Votre recherche

This article investigates the relationship between young people’s game-making practices and meaning-making in videogames. By exploring two different games produced in a game-making club in London through a multimodal sociosemiotic approach, the author discusses how semiotic resources and modes were recruited by participants to realize different discourses. By employing concepts such as modality truth claims and grammar, he examines how these games help us reflect on the links between intertextuality, hegemonic gaming forms and sign-making through digital games. He also outlines how a broader approach to what has been recently defined as the ‘procedural’ mode by Hawreliak in Multimodal Semiotics and Rhetoric in Videogames (2018) can be relevant for promoting different and more democratic forms of meaning-making through videogames.

The present paper discusses questions related to the histories of videogames, more specifically in how we approach videogames in Global South. By using Zeebo, a Brazilian console produced in the late 2000s as an epistemic tool, I discuss the limitations of universalist, mainstream-centric epistemological models for exploring videogames as cultural phenomena. By investigating Zeebo’s discourses about piracy and players in the Global South, I argue that this platform can be seen as a partial decolonial project, destabilising conventional historical narratives about South-North relationships in videogames, but refraining from challenging a mainstream, Global North oriented epistemology. This exploratory work, therefore, elaborates on how a decolonial project of history of videogames, one that is more epistemically just to Global South, could be sought.

"Afterlives of Indigenous Archives offers a compelling critique of Western archives and their use in the development of “digital humanities.” The essays collected here present the work of an international and interdisciplinary group of indigenous scholars; researchers in the field of indigenous studies and early American studies; and librarians, curators, activists, and storytellers. The contributors examine various digital projects and outline their relevance to the lives and interests of tribal people and communities, along with the transformative power that access to online materials affords. The authors aim to empower native people to re-envision the Western archive as a site of community-based practices for cultural preservation, one that can offer indigenous perspectives and new technological applications for the imaginative reconstruction of the tribal past, the repatriation of the tribal memories, and a powerful vision for an indigenous future."

Video games, even though they are one of the present's quintessential media and cultural forms, also have a surprising and many-sided relation with the past. From seminal series like Sid Meier's Civilization or Assassin's Creed to innovative indies like Never Alone and Herald, games have integrated heritages and histories as key components of their design, narrative, and play. This has allowed hundreds of millions of people to experience humanity's diverse heritage through the thrill of interactive and playful discovery, exploration, and (re-)creation. Just as video games have embraced the past, games themselves are also emerging as an exciting new field of inquiry in disciplines that study the past. Games and other interactive media are not only becoming more and more important as tools for knowledge dissemination and heritage communication, but they also provide a creative space for theoretical and methodological innovations. The Interactive Past brings together a diverse group of thinkers -- including archaeologists, heritage scholars, game creators, conservators and more -- who explore the interface of video games and the past in a series of unique and engaging writings. They address such topics as how thinking about and creating games can inform on archaeological method and theory, how to leverage games for the communication of powerful and positive narratives, how games can be studied archaeologically and the challenges they present in terms of conservation, and why the deaths of virtual Romans and the treatment of video game chickens matters. The book also includes a crowd-sourced chapter in the form of a question-chain-game, written by the Kickstarter backers whose donations made this book possible. Together, these exciting and enlightening examples provide a convincing case for how interactive play can power the experience of the past and vice versa. Source: Publisher

Digital games, with their capacity for expression and facilitating experience through code, design, art, and audio, offer spaces for Indigenous creatives to contribute to Gerald Vizenor’s characterization of survivance as an active sense of Native presence. Indigenous digital games can be acts of survivance both in the ways they are created as well as the resulting designs. We Sing for Healing is an experiment in developing an Indigenous digital game during limited Internet access that resulted in a musical choose-your-own adventure text game with design, art, and code by Anishinaabe, Métis, and Irish game developer Elizabeth LaPensée alongside music by Peguis First Nation mix artist Exquisite Ghost. The non-linear gameplay expresses traditional storytelling patterns while enabling players to poetically travel in, through, and around traditional teachings. The design uses listening, choosing, and revisiting to reinforce what is best described as a non-linear loopular journey.

