Journal articles on the topic 'Video games Modification'

This article examines the game Papers, Please to demonstrate how the aesthetic experience of gameplay resonates with the cultural logic of contemporary globalist paradigms. The author demonstrates how video games make their players undertake a synthesis of work and play via a process of psychological and physical self-modification. This interrelation between work, play, and subjectivity modification within gameplay experiences embodies the same ideological framework that governs many knowledge-based economies which thrive off of user-generated content. In using the work/play/subjectivity connection to locate similarities between video games and the logic of globalist paradigms, the author presents a revised understanding of what constitutes the political dimensions of video games and the experiences they elicit in their players. This article concludes with an analysis of how the mechanics and narrative of Papers, Please embodies the cultural mind-set of work-as-play while simultaneously challenging the discourses often applied to user-focused information technologies.

This essay’s purpose is to illustrate a broad understanding of legal issues and gaps in U.S. law regarding video game modifications. Digital entertainment technology develops so quickly that often new technology does not fit precisely into current law and statutes. Two different approaches to video game modification are explored pertinent to companies’ different attitudes toward modification by third parties and end-users. These two approaches include companies that encourage third party modifications, and companies that want to deter against third party modifications. Then, issues and risks of modification are explored through potential breach of contract, copyright infringement, and reverse engineering. The author analyzes the relevant court rulings on the matter of distributing these risks. Besides there are different forms of affirmative defenses such as fair use in the U.S case law which are also discussed in the article. Finally, gaps in the law and ownership issues regarding modifications are shown in the cases involving Blizzard Entertainment Inc. This essay is meant to illuminate the dichotomy of laws and courts protecting the interests of copyright holders, giving them protection and incentive to continue creating, versus anti-monopolistic rules, and providing the ultimate beneficiaries of video games the right to modify them.

Objective This study examines the association between time spent watching TV, playing video games, using a computer or handheld device (screen time), and BMI among U.S. adolescents, and potential effect modification of these associations by sex, sleep duration, and physical activity. Methods A secondary analysis of 10–17-year-old participants in the 2016–2017 National Survey of Children’s Health was conducted. Multivariable logistic regression was used to examine the association between parent-reported screen time and BMI categories and effect modification by sex, sleep duration and physical activity. Results The analysis included 29,480 adolescents (49.4% female). Those with ≥1 hour (vs <1 hour) of TV/video games per day were more likely to be overweight/obese (adjusted Odds Ratio (aOR) 1–3 hours = 1.4; 95% Confidence Interval (CI)1.19, 1.65; aOR ≥4 hours = 2.19; 95% CI 1.73, 2.77). This association was stronger in adolescents who did not meet the guidelines for physical activity (aOR ≥ 4 hours = 3.04; 95% CI: 2.1, 4.4) compared with those who did (aOR ≥ 4 hours = 1.64; 95% CI: 0.72, 3.72). Using computers/handheld devices was associated with a smaller increase in odds of overweight/obesity (aOR ≥4 hours = 1.53; 95% CI:1.19, 1.97). Conclusion Watching TV or playing video games for ≥1 hour per day is associated with obesity in adolescents who did not meet the guidelines for physical activity. Using computers or handheld devices seems to have a weaker association with BMI compared with TV/video games.

Background Video games are expanding exponentially with their increased popularity among users. However, this popularity has also led to an increase in reported video game addiction. There may be consumer engagement–related factors that may influence video game addiction. Objective This study aims to empirically examine the impact of the dimensions of consumer video game engagement on video game addiction. The dimensions are dedication, absorption, conscious attention, social connection, enthusiasm, and interaction. We utilize the uses and gratifications theory to study the video game engagement dimensions as potential factors through which gamers feel gratified and engaged in video game playing. Additionally, this study incorporates the cultivation theory to investigate how video game engagement factors trigger video game addiction. Methods A two-step process was applied for data analysis on valid cases of 176 gamers aged 15-25 years: video game addiction was specified and validated as a reflective-formative construct, and hypothesis testing was later performed using the WarpPLS on valid respondents. Results The analysis uncovered 2 dimensions of video game engagement: social connection with P=.08 and interaction with P=.49, which did not significantly contribute to video game addiction. Conclusions This study offers unique insights to a myriad of stakeholders, mostly psychologists and psychiatrists, who routinely prescribe behavior modification techniques to treat video game addiction.

Serious games based on video mazes can be easily and effectively applied for learning purposes with the goal of facilitating technology-enhanced education. In order to practice game-based learning for various curriculums, educators need software platforms for automatized construction and flexible customization of such games. This article presents an open software platform named Maze Builder built on Unity 3D, which is especially designed for automatic generation and easy modification of maze video games. We discuss the maze game design process, the platform architecture and its data model, the results obtained from the performance tests, and a practical experiment conducted with teachers using the platform for generating maze games with educational tasks embedded into maze rooms. The initial results acquired from these experiments are very positive and encouraging with regard of the usability of the Maze Builder platform by domain specialists who are not IT professionals.ACM Computing Classification System (1998): D.2.6, D.2.10, K.8.0.

When Jeremy Soule, composer for some of the most well-known video game franchises in the world such as Guild Wars and The Elder Scrolls, was accused of sexual misconduct by women in the gaming industry in 2019, the internet hosted reactions from several fronts. From questioning the victims’ credibility to taking a neutral position while waiting for further development, gamers and fans made use of digital platforms to express either concern, astonishment, or doubt; these reactions point to the significant symbolic capital that Soule possesses in the context of video game music. The Elder Scrolls franchise, and in particular Skyrim, is highly recognized for its soundtracks, and this franchise has given rise to the largest mods community to date. In previous research, I examined this mods community in order to consider music and sound in relation to immersion and modification in Elder Scrolls games. Since the data collected in that earlier research was limited to a time span until 2017, the recent developments concerning composer Jeremy Soule weren’t addressed in that earlier setting. However, these allegations were part of a larger phenomenon of awareness and public exposure of negative and abusive practices in several labor contexts in the video game industry, shedding some light on a much-needed discussion about sexism and mistreatment toward women and nonbinary professionals in these fields and raising some pertinent questions concerning users’ feedback and engagement. This article aims to discuss the possible impacts these accusations had on the relationship between Soule’s music and users in the mods community, including users’ overviews of their own personal affective engagement with the games, thus verifying the deep connection between music, interactivity, authorship and gamer identity.

Abstract Internet privacy is threatened by expanding use of automated mass surveillance and censorship techniques. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of using video games and virtual environments to evade automated detection, namely by manipulating elements in the game environment to compose and share text with other users. This technique exploits the fact that text spotting in the wild is a challenging problem in computer vision. To test our hypothesis, we compile a novel dataset of text generated in popular video games and analyze it using state-of-the-art text spotting tools. Detection rates are negligible in most cases. Retraining these classifiers specifically for game environments leads to dramatic improvements in some cases (ranging from 6% to 65% in most instances) but overall effectiveness is limited: the costs and benefits of retraining vary significantly for different games, this strategy does not generalize, and, interestingly, users can still evade detection using novel configurations and arbitrary-shaped text. Communicating in this way yields very low bitrates (0.3-1.1 bits/s) which is suited for very short messages, and applications such as microblogging and bootstrapping off-game communications (dialing). This technique does not require technical sophistication and runs easily on existing games infrastructure without modification. We also discuss potential strategies to address efficiency, bandwidth, and security constraints of video game environments. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such exploration of video games and virtual environments from a computer vision perspective.

Serious video games applied for learning purposes play a significant and important role for the modern technology enhanced education. The paper presents an educational 3D maze video game dedicated to the development of carpet fabrication in Bulgaria since 17 th century until modern days. The game was automatically generated by means of declarative description of the maze processed by an open software tool named Maze Builder and built on top of Unity game platform and specially designed for automatic generation and easy modification of maze video games. There are explained the maze game design process, the educational tasks embedded into the maze, and a practical experiment conducted with the generated game. The initial results obtained from these experiments are very positive and encouraging with regard of playability of such educational mazes and, as well, concerning their easy and straightforward generation by educators, who are not IT professionals.

Background: The current study aimed to determine the effect of video games among the Non-Video-Game Addicted (NVGA) and Video Game Addicted (VGA) in terms of mental health and physical activity among adolescents from Karachi.Subjects and methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at public sector schools and colleges of different socioeconomic status of Karachi, Pakistan, from Jan-March 2020. Total of 321 students, adolescents, aged from 15-19 years, from both genders and who used to play video games but were considered as non-video game adictors (using less than four hours per day on video games) and video game adictors (using more than 5 hours per day). Questionnaires were used to collect data based on DSM-5 to find gaming addiction in adolescents with 21 questions. "General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)," with 14 questions on mental health. "International Physical Activity Questionnaire," for physical activity status. Students were divided into two groups: non-video game addicted (NVGA) and video game addicted (VGA). Results: Out of 321, 233 (72.6%) were VGA, and 88 (27.4%) were NVGA students. There were 184 (57.3%) males and 137 (42.7%) females. The mean addiction score was 2.221+0.49 and 3.34+0.35 in the VGA group and NVGA group, respectively. 19.0% of males and 8.4% of females were VGA. Variables used for video game addiction in the study were salience, tolerance to play the game, mood modification, relapse, withdrawal, conflict, and problems (such as sleep deprivation, etc.). The mean score for all these variables was higher in the VGA group (p<0.001). The mean score of MHQ responses was significantly higher in the VGA group, indicating the high intensity of distress.Conclusion: It has been concluded from the study that a very high frequency of video game addiction in adolescents (VGA group) caused mental and physical health problems in the study population.

This article seeks to clarify the role of the image in video game representation. I argue that virtuality is incompatible with depictive representation and that the distinction between virtual environments and interactive depiction is important in game theory and analysis. In the first part, I combine a critical modification of Kendall Walton’s concept of reflexive representation with Edmund Husserl’s concept of image consciousness, in order to clarify the ontological difference between physical models and depictive images. In the second part, I discuss the relationship between physical models and virtual things, and the difference between photographic depiction and screen-mediated prosthetic vision. Finally, I show how this theoretical framework can help clarify the nature of interactive depiction in games.

This article aims to specify the role of spectator sounds in football simulation video games as exemplified by FIFA 19: what are the structures and functions of spectator sounds and how are these sounds related to the visuals of the video game and the player’s actions and potential experience of disruption? Although the examination generally adds to the understanding of a prevalent and purportedly significant yet hitherto rather underexplored type of video game sound, the examination also motivates a modification of certain positions within previous research that has routinely highlighted the non-obtrusive role of video game sounds. Specifically, the article shows how the disruptive potential of the spectator sounds is attributional both to what they sound like, why they occur and how and from what perspective the player is called upon to listen to them.

This article reviews the instruments and distinctive features that allow conducting creative activity within the game “Minecraft”, which implies modification of world and its rules, as well as the game project at the choice of the gamer. The author also examines the application of this game in educational sphere, including higher educational institutions. The subject of this research is the game “Minecraft”, or rather its peculiarities viewed from the perspective of aesthetics, mechanics and instruments for carrying out creative and educational activity. The author draws parallels between this and other game projects that have similar mechanics with Minecraft for determining the common properties and characteristics for carrying out the designated activities. The novelty consists in assessment of the value of games as a versatile topic for domestic research, as well as in demonstration of their successful application for educational purposes. The relevance is defined by fact that the topic of studying video games in Russia is in the infancy of its dynamic development, and the problem of distance education is especially acute due to COVID-19 pandemic. The conclusion is made that the universal neutral minimalistic style of Minecraft, alongside other features of this project, is a powerful instrument for the fulfillment of creative and educational projects.

In the age of participatory and convergence paradigms, video game music has its own networked culture with cybercommunities that discuss, share, and create content, thus opening up a creative space for artistic activities in a constant digital flow. Music composition and production is one of these activities, with files made available on several platforms such as SoundCloud and YouTube, specifically in the format of modification files (or mods). Building on research for a master’s dissertation, this article examines a new model of online artistic production in the form of the circulation of musical mods that were composed and shared on the Nexus Mods platform for the The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim video games. These mods add new musical material that is similar to the existing soundtrack of both titles, but the majority of the files in this platform’s audio category are related only to sounds, not to musical composition. By using titles such as “better sounds” or “immersive sounds” to describe their additions, many modders aim to give other gamers a more immersive experience in the game(s). In this case, immersive relates not only to the musical style and sound quality of the aural effects but also a plausible construction of the reality in which the gamers live, play, and negotiate meaning relating to their own social context. Intersecting “playbour,” fandom, aural immersion, and audiovisual literacy, these audio modders work on adding new layers to the soundscapes and environments of the virtual worlds presented in the two games. The modders regard immersion as a key aspect of design and playability, and they contribute audio material to enable their social capital and visibility on online platforms.

Children’s interest in playing popular video games could be utilized for learning and educational purposes. The entertaining and interactive learning environments of digital games can facilitate the learning of a variety of challenging subjects. This paper presents the Creative Programmer, which is a Minecraft modification (Mod) that takes an advantage of the popularity of Minecraft game among children to teach them basic computer programming concepts. This mod targets children aged between (5- 15). The effectiveness of this Mod was tested using a pre and post quizzes. The results indicate that children who did not have any previous knowledge of programming answered most of the test questions correctly, while the performance level of children who were familiar with programming improved in the post-quiz compared to the pre-quiz. Moreover, it has been observed that the familiarity of the Minecraft environment made learning more enjoyable and enhanced the knowledge gaining process.

We present a multi-layer hierarchical connectionist network model for simulating human autobiographical memory in believable agents. Grounded in psychological theory, this model improves on previous attempts to model agents’ event knowledge by providing a more dynamic and non-deterministic representation of autobiographical memories. From this model, a Java-based proof-of-concept prototype system was created for use as an enabling technology in video games. This prototype was leveraged in the creation of a Minecraft modification (mod) implementation of the model that is able to demonstrate context-dependent recall and the effects of recency on memory recall. Wider implications of the model in agent and game design are discussed.

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of different small-sided games (SSGs) format on external, internal load and technical actions of professional U-23 portuguese soccer players. Eight players (20.1±0.8 years, 180.4±7.2 cm, 75.9±4.9 kg) performed three different 4 vs. 4 ball possession SSGs (3x3 min play/rest) in different pitch dimensions, SSG1 16x24 m, SSG2 20x30 m and SSG3 24x36 m. All SSGs were video recorded for technical actions analysis. WIMU PROTM (RealTrack Systems, Almeria, Spain) inertial devices were used for internal and external load data collection. The distribution normality was determined with the Shapiro-Wilk test. Parametric and nonparametric statistics were selected accordingly. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS™ 25.0 version) was used for data analysis. No significant differences were observed comparing the different SSGs in total distance covered, acceleration/deceleration distance, as well as in maximal and mean heart rate. Regarding the technical actions, no significant differences were observed in successful passes, contrary to the observed from SSG1 to SSG3 in duels (7.00±2.13; 4.38±2.44; 4.25±1.98), number of balls lost (2.63±1.30; 1.00±0.53; 0.88±1.12) and in between SSGs in high-speed running (p<0.05, ES=0.37). In senior and professional soccer players, the modification of the pitch size between 16x24 m and 24x36 m during 4 vs. 4 ball possession SSGs with 3x3 min play/rest promotes modifications in the dynamic of technical actions and internal and external training load variables Keywords: Small-sided games, Professional soccer, Technical actions, External and internal load, Performance.

