Ludology, Narratology and Philosophical Hermeneutics

2014

In this article we present the hermeneutic method as a tool for analyzing game studies discourses. We use Markku Eskelinen’s profusely interpreted “The Gaming Situation” (2001) as a case study. Our premise is that whereas the hermeneutic method is academically well-established, its conscious application is not. It is suggested that with conscious application of the hermeneutic method the persistent and problematic questions in game studies, like those related to narrative, definition, and art, gain potential to be treated with increased sophistication. peerReviewed

Continuous play : leisure engagement in competitive fighting games and taekwondo

2023

In order to better understand the development of play and games in modern lives, this article examines two competitive leisure groups: digital fighting game players and traditional taekwondo practitioners. Drawing on qualitative offline/online interviews (n = 56) and close reading of externally documented life narratives (n = 14), we explore how the modes and motives of engagement fluctuate in competitive players over time. The study provides a new developmental approach to continuous competitive play as leisure. Our results show rather than making linear progress from ‘casual’ to ‘serious’ leisure, individuals in both groups perceive their lasting relationships with these activities gradua…

Do Videogames Simulate? Virtuality and Imitation in the Philosophy of Simulation

2015

Simulation. The concept of simulation has been contested in academia since its proliferation in the 1960s. This is hardly the case in videogame research, the subject of which is commonly discussed as a simulation or something that simulates with little analytical consideration of the term’s other scientific roles. Comparison. The article compares the simulation of videogame research to the ways in which other scientific sectors utilize the term. Problematic science communication. It turns out that videogame research has found an eccentric use for simulation with none or little relation to the term’s scientific (knowledge-driven) and etymological (imitational) predecessors. This becomes a p…

Eight Hypotheses on Technology Use and Psychosocial Wellbeing: A Bicultural Phenomenological Study of Gaming during the COVID-19 Pandemic

2022

AbstractIn this nonconfirmatory qualitative study, we pursued a range of hypotheses regarding how gaming operates in the lives and psychosocial wellbeing of those who actively play videogames during a crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Informed by an explorative survey (N = 793), interpretive phenomenological analysis was applied to interview data from actively gaming Chinese (n = 10) and Finnish (n = 10) participants. Our findings demonstrate how the general increase of pandemic-time gaming did not manifest in all player groups, but in some life contexts gaming activity rather decreased along with reformations in subjective meaning hierarchies and values. Ultimately, eight subo…

sj-docx-1-asm-10.1177_10731911211055435 ��� Supplemental material for Measuring Internet Gaming Disorder and Gaming Disorder: A Qualitative Content V…

2021

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-asm-10.1177_10731911211055435 for Measuring Internet Gaming Disorder and Gaming Disorder: A Qualitative Content Validity Analysis of Validated Scales by Veli-Matti Karhulahti, Marcel Marton��ik and Mat���� Adamkovi�� in Assessment

Let’s Play Tinder! : Aesthetics of a Dating App

2021

This article provides an analysis of the “dating app” Tinder as an aesthetic ludic artifact. By scrutinizing the title’s features of gameplay and expressive–interpretive social interaction, Tinder usage is set into a frame theory context and shown to operate by multiple overlapping frames that allow romantic engagement to be entered as play and vice versa. peerReviewed

Registered reports for qualitative research.

2022

Researchers are disincentivized from conducting urgently needed qualitative research, argues Veli-Matti Karhulahti. He recommends the adoption of registered reports for qualitative research as a remedial course of action. nonPeerReviewed

Associations between Sports Videogames and Physical Activity in Children

2022

Abstract Objective: The aim of the study was to examine the associations of sports video gaming behaviour in the sociological concept of Physical Activity Relationships (PAR) and to see if sports video gaming differs by gender. Methods: A convenience sample of children between 11–12 years of age (n = 114) from three Finnish regions completed a questionnaire on perceptions of their video gaming and physical activity habits. Differences by gender were tested by contingency tables, and blockwise binary logistic regressions were used to examine the strength of association with physical activity behaviour in PAR. Results: Almost all girls had low importance to video gaming and over two thirds (7…

Fictosexuality, Fictoromance, and Fictophilia: A Qualitative Study of Love and Desire for Fictional Characters

2021

Fictosexuality, fictoromance, and fictophilia are terms that have recently become popular in online environments as indicators of strong and lasting feelings of love, infatuation, or desire for one or more fictional characters. This article explores the phenomenon by qualitative thematic analysis of 71 relevant online discussions. Five central themes emerge from the data: (1) fictophilic paradox, (2) fictophilic stigma, (3) fictophilic behaviors, (4) fictophilic asexuality, and (5) fictophilic supernormal stimuli. The findings are further discussed and ultimately compared to the long-term debates on human sexuality in relation to fictional characters in Japanese media psychology. Contexts f…