Digital games can uniquely express Indigenous teachings by merging design, code, art, and sound. Inspired by Anishinaabe grandmothers leading ceremonial walks known as Nibi Walks, Honour Water (http://www.honourwater.com/) is a singing game that aims to bring awareness to threats to the waters and offer pathways to healing through song. The game was developed with game company Pinnguaq and welcomes people from all over to sing with good intentions for the waters. The hope is to pass on songs through gameplay that encourages comfort with singing and learning Anishinaabemowin. Songs were gifted by Sharon M. Day and the Oshkii Giizhik Singers. Sharon M. Day, who is Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe and one of the founders of the Indigenous Peoples Task Force, has been a leading voice using singing to revitalize the waters. The Oshkii Giizhik Singers, a community of Anishinaabekwe who gather at Fond du Lac reservation, contribute to the healing for singers, communities, and the waters. Water teachings are infused in art and writing by Anishinaabe and Métis game designer, artist, and writer Elizabeth LaPensée. From development to distribution, Honour Water draws on Indigenous ways of knowing to reinforce Anishinaabeg teachings with hope for healing the water.

Video games, which uniquely interweave design, code, art, and sound, can be an especially robust way to express Indigenous cultures. Such games should involve Indigenous people in meaningful roles throughout design and development from conceptualization to distribution with a focus on building capacity to encourage self-determination for Indigenous game developers. This call to action informs SPEAR (Sovereignty, Positionality, Equity, Advocacy, and Reciprocity), a framework for design and development informed by the Indigenous cultural game Thunderbird Strike.

The educational video game, When Rivers Were Trails, was launched in 2019. The purpose of the game is to teach players about Indigenous perspectives of history, US federal allotment policies affecting tribal nations, and some of the effects of these policies on Indigenous peoples. This article explores tribal college student experiences playing When Rivers Were Trails in hopes that it provides the basis for further research into how tribal college faculty may be able to teach the game within their own classrooms. Tribal colleges and universities were created by tribal nations to provide for the higher education needs of their citizens. Using phenomenological research methods, seven college students volunteered to participate in a brief study about their experiences playing the video game. Upon transcription and analysis of the interview data, three themes were developed that capture how these students define their experience with When Rivers Were Trails: feelings of representation, histories of land dispossession, and resilience of communities.

Video games can be dynamic sovereign spaces for Indigenous representation and expression when the self-determination of Indigenous people is supported. Where ga...

"Although the fields of media studies and digital humanities are both well established, their overlaps have not been examined in depth. This comprehensive collection fills that gap, giving students, scholars, and media studies practitioners a cutting-edge guide to understanding the array of methodologies and projects operating at the intersection of digital humanities, computing, and culture. Topics covered include: networks; interfaces; media and culture at scale; procedures, programming, code; memory, digitization, and new media; and hacking, queering, and bending."--Provided by publisher

Have you ever wanted to know which games to use in your classroom, library, or afterschool program, or even at home? Which games can help teach preschoolers, K-12, college students, or adults? What can you use for science, literature, or critical thinking skills? This book explores 100 different games and how educators have used the games to teach - what worked and didn't work and their tips and techniques. The list of 100 goes from A to Z Safari to Zoombinis, and includes popular games like Fortnite, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and Minecraft, as well as PC, mobile, VR, AR, card and board games.

