Nicholas David Bowman

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Syracuse University

Historically, there has been a great deal of interest in using basic measures of individual difference factors to predict future success in traditional sports. For instance, the National Football League (NFL) holds a scouting combine each year prior to the NFL draft during which a host of attributes about players are measured, from basic height and...

Video Game Demand Scale in Spanish

With efforts to investigate the role of interactivity on user psychology in video games, scholars have demonstrated that interactivity may induce cognitive, emotional, physical (controller and exertional), and social demands of global gamers. However, existing studies are missing Latin American gamers as critical yet understudied gaming communities...

With the advances in interactive technology in video games, recent scholars have started to explore whether and how the requirement of interactivity in video games and other digital experiences influences player experience, specifically entertainment. Drawing on the interactivity-as-demand framework, this chapter investigates the effects of interac...

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 by...

Amidst the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, video games were used heavily, presumably to help cope with negative moods and social isolation. This study sought to understand the implications of such play on well-being within a particular sample. Drawing on uses and gratifications and self-determination theories, the study adopted a longitudinal...

Common models of the scientific method articulate the processes by which we hypothesize about the correlation between variables and then test those predictions to make incremental conclusions about the world around us. Implied in this process is the replication and extension of that knowledge to various contexts. As with other social sciences, publ...

Research on the impact of video games on the brain and behavior typically focuses, at its root, on particular experiences inherent in different types of gameplay. Historically, genre labels have been used to quickly classify games into (at least somewhat) nonoverlapping types of experiences. Genre labels have been successfully used in previous rese...

In recent research, video games have been implicated as vehicles for feelings of nostalgia. Retrogames present a unique context in which to explore the elicitation of nostalgia, especially historical nostalgia among younger gamers who may lack first-hand experience with older games and gaming technologies. As part of a larger study investigating no...

The interactivity-as-demand model has been presented, which identifies the cognitive, emotional, physical (controller and exertion), and social demands of video games. These demands are presumed to apply to a broad set of video games and gaming technologies and are measured using the Video Game Demand Scale (VGDS). The current study fills a gap in...

Video Game Demand Scale in Korean

Over the past years, scholars have explored eudaimonic video game experiences—profound entertainment responses that include meaningfulness, reflection, and others. In a comparatively short time, a plethora of explanations for the formation of such eudaimonic gaming experiences has been developed across multiple disciplines, making it difficult to k...

Emerging research has suggested that retrogames can serve as vehicles for historical nostalgia among younger gamers without firsthand experience using older games and equipment—providing an opportunity to engage in a “bygone era” of video gaming. The current study focused on the historic nostalgia potential of playing a retrogame using original or...

Research has shown that seeking fun and enjoyment (i.e., hedonic reasons) motivates playing digital games. However, recent scholarship revealed that gaming also evokes eudaimonic entertainment experiences, such as meaningfulness and being moved. Yet, it is unclear whether players turn to games to have such eudaimonic experiences. Hence, the present...

Historical video games set in famous places in world history have grown in popularity. The current study extends prior work in analyzing how social realism (a dimension of perceived realism focused on regarding game characters and events as authentic) is related to entertainment outcomes, assessing the extent to which sense of place further contrib...

Video games are celebrated for their capacity to elicit myriad emotional experiences, from fun and excitement (hedonia) to reflection and contemplation (eudaimonia). Less clear is the extent to which gamers have salient eudaimonic expectations of upcoming games. The current study reports on an emergent thematic analysis of responses from N = 877 fa...

Historical video games set in famous places in the world history have grown in popularity. The current study extends prior work in analyzing how social realism (a dimension of perceived realism focused on regarding game characters and events as authentic) is related to entertainment outcomes, assessing the extent to which sense of place further con...

Both game-based trolling and hooliganism have existed in some form since the inception of online gaming and professional sports respectively. The two share many characteristics: provocation of an opposing entity, the tendency to taunt or trash-talk others based on their social or individual identity, and disruptive and/or destructive behaviour. How...

From their development in the early 1960s to their global prominence today, video games are an increasingly ubiquitous feature of entertainment culture. Likewise, video games and their supposed and actual effects on players feature prominently in public discourse and academic research. However, international scholarly outlets have largely omitted th...

Desde su desarrollo a principios de la década de 1960 hasta su prominencia mundial actual, los videojuegos son una característica cada vez más omnipresente de la cultura del entretenimiento. Asimismo, los videojuegos y sus efectos supuestos y reales en los jugadores ocupan un lugar destacado en el discurso público y la investigación académica. Sin...

Physical inactivity is a global problem, and active video games (AVGs) have been demonstrated as effective at motivating players to be more physically active. Virtual-reality AVGs (VRAVGs) further encourage engagement with exerting gameplay by challenging players to move in a full 360-degree range of motion. As a unique feature of VRAVGs, we examin...

As robots are increasingly integrated into human social spheres, they will be put in situations in which they may be perceived as moral patients—the actual or possible targets of humans’ (im)moral actions by which they may realize some benefit or suffering. However, little is understood about this potential, in part due to a lack of operationalizat...

