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The article deals with the functions of role-playing games of different types in adulthood in conjunction with the particularities of the players' self-consciousness. Changes in the status of game in the sociocultural context of postmodern society are discussed. 45 respondents took part in the empirical study: 15 participants of live action role-playing games (8 women, average age 31.53 ± 6.48 years old, game experience 10.7 ± 5.9 years), 15 participants of the online role-playing game «Second Life» (8 women, average age 33.8 ± 5.62 years old, game experience 9.57 ± 4.33 years), and 15 people who are not keen on role-playing games (8 women, average age 30.33 ± 6.03 years old). In course of research were used the author's questionnaire Self-Portrait of a Role-Playing Games Participant, a modification of Kuhn–McPartland's Twenty Statements Test, Dembo–Rubinstein's self-esteem measurement methods, and the Giessen Personality Questionnaire by D. Beckman. It has been found that while «players» and «non-players» lack differences in self-esteem, the participants in role-playing games rate the in-game-self higher in a number of parameters than the real-life-self. The characteristic features of self-consciousness of participants in role-playing games have been identified. For the participants in live action role-playing games, those include cognitive simplicity of the self-image and social orientation of the self-identity. For the «Second Life» players, over-differentiation of the self-image and egocentric orientation of the self-identity are common. The key functions of role-playing games have been identified based on the content analysis of the questionnaires. They are as follows: getting intense emotions and changing identities are the key functions in the group of live action role-playing games' participants, while self-fulfillment and transgression are typical for the «Second Life» players. The results are discussed in the context of possible changes in modern criteria for distinguishing normal and pathological personality.

The article addresses organization of distance learning of foreign languages in quarantine during the postmodern era. It is noted that organization of distance learning in the educational process is very important. It was clarified that distance learning is based on synchronous and asynchronous modes. The essence of the concepts of "distance learning", "asynchronous learning", "synchronous learning", "quarantine" is explained. Articles of domestic and foreign teachers and scientists analysing the broached subject were reviewed. The article highlights advantages and disadvantages of distance learning. It has been studied that for students studiing foreign languages remotely, an interesting form of learning is watching TV shows and movies. The digital programs and the essence of their advantages are also given. The researchers' view on the effectiveness of multimedia presentations, trainings, games is given. It is also found that during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is hard for parents to work on the platforms unlike children. The platforms for synchronous and asynchronous learning are separated. It is noted that teachers with primary school students use visual forms of learning to interest children and to present new material in a clear and accessible way. During the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual communication is found prevaling in postmodern society. It is noted that a foreign language can be learned through a Facebook group. It is investigated that learning foreign languages requires special attention to development of communication skills. The problems that arose in teachers during the organization of distance learning during the coronavirus pandemic are studied.

AbstractComputer games have become an important part of consumer culture. Moreover, they drive cultural and societal advancements that serve and benefit postmodern consumers. In this introductory article to the special issue, we discuss recent developments and outline research directions that will inform future inquiries into the marketing and consumer behaviour issues associated with computer game consumption. We begin with an overview of previous research on computer games in the marketing and consumer behaviour literature. Next, we provide an integrative summary of the articles that were selected for this special issue. Finally, we draw the threads together in order to elicit opportunities for future research in the area. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The purpose of this article is to explore further and through other examples what happens when a Foucauldian conception of power is remixed with "the theoretical toolbox of Deleuze" to address diverse notions of power in critical qualitative science inquiry. The article experiments with Foucauldian power/knowledge and the Deleuzian machine by using the metaphor of capoeira to argue that critical qualitative science can maintain its social justice focus as well as align conceptions of power with a postmodern framework. The authors illustrate how capoeira can function as a conceptual frame for shifting the onto-epistemologies of critical qualitative science inquiry.

This article considers larger methodological questions of what political work is undertaken when scholars engage in postcolonial critiques of video games within academic intellectual frameworks. What is postcolonial game studies, and what is its purpose, within the context of larger issues of inclusion, representation, diversity, and the challenging of hegemonic power structures? After surveying some of the key literature in postcolonial game studies, the author provides critical frameworks for understanding the means by which these approaches have largely been excluded from video game studies, and their crucial function in operating against the grain of profit and innovation-driven discourses in games. This work is the extension of a larger discussion of inclusion, diversity, and tolerance discourse within the liberal academy, and particularly the functions of postcolonial, postmodern and other critical cultural scholarly interventions. In this article, the author argues for a postcolonial approach to game studies, but one that refuses to be reduced to an institutional cultural labor of due diligence, or according to Slavoj Žižek's term, a 'culturalization of politics'. Through the work of Stuart Hall and Sara Ahmed on intellectual diversity work within the context of large systems and academic institutions, this article asserts that the perception that critical theorizations (like postcolonial game studies) exert pressure on efficiency and innovation is greatly outweighed by the rich toolkits they bring to video games as maturing cultural forms.

