Online survey data were collected from 30,000 users of Massively Multi-User Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) over a three year period to explore users ’ demographics, motivations and derived experiences. Not only do MMORPGs appeal to a broad age range (Mage = 26.57, range = 11-68), but the appeal is strong (on average 22 hours of usage per week) across users of all ages (r =-.04). An exploratory factor analysis revealed a five factor model of user motivations- Achievement, Relationship, Immersion, Escapism and Manipulation-illustrating the multi-faceted appeal of these online environments. Male players were significantly more likely to be driven by the Achievement and Manipulation factors, while female players were significantly more likely to be driven by the Relationship factor. Also, the data indicated that users derived meaningful relationships, salient emotional experiences as well as real-life leadership skills from these virtual environments. MMORPGs are not simply a pastime for teenagers, but a valuable research venue and platform where millions of users interact and collaborate using real-time 3D avatars on a daily basis.

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It has been speculated that computer game play by young people has negative correlates or consequences, although little evidence has emerged to support these fears. An alternative possibility is that game play may be associated with positive features of development, as the games reflect and contribute to participation in a challenging and stimulating voluntary leisure environment. This study examined the relationship between game play and several measures of adjustment or risk taking in a sample of 16-year-old high school students. No evidence was obtained of negative outcomes among game players. On several measures—including family closeness, activity involvement, positive school engagement, positive mental health, substance use, self-concept, friendship network, and disobedience to parents—game players scored more favorably than did peers who never played computer games. It

New media technologies have long tapped into social hopes and anxieties, and the turmoil that follows their appearance offers a window into the social tensions of the time. Clashing sets of utopian and dystopian visions have typically resulted in an ambivalent portrayal of such technologies. Video games prove to be no exception. Through a content analysis of media frames in the USA’s three leading news magazines, the reception and presentation of video-game technology was tracked over a thirty-year period, 1970–2000. The resulting patterns tell a story of vilification and partial redemption, owing to the mainstream acceptance of the medium and the aging user base. Fears of the negative effects from the new technology were hypothesized to come from a routine set of conservative worries. The results support this hypothesis. Moreover, the frames surrounding games, especially in the 1980s, reveal many of the key social tensions of the times, primarily those surrounding gender roles, the separation of age and racial groups, and the role of female parents within an increasingly technological society. The place of video games within the larger context of media history, and the social causes of the frames are discussed.

In a planetary system known as Corbantis, geological surveyors are busy inspecting their chemical harvesting installations to maintain their daily quota for a cartel of pharmaceutical manufacturers. These manufacturers, allied with a rebel faction, are struggling to research and supply key medical supplies to the front lines of the conflict. Corbantis is an incredibly sophisticated online

Digital game-based learning is a hot topic of research and development. Since the advent of computer and video games, educators were inherently interested in utilizing the beneficial aspects of computer games for educational purposes. These factors are primarily the intrinsic motivation of games, immersive environments, engaging stories, and an artful balance between challenges and continuously growing abilities. Proponents of computer games delivered a large number of empirical investigations revealing that games may foster the development of abilities and competencies. Besides the advantageous aspects of computer games, a variety of problems were reported by researchers. Due to the high costs of professional game development, many educational games are technologically poor and cannot compete with entertainment games in terms of visual design, possibilities for interactions, or storytelling. Moreover, many current educational games do not incorporate a sound psychological, pedagogical, or didactic background; instead they are focusing on transmission or rehearsal of isolated facts or skills. Finally, such games lack the ability to adapt to individual competencies failing to balance challenge and abilities regarding knowledge or skills. The ELEKTRA project, introduced in this article, aims for addressing these problems relying on an interdisciplinary approach of cognitive science, neuroscience, pedagogy, game design, and game development. The project will develop an adventure game that can keep up with commercial games and that focuses on primarily curriculum-related educational purposes by incorporating a sound psychological and pedagogical framework. Moreover, the project will prove the outcomes of research and development by a comprehensive game demonstrator.

There are significant differences between the art of animating for linear media such as film and video and the art of animating for interactive media such as computer and video games. In particular, these differences arise from the shift from linear characters to autonomous interactive characters. This article describes differences between linear animation and interactive animation in several areas of character design – character intelligence, emotional expressiveness, navigation, transitions among animations, and multi-character interaction. These differences provide insight into the processes of both forms of animation and the final products that they create, and may provide a starting point for linear animators interested in becoming familiar with interactive animation.

One of the major challenges of video game design is to have appropriate difficulty levels for users in order to maximize the entertainment value of the game. Game players may lose interests if a game is either too easy or too difficult. This paper presents a novel methodology to improve user’s experience in computer games by automatically adjusting the level of the game difficulty. The difficulty level is computed from measurements of the facial physiology of the players at a distance. The measurements are based on the assumption that the players’ performance during the game-playing session alters blood flow in the supraorbital region, which is an indirect measurement of increased mental activities. This alters heat dissipation, which can be monitored in a contact-free manner through a thermal imaging-based stress monitoring and analysis system, known as StressCam. In this work, we investigated on two primary objectives: (1) the feasibility of utilizing the facial physiology in automatically adjusting the difficulty level of the game and (2) the capability of the automatic difficulty level adjustment in improving game players ’ experience. We employed and extended a XNA video game for this study, and performed an in-depth, comparative usability evaluation on it. Our results show that the automatic difficulty adjustable system successfully maintains game players ’ interests and substantially outperforms traditional fixed-difficulty mode games. Although a number of issues of this preliminary study remain to be investigated further, this research opens a new direction that utilizes non-contact stress measurements for monitoring and further enhancing a variety of user-centric, interactive entertainment activities. Author Keywords Human-Computer Interaction, video games, game difficulty

Abstract: Most research on electronic play has focused on its possible negative effects for children and adolescents, and contextual factors such as socioeconomic status (SES) and culture are rarely considered. This article considers the potential benefits of electronic play from a psychological perspective, as well as individual and contextual factors that may shape the influence of electronic play for children and adolescents. Demographics of players and the games themselves are presented, and recommendations for research and policy are discussed.

Texas at Austin. The authors would like to thank Barbara O’Keefe for her support and guidance.