Query: video game benefits

title: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Video Game Live Streaming and Its Potential Risks and Benefits for Female Gamers
abstract: Twitch, a popular platform for social streaming in Europe and the Americas, describes itself as the leading community for gaming culture. As a window into said gaming culture, the women streaming on Twitch have the great opportunity to help shape the perception of female gamers within the gaming community but also in the eye of the public. This chapter gives an overview of Twitch and previous research addressing streaming. After presenting an argument for how and why female representation in this space matters, it describes three quite different women streaming on Twitch in more detail. Readers will take away an introduction to the possible risks and opportunities related to an increased degree of visibility for female gamers.

title: The Precarious Labor of Queer Indie Game making: Who Benefits from Making Video Games "Better"
abstract: This article looks at issues of precarious and exploited labor surrounding contemporary queer independent video game making. In recent years, there has been a marked rise in indie games made by and about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people. These games and their creators are commonly lauded for inspiring change in the mainstream game industry and making the medium of video games more diverse and therefore "better." However, this cultural narrative obfuscates the socioeconomic challenges faced by many queer indie game makers. Drawing from interviews conducted by the author, this article presents a counter narrative about the work of developing video games by and about marginalized people. Although such games are often described as "easy" or "free" to make, they in fact entail considerable, and rarely fairly compensated, labor. Simultaneously, value is being extracted from this labor by companies who look to queer indie games for inspiration, which translates into profit.

title: Value Creation in the Video Game Industry: Industry Economics, Consumer Benefits, and Research Opportunities
abstract: In the past twenty years, the video game industry has established itself as a significant contributor to the global entertainment economy. Compared to more established entertainment industries such as movies and music, limited scholarly research in marketing has addressed the processes that create value for companies and consumers in the context of video games which are now available on multiple devices (e.g. consoles, portables, mobile devices) and through multiple channels (e.g. retail and online) The authors therefore develop a conceptual framework of value creation through video games, highlight important findings from extant research in marketing and other disciplines, and apply the framework to derive future research opportunities.

title: Informal learning among teenagers through video games: a qualitative analysis of experiences, game modes and didactic benefits
abstract: UDK/UDC 37.091.3:004.5:794  The paper analyzes the positive effects of video games on teen development and on teenagers' informal learning. The participants in the research were teenagers. The analysis and interpretation of games and explanations of their pedagogical merit indicate that players recognize their value for informal learning. Latent characteristics of video games include positive elemests such as taking responsibility, teamwork, sense of belonging, creativity, multiculturalism, personal virtues and values, emotion management, learning new information and skills, motor skills development and professional orientation. In that respect, it is possible to conclude that gaming may help in the development of certain abilities important for informal as well as formal learning in today's digital age.

title: Extending the theory of Bounded Generalized Reciprocity: An explanation of the social benefits of cooperative video game play
abstract: Players had a helpful or unhelpful video game teammate or minimal in group member.Players engaged in a simultaneous or sequential PDG with teammate and opposing team.Helpful teammates confirmed reciprocity expectations and increased pro socialness.Unhelpful teammates had the opposite effect on pro socialness between teammates.Playing with a helpful teammate increased pro socialness toward out group members. The theory of Bounded Generalized Reciprocity was examined to help explain why cooperative video game play can increase players' subsequent pro social behaviors. Participants played a basketball video game with a helpful or unhelpful teammate against an ostensible opposing team. Participants in the control condition did not play a video game with their teammate. Participants then engaged in a one shot simultaneous or sequential prisoner's dilemma game with their teammate and an opposing team member. In line with Bounded Generalized Reciprocity, donations to teammates were influenced by expectations of others to reciprocate pro social behaviors. Specifically, playing with a helpful teammate confirmed expectations of in group members to reciprocate pro social behaviors and led to increases in pro social behaviors between teammates. Playing with an unhelpful teammate disconfirmed expectations of in group members to reciprocate pro social behaviors and led to decreases in pro social behaviors between teammates. Interestingly, playing with a helpful teammate increased participants' donation to out group members even though participants did not expect them to reciprocate. The current study emphasizes the importance of pro social reciprocity expectations in predicting people's pro social behaviors and the impact cooperative video game play can have on such expectations.

title: Broad based visual benefits from training with an integrated perceptual learning video game
abstract: Perception is the window through which we understand all information about our environment, and therefore deficits in perception due to disease, injury, stroke or aging can have significant negative impacts on individuals' lives. Research in the field of perceptual learning has demonstrated that vision can be improved in both normally seeing and visually impaired individuals, however, a limitation of most perceptual learning approaches is their emphasis on isolating particular mechanisms. In the current study, we adopted an integrative approach where the goal is not to achieve highly specific learning but instead to achieve general improvements to vision. We combined multiple perceptual learning approaches that have individually contributed to increasing the speed, magnitude and generality of learning into a perceptual learning based video game. Our results demonstrate broad based benefits of vision in a healthy adult population. Transfer from the game includes; improvements in acuity (measured with self paced standard eye charts) improvement along the full contrast sensitivity function, and improvements in peripheral acuity and contrast thresholds. The use of this type of this custom video game framework built up from psychophysical approaches takes advantage of the benefits found from video game training while maintaining a tight link to psychophysical designs that enable understanding of mechanisms of perceptual learning and has great potential both as a scientific tool and as therapy to help improve vision.