The article examined sin as a deception and the game in the context of the dialectic of sin and hope. Selected philosophical and psychological aspects of the review only correlated to the religious. Based on the modes of "being" and "having" by E. Fromm and "flow" by M. Chiksentmihayi conducted polemics with the postmodern view that for the destruction of the will to power is required the destruction of the subject and its consciousness. Opposes the flow and consumerism, happiness and pleasure, personal development and selfish.

"This book explores realist theories-also called power politics approaches, formulations of systems theories, and game theory in International Relations (IR). The first section of the book focuses on theories of Early Classical Realism-Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes, and two Asian exponents-Kautilya and Han Fei Tzu. It covers the rise and fall of different schools of imperial geopolitics including those developed during the Cold-War and postmodern periods. It also discusses theories proposed by three stalwarts of Neoclassical Realism- Niebuhr, Carr, and Morgenthau; the Neorealism of Waltz; Strategic Realism of Schelling; and Offensive Realism of Mearsheimer. The book also examines theoretic formulations of Kaplan, Modelski, Rosecrance, McClelland, Holsti, and Singer, as well as game theory and its relevance and application in international relations. It explores diverse variants of theories of power in international relations through a critical readings of texts and IR literature. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of political science, international relations, history and law"--

"This book explores realist theories-also called power politics approaches, formulations of systems theories, and game theory in International Relations (IR). The first section of the book focuses on theories of Early Classical Realism-Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes, and two Asian exponents-Kautilya and Han Fei Tzu. It covers the rise and fall of different schools of imperial geopolitics including those developed during the Cold-War and postmodern periods. It also discusses theories proposed by three stalwarts of Neoclassical Realism- Niebuhr, Carr, and Morgenthau; the Neorealism of Waltz; Strategic Realism of Schelling; and Offensive Realism of Mearsheimer. The book also examines theoretic formulations of Kaplan, Modelski, Rosecrance, McClelland, Holsti, and Singer, as well as game theory and its relevance and application in international relations. It explores diverse variants of theories of power in international relations through a critical readings of texts and IR literature. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of political science, international relations, history and law"--

The two of us wroteAnti-Oedipustogether. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd.—Deleuze and Guattari,A Thousand PlateausWith the linguistic turn came an ever-increasing tendency to see language as the locus where truths are born, passed along, or modified. As such, postmodern theories have proved highly compatible with postcolonial studies, which have inspired studies of modern Iran as a country that was colonized, only not officially. However, the latter seem to have fallen for extreme abstraction where metaphysical claims abound: presuming constructivist views of language but failing to present a tangible framework, these studies discuss "discursive change" without giving a clue as to what either discourse or change is. Convinced as such, we have adopted Wittgenstein's idea of language-games to present a tangible model for discursive change.

Argues that the materiality of postmodern ambivalence & the desiring subjects produced by this ambivalence are properly understood as ideological effects linked to the persistent & contradictory structures of capitalism in a reading of Neil Jordan's movie, The Crying Game. The movie is interpreted as a mythic representation of sexual ambivalence connected to the eruption of a postmodern sexual imaginary in industrial centers transformed by the processes of late capitalism. It is also taken to represent a neoimperialist postcolonial imaginary that is connected to Western anxieties over the breakdown of the colonial order. Together, these narratives are read as mythologizing the social structures of late capitalism through the fetishization of ambivalence, the naturalization of difference, & the displacement of third terms of collective subjectivity & social transformation with romantic individualism. The representation of ambivalence in the work of Slavoj Zizek (1993) & Judith Butler (1994) is shown to propose neoidealist or neoculturalist tales of ambivalence, respectively, that end in offering alibis for the historical & material conditions out of which new identities arise. It is concluded that this theoretical work, like the movie, participates in the mythologizing strategies of a broad-based postmodern imaginary. D. M. Smith

The paper at hand investigates forms and interpretations of author personae in autobiographical videogames. While, previously, autobiographical modes of expression have only been discussed in a few game-based artworks (Poremba 2007), the availability of free, easy-to-use tools like Twine and Ren'Py gradually affords autobiographical writing as a cultural technique outside of deliberately artistic endeavors. Therefore, the paper considers the creation and distribution of autobiographical games as a playful form of identity politics. For that purpose, a comparative content analysis (cf. e.g. Rössler 2012) of selected autobiographical games will be conducted, taking into account rhetorical and audiovisual elements but focusing on procedural design strategies and "bias" (Bogost 2008, 128). The corpus includes explicitly autobiographical sketches like Gravitation (2008) and Dys4ia (2012), but also cases in which the autobiographical characteristics are only implied like The Average Everyday Adventures of Samantha Browne (2016) as well as less polished, sometimes unfinished vignettes. This approach will be selectively complemented by a rhetorical analysis of paratextual elements such as developer statements and user comments. Play and games are increasingly recognized as modes of conceptualizing and expressing individual identity (Frissen et al. 2015, 35–36) that are particularly compatible with postmodern sensibilities. Consequently, the focus of the analysis will lie on how the implementation of the author personae as playable characters enable the developers to curate their identity online, both in terms of Moreno's psychodrama (Moreno 1987) and Foucault's technologies of the self (Aycock 1995).

