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Hur kan svårighetsprogression användas i skapandet av Puzzlehunts med syfte att uppnå en ökad upplevd känsla av flow hos spelaren? Denna frågeställning behandlas i uppsatsen och problemet som måste lösas är hur man kan bygga upp en ackumulerad kunskap om något vars syfte är att hela tiden tvinga dig att hitta nya lösningar på problem. I mer traditionella spel kan upprepning lära spelaren hur spelmekaniken fungerar. I puzzlehunts kan upprepning av spelmekanik inte användas eftersom målet för varje pussel är att hitta mekaniken som löser problemet. Uppsatsen visar att man genom inlärning av hur man skall tänka för att hitta lösningarna till pusslen kan bygga upp en ackumulerad kunskap hos spelaren och därmed även ha en svårighetsprogression och öka upplevd nivå av flow hos spelaren.

Raising the awareness of information security has been the focus of DOD and other government agencies in recent years. There is a need for an effective means of educating and training personnel in the topic of Information Assurance. CyberCIEGE offers an approach to training by engaging the personnel in an interactive simulation-based network security game. Each game scenario in CyberCIEGE is designed to impart some network security principles and Information Assurance concepts to the players. This research developed a scenario definition file for the CyberCIEGE game engine to illustrate and train players on matters related to information protection using compartmentalized Mutlilevel Secure (MLS) systems. The specific area of research is on the protection of sensitive information and operational commands for command and control systems. Through playing this military-based scenario, players can learn about the importance of physical security, the different strategies to protect sensitive information, and the use of MLS systems to provide controlled access to sensitive information. Testing of this game scenario was conducted through the creation of detailed solutions and incorrect gameplay examples.

The sale of text advertisements on search engines using an auction format called Generalized Second Price (GSP) has become increasingly common. GSP is unique in that it allows bidders to revise their bid if they are unhappy with the result of the auction, and because the auction sells multiple units of a related good simultaneously. We model this sale as a hierarchical game with complete information, allowing one potential bidder to bid in each stage. The hierarchical game has an entirely different set of equilibria from the simultaneous bid game studied in earlier research on this auction. Under hierarchical bidding, Vickrey-Clarke-Groves guarantees higher auctioneer revenue than any equilibrium in GSP.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / Throughout history people have searched for a means of predicting the outcomes of battles. Data analysis is a way of understanding the factors associated with battle outcomes. There are objective factors, such as force ratio, and subjective factors, such as leadership, that affect battles. Subjective factors are hard to determine and thus are usually avoided in models. Here, nationality is investigated as a surrogate for subjective factors. That is, we want to see how nationality is associated with battle outcomes by exploring the best available data set on historical land combat-developed by the Center for Army Analysis. We focus on four countries for which there is sufficient data: the USA, Germany, Britain and Israel. We find that these countries historically use a substantial amount of military power to defeat their enemies. In particular, the USA often has overwhelming force. Using classification tree models, with a correct classification rate of 79 percent, the results suggest that nationality was the most important factor in battles before World War I and the second most important factor during the World Wars. Force ratio was the most important factor in WWI and artillery ratio in WWII. In the years following WWII, the dominant variable has been air force ratio. / First Lieutenant, Turkish Army

For decades, mathematical games have been used to explore various properties of particular sets. The Banach-Mazur game is the prototypical intersection game and its modifications by e.g., W. Schmidt and C. McMullen are used in number theory and many other areas of mathematics. We give a brief survey of a few of these modifications and their properties followed by our own modification. One of our main results is proving that this modification is equivalent to an important set theoretic game, called the perfect set game, developed by M. Davis.

