female; the gender of the participants was not relevant to the experiment though. The participants were told that they were only being tested on their gaming skills. After giving their consent, participants played Saints Row 2, a game that is Grand Theft Auto, for 20 min on a Playstation 3. The participants were randomly assigned to play the game as either a Black or White male avatar. Prior to the participants’ arrival at the experiment, the experimenter set up the game with the appropriate avatar and rotated the game view, so that the avatar was seen face on by the participant when he or she star...

Rabah and Cassidy perform a meta analysis of review literature on education in games. The following is my annotation of that paper. This study seeks to evaluate a broad variety of review literature on gamification in education in order to establish a consensus of the effectiveness of research in such a practice. In addition, it seeks to identify flaws or blind spots in the current research on the effectiveness of gamification. Gamification is defined as, “the use of game design elements characteristic for games (rather than play or playfulness) in non-game contexts”, or applying elements of video games to other situations, such as learning. It finds that gamification is a factor in many positive learning outcomes, such as lowering anxiety, boosting knowledge retention, and building communities. It also concludes that more research on the topic is needed, especially concerning how specific game mechanics connect to specific design principles. This study performed a qualitative a...

Moyer, M. W. (2018, October 2). Do Violent Video Games Trigger Aggression?  Moyer does a fine job in being the devil’s advocate but does have a visible stance on the video game violence debate. Throughout the article Moyer cites professors on both sides of the spectrum. She reviews either advocates for or against the correlation between violent video games and real world violent actions. Moyer seems to lean on the notion that video games do not have any link to increased violence in the real world while also understanding the debate will not end for some time. I agree with Moyer’s stance on the statistics regarding the affect video games have on pre-teen or adolescent violence in the real world. After reviewing controlled experiments, she states that “ the meta-analysis reported an effect size of 0.08, which suggests that violent video games account for less than one percent of the variation in aggressive behavior among U.S. teens and pre-teens…”. Furthermore, she ci...

Lavigne, C. (2015). "I'm Batman" (and You Can Be Too): "Gender" and Constrictive Play in the "Arkham" Game Series. Cinema Journal Vol. 55, No. 1 (Fall 2015), pp. 133-141 Lavigne used Batman: Arkham City (2013, Rocksteady) to create a qualitative review of dangerous tropes in mainstream games. The article shows that the character Batman “advances heteronormative, hypergendered stereotypes” with his “ripped” physique, justified violence, and having to rescue almost every female he comes in contact with. Catwoman is brought up as an equally dangerous character in regards to tropes. She fights in heels, kisses thugs, and is programmed to show all of her curves while playing as her. This, in addition to NPC interactions with her, make Catwoman a dangerous stereotype. This article shows that mainstream media can be instrumental to stereotypes being brought forward. It also shows that game design is still entrenched in the “typical male fantasy”, and that...

Chess's article  "Going with the Flo: Diner Dash And Feminism" discusses the popular line of “Diner Dash” games and its hidden aspect of feminism and empowerment. The Diner Dash games consist of the main character Flo who waitresses for different diners and passes through levels that get more advanced as the player plays. As the player plays, they are guided with narration that is broad and very open to interpretation. Not only does Diner Dash create a discourse for women and girls, but creates a casual game for those who are not hard core games. This article sources the Casual Games Association's Market Report’s 2007 statistics on casual games that states 74 percent of casual gamers are women. Chess states that according to sources women are more apt to playing casual games because of the style of casual games (usually home making, cooking, or puzzle games), while men are more apt to games like Call of Duty. Chess quotes Christine Gledhill’s perspective on feminism ...

Nuyens, Filip, Jory Deleuze, Pierre Maurage, Mark D. Griffiths, Daria J. Kuss, and Joël Billieux.             “Impulsivity in Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Gamers: Preliminary Results on                          Experimental and Self-Report Measures.” Journal of Behavioral Addictions 5, no. 2                     (2016): 351–56. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.5.2016.028. Keywords: Internet gaming disorder - Internet addiction - Multiplayer online battle arena - Videogame addiction - impulsivity - delay discounting This study was on a sample of Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) players attempting to find a connection between MOBA playing and impulsivity. The subjects with the most impulsivity were connected to the mo...

Sarkeesian, A., Petit, C. (2019). Female Representation in Videogames Isn't Getting Any Better. WIRED 2019. This article proves that representative equality in the video game industry is still far behind where it should be. Sarkeesian & Petit used data from the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E 3 ) from 2015 to 2019 to quantify gender representation in the video game industry. The time frame is significant due to Gamergate in 2014, a misogynist movement that used video game as its platform. While open character creation options are more prevalent than in previous years, games with only a female protagonist are few.  Sarkeesian & Petit quantified the data by counting the number of games at E 3 with male, female, gender-ambiguous, and open character options. The data show that in those years, there were 3-10x more male protagonists than female. Sarkeesian & Petit also counted presenters featured at 2019 E 3 , and found that there were about 4x as many male prese...