<p>An alternate reality game, often abbreviated as ARG, is a mix between a game and a crossmedia interactive story using mainly the Internet as a platform. The game is built around the idea of teamwork among its participants. The players cooperate to solve puzzles allowing them to go forward in the story of the game. The marketing element is in different ways included in the story.</p><p>A few Alternate Reality Games such as <em>The Beast, The Art of the H3ist</em> and <em>The Lost Ring </em>have previously been launched as marketing campaigns. This bachelor thesis aims to examine the possibilities of Alternate Reality Games as an alternative marketing tool for profit-driven companies. The method includes interviewswith Swedish advertising agencies as well as individuals in the ARG business. The prototype used in the thesis is an earlier ARG named <em>Den Dolda Sanningen</em>, which was produced in the fall semester of 2008 as an assignment for a course at Växjö University.</p>

Obesity in children is a nationwide problem. Physical activity is one way to help children stay fit and prevent obesity. Unfortunately, access to technology involving sedentary behavior is easier than ever. Fortunately, for this generation of students there is a way to combine physical activity and technology through exergaming. In order to encourage students to participate in exergaming, the students should be able to play games they prefer. The purpose of this study was to apply a paired choice preference assessment, rank order card sort, and social validity surveys to determine the preference order of six exergames for six elementary students and measure heart rates as the children played the six exergames. The results of this study show that children had different preferences as evident by the rank order card sort, social validity survey, and paired choice preference assessment. The pre-rank order card sort was significantly correlated with the paired choice assessment. On the other hand, the pre-social validity survey was not significantly correlated with the paired choice assessment.

Competitive video gaming is experiencing exponential growth. Advances in technology and global Internet penetration has created highly dedicated fan bases for games played at a competitive level. Game developing companies are beginning to focus their attention on making games for the new eSports market. How avid eSports fans view competitive gaming is disrupting traditional consumption models. Twitch.TV a site that streams live gaming content is seeing massive growth. Now, more than ever, dedicated gamers can live off of playing games – whether by competing in tournaments as sponsored players or running ads on their Twitch.TV live stream while they play. The communities that have developed around different genres of competitive games are as varied as traditional sports such as Major League Baseball or the National Football League. A new industry with a complex infrastructure is developing in this new market. / text

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Miami University, Dept. of Psychology, 2006. / Title from second page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 269-277).

Design philosophies in MMOs seem to have seen a shift in recent years. What used to be designs for social dependencies and challenging content seems to have become designs for social independence and casual play. This has not gone by unnoticed by communities of players that have gradually increased in size, hoping to find regression in design philosophies for their favorite games. This study combines the social component of Yee’s (2006) model for motivations for online play with Bradner’s (2001) concept of social affordances, and quantitative surveys with qualitative interviews in order to examine how the social player experience in World of Warcraft has changed in relation to changes made to the game. Some of the findings are that the incentives and necessity for socializing with strangers in the game has generally diminished as a consequence of changes made in the game that focus on practical efficiency. External factors that seems to have played a role in these results are age, technological contexts and life contexts of the respondents.

Många ungdomar spelar datorspel dagligen och trots att många spelar för underhållnings skull finns det dem som utvecklar problem likt missbruksproblematik. Datorspelsberoende är ingen diagnos men ingår i Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th edition (DSM-5) som ett potentiellt nytt tillstånd som kräver ytterligare forskning. Föreliggande studie syftade till att undersöka vilka personlighetsdrag hos ungdomar som har ett samband med datorspelsberoende och som i sin tur har ett samband med psykisk ohälsa samt hur sambanden ser ut hos pojkar respektive flickor. Studiens övergripande syfte var att bidra med kunskap inom datorspelsberoende för att behandling för denna målgrupp ska kunna bli mer individanpassad. 123 gymnasieelever deltog i en enkätundersökning. Mediationsanalyser gjordes på datamaterialet, som bestod av specifika personlighetsdrag som prediktorvariabel, datorspelsberoende som mediator och psykisk ohälsa som utfallsvariabel. Inga mediationseffekter för det totala stickprovet uppmättes. Resultatet visade på tre medelstora mediationseffekter för pojkar och för flickor visades inget samband mellan prediktor-, mediator- och utfallsvariabel, varpå mediationsanalys inte utfördes på detta stickprov. Studiens resultat indikerar på att det finns en mediationseffekt av datorspelsberoende på relationen mellan specifika personlighetsdrag och psykisk ohälsa hos pojkar, men inte flickor. / Many adolescents play computer games daily and despite the fact that many play for the sake of entertainment, there are those who develop problems similar to addiction problems. Internet gaming addiction is not a diagnosis but it's part of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th edition (DSM-5) as a potentially new state that requires further research. This study aimed to investigate which personality traits of young people that have a relationship with Internet gaming addiction and which in turn have a relationship with mental illness and how the relationships between the variables interact in samples with boys and girls. The overall aim of the study was to contribute knowledge in Internet gaming addiction to enable treatment for this target group to become a more individualized treatment. 123 high school students participated in a survey. Mediation analysis were made on the data consisting of specific personality traits as predictor variable, Internet gaming addiction as mediator and mental illness as outcome variable. No mediation effects for the total sample were measured. The results showed 3 medium mediation effects for boys and for girls there was no correlation between predictor, mediator and outcome variables, after which mediation analysis was not performed on this sample. The results of the study indicate that there is a mediation effect of Internet gaming addiction on the relationship between specific personality traits and mental illness for boys, but not girls.

