Tag: Vol.2 No.2 (2019)

ABSTRACT: The aim of this exploratory study is to identify the main advertising tools used in-world the in the virtual world Second Life. The main categories of products and services available within the world were defined and divided: the advertising opportunities into free marketing tools, official tools and in-world marketing tools. Second Life creates a unique platform, which allows the creation of a virtual business with profits in real life. Advertising and in-world marketing offers them the option to promote virtual goods. The main marketing tools within the virtual environment are defined and elaborated with specific cases. The lack of literature related to Second Life is visible in the sources and the environment is still unexplored, therefore we used personal experience from our 11 year presence within the virtual environment and virtual business in Second Life.

KEY WORDS: advertising, in-world, marketing, marketing tools, second life, virtual business, virtual world.

ABSTRACT: Easter eggs are a well-known and popular phenomenon throughout the whole of pop culture, and the interactive nature of digital games unleashes the full potential of their implementation, as well as integrating them into the gamers’ experience. The study focuses on Easter eggs in digital games from a structural point of view to understand them on the fundamental text level. With this aim, the analysis consists of applying Genette’s textual transcendence to a specific digital game, The Talos Principle. The paper represents part of the introductory theoretical framework to the following research on comprehensive Easter eggs’ classification.

KEY WORDS: digital games, Easter eggs, textual transcendence, The Talos Principle, transtextuality.

ABSTRACT: This study focuses on digital games that have become powerful persuasion tools which can be utilized for political marketing purposes. The authors believe that these media have to be thoroughly explored, because of the great potential of these platforms to become very useful tools for setting up political messages and the outreach capacity to the voting segment being difficult to achieve if only traditional media are used. The paper provides a set of theoretical views on political marketing in digital games. There are many examples analyzed in the paper, proving that the techniques of political marketing can create big benefits and that they can help politicians achieve their goals. So, we hypothesized a new phase of political marketing, underpinned by the utilization of digital games. As a methodology, we used content analysis of various digital games. The aim of this paper is to offer a better understanding of the benefits of political marketing campaigns in the digital gaming industry and to explore the role and impact of these techniques, as well as to provide potential future directions of this form of marketing.

KEY WORDS: digital games, future directions, political marketing, political messages.

ABSTRACT: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neuro-developmental disorder that starts in childhood and has a persistent pattern of behaviour involving lack of attention and/or hyperactivity-impulsiveness that interferes in social, academic or work processes, or reduces the quality of them. Through activities with games, children and adolescents improve memory, concentration, motor planning and time management skills. According to some studies these may present positive effects for the attention span, executive functions, working memory and other cognitive skills. However, there are few studies that explain their effects. This paper presents a systematic mapping study and underlines the direction taken by the empirical studies undertaken on the use of digital games in treating ADHD and ADD. A total of 12 articles, covering 2005 to 2015, were selected. The research questions behind the study were: RQ1 What particular characteristics have been investigated by researchers?; RQ2 What research methods have been used?; and RQ3 On which game has the study on ADD-ADHD been focused?. There are studies are focused on the risk of addiction, increased attention deficit or behaviour problems and studies evaluating the improvement in executive functions, reduction in hyperactivity and motivation. The research methods used were experimental and exploratory methods. Finally, the digital games are analyzed without distinguishing between the genres and theme of the game.

KEY WORDS: adolescents, attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, digital games, children, literature review, systematic mapping study.