The Ethical and Political Contours of Institutional Promotion in Esports : From Precariat Models to Sustainable Practices

2020

This study evaluated five early cases in which esport developer Riot Games made rulings regarding activities and infractions by members of various institutions related to its product, League of Legends. The findings of this study support future theoretical exploration of other esports in seeking a fuller understanding of issues related to consent, power differentials, and roles and behaviors expected of the institutional activities of players and teams in competition. Increased investigation of these—and other—issues from an ethical standpoint could lead to a framework that not only would facilitate future study but also bring opportunities for improvements in practices in concert with nece…

Two Overwatch Player Profiles

2022

AbstractWe pursue Overwatch player profiles via a statistical cluster analysis of survey data from the UK (N = 1089) and the USA (N = 417). The profiles are based on the players’ activity, challenge, and experiential preferences as well as motivations. Our analytical process produces six esports player clusters, two of which with Overwatch. The first (OW1) plays mainly Overwatch and Fortnite on a console, and they enjoy diverse types of non-competitive play elements more than other esports players. The second cluster (OW2) plays mainly Overwatch and League of Legends on a PC, and despite appearing more “competitive”, they did not report more competitive preferences. We suggest that the alle…

Challenge types in gaming validation of video game challenge inventory (CHA)

2020

Challenge is a key motivation for videogame play. But what kind of challenge types videogames include, and which of them players prefer? This article helps to answer the above questions by developing and validating Videogame Challenge Inventory (CHA), a psychometrically sound measurement for investigating players’ challenge preferences in videogames. Based on a review of literature, we developed a 38-item version of CHA that was included in a social media user survey (N = 813). An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) revealed a latent structure of five challenge types: Physical, Analytical, Socioemotional, Insight, and Foresight. CHA was amended in another EFA with USA-based survey data (N = 5…

An Extended Study on Training and Physical Exercise in Esports

2019

This chapter is an extended revision of the authors' earlier study (2016) on the training routines of professional and high-level esport players, with added focus on their physical exercise. The study is methodologically mixed with a quantitative survey sample (n=115) and a qualitative interview sample (n=7). Based on this data, high-level esport players train approximately 5.28 hours every day around the year, and professional esport players at least the same amount. Approximately 1.08 hours of that training is physical exercise. More than half (55.6%) of the professional and high-level esport players believe that integrating physical exercise into their training programs has a positive ef…

Continuous play: leisure engagement in competitive fighting games and taekwondo

2021

In order to better understand the development of play and games in modern lives, this article examines two competitive leisure groups: digital fighting game players and traditional taekwondo practi...

Let’s Play Tinder! Aesthetics of a Dating App

2019

This article provides an analysis of the “dating app” Tinder as an aesthetic ludic artifact. By scrutinizing the title’s features of gameplay and expressive–interpretive social interaction, Tinder usage is set into a frame theory context and shown to operate by multiple overlapping frames that allow romantic engagement to be entered as play and vice versa.

From Claw Crane to Toy Crane: Catching, Courting, and Gambling in South Korea

2022

The claw crane—an arcade game that invites its players to remotely grab a prize with a “claw”—has undergone a long process of development from an eye-catching “steam shovel” to a calculated gambling machine across amusement arcades, train stations, and traveling carnivals. Recently, the claw crane has become a common transmedia object in various consumer outlets around the world, serving today’s “kidults” who are willing to play and be playful with toys as grownups. Especially in South Korea, the claw crane now rewards its players with cutified character plushies, which arguably reflects and resonates with the local sociocultural conventions. In this mixed-methods study, we deconstruct the …

북유럽 레트로: 핀란드의 레트로게임 문화 [Retrogaming in Finland]

2021

Computer game as a pragmatic concept : ideas, meanings, and culture

2020

This article discusses the ‘computer game’ as a pragmatic concept. A dual nature of the computer game as both a pragmatic idea and a pragmatic meaning is introduced. Practical meanings of the computer game correspond with the concrete effects that engaging with computer games produces in an individual. Practical ideas of the computer game correspond with the subjectively constituted conceptual families concerning the computer game’s assumed practical meaning. Individual computer games can be considered flat or round depending on the range of their practical meanings. Thus, the article contributes to the study of cultural objects by offering a framework for examining the evolution and existe…