Orientador: José Roberto Boettger Giardinetto / Banca: José Carlos Miguel / Banca: Maria do Carmo Monteiro Kobayashi / Resumo: O presente trabalho aborda aspectos que contribuem para a pré-formação do conceito numérico na Educação Infantil sob a ótica da Pedagogia Histórico-Crítica (PHC), pois a mesma buscou responder à pergunta: Quais os aspectos necessários para a pré-formação do conceito numérico na criança de Educação Infantil? Para tanto, utiliza jogos, tornando a aprendizagem dos alunos mais dinâmica e significativa. Os objetivos da pesquisa foram: Identificar, descrever e analisar, sob a ótica da PHC, procedimentos, materiais e instrumentos para o ensino/aprendizado do pensamento lógico-matemático, na pré-formação do conceito numérico. A pesquisa também promove reflexões sobre a Educação Infantil na perspectiva da PHC, a periodização do desenvolvimento infantil e a função dos jogos no processo de desenvolvimento da aprendizagem. Também apresenta as teorias Piagetianas e Davidovianas sobre a formação do conceito numérico. Para esse trabalho, foi utilizado a pesquisa bibliográfica, numa abordagem qualitativa com características da pesquisa-ação. Como produto educacional, foram criados jogos que foram aplicados em uma sala de aula da Educação Infantil com a faixa etária de 4 e 5 anos de idade, com 20 alunos, numa escola municipal de uma cidade do interior do Estado de São Paulo. Os jogos foram desenvolvidos com base nos aspectos: classificação, agrupamento, correspondência biunívoca, sequenciação, inclusão, seriação/ordenação, conservação e reversibilidade. De posse dos dados coletados, por meio ... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: The present work addresses aspects that contribute to the pre-formation of the numerical concept in Early Childhood Education from the perspective of Historical-Critical Pedagogy (PHC), since it sought to answer the question: What aspects are necessary for the pre-formation of the numerical concept in kindergarten? To do so, it uses games, making student learning more dynamic and meaningful. The objectives of the research were: To identify, describe and analyze, from PHC's point of view, procedures, materials and instruments for the teaching / learning of logical-mathematical thinking, in the pre-formation of the numerical concept. The research also promotes reflections on Early Childhood Education from the perspective of PHC, periodization of child development and the role of games in the process of learning development. It also presents the Piagetian and Davidovian theories on the formation of the numerical concept. For this work, the bibliographic research was used, in a qualitative approach with characteristics of the action research. As an educational product, games were created that were applied in a classroom of Early Childhood Education with the age group of 4 and 5 years old, with 20 students, in a municipal school in a city in the interior of the State of São Paulo. The games were developed based on the aspects: classification, grouping, biunivocal correspondence, sequencing, inclusion, serialization / ordering, conservation and reversibility. With the data collecte... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

This dissertation examines early adopters of mass-marketed Virtual Reality (VR), as well as other immersive technologies, and the playful processes by which they incorporate the devices into their lives within New York City. Starting in 2016, relatively inexpensive head-mounted displays (HMDs) began to be manufactured and distributed by leaders in the game and information technology industries. However, even before these releases, developers and content creators were testing the devices through “development kits.” These de facto early adopters, who are distinctly commercially-oriented, acted as a launching point for the dissertation to scrutinize how, why and in what ways digital technologies spread to the wider public. Taking a multimethod approach that combines semi-structured interviews, two years of participant observation, media discourse analysis and autoethnography, the dissertation details a moment in the diffusion of an innovation and how publicity, social forces and industry influence adoption. This includes studying the media ecosystem which promotes and sustains VR, the role of New York City in framing opportunities and barriers for new users, and a description of meetups as important communities where devotees congregate. With Game Studies as a backdrop for analysis, the dissertation posits that the blurry relationship between labor and play held by most enthusiasts sustains the process of VR adoption. Their “playbor” colors not only the rhetoric and the focus of meetups, but also the activities, designs, and, most importantly, the financial and personal expenditures they put forth. Ultimately, play shapes the system of production by which adopters of commercial VR are introduced to the technology and, eventually, weave it into their lives. Situating play at the center of this system highlights that the assimilation of digital media is in part an embodied and irrational experience. It also suggests new models by which future innovations will spread to the public.

Thesis (M. A. (Folklore Studies)) --University of Limpopo, 2012 / Refer to document

With the rise of services like Steam and Xbox Live, multiplayer support has become essential to the success of many commercial video games. Explicit, server-client synchronisation models are bandwidth intensive and error prone to implement, while implicit, peer-to-peer synchronisation models are brittle, inflexible, and vulnerable to cheating. We present a generalised server-client network synchronisation model targeted at complex games, such as real time strategy games, that previously have only been feasible via peer-to-peer techniques. We use prediction, learning, and entropy coding techniques to learn a bandwidth-efficient incremental game state representation while guaranteeing both correctness of synchronised data and robustness in the face of unreliable network behavior. The resulting algorithms are efficient enough to synchronise the state of real time strategy games such as Blizzard’s Starcraft (which can involve hundreds of in-game characters) using less than three kilobytes per second of bandwidth.