Researching Journals

Squire K, Intelligent Cultural Framing of Computer/Video Games(2002) , The international journal of computer game research
Volume 2 Issue 1
http://www.gamestudies.org/0102/squire/
Accessed: 28/09/07

This article discusses how computer games have been dealt with over time and their integration into popular culture. It points out a variety of interesting points, from the health risks caused by games playing to education. The article mainly deals with three topics; violence, education and the impact of computer games. Although very interesting, I felt it did not directly help my investigation.


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Hejdenberg A,The Psychology Behind Games(2005)
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050426/hejdenberg_pfv.htm
Accessed: 28/09/07

The Psychology Behind Games was particularly useful in this article. It discuses what we need as a species to survive and focuses on Maslow’s pyramid of needs. It explores the theory that once we have fulfilled these essentials we can then go onto pleasure seeking activities. Maslow describes them as deficient and growth needs. Anders Hejdenberg(the author) then discusses that games are a big part of this ,citing Man, Play and Games from Roger Caillois’ four main points before moving onto Mr.Csikszentmihalyi flow theory. I thought that this was particularly useful as it breaks down what gamers do for pleasure in a modern society .


Hejdenberg states that overtime videogames also nest other types of media like text, sound ,music , storytelling ,art and film. “As a whole package, videogames give us the ability to forget our worries for a moment and transcend beyond our physical self to an imaginary, illusory world in which our unrealizable desires can be realized.” Anders Hejdenberg then goes onto a detailed write-up of creating user profiles using market analysis which I thought was interesting and helpful.

Imitation
I thought imitation was particularly interesting in regards to game characters. Anders Hejdenberg talks about that as we grow up we use imitation as our way of learning about new things and as children we spent a lot of our time imitating. From this we can learn about values and our culture. The main point of this imitation is that it’s our way of striving who we want to become as adults. Shown best in the quote “The icons that we choose to imitate are often the ones that we feel similar to, and that we can relate to – this may be one of the reasons that Harry Potter is so popular among children for example.” This has direct relevance to game characters Hejdenberg states, in that videogames we can either play as a certain character or when you play as “yourself” but with a new set of skills in a fantasy world.

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Lazzero N, president of Xeodesign,Why we play games:four keys to more emotion without story (2004)
Issue 1
pp 1-8
http://www.xeodesign.com/xeodesign_whyweplaygames.pdf
Accessed: 28/09/07

This study deals with creating more emotions in games and is actually employed by many companies with the aim of helping them do this. So far it has helped to improve over 40 million user’s experiences. In this particular study it researches the questions “where do emotions come from? Along with “is it possible to build emotions into games by adding emotion producing objects to gameplay rather than cut scenes?”