Measuring Internet Gaming Disorder and Gaming Disorder: A Qualitative Content Validity Analysis of Validated Scales

2021

Numerous instruments have been developed to measure gaming-related health problems based on “internet gaming disorder” (IGD) in the third section of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.) and “gaming disorder” (GD) in the International Classification of Diseases (11th rev.). However, the criteria in the manuals tend to be operationalized in numerous diverse ways, which can make screening outcomes incomparable. A content validity analysis is needed to reassess the relationships between the diagnostic criteria and the items that operationalize them. The IGD and GD criteria were divided into sematic components. A qualitative content validity analysis was carried o…

Reply to Billieux and Fournier (2022) : collaborative shortcut to ontological diversity

2022

Punchline behind the hotspot : structures of humor, puzzle, and sexuality in adventure games (with Leisure Suit Larry in Several Wrong Places)

2021

Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, during the embryonic era of computers, hackers, and all that digitalized punk jazz, who would have guessed that one of the period’s juvenile narrative arts—“interactive fiction” it was called at the time—would soon lead to a pop cultural revolution? A young scholar named Mary Ann Buckles did. Having spent years analyzing a piece of software that the present history knows as the most influential of all computerized text-based playthings, Adventure, in 1985, Buckles eventually completed her doctoral dissertation with a first-ever focus on something that had thus far been struggling to be taken seriously by cultural critics: storygames running on compute…

"Mammat menee kahville, me koneelle" : kilpapelaaminen poikien elämässä

2022

Tämä artikkeli käsittelee e-urheilua osana aktiivisesti pelaavien turkulaisten poikien elämää. Laadullisen haastatteluaineiston (N=14) kautta artikkeli avaa nuorten näkemyksiä e-urheilun asemasta sekä henkilökohtaisena että yhteiskunnallisena toimintana. Tutkimus viittaa siihen, että e-urheilun rooli aktiivisesti yhdessä pelaavien poikien arjessa toimii perinteisten urheilulajien tavoin tavoitteellisena kilpailuna kuin myös vähemmän tavoitteellisena sosiaalisena ajanvietteenä. Kyseiselle joukolle e-urheilu on harrastus, jota myös perhe, ystävät ja yhteiskunta yhä useammin tukevat. Ohjattu e-urheilutoiminta sekä siihen liittyvät sosiaaliset infrastruktuurit todennäköisesti edesauttavat terve…

Do E-Athletes Move?

2016

This article offers possibly the first peer-reviewed study on the training routines of elite e-athletes with special focus on the subjects' physical exercise routines. The study is based on a sample of 115 elite e-athletes. According to the responses, e-athletes train approximately 5.28 hours every day around the year on the elite level. Approximately 1.08 hours of that training is physical exercise. More than half (55.6%) of the elite e-athletes believe that integrating physical exercise in their training programs has a positive effect on esport performance; however, no less than 47.0% of the elite e-athletes do their physical exercise chiefly to maintain overall health. Accordingly, the s…

On the Prevalence of Addicted or Problematic Gaming in Finland

2019

Highlights • A dataset from Finland in 2015 (systematic random sampling N = 4511) suggests an (unweighted) prevalence rate of certain “addicted gaming” (videogame play) to be 0.6% among local gamers and 0.03% among the whole population. • The implied prevalence of certain “problematic gaming” (videogame play) climbs to 1.4% among local gamers and 0.6% among the whole population. • Of those “addicted” individuals to whom videogame play was a problem “almost always,” eight reported their hours of play during a week (72, 30, 10, 7, 4, 1, 1, 1), which indicate that “addicted gaming,” if understood as excessive play, might not be optimal for describing such problems.

Multiverse Ethnography: A Qualitative Method for Gaming and Technology Use Research

2021

This article introduces multiverse ethnography as a systematic team-based qualitative method for studying the mechanical, structural and experiential properties of video games and other technological artefacts. Instead of applying the ethnographic method to produce a single in-depth account, multiverse ethnography includes multiple researchers carrying out coordinated synergetic ethnographic work on the same research object, thus producing a multiverse of interpretations and perspectives. To test the method, 41 scholars carried out a multiverse ethnography on two video games, Cyberpunk 2077 and Among Us. Explorative thematic findings regarding both titles are reported and methodological imp…