There are clear challenges posed by rural and remote education in Australia. These challenges are caused both by physical and material factors, but more importantly epistemological divisions that have created a separation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous worlds. Video games have the potential to bridge this epistemological gap by explicating the differences between different knowledge systems and engaging students in exploring these differences. Crucially, these projects need to be co-constructed to ensure that not only the representations of Indigenous people surpass some dubious traditions, but that different epistemologies are adequately framed. There is an urgent need for research-informed game-based learning projects to begin to address the ‘epistemology gap’ and the challenges faced by all Australians.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: As I sit writing in my kitchen while the forces of the U.S. military state are brought to bear on thousands of Standing Rock water stewards and land protectors and their allies in Cannonball, North Dakota, I consider how this sail special issue on digital Indigenous studies not only represents a collection of essays about the critical work Indigenous women are performing in their various digital projects but also illustrates that these online “Indigenous territories” (Hearne), crafted on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, save lives. Every single day since the protectors first gathered to oppose the proposed 1,170-mile Dakota Access pipeline (a project that would potentially contaminate the Missouri watershed and the Ogallala Aquifer and desecrate Dakota sacred sites), digital independent and social media have constantly covered the story. At least 1.3 million Facebook users checked in virtually at Oceti Sakowin and other Indigenous camps and communities to ensure that support presence is recognized, while the world monitors the presence of the military and police force gathering at the construction site to curb further violence. The Standing Rock gathering offers hope to networked Indigenous youth, a demographic between three and ten times as likely to commit suicide than the national average peer rate. The Nodapl action in the Indigenous imaginary is an invitation to stand at the front lines of a global movement to protect water and land resources for all living beings on this planet and to draw attention to and support those whose lives and ways of being are in peril through overt military action and consequential environmental destruction. It is also an occasion, in the words of Jolene Rickard, “to invest in the apparatus of the imagination” (Bernardin). One need only look at the online art, handwritten signs, and logos representing #nodapl, #standingrock, [End Page 172] #waterislife, and #rezpectourwater to see the ways in which Indigenous artists are creatively and powerfully envisioning this movement, most often immersed with work that features strong images of Native women and girls, the community backbone and life force. Or we need only view digital videos like computer animator and artist Joseph Erb’s black-and-red graphic history of Standing Rock, “Mni Wiconi / Water Is Life” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXoy5lzpjiM), and first-person game platforms like Elizabeth LaPensée’s Thunderbird Strike, which extend the conversations at Standing Rock to the struggles over Enbridge’s Alberta tar sands pipeline and fracking practices as players work to undo and prevent further environmental degradation. Following Idle No More’s digital and geospatial (re)articulation of Indigenous territories, we are now living and loving and hoping in this historic moment as new ways of relating to one another and living in deep connection with the land and all its forms of life are being physiologically, intellectually, and spiritually forged at the geospatial confluence of the Missouri and Cannonball Rivers. They are being forged as well through the confluences of digital rivers on our electronic devices and in our online conversations about the beauty and devastation of the events that are unfolding in Standing Rock. Susan Bernardin’s essay in this issue on Heid E. Erdrich’s “Pre-Occupied” considers the meaning of rivers to Native peoples and contends that images of waterways, particularly the Mississippi, are mobilized “to make visible the continuing claims of this and other imperiled riverine systems.” In her introduction, Joanna Hearne asks us, “How might such an intersection of digital and Indigenous specificities take place in a way that is ‘native to the device’; that is, how might Indigenous specificity be embedded in shared platforms that are therefore central to all of our digital lives?” The essays in this special issue respond to this question by theorizing digital media in fresh and innovative ways. Many of us teach digital humanities courses or classes with strong digital media content, but we lack the language for critically engaging this new field on its own terms as it intersects, extends, and radically reconceptualizes more familiar research areas such as cinema studies, Indigenous / Native American studies, communication, literature, art, and history.

Thunderbird Strike, a 2D side-scroller developed by Elizabeth LaPensée, allows a player fly from the Tar Sands to the Great Lakes as a thunderbird protecting Turtle Island with searing lightning against the snake that threatens to swallow the lands and waters whole. The game encouraged players to learn about the indigenous culture, reflect on water protection and alternative energy sources, and gain awareness of risks posed by oil pipeline construction for the conveyance of tar sands.Thunderbird Strike was developed through residencies including O k’inādās Residency, The Banff Musicians in Residence Program, and Territ-Aur(i)al Imprints Exchange thanks to the 2016 Artist Fellowship grant from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council.

