Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI) is a new and quickly developing discipline, which is closely related to HCI and is making reference to some of its theoretical frameworks and research methodologies. The first edition of the Workshop on Research Methods in ACI (RM4ACI) was co-located with the Third International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction, which took place in Milton-Keynes, UK in November 2016. This paper presents an overview of the workshop, including insights from discussions on some of the challenges faced by the ACI community as it works to develop ACI as a discipline, and on important opportunities for cross-fertilization between HCI and ACI that the HCI community could consider.
As a result of its unique characteristics as a technology and a medium, a computer game engages its players with several novel forms of coproductivity, such as modding, the making of machinima videos, and the writing of game play walkthroughs. Depending on the game, genre, and playing style, the player is either expected or encouraged to create game content and game-related texts of her own. This essay discusses the productive practices surrounding computer games, proposing five dimensions of player productivity: (1) game play as productivity; (2) productivity for play: instrumental productivity; (3) productivity beyond play: expressive productivity; (4) games as tools; and (5) productivity as a part of game play. Such mapping reveals limitations in views that consider fandom predominantly as productivity or approach player coproductivity straightforwardly as fandom. The essay aims to illustrate that we should look for alternative manifestations of fandom among players, those not solely based on productivity. By exploring various ways in which players of computer games take part in the production of the games they play, the essay discusses games as an excellent example of a participatory culture because of the blurring of professional and hobbyist productivity in games. Since new motivations for productivity are proposed, this view informs research about fandom and productivity in current media culture in general.
The People’s Republic of China has become the largest digital game software
market in the world. Yet, outside the Chinese game industry itself,
very little is known about the local development scene. In this chapter, we
approach Chinese regions’ game industry from both a historical and an
analytical perspective, particularly by examining how game developers in
the PRC, Taiwan, and Hong Kong came to learn game development through
copying, imitation, and gradually moving to innovation. The chapter aims
at explaining China’s game development history chronologically, starting
from the end of the 1980s when Nintendo’s products entered China and
pirated products overwhelmed the legally bound regular market until
the emergence of indie studios in the 2010s.
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