#GirlGamers, Soldiers, and Public Relations: Analyzing Gender Representation in U.S. Army Esports

While interest in esports is widespread across demographic categories, the gendered norms surrounding video game play have been replicated, resulting in a male-dominated space. Scholars argue that broadening representations of gamers is necessary to normalizing women’s presence in esports. As nongaming organizations enter the space, they have a unique opportunity to disrupt established norms through their representations of esports competitors. This study analyzes the representation of U.S. Army Esports (USAE) team members via official social media channels. USAE was created as a public relations tool to engage with a younger audience, redefine the public image of the Army, and recruit soldiers. Using a critical public relations framework and critical discourse analysis, we examine the discourse around gender and esports constructed through USAE’s representation of team members and the role of public relations practice in reinforcing or disrupting existing norms.

Let the games begin: the relationship between video gaming and entrepreneurial mindsets

PurposeThis article addresses the need for further conceptual development of the factors that influence the development of the entrepreneurial mindset. It focuses on finding a link between the classic mental models of entrepreneurship and those that are employed during video game play to explore if similarities exist.Design/methodology/approachUsing theories of entrepreneurship and opportunity recognition, the study examines a sample of 217 video gamers.FindingsThe results of this study suggest that an individual who exhibits a high level of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) has an enhanced opportunity recognition capability when the intensity of playing video games is also high. Various genres of games were controlled for; however, it was found that shooting games have the highest effect on the emergence of opportunity recognition.Originality/valueThus, the study reveals that some game activities can be linked to entrepreneurial cognitions. This has implications for the entrepreneurial intent literature as it reveals certain actions can be linked with entrepreneurial information processing. These findings are useful for game designers and managers as well.

Video Game Values: Play as Human-Computer Interaction

<p>Video games are a form of software and thus an obvious object of study in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Interaction with video games differs from the usual understanding of HCI, however, because people play video games rather than use them. In this dissertation we ask: " How can we analyse human-computer interaction in video games when the interaction in question is play?" We propose video game values, defined as sustained beliefs about preferable conduct during play, as a basis for video game HCI. In order to describe and analyse play we use activity theory, focusing on how the interface mediates players' beliefs about preferable conduct. Activity theory allows us to address the multiple levels of context and detail in play as well as the role of conflict. We employ a qualitative case study methodology to gather data about five popular video games: Civilization III, Fable, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Half-Life 2, and The Sims 2. Our core data comes from observation and interview sessions with twenty-five experienced players of these games. We collected further data based on the games' interfaces, participant observation, and documentation such as manuals and walkthroughs. We make three key contributions to video game HCI: 1) We introduce video game values as a means to analyse play as a form of human-computer interaction and show how the values of PAIDIA and LUDUS influence all aspects of play; 2) we develop a video game activity framework for describing and analysing video game play at multiple levels of detail and context; and 3) we extend the video game activity framework to include contradictions and breakdowns as a means to describe and analyse the role of conflict and challenge in video game play.</p>

Video Game Values: Play as Human-Computer Interaction

<p>Video games are a form of software and thus an obvious object of study in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Interaction with video games differs from the usual understanding of HCI, however, because people play video games rather than use them. In this dissertation we ask: " How can we analyse human-computer interaction in video games when the interaction in question is play?" We propose video game values, defined as sustained beliefs about preferable conduct during play, as a basis for video game HCI. In order to describe and analyse play we use activity theory, focusing on how the interface mediates players' beliefs about preferable conduct. Activity theory allows us to address the multiple levels of context and detail in play as well as the role of conflict. We employ a qualitative case study methodology to gather data about five popular video games: Civilization III, Fable, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Half-Life 2, and The Sims 2. Our core data comes from observation and interview sessions with twenty-five experienced players of these games. We collected further data based on the games' interfaces, participant observation, and documentation such as manuals and walkthroughs. We make three key contributions to video game HCI: 1) We introduce video game values as a means to analyse play as a form of human-computer interaction and show how the values of PAIDIA and LUDUS influence all aspects of play; 2) we develop a video game activity framework for describing and analysing video game play at multiple levels of detail and context; and 3) we extend the video game activity framework to include contradictions and breakdowns as a means to describe and analyse the role of conflict and challenge in video game play.</p>

Action video game play facilitates “learning to learn”

Previous work has demonstrated that action video game training produces enhancements in a wide range of cognitive abilities. Here we evaluate a possible mechanism by which such breadth of enhancement could be attained: that action game training enhances learning rates in new tasks (i.e., “learning to learn”). In an initial controlled intervention study, we show that individuals who were trained on action video games subsequently exhibited faster learning in the two cognitive domains that we tested, perception and working memory, as compared to individuals who trained on non-action games. We further confirmed the causal effect of action video game play on learning ability in a pre-registered follow-up study that included a larger number of participants, blinding, and measurements of participant expectations. Together, this work highlights enhanced learning speed for novel tasks as a mechanism through which action video game interventions may broadly improve task performance in the cognitive domain.

NOSTALGIA AND THE BACKLOG: /R/PATIENTGAMERS AND THE TRANSACTIONAL NATURE OF LEISURE

This paper uses the findings of an investigation into the /r/patientgamers subreddit to account for the ways that our leisure time and our play have been assimilated by the logics of neoliberal, late capitalism. I do this by tracing classed experiences of slowness as experienced by video game players. The figure of the patientgamer was selected not just because of their protracted approach to video game consumption, but because the grows out of a frustration with the financial and temporal costs to access leisure. Through Foucauldian discourse analysis, two major themes were detected across a number of posts which traced how many players tried, and often failed, to slow down their lives in restful ways through their play and the conversations that emerged from the impulse to treat their leisure time as work. Specifically, users’ nostalgia for their childhoods and their anxieties around possessing a video game backlog are both emblematic of the way that video game play has been made legible to capitalist logics such that any distinction between labour and leisure becomes moot and attempt to lift from the patientgamer ethos some potential ways that the work of play may be reframed to undercut logics of efficiency and productivity. The case study of /r/patientgamers holds relevance not just for the study of games and/as culture, but of how technocapitalism instrumentalizes all leisure and the consequences felt by those who try to slow their rhythms of consumption but do so without proper attention to issues of class and power.