Esta pesquisa parte do problema acerca do sentido de jogar videogame. Estudos sobre videogame nunca foram muitos na área acadêmica, todavia vemos um crescimento na preocupação séria com o tema nos últimos anos com os game studies que englobam estudos interdisciplinares vários. O objetivo deste trabalho é compreender como é jogar videogame com base em um relato referente à experiência em Phantasy Star . Propõe-se a utilização do método fenomenológico como forma de análise dos dados e um diálogo com autores que corroboram com esta perspectiva de pesquisa e autores da área dos videogames. Com esta pesquisa, busca-se contribuir com a psicologia do Brasil além dos game studies de modo geral. E, não obstante, ser uma fonte para a reflexão acerca de estereótipos promovidos pela mída e muitas vezes corroborados por cientistas sobre jogadores de videogame. / The present research starts with the problem concerning the meaning of playing videogames. There are few academic videogame studies, but it is possible to see a growing development in research as we can see with the game studies that unite interdisciplinary studies. The goal of this work is to comprehend how it is to play videogames based on one discourse concerning an experience in Phantasy Star. We propose the phenomenological method as a way to analyze the data and a dialog with authors who adopt the same perspective and others in the specific field of videogame studies. It is intended with this research to improve the Brazilian psychology and game studies as a whole. And nonetheless to be a critical source concerning the stereotypes prevalent about videogame players as shown in the media, and often adopted by scientists.

M.Sc. (Information Technology) / The dissertation provides a look at artificial intelligence techniques that have been embedded into computer games, which is then referred to as either game agents or non-player character agents (NPC-agent). This dissertation focuses on the design and creation of an agent that utilises the concept of symbiosis for controlling a non-player character (NPC). The dissertation considers what agents are, and what their connection to computer games is. The aspect of cloud computing was considered as it provides a new avenue for additional resources to be obtained for agents in computer games. To understand how this can be achieved cloud computing is investigated to provide a basic understanding of cloud computing as a whole. The next stage was to consider the essential components in a game agent, which are navigation, decision-making, and perception. The components are then discussed along with the techniques that they have utilised. Once the research was completed, the model was designed with the aid of symbiosis to create a symbiotic game agent (SGA). The SGA is created by breaking down the vital components of a game agent into separate symbiont agents that have the sole purpose of fulfilling one set of responsibilities, for example, a symbiont agent is responsible for all perception activity in connection to the NPC. To allow access to the resources to be obtained from cloud computing, service orientation and a service agent are introduced into the design. The last stage of the dissertation is the creation of a prototype SGA to provide proof of the concept of the model. Within the prototype, the SGA was implemented along with the implemented navigation symbiont agent, using a service agent. Results of the implementation are presented, highlighting the use of each of the symbiont agents in the SGA while they direct the NPC in the prototype computer game environment.

As live streaming of video games has become easier, electronic sports have grown quickly and they are still increasing as tournaments grow in viewers and prizes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the theory Metagame Bounds by applying it to League of Legends and Dota 2, to see if it is a valid way of looking at character balance in the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena game genre. The main mode of both games consist of matches played on a map where a team of five players is up against another team of five players. Characters in the games generally have four abilities and a number of attributes, making them complex to compare without context. We gathered character data from websites and entered the data into a file that we used with the Metagame Bounds application. We compared the graphs that the data yielded with how often a character wins and how often it is played. To examine whether the characters were balanced we also played the games and analysed the characters in depth. All statistical data gathered was retrieved over the span of a few hours on the 21st of April 2015 from the websites Champion.gg for League of Legends and Dotabuff for Dota 2. Sirlin’s (2001) definition of multiplayer game balance is “A multiplayer game is balanced if a reasonably large number of options available to the player are viable – especially, but not limited to, during high-level play by expert players.” and with the data we see that these games are balanced in terms of characters according to that definition. Overall we believe that Metagame Bounds is a valid way of looking at balance within the genre, but the data is not completely reliable on its own and should be compared with other statistics.

This study investigated the relationship between the degree of involvement with video games of 72 male university students with performance on pilot screening tests of psychomotor abilities, perceptual abilities, and cognitive style, and also with several personological variables, school performance, locus of control, sociability, and social presence. Additionally, the effects of experience with a video game on the learning of perceptual and psychomotor skills was examined for different levels of previous computer game involvement. It was found that those students who began playing at earlier ages and who more recently played the most demonstrated increased psychomotor abilities, and those abilities appeared to be enhanced by video game play. Greater amounts of time per week spent with computer games were found to correlate with increased facility in learning perceptual skills on computerized instrumentation, and with relative underachievement in school. No systematic relationship was found between degree of video game involvement and measures of sociability, social presence, and field dependence-independence. The study concluded that computer games may have effects upon those individuals who play them, but the effects may not be as negative as many people believe.

