Gaming the Publishing Industry: Exploring Diverse Open Scholarship Models in Digital Games Studies

2020 ◽  
Vol 02 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Saklofske

The emergent field of digital game scholarship has developed along unique communicative lines, illuminating alternative models and diversified potentials for scholarly communication. Following the decline of print-based magazine journalism, the rise of moderated aggregator sites, such as Kotaku, Polygon, and Rock Paper Shotgun has exposed many independent voices to larger audiences. Much of the scholarship cited in current academic work can be found online at sites like Critical Distance (which uses “roundups, roundtables, podcasts, and critical compilations” to encourage dialogue between “developers, critics, educators and enthusiasts”), First Person Scholar, a middle-state publication that combines “the timeliness and succinctness of a blog, while retaining the rigor and context of a conventional journal article” (Hawreliak), highly polished and curated online zines such as Heterotopias, and from quality video bloggers such as Noah Caldwell Gervais and short-form documentary creators such as Gvmers. These heterogeneous alternatives collectively model a publishing plasticity and adaptiveness, establishing a culture of open scholarship practices, inclusive and diverse voices, and a rapid deployment of ideas and perspectives. This paper argues that emergent models of scholarly communication explored by the game studies community include but also moderate the reactive energies of social media and the toxicity of “gamer” culture.

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Wilcox

There is a considerable amount of academic and non-academic interest in the production and reception of video games. At the same time game scholars encounter questions such as, “are video game academics irrelevant?” In this article I connect questions of relevancy in game studies with the need to develop forms of publishing capable of asserting that relevancy more broadly. As the co-founder and editor-in-chief of First Person Scholar (FPS), a middle-state publication based in the Games Institute at the University of Waterloo, I detail how FPS has attempted to reach beyond the traditional scope of game studies to engage a wider audience and assert a new degree of relevancy for the game scholar.


Author(s):  
Jadranka Stojanovski

>> See video of presentation (28 min.) The primary goal of scholarly communication is improving human knowledge and sharing is the key to achieve this goal: sharing ideas, sharing methodologies, sharing of results, sharing data, information and knowledge. Although the concept of sharing applies to all phases of scholarly communication, most often the only visible part is the final publication, with the journal article as a most common type. The traditional characteristics of the present journals allow only limited possibilities for sharing the knowledge. Basic functions, registration, dissemination, certification, and storage, are still present but they are no more effective in the network environment. Registration is too slow, there are various barriers to dissemination, certification system has many shortcomings, and used formats are not suitable for the long term preservation and storage. Although the journals today are digital and various powerful technologies are available, they are still focused on their unaltered printed versions. This presentation will discuss possible evolution of journal article to become more compliant with users' needs and to enable “the four R’s of openness” – reuse, redistribute, revise and remix (Hilton, Wiley, Stein, & Johnson, 2010).Several aspects of openness will be presented and discussed: open access, open data, open peer review, open authorship, and open formats. With digital technology which has become indispensable in the creation, collection, processing and storage of data in all scientific disciplines the way of conducting scientific research has changed and the concept of "data-driven science" has been introduced (Ware & Mabe, 2009). Sharing research data enhances the capabilities of reproducing the results, reuse maximizes the value of research, accelerating the advancement of science, ensuring transparency of scientific research, reducing the possibility of bias in the interpretation of results and increasing the credibility of published scientific knowledge. The open peer review can ensure full transparency of the entire process of assessment and help to solve many problems in the present scholarly publishing. Through the process of the open peer review each manuscript can be immediately accessible, reviewers can publicly demonstrate their expertise and could be rewarded, and readers can be encouraged to make comments and views and to become active part of the scholarly communication process. The trend to to describe the author's contribution is also present, which will certainly lead to a reduced number of “ghost”, "guest" and "honorary" authors, and will help to establish better standards for author’s identification.Various web technologies can be used also for the semantic enhancement of the article. One of the most important aspects of semantic publication is the inclusion of the research data, to make them available to the user as an active data that can be manipulated. It is possible to integrate data from external sources, or to merge the data from different resources (data fusion) (Shotton, 2012), so the reader can gain further understanding of the presented data. Additional options provide merging data from different articles, with the addition of the component of time. Other semantic enhancement can include enriched bibliography, interactive graphical presentations, hyperlinks to external resources, tagged text, etc.Instead of mostly static content, journals can offer readers dynamic content that includes multimedia, "living mathematics", “executable articles”, etc. Videos highlighting critical points in the research process, 3D representations of chemical compounds or art works, audio clips with the author's reflections and interviews, and animated simulations or models of ocean currents, tides, temperature and salinity structure, can became soon common part of every research article. The diversity of content and media, operating systems (GNU / Linux, Apple Mac OSX, Microsoft Windows), and software tools that are available to researchers, suggests the usage of the appropriate open formats. Different formats have their advantages and disadvantages and it would be necessary to make multiple formats available, some of which are suitable for "human" reading (including printing on paper), and some for machine reading that can be used by computers without human intervention. Characteristics and possibilities of several formats will be discussed, including XML as the most recommended format, which can enable granulate document structure as well as deliver semantics to the human reader or to the computer.Literature:Hilton, J. I., Wiley, D., Stein, J., & Johnson, A. (2010). The Four R’s of Openness and ALMS Analysis: Frameworks for Open Educational Resources. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, 25(1), 37–44. doi:10.1080/02680510903482132Shotton, D. (2012). The Five Stars of Online Journal Articles - a Framework for Article Evaluation. D-Lib Magazine, 18(1/2), 1–16. doi:10.1045/january2012-shottonWare, M., & Mabe, M. (2009). The stm report (p. 68).


