Genom denna avhandling undergår vi som speldesigners en dokumenterad process där vi utvecklar ett spel från koncept till funktionell prototyp. Målet är att kunna bygga vidare på våra egna samt andras metoder för utvecklingen av mekaniker som kompletterar övrigt gameplay. Undersökningsområdet för denna process utgörs av hur vi kan framställa en dödsmekanik som passar i kontext till vårt valda spelkoncept och dess förutsättningar. Detta inriktningsområde grundas i vår vilja att skapa dödsmekaniker som upplevs inge betydelsefulla konsekvenser både på spelarkaraktären och spelupplevelsen i sin helhet vilket stämmer överens med konceptets designmål. Genom ett speltest där en testgrupp genomför ett antal kvalitativa prototyptester av dödsmekaniker kan vi sedan jämföra resultaten och etablera slutsatser kring hur väl varje prototyp lyckas uppfylla konceptets designmål och inge tydliga konsekvenser för spelaren som förstärker resterande gameplay. / Through this thesis we as game designers undergo a documented process in which we develop a game from concept to functional prototype. The end goal is to allow us to further our own as well as others’ methodology for the development of mechanics that complement existing gameplay. The field of inquiry for this process consists of how we can establish a death mechanic that fits in context to our chosen game concept and its parameters. This focal point originates from a desire on our part to create death mechanics that strive to instill meaningful consequences affecting the player as well as the game experience itself which correspond with the design goals of the concept. By performing a playtest where a number of qualitative prototypes of death mechanics are carried out by a test group we can compare the results and establish conclusions concerning how well each prototype manages to fulfill the concept’s design goals and convey clear consequences for the player, reinforcing surrounding gameplay.

[pt] O principal objetivo desta tese é compreender a produção de sentidos realizada por um grupo de adolescentes que gostam de jogar videogames, a partir das interações sociais ocorrentes através destes jogos online e off-line, individuais e coletivos. O problema de pesquisa foi delineado com vistas à exploração de aspectos da cultura que permeiam o uso dos videogames e da ação própria das tecnologias, que enfatizam ou negligenciam certos valores e princípios a partir de ambientes que transformam e são transformados pelos/as seus/suas usuários/as. O quadro teórico utilizado constitui-se pelas perspectivas teórico-metodológicas da Ecologia das Mídias e dos Game Studies, tematizadas em posição dialógica aos Estudos das Mídias na perspectiva da Educomunicação e da Alfabetização Midiática Informacional (AMI). A partir de pesquisa qualitativa, a coleta de dados foi realizada em 2020, utilizando a técnica de grupos focais, em ambiente escolar, com participantes na faixa etária de 12 a 18 anos, estudantes de escola pública no Rio de Janeiro. As categorias de análise emergiram dos relatos dos sujeitos participantes, a partir da observação de padrões resultantes da sistematização das recorrências encontradas. Os dados permitiram a estipulação de quatro categorias analíticas relacionadas à interação social, infraestrutura tecnológica, família, identidades culturais, gênero e representação, a saber: Jogar o jogo: tecnologia e diversão; Interações sociais: vivendo e aprendendo a jogar; Gamer: ser ou não ser; e Avatares: representação e gênero. / [en] The main purpose of this thesis is to understand the production of meanings carried out by a group of teenagers who like to play video games, about the social interactions that occur through these online and offline games, individual and collective. The research problem was delineated to explore the aspects of culture that permeate the use of video games and the proper action of technologies, which emphasize or neglect certain values and principles from environments that transform and are transformed by its users. The theoretical framework used is constituted by the theoretical-methodological perspectives of Media Ecology and Game Studies, which are discussed in a dialogical position with Media Studies from the perspective of Educommunication and Media and Information Literacy (MIL). Based on qualitative research, data collection was carried out in 2020, using the focus groups technique in a school environment with students from public schools in Rio de Janeiro aged 12 to 18 years. The analysis categories emerged from the reports of the participating subjects, based on the observation of patterns resulting from the systematization of the recurrences found. The data allowed the stipulation of four analytical categories related to social interaction, technological infrastructure, family, cultural identities, gender and representation, namely: Playing the game: technology and fun; Social interactions: living and learning to play; Gamer: to be or not to be; and Avatars: representation and gender.