Video games have been a popular form of media entertainment since the 1970s, with gamers of all ages experiencing and engaging digital worlds and creating lasting memories in those spaces. As video games mature, so are their players-by some estimates, the average age of a gamer is in their 30s, and often playing games with their children. As such,...

Video games are celebrated for their capacity to elicit myriad emotional experiences, from fun and excitement (hedonia) to reflection and contemplation (eudaimonia). Less clear is the extent to which gamers have salient eudaimonic expectations of upcoming games. The current study reports on an emergent thematic analysis of responses from N = 877 fa...

As news organizations struggle with issues of public distrust, artificially intelligent (AI) journalists may offer a means to reduce perceptions of hostile media bias through activation of the machine heuristic—a common mental shortcut by which audiences perceive a machine as objective, systematic, and accurate. This report details the results of t...

While perspectives on open scholarship practices (OSPs) in Communication are noted in editorials and position papers, as a discipline we lack data-driven insights into how the larger community understands, feels about, engages in, and supports OSPs – insights that could inform current conversations about OSPs in Communication and document how the f...

While perspectives on open scholarship practices (OSPs) in Communication are noted in editorials and position papers, as a discipline we lack data-driven insights into how the larger community understands, feels about, engages in, and supports OSPs—insights that could inform current conversations about OSPs in Communication and document how the fie...

Studies have demonstrated the eudaimonic capacity of digital games, but less clear is whether gameplay is eudaimonically motivated. The present study examined potential eudaimonic motivations of gaming fans of five different upcoming games (N = 1163). Factor analysis reported ‘eudaimonic growth’ as a distinct gaming motivation alongside ‘absorption...

With the popularity of virtual reality (VR) devices, advertisers are starting to seek the potential advertising tactics and effects in VR. This study investigates the influence of introducing 3D animated agents on video ad effectiveness in a VR context (i.e., brand/product attitude, brand/product recall, purchase intention, and ad-skipping behavior...

As gamers age, the classic and retro video game market grows in lockstep. Previous work has shown that myriad aspects of games, such as playing familiar franchises, seeing game consoles and trailers, or even thinking about past gameplay, can induce nostalgia. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches, the current study looks to...

Despite stereotypes of video games as isolating technologies, video gaming can be a highly social activity that contributes to well-being. Advances in computing technology and greater social acceptance of video gaming have led to overall increases in gameplay in social scenarios. Our review focuses on three areas of research relevant to understandi...

From a media psychology perspective, an important feature of digital media are the “bottom-up” and “top-down” affective experiences that digital media trigger in their users. Emotions play a critical role in motivating our selection of digital media, guiding our processing of the content of digital media, and describing and determining the effects...

Anecdotal evidence suggests that video games regularly inspire awe in players—an emotional response involving feelings of being ‘blown away’ or ‘amazed’. While game research has mostly overlooked awe, initial theoretical and empirical work just recently suggested that awe experiences substantially fuel players’ entertainment experiences. The presen...

This paper examines how microstreamers either intentionally or unintentionally share their intimate physical spaces with audiences. While most streaming research focuses on larger and/or monetized professional streamers, there is emerging research on ‘microstreaming’—streams whose audiences are often as low as single digits—and their importance as...

In the face of increasing public distrust for journalistic institutions, stories sourced from artificially intelligent (AI) journalists have the potential to lower hostile media bias by activating the machine heuristic—a mental shortcut assuming machines are more unbiased, systematic, and accurate than are humans. An online experiment targeting iss...

World of Warcraft (WoW) Classic (released August 2019) allows players to return to the original game experience. This study considers how WoW players experience game content through media nostalgia and sense of place and investigates how social presence impacts these components of experience. Survey questions addressed 306 participants’ experiences...

In playing videogames, players often create avatars as extensions of agency into those spaces, where the player-avatar relationship (PAR) both shapes gameplay and is the product of gameplay experiences. Avatars are generally understood as singular bodies; however, we argue they are functional and phenomenological assemblages—networks of social and...

A growing number of communication scholars have pushed for increased accountability and transparency in scholarship. While perspectives on open scholarship practices (OSPs) are noted in editorials and positions papers, we lack insights into how the larger community understands, feels about, engages with, and supports OSPs in practice. A mixed-metho...

A growing number of communication scholars have pushed for increased accountability and transparency in scholarship. While perspectives on open scholarship practices (OSPs) are noted in editorials and positions papers, we lack insights into how the larger community understands, feels about, engages with, and supports OSPs in practice. A mixed-metho...

Digital games have evolved into a medium that moves beyond basic toys for distraction and pleasure towards platforms capable of and effective at instigating more serious, emotional, and intrapersonal experiences. Along with this evolution, games research has also started to consider more deeply affective and cognitive reactions that resemble the br...

Digital games have evolved into a medium that moves beyond basic toys for distraction and pleasure towards platforms capable of and effective at instigating more serious, emotional, and intrapersonal experiences. Along with this evolution, games research has also started to consider more deeply affective and cognitive reactions that resemble the br...