This paper proposes a concept of layered framework for adjustable artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligences are used in various areas of computer science for decision making tasks. Traditionally artificial intelligences are developed in order to be used for a specific purpose within a particular software. However, this paper stands as the first step of a research in progress whose final objective is to design an artificial intelligence adjustable to every types of problems without any modification in its source code. The present work focuses on a framework of such an artificial intelligence and is conducted in the context of video games. This framework, composed of three layers, would be re-usable for all types of game.

Background:Active video games (exergames) increase energy expenditure (EE) and physical activity (PA) compared with sedentary video gaming. The physiological cost and enjoyment of exergaming in adolescents, and young and older adults has not been documented, nor compared with aerobic exercise. This study compared the physiological cost and enjoyment of exergaming on Wii Fit with aerobic exercise in 3 populations.Methods:Cardiorespiratory and enjoyment measurements were compared in 14 adolescents, 15 young adults, and 13 older adults during handheld inactive video gaming, Wii Fit activities (yoga, muscle conditioning, balance, aerobics), and brisk treadmill walking and jogging.Results:For all groups EE and heart rate (HR) of Wii Fit activities were greater than handheld gaming (P < .001) but lower than treadmill exercise (P ≤ .001). Wii aerobics elicited moderate intensity activity in adolescents, young adults, and older adults with respective mean (SD) metabolic equivalents of 3.2 (0.7), 3.6 (0.8), and 3.2 (0.8). HR during Wii aerobics fell below the recommended intensity for maintaining cardiorespiratory fitness. Group enjoyment rating was greater for Wii balance and aerobics compared with treadmill walking and jogging (P ≤ .05).Conclusions:Wii Fit appears an enjoyable exergame for adolescents and adults, stimulating light-to-moderate intensity activity through the modification of typically sedentary leisure behavior.

(1) Background: Childhood obesity is an important public health problem. Children with overweight or obesity often tend to show the pediatric inactivity triad components; these involve exercise deficit disorder, pediatric dynapenia, and physical illiteracy. The aim of the study was to examine the influence of an active video games (AVG) intervention combined with multicomponent exercise on muscular fitness, physical activity (PA), and motor skills in children with overweight or obesity. (2) Methods: A total of 29 (13 girls) children (10.07 ± 0.84 years) with overweight or obesity were randomly allocated in the intervention group (AVG group; n = 21) or in the control group (CG; n = 8). The intervention group performed a 5-month AVG training using the Xbox 360® with the Kinect, the Nintendo Wii®, dance mats, and the BKOOL® interactive cycling simulator, combined with multicomponent exercise, performing three sessions per week. The control group continued their daily activities without modification. Weight, PA using accelerometers, and motor competence using the Test of Gross Motor Development 3rd edition were measured. Muscular fitness was evaluated through the Counter Movement Jump height, maximal isometric strength of knee extension and handgrip strength, and lean mass using Dual-energy X-ray Absorptiometry. Mann–Whitney U and Wilcoxon signed rank tests were performed. The biserial correlation coefficients (r) were calculated. Spearman’s correlation coefficients among PA, muscular fitness, and motor competence variables were also calculated. (3) Results: The AVG group significantly increased their knee extension maximal isometric strength (4.22 kg; p < 0.01), handgrip strength (1.93 kg; p < 0.01), and jump height (1.60 cm; p < 0.01), while the control group only increased the knee extension maximal isometric strength (3.15 kg; p < 0.01). The AVG group improved motor competence and light physical activity (p < 0.05) and decreased sedentary time (p < 0.05). Lean mass improved in both AVG group and CG (p < 0.05). Lastly, the percentage of improvement of motor skills positively correlated with the percentage of improvement in vigorous PA (r = 0.673; p = 0.003) and the percentage of improvement in CMJ (r = 0.466; p = 0.039). (4) Conclusions: A 5-month intervention combining AVG with multicomponent training seems to have positive effects on muscle fitness, motor competence, and PA in children with overweight or obesity.

Retranslation Hypothesis claims that retranslations tend to be more source-oriented than the first translations. Video game translation (VGT) refutes this hypothesis since retranslations in VGT, occuring on game remakes and remasters, are target oriented. We argue that retranslations in VGT context are better to be termed prosthetic translation, a retranslation involving game mechanics adjustments at intertextual level. To prove that prosthetic translation is of existence, we applied theories of retranslation, multiplicity, commodified nostalgia, and intertextual continuity on seven titles of Square Enix’s award winning Final Fantasy series. The original Japanese versions, North American versions, their first translations, and retranslations were analyzed to prove the presence of prosthetic translation. The findings show that retranslations on the series are oriented to target gaming system and the aesthetics of mechanics and narrative intertextuality and thus refuting Retranslation Hypothesis. Based on the findings, we argue that retranslation of video game remakes and remasters focuses on repairing extremities or intertextual losses, occuring due to game narrative and mechanical aesthetics. These intertextual losses are repaired by attaching mechanical prostheses like dialogue box extension or modification, font type and size alteration, and other mechanical modification to ensure present time recontextualization of the remade and remastered games. Keywords: Retranslation hypothesis, prosthetic translation, remakes, remasters, video game translationPENERJEMAHAN PROSTETIK: SANGGAHAN TERHADAP HIPOTESIS PENERJEMAHAN ULANG (RETRANSLATION HYPOTHESIS) MELALUI REMAKE DAN REMASTER VIDEO GAME AbstrakHipotesis Penerjemahan Ulang (Retranslation Hypothesis) menyatakan bahwa penerjemahan ulang cenderung lebih berorientasi pada sumber jika dibandingkan dengan penerjemahan pertama. Penerjemahan video game menyanggah pernyataan ini karena penerjemahan ulang dalam konteks video game yang muncul pada remake dan remaster cenderung lebih berorientasi pada target penggunanya. Tulisan ini menyarankan bahwa penerjemahan ulang dalam penerjemahan video game sebaiknya disebut dengan penerjemahan prostetik, penerjemahan ulang yang mengikutsertakan penyesuaian mekanisme game-nya pada tataran intertekstual. Untuk membuktikan keberadaan penerjemahan prostetik, teori penerjemahan ulang, multiplicity yang membahas mengenai remake dan remaster, komodifikasi nostalgia, dan kontinuitas intertekstual diaplikasikan pada tujuh judul serial Final Fantasy untuk mengungkapkan keberadaan penerjemahan prostetik. Ketujuh judul tersebut terdiri dari versi asli Jepangnya, versi terjemahan bahasa Inggrisnya, versi terjemahan pertama dan terjemahan ulangnya. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa penerjemahan ulang dalam video game berorientasi pada sistem game sasarannya dan estetika intertekstualitas mekanis dan naratif game-nya. Temuan ini menyanggah Hipotesis Penerjemahan Ulang. Temuan juga menunjukkan bahwa penerjemahan prostetik berfungsi untuk memperbaiki ekstrimitas atau rumpang intertekstual, yang muncul karena estetika mekanis dan naratif dalam sebuah game. Rumpang intertekstual ini diperbaiki melalui prostetik mekanis seperti ekstensifikasi atau modifikasi kotak dialog, alterasi ukuran font, dan modifikasi mekanis lainnya guna terjaminnya rekontekstualisasi masa kini sebuah remake dan remaster video game.Kata Kunci: Hipotesis penerjemahan ulang, penerjemahan prostetik, remake, remaster, penerjemahan video game

Compared to 25 years ago, the climbing sport itself has changed dramatically. From a rock climbing modification to a separation in three independent disciplines, the requirements to athletes and trainers increased rapidly. To ensure continuous improvement of the sport itself, the usage of measurement and sensor technology is unavoidable. Especially in the field of the discipline speed climbing, which will be performed as a single discipline at the Olympic Games 2024 in Paris, the current state of the art of movement analysis only consists of video analysis and the benefit of the experience of trainers. Therefore, this paper presents a novel method, which supports trainers and athletes and enables analysis of motion sequences and techniques. Prerecorded video footage is combined with existing feature and human body keypoint detection algorithms and standardized boundary conditions. Therefore, several image processing steps are necessary to convert the recorded movement of different speed climbing athletes to significant parameters for detailed analysis. By studying climbing trials of professional athletes and the used techniques in different sections of the speed climbing wall, the aim among others is to get comparable results and detect mistakes. As a conclusion, the presented method enables powerful analysis of speed climbing training and competition and serves with the aid of a user-friendly designed interface as a support for trainers and athletes for the evaluation of motion sequences.

In recent years, cinematography and other digital content creators have been eagerly turning to Three-Dimensional (3D) imaging technology. The creators of movies, games, and augmented reality applications are aware of this technology’s advantages, possibilities, and new means of expression. The development of electronic and IT technologies enables the achievement of a better and better quality of the recorded 3D image and many possibilities for its correction and modification in post-production. However, preparing a correct 3D image that does not cause perception problems for the viewer is still a complex and demanding task. Therefore, planning and then ensuring the correct parameters and quality of the recorded 3D video is essential. Despite better post-production techniques, fixing errors in a captured image can be difficult, time consuming, and sometimes impossible. The detection of errors typical for stereo vision related to the depth of the image (e.g., depth budget violation, stereoscopic window violation) during the recording allows for their correction already on the film set, e.g., by different scene layouts and/or different camera configurations. The paper presents a prototype of an independent, non-invasive diagnostic system that supports the film crew in the process of calibrating stereoscopic cameras, as well as analysing the 3D depth while working on a film set. The system acquires full HD video streams from professional cameras using Serial Digital Interface (SDI), synchronises them, and estimates and analyses the disparity map. Objective depth analysis using computer tools while recording scenes allows stereographers to immediately spot errors in the 3D image, primarily related to the violation of the viewing comfort zone. The paper also describes an efficient method of analysing a 3D video using Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). The main steps of the proposed solution are uncalibrated rectification and disparity map estimation. The algorithms selected and implemented for the needs of this system do not require knowledge of intrinsic and extrinsic camera parameters. Thus, they can be used in non-cooperative environments, such as a film set, where the camera configuration often changes. Both of them are implemented with the use of a GPU to improve the data processing efficiency. The paper presents the evaluation results of the algorithms’ accuracy, as well as the comparison of the performance of two implementations—with and without the GPU acceleration. The application of the described GPU-based method makes the system efficient and easy to use. The system can process a video stream with full HD resolution at a speed of several frames per second.

Music listening in everyday life tends to accompany the completion of other everyday activities in a highly personalised manner. However, music and task performance studies have tended to be experimenter-centred and contextually isolated, largely independent of the listener's music practices and preference. The present study adopted a listener-centred approach to compare the effects of self-selected and experimenter-selected music (high and low arousal), on concurrent activity performance and experience. 125 participants completed three laps of a driving game in either (i) silence (ii) car sounds alone; car sounds with the addition of (iii) self-selected music, (iv) High-Arousal music or (v) Low-Arousal music. Three performance measures (accuracy-collisions, time-ms, and speed-mph) and 5 experience measures (distraction, liking, appropriateness, enjoyment, and tension-anxiety) were taken. Participants exposed to their self-selected music were most efficient, perceived lowest distraction, highest enjoyment, liking and appropriateness, and experienced a reduction in tension-anxiety. In contrast, performance and experience were poorest when exposed to High-Arousal experimenter-selected music. Participants were most inaccurate, perceived highest distraction, lowest liking, enjoyment and appropriateness, and experienced an increase in tension-anxiety. Collectively, the findings highlight the efficacy of self-selected music as a tool to optimise response in the everyday activity context for which it is selected. Accordingly, the results are discussed in relation to potential implications for the performance and experience of concurrent tasks such as video games. Additionally, the discussion highlights theories of attention-distraction, arousal and affect modification, and subjective experiences of music listening.

Purpose: The article sought to answer research questions regarding investigated branded content generated by players in simulation video games. How does the process work in video games? What are the characteristics of branded user-generated content in video games? To what extent players are willing to participate in branded content creation? Methodology: I conducted 20 in-depth interviews among Polish players, with the application of snowball sampling. The study participants were adult users of chosen simulation video games: The Sims, Second Life, and Euro Truck Simulator 2. Findings: We can distinguish content based on game mechanism, official add-ons, or game modding. Players frequently check some brands from a set offered by game developers and create content (e.g. in The Sims users can design house interiors with IKEA furniture). Some players are not satisfied by what a game offers and generate content based on modding (e.g. DHL trucks or McDonald’s restaurants inside the Euro Truck Simulator 2). In this respect, the article refers to Smith’s, Fischer’s, and Yongjian’s content dimensions. Branded game modifications described by respondents are characterized by a high level of similarity towards real brands and positive brand sentiment (valence). I noted no statement about player and marketer (brand) communication in gathered material. The biggest challenge for practitioners in the field of UGC in video games is how to manage brand messages. Practical Implications: Brand-related user-generated content is an important phenomenon in terms of the brand-building process and its impact on brand reception, which all require marketers’ attention. For game developers, such a content is a source of information about customer expectations. Players show their personal expectations by game modding. Originality/Value: Brand-related content generated by users is frequently associated with social media. The scholarship shows a lack of knowledge of branded user-generated content in video games.

Video games that require players to utilize a target or second language to complete tasks have emerged as alternative pedagogical tools for Second Language Acquisition (SLA). With the exception of vocabulary acquisition, much of the prior research in game-based SLA fails to gauge students' literacy skills, specifically their morphological awareness or understanding of the smallest meaningful linguistic units (e.g., prefixes, suffixes, and roots). Given this shortcoming, we utilize a two-player online game to facilitate social interactions between Native English Speakers (NES) and English as a Second Language (ESL) students as a mechanism to generate ESL students' written output in the targeted language and draw attention to their morphological awareness. Analysis of chat logs demonstrates the game's potential to enhance ESL students' morphological awareness and other important L2 literacy skills such as word reading accuracy. Both NES and ESL students' reflections of their gameplay experiences suggest game design modifications that promote ESL students' willingness to communicate with NES while developing their morphological awareness and practicing their L2 communication and literacy skills.

The article discusses the use of nicknames in online games (specifically, the Dota 2 game) which constitutes a completely new field of onomastic research. The paper starts by reviewing the main onomastic issues related to nicknames: correlation with similar and synonymous terms, questions of their status amongst other categories of anthroponyms, approaches to classifying, including the functional typology. It is exactly the study of the functional use of nicknames and their variability that the paper is devoted to. The game is rather popular and has a large community of players divided into the amateur and the professional clusters, although this opposition is rather diffuse. The functional specificity of nicknames in Dota 2 manifests itself in a number of in-game communication features and a range of pragmatic indicators. The revealed features help to distinguish the nicknames from pseudonyms and player names, and also provide the grounds for their separate consideration in professional and amateur eSports. The diversity of virtual nicknames was studied based on self-appellations of professional Russian-speaking players. Their range can be represented as a field structure where the main (the most recognizable) nickname constitutes the core, and the periphery is formed by its modifications at different levels. An online survey of amateur players was conducted to explore individual motivation behind the nickname choice. In the case of pragmatic purposeful naming, the functions are found to be diverse. It is concluded that nicknames as a category of anthroponyms are subject to internal functional differentiation.

