A New Contemporary Profession as Game Boosters: The Behavioural Emergence of Intellectual Opportunism

This study investigates the emergence of intellectual opportunism for game boosters in mobile social networks. It shows the supply and demand for upgrading game levels in mobile social networks. These supply and lucrative demand highlight a new temporary profession as game boosters. Game boosters facilitate framed newbie gamers who want to play at a higher game level without playing for a long time. This emergence of professionally game boosters is due to economic opportunism, promising their potential future incomes. Moreover, opportunistic mobile social networks (OMSNs) support the muscular appearance of the game booster profession. On the other hand, this study demonstrates that mobile social networks exploit hedonistic human needs by reflecting their behaviour and social relationships when building efficient and trustworthy business contracts. This study presents uniqueness supported by critical reasoning. First, it shows that the game booster phenomenon has emerged as a contemporary profession in society, promising future cash inflows above the average salaries of typical jobs. Second, this research demonstrates the sequential logic of economic opportunities, intellectual opportunism, and mobile social networks, constructing game boosters’ income generating. Nevertheless, this study acknowledges that the game booster profession has low integrity due to its members’ inconsistent and unprincipled virtues.

"I did it without hesitation. Am I the bad guy?" Online conversations in response to controversial in-game violence

Video game content has evolved over the last six decades, from a basic focus on challenge and competition to include more serious and introspective narratives capable of encouraging critical contemplation within gamers. The "No Russian" mission from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 casts players as terrorists responsible for the murder of innocent bystanders, sparking debate around how players engage and react to wanton violence in modern video games. Through thematic analysis of 649 Reddit posts discussing the mission, 10 themes emerged representing complexity in player experiences. Those themes were grouped into categories representing (descending order), (1) rote gameplay experiences, (2) dark humor, (3) comparing the mission to other games and real-world events, and (4) self-reflective eudaimonic reactions to the mission. Although less common, the presence of eudaimonic media effects (in at least 15% of posts) holds promise for the use of video games as reflective spaces for violence prevention.

The Paradox of Interactive Media: The Potential for Video Games and Virtual Reality as Tools for Violence Prevention

Interactive media such as video games and virtual reality (VR) provide users with lived experiences that may be dangerous or even impossible in daily life. By providing interactive experiences in highly authentic, detail-rich contexts, these technologies have demonstrated measurable success in impacting how people think, feel, and behave in the physical world. At the same time, violent interactive media content has been historically connected with a range of antisocial effects in both popular press and academic research. Extant literature has established a small-but-statistically significant effect of interactive media violence on aggressive thoughts and behaviors, which could serve as a risk factor for interpersonal violence. However, left unexplored is the seemingly paradoxical claim that under some conditions, interactive media experiences might protect against interpersonal violence. Drawing on advances in media theory and research and the evolution of interactive media content and production practices, the current manuscript suggests ways in which interactive media violence may be leveraged to lower the likelihood of real-world violence experiences. For example, research on both violent and non-violent games has found that players can (a) express guilt after committing violent acts, (b) report reflective and introspective emotional reactions during gameplay, and (c) debate the morality of their actions with others. Regarding VR, studies have demonstrated that (a) witnessing physical violence in immersive spaces led participants to take the perspective of victims and better understand their emotional state and (b) controlled exposure to traumatic or violent events can be used for treatment. Broadly, studies into video games and VR demonstrate that the impact of actions in virtual worlds transfer into the physical worlds to influence (later) attitudes and behaviors. Thus, how these experiences may be potentially harnessed for social change is a compelling and open consideration, as are side-effects of such interventions on vulnerable groups. The current manuscript summarizes emerging research perspectives (as well as their limitations) to offer insight into the potential for interactive media violence to protect against real-world violence victimization and perpetration.