EverQuest is a multiplayer online role playing game that serves as a practical incarnation of life as a cyborg in a posthuman community. Using cultural materialsim, this thesis demonstrates how the words of EverQuest interactants - from message boards, interviews, and player in-game communications - construct the world of EverQuest and the roles of the interactants as its citizens. More specifically, this thesis will argue that the EverQuest world serves to reify the ideas of consumer capitalism that informs the "real" world, even as EverQuest itself promises an escape from that world.

Recently, many researchers have been interested in how videogames can influence the attitude and behavior of children. It has also been questioned if videogames can be a useful teaching tool in the classroom. There are many games that have been created to teach traditional school subjects such as Math and English. But what about creating games to teach about current environmental issues? The goal of my thesis project is to create an educational advocacy game for smartphone devices that will educate children about the effects of overfishing on marine life and how it can negatively affect coastal communities in the Caribbean. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014.. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

As puzzle-driven, character based games, Portal and Portal 2, developed by the Valve Corporation, are not only pioneering in their use of narrative, but they also revolutionize the function of aporia. This thesis explores the role of aporia and use of the narrative in the two video games. It will be argued that the games possess a rigid narrative structure, but while the narrative serves as a peripheral construction, there are other structures that contribute to the experience of gameplay. The research aims to determine how the games adapt narrative and use it in combination with other elements to move beyond simple play and storytelling. As video games become more widely studied in academia, it is important that they merit and maintain standing ; Portal and Portal 2 not only provide a rich gameplay experience, but also offer a particular interaction not found in other texts. / by Kimberly Copeland. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

Wong Sun Fai. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-102). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter Chapter I: --- Introduction --- p.9 / Chapter Chapter II: --- A New Issue in Historiography / Chapter 2.1 --- Issues on Historiography in Recent Years --- p.16 / Chapter 2.2 --- Computer Game as a Topic of Historical Study --- p.32 / Chapter Chapter III: --- The Scope of Game/Play Studies / Chapter 3.1 --- Archeology of Game Studies: Historical Approach --- p.34 / Chapter 3.2 --- Anthropology and (Post-)structuralism --- p.37 / Chapter 3.3 --- Psychology and Pedagogy --- p.40 / Chapter 3.4 --- Cultural Studies and Recent Approaches --- p.45 / Chapter Chapter IV: --- Romance of Three Kingdoms / Chapter 4.1 --- The Company: KOEI --- p.52 / Chapter 4.2 --- The Simulation of History --- p.54 / Chapter 4.3 --- Controlling and Interactivity --- p.61 / Chapter 4.4 --- Digitalization of Historical Image --- p.65 / Chapter 4.5 --- Reconstructing of Historical Ideology --- p.70 / Chapter Chapter V: --- Reconstructing History / Chapter 5.1 --- Evolution of Medias --- p.76 / Chapter 5.2 --- Game as Media --- p.80 / Chapter 5.3 --- Virtual Reality and the Reconstruction of History --- p.84 / Chapter Chapter VI: --- Conclusion --- p.91 / Reference --- p.95

The Internet has enabled the popular pastime of playing video games to grow rapidly by connecting game players in disparate locations. However, with popularity have come the two challenges of hosting a large number of users and detecting cheating among users. For reasons of control, security, and ease of development, the most popular system for hosting on-line games is the client server architecture. This is also the most expensive and least scalable architecture for the game publisher, which drives hosting costs upwards with the success of the game. In addition to the expense of hosting, as a particular game grows more competitive and popular, the incentive to cheat for that game grows as well. All popular online games suffer from cheats in one form or another, and this cheating adversely affects game popularity and growth. In this dissertation we follow a hypothetical game company (GameCorp) as it surmounts challenges involved in running an on-line game. We develop a characterization of gamer habits and game workloads from data sampled over a period of years, and show the benefits and drawbacks of multiplexing online applications together in a single large server farm. We develop and evaluate a geographic redirection service for the public server architecture to match clients with servers. We show how the public server game architecture can be used to scalably host large persistent games such as massively multiplayer (MMO) games that previously used the client server architecture. Finally we develop a taxonomy for client cheating in on-line games to focus research efforts, and specifically treat one of the categories in detail: information exposure in peer-to-peer games. The thesis of this dissertation is: a methodology for accurate usage modeling of server resources can improve workload management; public-server resources can be leveraged in new ways to serve multiplayer on-line games; and that information exposure in peer-to-peer on-line games is preventable or detectable with the adoption of cryptographic protocols.

Whether virtual reality will have positive or negative implications on the social structure is debatable, but one thing is certain- virtual reality will play an increasingly important role in public and private life as we move toward the future (1). Over the years there has been a notable increase in the amount of people playing online virtual reality games. World of Warcraft (WoW) alone has an estimated eight million account holders, making it the largest Massive Multi-player Online Role-playing Game (MMORPG) in the world. Although the Internet has been appropriated by social practice, it does have specific affects on the social practice itself. Role-playing and identity building form the basis of online interaction (Castells, 2001:118), which suggests that social patterns of communication are starting to change. This study starts with the basic explanation of the Internet and Globalization which lends a hand to those wanting to escape into parallel online worlds, where they are able to reinvent themselves. This will lead into a discussion on how virtual reality online gaming can aid in the erosion of social communication as well as enhance it, through communities, the identity, and addiction. Theorists such as Rheingold (1994), Turkle (1998), Robins (1998) and Yee (2006) discuss how virtual reality gaming provides a window to a different world, where players can experiment with their identities as well as interact with people from around the world; all of which aid in the shift of normal social patterns and self construction. Finally a close look is taken on why these virtual reality online games hold such an allure to its players, turning them into gaming addicts, or is it an online communication addiction. During this dissertation a preliminary case study was under taken with a collected group of the Durban youth, regarding WoW and their online interactions with people abroad. It is evident that further research needs to be conducted in order to fully understand the extent of virtual reality online games and their effect on social behaviours and communication patterns. As a transformation in the relationship between the self and the social outside worlds, tends to blur when gamers enter into their fantasy society. (1) www.bilawchuk.com / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.