This article examines Indigenous video games that critique mainstream environmental politics at the level of mechanics. An analysis of video games’ influences on ecological values requires looking beyond the representational to the mechanical relationships between player and software. As a cultural–computational medium, video games are embedded with ethics of interaction that inflect this representational dimension by requiring that players generate the text as participant. With the recent visibility of Indigenous rights movements, developers have embedded Indigenous cultural protocols in the mechanical interactions (or technical protocols) of gameplay. In the context of critique, their integration produces “critical protocols,” configurations of gamic action that encourage players to evaluate their treatment of real-world environments. Critical protocols emerge between the technical and cultural, where scripts for interaction in algorithmic spaces intervene in affirmative game design and work as an analog beyond the game. Indigenous developers call for new ways of computing and critiquing settler digitality through play. These games aim toward representational as well as computational sovereignty.

When Rivers Were Trails is a 2D adventure game wherein The Oregon Trail meets Where the Water Tastes Like Wine through an Indigenous lens. The game depicts a myriad of cultures during the player’s journey from Minnesota to California amidst the impact of land allotment in the 1890s. Initiated by the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, the game was developed in collaboration with the Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab at Michigan State University thanks to support from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians and the many Indigenous creatives who contributed design, art, music, and writing. Uniquely, When Rivers Were Trails is a sovereign game, meaning that it was directed and informed by Indigenous creatives who maintained the role of final decisions during development. Merging design research and close reading methods, this study sets out to describe the game’s design, development process in regards to the game writing, and the resulting themes which emerged as a result of engaging Indigenous writers in self-determined representations.

En 2014, une collaboration entre le studio Upper One Games et des conteurs et aînés iñupiats d’Alaska a mené au lancement du jeu vidéo Kisima Inŋitchuŋa (Never Alone). Ce jeu de plateforme invite à une immersion poétique dans un univers nordique guidée par une trame narrative inspirée d’une légende traditionnelle. Dans une perspective culturelle, les fonctions ludique et documentaire du jeu permettent d’acquérir des connaissances en lien avec les pratiques traditionnelles et la vision du monde des Iñupiats. Ainsi, l’étude exploratoire présentée dans cet article contribue à comprendre les caractéristiques du jeu (design, narration, mécaniques) et les stratégies relevant de sa conception. Les résultats invitent à reconsidérer des représentations dominantes du Grand Nord et soulignent en quoi le jeu vidéo se fait vecteur d’expression du patrimoine culturel, artistique et oral d’un peuple autochtone de l’Arctique.

Interview with With Kurt Prieto, Games Designer Of Boo! Dead Ka! Game

This study compared the effects of episodic framing of the Checkpoint scenario and the Military Raid scenario in Global Conflicts (2010), a computerized simulation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on developing impartial attitudes towards this conflict. The former presents a more human, individual and personal framing of the conflict than does the latter. Two hundred and ten Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian undergraduate students participated in the experiment. They filled in questionnaires measuring attitudes towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before and after playing the scenarios. Results suggested that participants playing the Checkpoint scenario became more impartial toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, unlike those playing the Military Raid scenario. The results show that computerized simulations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be used for attitude change intervention, but the framing of the story in the game may be crucial in determining whether the players become impartial regarding the situation or not.

Computational algorithmic thinking (CAT) is the ability to design, implement, and assess the implementation of algorithms to solve a range of problems. It involves identifying and understanding a problem, articulating an algorithm or set of algorithms in the form of a solution to the problem, implementing that solution in such a way that the solution solves the problem, and evaluating the solution based on some set of criteria. CAT is an important scaffolded on-ramp as students develop more advanced computational thinking capabilities and apply computational thinking to solve problems that are more constrained and require greater expertise. Supporting Computational Algorithmic Thinking (SCAT) is both a longitudinal between-subjects research project and a free enrichment program supporting and guiding African-American middle school girls over three years as they iteratively design a set of complex games for social change. This article explores Scholars' reflections about the difficulties they faced while using CAT capabilities as they engaged in collaborative game design for social change over those three years. We particularly focus on how these difficulties changed over the course of three years as well as new difficulties that emerged from year to year as Scholars become more expert game designers and computational algorithmic thinkers.