This paper tries to characterize relation between narrative of novels and computer games. In its first part it points out specifics of the narrative of videogames, but also shows how narrative used in literature reacted in a form of multiform stories. It defines the possible kinds of relations between these two media (genetical influence, influence of structural analogy, influence of functional similarity, influence of shared contextual functioning, metatextual relation and changes caused by shared influences of perception), shows possible directions in which they can be used and finally it shows some of the prominent examples from both media to make these relations clearer. The main interest of the paper is then influence of structural analogy because of comparison of possibilities in both kinds of narrative. KEYWORDS narratology - narrative - fictional worlds - comparatistics - literature - computer games

Facial animation is an integral and increasing part of 3D games. This study investigates how the two most common methods of 3D facial animation compare to each other. The goal of this study is to summarize the situation and to provide animators and software developers with relevant recommendations. The two most utilized methods of facial animation; morph target animation and bone driven animation are examined with their strong and weak aspects presented. The investigation is based on literature analysis as well as a comparative case study approach which was used for comparing multiple formal and informal sources according to seven parameters such as: performance, production time, technical limitations, details and realism, ease of usability, cross platform compatibility and common combinations of systems. The strengths and weaknesses of the two methods of 3D facial animation are compared and discussed followed by a conclusion part which present recommendation to which is the preferable method to use under different circumstances. In some cases, the results are inconclusive due to a lack of data.  It is concluded that a combination of morph target and bone driven animation will give the most artistic control if time is not limited.

[pt] O autismo é um transtorno global do desenvolvimento infantil que afeta a capacidade de comunicação do indivíduo, de estabelecer relacionamentos e de responder apropriadamente ao ambiente. A Ciência da Computação e, em particular, a área de Interação Humano-Computador (IHC) podem auxiliar na construção de ferramentas com alta qualidade de uso capazes de ajudar no desenvolvimento de crianças com autismo. Este trabalho tem por objetivo analisar o impacto de um programa de computador desenvolvido exclusivamente para ajudar crianças com autismo na aquisição de vocabulário. Os resultados obtidos demonstram que as crianças foram capazes de aprender novas palavras, retendo e generalizando o conhecimento. / [en] Autism is a global development disorder that affects children s ability to communicate, to establish relationships and to respond appropriately to the environment. Within Computer Science, the area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) can assist in building high quality tools that can help the development of children with autism. This work aims to analyze the impact of a computer game developed exclusively to help children with autism in vocabulary acquisition. The results obtained show that children were able to effectively learn new words. Evidence of generalization and retention has been shown.

The main objective of the thesis is to describe situation on the current computer games market in Czech Republic and with use of own market research to reveal behavior, usage and preferences of consumers on this market. Based on this data significant market segments should be revealed and appropriate conclusions and recommendations useful for marketing communication should be given for them. Own market research is of quantitative character and is realized in form of Internet questionnaire. Data obtained from this questionnaire are analyzed with help of pivot tables in MS Excel. IBM SPSS Statistics 20 is used for uncovering market segments and expansion of their profiles. The output of the thesis is detection of 5 major market segments and formulation of basic recommendations on marketing mix level for each market segment.

The recent transformation of consumer graphics (CG) cards into powerful 3D rendering processors is due in large measure to the success of game developers in delivering mass market entertainment software that feature highly immersive and captivating virtual environments. Despite this success, 3D CG application development is becoming increasingly handicapped by the inability of traditional content creation methods to keep up with the demand for content. The term content is used here to refer to any data operated on by application code that is meant for viewing, including 3D models, textures, animation sequences and maps or other data-intensive descriptions of virtual environments. Traditionally, content has been handcrafted by humans. A serious problem facing the interactive graphics software development community is how to increase the rate at which content can be produced to keep up with the increasingly rapid pace at which software for interactive applications can now be developed. Research addressing this problem centers around procedural content creation systems. By moving away from purely human content creation toward systems in which humans play a substantially less time-intensive but no less creative part in the process, procedural content creation opens new doors. From a qualitative standpoint, these types of systems will not rely less on human intervention but rather more since they will depend heavily on direction from a human in order to synthesize the desired content. This research draws heavily from the entertainment software domain but the research is broadly relevant to 3D graphics applications in general.

This thesis explores the balance between visual quality and the performance of a 3D object for computer games. Additionally, it aims to help new 3D artists to create assets that are both visually adequate and optimized for real-time rendering. It further investigates the differences in the judgement of the visual quality of thosethat know computer graphics, and thosenot familiar with it. Many explanations of 3D art optimization are often highly technical and challenging for graphic artists to grasp. Additionally, they regularly neglect the effects of optimization to the visual quality of the assets. By testing several 3D assets to measure their render time while using a survey to gather their visual assessments, it was discovered that 3D game art is very contextual. No definite or straightforward way was identified to find the balance between art quality and performance universally. Neither when it comes to performance nor visuals. However, some interesting findings regarding the judgment of visual quality were observed and presented. / Den här uppsatsen utforskar balansen mellan visuell kvalitéoch prestanda i 3D modeller för spel. Vidare eftersträvar den att utgöra ett stöd för nya 3D-modelleingskonstnärer för att skapa modeller som är både visuellt adekvata och optimerade för att renderas i realtid. Dessutom undersöks skillnaden mellan omdömet av den visuella kvalitén mellan de som är bekanta med 3D datorgrafik och de som inte är det. Många förklaringar gällande optimering av 3D grafik är högst tekniska och utgör en utmaning för grafiker att förståsig på och försummar dessutom ofta effekten av hur optimering påverkar resultatet rent visuallet. Genom att testa ett flertal 3D modeller, mäta tiden det tar för dem att renderas, samt omdömen gällande visuella intryck, drogs slutsatsen att bedömning av 3D modellering för spel är väldigt kontextuell. Inget definitivt och enkelt sätt att hitta balansen mellan visuella kvalitén upptäcktes. Varken gällande prestanda eller visuell kvalité. Däremot gjordes några intressanta upptäckter angående bedömningen av den visuella kvalitén som observerades och presenterades.