Background: The usage of video games for educational purposes has become more prevalent in the recent decade. There are a lot of studies showing that video games can affect a person’s cognitive abilities. However, few studies have aspired to determine if a virtual environment can affect a person’s Game experience. A few examples are competence, negative effects and positive. In this research, an experiment will be conducted where participants are asked to solve simple puzzles in four different virtual environments. Afterwards, the participants are asked to answer a questionnaire based on the Game Experience questionnaire. The results will be compiled, analyzed and discussed. Objectives: The objective of this research is to assess if the different virtual environments affect the subjects’ experience positively and negatively.Methods: The main research methods in this project will be implementation and experimentation with a questionnaire. Where the participants will be given different virtual environments to walk around in and solve simple puzzles. The data will then be analyzed. Results: Some of the results were expected and confirmed some of our hypotheses, however, the other half of the results were unexpected.Conclusions and future work: Different virtual environments had a major impact on a player’s game experience. Environments that are considered "negative" would affect the player’s experience negatively. And "positive environments would affect the player’s experience positively. However, it varies greatly from person to person. For future work, an increase in participants and more carefully planned environments may yield a more accurate result.

Critical media literacy (Kellner & Share, 2005) may better equip children to interpret videogame content and to create games that are nonviolent and socially just. Videogames are growing in popularity in classrooms. Yet educators and parents have concerns about the violent and stereotypical content they include. An earlier study based on the curriculum Beyond Blame: Challenging Violence in the Media (Webb, Martin, Afifi, & Kraus, 2009) examined the value of a media awareness curriculum. In this mixed-method study, I explored the effectiveness of a critical media literacy program that incorporated collaboratively creating nonviolent or sociallyjust games in teaching fourth-grade students the factors of awareness of violence, marketing, and critical media literacy. Qualitative data collected from teacher reflection notes, student journals, Scratch projects, and interviews revealed the positive effects of the program. Quantitative data supported these conclusions. This highlights the need for schools to engage students in computer programming as a means to learn academics, while educating students in critical media literacy to better enable them to navigate wisely the media saturated world in which they live. In learning programming, students engage in collaborative work, their interactions helping them to collectively create meaning for the symbols they create. Set in a framework of critical media literacy and symbolic interactionism (Blumer, 1969; Mead, 1934), this study provides an innovative model for teaching computer programming and critical media literacy skills to students.

Video game researchers have recently begun to explore qualitative techniques to understand video games and their audiences. Yet many questions remain concerning the significance of gaming media and how video game research should be conducted. This research addresses the changing focus of video game researchers from the "producers," or sender of the video game, to the "audience" or receiver. This is accomplished in the following ways: by exploring meanings created by individuals while "role-playing" in an electronic world as an on-screen video game avatar; by using the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique (ZMET), to gather a deeper understanding of how players are interpreting the video game creators intended message, and focusing on the relationships formed between a player and their onscreen character. Using the ZMET method the author conducts ten in-depth interviews looking at the interviewees' relation with the Super Mario Bros avatar to gain an understanding of player-avatar relationships. Interviews are then discussed to describe how these individuals understand the video game message and avatar relationship.

Today’s competitive market in the video game industry puts a lot of stress on companies to be ahead of competitors. The ability to predict the potential of a product gives companies an advantage over competitors on the market. Companies have therefore increased Competitive Intelligence (CI) departments in recent years and looked for ways to optimise forecasting capabilities. Researchers argue for the use of Machine Learning (ML) to forecast market potential of products, and have investigated varying methods of optimising the accuracy of models. Past studies have shown the existence of predictive value in online search traffic on Google. This study set out to investigate if Youtube search traffic holds similar predictive value. Results show that Youtube trends do have a degree of inherent predictive value, and the addition of the information enhances forecasting performance of ML models. However, the exact degree of the predictive value in Youtube trends is yet to be determined, as some evidence from testing implicated it to be strong while others weak.

This study explored to answer if video game players could estimate distance to an NPC walking towards them based on the footsteps sounds of the NPC using amplitude attenuation. The reason was to create a framework or a recommendation for sound designer to work with when implementing footsteps sounds in a game where distance estimations are of importance. A listening test was conducted using Unreal Engine 4.26 (Epic Games, 2022) where 18 participants completed the test. The participants played through 4 courses to complete the test. The courses were: walkthrough of training, walkthrough of main study test, training, and main study. They were asked to estimate the distances to invisible NPCs in full meters. After the test, a questionnaire including demographical data was answered by the participants. The results were then analyzed. The results showed no statistical significance. The results show that, by only using amplitude attenuation and disregarding reverb and occlusion, which is frequently used when sound designing footsteps sounds in video games does not give sufficient information to accurately estimate distance to footsteps cues of an NPC.