Public policy for inclusive education in Ecuador favors the entry of students with Special Education Needs into conventional schools. However, teachers require to develop adaptations to improve their work with students who have such conditions. This research aims to study the contribution of audiovisuals in adaptations and modifications for teaching English Language to a child reported with attention-deficit. This case of study refers to a boy attending the 4th Grade of elementary school in Manta-Ecuador. The research team designed a 10-sessions educational intervention for stimulating the child attention and improving his communication skills in English as a foreign language. A mixture of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies is applied to determine the participant’s English language skills evolution. This work also introduces teaching strategies that convine games and technology to support the vocabulary acquisition process of children with physical or intellectual disabilities. Results show how the videos catch and keep the participant’s attention during more time; and how the voice self-recording supports his listening and speaking practice. Such circumstance opens multiple possibilities to innovate the current adaptations and modifications for improving the teaching and learning process of children with special educational needs in ESL context.

Background: Concern for head injuries is widespread and has been reported by the media to be the number one cause of decreased participation in football among the American youth population. Identifying player mechanisms associated with intentional, or purposeful, head impacts should provide critical data for rule modifications, educational programs, and equipment design. Purpose: To investigate the frequency of intentional and unintentional head impacts and to examine the player mechanisms associated with intentional high-magnitude head impacts by comparing the impact mechanism distributions among session type, player position, and ball possession. Study Design: Cross-sectional study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: Head impact sensors and video footage of 68 players were used to analyze and classify 1319 high-magnitude impacts recorded over 1 season of youth football. Results: In total, 80% of the high-magnitude head impacts were classified as being caused by intentional use of the head. Head-to-head impact was the primary impact mechanism (n = 868; 82.7%) within the 1050 intentional high-magnitude impacts, with classifiable mechanisms, followed by head-to-body (n = 139; 13.2%), head-to-ground (n = 34; 3.2%), and head-to-equipment (n = 9; 0.9%). Head-to-head impacts also accounted for a greater proportion of impacts during practices (n = 625; 88.9%) than games, for linemen (n = 585; 90.3%) than perimeters and backs, and for ball carriers (n = 72; 79.1%) than tacklers. Conclusion: Overall, the majority of high-magnitude head impacts were intentional and resulted from head-to-head contact. The proportion of head-to-head contact was significantly higher for practices than games, linemen than backs and perimeter players, and ball carriers than tacklers.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a medical condition characterized by an inability to concentrate, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness. Children with ADHD tend to be careless, irritable, difficult to gather, difficult to carry out orders so it is important to treat this condition as early as possible. The purpose of this study was to analyze studies according to computer program-based cognitive rehabilitation interventions to improve the cognitive abilities of children with ADHD on empirical studies in the last five years. Journals or articles were obtained by searching in databases indexed by Scopus, PubMed, Science Direct, Garuda Portal using adequate keywords. The quality assessment of the study used inclusion and exclusion criteria. The framework used to conduct the review was PICOS and the inclusion criteria used English and Indonesian journals from 2015 to 2020. The data analysis and tabulation were carried out in articles or journals. Title, abstract, full text, and methodology were assessed to determine the eligibility of the article or journal. Researchers found 15 journals that match the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and passed the study selection and quality assessment. 7 journals discuss about training-based intervention programs and 8 journals discussed the game or game-based intervention programs. The 15 journals obtained came from four continents, Asia, America, Australia, and Europe. Computer-based intervention significantly improved the cognitive abilities of children with ADHD such as concentration skills, working memory, and academic learning outcomes. Modifications need to be made, among others, to facilitate parents who can not afford compatible facilities and infrastructure. In Indonesia, the modifications that are possibly made are the daily training program compared to video games.

Resumo Este artigo é parte da dissertação de mestrado de uma pesquisa qualitativa que pretendeu refletir sobre como os jogos e brincadeiras se inserem em tempos-espaços, na construção social e cultural de diferentes gerações de estudantes dos sextos anos de uma escola estadual do município de Catanduva. Para o levantamento dos dados, utilizamos o questionário de autoaplicação com perguntas distintas para os alunos e para as famílias, bem como o diário de campo e as produções realizadas pelos educandos (desenhos, redações e vídeos). Cada família elencou uma brincadeira que a representasse e estas foram vivenciadas pelas crianças. A análise de dados aconteceu por meio de categorias dos conteúdos e os resultados nos mostram a contribuição que os diferentes contextos proporcionam para as trocas de experiências entre as gerações.Palavras-chave: Jogos. Brincadeiras. Educação Física Escolar. Games and plays: modifications between generations Abstract This article is part of the master's dissertation of a qualitative research that intended to reflect on how games and plays are inserted in time-spaces, in the social and cultural construction of different generations of students of the sixth years of a state school in the city of Catanduva. To collect the data, we used the self-application questionnaire with different questions for students and families, as well as the field diary and the productions made by the students (drawings, essays and videos). Each family listed a game that represented it and these were experienced by the children. Data analysis took place through content categories and the results show us the contribution that different contexts provide for the exchange of experiences between generations.Keywords: Games. Plays. School Physical Education. Juegos y chistes: modificaciones entre generaciones Resumen Este artículo es parte de la disertación de maestría de una investigación cualitativa que tuvo como objetivo reflexionar sobre cómo los juegos y los chistes se insertan en los espacios de tiempo, en la construcción social y cultural de diferentes generaciones de estudiantes de sexto año de una escuela estatal en el municipio de Catanduva Para recopilar los datos, utilizamos el cuestionario de autoaplicación con diferentes preguntas para estudiantes y familias, así como el diario de campo y las producciones realizadas por los estudiantes (dibujos, ensayos y videos). Cada familia enumeró un juego que lo representaba y estos fueron experimentados por los niños. El análisis de datos se realizó a través de categorías de contenido y los resultados nos muestran la contribución que los diferentes contextos proporcionan para el intercambio de experiencias entre generaciones.Palabras clave: Juegos. Chistes. Educación Física Escolar.

Background: To reduce the risk of concussion in youth ice hockey, Hockey Canada implemented a national “zero tolerance for head contact” (HC) policy in 2011. A previous cohort study revealed higher concussion rates after this implementation in players aged 11 to 14 years. However, it is unknown whether the elevated risk was due to higher HC rates or factors such as increased concussion awareness and reporting. Purpose: To compare the rates of primary and secondary HCs and HC policy enforcement in elite U15 ice hockey leagues (players <15 years) before (2008-2009) and after (2013-2014) the zero-tolerance policy change. Study Design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: A total of 32 elite U15 games before (n2008-2009 = 16; 510 players) and after (n2013-2014 = 16; 486 players) HC policy implementation were video recorded. Videos were analyzed with validated criteria for identifying HC types (primary/direct contact by players [HC1], secondary/indirect contact via boards, glass, or ice surface [HC2]) and other player-to-player contact behavior. Referee-assessed penalties were cross-referenced with the official Hockey Canada casebook, and penalty types were displayed using proportions. Univariate Poisson regression (adjusted for cluster by team game, offset by game length [minutes]) was used to estimate HC incidence rates (IRs) and incidence rate ratios (IRRs) between cohorts. Results: A total of 506 HCs were analyzed, 261 before HC policy implementation (IR, 16.6/100 team minutes) and 245 after implementation (IR, 15.5/100 team minutes). The HC1 rate (IRR, 1.05; 95% CI, 0.86-1.28) and HC2 rate (IRR, 0.74; 95% CI, 0.50-1.11) did not significantly differ before versus after implementation. Only 12.0% and 13.6% of HC1s were penalized pre- and postimplementation, respectively. Before implementation, HC1s were commonly penalized as roughing or elbowing penalties (59%), while after implementation, HC1s were penalized with the HC penalty (76%), and only 8% as roughing or elbowing. Conclusion: Despite implementation of the “zero tolerance for HC” policy, there was no difference in the rate of HC1s and HC2s or the proportion of HC1 penalized from before to after implementation. This research is instrumental in informing Hockey Canada’s future referee training and rule enforcement modifications.

AbstractIn artistic gymnastics, athletes need to compose their floor exercise routines in accordance with the Code of Points which is provided by the International Gymnastics Federation. In view of the latest rule modifications subsequent to the 2016 Olympic Games, this study investigates recent changes in judges’ scorings with respect to changes in the characteristics of floor exercise routines in world elite male gymnasts. Therefore, all floor exercise routines (n = 25) performed in the men’s floor exercise finals at the World Championships in 2013 (WC13), 2015 (WC15) and 2017 (WC17) were examined using video analysis. Gymnasts’ scores (difficulty, execution and final scores), element group distributions and further exercise characteristics (e.g., the total amount of somersaults, twists, and landing errors) were defined as variables. Decreases in difficulty and execution scores were revealed for WC17 compared to WC15 and WC13, respectively (p < .01). Additionally, a decrease in the number of backward jumped elements was observed at WC17 (p < .01), whereas the number of forward jumped elements increased (p < .01). Furthermore, a significantly increased number of landing errors (p < .05) negatively correlated with the decrease in execution (p < .001) and final scores (p < .05). To conclude, current compositional trends in men’s floor exercise encourage to include difficult forward jumps and multiple twisting connections in consideration of prudent teaching with respect to the gymnasts’ individual abilities and the decisive influence of stick landings.

ResumoEste artigo é parte da dissertação de mestrado de uma pesquisa qualitativa que pretendeu refletir sobre como os jogos e brincadeiras se inserem em tempos-espaços, na construção social e cultural de diferentes gerações de estudantes dos sextos anos de uma escola estadual do município de Catanduva. Para o levantamento dos dados, utilizamos o questionário de autoaplicação com perguntas distintas para os alunos e para as famílias, bem como o diário de campo e as produções realizadas pelos educandos (desenhos, redações e vídeos). Cada família elencou uma brincadeira que a representasse e estas foram vivenciadas pelas crianças. A análise de dados aconteceu por meio de categorias dos conteúdos e os resultados nos mostram a contribuição que os diferentes contextos proporcionam para as trocas de experiências entre as gerações.Palavras-chave: Jogos. Brincadeiras. Educação Física Escolar.Games and plays: modifications between generationsAbstractThis article is part of the master's dissertation of a qualitative research that intended to reflect on how games and plays are inserted in time-spaces, in the social and cultural construction of different generations of students of the sixth years of a state school in the city of Catanduva. To collect the data, we used the self-application questionnaire with different questions for students and families, as well as the field diary and the productions made by the students (drawings, essays and videos). Each family listed a game that represented it and these were experienced by the children. Data analysis took place through content categories and the results show us the contribution that different contexts provide for the exchange of experiences between generations.Keywords: Games. Plays. School Physical Education.Juegos y chistes: modificaciones entre generacionesResumenEste artículo es parte de la disertación de maestría de una investigación cualitativa que tuvo como objetivo reflexionar sobre cómo los juegos y los chistes se insertan en los espacios de tiempo, en la construcción social y cultural de diferentes generaciones de estudiantes de sexto año de una escuela estatal en el municipio de Catanduva Para recopilar los datos, utilizamos el cuestionario de autoaplicación con diferentes preguntas para estudiantes y familias, así como el diario de campo y las producciones realizadas por los estudiantes (dibujos, ensayos y videos). Cada familia enumeró un juego que lo representaba y estos fueron experimentados por los niños. El análisis de datos se realizó a través de categorías de contenido y los resultados nos muestran la contribución que los diferentes contextos proporcionan para el intercambio de experiencias entre generaciones.Palabras clave: Juegos. Chistes. Educación Física Escolar.

ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to characterize high magnitude subconcussive impacts in football to identify injurious relationships between player/game-based characteristics and impact magnitude and frequency.BackgroundSubconcussive impacts are asymptomatic head impacts thought to induce alterations in the brain after repetitive exposure. Understanding factors that lead to higher magnitude or frequency of head impacts in football is crucial to develop harm reduction and prevention strategies.Design/MethodsEighty-one male university level football players were equipped with helmet accelerometers to capture linear acceleration (LA), impact frequency and helmet impact location. Impacts with LA = 60 g were included in the analysis. Video footage from 15 games over three seasons was analyzed to characterize aspects of play including play type, position, closing distance, player technique, tackling versus blocking and impact type (helmet-to-helmet/body/ground).ResultsA total of 570 impacts were included in the analysis with a mean LA of 83.44 g ± 23.60. Impacts with a closing distance of = 10 yards resulted in higher LA compared to <10 yards and occurred most frequently in run plays. Wide receivers and defensive backs were most often involved in impacts with a larger closing distance and experienced the highest average LA behind quarterbacks. Helmet-to-body impacts generated significantly higher LA compared to helmet-to-helmet, though helmet-to-helmet occurred more often. Players involved in a tackle sustained significantly higher LAs than those involved in a block. Impacts in which players exhibited poor technique lead to higher LA and occurred more frequently in tackling versus blocking impacts.ConclusionsThe results of this work suggest that rules regarding offensive backfield running starts could be adjusted to decrease risk of impact after a larger closing distance. Behavioral modifications and coaching approaches aimed at improving tackling technique could decrease exposure to threshold impacts at the level of the individual player.

Background Advancements in science and various technologies have resulted in people having access to better health care, a good quality of life, and better economic situations, enabling humans to live longer than ever before. Research shows that the problems of loneliness and social isolation are common among older adults, affecting psychological and physical health. Information and communication technology (ICT) plays an important role in alleviating social isolation and loneliness. Objective The aim of this review is to explore ICT solutions for reducing social isolation or loneliness among older adults, the purpose of ICT solutions, and the evaluation focus of these solutions. This study particularly focuses on customized ICT solutions that either are designed from scratch or are modifications of existing off-the-shelf products that cater to the needs of older adults. Methods A scoping literature review was conducted. A search across 7 databases, including ScienceDirect, Association for Computing Machinery, PubMed, IEEE Xplore, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science, was performed, targeting ICT solutions for reducing and managing social isolation and loneliness among older adults. Articles published in English from 2010 to 2020 were extracted and analyzed. Results From the review of 39 articles, we identified 5 different purposes of customized ICT solutions focusing on reducing social isolation and loneliness. These were social communication, social participation, a sense of belonging, companionship, and feelings of being seen. The mapping of purposes of ICT solutions with problems found among older adults indicates that increasing social communication and social participation can help reduce social isolation problems, whereas fulfilling emotional relationships and feeling valued can reduce feelings of loneliness. In terms of customized ICT solution types, we found the following seven different categories: social network, messaging services, video chat, virtual spaces or classrooms with messaging capabilities, robotics, games, and content creation and management. Most of the included studies (30/39, 77%) evaluated the usability and acceptance aspects, and few studies (11/39, 28%) focused on loneliness or social isolation outcomes. Conclusions This review highlights the importance of discussing and managing social isolation and loneliness as different but related concepts and emphasizes the need for future research to use suitable outcome measures for evaluating ICT solutions based on the problem. Even though a wide range of customized ICT solutions have been developed, future studies need to explore the recent emerging technologies, such as the Internet of Things and augmented or virtual reality, to tackle social isolation and loneliness among older adults. Furthermore, future studies should consider evaluating social isolation or loneliness while developing customized ICT solutions to provide more robust data on the effectiveness of the solutions.

