Talk:Game studies

message: I work somewhat in this field (though more from a CS/AI perspective) and with a number of well-known people in it, so a few comments based on my knowledge of it. "Game studies" is more or less becoming the grudgingly accepted name for the field, insofar as people bother to name it at all. "Ludology" now has too much baggage so people generally avoid it unless talking specifically about Frasca's approach, and even Frasca's close collaborators (like Ian Bogost) don't really use the term much. The two main journals in the field are Game Studies and Games and Culture (the latter cleverly avoids coming up with a name for the field by just using a descriptive phrase).
The article should in any case probably focus less on these foundational debates, or spin off the ludology v. narratalogy debate to a separate article, and expand coverage of what it is that people actually do in the field. Some things worth covering, with a focus on the areas I'm familiar with (mostly somewhat practice-slanted) include:
* newsgames and other persuasive games (see also Bogost's Persuasive Games [MIT Press, 2007])
* interactive narrative and its possibilities and status (see also Façade)
* code studies and humanistic readings of computer code
* more generally the relationship (or not) between the field and computer code; e.g. arguments over procedural literacy (though that term/discussion predates the field, it's been revived recently); "platform studies" as an approach (see Montfort's "Combat in Context" in Game Studies); and so on
* Some comments on the field's forerunners, many of which have been revived and retroactively incorporated (often quite influentially), most notably Johan Huizinga's 1938 book Homo Ludens and especially its "magic circle" concept
* the "are games art?" question, and somewhat relatedly, the production of games (or something resembling games) by artists, often as absurdist concept art, but occasionally with real games in mind (e.g. Bill Viola's collaboration on The Night Journey)
* Probably a bunch more from a non-practice-oriented approach I've left out
--Delirium 03:08, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  a few comments 

message: I think some work needs to be done on the citation front. We've got two different styles, which I can't believe is ever a good thing, and there does not seem to be any section to which the parenthetical references refer. Some input would be great, but if there are no objections sometime soon I will go through and convert everything that I can to footnotes. -- The Fwanksta (talk) 21:48, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: go ahead, please --83.60.59.251 (talk) 17:51, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

text: Change the parantheticals to ref tags...    Jhonka 00:09, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

text: On further research, the Eskelinen 2001 citation seems to refer to http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/eskelinen/ , but Frasca (2003) at http://www.ludology.org/articles/frasca_levelUP2003.pdf insists that to take this as wholly discarding graphics and stories as incidental is a misreading of the text out of context. 128.206.28.105 (talk) 22:30, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: While well written, this really isn't in encyclopedic format... "Introduction"  contains history, characterization, theories... This page simply reads like an essay. see Television Studies for a better way of organizing information. You shouldn't have to read the whole page to understand this topic.    Jhonka 00:04, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Readability? 

message: I've bumped this topic up from mid to high because this article is so vital to the "games and sports" portal that more attention needs to be called to the fact that it needs cleaning up. This is equivalent to if the Psychology portal had a poorly written article on Psychology.Darqcyde (talk) 16:35, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Importance 

message: This article is structured closely after the introductory chapters of Jose P. Zagal's dissertation Ludoliteracy. Most suspicious is the way it discusses the multi- and inter-disciplinary nature of Game Studies. The language throughout is also stylistically similar. People have already mentioned the strange parenthetical citations, and while these follow a widely-disseminated style (I think APA?), the fact that the style of citation is the same as the citations that appear in Zagal's dissertation raises red flags. Shouldn't this article cite the dissertation as its source? Rumirumirumirumi (talk) 17:39, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ludoliteracy 