2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michalis Kokonis

Abstract In the last ten or fourteen years there has been a debate among the so called ludologists and narratologists in Computer Games Studies as to what is the best methodological approach for the academic study of electronic games. The aim of this paper is to propose a way out of the dilemma, suggesting that both ludology and narratology can be helpful methodologically. However, there is need for a wider theoretical perspective, that of semiotics, in which both approaches can be operative. The semiotic perspective proposed allows research in the field to focus on the similarities between games and traditional narrative forms (since they share narrativity to a greater or lesser extent) as well as on their difference (they have different degrees of interaction); it will facilitate communication among theorists if we want to understand each other when talking about games and stories, and it will lead to a better understanding of the hybrid nature of the medium of game. In this sense the present paper aims to complement Gonzalo Frasca’s reconciliatory attempt made a few years back and expand on his proposal.


2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 333-341
Author(s):  
Jan Velterop ◽  
Erik Schultes

Presented here is a proposal for the academic publishing industry to get actively involved in the formulation of protocols and standards that make published scientific research material machine-readable in order to facilitate data to be findable, accessible, interoperable, and re-usable (FAIR). Given the importance of traditional journal publications in scholarly communication worldwide, active involvement of academic publishers in advancing the more routine creation and reuse of FAIR data is highly desired.


Author(s):  
Emma Witkowski

This paper examines epistemological issues in game studies research, specifically exploring qualitative research approaches to networked, expert computer game teams who engage in esports practices. Expert teams deliver their expert practice in part through interembodied sensitivities to sensorial team-based phenomena, which is made across multiple bodies and machines in the process of play. Drawing on fieldwork with World of Warcraft Arena tournament esports teams and research methods orientations from games studies, sensuous ethnography, and sports studies, a position of sensuous proximity in games research is explored and developed as a suite of research guidelines for engaging with esports teams high performance practices. I suggest a research approach that involves differing lenses and stances in the study of embodied team play, and varying scales of sensuous proximity to the layers of expert team practices that augmens the notion of playing research in game studies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Lawler ◽  
Sean Smith

Abstract This paper explores the need and opportunities for historians to recognize the importance of video games to their research in modern American history. While this paper is rooted in examples specific to United States history, the call for historians to examine video games, engage with the rich field of games studies, and explore video games as sources in historical scholarship is a universal one, applicable to all fields of history. In this paper we argue that digital games are an essential part of media and cultural history and while media scholars and others interested in game studies have taken up the mantel of video games history, historians have been slow to respond to the medium and even slower to engage with video games as historical sources.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 765-783 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth Giddings

Revisiting early critical responses to computer and video games as a cultural form—before the establishment of games studies as an academic field in the early 2000s—reveals a consistent fascination with games as economic phenomena. Not just as a new commercial competitor in the established popular media marketplace but as models of economies in their own right, models that mesh with player’s everyday lives, constraining, facilitating, and forming gameplay. This article will identify and explore some of the most salient themes and phenomena in this early games scholarship and will follow them through subsequent enquiry into games as economies either isomorphic with the systems of consumer capitalism and neoliberalism from which they issue or metamorphic—phantasmagorical or ironic inversions of prevailing social and industrial conditions.


Author(s):  
Mario Pagliaro

After showing how the advent of the internet, in an almost opposite fashion to what happened to newspaper publishing, has led to further flourishing of the $25 billion scholarly publishing industry, I show how the unexpected expansion of preprints to all scientific disciplines beyond physics, mathematics and computer science is actually reshaping scientific communication at large and then, inevitably, scientific publishing. I thus provide arguments substantiating my viewpoint on why and how expanding the education of today’s students and young researchers to include modern scholarly communication will be instrumental for the transition to open science.


Author(s):  
Mario Pagliaro

Originally created for facilitating scientific communication, the internet in principle makes scientific journals no longer necessary. Yet, in an almost opposite fashion to what happened to newspaper publishing, the $25 billion annual income scholarly publishing industry has further flourished following the advent of the internet. Expanding the education of today’s students and young researchers to include modern scholarly communication is the key requisite for the transition to open science.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-299
Author(s):  
Kristina Lahl

Games Studies sind noch ein relativ junger eigenständiger Zweig der interdisziplinären Medienwissenschaft und mussten die Anerkennung der wissenschaft lichen und kulturellen Relevanz ihres Untersuchungsgegenstands hart erkämpfen. Dabei war es vor allen Dingen ein Aspekt, der in der Forschung das Alleinstellungsmerkmal des Mediums Computerspiel im Gegensatz z. B. zu Literatur und Film markiert: “[S]pace is the one category that has come to be accepted as the central issue of game studies, and the one in which all previous categories are integrated”. Die hochkomplexe Verknüpfung von Rezeption, Interaktion und Produktion, die Computerspielen inhärent ist und sich in ihrem Verhältnis von Spiel, Spielerin und Avatar oder Interface äußert, kommt insbesondere in der Repräsentation des Raums, der Aktion innerhalb desselben und der Re-aktion der Spielumgebung zur Geltung. Es liegt also nahe, eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem Raum als soziale und kulturelle Größe mit dem Computerspiel an das Medium zu knüpfen, das dessen Darstellungen als “raison d’être” innehat und auf vielfältige Weise nutzt.


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