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- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979
(författare)
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Avatars and interaction in gaming: Dysfunctional interaction or a practice of players
- 2007
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Ingår i: Game in' Action, June, 2007, Gothenburg, Sweden.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) you act and react on other players avatars in ways that resembles face-to-face interaction. At the same time, the avatar-interaction is restricted in the technological-embedded environment. Research indicates problems concerning interaction inside these worlds, namely whether the systems resemble ordinary human face-to-face interaction in an adequate way. The assumed insufficient avatar-mediating interaction apparatus is in this paper used as a thinking tool. As a point of departure MMORPG’s is seen as having a history of social life, one that has created specific domains and discursive practices. Examples of avatar in-game text chat from initial research on a Role-Playing (RP) server in World of Warcraft (WoW) are used to illustrate such domain. This indicates that the textual interaction system built-in has done language expressions utterly crucial to be able to interact with other avatars and to know how to act in a competent way to others utterances. In relation with face-to-face interaction, avatar-toavatar interaction in a RP server is done with the heritage of RP which demands competence of framing the interaction activity such as both in-game issues and RP could coexistence to let the other person now what you are doing here and now, a so called metaframing activity. Thus, the avatar interaction is not foremost seen as an insufficient environment for interaction, but instead as a domain in itself.
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| 2. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979-
(författare)
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Collaborative assessment and game development : professionals’ orientation towards problems, potentials and organizational demands
- 2014
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Ingår i: 4th International Conference Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper address assessment practice as part of professional activity and learning in the domain of game development. A growing body of research has been concerned with the professionalization of games production knowledge, frequently attributed to the coordinated work of numerous actors in technology dense settings. While previous accounts of games development list a multifaceted body of knowledge, there is a gap in the literature focusing on game developers’ professional knowing and learning in situ. With an analytical approach informed by ethnomethodology, this paper aim to make visible professional knowledge and learning when collaboratively evaluating games-in-development. It is focusing on game developers’ assessment work as a way to gain insight in the practical reasoning when orienting towards games and gaming as subject of assessment, and as a way of making professional knowledge bases explicit. The empirical material is drawn from three settings: 1) a vocational game education, 2) a national game award event, and 3) a professional game development company. Based on fieldwork augmented with video-recordings, the study investigates how games-in-development are collaborative assessed and specifically the ways professionals evaluate co-workers views and understandings with respect to what constitutes problems and potentials of games-in-development. Assessments are at stake in a number of internal and external work practices, such as gate reviews, playtests, and the activity of pitching not-yet-finished-nor-financed games to publishers. Games assessments are a common preoccupation at game companies and game education but also at so-called game awards. Games assessments share similarities with assessment practices in other professional and educational settings, such as design reviews in architectural practices. Both are events where proposals are assessed by externally recruited professionals. However, the assessment activities and object of assessment largely differ. In architectural education, proposals are assessed by considering the qualities visible in the designed material (such as plans, paper posters and digital slideshows) in relation to articulated intentions. This can be contrasted with the object of criticism in games presentations: the object constitutes both digitally visual material and designed ‘playable/interactive’ activities. This means that the qualities of a game cannot only be judged by interpreting the idea communicated in plain words together with some visual layout, it also has to be discovered when engaging with the designed ‘experience’. Hence, professionals’ in the gaming domain are required to account for what hinders or make possible appealing experiences during assessments of digital games. By focusing on professionals’ collaborative assessments, the analysis unpacks some recurrent orientations towards games and gaming in professional settings. It is shown that the professionals are faced with a number of institutional and organizational demands with respect to time, technology, conventions, and innovations.
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| 3. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979
(författare)
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Gaming Competence as Professional Vision
- 2006
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Ingår i: Paper presented at From Games to Gaming, Mars 2006, Gothenburg, Sweden.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 4. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979
(författare)
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Lessons learned from ’being’ virtually there: Worded action in the perceptual field of online computer games
- 2008
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Ingår i: Paper presented at ECER 2008, From teaching to Learning (September 2008, Gothenburg, Sweden).