In the age of computing, we rely on software to manage our days, from the moment we wake up until we go to sleep. Software predicts the future based on actualized data from the past. It produces procedures instead of experiences and solutions instead of care. Software systems tend to perpetuate a normalized state of equilibrium. Their application in social media, predictive policing, and social profiling is increasingly erasing diversity in culture and identity. Our immediate reality is narrowing towards cultural conventions shared among the powerful few, whose voices directly influence contemporary digital culture. On the other hand, computational collective intelligence can sometimes generate emergent forces to counter this tendency and force software systems to open up. Historically, artists from different artistic moments have adopted collaborative making to redefine the boundary of creative expression. Video Gaming, especially open-world simulation games, is rapidly being adopted as an emerging form of communication, expression, and self-organization. How can gaming conventions such as Narrative Emergence, Hacking, and Modding help us understand collective play as countering forces against the systematic tendency of normalization? How can people from diverse backgrounds come together to contemplate, make, and simulate rules and conditions for an alternative virtual world? What does it mean to design and virtually inhabit a world where rules are rewritten continuously by everyone, and no one is in control?

The proliferation of the Internet and online-based social interactions has become an increasingly popular topic with communication scholars. The goal of this study was to explore how massively multi-player online role playing game (MMORPG) players make sense of and negotiate their online social interactions. This study (N = 292) examined how players of SecondLife and World of Warcraft evaluated their online relationships compared to their offline relationships and investigated how different levels of realism within different MMORPGs effected player's online experiences. The results indicated that players of SecondLife placed higher values of emotional closeness to their online relationships when compared to players of World of Warcraft and SecondLife was rated more real by its players than World of Warcraft. Results further indicated that players of SecondLife had higher levels of perceived online emotional closeness when compared to perceived offline emotional closeness. Implications of this study focus on developing a bottom up holistic profile of online game players as opposed to the current top down research model.

Seventeen teens (mean age = 11.71. SD = 1.26) who had experiences in playing online games participated in the focus group interviews of Study 2. Their responses were collected in order to develop comprehensive scales to measure cyber-victimization and cyberbullying, so as to better understand the differences between online and real life friendship and also to reveal the reasons behind playing online games. Studies 3 and 4 were based on the same sample of six hundred twenty-six grade 5 and 6 students (mean age =10.81, SD = .83), but with different purposes. In Study 3, two scales, both ultimately (following test analyses) comprised of eight items were developed for measuring cyber-victimization and cyberbullying, They demonstrated satisfactory reliabilities and criterion validities. In Study 4, the relative quality of best friendship in online games versus in real life, as well as the relative importance of friendship, victimization, and bullying in real life and in online games in relation to early adolescents' overall psychosocial adjustment were examined. Online victimization and online bullying were negatively related to psychological well-being of early adolescents. After controlling demographics, computer gaming habits, school victimization and real life friendship, online victimization still significantly and negatively explained additional variance in friendship satisfaction, while online friendship still positively and significantly explained additional variance in social competence, friendship satisfaction, self esteem and life satisfaction after demographics, computer gaming habits, school victimization, and real life friendship were statistically controlled. Gender moderated the relationship between real life friendship and social competence and friendship satisfaction, but it did not moderate the relationship between online friendship and the other psychological constructs. This research demonstrated the theoretical and practical importance of investigating social experiences (both negative, i.e. being cyber-bullied, and positive, i.e. building up online friendship) in the online context. / The present research comprised four studies to investigate the relation of online game playing and correlates of three important aspects, namely friendship, victimization and bullying, of social development of Hong Kong Chinese grade 5 and 6 students. Comparisons of these correlates across two contexts, the real life and internet experiences, were also made. Four hundred ninety-four grade five and six students (mean age = 11.54, SD = .91) participated in Study 1. Average times spent on different types of different type of computer games and the importance of social functioning of online games were determined. Average time spent per day on Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), solitary computer games, handheld video games e.g. NDS, PSP, and home video consoles (e.g., Wii) were 2.38 hours (SD =2.21), 1.66 hours (SD =1.86), 1.25 hours, (SD =1.54), and .67 hours (SD =1.15), respectively. Social functioning of online games was positively correlated with life satisfaction of early adolescents. / Leung, Nga Man. / Adviser: Catherine McBride-Chang. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 72-04, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-119). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

Mass Effect is a Science Fiction/Action Role Playing/Third Person Shooter video game series that takes place in the year 2183, in which the player assumes control of Commander Shepard. Players can choose to customize the character based on his/her gender, appearance, sexual orientation, background origin and occupation. The choices that show up in the game are also based on how the player wants their version of Shepard to interact with other characters and allows players some leeway to shape their own narrative. The series also discusses and acknowledges issues of race, gender, subjecthood and sovereignty, politics and sexual orientation within its narrative. This analysis focuses on the text of the series and its implications concerning hegemonic reinforcement and/or resistance in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, politics, and warfare tactics. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection