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(2022)ThesisVideo game trailers are an effective promotional form of intermediation that enables audiences to navigate and engage with old and new media. Although video game trailers function as advertisements designed to sell a game, they are also stories that provoke social media commentary and debate. Trailers aim to draw the viewer in, convey sound and imagery, and evoke an involuntary reaction of excitement and awe. In this thesis, I will be using the games Fallout 4, Watch Dogs 2, and Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. In the case studies, I investigate how viewers make sense of the promotional and storytelling aspects of video game trailers. I examine how video game trailers have the potential to arouse emotions and interest before viewers even play the game. Trailers provide an insight into the basic gameplay, not only into the gameplay but also into the story and the characters (protagonists and antagonists). They show audiences the video game theme genre and provide the viewer with a visual and auditory tool to entice possession. This project explores these themes, showing how video game trailers have an inherited cinematic quality but also how trailers actually spend little time presenting actual gameplay. There is a clear connection with movie trailers, teasing the events that will take place in the game and asking the player what will happen next. In this study, I used the methods of narrative analysis and textual analysis to analyse comments from YouTube, Facebook, and a survey of video gamers. The textual analysis of the trailers raises questions of representation and authenticity. In this research, I identified an incongruity between the representation of the core features of a game and the promotion of those features in the trailer. The narrative analysis of the trailers focused on storytelling and emplotment in the trailers. A key theme that has emerged from the analysis is that superheroes engage in vigilantism, a justifiable form of self-administered violence. Gamers may feel at ease with the violence used to correct perceived injustices. There is potential for gamers to consider the moral grey area of vigilante violence and romanticised vigilantism. With their enhanced ability to simulate complex interactive narratives for actual and simulated authenticity, video games offer a sophisticated engagement with players that contributes significantly to their widespread and universal support. The role of culturally created characters in the experience of playing a video game helps stimulate philosophical research. I explore whether normative audience expectations can speed up the development of cultural expectations about the relationship between the player and the narrative of the game and its audience. In this context, I examine case study video game trailers and ask what it means to revise our understanding of the relationship between power, law, and morality while playing the game. I examine and critique how the narrative, and thus the mechanics of a specific game, shapes our understanding of connection, power, law, or morality; I contend that prestige reflects normative privilege and law.
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(2021)ThesisMultiferroic BiFe0.5Cr0.5O3 (BFCO) in which ferroelectric and magnetic orders coexist has gained research interest owing to its potential applications, e.g., spintronic and resistive random-access memory. Moreover, multiferroics possess a narrower bandgap compared to typical ferroelectrics, extending their application to photovoltaic devices. In contrast to the conventional semiconductors, the polarization-induced electric field facilitates the photoexcited charge separation, leading to an above-bandgap photovoltage in ferroelectrics. Nevertheless, a long-standing issue is the relatively low absorption of visible light. Thus, it is essential but challenging to tune their bandgap without compromising ferroelectricity. This thesis explores structural phase transition in the epitaxial BFCO films grown on SrRuO3 buffered (001) SrTiO3 substrate via Laser Molecular Beam Epitaxy (LMBE). Reciprocal space mapping result shows strain relaxation mechanism is not solely by the formation of misfit dislocation but also by changing the crystal symmetry, transitioning from tetragonal-like to a monoclinically distorted phase as the thickness increases. The crystallographic evolution is also coupled with bandgap modulation, confirming that BFCO structure and its physical properties are strongly intertwined. Using spectroscopic ellipsometry, the slight redshift of the bandgap distinguishes the absorption process of the T-like BFCO layer from that of monoclinically distorted structure, further confirmed by spectral photocurrent measurement via conductive-atomic force microscopy. The preparation of pure phase BFCO film with a robust polarization is of paramount importance for practical application. Yet, similar to the parental bismuth ferrite, BFCO suffers from poor electrical leakage performance. We report a three-order of magnitude suppression in the leakage current for the BFCO film through judicious adjustment of the growth rate. Scanning probe microscopy (PFM, AFM and c-AFM) results reveal that both microstructure and ferroelectric properties can be tuned by lowering the growth rate, ensuing realization of the room-temperature ferroelectric polarization comparable to the ab-initio predicted value. This thesis provides a facile strategy to tailor the structure-property of epitaxial BFCO film and its functional response for emerging optoelectronic devices.