The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of sedentary behavior and investigate associated factors in adolescents 11 years of age from the 1993 birth cohort in Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil. Sedentary behavior was investigated with a questionnaire, and was defined as spending more than two hours per day watching television, playing videogames, or using the computer. Of the...

In a social context marked by the crucial relevance of the development of the individual, it is of primary importance to focus the attention on those social phenomena that can contribute to it and are often underestimated and underexploited in terms of learning processes. Videogaming (i.e., the activity of playing a videogame) is certainly one of such phenomena, and its importance and popularit...

This article explores the early evolution of the structure and management of gameplay in videogames. The authors introduce the notion of gameplay segmentation to capture the role that design elements such as level, boss, and wave play in videogames and identify three modes of segmentation. Temporal segmentation limits, synchronizes, and/or coordinates player activity over time. Spatial segmenta...

George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead is a film which has been criticised for its violence, but which also contains insights into our consumer society. In this paper I argue that videogames, which are similarly criticised for being violent, also tell us about one trajectory of consumer culture. Drawing from recent re-evaluations of the flâneur-shopper I consider the temporal, spatial and panoptic sc...

As this is the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations it is appropriate to start with a work that attempts to provide a theoretical framework for how and why videogames can move and influence people’s lives. The question of how well Bogost achieves this goal depends upon the audience. While Bogost’s thesis is ripe for a mainstream discussion, th...