title: On the use of participatory methodologies for video game research: Exploring disaster risk reduction in video games
abstract: Video game scholars examining the shortcomings of previous video game research reference the need for new and innovative methodologies. Existing video game research seemingly inhibits organic learning experiences by setting specific research targets or providing players with gameplay instructions, hence utilising methodological approaches that study the learning process from the outside. With the increasing popularity of both serious and mainstream disaster video games, a necessity exists for innovative research to explore how video games can be used as learning tools. Based upon the researchers' own enquiry, this article demonstrates the potential use, benefits and challenges of participatory methodologies for the conduct of video game research. This article pushes back upon traditional video game research methods, reviewing the methodological approaches of existing video game literature and demonstrates how participatory methodologies are currently being used for disaster video game research. An examination of participatory methodologies, being used in disaster video game research, reviews the strengths and challenges of each research approach. Rationalising the potential of participatory methodologies, in the context of constructivist learning theory and active participation, to foster the learning process and explore learning from the inside. As such this article provides an innovative methodological framework, which can be used as a template when considering future video game research.

title: Study Protocol: Does an Acute Intervention of High Intensity Physical Exercise Followed by a Brain Training Video Game Have Immediate Effects on Brain Activity of Older People During Stroop Task in fMRI? A Randomized Controlled Trial With Crossover Design
abstract: Elderly people are affected by processes leading to decline in various aspects of daily living that impair their quality of life. Regarding neurological aspects, executive functions have been shown to be valuable for daily life and to slow decline during aging. Most intervention studies intended to improve cognitive functions during aging specifically address long term destructive processes and countermeasures. However, to an increasing degree, studies also investigate the acute benefits that prove to be useful for daily life, such as physical exercise or video games in the form of exercise video gaming "exergaming" Because little is known about the change in cognitive ability following acute intervention of a combination of physical exercise and video gaming, especially for older people, this work is designed as an attempt to address this matter.  This study is a randomized crossover controlled trial to test the response to an acute bout of high intensity physical exercise followed by a short session with a brain training (Brain Age) video game in physically active and cognitively healthy older adults (60 70 years) The response is measured using Stroop task performance (cognitive task for executive function) and related brain activity assessed with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) The control conditions are low intensity physical exercise and Tetris for video gaming.  This study is intended to provide insight into the alteration of executive function and its related brain activity from an acute intervention with a combination of physical exercise and video gaming in older people. The protocol might not be implementable in daily life to improve cognitive abilities. However, the results can support future studies that investigate cognition and the combination of physical exercise and video gaming. Moreover, it can provide real life implications.

title: Playing style recognition through an adaptive video game
abstract: Playing style recognition is crucially important for style based adaptation of digital games. Unlike traditional ways for measuring of styles by means of self reports, automatic style estimation incorporated into a video game appears to be a more efficient and ecologically valid method. The article presents a model for in game recognition of four playing styles (Competitor, Dreamer, Logician, and Strategist) based on the Kolb's experiential learning theory. The model applies multiple linear regression over task performance metrics as explanatory variables and coefficients found first by a heuristic approach relaying on experience and observation knowledge of domain experts and, next, estimated by the least squares method. Experiments with the model implemented within an affectively adaptive video game demonstrated the benefits of emotion based dynamic difficulty adjustment over playing outcomes and proved its validity as an accurate instrument for automatic estimation of both the four playing styles and the learning styles of Honey and Mumford.

title: Narrative and active video game in separate and additive effects of physical activity and cognitive function among young adults
abstract: Physically active video games (AVGs) have been found to positively impact physical activity behaviors, especially when a narrative is added. However, the motivational and cognitive benefits of adding narrative to AVG are unclear. We examined the separate and additive effects of narrative and AVG on physical activity and cognitive function versus an active comparator, such as a sedentary video game (SVG) We randomly assigned young adults to one of four groups (narrative AVG, AVG, narrative SVG, or SVG) and had them complete sustained attention and working memory tasks before and after a 30 min experimental condition. Participants in both narrative AVG and AVG groups achieved a moderate intensity physical activity, while adding narrative to AVG resulted in higher step counts and more time spent in moderate to vigorous physical activity than AVG without narrative. Regardless of the narrative effect, participants in both AVG groups performed better on overall working memory than both SVG groups, while both AVG and SVG groups similarly achieved maximal performance in sustained attention. Working memory enhancement was positively correlated with increased heart rate. Participants in narrative SVG group had a better response accuracy in working memory than those who played SVG without narrative. Taken together, adding narrative to AVG as a motivational component increased physical activity, which was the primary factor in the improvement of overall working memory.