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- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979
(författare)
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Att spela datorspel: Om färdigheter och kompetenser i spelaktiviteten : Gaming and literacy: Skills and competencies in computer game activity
- 2006
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Ingår i: Master thesis. - Göteborg : University of Gothenburg.
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- By taking departure in the concept of computer gaming literacy, which is described as the ability of interacting with a computer game, the report relates this to what gamers actually do in an empirically study of players. Earlier research claim that computer gaming could be seen as a semiotic domain. This study focus on the “character” of any ability that the concept computer gaming literacy could include, and answering the question what it means to be “literate” within this area. In particular what is it that a gamer can? The study’s empirical material is based on 20 gamers playing the Xbox game Timesplitters 2 by videotaping them when playing the game in pairs (split-screen). The players in the study, with an age between 17 and 54, have a broad variation in gaming experience. By doing interaction analysis, which has a background from socio cultural theory, the result illustrate that gaming is a discursive practice with a specialized language. Therefore, the gamer assumes learning a discourse in the game activity. Further, the gaming activities demonstrate that competence could be seen as two, to some extent, separate capabilities. One of them deals with handling the control, and therefore the games interface, by making it invisible to be able to interpret the artifacts “statements”. The second capability or competence is about seeing the game environments structure. The study shows that the gamer must make competent hypothesis concerning the model underlying the functions of the game to be able to progress in the game environment. Experienced gamers have therefore developed a way of seeing based on the structure of the game environment.
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| 3. |
- 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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| 4. |
- 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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| 5. |
- 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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| 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. |
- 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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| 8. |
- 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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| 9. |
- 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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| 10. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979
(författare)
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What does it take to 'be' a player? The skilled work of role-players in an online game space
- 2008
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Ingår i: Paper presented at Multimodality and Learning International Conference, June 2008, London.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper takes departure in arguments and beliefs of playing activities within fantasy role-play and information- and communication technology. Opinions on how to play a fantasy role-playing game have been active since the 70s. The tension stem from, on one side, to play a game with rules and specific outcomes (instrumental play). On the other side, living and breathing as a fantasy character. Also, interactive media, as digital games, have been assumed to diminish the gap between representation and represented phenomena. Such arguments and assumptions can be seen in relation to online game environments, such as World of Warcraft, where computer game rules exists side-by-side with social norms. On certain game servers, role-playing rules exists on a meta-level. In other words, how to be and act as a role-playing character are only regulated within the community of role-play members. The paper describes and analyzes one sequence of screen captured video-data of players’ management of player characters – so called avatars – in interaction with other avatars, focusing both role-play and instrumental play. The work is based on interaction analysis, with influences of methods used in conversation analysis and ethnomethodology. What will be highlighted through the analysis of player actions when managing the tools at hand, i.e. the avatar, the game environment and the discourse produced by text in chat windows, are the ways in which players achieve role-play and instrumental play. The norms and values in online games can be regarded as institutionalized ways where members make visible role-playing phenomena. The players’ avatars are seen to use methods to manage and maintain a role-play focused discourse and perception. And at the same, through movements and actions of avatars, players conduct coordinated instrumental play. What is investigated in this study is the work that is needed to become, what some would call, immersed, and others being ‘in-character’. Thus, players are not per se absorbed in the game experience. As such, the paper investigates the skills needed and used to achieve such play. Using Goodwin’s concept of professional vision when scrutinizing the players’ accomplishment, the activity consist of a practice where discourse, perception and practical action are meshed. The competences players present through their avatars actions is seen as intertwining creative discursive activities with perceptual awareness of the game space.
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