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Computer games are assumed to, for better or worse, influence knowledge, beliefs and attitudes of the user. Assumptions are often based on computer games complex environments and visual components. This has brought along expectations about using computer games within education for pedagogical purposes. Though, attempts to use computer games in education has shown to be a complicated affair, demanding structures surrounding such attempts that often is not met. Further, research show that games cannot be used in ways that other media have been invoked in education. Computer games as category is used to a wide array of products. Those different genres give rise to different activities from the players. Online game environments are a category which can be seen as the next computer game area to be glanced at for pedagogical purposes. Though, earlier research on learning and computer games are based on computer game formats that lack crucial features from online games. The most obvious difference is that players’ meet other players within these online spaces, and interact through virtual bodies. The most popular and developed virtual worlds focus game-specific contents. This paper take such online game worlds (i.e. massively multiplayer online role-playing games, MMORPG) as focus for scrutinizing players activity. How, then, are online game formats to be understood in relation to learning aspects? Earlier research concerning Massively Multiplayer Online Games has, among all, studied the lingo developed between players’ in online games. This paper advocates for studying online gaming worlds as domains in itself. In other words, how players’ manage their virtual bodies (i.e. the avatar) in conduct with others in task-oriented group activities, or the work players do when they role-play a character through the mediated tool of the avatar. To play, live and communicate in online games, players’ need to master their avatar through typing in chat channels and using interaction methods that have been institutionalized in these online spheres. These institutionalized ways to act and be, stems from earlier technological online environments. Hence, the paper argues that the skills and competencies needed to “be” in an online game space must be considered before embracing them for learning potentials outside activities that is done in ordinary “virtual” life. The empirical material comes from screen-captured video-recorded avatar-interaction within the online games World of Warcraft and The Lord of the Rings Online. Detailed transcripts have been transformed into sequential art to highlight aspects of the activities to make the setting understandable for outsiders.
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| 5. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979-
(författare)
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Searching for the best game : professionals’ jury work at a national game-award event
- 2014
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Ingår i: The Second International ProPEL: Professional Practice, Education and Learning Conference, June 25-27, 2014.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study investigates jury-based assessment work as part of professional activity in an emerging profession, the gaming industry. Drawing on prior studies of professional learning (Mäkitalo, 2012), jury deliberations (Garfinkel, 1976), and assessment practices in related settings, assessment is approached as a way of making professional knowledge and learning visible. With an analytical focus informed by ethnomethodology, the paper builds on the idea that detailed studies of local orders of collaborative assessment in creative organizations could contribute to the understanding of assessment in professional learning.Although previous research on games development point to a multifaceted body of knowledge and considered its development in terms of professionalization (cf. Bennerstedt, 2013), there is a lack of empirical studies of professional game developers practices, particularly addressing the key object of criticism - the games. Games assessments are not only a common preoccupation at game companies and in game education, but also at so-called game awards where novices send in playable demos. Games evaluations share similarities with assessment practices in other professional and educational settings, such as design reviews in architectural practices (Lymer, 2010). However, the assessment activities and object of assessment largely differ, as the qualities of playable games have to be discovered interactively and therefore include a range of learning trajectories and troubles.Based on fieldwork augmented with video-recordings at a game café, the paper explores a small group of invited professionals’ assessment when reviewing a large number of game demos for a national game award event. By focusing on collaborative work conducted in private deliberations, it is shown that the professionals are faced with a number of challenges when ranking and grading the demos. They discover problems and qualities with the games by taking departure in fixed categories, established standards and emergent criteria, but make collaborative decisions that are governed by the jury members’ varied access to the assessed demos. The variations with respect to access are tightly related to the time schedule of the reviewing, but also the design of the interactive material. They accomplished their work by drawing on jury members’ as well as organizers’ access to, and knowledge of, demos in terms of playability, progression, emergence, visual appearance, technical solutions, etc. Critical for overcoming knowledge gaps are the ways the jury manages access by engaging in hybrid activities, i.e. moving between assessments and instructions/demonstrations of demos.Pedagogical implications of the analysis are discussed, and it is suggested that the jury-based assessment of digital material shed new light on how professionals deal with ad hoc learning and instruction. ReferencesBennerstedt, U. (2013). Knowledge at play: Studies of games as members’ matters. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Lymer, G. (2010). The work of critique in architectural education. Göteborg, Sweden: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.Mäkitalo, Å. (2012). Professional learning and the materiality of social practice. Journal of Education and Work, 25(1), 59-78.