Stacked die packages such as PoP are used in space - constrained portable systems e,g. SmartPhones. The processor ( SoC ) and Mobile DRAM chips are stacked vertically to fit the combination within the restricted board space. The use of wire bonds in the memory chips as well as package level interconnects introduces delays into the data transmitted between the chips and limits the max. clock rate ( at present about 533 MHz for LP DDR 2 memory ) and hence the data transfer rate / bandwidth to less than 6.4 GB per sec. For Smart Phones to become capable of PC quality Games and high speed video would require a doubling of the bandwidth to over 12.8 GB per sec. To achieve that target PoP type packages were to be replaced by 3-d stacks using TSVs and wide I/Os. However recently JEDEC has postponed the introduction of Wide I/O Mobile memory stacks ( using TSVs ) to 2015. So the bandwidth of PoP packages must be improved. A physical way to increase the Bandwidth between the SoC and memory chips in a PoP is by increasing the max. no. of vertical I/Os as this allows more channels / higher parallelism in data transfer. This can be accomplished by shrinking the pitch ( from current 0.4 mm to 0.3 mm ) and doubling the number of rows of vertical I/Os ( from current 2 to 4 ) in PoP. However this requires major effort for the Packaging supply chain and would still fall well short of the future Bandwidth and interconnect Power efficiency targets. In this paper we will describe modifications and additions to the baseline PoP package so that it can be operated at clock rates up to 800 MHz and deliver bandwidth of 12.8 GB per sec or more and match the Interconnect Power efficiency of 3-d stacks with TSVs. Compensation features are introduced for ea. interconnect line between the SoC and Memory in the PoP package. The features are integrated on chips that are inserted between the two layers of the package. The vertical interconnection between the two levels of the PoP are replaced and routed through this additional chip. Only minor changes are required in the baseline PoP package thus will not require long delay to shrink current PoP interconnect pitch etc. The additional chip is built with available technologies and would increase cost by only a fraction of that needed for stacks with TSV-based wide I/O. Simulation results will be presented and compared with test results.


 
 
 If Blake is right and the path of excess leads to the tower of wisdom then video games ought to provide plenty of shortcuts along the way. Wading through gore, dismemberment and the occasional bout of torture, violent games have pushed the limits of depiction of violence. While even video nasties pad the ‘money shot’ scenes of extremity with exposition and story (however flimsy), video games concentrate more carnage per minute than any other media form – so why are so many of us increasingly drawn to them as a leisure activity? Of course it is wrong to lump all video games together with violent games, as game critics are liable to do. US lawyer and anti-video game campaigner Jack Thompson describes games as ‘murder simulators’ that train players into violent responses through operant conditioning and rewards. He describes game playing as an antisocial, “”masturbatory activity”:http://www.netjak.com/review.php/1091”. Indeed it is mainly through the conduct of critics like Thompson and censors that games are visible in mainstream culture, which is ironic given the large audience that games have. In Australia, video games have been at the vanguard of the steady censorship creep which has been occurring over the last few years, banning games outright or forcing local distributors censored versions. Unless they are regular visitors to the Office of Film and Literature Classification website, or one of the watchdog sites, such as Refused Classification, most Australians are unaware that they are watching censored films, playing censored games. Earlier in 2006 the graffiti game Marc Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents under Pressure was banned on a little-used regulation that it promoted crime (in this case the crime was graffiti and fare evasion; the OFLC did not have an issue with the violence in the game). Since then, these ‘crime promotion’ principles have been extended to ban Islamic books, a return to direct political censorship in Australia. So what is it about games that have stirred regulators into action? Why are games convenient scapegoats to extend the net of censorship? It is certainly not because game playing is not a minority activity – a recent survey conducted by Bond University indicated that 76% of Australian households have game hardware, that the average age of gamers is 24 and that 38% of gamers were female. Perhaps it has to do with ambivalence toward the extreme content in games, even from those who play them. With a brief excursion through a set of recent video games I can sneak up behind the unsuspecting and slit their throats (Splinter Cell), shake down prostitutes (Grand Theft Auto), torture enemies with power tools (The Punisher) and tear off someone’s arm and beat them with it (Stubbs the Zombie). These are just the interactive elements, if we figure in the horrors we observe rather than perform in games like the Resident Evil or Silent Hill series we have a catalogue of extremity that surpasses the video nasties of the 1980s. The extremity does collect around violence and horror, sexual content is largely missing, at least from the games available through game retailers (the adult industry has their own interactive content). Recently the first Sex in Video Games conference was held in San Francisco, flagging emerging trends in this area. One of the more high profile games to be banned for sexual content in Australia, then released in an edited form was Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas because of the ‘hot coffee’ sexual content. What is striking about this content is that is was only accessible through a downloaded modification in the PC version and not accessible from the console versions – which did not stop the censors banning all versions of the game entirely. These concerns about extreme violence and sexual content are made more complicated when we go beyond elements scripted by game designers and begin to consider interactively generated content, emergent gameplay, online interaction and the ability to modify games. It is clear that this is media that is very different to older media forms, yet too often we criticise and censor the gaming experience using film as a benchmark. Concepts of realism, impact and justification are borrowed directly from film analysis, primarily because we lack a critical language to understand and discuss video games. But 50 Cent: Bulletproof is different to Salo, on so many levels. We do not understand the impact that video games have on us, and particularly the effect that they have on children. Media studies research does not help, being intractably locked between the those who see media as programming human behaviour and those who believe audiences are in control. As a result is all too easy to give into moral panics, on the basis of what games might do. Games are also a convenient scapegoat for other social problems, such as with the Columbine massacre. Regulators therefore take a conservative stance on video game dangers, using children as the benchmark for everyone. In Australia there is no R rating available to games. If games fulfil the criteria for an R, they are Refused Classification, in the same category as child pornography and extreme violent pornography. The federal laws control commercial distributors but the classification decisions also feed into ancillary state laws which give police wide powers to detain, search and prosecute those who distribute informally. This is of concern for game players but more worrying now that the principles used to regulate games have been extended to political texts. In Australia we also have the unusual principle that media which promote crime or instruct in the matter of crime can be refused classification and fall into the same regulatory net. This was the principle under which Getting Up was banned but has potential for growth to other games and media generally. There have only been a few decisions in this area but they make clear that censors have very broad discretion (most crime movies could fall foul of this provision), that the regulators have very little empirical evidence on what causes criminality and that they adopt a zero tolerance attitude to satire. So what does this increasing surveillance mean for the future of video games? For mainstream gaming not much, the industry has always had peripheral controversy. From the blocky extremity of 1982’s Custer’s Revenge to modern games like Reservoir Dogs (banned in Australia in June 2006) some developers have pushed the boundaries, usually overtly courting controversy but the backlash seems to be gaining momentum. The trend toward censorship of games in Australia would seem to bear the hallmarks of a moral panic, if not for the medium’s widespread penetration into our culture and the size of the audience. Most of the games which have been banned have passed unnoticed not being commercially successful or reviewed well overseas, but this censorship sets ugly precedents. Video games are yet to really develop an avant garde or art-house, but if they are, this process will be hampered by legal controls that do not understand the medium and are not committed to free expression as an ideal. It is clear that, for various reasons, there is little serious public discourse around games beyond what is lead by pro-censorship critics and regulators. The statistics indicate that the majority of Australians play games or at least have contact with someone who does, yet games enjoy little of the public discussion and criticism that films or television do, where the audience is presumed to be broader. Many gamers are even embarrassed to discuss their hobby, putting it on par with consumption of pornography as embarrassing, juvenile or as Thompson would suggest masturbatory. But just as pornography has become subject of more serious critical attention despite the potential cringe, so to do games. Part of the change will come as there is more critical academic engagement. This is not suggesting that games should ‘grow up’ or aspire to art. Part of their appeal lies in their engagement with the id, the potential for extremity. Rather than argue that games are valid despite their excesses, might we perhaps look to the excesses in order to understand the appeal? Don’t knock the pleasures of beating someone to death with their own arm until you’ve tried it. 
 
 
 Citation reference for this article
 
 MLA Style
 Beattie, Scott. "Extremity, Video Games and the Censors." M/C Journal 9.5 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/08-beattie.php>. APA Style
 Beattie, S. (Nov. 2006) "Extremity, Video Games and the Censors," M/C Journal, 9(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/08-beattie.php>. 

Platformed racism offers a unique lens through which to investigate technological structures that enable racism. Online video games, such as EA Sports’ FIFA series — which dominates the soccer video game market share through its touted realism — feature these structures. Like many platforms, FIFA enables representations of real bodies (i.e., professional soccer players). But, unlike many games, FIFA enables game players to directly affect the creation/modification of these representation in the form of player character cards. Analyzing a census of six years of player cards, this study found that platformed racism was enabled because the game’s realism invited racism when players tried to maintain that realism. The study concludes that the catalyst for racism to emerge in FIFA was the drive towards realism.

Educational devices can include play-based elements, and even take the form of so-called serious video games combining educational and playful aspects. Educational engineering models, however, do not take into consideration the addition of play-based features in educational devices. As for engineering models targeting serious games, they are often designed for a specific genre. In this article, we propose the addition of gamification specifications to the ADDIE model for use in the development of serious games. The example used ultimately highlights the adaptability of the model created, which allows the modification of later versions of a serious game.Les dispositifs pédagogiques peuvent comporter des éléments ludiques et même prendre la forme de jeux vidéo dits sérieux qui combinent aspects pédagogique et ludique. Cependant, les modèles d’ingénierie pédagogique ne prennent pas en considération l’ajout de caractéristiques ludiques aux dispositifs pédagogiques. De leur côté, les modèles d’ingénierie ciblant les jeux sérieux sont souvent conçus pour un genre précis. Dans le présent article, nous proposons d’adjoindre un devis ludique au modèle ADDIE afin de l’utiliser pour l’ingénierie des jeux sérieux. Au final, l’exemple utilisé souligne l’adaptabilité du modèle créé qui permet la modification de versions ultérieures d’un même jeu sérieux.

