2024-03-29T15:28:46Z
http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/oai
oai:ojs.press-start.gla.ac.uk:article/15
2016-07-19T19:42:05Z
press-start:ED
Editorial
Barr, Matthew
Right now, video games are being discussed, dissected and developed by students from a huge range of disciplines. With some notable exceptions, the overwhelming majority of higher education institutions lack a dedicated game studies department. As evidenced by the continued success of respected institutions such as DiGRA and ground-breaking publications such as Game Studies, however, our discipline is thriving. It just happens to be thriving in some unlikely places.
Press Start
2014-11-21
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http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/15
Press Start; Vol 1 No 1 (2014); pp. i-ii
2055-8198
eng
http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/15/2
Copyright (c) 2014 Matthew Barr
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
oai:ojs.press-start.gla.ac.uk:article/30
2016-07-19T19:42:09Z
press-start:ED
Editorial
Barr, Matthew
While preparing this issue of Press Start for publication, I finally conceded that the word "Gamergate" probably belonged in my spellchecker's dictionary. Certainly, one could view the proliferation of this term – and its legitimatisation, implicit in my decision to stop having my word processor complain about its use – as a grim indictment of contemporary gaming culture. However, that a student journal of game studies can begin to address the issues surrounding Gamergate – however indirectly, in this case – demonstrates a laudable maturity in our discipline's approach to the phenomenon.
Press Start
2015-06-11
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http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/30
Press Start; Vol 2 No 1 (2015); i-ii
2055-8198
eng
http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/30/19
Copyright (c) 2015 Matthew Barr
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
oai:ojs.press-start.gla.ac.uk:article/57
2016-12-07T14:04:24Z
press-start:ED
Editorial: Negotiating Gamer Identities
Barr, Matthew
Berry, Landon Kyle
Butt, Mahli-Ann
Dunne, Daniel Joseph
Ecenbarger, Charlie
Evans, Sarah Beth
Murray, Lorraine
Scott, Michael James
de Wildt, Lars
The term ‘gamer identity’ is hotly contested, and certainly not understood as a broadly accepted term. From the outdated stereotype of white, heterosexual, teenage boys playing Nintendo in their parents’ basement to the equally contested proclamation that “‘gamers’ are over”, the current game culture climate is such that movements as divisive and controversial as #gamergate can flourish.For this latest special issue of Press Start, we invited submissions regarding the recent controversies surrounding the notion of player identities, with the aim of receiving papers from different viewpoints on gamer identity and culture.
Press Start
2016-07-19
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http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/57
Press Start; Vol 3 No 1 (2016): Special Issue: 'Negotiating Gamer Identities'; i-ii
2055-8198
eng
http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/57/43
Copyright (c) 2016 Matthew Barr
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
oai:ojs.press-start.gla.ac.uk:article/68
2017-06-12T13:54:01Z
press-start:ED
Editorial: Conflicts
Barr, Matthew
Berry, Landon Kyle
Butt, Mahli-Ann
Dunne, Daniel Joseph
Ecenbarger, Charlie
Evans, Sarah Beth
Murray, Lorraine
Scott, Michael James
de Wildt, Lars
The Editorial Board reflects on the theme of 'conflict', as observed in the work published in this issue, and in the wider world.
Press Start
2016-12-07
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info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
application/pdf
http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/68
Press Start; Vol 3 No 2 (2016); i-iii
2055-8198
eng
http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/68/53
Copyright (c) 2016 Matthew Barr, Landon Kyle Berry, Mahli-Ann Butt, Daniel Joseph Dunne, Charlie Ecenbarger, Sarah Beth Evans, Lorraine Murray, Michael James Scott, Lars de Wildt
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
oai:ojs.press-start.gla.ac.uk:article/79
2018-09-27T10:38:50Z
press-start:ED
Editorial: Behind the Making
de Wildt, Lars
Assuncao, Carina
Azrioual, Samir
Barr, Matthew
Berry, Landon Kyle
Butt, Mahli-Ann
Dunne, Daniel Joseph
Evans, Sarah Beth
Murnane, Eric
Few theses, proposals and books in game studies start without some statement of the importance of video games as a media format. However, despite this emphasis on the industry’s size and importance, very little academic attention goes toward what is behind the process of designing games.Game developer Katharine Neil, writing about the state of the game industry and its relation to academia mounts a call to arms: "We can demand research and development into design support technology — not for more tools for prototyping and production or metrics, but for tools that support design thinking".For Neil, these have led to a palpable stagnation in game design. Judging by the articles selected for this issue of Press Start, young game scholars increasingly seek to ameliorate both the lacking academic reflection on game design; and the lack of communication that Neil diagnoses between academics and game makers.
