Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds - Volume 2, Issue 3, 2010

This article argues that the first-person shooter Bioshock uses the video game medium to provide a powerful critique of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. The city of Rapture, collapsing into chaos and violence, provides a dystopian vision of what the game suggests are the inevitable results of the laissez faire politics of Rand. Bioshock not only tells a compelling story about the dangers of Objectivism, but also encodes anti-Objectivist messages into the very mechanics of the game. I examine the game's visual, narrative and procedural rhetoric, and the ways that it counters the fiction that has acted as the conduit to spread Objectivist thought.

The warp device is commonly applied as a design feature within videogames. It allows the player's avatar to be transported through the gameworld changing the relationship with the gamespace. Moving the avatar through the gameworld can be seen as a response to the player's actions and its location acts as a way of working through and understanding relationships within game spaces. This article analyses how warps and portals function and how they can affect the position of the avatar in the gameworld. The space of the videogame is defined through the notion of paths and tracks to understand how players can swap between roles of interaction and observation as they make their way through various levels and scenarios of gameplay. Warps and portals are categorized as to their use within game design in first-person and third-person games and how this impacts on the player's experience of the avatar.

In this article we compare the content creation systems of two popular virtual worlds: World of Warcraft and Second Life. We then discuss recommendations for three-dimensional (3D) content creation systems based on current trends in 3D user interface research. We hypothesize that by designing 3D content creation systems that follow these recommendations, virtual-world economies based on custom content creation (e.g., Second Life) may be transformed, as more people will be able to create and modify content.

Virtual environments are often used for training. In particular, virtual worlds can be used for situation-awareness. Such models allow users to gain an understanding of a real-world location or walk-through scenarios that may incorporate many participants and achieve training to develop skills and competencies. One of the main challenges for the developer is to create virtual models that are appropriately sized in comparison with the avatars. In-world measurements are different to those in the real-world. In-world models have exaggerated avatar heights and often use third-person viewing projections. This article describes our experience with developing a scale model. We have used Second Life to provide a case study for understanding virtual design issues and challenges of scale in development. We discuss these challenges and describe our experiences of developing real-world models in virtual environments.

Assassin's Creed 2: A RenaissanceAssassin's Creed 2, Ubisoft (2010), Montreal, Quebec (Canada): Ubisoft, $39.99 (USD)

The Transformation of Everyday Life Through Pervasive PlayPervasive Games: Theory and Design, Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros and Annika Waern (2009), New York: Morgan Kaufmann, 336pp., ISBN: 978-0-12-374853-9, Paperback, $49.95 (USD)

Introducing Machinima Reviews toJGVW

Dagon: A Virtual Nightmare

Across the Universe

Victim of Society