ENG 225 Rhetoric and Gaming

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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 racism. 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...

McCabe and Wise,  It’s All Fun and Games until Someone Learns Something: Assessing the Learning Outcomes of Two Educational Games discuss whether educational games can be designed for both learning and entertainment. It involves the evaluation of the game Tic Tac Toe and comparing it to relative achievement levels of students who played the game and players who did not play the game. They questioned the degree of the students’ proficiency in identifying citations improved as a result of playing. They had seven sections of a GCOM 103 class which is a mandatory communication class for first year students and had them take a thirty- five multiple choice test to test the student proficiency. The students were asked by their instructor to take the citation test twice, at the beginning and the end of the semester. The Magnetic Keyboard game was also tested having pre-programmed tasks for the user to complete and the amount of time it was completed, at the end the researcher could dete...

Bonnie Ruberg; Queerness and Video Games: Queer Game Studies and New Perspectives through Play. GLQ 1 October 2018; 24 (4): 543–555. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-6957940 Pages:13 Peer Reviewed: Yes Annotation Word Count: 382 Ruberg believes that because of video game’s huge social influence on most of the planet, it is important for queer studies to research and analyze how video games handle queer content. Ruberg believes that play is the most important tool video games can use to explore LGBTQ content. Having players experience LGBTQ content through play allows the player to gain a greater grasp of the experiences someone for the LGBTQ community may go through. Whether those experiences are negative or positive are up to the developers. The purpose of Ruberg’s paper is to explore the importance of queer studies to investigate how video games have and may be able to help the player experience what it is like to be apart of the LGBTQ community. Ruberg recounts the...

Pulos, A. (2013). Confronting Heteronormativity in Online Games: A Critical Discourse Analysis of LGBTQ Sexuality in World of Warcraft. Games and Culture, 8(2), 77–97. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412013478688 Pages: 21 Peer Reviewed: Yes Annotation Word Count: 329 Pulos analyzed how the World of Warcraft (WoW) community talks about and interacts with people who are a part of the LGBTQ community. Pulos argues that WoW’s community is based on a system that Blizzard created that does not support LGBTQ friendly content. Pulos found that Blizzard actively investigated their forums for content relating to anything LGBTQ and taking it down because it “violated their terms of service.” Pulos analyzed 400 messages on the Blizzard forums that focused on “LGBTQ players and the Wow community.” Pulos also drew upon her own experience from playing WoW. Pulos spoke with Sara Andrews, who started an LGBTQ friendly guild. Andrews had her post/guild taken down and was told by Blizzard that...

Ertzberger, J. (2008). An exploration of factors affecting teachers' use of video games as instructional tools (Order No. 3311370). Available from Education Database. (304838683). Retrieved from https://unco.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/304838683?accountid=12832 This study discusses implementing video games into a classroom setting, including the possible deterrents, such as cost, lack of relevance to the curriculum, and set up/maintenance time. It describes the innovations made by video games in education and in general, as well as why and how games improve student engagement with the materials being taught. This study used surveys and research synthesis to determine the data it utilized in its findings. The study dealt only with video games, not board games, and was confined to video game use by K-12 educators in North Carolina It discusses why kids find school so unappealing, as well as why video games can make learning more appealing. It a...