Press Start
2017-06-12
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http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/79
Press Start; Vol 4 No 1 (2017); i-iv
2055-8198
eng
http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/79/63
Copyright (c) 2017 Lars de Wildt, Carina Assuncao, Samir Azrioual, Matthew Barr, Landon Kyle Berry, Mahli-Ann Butt, Daniel Joseph Dunne, Sarah Beth Evans, Eric Murnane
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oai:ojs.press-start.gla.ac.uk:article/95
2018-09-27T10:38:45Z
press-start:ED
Editorial: Body Movements
Assuncao, Carina
Azrioual, Samir
Barr, Matthew
Berry, Landon Kyle
Butt, Mahli-Ann
de Wildt, Lars
Dunne, Daniel Joseph
Evans, Sarah Beth
Murnane, Eric
Today, the juxtaposition between physical bodies and the gameworld is ever more fluid. Virtual Reality headsets are available at game stores with more AAA games being created for the format. The release of the Nintendo Switch and its dynamic JoyCon controllers reintroduce haptic movement based controls. Pokémon GO’s augmented reality took gamers outdoors and has encouraged the Harry Potter franchise to follow in its mobile footsteps. Each development encourages a step further into the digital world.
At the same time, the movement of bodies always has political dimensions. We live in a world where walls seem like solutions to the movement of bodies, while the mere meeting of bodies elsewhere – for sex, marriage and other reasons – is still forbidden by many states’ rules. Games and game-like interfaces have shown the ability to bend those rules, and to sometimes project other worlds and rule systems over our world in order to make bodies move and meet.
For this special issue on ‘Body Movements’, Press Start invited authors to focus on embodiment, body movements, political bodies, community bodies, virtual bodies, physical bodies, feminine, masculine, trans- bodies, agency or its lack, and anything else in between. The response to this invitation was variegated, and provocative, as outlined here.
Press Start
2018-01-19
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http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/95
Press Start; Vol 4 No 2 (2018): Special Issue: 'Body Movements'; i-ii
2055-8198
eng
http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/95/73
Copyright (c) 2018 Carina Assuncao, Samir Azrioual, Matthew Barr, Landon Kyle Berry, Mahli-Ann Butt, Lars de Wildt, Daniel Joseph Dunne, Sarah Beth Evans, Eric Murnane
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
oai:ojs.press-start.gla.ac.uk:article/137
2019-03-13T07:04:37Z
press-start:ED
Editorial
Butt, Mahli-Ann
Berry, Landon Kyle
Stang, Sarah
Copeland, Alicia
Lima, Leandro Augusto Borges
MacLean, Erin
Thomson, Reece
Wilson, Dennis
Over the past year, we’ve had a change of hands from our founder, Matt Barr, to our new editor-in-chief, Mahli-Ann Butt. We’ve taken some extra time to put together this issue with great pride and care.
Through a friendly double-open peer-reviewing process, for this open-call issue we’ve published 7 excellent game studies student articles:
Dennis Jansen’s ‘The Environment at Play: Confronting Nature in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and the “Frostfall” Mod,’ argues that the natural environment in the base game of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) is devoid of agency and power in the face of the player’s colonialist endeavours to explore, conquer and master that environment. Jansen thus discusses how the “Frostfall” counteracts the destructive and oppositional relationship between the player and nature in Skyrim.
Brianna Dym’s ‘The Burden of Queer Love,’ explores attempts by game development studio Bioware to create video games that are inclusive of gay, lesbian, and bisexual players by writing in queer romantic narrative subplots into their games. While Bioware’s attempts are certainly not malicious, they fail time and time again, game after game, to break free of the hypermasculine and heterocentric culture dominant in the gaming industry. Instead, Bioware appropriates queer experiences and construes them as a burden to the player so as not to displace the fantasies of male, heterosexual gamers.