message: Festl, Ruth, Michael Scharkow, and Thorsten Quandt. "Problematic Computer Game 
Use among Adolescents, Younger and Older Adults." Addiction 108.3 (2012): 
592-99. Web.
In this article, they discuss how only .2% of participants met every criteria of the GAS scale (Gaming Addiction Short Scale), while 3.7% of participants were considered problematic, meaning they met half the requirements. 7.6% of adolescents were considered problematic. They concluded that gaming addiction was not a widespread phenomenon, but is linked to problematic aspects of an individual’s personal or social life.
Wiegman, Oene, and Emil G. M. Schie. "Video Game Playing and Its Relations with 
Aggressive and Prosocial Behaviour." British Journal of Social Psychology 
37.3 (1998): 367-78. Web.
This study found that there was no link between video game playing and aggressive behaviors, however there was a significant link between video game playing and less prosocial behaviors. There was also a link between a preference for violent video games and aggressive and less prosocial behaviors, further analyses showed that children who preferred violent video games tended to have lower intelligence. 
Shaw, Adrienne. "Rethinking Game Studies: A Case Study Approach to Video Game 
Play and Identification." Critical Studies in Media Communication 30.5 
(2013): 347-61. Web.
This article shows that the field of game studies, or ludology, is constantly changing. It is a new field, and is being changed, updated, and revised constantly. In this article, they discuss new methods they are developing for identifying gamers, and what It means to be a gamer, and how it fits into a persons daily life. 
Stein, A., K. Mitgutsch, and M. Consalvo. "Who Are Sports Gamers? A Large Scale 
Study of Sports Video Game Players." Convergence: The International Journal 
of Research into New Media Technologies 19.3 (2012): 345-63. Web.
This article talks about sports gamers, and the studies being done on them to find out more information about how/when they game, and possibly better target advertising to them. This gives a better insight at another form of games studies, the capitalistic side, other than the effects gaming may have on a person. 
Souders, D. J., W. R. Boot, N. Charness, and J. H. Moxley. "Older Adult Video Game 
Preferences in Practice: Investigating the Effects of Competing or 
Cooperating." Games and Culture 11.1-2 (2015): 170-200. Web.
In this article, they are studying adults to find out what their preference for gaming is. They set them up with two different types of games, a game you play by yourself, and a game you play cooperatively, and they also put them into two different situations, they were either by themselves, or with someone else. The study concluded that multiplayer gameplay is associated with greater enjoyment in adult gamers.
Jacobhutchinson95 (talk) 04:06, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Annotated bibliography for future changes. 

message: Game studies, also known as luology or gaming theory, is the study of games, or the act of playing them, most commonly video games. Game studies is a discipline of Cultural studies that deals with all types of games throughout history. This field of research utilizes the tactics of at least Anthropology, sociology, and psychology while examining aspects of the design of the game, the players in the game, and finally, the role the game plays in its society or culture. Game studies may often times be confused with the study of video games, but this is only one area of focus for game studies, in reality it includes all types of gaming, including sports, board games, etc. Before the creation of video games, game studies often only included anthropological work, studying the games of past societies. However, once video games were introduced, and became mainstream, game studies was updated to performs sociological, and psychological observations to observe the effects of gaming on an individual, and his or her interactions with society and the way it could impact the world around us. There are three main approaches to game studies, the social science approach, the humanities approach, and the industry and engineering approach. The social science approach asks itself how games affect people and uses tools such as surveys and controlled lap experiments. The humanities approach asks itself what meanings are expressed through games, and uses tools such as ethnographies, ethnography, and patient observation. The industrial and engineering approach applies mostly to video games and less to games in general, and examines things such as computer graphics, artificial intelligence, and networking.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jacobhutchinson95 (talk • contribs) 03:30, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  new lead paragraph 

message: I really enjoyed the information given in your lead paragraph, I felt like I got a good feel for the article's main topic and liked the way you touched on multiple approaches and the history of game studies. When reviewing and editing for you finally draft, I would be sure to cite your sources, especially in your lead section. You seem to do a good job of it in the edits you posted within the article's body, but the lead paragraph is also important. I agree with your decision to move the topic of video game related aggression to the social science part of the article and thought the information added throughout this section was well researched and a great addition. My suggestion for the overall edits to the article would to be review your sentence structure and the professionalism with which the information is presented. I think for your final edit, it would be helpful to make small edits throughout the article dealing, focusing on grammar and sentence structure to make a more cohesive piece that reads more like an encyclopedia and less like an opinionated essay. Overall, great job with your edits and addition of information. Your research has really inspired me to look deeper into other topics of my article! Haberme3 (talk) 02:25, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Peer Review