Commercially available military-themed virtual simulations have been developed and sold for entertainment since the beginning of the personal computing era. There exists an intense interest by various branches of the military to leverage the technological advances of the personal computing and video game industries to provide low cost military training. By nature of the content of the commercial military-themed virtual simulations, a large overlap has grown between the interests, resources, standards, and technology of the computer entertainment industry and military training branches. This research attempts to identify these commonalities with the purpose of systematically designing and evaluating a common component-based software architecture that could be used to implement a framework for developing content for both commercial and military virtual simulation software applications.

We present a study that investigates user performance benefits of 3D stereo in modern video games. Based on an analysis of several video games that are best suited for use with commercial 3D stereo drivers and vision systems, we chose five modern titles focusing on racing, first person shooter, third person shooter, and sports game genres. For each game, quantitative and qualitative measures were taken to determine if users performed better and learned faster in the experimental group (3D stereo display) than in the control group (2D display). A game experience pre-questionnaire was used to classify participants into beginner, intermediate, and advanced gameplay categories to ensure prior game experience did not bias the experiment. Our results indicate that even though participants preferred playing in 3D stereo, for the games we tested, it does not provide any significant advantage in overall user performance. In addition, users‟ learning rates were comparable in the 3D stereo display and 2D display cases

Synthetic Learning Environments (SLEs) represent a hybrid of simulations and games, and in addition to their pedagogical content, rely on elements of story and interactivity to drive engagement with the learning material. The present work examined the differential impact of varying levels of story and interactivity on learning. The 2x2 between subjects design tested learning and retention among 4 different groups of participants, each receiving one of the 4 possible combinations of low and high levels of story and interactivity. Objective assessments of participant performance yielded the unexpected finding that learners using the SLE performed more poorly than any other learning group, including the gold-standard baseline. This result is made even more surprising by the finding that participants rated their enjoyment of and performance in that condition highest among the four conditions in the experiment. This apparent example of metacognitive bias has important implications for understanding how affect, narrative structure, and interactivity impact learning tasks, particularly in synthetic learning environments.

An experimental research study using a mixed-method analysis to was conducted to examine educational video game effects on mathematics achievement and motivation between sexes. This study examined sex difference in a 7th grade mathematics (Mathematics 2/Mathematics 2 Advanced) classroom (n=60) learning algebra. Attributes and barriers relating to educational video game play, preference, and setting characteristics were explored. To examine achievement and motivation outcomes, a repeated-measure (SPSS v14) test was used. The analysis included ethnographic results from both student and teacher interview and observation sessions for data triangulation. Results revealed a statistically significant academic mathematics achievement score increase (F =21.8, df =1, 54, < .05). Although, mathematics class motivation scores did not present significance (F =.79, df =1, 47, p > .05), both sexes posted similar data outcomes with regard to mathematics class motivation after using an educational video game as treatment during an eighteen-week term in conjunction with receiving in-class instruction. Additionally, there was an increase in male variability in standard deviation score (SDmotivationpre=8.76, SDmotivation post=11.70) for mathematics class motivation. Lastly, self-reported differences between the sexes for this limited sample, with regard to game design likes and dislikes and observed female game play tendencies, were also investigated. The data presented customization as a unified, but most requested, game design need between the sexes. Between sex differences were found only to be superficial other than a female delay in game acceptance with regard to time and game play comfort.

We present an exploration into realistic locomotion interfaces in video games using spatially convenient input hardware. In particular, we use Nintendo Wii Remotes to create natural mappings between user actions and their representation in a video game. Targeting American Football video games, we used the role of the quarterback as an exemplar since the game player needs to maneuver effectively in a small area, run down the field, and perform evasive gestures such as spinning, jumping, or the "juke". In our study, we developed three locomotion techniques. The first technique used a single Wii Remote, placed anywhere on the user's body, using only the acceleration data. The second technique just used the Wii Remote's infrared sensor and had to be placed on the user's head. The third technique combined a Wii Remote's acceleration and infrared data using a Kalman filter. The Wii Motion Plus was also integrated to add the orientation of the user into the video game. To evaluate the different techniques, we compared them with a cost effective six degree of freedom (6DOF) optical tracker and two Wii Remotes placed on the user's feet. Experiments were performed comparing each to this technique. Finally, a user study was performed to determine if a preference existed among these techniques. The results showed that the second and third technique had the same location accuracy as the cost effective 6DOF tracker, but the first was too inaccurate for video game players. Furthermore, the range of the Wii remote infrared and Motion Plus exceeded the optical tracker of the comparison technique. Finally, the user study showed that video game players preferred the third method over the second, but were split on the use of the Motion Plus when the tasks did not require it.