Reasons for qualitative psychologists to share human data

2021

ARTICLE PUBLISHED (OPEN ACCESS) IN BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. Qualitative data sharing practices in psychology have not developed as rapidly as those in parallel quantitative domains. This is often explained by numerous epistemological, ethical, and pragmatic issues concerning qualitative data types. In this essay, I provide an alternative to the frequently expressed (often reasonable) concerns regarding the sharing of qualitative human data by highlighting three advantages of qualitative data sharing. I argue that sharing qualitative human data is not by default “less ethical,” “riskier,” and “impractical” compared to quantitative data sharing, but in some cases more ethical, le…

Sexuality and Play : Introduction

2019

A primer for choosing, designing and evaluating registered reports for qualitative methods

2023

Registered reports are a publication format that involves peer reviewing studies both before and after carrying out research procedures. Although registered reports were originally developed to combat challenges in quantitative and confirmatory study designs, today registered reports are also available for qualitative and exploratory work. This article provides a brief primer that aims to help researchers in choosing, designing, and evaluating registered reports, which are driven by qualitative methods.

Factors Affecting Digital Tool Use in Client Interaction According to Mental Health Professionals : Interview Study

2023

Background: Digital tools and interventions are being increasingly developed in response to the growing mental health crisis, and mental health professionals (MHPs) considerably influence their adoption in client practice. However, how MHPs use digital tools in client interaction is yet to be sufficiently understood, which poses challenges to their design, development, and implementation. Objective: This study aimed to create a contextual understanding of how MHPs use different digital tools in clinical client practice and what characterizes the use across tools. Methods: A total of 19 Finnish MHPs participated in semistructured interviews, and the data were transcribed, coded, and inductiv…

Introduction

2022

A decade ago, it was still somewhat conventional to start a study by writing how “esports is a novel phenomenon.” As we write this introduction in 2021, that is no longer true. Today, more than a thousand studies have been published on esports, including several books and special issues. Moreover, the work is no longer conducted purely in the “game studies” related fields, but across numerous domains from medical and health sciences to economics and sports. Esports is no longer a novel phenomenon, not even for researchers. As both the industry and academia of esports progress—with hundreds of digital (and some analog) game titles being played as “esports”—it is more and more difficult to ad…

Ontological diversity in gaming disorder measurement: a nationally representative registered report

2022

Gaming-related health problems have been researched since the 1980s with numerous different ontologies as reference systems, from self-assessed ‘game addiction’ to ‘pathological gambling’ (in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM]-IV), ‘internet gaming disorder’ (in the third section of the DSM-5) and most recently ‘gaming disorder’ (in the International Classification of Diseases [ICD]-11). Our goal was to investigate how screening instruments that derive from different ontologies differ in identifying associated problem groups. By using four central screening instruments, each representing a different ontological basis, we hypothesized differences and similarities…

Measuring Internet Gaming Disorder and Gaming Disorder : A Qualitative Content Validity Analysis of Validated Scales

2021

Numerous instruments have been developed to measure gaming-related health problems based on “internet gaming disorder” (IGD) in the third section of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.) and “gaming disorder” (GD) in the International Classification of Diseases (11th rev.). However, the criteria in the manuals tend to be operationalized in numerous diverse ways, which can make screening outcomes incomparable. A content validity analysis is needed to reassess the relationships between the diagnostic criteria and the items that operationalize them. The IGD and GD criteria were divided into sematic components. A qualitative content validity analysis was carried ou…

In Search of Characters Without Signifiers

2022

This essay explores the question whether characters can exist without being signified in any way. If characters can exist trans-medially, independently of a particular form of signification or sign-vehicle, why not exist without any signification at all? What kind of existence would such a character have? And, paradoxically, what would examples look like? While the question at face value might appear logically invalid, I argue that at (or just beyond) the minimalist end of the character-representational spectrum, we find what might be called implied characters, that is, characters that are not in any way given, represented, named, or performed, but can only exist in the minds of their playe…

Nothing: A Review

2020

Fictosexuality, Fictoromance, and Fictophilia: A Qualitative Study of Love and Desire for Fictional Characters

2021

Fictosexuality, fictoromance, and fictophilia are terms that have recently become popular in online environments as indicators of strong and lasting feelings of love, infatuation, or desire for one or more fictional characters. This article explores the phenomenon by qualitative thematic analysis of 71 relevant online discussions. Five central themes emerge from the data: (1) fictophilic paradox, (2) fictophilic stigma, (3) fictophilic behaviors, (4) fictophilic asexuality, and (5) fictophilic supernormal stimuli. The findings are further discussed and ultimately compared to the long-term debates on human sexuality in relation to fictional characters in Japanese media psychology. Contexts f…

Trolligans : Conceptual Links Between Trolling and Hooliganism in Sports and Esports

