The visual presentation I gave during Research week based off my thesis.

1. Video Games:Positive Agents ofSocialization By: YurijBryndzia With Help from: Professor Joseph Straubhaar And Doctorate Candidate Matthew Payne

2. Background Texas Interdisciplinary Plan: Digital Entertainment Inspired by SXSW Decided to act upon passion of video games

3. What do Games do exactly? Pass the time? Degrade your social skills? Convince you to do drugs, have sex and kill for fun?

4. ANSWER: NONE OF THE ABOVE!!! Video games are creators of emotion

5. So What? The growing trend in games is the simulation of social situations that reflect the ones we face in everyday life. Through the increased exposure of these social situations, games can teach the player positive social behaviors through these emotional experiences.

6. Shock Therapy for Your Heart In most games you develop close connections with non-playable character allies and endure through conflicts and as such relate future interactions based on those situations. Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfu3F1atfAc

7. Is That Even Plausible? Key Concepts to Know Procedural Rhetoric Processes that result in certain actions used to persuade the player that their actions bear particular consequences The “half-real” Balance of rules and fiction The “magic circle” Mindstate player immerses into through video games

8. The “Magic Circle” One of the ways in which a game is delineated from what is outside the game. The gamespace which the classic game model (right) explains the immersive properties of the magic circle

9. Procedural Rhetoric The art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions Games and their rules embody cultural values Processes executing rule-based symbolic manipulation Practicing the controls and other in-game functions develops this rhetoric

10. The “Half-Real” Rules and Fiction Rules cue the player into imagining the gameworld Fiction cues them into understanding the rule of the game Combination of rules and fiction creates an effect that emulates the real world Stylized simulations Some actions are obvious since they emulate elements of the real world

11. The Big Idea The intersect of these concepts make it possible ‘The magic circle’ also known as flow state is one of full immersion In full immersion the Player builds PR Player‘s sense of the “half-real” intensifies Games as creators of emotion have the potential to impart social lessons in this way

12. Another Tug on the Heartstrings In some games there are groups that are openly discriminated against and the option to be a part such a group, like in Dragon Age http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kh6RzaHPVI

13. Evidence Accumulated Although the concepts themselves are evidenced by prior research, the link between those ideas and my argument are strengthened by recent studies. Effects of Prosocial Video Games (June 2009) Environmental Priming (2009)

15. Video games aren’t inherently good or bad

16. Prosocial – helping others (not necessarily non-violent)

18. Short term effects include learning the game’s skills and fiction

20. One Last Feel-Good Moment The positive decisions you make in certain games, like Bioshock, are rewarded with endings like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE7_BKvHikU

21. Weaving the Basket Threading it all together The Magic Circle, Procedural Rhetoric, and the Half Real happen simultaneously As a result, it grants the emotions that video games generate for the players the potential to allow them to internalize the positive social behaviors they encounter.

22. Conclusion If one can accept that games simulate real life situations within the frame of interactive fiction by generating emotions in mirror image circumstances, then it is plausible to believe that video games can teach positive social behaviors to its players in this way.

23. Questions?