As video games and other gaming has become a popular media form, with 60% of Americans playing games daily (Entertainment Software Association [ESA], 2018), gaming communities have increased in size and participation. While scholarly research has consistently found that women are marginalized in these communities, little research has looked at how men see these communities. Research on homosociality shows that men use communities and relationships with other men to access masculinity (Bird, 1996; Dellinger, 2004; Houston, 2012). Building on game studies and masculinity studies, this research looks at the way men in tabletop roleplaying game communities understand their involvement and the ways their involvement connects with masculinity. Tabletop gaming communities give men access to a form of masculinity they may be denied, primarily by providing access to other ways of building social capital and relationships with other men.

This study aimed to explore which philosophies and opinions professionals within the Chinese indie game industry hold in relation to the indie concept. Indie is a short form of the word "independence”, and is used to describe certain products and creative practices within media such as video games. The term’s exact definition is however subject to discussion. This study aims to include Chinese game professionals in this discussion. The study was carried out in China through Game Hub Scandinavia (Game Hub Scandinavia, 2018) and in cooperation with Indienova. The participants that were interviewed in this study were all professionals within the Chinese game industry. The research tools developed for these interviews were two playable demos and a survey. The answers provided constituted as basis for the study’s concluding analysis. The data indicated that the Chinese indie developers define indie as a creative endeavour which products and underlying ambitions contrasts the commercially motivated game industry in China. / <p>2018-08-23 14:25, G203, svenska</p><p>Högskolevägen 1, 541 28, Skövde</p>

komerční hry. Zaměřuje se na jejich korespondenci s prezentovanými historickými událostmi a výukový potenciál. Práce vznikala v roce 2017 na základě vědeckých prací Bogosta, Chapmana, Juula a dalších, či vlastním výzkumem podpořeným dotazováním respondenty. V úvodní části se autor zaměřuje na dostupnou teorii a poznání jednak v oblasti výuky u her, jednak v oboru herních studií. V následující části se zabývá metodologií diplomové práce, průběhem vlastního výzkumu a dotazníkem. Autor se snaží komerčních her, vnějších vlivů, které formují jejich podobu a přístupu hráčů k tomuto žánru her. Zároveň se snaží zodpovědět otázky "do jaké míry jsou tituly série vzdělávací a jaký je vztah hráče a komerčního obsahu?" V předposlední části diplomové práce autor pracuje s historií prezentovanou akademickými odborníky. Následně podrobuje herní verzi srovnání a zabývá se také reprezentací historie v dalších typech médií. Na závěr seznamuje autor s povídá vytyčené otázky. V neposlední řadě pak na základě výsledků dotazování prezentuje vztah a vliv vybraných her na hráče.

In terms of both production and consumption, video games and gaming are a significant phenomenon in Russia, a fact acknowledged by the authorities and mainstream media. Although internet use in Russia has been a point of academic interest over the past few years, scholars have been slower to research video games despite their increasingly popular position in the media ecology of the region. Similarly, despite the abundance of theory and data on gaming in North America and Europe, game studies researchers have hardly skimmed the surface of the cultures, preferences and activities of gamers further afield. This dissertation investigates the online gaming sphere in Russia, presenting an empirical study of the industry, providing insight into gamers themselves, and analysing the media and political discourses surrounding gaming in Russia. In this study, I draw upon survey data, forum, website, and blog posts, user comments from gaming forums and analyses of local games to construct a picture of gaming activity and identity amongst gamers. In particular, I show how Russian-speaking gamers present themselves as members of a distinct subcultural group. Online gamers who participated in this study are shown to consume and discuss games in ways that can differ from elsewhere in the world, but they still retain common beliefs about the importance of expertise, taste and self-discipline within the gaming community. They display a great deal of knowledge about the games and communities available to them locally, while also consuming foreign games in selective and critical ways. For the reader conversant with game studies work, the dissertation constitutes a challenge to West-centric theories of gaming and gamers and demonstrates the importance of cultural context in shaping gaming practice. Throughout the dissertation, interactions between global and local, media and subcultural definitions of ‘gamer’ are crucial to understanding how gaming plays out in a Russian context. The self-definition of gamers differs greatly from mainstream media concepts of gamers. I contextualise discourses of the gaming self within an analysis of how the Russian media presents gamers as young people in need of moral and emotional guidance. Moreover, I show how contemporary media assessments of games and gamers have much in common with earlier moral panics about Western-inflected media and subcultures, such as rock music and style. Ultimately the gaming landscape in Russia is shown to be full of tensions, and the task of this dissertation is to identify, assess and compare these disparate discourses.