A common criticism of the rhythm video games genre — including series like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, is that playing musical simulation games is a waste of time when you could be playing an actual guitar and learning a real skill. A more serious criticism of games cultures draws attention to the degree of e-waste they produce. E-waste or electronic waste includes mobiles phones, computers, televisions and other electronic devices, containing toxic chemicals and metals whose landfill, recycling and salvaging all produce distinct environmental and social problems. The e-waste produced by games like Guitar Hero is obvious in the regular flow of merchandise transforming computer and video games stores into simulation music stores, filled with replica guitars, drum kits, microphones and other products whose half-lives are short and whose obsolescence is anticipated in the annual cycles of consumption and disposal. This paper explores the connection between e-waste and obsolescence in the games industry, and argues for the further consideration of consumers as part of the solution to the problem of e-waste. It uses a case study of the PC digital distribution software platform, Steam, to suggest that the digital distribution of games may offer an alternative model to market driven software and hardware obsolescence, and more generally, that such software platforms might be a place to support cultures of consumption that delay rather than promote hardware obsolescence and its inevitability as e-waste. The question is whether there exists a potential for digital distribution to be a means of not only eliminating the need to physically transport commodities (its current 'green' benefit), but also for supporting consumer practices that further reduce e-waste. The games industry relies on a rapid production and innovation cycle, one that actively enforces hardware obsolescence. Current video game consoles, including the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii, are the seventh generation of home gaming consoles to appear within forty years, and each generation is accompanied by an immense international transportation of games hardware, software (in various storage formats) and peripherals. Obsolescence also occurs at the software or content level and is significant because the games industry as a creative industry is dependent on the extensive management of multiple intellectual properties. The computing and video games software industry operates a close partnership with the hardware industry, and as such, software obsolescence directly contributes to hardware obsolescence. The obsolescence of content and the redundancy of the methods of policing its scarcity in the marketplace has been accelerated and altered by the processes of disintermediation with a range of outcomes (Flew). The music industry is perhaps the most advanced in terms of disintermediation with digital distribution at the center of the conflict between the legitimate and unauthorised access to intellectual property. This points to one issue with the hypothesis that digital distribution can lead to a reduction in hardware obsolescence, as the marketplace leader and key online distributor of music, Apple, is also the major producer of new media technologies and devices that are the paragon of stylistic obsolescence. Stylistic obsolescence, in which fashion changes products across seasons of consumption, has long been observed as the dominant form of scaled industrial innovation (Slade). Stylistic obsolescence is differentiated from mechanical or technological obsolescence as the deliberate supersedence of products by more advanced designs, better production techniques and other minor innovations. The line between the stylistic and technological obsolescence is not always clear, especially as reduced durability has become a powerful market strategy (Fitzpatrick). This occurs where the design of technologies is subsumed within the discourses of manufacturing, consumption and the logic of planned obsolescence in which the product or parts are intended to fail, degrade or under perform over time. It is especially the case with signature new media technologies such as laptop computers, mobile phones and portable games devices. Gamers are as guilty as other consumer groups in contributing to e-waste as participants in the industry's cycles of planned obsolescence, but some of them complicate discussions over the future of obsolescence and e-waste. Many gamers actively work to forestall the obsolescence of their games: they invest time in the play of older games (“retrogaming”) they donate labor and creative energy to the production of user-generated content as a means of sustaining involvement in gaming communities; and they produce entirely new game experiences for other users, based on existing software and hardware modifications known as 'mods'. With Guitar Hero and other 'rhythm' games it would be easy to argue that the hardware components of this genre have only one future: as waste. Alternatively, we could consider the actual lifespan of these objects (including their impact as e-waste) and the roles they play in the performances and practices of communities of gamers. For example, the Elmo Guitar Hero controller mod, the Tesla coil Guitar Hero controller interface, the Rock Band Speak n' Spellbinder mashup, the multiple and almost sacrilegious Fender guitar hero mods, the Guitar Hero Portable Turntable Mod and MAKE magazine's Trumpet Hero all indicate a significant diversity of user innovation, community formation and individual investment in the post-retail life of computer and video game hardware. Obsolescence is not just a problem for the games industry but for the computing and electronics industries more broadly as direct contributors to the social and environmental cost of electrical waste and obsolete electrical equipment. Planned obsolescence has long been the experience of gamers and computer users, as the basis of a utopian mythology of upgrades (Dovey and Kennedy). For PC users the upgrade pathway is traversed by the consumption of further hardware and software post initial purchase in a cycle of endless consumption, acquisition and waste (as older parts are replaced and eventually discarded). The accumulation and disposal of these cultural artefacts does not devalue or accrue in space or time at the same rate (Straw) and many users will persist for years, gradually upgrading and delaying obsolescence and even perpetuate the circulation of older cultural commodities. Flea markets and secondhand fairs are popular sites for the purchase of new, recent, old, and recycled computer hardware, and peripherals. Such practices and parallel markets support the strategies of 'making do' described by De Certeau, but they also continue the cycle of upgrade and obsolescence, and they are still consumed as part of the promise of the 'new', and the desire of a purchase that will finally 'fix' the users' computer in a state of completion (29). The planned obsolescence of new media technologies is common, but its success is mixed; for example, support for Microsoft's operating system Windows XP was officially withdrawn in April 2009 (Robinson), but due to the popularity in low cost PC 'netbooks' outfitted with an optimised XP operating system and a less than enthusiastic response to the 'next generation' Windows Vista, XP continues to be popular. Digital Distribution: A Solution? Gamers may be able to reduce the accumulation of e-waste by supporting the disintermediation of the games retail sector by means of online distribution. Disintermediation is the establishment of a direct relationship between the creators of content and their consumers through products and services offered by content producers (Flew 201). The move to digital distribution has already begun to reduce the need to physically handle commodities, but this currently signals only further support of planned, stylistic and technological obsolescence, increasing the rate at which the commodities for recording, storing, distributing and exhibiting digital content become e-waste. Digital distribution is sometimes overlooked as a potential means for promoting communities of user practice dedicated to e-waste reduction, at the same time it is actively employed to reduce the potential for the unregulated appropriation of content and restrict post-purchase sales through Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies. Distributors like Amazon.com continue to pursue commercial opportunities in linking the user to digital distribution of content via exclusive hardware and software technologies. The Amazon e-book reader, the Kindle, operates via a proprietary mobile network using a commercially run version of the wireless 3G protocols. The e-book reader is heavily encrypted with Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies and exclusive digital book formats designed to enforce current copyright restrictions and eliminate second-hand sales, lending, and further post-purchase distribution. The success of this mode of distribution is connected to Amazon's ability to tap both the mainstream market and the consumer demand for the less-than-popular; those books, movies, music and television series that may not have been 'hits' at the time of release. The desire to revisit forgotten niches, such as B-sides, comics, books, and older video games, suggests Chris Anderson, linked with so-called “long tail” economics. Recently Webb has queried the economic impact of the Long Tail as a business strategy, but does not deny the underlying dynamics, which suggest that content does not obsolesce in any straightforward way. Niche markets for older content are nourished by participatory cultures and Web 2.0 style online services. A good example of the Long Tail phenomenon is the recent case of the 1971 book A Lion Called Christian, by Anthony Burke and John Rendall, republished after the author's film of a visit to a resettled Christian in Africa was popularised on YouTube in 2008. Anderson's Long Tail theory suggests that over time a large number of items, each with unique rather than mass histories, will be subsumed as part of a larger community of consumers, including fans, collectors and everyday users with a long term interest in their use and preservation. If digital distribution platforms can reduce e-waste, they can perhaps be fostered by to ensuring digital consumers have access to morally and ethically aware consumer decisions, but also that they enjoy traditional consumer freedoms, such as the right to sell on and change or modify their property. For it is not only the fixation on the 'next generation' that contributes to obsolescence, but also technologies like DRM systems that discourage second hand sales and restrict modification. The legislative upgrades, patches and amendments to copyright law that have attempted to maintain the law's effectiveness in competing with peer-to-peer networks have supported DRM and other intellectual property enforcement technologies, despite the difficulties that owners of intellectual property have encountered with the effectiveness of DRM systems (Moore, Creative). The games industry continues to experiment with DRM, however, this industry also stands out as one of the few to have significantly incorporated the user within the official modes of production (Moore, Commonising). Is the games industry capable (or willing) of supporting a digital delivery system that attempts to minimise or even reverse software and hardware obsolescence? We can try to answer this question by looking in detail at the biggest digital distributor of PC games, Steam. Steam Figure 1: The Steam Application user interface retail section Steam is a digital distribution system designed for the Microsoft Windows operating system and operated by American video game development company and publisher, Valve Corporation. Steam combines online games retail, DRM technologies and internet-based distribution services with social networking and multiplayer features (in-game voice and text chat, user profiles, etc) and direct support for major games publishers, independent producers, and communities of user-contributors (modders). Steam, like the iTunes games store, Xbox Live and other digital distributors, provides consumers with direct digital downloads of new, recent and classic titles that can be accessed remotely by the user from any (internet equipped) location. Steam was first packaged with the physical distribution of Half Life 2 in 2004, and the platform's eventual popularity is tied to the success of that game franchise. Steam was not an optional component of the game's installation and many gamers protested in various online forums, while the platform was treated with suspicion by the global PC games press. It did not help that Steam was at launch everything that gamers take objection to: a persistent and initially 'buggy' piece of software that sits in the PC's operating system and occupies limited memory resources at the cost of hardware performance. Regular updates to the Steam software platform introduced social network features just as mainstream sites like MySpace and Facebook were emerging, and its popularity has undergone rapid subsequent growth. Steam now eclipses competitors with more than 20 million user accounts (Leahy) and Valve Corporation makes it publicly known that Steam collects large amounts of data about its users. This information is available via the public player profile in the community section of the Steam application. It includes the average number of hours the user plays per week, and can even indicate the difficulty the user has in navigating game obstacles. Valve reports on the number of users on Steam every two hours via its web site, with a population on average between one and two million simultaneous users (Valve, Steam). We know these users’ hardware profiles because Valve Corporation makes the results of its surveillance public knowledge via the Steam Hardware Survey. Valve’s hardware survey itself conceptualises obsolescence in two ways. First, it uses the results to define the 'cutting edge' of PC technologies and publishing the standards of its own high end production hardware on the companies blog. Second, the effect of the Survey is to subsequently define obsolescent hardware: for example, in the Survey results for April 2009, we can see that the slight majority of users maintain computers with two central processing units while a significant proportion (almost one third) of users still maintained much older PCs with a single CPU. Both effects of the Survey appear to be well understood by Valve: the Steam Hardware Survey automatically collects information about the community's computer hardware configurations and presents an aggregate picture of the stats on our web site. The survey helps us make better engineering and gameplay decisions, because it makes sure we're targeting machines our customers actually use, rather than measuring only against the hardware we've got in the office. We often get asked about the configuration of the machines we build around the office to do both game and Steam development. We also tend to turn over machines in the office pretty rapidly, at roughly every 18 months. (Valve, Team Fortress) Valve’s support of older hardware might counter perceptions that older PCs have no use and begins to reverse decades of opinion regarding planned and stylistic obsolescence in the PC hardware and software industries. Equally significant to the extension of the lives of older PCs is Steam's support for mods and its promotion of user generated content. By providing software for mod creation and distribution, Steam maximises what Postigo calls the development potential of fan-programmers. One of the 'payoffs' in the information/access exchange for the user with Steam is the degree to which Valve's End-User Licence Agreement (EULA) permits individuals and communities of 'modders' to appropriate its proprietary game content for use in the creation of new games and games materials for redistribution via Steam. These mods extend the play of the older games, by requiring their purchase via Steam in order for the individual user to participate in the modded experience. If Steam is able to encourage this kind of appropriation and community support for older content, then the potential exists for it to support cultures of consumption and practice of use that collaboratively maintain, extend, and prolong the life and use of games. Further, Steam incorporates the insights of “long tail” economics in a purely digital distribution model, in which the obsolescence of 'non-hit' game titles can be dramatically overturned. Published in November 2007, Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3) by Epic Games, was unappreciated in a market saturated with games in the first-person shooter genre. Epic republished UT3 on Steam 18 months later, making the game available to play for free for one weekend, followed by discounted access to new content. The 2000 per cent increase in players over the game's 'free' trial weekend, has translated into enough sales of the game for Epic to no longer consider the release a commercial failure: It’s an incredible precedent to set: making a game a success almost 18 months after a poor launch. It’s something that could only have happened now, and with a system like Steam...Something that silently updates a purchase with patches and extra content automatically, so you don’t have to make the decision to seek out some exciting new feature: it’s just there anyway. Something that, if you don’t already own it, advertises that game to you at an agreeably reduced price whenever it loads. Something that enjoys a vast community who are in turn plugged into a sea of smaller relevant communities. It’s incredibly sinister. It’s also incredibly exciting... (Meer) Clearly concerns exist about Steam's user privacy policy, but this also invites us to the think about the economic relationship between gamers and games companies as it is reconfigured through the private contractual relationship established by the EULA which accompanies the digital distribution model. The games industry has established contractual and licensing arrangements with its consumer base in order to support and reincorporate emerging trends in user generated cultures and other cultural formations within its official modes of production (Moore, "Commonising"). When we consider that Valve gets to tax sales of its virtual goods and can further sell the information farmed from its users to hardware manufacturers, it is reasonable to consider the relationship between the corporation and its gamers as exploitative. Gabe Newell, the Valve co-founder and managing director, conversely believes that people are willing to give up personal information if they feel it is being used to get better services (Leahy). If that sentiment is correct then consumers may be willing to further trade for services that can reduce obsolescence and begin to address the problems of e-waste from the ground up. Conclusion Clearly, there is a potential for digital distribution to be a means of not only eliminating the need to physically transport commodities but also supporting consumer practices that further reduce e-waste. For an industry where only a small proportion of the games made break even, the successful relaunch of older games content indicates Steam's capacity to ameliorate software obsolescence. Digital distribution extends the use of commercially released games by providing disintermediated access to older and user-generated content. For Valve, this occurs within a network of exchange as access to user-generated content, social networking services, and support for the organisation and coordination of communities of gamers is traded for user-information and repeat business. Evidence for whether this will actively translate to an equivalent decrease in the obsolescence of game hardware might be observed with indicators like the Steam Hardware Survey in the future. The degree of potential offered by digital distribution is disrupted by a range of technical, commercial and legal hurdles, primary of which is the deployment of DRM, as part of a range of techniques designed to limit consumer behaviour post purchase. While intervention in the form of legislation and radical change to the insidious nature of electronics production is crucial in order to achieve long term reduction in e-waste, the user is currently considered only in terms of 'ethical' consumption and ultimately divested of responsibility through participation in corporate, state and civil recycling and e-waste management operations. The message is either 'careful what you purchase' or 'careful how you throw it away' and, like DRM, ignores the connections between product, producer and user and the consumer support for environmentally, ethically and socially positive production, distribrution, disposal and recycling. This article, has adopted a different strategy, one that sees digital distribution platforms like Steam, as capable, if not currently active, in supporting community practices that should be seriously considered in conjunction with a range of approaches to the challenge of obsolescence and e-waste. References Anderson, Chris. "The Long Tail." Wired Magazine 12. 10 (2004). 20 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html›. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984. Dovey, Jon, and Helen Kennedy. Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media. London: Open University Press,2006. Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. The Anxiety of Obsolescence. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 2008. Flew, Terry. New Media: An Introduction. South Melbourne: Oxford UP, 2008. Leahy, Brian. "Live Blog: DICE 2009 Keynote - Gabe Newell, Valve Software." The Feed. G4TV 18 Feb. 2009. 16 Apr. 2009 ‹http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/693342/Live-Blog-DICE-2009-Keynote-–-Gabe-Newell-Valve-Software.html›. Meer, Alec. "Unreal Tournament 3 and the New Lazarus Effect." Rock, Paper, Shotgun 16 Mar. 2009. 24 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/03/16/unreal-tournament-3-and-the-new-lazarus-effect/›.Moore, Christopher. "Commonising the Enclosure: Online Games and Reforming Intellectual Property Regimes." Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society 3. 2, (2005). 12 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.swin.edu.au/sbs/ajets/journal/issue5-V3N2/abstract_moore.htm›. Moore, Christopher. "Creative Choices: Changes to Australian Copyright Law and the Future of the Public Domain." Media International Australia 114 (Feb. 2005): 71–83. Postigo, Hector. "Of Mods and Modders: Chasing Down the Value of Fan-Based Digital Game Modification." Games and Culture 2 (2007): 300-13. Robinson, Daniel. "Windows XP Support Runs Out Next Week." PC Business Authority 8 Apr. 2009. 16 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/142013,windows-xp-support-runs-out-next-week.aspx›. Straw, Will. "Exhausted Commodities: The Material Culture of Music." Canadian Journal of Communication 25.1 (2000): 175. Slade, Giles. Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2006. Valve. "Steam and Game Stats." 26 Apr. 2009 ‹http://store.steampowered.com/stats/›. Valve. "Team Fortress 2: The Scout Update." Steam Marketing Message 20 Feb. 2009. 12 Apr. 2009 ‹http://storefront.steampowered.com/Steam/Marketing/message/2269/›. Webb, Richard. "Online Shopping and the Harry Potter Effect." New Scientist 2687 (2008): 52-55. 16 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026873.300-online-shopping-and-the-harry-potter-effect.html?page=2›. With thanks to Dr Nicola Evans and Dr Frances Steel for their feedback and comments on drafts of this paper.

Approximately 1.23 billion people play video games. Gamification is the study of what motivates gamers to invest thousands of hours into these games, and more importantly attempts to derive principles of gamification that can be applied to motivate people to participate in non-video game tasks with equal zeal. Education is one area where gamification is being explored.One gamification principle is to give participants a clear indication of their progress. In video games this is often depicted as ‘points’. The typical grade system could be interpreted as a type of point system, but one without much flexibility. Implementation of a bonus point system as an overlay to the standard grade system may allow for more flexibility.In this study this gamification principle was used to motivate students in a first year design course to participate in optional professional development activities and to foster an active online peer feedback and instruction community. With relatively minor modifications and repackaging of an existing evaluation methods students were motivated to give optional oral presentations, attend optional skill development workshops, and to contribute extensively to an online learning community.This implementation of gamification was found to have a net positive effect on student participation in Professional Development activities. Where it succeeded and where it failed will be explored.

Through a comparison of the free online Flash game updated for PlayStation 3 to World of Warcraft, I investigate participatory culture in the game community. The question of why people pursue activities that offer no monetary or similar reward is answered in part by analyzing fan-produced game modifications or mods.

Objective: Studies that have reported the associations of diet quality, physical activity (PA), sedentary behavior (SB), and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) with mental health among children and adolescents are predominantly cross-sectional in design. Very few studies have examined the longitudinal relationship of mental health with health behavior and HRQoL among children. This study aimed to investigate the associations of diet quality, PA, SB, and HRQoL among children with mental health disorders throughout childhood.Methods: We linked data from grade five students aged primarily 10 and 11 years who participated in the Raising Healthy Eating and Active Living (REAL) Kids Alberta survey in 2012 in the Canadian province of Alberta with their administrative health care data from birth to 2012. Mental health outcomes included internalizing disorder and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) defined by the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) or Tenth Revision, Canadian version (ICD-10-CA). The HRQoL was measured by the EQ-5D-Y, a five-dimensional descriptive system for children and youth. We applied negative binomial regressions to examine the associations between health behaviors, HRQoL, and mental health.Results: Of the 1,352 participating students, 12.31 and 8.32% had a diagnosis of internalizing disorders and ADHDs, respectively, during childhood from birth to the ages of 10–11 years. Students in the highest tertile for diet quality, relative to the lowest tertile, were 56% less likely to have diagnoses of internalizing disorders (incidence rate ratio, IRR = 0.44, 95% CI = 0.23–0.85). Students engaged in less PA (vs. more PA) were more likely to be diagnosed for internalizing disorders (IRR = 1.98, 95% CI = 1.19–3.30). Poorer diet quality, low PA, excessive use of computers/video games, and watching TV were significantly associated with more diagnoses of ADHDs. Children who experienced some or a lot of problems in “feeling worried, sad, or unhappy” and “having pain or discomfort” were more likely to receive diagnoses of internalizing disorders and ADHDs, respectively.Conclusions: These observed associations suggest that health promotion programs targeting promoting diet quality, PA, and HRQoL and reducing SB among children may contribute to improving mental health.

Abstract New models of knowledge creation are emerging, where the user community is a major source of innovation development. But, how does user innovation impact on producer sales, and the other way round? In this article, the mutual benefits deriving from the user–producer interaction are analyzed in terms of network effects and on a basis of a unique panel dataset of weekly observations in the context of video games and their user-generated, free modifications. The estimates of a system of equations modeling the original good’s retail demand function and the user innovation dynamics show that user-generated complements spur the demand for the original product and smooth the consumer price sensitivity. User innovation increases with the crowd of complementors up to a certain threshold and decreases afterwards, thus following a non-monotonic pattern.