The paper at hand investigates forms and interpretations of author personae in autobiographical videogames. While, previously, autobiographical modes of expression have only been discussed in a few game-based artworks (Poremba 2007), the availability of free, easy-to-use tools like Twine and Ren'Py gradually affords autobiographical writing as a cultural technique outside of deliberately artistic endeavors. Therefore, the paper considers the creation and distribution of autobiographical games as a playful form of identity politics. For that purpose, a comparative content analysis (cf. e.g. Rössler 2012) of selected autobiographical games will be conducted, taking into account rhetorical and audiovisual elements but focusing on procedural design strategies and "bias" (Bogost 2008, 128). The corpus includes explicitly autobiographical sketches like Gravitation (2008) and Dys4ia (2012), but also cases in which the autobiographical characteristics are only implied like The Average Everyday Adventures of Samantha Browne (2016) as well as less polished, sometimes unfinished vignettes. This approach will be selectively complemented by a rhetorical analysis of paratextual elements such as developer statements and user comments. Play and games are increasingly recognized as modes of conceptualizing and expressing individual identity (Frissen et al. 2015, 35–36) that are particularly compatible with postmodern sensibilities. Consequently, the focus of the analysis will lie on how the implementation of the author personae as playable characters enable the developers to curate their identity online, both in terms of Moreno's psychodrama (Moreno 1987) and Foucault's technologies of the self (Aycock 1995).

The subject of this article is Neil Jordan's film The Crying Game. Released in 1992, it was widely received as a film that challenged stereotypes in relation to both the IRA and questions of race, sexuality and desire. This article calls into question such a radical reading by analysing the way in which Jude the IRA woman is represented. Through a feminist deconstruction, the article proposes that the character of Jude can be seen to represent both national and international anxieties concerning contemporary masculine and feminine subject positions. The article plots this by investigating how the film deals with the specifics of gender and Irish nationalism. It then moves on to consider how these specifics can be seen to articulate international postmodern concerns about contemporary gender identities.

Despite the encouragement of women's and girls' curiosity in matriarchal and oral fairy tale traditions, their patriarchal print production in Western Europe reframed this trait as undesirable. Fairy tale print productions also troubled the tales' transformative and communal form in establishing versions that would receive ongoing duplication by attaching prominent authorial figures. In this article, I investigate the teen girl detective game as a format that reflects upon and updates these values. Taking Mografi's Jenny LeClue: Detectivú as my case study, I interpret the text as a postmodern fairy tale revision that unsettles the master narrative and the notion of the singular authorial figure. The game encourages the player's active investigatory participation while presenting a narrative that invites collaboration and a critique of the conservative author.

The issue of aesthetics in postmodernism, unlike modernism, denies the aesthetic independence of political, social, and cultural issues, and accordingly, the paradigm of uncertainty in the trajectory of subversive discourses, without regard to objectivity and the issue of individual genius, resorts to techniques such as adapting and imitating previous ideas. Thus, it de-formalizes various cultural genres that have themselves been influenced by the process of modernization of late capitalist currents at the international level in the process of distortion. In the meantime, the intertextuality created by language games and electronic media sub-narratives, relying on the multiplicity of identities, blurs the line between reality and imagination in an aesthetic understanding of photomontage images. The purpose of this paper is to interpret the word "creation" as an adaptation in the process of creating photomontage images in an aesthetic way and based on the paradigm of the pluralism of the late capitalist era. Accordingly, it raises the main question of what interpretation of the photomontage model depicts the accelerated and multifaceted approach to the production of cultural symbols aimed at capitalist modernization in the path of postmodernist aesthetic discourse? Therefore, in a qualitative approach and in a descriptive-analytic study, documented data based on common themes among the variables in the research topic have been analyzed by content analysis method to conclude that the accumulation of space and time due to late capitalist culture with the central discourse of postmodernist aesthetics mixing path marks the atmosphere of cultural symbols that the idea of creating such a utopia of postmodernist atmosphere is compatible with the pattern of photomontage images and their imitation and fusion properties.