This study explores gender modeling specifically in avatar creation tools through the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV. The design of systems is often limited by the experiences of those who build them. In the video game industry; this means that systems are often designed by white, cisgender, heterosexual men. This demographic does not represent the wealth of people who play games and are subjected to these systems. The needs of marginalized communities, especially queer communities, in terms of affordances and representation tend to be overlooked or forgotten. This issue is apparent in avatar creation tools which define the types of bodies and identities that are allowable in the world of the game. Using Brenda Laurel’s research driven design tactics, modifications to Final Fantasy XIV’s current system were realized through a paper prototype and constant input from a group of self-identifying queer players. Both the feedback from these queer players and the modifications made to the prototype were condensed into a series of suggestions for the creators of these tools. Ultimately, I discovered that there are three key features which vastly improve the affordances of character creators for queer players; the inclusion of pronoun identification, the identification of gender identity, and the separation of both of these options from the character’s physical appearance. Designers who implement these findings in their work will contribute to creating environments that support queer identities.

This philosophical dissertation concerns the nature of play, a nebulous concept that is nonetheless vitally important to understanding the human being. Play is older than the spoken word and represents a mode of being in the world for many animals, including us. Many thinkers have attempted to unravel the mysteries of play but it has long resisted attempts to fully capture it. I begin Part One by defining play – a trickier proposition that one might expect – and examining the biological origin of the instinct for play in boredom and fun. Part One is a genetic account of play. Part Two contains a memetic account of play – these five chapters look at personal, human play in particular. They cover five philosophical topics: how the play concept has been used in the history of philosophy, the phenomenological experience of play, the relations between play and reason, the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of play, and the relation between play and the production of culture. By examining the discourse surrounding the concept of play in these spheres of human activity, this treatise provides a thorough philosophical understanding of play as a foundation upon which future studies of the play concept can build.

Identification record PELANT, Josef. Griefing in Online Games. Prague, 2017. 86 p. Thesis (Mgr.). Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts, Institute of Information Studies and Librarianship, 2001. Thesis lead Vít Šisler. Abstract The goal of this thesis is to find out the frequency of griefing (harassment or intentional provocation of other players) among the players of the most popular genres of online games, and to determine the typical characteristics of griefers, based on following factors: age, gender, preferency of the game genres, and motivational factors of competition, socialization, and teamplay. The goal has been achieved through questionaire survey with the use of quantitative method. Among the most important findings belong that men are substantially more frequently griefers compared to women, griefers are more focused on competition than other respondents, approximately half of the surveyed players have commited griefing, and almost every player has been a victim of a griefer. It has also been found that griefers are more likely to identify themselves as victims of griefing, compared to the rest of players. Keywords griefing, griefer, game studies, online games, second life, world of warcraft

Videogames are becoming an important means of expression for marginalized communities. Despite the growing body of research in queer game studies, transgender identity remains under-researched and lacking in empirical data. By using an experimental approach coupled with grounded theory and informed by current game and queer theory, this study aims to illuminate how transgender- identifying persons approach autobiographical videogame depiction of transgender experience. Ten participants were asked to play influential independent videogame Dys4ia, which depicts the author's hormonal replacement therapy, and semi-structured interviews were conducted. Their responses were coded, and a preliminary model of how Dys4ia works in the context of transgender media ecology was constructed. The term Procedural-autobiographic multimodality is introduced to describe an assemblage of interactive affordances, distinctive aesthetics and situatedness of Dys4ia in structures of minority media while considering video game-specific theories. This study attempts to empirically ground transgender queer game studies, suggesting avenues for future research and proposing a model of how videogames as procedural artefacts work alongside vlogs and other expressive means within transgender mediascape.