Chris Alton’s ‘Aya of the Beholder: An Examination of the Construction of Real-World Locations in Parasite Eve,’ uses the foundational example of Square’s Parasite Eve (1997) to examine the ways in which real-world locations and approximations of such are represented within video game worlds. Alton examines the methods through which videogames can create spaces which evoke the conceptual idea of a given place, both through audio/visual and interactive means, without constructing a one-to-one simulacrum of the location. Thus, the player actively contributes in the transformation of an actionable virtual space into an actualized lived place.
Anna Maria Kalinowski’s ‘Silent Halls: P.T., Freud, and Psychological Horror,’ draws from Sigmund Freud’s concept of the uncanny to address how the psychological concepts surface within the never-ending hallway of P.T. (2014) and create a deeply psychologically horrifying experience.
Sean Pellegrini’s ‘And How Does That Make You Feel?: A Psychological Approach to a Classic Game Studies Debate – Violent Video Games and Aggression,’ investigates the claim that violent video games can cause aggression. The findings of this study suggest that people highly correlated with the Dark Triad of personality are a high-risk group for aggression, but that this aggression is unrelated to video games.
Daniel Odin Shaw’s ‘Ideology in BioShock: A Critical Analysis,’ analyses the Bioshock series, with a particular focus on the treatment of ideology. By examining the games, with a particular reference the use of procedural rhetoric, this paper argues that this series presents a critique of extreme ideology itself.
Hayley McCullough’s ‘“Hey! Listen!”: Video Game Dialogue, Integrative Complexity and the Perception of Quality,’ explores potential complexity differences between winning and losing video games at the Spike Video Game Awards. It compared the integrative complexity of a sample of video game dialogue for three categories (Best Shooter, Best RPG and Best Action/Adventure). Across all analyses a consistent mean pattern emerged: The winning games averaged lower complexity scores than the losing games. These findings suggest a general association between simplistic dialogue and high-quality video games, providing keen insight into the underlying psychology of video games, and establishes a strong foundation for future research.
As this issue demonstrates, Press Start is always delighted to be publishing the best new work by early career researchers from a wide variety of disciplinary fields.
The Press Start Journal team also welcomed many new members to our editorial board. During this transition period, we’ve begun a mentoring program for our senior members to share their knowledge of the editorial process. This spirit of mentorship, guidance, and support is something we hope to continue into our journal’s future as it reflects our larger goal of encouraging game studies students to share their work and take part in a lively, academic community.
Once again, we’re seeking new members to replace our outgoing board, who are graduating and moving on to other things. Board members of Press Start serve as key stakeholders and decision-makers for developing the journal and actively work to support student scholarship in game studies. Current students and graduates within one year of their graduation date are eligible to apply. Our deadline to apply to be on the editorial board this year has just past, but if you are interested in working with Press Start in the future, you can find more information on the responsibilities of an editor here.
In 2018, we saw some of our editors present on a panel at DiGRA in Turin, Italy. This was an exciting opportunity for our new members to sit down with established members and discuss our hopes, expectations, and advice regarding the publishing process in general, and with Press Start in particular. While everyone has a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, some commonalities emerged. Fostering an open, supportive, caring – in other words, overtly feminist – atmosphere for editors, reviewers, and contributors has been our most important goal. Reaching out to, and encouraging, junior scholars, new graduate students, upper year undergraduate students, and scholars whose first language is not English are also central goals for Press Start. Given the often intimidating, daunting, and confusing process of academic publishing, we hope to make Press Start an appealing home for exciting, innovative, unusual, and social justice-oriented games research.
As students and emerging academics, we believe Press Start should embody the kinds of practices that we want to see become standards for academia. Thus, in order to see a greater diversity in game studies scholarship, we have introduced an initiative to translate our calls for papers into as many languages as we can find volunteers: http://tinyurl.com/yblfxkk4. Press Startencourages submissions from ESL writers, especially if they are not yet fully confident of their ability to write academically in English but want to learn and improve.
Press Start Journal is a labour of love and we thank you for your continued support of our journal.