 
 
 On the morning of Thursday, 4 May 2006, the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held an open hearing entitled “Terrorist Use of the Internet.” The Intelligence committee meeting was scheduled to take place in Room 1302 of the Longworth Office Building, a Depression-era structure with a neoclassical façade. Because of a dysfunctional elevator, some of the congressional representatives were late to the meeting. During the testimony about the newest political applications for cutting-edge digital technology, the microphones periodically malfunctioned, and witnesses complained of “technical problems” several times. By the end of the day it seemed that what was to be remembered about the hearing was the shocking revelation that terrorists were using videogames to recruit young jihadists. The Associated Press wrote a short, restrained article about the hearing that only mentioned “computer games and recruitment videos” in passing. Eager to have their version of the news item picked up, Reuters made videogames the focus of their coverage with a headline that announced, “Islamists Using US Videogames in Youth Appeal.” Like a game of telephone, as the Reuters videogame story was quickly re-run by several Internet news services, each iteration of the title seemed less true to the exact language of the original. One Internet news service changed the headline to “Islamic militants recruit using U.S. video games.” Fox News re-titled the story again to emphasise that this alert about technological manipulation was coming from recognised specialists in the anti-terrorism surveillance field: “Experts: Islamic Militants Customizing Violent Video Games.” As the story circulated, the body of the article remained largely unchanged, in which the Reuters reporter described the digital materials from Islamic extremists that were shown at the congressional hearing. During the segment that apparently most captured the attention of the wire service reporters, eerie music played as an English-speaking narrator condemned the “infidel” and declared that he had “put a jihad” on them, as aerial shots moved over 3D computer-generated images of flaming oil facilities and mosques covered with geometric designs. Suddenly, this menacing voice-over was interrupted by an explosion, as a virtual rocket was launched into a simulated military helicopter. The Reuters reporter shared this dystopian vision from cyberspace with Western audiences by quoting directly from the chilling commentary and describing a dissonant montage of images and remixed sound. “I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters,” a narrator’s voice said as the screen flashed between images of street-level gunfights, explosions and helicopter assaults. Then came a recording of President George W. Bush’s September 16, 2001, statement: “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.” It was edited to repeat the word “crusade,” which Muslims often define as an attack on Islam by Christianity. According to the news reports, the key piece of evidence before Congress seemed to be a film by “SonicJihad” of recorded videogame play, which – according to the experts – was widely distributed online. Much of the clip takes place from the point of view of a first-person shooter, seen as if through the eyes of an armed insurgent, but the viewer also periodically sees third-person action in which the player appears as a running figure wearing a red-and-white checked keffiyeh, who dashes toward the screen with a rocket launcher balanced on his shoulder. Significantly, another of the player’s hand-held weapons is a detonator that triggers remote blasts. As jaunty music plays, helicopters, tanks, and armoured vehicles burst into smoke and flame. Finally, at the triumphant ending of the video, a green and white flag bearing a crescent is hoisted aloft into the sky to signify victory by Islamic forces. To explain the existence of this digital alternative history in which jihadists could be conquerors, the Reuters story described the deviousness of the country’s terrorist opponents, who were now apparently modifying popular videogames through their wizardry and inserting anti-American, pro-insurgency content into U.S.-made consumer technology. One of the latest video games modified by militants is the popular “Battlefield 2” from leading video game publisher, Electronic Arts Inc of Redwood City, California. Jeff Brown, a spokesman for Electronic Arts, said enthusiasts often write software modifications, known as “mods,” to video games. “Millions of people create mods on games around the world,” he said. “We have absolutely no control over them. It’s like drawing a mustache on a picture.” Although the Electronic Arts executive dismissed the activities of modders as a “mustache on a picture” that could only be considered little more than childish vandalism of their off-the-shelf corporate product, others saw a more serious form of criminality at work. Testifying experts and the legislators listening on the committee used the video to call for greater Internet surveillance efforts and electronic counter-measures. Within twenty-four hours of the sensationalistic news breaking, however, a group of Battlefield 2 fans was crowing about the idiocy of reporters. The game play footage wasn’t from a high-tech modification of the software by Islamic extremists; it had been posted on a Planet Battlefield forum the previous December of 2005 by a game fan who had cut together regular game play with a Bush remix and a parody snippet of the soundtrack from the 2004 hit comedy film Team America. The voice describing the Black Hawk helicopters was the voice of Trey Parker of South Park cartoon fame, and – much to Parker’s amusement – even the mention of “goats screaming” did not clue spectators in to the fact of a comic source. Ironically, the moment in the movie from which the sound clip is excerpted is one about intelligence gathering. As an agent of Team America, a fictional elite U.S. commando squad, the hero of the film’s all-puppet cast, Gary Johnston, is impersonating a jihadist radical inside a hostile Egyptian tavern that is modelled on the cantina scene from Star Wars. Additional laughs come from the fact that agent Johnston is accepted by the menacing terrorist cell as “Hakmed,” despite the fact that he utters a series of improbable clichés made up of incoherent stereotypes about life in the Middle East while dressed up in a disguise made up of shoe polish and a turban from a bathroom towel. The man behind the “SonicJihad” pseudonym turned out to be a twenty-five-year-old hospital administrator named Samir, and what reporters and representatives saw was nothing more exotic than game play from an add-on expansion pack of Battlefield 2, which – like other versions of the game – allows first-person shooter play from the position of the opponent as a standard feature. While SonicJihad initially joined his fellow gamers in ridiculing the mainstream media, he also expressed astonishment and outrage about a larger politics of reception. In one interview he argued that the media illiteracy of Reuters potentially enabled a whole series of category errors, in which harmless gamers could be demonised as terrorists. It wasn’t intended for the purpose what it was portrayed to be by the media. So no I don’t regret making a funny video . . . why should I? The only thing I regret is thinking that news from Reuters was objective and always right. The least they could do is some online research before publishing this. If they label me al-Qaeda just for making this silly video, that makes you think, what is this al-Qaeda? And is everything al-Qaeda? Although Sonic Jihad dismissed his own work as “silly” or “funny,” he expected considerably more from a credible news agency like Reuters: “objective” reporting, “online research,” and fact-checking before “publishing.” Within the week, almost all of the salient details in the Reuters story were revealed to be incorrect. SonicJihad’s film was not made by terrorists or for terrorists: it was not created by “Islamic militants” for “Muslim youths.” The videogame it depicted had not been modified by a “tech-savvy militant” with advanced programming skills. Of course, what is most extraordinary about this story isn’t just that Reuters merely got its facts wrong; it is that a self-identified “parody” video was shown to the august House Intelligence Committee by a team of well-paid “experts” from the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a major contractor with the federal government, as key evidence of terrorist recruitment techniques and abuse of digital networks. Moreover, this story of media illiteracy unfolded in the context of a fundamental Constitutional debate about domestic surveillance via communications technology and the further regulation of digital content by lawmakers. Furthermore, the transcripts of the actual hearing showed that much more than simple gullibility or technological ignorance was in play. Based on their exchanges in the public record, elected representatives and government experts appear to be keenly aware that the digital discourses of an emerging information culture might be challenging their authority and that of the longstanding institutions of knowledge and power with which they are affiliated. These hearings can be seen as representative of a larger historical moment in which emphatic declarations about prohibiting specific practices in digital culture have come to occupy a prominent place at the podium, news desk, or official Web portal. This environment of cultural reaction can be used to explain why policy makers’ reaction to terrorists’ use of networked communication and digital media actually tells us more about our own American ideologies about technology and rhetoric in a contemporary information environment. When the experts come forward at the Sonic Jihad hearing to “walk us through the media and some of the products,” they present digital artefacts of an information economy that mirrors many of the features of our own consumption of objects of electronic discourse, which seem dangerously easy to copy and distribute and thus also create confusion about their intended meanings, audiences, and purposes. From this one hearing we can see how the reception of many new digital genres plays out in the public sphere of legislative discourse. Web pages, videogames, and Weblogs are mentioned specifically in the transcript. The main architecture of the witnesses’ presentation to the committee is organised according to the rhetorical conventions of a PowerPoint presentation. Moreover, the arguments made by expert witnesses about the relationship of orality to literacy or of public to private communications in new media are highly relevant to how we might understand other important digital genres, such as electronic mail or text messaging. The hearing also invites consideration of privacy, intellectual property, and digital “rights,” because moral values about freedom and ownership are alluded to by many of the elected representatives present, albeit often through the looking glass of user behaviours imagined as radically Other. For example, terrorists are described as “modders” and “hackers” who subvert those who properly create, own, legitimate, and regulate intellectual property. To explain embarrassing leaks of infinitely replicable digital files, witness Ron Roughead says, “We’re not even sure that they don’t even hack into the kinds of spaces that hold photographs in order to get pictures that our forces have taken.” Another witness, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and International Affairs, Peter Rodman claims that “any video game that comes out, as soon as the code is released, they will modify it and change the game for their needs.” Thus, the implication of these witnesses’ testimony is that the release of code into the public domain can contribute to political subversion, much as covert intrusion into computer networks by stealthy hackers can. However, the witnesses from the Pentagon and from the government contractor SAIC often present a contradictory image of the supposed terrorists in the hearing transcripts. Sometimes the enemy is depicted as an organisation of technological masterminds, capable of manipulating the computer code of unwitting Americans and snatching their rightful intellectual property away; sometimes those from the opposing forces are depicted as pre-modern and even sub-literate political innocents. In contrast, the congressional representatives seem to focus on similarities when comparing the work of “terrorists” to the everyday digital practices of their constituents and even of themselves. According to the transcripts of this open hearing, legislators on both sides of the aisle express anxiety about domestic patterns of Internet reception. Even the legislators’ own Web pages are potentially disruptive electronic artefacts, particularly when the demands of digital labour interfere with their duties as lawmakers. Although the subject of the hearing is ostensibly terrorist Websites, Representative Anna Eshoo (D-California) bemoans the difficulty of maintaining her own official congressional site. As she observes, “So we are – as members, I think we’re very sensitive about what’s on our Website, and if I retained what I had on my Website three years ago, I’d be out of business. So we know that they have to be renewed. They go up, they go down, they’re rebuilt, they’re – you know, the message is targeted to the future.” In their questions, lawmakers identify Weblogs (blogs) as a particular area of concern as a destabilising alternative to authoritative print sources of information from established institutions. Representative Alcee Hastings (D-Florida) compares the polluting power of insurgent bloggers to that of influential online muckrakers from the American political Right. Hastings complains of “garbage on our regular mainstream news that comes from blog sites.” Representative Heather Wilson (R-New Mexico) attempts to project a media-savvy persona by bringing up the “phenomenon of blogging” in conjunction with her questions about jihadist Websites in which she notes how Internet traffic can be magnified by cooperative ventures among groups of ideologically like-minded content-providers: “These Websites, and particularly the most active ones, are they cross-linked? And do they have kind of hot links to your other favorite sites on them?” At one point Representative Wilson asks witness Rodman if he knows “of your 100 hottest sites where the Webmasters are educated? What nationality they are? Where they’re getting their money from?” In her questions, Wilson implicitly acknowledges that Web work reflects influences from pedagogical communities, economic networks of the exchange of capital, and even potentially the specific ideologies of nation-states. It is perhaps indicative of the government contractors’ anachronistic worldview that the witness is unable to answer Wilson’s question. He explains that his agency focuses on the physical location of the server or ISP rather than the social backgrounds of the individuals who might be manufacturing objectionable digital texts. The premise behind the contractors’ working method – surveilling the technical apparatus not the social network – may be related to other beliefs expressed by government witnesses, such as the supposition that jihadist Websites are collectively produced and spontaneously emerge from the indigenous, traditional, tribal culture, instead of assuming that Iraqi insurgents have analogous beliefs, practices, and technological awareness to those in first-world countries. The residual subtexts in the witnesses’ conjectures about competing cultures of orality and literacy may tell us something about a reactionary rhetoric around videogames and digital culture more generally. According to the experts before Congress, the Middle Eastern audience for these videogames and Websites is limited by its membership in a pre-literate society that is only capable of abortive cultural production without access to knowledge that is archived in printed codices. Sometimes the witnesses before Congress seem to be unintentionally channelling the ideas of the late literacy theorist Walter Ong about the “secondary orality” associated with talky electronic media such as television, radio, audio recording, or telephone communication. Later followers of Ong extend this concept of secondary orality to hypertext, hypermedia, e-mail, and blogs, because they similarly share features of both speech and written discourse. Although Ong’s disciples celebrate this vibrant reconnection to a mythic, communal past of what Kathleen Welch calls “electric rhetoric,” the defence industry consultants express their profound state of alarm at the potentially dangerous and subversive character of this hybrid form of communication. The concept of an “oral tradition” is first introduced by the expert witnesses in the context of modern marketing and product distribution: “The Internet is used for a variety of things – command and control,” one witness states. “One of the things that’s missed frequently is how and – how effective the adversary is at using the Internet to distribute product. They’re using that distribution network as a modern form of oral tradition, if you will.” Thus, although the Internet can be deployed for hierarchical “command and control” activities, it also functions as a highly efficient peer-to-peer distributed network for disseminating the commodity of information. Throughout the hearings, the witnesses imply that unregulated lateral communication among social actors who are not authorised to speak for nation-states or to produce legitimated expert discourses is potentially destabilising to political order. Witness Eric Michael describes the “oral tradition” and the conventions of communal life in the Middle East to emphasise the primacy of speech in the collective discursive practices of this alien population: “I’d like to point your attention to the media types and the fact that the oral tradition is listed as most important. The other media listed support that. And the significance of the oral tradition is more than just – it’s the medium by which, once it comes off the Internet, it is transferred.” The experts go on to claim that this “oral tradition” can contaminate other media because it functions as “rumor,” the traditional bane of the stately discourse of military leaders since the classical era. The oral tradition now also has an aspect of rumor. A[n] event takes place. There is an explosion in a city. Rumor is that the United States Air Force dropped a bomb and is doing indiscriminate killing. This ends up being discussed on the street. It ends up showing up in a Friday sermon in a mosque or in another religious institution. It then gets recycled into written materials. Media picks up the story and broadcasts it, at which point it’s now a fact. In this particular case that we were telling you about, it showed up on a network television, and their propaganda continues to go back to this false initial report on network television and continue to reiterate that it’s a fact, even though the United States government has proven that it was not a fact, even though the network has since recanted the broadcast. In this example, many-to-many discussion on the “street” is formalised into a one-to many “sermon” and then further stylised using technology in a one-to-many broadcast on “network television” in which “propaganda” that is “false” can no longer be disputed. This “oral tradition” is like digital media, because elements of discourse can be infinitely copied or “recycled,” and it is designed to “reiterate” content. In this hearing, the word “rhetoric” is associated with destructive counter-cultural forces by the witnesses who reiterate cultural truisms dating back to Plato and the Gorgias. For example, witness Eric Michael initially presents “rhetoric” as the use of culturally specific and hence untranslatable figures of speech, but he quickly moves to an outright castigation of the entire communicative mode. “Rhetoric,” he tells us, is designed to “distort the truth,” because it is a “selective” assembly or a “distortion.” Rhetoric is also at odds with reason, because it appeals to “emotion” and a romanticised Weltanschauung oriented around discourses of “struggle.” The film by SonicJihad is chosen as the final clip by the witnesses before Congress, because it allegedly combines many different types of emotional appeal, and thus it conveniently ties together all of the themes that the witnesses present to the legislators about unreliable oral or rhetorical sources in the Middle East: And there you see how all these products are linked together. And you can see where the games are set to psychologically condition you to go kill coalition forces. You can see how they use humor. You can see how the entire campaign is carefully crafted to first evoke an emotion and then to evoke a response and to direct that response in the direction that they want. Jihadist digital products, especially videogames, are effective means of manipulation, the witnesses argue, because they employ multiple channels of persuasion and carefully sequenced and integrated subliminal messages. To understand the larger cultural conversation of the hearing, it is important to keep in mind that the related argument that “games” can “psychologically condition” players to be predisposed to violence is one that was important in other congressional hearings of the period, as well one that played a role in bills and resolutions that were passed by the full body of the legislative branch. In the witness’s testimony an appeal to anti-game sympathies at home is combined with a critique of a closed anti-democratic system abroad in which the circuits of rhetorical production and their composite metonymic chains are described as those that command specific, unvarying, robotic responses. This sharp criticism of the artful use of a presentation style that is “crafted” is ironic, given that the witnesses’ “compilation” of jihadist digital material is staged in the form of a carefully structured PowerPoint presentation, one that is paced to a well-rehearsed rhythm of “slide, please” or “next slide” in the transcript. The transcript also reveals that the members of the House Intelligence Committee were not the original audience for the witnesses’ PowerPoint presentation. Rather, when it was first created by SAIC, this “expert” presentation was designed for training purposes for the troops on the ground, who would be facing the challenges of deployment in hostile terrain. According to the witnesses, having the slide show showcased before Congress was something of an afterthought. Nonetheless, Congressman Tiahrt (R-KN) is so impressed with the rhetorical mastery of the consultants that he tries to appropriate it. As Tiarht puts it, “I’d like to get a copy of that slide sometime.” From the hearing we also learn that the terrorists’ Websites are threatening precisely because they manifest a polymorphously perverse geometry of expansion. For example, one SAIC witness before the House Committee compares the replication and elaboration of digital material online to a “spiderweb.” Like Representative Eshoo’s site, he also notes that the terrorists’ sites go “up” and “down,” but the consultant is left to speculate about whether or not there is any “central coordination” to serve as an organising principle and to explain the persistence and consistency of messages despite the apparent lack of a single authorial ethos to offer a stable, humanised, point of reference. In the hearing, the oft-cited solution to the problem created by the hybridity and iterability of digital rhetoric appears to be “public diplomacy.” Both consultants and lawmakers seem to agree that the damaging messages of the insurgents must be countered with U.S. sanctioned information, and thus the phrase “public diplomacy” appears in the hearing seven times. However, witness Roughhead complains that the protean “oral tradition” and what Henry Jenkins has called the “transmedia” character of digital culture, which often crosses several platforms of traditional print, projection, or broadcast media, stymies their best rhetorical efforts: “I think the point that we’ve tried to make in the briefing is that wherever there’s Internet availability at all, they can then download these – these programs and put them onto compact discs, DVDs, or post them into posters, and provide them to a greater range of people in the oral tradition that they’ve grown up in. And so they only need a few Internet sites in order to distribute and disseminate the message.” Of course, to maintain their share of the government market, the Science Applications International Corporation also employs practices of publicity and promotion through the Internet and digital media. They use HTML Web pages for these purposes, as well as PowerPoint presentations and online video. The rhetoric of the Website of SAIC emphasises their motto “From Science to Solutions.” After a short Flash film about how SAIC scientists and engineers solve “complex technical problems,” the visitor is taken to the home page of the firm that re-emphasises their central message about expertise. The maps, uniforms, and specialised tools and equipment that are depicted in these opening Web pages reinforce an ethos of professional specialisation that is able to respond to multiple threats posed by the “global war on terror.” By 26 June 2006, the incident finally was being described as a “Pentagon Snafu” by ABC News. From the opening of reporter Jake Tapper’s investigative Webcast, established government institutions were put on the spot: “So, how much does the Pentagon know about videogames? Well, when it came to a recent appearance before Congress, apparently not enough.” Indeed, the very language about “experts” that was highlighted in the earlier coverage is repeated by Tapper in mockery, with the significant exception of “independent expert” Ian Bogost of the Georgia Institute of Technology. If the Pentagon and SAIC deride the legitimacy of rhetoric as a cultural practice, Bogost occupies himself with its defence. In his recent book Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, Bogost draws upon the authority of the “2,500 year history of rhetoric” to argue that videogames represent a significant development in that cultural narrative. Given that Bogost and his Watercooler Games Weblog co-editor Gonzalo Frasca were actively involved in the detective work that exposed the depth of professional incompetence involved in the government’s line-up of witnesses, it is appropriate that Bogost is given the final words in the ABC exposé. As Bogost says, “We should be deeply bothered by this. We should really be questioning the kind of advice that Congress is getting.” Bogost may be right that Congress received terrible counsel on that day, but a close reading of the transcript reveals that elected officials were much more than passive listeners: in fact they were lively participants in a cultural conversation about regulating digital media. After looking at the actual language of these exchanges, it seems that the persuasiveness of the misinformation from the Pentagon and SAIC had as much to do with lawmakers’ preconceived anxieties about practices of computer-mediated communication close to home as it did with the contradictory stereotypes that were presented to them about Internet practices abroad. In other words, lawmakers found themselves looking into a fun house mirror that distorted what should have been familiar artefacts of American popular culture because it was precisely what they wanted to see. References ABC News. “Terrorist Videogame?” Nightline Online. 21 June 2006. 22 June 2006 http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2105341>. Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: Videogames and Procedural Rhetoric. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Game Politics. “Was Congress Misled by ‘Terrorist’ Game Video? We Talk to Gamer Who Created the Footage.” 11 May 2006. http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/285129.html#cutid1>. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. julieb. “David Morgan Is a Horrible Writer and Should Be Fired.” Online posting. 5 May 2006. Dvorak Uncensored Cage Match Forums. http://cagematch.dvorak.org/index.php/topic,130.0.html>. Mahmood. “Terrorists Don’t Recruit with Battlefield 2.” GGL Global Gaming. 16 May 2006 http://www.ggl.com/news.php?NewsId=3090>. Morgan, David. “Islamists Using U.S. Video Games in Youth Appeal.” Reuters online news service. 4 May 2006 http://today.reuters.com/news/ArticleNews.aspx?type=topNews &storyID=2006-05-04T215543Z_01_N04305973_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY- VIDEOGAMES.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc= NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2>. Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London/New York: Methuen, 1982. Parker, Trey. Online posting. 7 May 2006. 9 May 2006 http://www.treyparker.com>. Plato. “Gorgias.” Plato: Collected Dialogues. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1961. Shrader, Katherine. “Pentagon Surfing Thousands of Jihad Sites.” Associated Press 4 May 2006. SonicJihad. “SonicJihad: A Day in the Life of a Resistance Fighter.” Online posting. 26 Dec. 2005. Planet Battlefield Forums. 9 May 2006 http://www.forumplanet.com/planetbattlefield/topic.asp?fid=13670&tid=1806909&p=1>. Tapper, Jake, and Audery Taylor. “Terrorist Video Game or Pentagon Snafu?” ABC News Nightline 21 June 2006. 30 June 2006 http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Technology/story?id=2105128&page=1>. U.S. Congressional Record. Panel I of the Hearing of the House Select Intelligence Committee, Subject: “Terrorist Use of the Internet for Communications.” Federal News Service. 4 May 2006. Welch, Kathleen E. Electric Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric, Oralism, and the New Literacy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. 
 