The connection between player and avatar is central to digital gaming, with identification assumed to be core to this connection. Often, scholarship engages single dimensions of identification, yet emerging perspectives reveal that identification is polythetic (PID) – comprising at least six sufficient (but not necessary) mechanisms. The current st...

Affective disposition theory explains that the perceived morality of characters plays a critical role in the experience of enjoyment, but is challenged by the apparent appeal of morally ambiguous characters (MACs). Therefore, it is important to examine the role of morality in enjoyment and to understand how viewers perceive characters of varying mo...

This handbook provides a strong collection of communication- and psychology-based theories and models on media entertainment, which can be used as a knowledge resource for any academic and applied purpose. Its 41 chapters offer explanations of entertainment that audiences find in any kind of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, from classic novels to VR video ga...

This handbook provides a strong collection of communication- and psychology-based theories and models on media entertainment, which can be used as a knowledge resource for any academic and applied purpose. Its 41 chapters offer explanations of entertainment that audiences find in any kind of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, from classic novels to VR video ga...

In the last 10 years, many canonical findings in the social sciences appear unreliable. This so-called “replication crisis” has spurred calls for open science practices, which aim to increase the reproducibility, replicability, and generalizability of findings. Communication research is subject to many of the same challenges that have caused low re...

Gamification—the use of video game elements in non-gaming environments—is an effective and lucrative method of compelling individuals to engage with behaviors normally found aversive or uninteresting. Gamified applications are found in myriad areas, from education and social justice to health and wellness. A preponderance of evidence suggests that...

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 phy...

Videogames directly involve players as co-creators of on-screen events, and this interactivity is assumed to be a core source of their attraction as a successful entertainment medium. Although interactivity is an inherent property of the videogame, it is variably perceived by the end user—for some users, perceived as a more demanding process, taxin...

Scientific practices are constantly evolving to meet the best practices and standards available at a point in time. In the current publication environment, advances in communication technology in tandem with concerns about the transparency of extant communication scholarship have encouraged many to reconsider how we share knowledge with one another...

Game streaming is emerging as an increasingly popular form of social gaming even among non-professionals. As such, players have to adapt to the presence of a digital gaming audience consisting of people who are either synchronously or asynchronously participating in their performance and engaging with them remotely via digital media. While individu...

For social sciences such as communication studies, in which key variables are often indirectly measured using myriad operationalizations, issues of construct validity are critical to the veracity of claims made from empirical data. This manuscript considers the ways we can improve how we demonstrate construct validity when using survey items. Some...

The Video Game Demand Scale (VGDS) is a 26-item, five-factor scale designed to assess the cognitive, emotional, physical, and social demands experienced by video game players. Given the international relevance of video games, cross-cultural research focusing on gamers beyond the US community holds promise to substantiate and refine extant approache...

Little empirical work has explored the psychological processes triggered by immersive technologies and how they might lead to more effective desirable prosocial outcomes. Thus, the current study explores two different modalities for presenting 360 videos—YouTube and head‐mounted display (HMD)—as strategies for engaging audiences with cause‐related...

Audience flow research began as a way to explain how and why audiences moved from one media program to the next. The earliest work was rooted in a broadcast model of media content distribution, in which data suggested audiences for more popular “lead‐in” programs tended to flow into subsequent programming; the latter programs inheriting the audienc...

Invoking Tuan’s cultural–geographic notion of sense of place (SoP), this study examined the potential for video game play to foster a sense of affective familiarity with (emotional connection) and abstract understanding of (place recollection) actual physical locations rendered in digital environments. A total of 556 players of Fallout 76 were aske...

This paper explores the relationships between two types of permadeath (permadeath and faux-permadeath), player-avatar relationships/interactions, and video game demands.

New perspectives on the misinformation ecosystem that is the production and circulation of fake news. What is fake news? Is it an item on Breitbart, an article in The Onion, an outright falsehood disseminated via Russian bot, or a catchphrase used by a politician to discredit a story he doesn't like? This book examines the real fake news: the const...

From the middle-20th century to today, video games have grown from an idiosyncratic interest of computer programmers and engineers to a globally dominant form of media entertainment. Advances in technology and creativity have combined to present players with interactive experience that vary in their cognitive, emotional, physical, and social comple...

Purpose To examine the association between positive and negative experiences on social media (SM) and perceived social isolation (PSI). Design Cross-sectional survey. Setting One large mid-Atlantic University. Participants A total of 1178 students aged 18 to 30 were recruited in August 2016. Measures Participants completed an online survey asse...

Ample evidence exists of bipartisan positive attitudes towards undocumented immigrants receiving a path to citizenship, and of a lack of US residents’ knowledge about undocumented immigration, but it is not yet clear whether individuals in the same sampling frame may exhibit both favourable attitudes towards and ignorance about undocumented immigra...

This paper outlines an in-progress systematic review of extant research in game studies that has incorporated Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), or relevant extensions of that theory to media entertainment, such as the Moral Intuition and Media Entertainment/Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars (MIME). Due to the interdisciplinary nature of these...