message: The statement "Economists observed that during a recession the absence of a minimum wage make the labour market bounce quickly, and suddenly, the economy is back to growing." is not verified by the cited sources. It seems to come from a brief statement in the Washington Post: "Labor markets quickly bounce back from recession because there’s no minimum wage"https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/09/28/the-economics-of-video-games/. But it does not mention which economist observed this or even that it was observed in EVE online itself. They state it almost as if it's an obvious truth rather than a new discovery. It does not cite any scholarly articles or research on this causal relationship. Searching the sentence on google only brings me to articles that show evidence of no impact on labor markets by the minimum wagehttp://www.epi.org/publication/briefingpapers_bp150/http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2015/12/the-effects-of-minimum-wages-on-employment-.html, leading me to believe this statement is false or at best misleading. Even if correlation is established, saying that the labour markets are bouncing back *because* of lack of minimum wage would need some serious evidence. In a virtual reality where hunger, disease and homelessness are not critical issues, it could be the lack of danger rather than a lack of safety net which caused a quick bounce. Furthermore, implying that this has greater implications in the real world without any serious evidence is inappropriate in an encyclopedia. 76.10.180.79 (talk) 03:07, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed the claim to resolve the maintenance tag, but feel free to discuss further. czar 15:44, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious 

message: The second sentence under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_studies#Virtual_economies_in_gaming is just incomplete. I'm guessing it was supposed to say something along the lines of "[...], and thus real problems in the economy, [blabla], can be closely observed and tracked in real time".  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.108.111.232 (talk) 12:04, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sentence incomplete 

message: This issue has been raised at least since 2011 (or earlier in 2009), and it's time the potential copyright violations were investigated. The original language was inserted back in 2007 in a series of edits like , , and . They are word-for-word identical to sections from Jose P. Zagal's Ludoliteracy (published in 2010). On its surface this would seem to suggest that Zagal is copying Wikipedia, but Zagal's work actually provides endnote sources in addition to parenthetical citations whereas this Wikipedia article includes only short-hand parentheticals and does not list the full source anywhere. So it strongly appears that Zagal's work was the original and that the text in this article copied that. Zagal's writing goes back to 2000 (see papers), so it's possible that the language from his 2010 book originated in earlier papers he has published. It's also vaguely possible that both Wikipedia and Zagal are copying from an earlier work (or works). Anyway for now I've tagged the most obvious duplicated sections that match word-for-word with Zagal's Ludoliteracy. There may be more copyvios present in the article. I will try to investigate this more deeply myself if I can find some free time... -Thibbs (talk) 16:34, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: It's hard to located copy-vio portions from between the non-copyvio segments, but the line starting "For example, in her book Life on the Screen, Sherry Turkle explored how..." also seems to be an exact match with Ludoliteracy. We should probably examine all parenthetical-style citations. -Thibbs (talk) 16:59, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

text: I just realized that I haven't provided a link to the Ludoliteracy paper itself, so here it is, and a quick check against Earwig's copyvio detector gives us a violation score of 95.4%. I'll continue to look into the issue of the dates as I can. -Thibbs (talk) 12:45, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

text: Another possibility struck me while looking through 's edits (this user was one of the ones who had added the suspect material back in 2007) and noticing that some of Zagal's other works were also linked (e.g. ). It's at least a possibility that Tajoman may be Zagal himself and that he had been using Wikipedia in 2007 as a sounding board for the material that became his 2010 book. The portions that were (sloppily) added to Wikipedia (without full endnote sources) may have originated in an unpublished manuscript that eventually became Ludoliteracy. If that's the case, and if Wikipedia was the original point of publication for the suspect material then I assume it would be OK to leave the material as-is and just fix the endnotes. I'll contact Tajoman to see if I can find anything out, but that editor's last edit was in 2016 so it may be too late... We'll see if Tajoman can shed any light here. -Thibbs (talk) 13:20, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your work here, . Did you ever hear anything definitive about this? I ask because my students might be interested in editing this entry for their work this semester. -Grlucas (talk) 18:29, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, . The copyvio process is rather slow. I've posted a question to User:Tajoman's talk page about these edits and I haven't heard anything back since then. It's possible that we'll never hear back. So for now I would say that it's probably OK to just remove the tagged text and replace it with non-copyright-violating text. The copyvio process will still slowly be completed and if at a later date the article is found to have breached Zagal's copyrights then historical versions of the article may be removed. All new non-copyvio text should be left intact so your students' work would remain. I hope that helps. Let me know if you need further clarification. -Thibbs (talk) 18:37, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

text: Interesting. Thanks for looking into this, ! , this sounds like a perfect opportunity for your class. What say you? -Thibbs (talk) 13:48, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: , thanks for the detective work. , I'll certainly make them aware of the opportunity. -Grlucas (talk) 17:35, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

text: The book is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 licence. This is not compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence used by Wikipedia. (Wikipedia articles can be used for commercial purposes, the book text can't.) Hut 8.5 19:12, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Copyvio tags

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thread_title:  External links modified