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| 6. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979
(författare)
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Sheeping, sapping and avatars-in-action: An in-screen perspective on online gameplay
- 2008
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Ingår i: In S. Mosberg Iversen (Ed.), Proceedings of The [Player] Conference. IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, August 2008. ; , s. 28-52
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper is about the various practices that players use to coordinate their in-game activities. In the paper, screen-captured video data of one group of players’ gameplay are scrutinized in order to explicate coordination work. Instead of seeing interaction between online players as design issues or focusing off-screen events, the paper reframes in-screen collaboration activities as participants’ concerns. In order to explore empirical examples of players’ accomplishment of tight coordination in massively multiplayer online games, ethnomethodological influenced interaction analysis is used. The paper elaborates a player perspective by bridging the researcher’s knowledge of gameplay with empirical in-screen data. This study shows the work players do as coordinated, referential activities; accomplished by means of avatar movements and actions, as well as highlighted and made observable by visual markers and gaming discourse. The players’ achievement of mundane, jointly activities are termed routine play.
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979, et al.
(författare)
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The Spellbound Ones: Illuminating Everyday Collaborative Gaming Practices in a MMORPG
- 2009
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Ingår i: In C. O'Malley, D. Suthers, P. Reimann, A. Dimitracopoulou (Eds.), Proceedings of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning. ; (CSCL 2009):Rhodes, Greece, s. 404-413
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- A common argument about computer games and learning is that the commitment gamers have might be transformed and used in educational practices. In order to unpack gamers’ commitment, the present study investigates collaboration in a Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG). It investigates gamers’ practices in order to expose their everyday gaming activities and knowledge domains. Drawing on detailed descriptions of team gaming practices, the paper highlights that gamers’ of MMORPGs are hands-on experts in handling a game interface. Their expertise is about skilled stances tied to gaming structures. Also, gamers are members in certain communities and adhere to both community specific epistemologies and to generic ones. These gaming stances are from certain educational approaches difficult to make-sense of, while gamers’ commitments in other perspectives become means for learning. Lastly, in relation to MMORPGs and education, a neglected issue concerns social pressure in gaming communities, resulting in various forms of participation.
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| 9. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979
(författare)
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Walking as a dragon slayer: Analyzing online gamers make-believe discourse within a coordinated game activity
- 2008
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Ingår i: Space Interaction Discourse International Conference, November 2008, Aalborg, Denmark.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Computer game activities can be mistaken for an easygoing and non-communicative form of entertainment. Such descriptions have shortcomings when seen in relation to what players do in an online game world. Knowledge about the game interface and game specific tasks within the game world is a starting point to act in such social world. As a social world the complexness originates from the multifarious activities players do together when playing and socializing. As such, online game worlds consist of communication mediated through typed text in chat channels (or voice-chat), and interaction between the player’s puppet (i.e. avatar), the game world and other players doings. Such avatar-mediated-interaction has been said to be insufficient in relation to what we do in face-to-face settings (cf. Moore, Ducheneaut & Nickell, 2007). The point of departure in this work concern the ways players actively maintain a role-play discourse concerning something else than is visible in the game space, while at the same time achieve a coordinated game activity. Instead of seeing this layered activity as insufficient or problematic, the material is seen as activities that players do as “visible-rational-and-reportable-for-all-practical-purposes” (Garfinkel, 1967, p. vii). The empirical material comes from naturally occurring video-recorded avatar-interaction within the online game World of Warcraft. Detailed transcripts have been transformed into sequential art to highlight aspects of the recordings to make the setting understandable for outsiders. Further, the empirical material is also used to raise issues in relation to how to collect and utilize transcriptions of such data.
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| 10. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979
(författare)
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Welcome to the digital puppet show: Positioning work and make-believe methods in role play MMORPG servers
- 2008
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Ingår i: In S. Mosberg Iversen (Ed.), Proceedings of The [Player] Conference. IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, August 2008. ; , s. 53-87
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper it will be suggested that a role play MMORPG server is a complex, institutionalized practice which is built on competent acting in and through a digital puppet. The paper takes departure in four different in-game situations to investigate players’ achievement of various social roles, where role play is one dimension of the interaction. This is made through methods stemming from interaction analysis. The empirical material consists of screen-captured video-recorded data from World of Warcraft and The Lord of the Rings Online. The detailed analysis makes visible the achievement of (in-character) role play, as well as social roles achieved out-of-character. The players’ competences are seen as interactional achievements where they by means of the avatar and other interface resources manage moment-by-moment positioning. Players are seen to make visible their positioning via their digital puppet to move and speak from three different footings; the physical player, the virtual personae and a fantasy character. Furthermore, through the multi-voiced activity the analysis point out players ever-present out of character stance when engaged in various kinds of ‘puppet shows’. Playing on a role play dedicated server demand skilled acting in social and technical characteristics to be able to produce and perceive phenomena seen and heard as a role play event.
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