Best wishes from the Press Start editorial board,
Mahli-Ann Butt, Landon Kyle Berry, Sarah Stang, Alicia Copeland, Leandro Augusto Borges Lima, Erin MacLean, Reece Thomson, and Dennis Wilson.
Press Start
2019-03-12
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http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/137
Press Start; Vol 5 No 1 (2019); i-iii
2055-8198
eng
http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/137/85
Copyright (c) 2019 Mahli-Ann Butt
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
oai:ojs.press-start.gla.ac.uk:article/172
2019-08-27T07:24:05Z
press-start:ED
Walking Simulators Special Issue Editorial
Stang, Sarah
Walking Simulators Special Issue Editorial
Press Start
2019-08-26
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http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/172
Press Start; Vol 5 No 2 (2019): Special Issue: Walking Simulators; i-v
2055-8198
eng
http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/172/86
Copyright (c) 2019 Sarah Stang
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
oai:ojs.press-start.gla.ac.uk:article/196
2020-06-09T19:54:42Z
press-start:ED
Editorial
Stang, Sarah
Editorial for June 2020 Issue
Press Start
2020-06-08
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http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/196
Press Start; Vol 6 No 1 (2020); i-iii
2055-8198
eng
http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/196/97
Copyright (c) 2020 Sarah Stang
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
oai:ojs.press-start.gla.ac.uk:article/222
2021-06-16T14:25:43Z
press-start:ED
Editorial
Stang, Sarah
Editorial for the June 2021 issue.
Press Start
2021-06-09
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http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/222
Press Start; Vol 7 No 1 (2021); i-iii
2055-8198
eng
http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/222/110
Copyright (c) 2021 Sarah Stang
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
oai:ojs.press-start.gla.ac.uk:article/233
2022-02-01T00:01:16Z
press-start:ED
Digital Heroisms Special Issue Editorial
Elvery, Gabriel
Butterworth-Parr, Francis
Digital Heroisms Special Issue Editorial
Press Start
2022-01-27
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http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/233
Press Start; Vol 8 No 1 (2022): Special Issue: Digital Heroisms; i-iii
2055-8198
eng
http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/233/115
Copyright (c) 2022 Gabriel Elvery, Francis Butterworth-Parr
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
oai:ojs.press-start.gla.ac.uk:article/251
2022-06-14T04:41:02Z
press-start:ED
Editorial
Poirier-Poulin, Samuel
Stang, Sarah
Maclean, Erin
Watson, Lauren
Bailey, Andrew
Fleshman, Andrew
Catá-Ross, Alexandra
Jones, Ashley P.
Delany, Avery
Timss, Braden
Courtois, Charlotte
Barkman, Cassandra
Butterworth-Parr, Francis
McCullough, Hayley
Thach, Hibby
Editorial for the June 2022 issue.
Press Start
2022-06-09
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
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http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/251
Press Start; Vol 8 No 2 (2022); i-iv
2055-8198
eng
http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/251/126
Copyright (c) 2022 Samuel Poirier-Poulin; Sarah Stang, Erin Maclean, Lauren Watson, Andrew Bailey, Alexandra Catá-Ross, Ashley P. Jones, Avery Delany, Braden Timss, Charlotte Courtois, Christopher Barkman, Drew Fleshman, Francis Butterworth-Parr, Hayley McCullough, Hibby Thach
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
oai:ojs.press-start.gla.ac.uk:article/299
2023-04-04T15:25:48Z
press-start:ED
Editorial
Poirier-Poulin, Samuel
Watson, Lauren
Fleshman, Andrew
Barkman, Cassandra
Maclean, Erin
Timss, Braden
Courtois, Charlotte
Russell, Chelsea
Butterworth-Parr, Francis
Daneels, Rowan
Editorial for the April 2023 issue.
Press Start
2023-03-31
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info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
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http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/299
Press Start; Vol 9 No 1 (2023); i-iii
2055-8198
eng
http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/299/135
Copyright (c) 2023 Samuel Poirier-Poulin, Lauren Watson, Andrew Fleshman, Christopher Barkman, Erin Maclean, Braden Timss, Charlotte Courtois, Chelsea Russell, Francis Butterworth-Parr, Rowan Daneels
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0