2023

Both game-based trolling and hooliganism have existed in some form since the inception of online gaming and professional sports respectively. The two share many characteristics: provocation of an opposing entity, the tendency to taunt or trash-talk others based on their social or individual identity, and disruptive and/or destructive behaviour. However, despite this and the increasing similarity between the worlds of traditional sports and esports, research on the two negatively perceived phenomena has remained largely separate. The present article aims to both link and distinguish the two types of behaviour in terms of what motivates them, the agents involved, and the spaces in which they…

Esports Transmedia Universes

2021

What actual life problems relate to gaming disorder? A qualitative study

2022

A lot of research has been carried out regarding people's problematic relationships with videogame play, especially after the WHO added "gaming disorder" in their ICD-11 as a new mental disorder. Nevertheless, very few qualitative studies with actual clinical samples have been published, and in most of them, the "clinical" characteristic of the sample has been defined by help-seeking rather than the problems for which the participants seek help. The goal of this study is to carry out a qualitative investigation regarding the nature of those problems that lead videogame players to seek professional help for their gaming habits. We utilize a template analysis approach to a previously unstudie…

Phenomenological Strands for Gaming Disorder and Esports Play: A Qualitative Registered Report

2021

The recent inclusion of gaming disorder in the ICD-11 as a mental disorder has further increased the importance of researching the health spectrum related to gaming. A critical area in this regard is the lack of clarity concerning the differences between gaming disorder and intensive play, the latter of which often involves several gaming hours per day without related health problems. In this study, we approached the above question by interpretive phenomenological analysis with interviews in two groups of highly involved videogame players: those who seek or have sought clinical help for their problems with gaming (n=6), and those who play esports more than 4 hours per day without self-repor…

Network Structures of Internet Gaming Disorder and Gaming Disorder: Symptom Operationalization Causes Variation

2022

Background: From 2022, the ICD-11 includes the first mental disorder based on digital technology, “gaming disorder”, which was previously suggested as a condition for further study in the DSM-5 (2013). In this cross-sectional study, we provide the first large-scale network analysis of various symptom structures for these constructs to understand the complex interconnections between their proposed symptoms. Methods: Culturally diverse samples of 2,846 digital game players (M = 25.3 years) and 746 esports players (M = 23.5 years) were recruited. A network approach was applied to explore a multiverse of gaming disorder symptom structures, effects of item operationalization, and possible extern…

Why do adults seek treatment for gaming (disorder)? A qualitative study

2022

Despite gaming disorder now being diagnosable by the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as a new mental disorder due to addictive behaviors, little is known about the concrete reasons for which people seek treatment for their videogame play. As the current literature is mainly based on children and adolescents, there is a strong need for better understanding adult treatment-seekers in particular. This preregistered study responds to the gap in research by qualitatively investigating the reasons for treatment-seeking with 110 participants who had sought help for their videogame play from a Finnish treatment program. We applied template analysis to the open-ended data, which co…

The Ethical and Political Contours of Institutional Promotion in eSports: From Precariat Models to Sustainable Practices

2020

This study evaluated five early cases in which esport developer Riot Games made rulings regarding activities and infractions by members of various institutions related to its product, League of Legends. The findings of this study support future theoretical exploration of other esports in seeking a fuller understanding of issues related to consent, power differentials, and roles and behaviors expected of the institutional activities of players and teams in competition. Increased investigation of these—and other—issues from an ethical standpoint could lead to a framework that not only would facilitate future study but also bring opportunities for improvements in practices in concert with nece…

Split-Screen : Videogame History through Local Multiplayer Design

2021

By looking at videogame production through a two-vector model of design – a practice determined by the interplay between economic and technological evolution – we argue that shared screen play, as both collaboration and competition, originally functioned as a desirable pattern in videogame design, but has since become problematic due to industry transformations. This is introduced as an example of what we call design vestigiality: momentary loss of a design pattern’s contextual function due to techno-economical evolution. peerReviewed

Challenge Types in Gaming : Validation of Videogame Challenge Inventory (CHA)

2020

Challenge is a key motivation for videogame play. But what kind of challenge types videogames include, and which of them players prefer? This article answers the above questions by developing and validating Videogame Challenge Inventory (CHA), a psychometrically sound measurement for investigating players’ challenge preferences in videogames. Based on a comprehensive review of literature, we developed a 38-item version of CHA that was included in a social media user survey (N=813). An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) revealed a latent structure of five challenge types: Physical, Analytical, Socioemotional, Insight, and Foresight. CHA was amended in another EFA with USA-based survey data (N…