At an unrivaled and enduring pace, computing has transformed the world, resulting in demand for a universal fourth foundation beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic: computational thinking (CT). Despite increasingly widespread acceptance of CT as a crucial competency for all, transforming education systems accordingly has proven complex. The principal hypothesis of this thesis is that we can improve the efficiency and efficacy of teaching and learning CT by building gameful learning and assessment systems on top of block-based programming environments. Additionally, we believe this can be accomplished at scale and cost conducive to accelerating CT dissemination for all. After introducing the requirements, approach, and architecture, we present a solution named Gameful Direct Instruction. This involves embedding Parsons Programming Puzzles (PPPs) in Scratch, which is a block-based programming environment currently used prevalently in grades 6-8. PPPs encourage students to practice CT by assembling into correct order sets of mixed-up blocks that comprise samples of well-written code which focus on individual concepts. The structure provided by PPPs enable instructors to design games that steer learner attention toward targeted learning goals through puzzle-solving play. Learners receive continuous automated feedback as they attempt to arrange programming constructs in correct order, leading to more efficient comprehension of core CT concepts than they might otherwise attain through less structured Scratch assignments. We measure this efficiency first via a pilot study conducted after the initial integration of PPPs with Scratch, and second after the addition of scaffolding enhancements in a study involving a larger adult general population. We complement Gameful Direct Instruction with a solution named Gameful Constructionism. This involves integrating with Scratch implicit assessment functionality that facilitates constructionist video game (CVG) design and play. CVGs enable learner to explore CT using construction tools sufficiently expressive for personally meaningful gameplay. Instructors are enabled to guide learning by defining game objectives useful for implicit assessment, while affording learners the opportunity to take ownership of the experience and progress through the sequence of interest and motivation toward sustained engagement. When strategically arranged within a learning progression after PPP gameplay produces evidence of efficient comprehension, CVGs amplify the impact of direct instruction by providing the sculpted context in which learners can apply CT concepts more freely, thereby broadening and deepening understanding, and improving learning efficacy. We measure this efficacy in a study of the general adult population. Since these approaches leverage low fidelity yet motivating gameful techniques, they facilitate the development of learning content at scale and cost supportive of widespread CT uptake. We conclude this thesis with a glance at future work that anticipates further progress in scalability via a solution named Gameful Intelligent Tutoring. This involves augmenting Scratch with Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) functionality that offers across-activity next-game recommendations, and within-activity just-in-time and on-demand hints. Since these data-driven methods operate without requiring knowledge engineering for each game designed, the instructor can evolve her role from one focused on knowledge transfer to one centered on supporting learning through the design of educational experiences, and we can accelerate the dissemination of CT at scale and reasonable cost while also advancing toward continuously differentiated instruction for each learner.

The purpose of this essay is to explore the connection between the novel adaptation of Five Nights at Freddy’s and its video game source. As well as questioning how the two sources have developed a unique transmedial symbiosis. This relationship will be explored through the lens of modern adaptation, transmedial storytelling, worldbuilding, and world linking methods. By exploring the games unnatural narrative the transmedial tools and ideas the franchise has been based on can be defined. Through interaction and puzzle-like narrative which invites the player to participate by discussing and theorizing. Which then evolved and expanded further through the creation of the novel trilogy. The novel trilogy creates a transmedial narrative using world linking transmedial methodology to achieve interconnection between the works.

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Video games often include various creatures within their games, these creatures often give the world in which they inhabit a richer experience for the player. Creating these creatures can be costly, to lower these costs procedural content generated creatures could be used instead. Creatures created with PCG will have a lower upfront cost but comes with the downside of less control without a large amount of testing. This is a problem, what we have tried to do is lessening the amount of time needed to achieve the desired level of perfection. In this paper we have tried to find patterns which will further help the use of procedural content generated creatures. The game Forest Moon will be introduced to gather data and to find pattern of how players interact from various visual cues. With the data we have gained further understanding on how players react and what kind of emotions they feel when certain visual cues are presented.

This project aims to explore the effects of feedback over experience invideo games. It acts as a part of a discussion around the concept of “Juiciness”, byattempting to define it both in theory and practice. The text describes a positionon “Juiciness” in relation to experience design and “Experiential qualities”, anddiscusses the role of aesthetics in the context of feedback. The practical aspect ofthe project is aimed towards finding where “Juiciness” can enrich a designprocess and this is done through the design, development and analysis of a videogame prototype. The project also takes a critical standpoint towards “Juiciness”,in order to question and expand on the current definitions of the concept.

This thesis examines the fissures and intersections between feminist digital media, queer theory, and Mad and disability studies. Moving across social media platforms, hashtag data, and digital gaming, this project argues for the subversive and creative potential within Mad/crip/queer digital identity performances. My theorizing of the avatar as an automedial figure in this project is attentive to the politics of the face as a site of encounter, to digital bodies and movement, to identification and community-building, and to embodiment and affects that move between on- and off-screen lives. This thesis follows the “bad avatar,” a collection of Mad digital identity practices that interrupt, disrupt, and transgress normalizing and normative digital spaces of North American settler capitalist culture. Claiming the bad avatar as a deliberate identity position is an act of claiming the label of “bad,” which here has multiple meanings: Mad queer bodies—physical and digital—are bad citizens because we break the heteronormative patriarchal rules. We’re troublemakers—we make trouble for power systems and those who embody power. We can be bad workers, unproductive and fatigued. We can be bad for capitalism and bad for nationalist morale. We also experience feelings that become pathologized and policed. As despair, panic, melancholy, and angst stick to our bodies our bodies themselves become framed as bad: sick, broken, wrong, a problem in need of fixing or eradication. Reclaiming “bad” is both a celebration of the willful subject (Ahmed 2014) and a challenge to the binary of “good/bad” that is used to oppress Mad and disabled bodies. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis theorizes the digital avatar as an automedial figure, a mode of virtual embodiment and a site of encounter. I use “avatar” to draw a connecting line between widely varied digital identity acts that occur across social media platforms and video games. This thesis examines the “bad avatar,” a collection of Mad/crip/disabled faces, bodies, and identity practices that interrupt, disrupt, and transgress the normalizing and normative digital spaces of North American settler capitalist culture. Mad/crip digital identity play offers avenues for enacting modes of resistance through the politics of representation and the processes of identity performance and community-building.