 
 
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IntroductionLike other forms of embodiment, pregnancy has increasingly become subject to representation and interpretation via digital technologies. Pregnancy and the unborn entity were largely private, and few people beyond the pregnant women herself had access to the foetus growing within her (Duden). Now pregnant and foetal bodies have become open to public portrayal and display (Lupton The Social Worlds of the Unborn). A plethora of online materials – websites depicting the unborn entity from the moment of conception, amateur YouTube videos of births, social media postings of ultrasounds and self-taken photos (‘selfies’) showing changes in pregnant bellies, and so on – now ensure the documentation of pregnant and unborn bodies in extensive detail, rendering them open to other people’s scrutiny. Other recent digital technologies directed at pregnancy include mobile software applications, or ‘apps’. In this article, we draw on our study involving a critical discourse analysis of a corpus of pregnancy-related apps offered in the two major app stores. In so doing, we discuss the ways in which pregnancy-related apps portray pregnant and unborn bodies. We place a particular focus on the ludification and gamification strategies employed to position pregnancy as a playful, creative and fulfilling experience that is frequently focused on consumption. As we will demonstrate, these strategies have wider implications for concepts of pregnant and foetal embodiment and subjectivity.It is important here to make a distinction between ludification and gamification. Ludification is a broader term than gamification. It is used in the academic literature on gaming (sometimes referred to as ‘ludology’) to refer to elements of games reaching into other aspects of life beyond leisure pursuits (Frissen et al. Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures; Raessens). Frissen et al. (Frissen et al. "Homo Ludens 2.0: Play, Media and Identity") for example, claim that even serious pursuits such as work, politics, education and warfare have been subjected to ludification. They note that digital technologies in general tend to incorporate ludic dimensions. Gamification has been described as ‘the use of game design elements in non-game contexts’ (Deterding et al. 9). The term originated in the digital media industry to describe the incorporation of features into digital technologies that not explicitly designed as games, such as competition, badges, rewards and fun that engaged and motivated users to make them more enjoyable to use. Gamification is now often used in literatures on marketing strategies, persuasive computing or behaviour modification. It is an important element of ‘nudge’, an approach to behaviour change that involves persuasion over coercion (Jones, Pykett and Whitehead). Gamification thus differs from ludification in that the former involves applying ludic principles for reasons other than the pleasures of enjoying the game for their own sake, often to achieve objectives set by actors and agencies other than the gamer. Indeed, this is why gamification software has been described by Bogost (Bogost) as ‘exploitationware’. Analysing Pregnancy AppsMobile apps have become an important medium in contemporary digital technology use. As of May 2015, 1.5 million apps were available to download on Google Play while 1.4 million were available in the Apple App Store (Statista). Apps related to pregnancy are a popular item in app stores, frequently appearing on the Apple App Store’s list of most-downloaded apps. Google Play’s figures show that many apps directed at pregnant women have been downloaded hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of times. For example, ‘Pregnancy +’, ‘I’m Expecting - Pregnancy App’ and ‘What to Expect - Pregnancy Tracker’ have each been downloaded between one and five million times, while ‘My Pregnancy Today’ has received between five and ten million downloads. Pregnancy games for young girls are also popular. Google Play figures show that the ‘Pregnant Emergency Doctor’ game, for example, has received between one and five million downloads. Research has found that pregnant women commonly download pregnancy-related apps and find them useful sources of information and support (Hearn, Miller and Fletcher; Rodger et al.; Kraschnewski et al.; Declercq et al.; Derbyshire and Dancey; O'Higgins et al.). We conducted a comprehensive analysis of all pregnancy-related smartphone apps in the two major app stores, Apple App Store and Google Play, in late June 2015. Android and Apple’s iOS have a combined market share of 91 percent of apps installed on mobile phones (Seneviratne et al.). A search for all pregnancy-related apps offered in these stores used key terms such as pregnancy, childbirth, conception, foetus/fetus and baby. After eliminating apps listed in these searches that were clearly not human pregnancy-related, 665 apps on Google Play and 1,141 on the Apple App Store remained for inclusion in our study. (Many of these apps were shared across the stores.)We carried out a critical discourse analysis of these apps, looking closely at the app descriptions offered in the two stores. We adopted the perspective that sees apps, like any other form of media, as sociocultural artefacts that both draw on and reproduce shared norms, ideals, knowledges and beliefs (Lupton "Quantified Sex: A Critical Analysis of Sexual and Reproductive Self-Tracking Using Apps"; Millington "Smartphone Apps and the Mobile Privatization of Health and Fitness"; Lupton "Apps as Artefacts: Towards a Critical Perspective on Mobile Health and Medical Apps"). In undertaking our analysis of the app descriptions in our corpus, attention was paid to the title of each app, the textual accounts of its content and use and the images that were employed, such as the logo of the app and the screenshots that were used to illustrate its content and style. Our focus in this article is on the apps that we considered as including elements of entertainment. Pregnancy-related game apps were by far the largest category of the apps in our corpus. These included games for young girls and expectant fathers as well as apps for ultrasound manipulation, pregnancy pranks, foetal sex prediction, choosing baby names, and quizzes. Less obviously, many other apps included in our analysis offered some elements of gamification and ludification, and these were considered in our analysis. ‘Pregnant Adventures’: App Games for GirlsOne of the major genres of apps that we identified was games directed at young girls. These apps invited users to shop for clothes, dress up, give a new hair style, ‘make-over’ and otherwise beautify a pregnant woman. These activities were directed at the goal of improving the physical attractiveness and therefore (it was suggested) the confidence of the woman, who was presented as struggling with coming to terms with changes in her body during pregnancy. Other apps for this target group involved the player assuming the role of a doctor in conducting medical treatments for injured pregnant women or assisting the birth of her baby.Many of these games represented the pregnant woman visually as looking like an archetypal Barbie doll, with a wardrobe to match. One app (‘Barbara Pregnancy Shopping’) even uses the name ‘Barbara’ and the screenshots show a woman similar in appearance to the doll. Its description urges players to use the game to ‘cheer up’ an ‘unconfident’ Barbara by taking her on a ‘shopping spree’ for new, glamorous clothes ‘to make Barbara feel beautiful throughout her pregnancy’. Players may find ‘sparkly accessories’ as well for Barbara and help her find a new hairstyle so that she ‘can be her fashionable self again’ and ‘feel prepared to welcome her baby!’. Likewise, the game ‘Pregnant Mommy Makeover Spa’ involves players selecting clothes, applying beauty treatments and makeup and adding accessories to give a makeover to ‘Pregnant Princess’ Leila. The ‘Celebrity Mommy’s Newborn Baby Doctor’ game combines the drawcard of ‘celebrity’ with ‘mommy’. Players are invited to ‘join the celebrities in their pregnancy adventure!’ and ‘take care of Celebrity Mom during her pregnancy!’.An app by the same developer of ‘Barbara Pregnancy Shopping’ also offers ‘Barbara’s Caesarean Birth’. The app description claims that: ‘Of course her poor health doesn’t allow Barbara to give birth to her baby herself.’ It is up to players to ‘make everything perfect’ for Barbara’s caesarean birth. The screenshots show Barbara’s pregnant abdomen being slit open, retracted and a rosy, totally clean infant extracted from the incision, complete with blonde hair. Players then sew up the wound. A final screenshot displays an image of a smiling Barbara standing holding her sleeping, swaddled baby, with the words ‘You win’.Similar games involve princesses, mermaids, fairies and even monster and vampire pregnant women giving birth either vaginally or by caesarean. Despite their preternatural status, the monster and vampire women conform to the same aesthetic as the other pregnant women in these games: usually with long hair and pretty, made-up faces, wearing fashionable clothing even on the operating table. Their newborn infants are similarly uniform in their appearance as they emerge from the uterus. They are white-skinned, clean and cherubic (described in ‘Mommy’s Newborn Baby Princess’ as ‘the cutest baby you probably want’), a far cry from the squalling, squashed-faced infants smeared in birth fluids produced by the real birth process.In these pregnancy games for girls, the pain and intense bodily effort of birthing and the messiness produced by the blood and other body fluids inherent to the process of labour and birth are completely missing. The fact that caesarean birth is a major abdominal surgery requiring weeks of recovery is obviated in these games. Apart from the monsters and vampires, who may have green- or blue-hued skin, nearly all other pregnant women are portrayed as white-skinned, young, wearing makeup and slim, conforming to conventional stereotypical notions of female beauty. In these apps, the labouring women remain glamorous, usually smiling, calm and unsullied by the visceral nature of birth.‘Track Your Pregnancy Day by Day’: Self-Monitoring and Gamified PregnancyElements of gamification were evident in a large number of the apps in our corpus, including many apps that invite pregnant users to engage in self-tracking of their bodies and that of their foetuses. Users are asked to customise the apps to document their changing bodies and track their foetus’ development as part of reproducing the discourse of the miraculous nature of pregnancy and promoting the pleasures of self-tracking and self-transformation from pregnant woman to mother. When using the ‘Pregnancy+’ app, for example, users can choose to construct a ‘Personal Dashboard’ that includes details of their pregnancy. They can input their photograph, first name and their expected date of delivery so that that each daily update begins with ‘Hello [name of user], you are [ ] weeks and [ ] days pregnant’ with the users’ photograph attached to the message. The woman’s weight gain over time and a foetal kick counter are also included in this app. It provides various ways for users to mark the passage of time, observe the ways in which their foetuses change and move week by week and monitor changes in their bodies. According to the app description for ‘My Pregnancy Today’, using such features allows a pregnant woman to: ‘Track your pregnancy day by day.’ Other apps encourage women to track such aspects of physical activity, vitamin and fluid intake, diet, mood and symptoms. The capacity to visually document the pregnant user’s body is also a feature of several apps. The ‘Baby Bump Pregnancy’, ‘WebMD Pregnancy’, ‘I’m Expecting’,’iPregnant’ and ‘My Pregnancy Today’ apps, for example, all offer an album feature for pregnant bump photos taken by the user of herself (described as a ‘bumpie’ in the blurb for ‘My Pregnancy Today’). ‘Baby Buddy’ encourages women to create a pregnant avatar of themselves (looking glamorous, well-dressed and happy). Some apps even advise users on how they should feel. As a screenshot from ‘Pregnancy Tracker Week by Week’ claims: ‘Victoria, your baby is growing in your body. You should be the happiest woman in the world.’Just as pregnancy games for little girls portrayal pregnancy as a commodified and asetheticised experience, the apps directed at pregnant women themselves tend to shy away from discomforting fleshly realities of pregnant and birthing embodiment. Pregnancy is represented as an enjoyable and fashionable state of embodiment: albeit one that requires constant self-surveillance and vigilance.‘Hello Mommy!’: The Personalisation and Aestheticisation of the FoetusA dominant feature of pregnancy-related apps is the representation of the foetus as already a communicative person in its own right. For example, the ‘Pregnancy Tickers – Widget’ app features the image of a foetus (looking far more like an infant, with a full head of wavy hair and open eyes) holding a pencil and marking a tally on the walls of the uterus. The app is designed to provide various icons showing the progress of the user’s pregnancy each day on her mobile device. The ‘Hi Mommy’ app features a cartoon-like pink and cuddly foetus looking very baby-like addressing its mother from the womb, as in the following message that appears on the user’s smartphone: ‘Hi Mommy! When will I see you for the first time?’ Several pregnancy-tracking apps also allow women to input the name that they have chosen for their expected baby, to receive customised notifications of its progress (‘Justin is nine weeks and two days old today’).Many apps also incorporate images of foetuses that represent them as wondrous entities, adopting the visual style of 1960s foetal photography pioneer Lennart Nilsson, or what Stormer (Stormer) has referred to as ‘prenatal sublimity’. The ‘Pregnancy+’ app features such images. Users can choose to view foetal development week-by-week as a colourful computerised animation or 2D and 3D ultrasound scans that have been digitally manipulated to render them aesthetically appealing. These images replicate the softly pink, glowing portrayals of miraculous unborn life typical of Nilsson’s style.Other apps adopt a more contemporary aesthetic and allow parents to store and manipulate images of their foetal ultrasounds and then share them via social media. The ‘Pimp My Ultrasound’ app, for example, invites prospective parents to manipulate images of their foetal ultrasounds by adding in novelty features to the foetal image such as baseball caps, jewellery, credit cards and musical instruments. The ‘Hello Mom’ app creates a ‘fetal album’ of ultrasounds taken of the user’s foetus, while the ‘Ultrasound Viewer’ app lets users manipulate their 3/4 D foetal ultrasound images: ‘Have fun viewing it from every angle, rotating, panning and zooming to see your babies [sic] features and share with your family and friends via Facebook and Twitter! … Once uploaded, you can customise your scan with a background colour and skin colour of your choice’.DiscussionPregnancy, like any other form of embodiment, is performative. Pregnant women are expected to conform to norms and assumptions about their physical appearance and deportment of their bodies that expect them to remain well-groomed, fit and physically attractive without appearing overly sexual (Longhurst "(Ad)Dressing Pregnant Bodies in New Zealand: Clothing, Fashion, Subjectivities and Spatialities"; Longhurst "'Corporeographies’ of Pregnancy: ‘Bikini Babes'"; Nash; Littler). Simultaneously they must negotiate the burden of bodily management in the interests of risk regulation. They are expected to protect their vulnerable unborn from potential dangers by stringently disciplining their bodies and policing to what substances they allow entry (Lupton The Social Worlds of the Unborn; Lupton "'Precious Cargo': Risk and Reproductive Citizenship"). Pregnancy self-tracking apps enact the soft politics of algorithmic authority, encouraging people to conform to expectations of self-responsibility and self-management by devoting attention to monitoring their bodies and acting on the data that they generate (Whitson; Millington "Amusing Ourselves to Life: Fitness Consumerism and the Birth of Bio-Games"; Lupton The Quantified Self: A Sociology of Self-Tracking).Many commentators have remarked on the sexism inherent in digital games (e.g. Dickerman, Christensen and Kerl-McClain; Thornham). Very little research has been conducted specifically on the gendered nature of app games. However our analysis suggests that, at least in relation to the pregnant woman, reductionist heteronormative, cisgendered, patronising and paternalistic stereotypes abound. In the games for girls, pregnant women are ideally young, heterosexual, partnered, attractive, slim and well-groomed, before, during and after birth. In self-tracking apps, pregnant women are portrayed as ideally self-responsible, enthused about their pregnancy and foetus to the point that they are counting the days until the birth and enthusiastic about collecting and sharing details about themselves and their unborn (often via social media).Ambivalence about pregnancy, the foetus or impending motherhood, and lack of interest in monitoring the pregnancy or sharing details of it with others are not accommodated, acknowledged or expected by these apps. Acknowledgement of the possibility of pregnant women who are not overtly positive about their pregnancy or lack interest in it or who identify as transgender or lesbian or who are sole mothers is distinctly absent.Common practices we noted in apps – such as giving foetuses names before birth and representing them as verbally communicating with their mothers from inside the womb – underpin a growing intensification around the notion of the unborn entity as already an infant and social actor in its own right. These practices have significant implications for political agendas around the treatment of pregnant women in terms of their protection or otherwise of their unborn, and for debates about women’s reproductive rights and access to abortion (Lupton The Social Worlds of the Unborn; Taylor The Public Life of the Fetal Sonogram: Technology, Consumption and the Politics of Reproduction). Further, the gamification and ludification of pregnancy serve to further commodify the experience of pregnancy and childbirth, contributing to an already highly commercialised environment in which expectant parents, and particularly mothers, are invited to purchase many goods and services related to pregnancy and early parenthood (Taylor "Of Sonograms and Baby Prams: Prenatal Diagnosis, Pregnancy, and Consumption"; Kroløkke; Thomson et al.; Taylor The Public Life of the Fetal Sonogram: Technology, Consumption and the Politics of Reproduction; Thomas).In the games for girls we examined, the pregnant woman herself was a commodity, a selling point for the app. The foetus was also frequently commodified in its representation as an aestheticised entity and the employment of its image (either as an ultrasound or other visual representations) or identity to market apps such as the girls’ games, apps for manipulating ultrasound images, games for predicting the foetus’ sex and choosing its name, and prank apps using fake ultrasounds purporting to reveal a foetus inside a person’s body. As the pregnant user engages in apps, she becomes a commodity in yet another way: the generator of personal data that are marketable in themselves. In this era of the digital data knowledge economy, the personal information about people gathered from their online interactions and content creation has become highly profitable for third parties (Andrejevic; van Dijck). Given that pregnant women are usually in the market for many new goods and services, their personal data is a key target for data mining companies, who harvest it to sell to advertisers (Marwick).To conclude, our analysis suggests that gamification and ludification strategies directed at pregnancy and childbirth can serve to obfuscate the societal pressures that expect and seek to motivate pregnant women to maintain physical fitness and attractiveness, simultaneously ensuring that they protect their foetuses from all possible risks. 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As leaders are now being encouraged to work across different organizations and in more complex ways, a Systems Leadership programme was developed. The programme required a final module to consolidate the learning which was simulation based. The candidates attending the ‘murder on the lab floor’ module were a mixture of clinical and non-clinical senior leaders from public and third sector organizations.The aim of the study was to design a half-day course utilizing the simulation structure of pre-brief, scenarios and debrief which enable the candidates to reflect on their own learning in the areas of leadership, communication decision-making and collaborative skills.We formed a working group to design the scenarios, which were a series of games, build prototypes, run pilots to assess suitability, identify modifications and ensure consistency. Games were linked to leadership traits to aid reflection through debriefing. Games were designed to be played face to face, or remotely, thus promoting inclusivity for shielding staff. A short pre-brief or introduction was filmed.In our first cohort, all candidates attended the 3-hour session in person. The pre-brief film was played to the candidates setting the scene of an industrial scientist collapsed on a laboratory floor. It outlined the aim to collect as many golden syringes as possible by completing seven 5-minute activities. The candidates were given 5 minutes to nominate which candidate would complete which of the seven games set out in the laboratory. The games were categorized as mental, physical, mystery and skill. The nominated candidate entered the laboratory fitted with a radio headset. Audio and video were fed to the debrief room and to remote candidates via Teams. Once the candidate entered the laboratory the timer was activated. Candidates in both rooms were expected to work together to solve the puzzle and demonstrate team dynamics, communication and strategic thinking. On completion of all games, the candidates participated in a structured debrief led by two of the faculty. This reflective process highlighted the intended learning points and also brought about a discussion examining the effects of COVID-19 on the individuals and their teams.Qualitative feedback was collected. Candidates stated that It was the best session of the programmeThe method suited my style of learningI would like my team to go through the process as I found it so valuable.As this fitted social distancing guidelines it is a great alternative to an online programmeThe activities joined the dots between leadership theory and how we work in practice

Abstract Purpose of Review Loot boxes are gambling-like monetisation mechanics in video games that are purchased for opportunities to obtain randomised in-game rewards. Gambling regulation is increasingly being informed by insights from public health. Despite conceptual similarities between loot boxes and gambling, there is much less international consensus on loot box regulation. Various approaches to regulating loot boxes are reviewed via a public health framework that highlights various trade-offs between individual liberties and harm prevention. Recent Findings Many countries have considered regulation, but as yet only a few countries have taken tangible actions. Existing regulatory approaches vary greatly. More restrictively, Belgium has effectively ‘banned’ paid loot boxes and prohibits their sale to both children and adults. In contrast, more liberally, China only requires disclosure of the probabilities of obtaining potential rewards to provide transparency and perhaps help players to make more informed purchasing decisions. Most other countries (e.g., the UK) have adopted a ‘wait-and-watch’ approach by neither regulating loot box sales nor providing any dedicated consumer protection response. Industry self-regulation has also been adopted, although this appears to elicit lower rates of compliance than comparable national legal regulation. Summary Many potential public health approaches to loot box regulation, such as expenditure limits or harm-reducing modifications to loot box design (e.g., fairer reward structures), deserve further attention. The compliance and clinical benefits of existing interventions (including varying degrees of regulation, as adopted by different countries, and industry self-regulation) should be further assessed. The current international variation in loot box regulation presents opportunities to compare the merits of different approaches over time.

Impaired use of the hand in functional tasks remains difficult to overcome in many individuals after a stroke. This often leads to compensation strategies using the less-affected limb, which allows for independence in some aspects of daily activities. However, recovery of hand function remains an important therapeutic goal of many individuals, and is often resistant to conventional therapies. In prior work, we developed HEXORR I, a robotic device that allows practice of finger and thumb movements with robotic assistance. In this study, we describe modifications to the device, now called HEXORR II, and a clinical trial in individuals with chronic stroke. Fifteen individuals with a diagnosis of chronic stroke were randomized to 12 or 24 sessions of robotic therapy. The sessions involved playing several video games using thumb and finger movement. The robot applied assistance to extension movement that was adapted based on task performance. Clinical and motion capture evaluations were performed before and after training and again at a 6-month followup. Fourteen individuals completed the protocol. Fugl-Meyer scores improved significantly at the 6 month time point compared to baseline, indicating reductions in upper extremity impairment. Flexor hypertonia (Modified Ashworth Scale) also decreased significantly due to the intervention. Motion capture found increased finger range of motion and extension ability after the intervention that continued to improve during the followup period. However, there was no change in a functional measure (Action Research Arm Test). At the followup, the high dose group had significant gains in hand displacement during a forward reach task. There were no other significant differences between groups. Future work with HEXORR II should focus on integrating it with functional task practice and incorporating grip and squeezing tasks.Trial Registration:ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04536987. Registered 3 September 2020 - Retrospectively registered, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/record/NCT04536987.

Abstract Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. Background Recent studies show that cardiac telerehabilitation, including exercise and lifestyle modification, is effective in reducing cardiovascular risk factors in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). Thus, physical activity and technology usage of patients with CAD are important key points in order to create technology-based cardiac rehabilitation programs to improve physical patients´ condition and reduce cardiovascular risk. Purpose The aim of this study was to compare the physical activity and the technological usage of women and men with CAD. Methods A cross-sectional study in patients with CAD was performed. Sociodemographic data, physical activity (measured with the International Physical Activity Questionnaire, IPAQ) and the technology usage (measured with the Technology use subscale of the Technology Usage Questionnaire) were collected. Descriptive and inferential analyzes were performed to explore the differences between men and women with CAD. Results A total of 70 participants were included (84.28% men, mean age=59±8.54 years). Regarding the IPAQ, men significantly reported higher walking time (99.31±95.22 METS vs. 33.28±37.42 METS, p=0.001, respectively) and higher total physical activity (4164.91±4164.91 METS vs. 1390.68±1609.05 METS, p<0.001, respectively) than women. In relation to technology usage, the entire sample used a mobile phone, whilst there were no significant gender differences in the functions/applications used (phone calls, text messages, camera, receive videos/photos, internet searches, apps, instant messages, social media, games) (p=0.068). Although the majority of the participants (85.71%) had regular access to internet, men used their phone more frequently than women (81.10% vs. 37.50%, p=0.005, respectively). Comparison by gender showed no significant differences in the type of device used for internet searches (computer, tablet, mobile phone) (p=0.169), familiarization with technology-based physical activity games (p=0.801), use of heart rate monitors (p=0.193), preference to monitor heart rate when exercising (p=0.664), nor use of other devices to monitor physical activity (pedometer, etc.) (p=0.193). Conclusion Based on the results obtained, we conclude that men with CAD were more physical active and used the Internet more often than women, whilst there were no differences by gender in the rest of variables. Assessment of physical activity and technology usage should be implemented in patients with CAD, in order to adapt and improve the design of technology-based telerehabilitation programs