A pesquisa, mobilizada pelo desejo de contribuir com a criação de condições de ensino que potencializassem ações educativas com o jogo (ações de ensino por parte dos educadores e ações de aprendizagem por parte dos estudantes), baseou-se na convicção de que o jogo é um valioso instrumento de ensino ao possibilitar o desenvolvimento cultural dos educandos. Os principais referenciais teóricos utilizados foram: Vygotsky, no que se refere ao papel do brinquedo e do brincar para o desenvolvimento; Elkonin, ao tratar sobre a psicologia do jogo; e Leontiev, com a Teoria da Atividade. Além desses autores e dos conceitos desenvolvidos por eles, utilizamos nessa pesquisa o conceito de Atividade Orientadora de Ensino, cujos pressupostos, foram fundamentais para o desenvolvimento deste trabalho. Destacamos como elementos centrais da Atividade Orientadora de Ensino a importância das situações-problema, típicas do fazer pedagógico, a definição dos conceitos nos conteúdos a serem ensinados, a criação de situações desencadeadoras de aprendizagem, o planejamento de ações e a avaliação contínua das ações didáticas. Assim, à luz dos referenciais teóricos da psicologia histórico-cultural, buscamos entender como se dá o desenvolvimento da compreensão do jogo na Atividade de Ensino, para professores em formação inicial. Os sujeitos da pesquisa foram seis estudantes, procedentes do Curso de Pedagogia (do 3º e 4º anos) da Faculdade de Educação e do Curso de Matemática do Instituto de Matemática e Estatística (ambos pertencentes à Universidade de São Paulo), que realizavam estágio no Clube da Matemática, projeto de extensão e campo de estágio da FEUSP. A realização coletiva das Atividades de Ensino no Clube, questionários e observações dos estagiários em suas ações educativas foram as fontes de análise do nosso objeto de estudo. Foi possível inferir, por meio da análise dos dados, que na medida em que os estagiários foram se apropriando da Atividade de Ensino, buscando organizar suas ações didáticas, definindo os conceitos que queriam ensinar, trabalhando coletivamente e avaliando o modo de realização da Atividade, a compreensão do papel do jogo nos processos de ensino e aprendizagem, foi sendo ressignificada. / The research, triggered by the wish of contributing to the creation of teaching conditions to surge educational initiatives around gaming (teaching initiatives on the educators side and learning initiatives on the students side), is based on the belief that gaming is an invaluable teaching tool to reinforce the students cultural growth. The main theoretical referentials were Vygotsky, on the role of toys and playing in the development, Elkonin, on the gaming psychology, and Leontiev, on the theory of activity. Besides these authors and the concepts they developed, we used the concept of Teaching Orienting Activity, with pivotal presuppositions for the development of this research. We highlight the importance of trouble situations, recurrent in the pedagogical make, as core elements of the Teaching Orienting Activity, along with the definition of concepts in the contents to be taught, the creation of learning chain situations, the planning of actions, and the sustained evaluation of didactic initiatives. Thus, in the light of the theoretical referentials from the cultural-historical psychology, we aimed to understand how gaming assimilation development takes place in the Teaching Orienting Activity, for teachers at initial teacher training. The subjects of the research were six students, coming from the Pedagogy Course (3rd and 4th years) at the Education School and from the Mathematics Course at the Mathematics and Statistics Institute (both belonging to the University of Sao Paulo), who took part in the Math Club, a project of extension and field internship at FEUSP. Collective performance in the teaching activities at the club, questionnaires, and observation of the trainees carrying out their educational initiatives were the source for analysis of our study object. It was possible to infer, by data analysis, that as trainees took charge of the Teaching Activity, seeking the organization of their didactic initiatives, defining the concepts that they wanted to teach, collectively working and evaluating the conduction of the activity, the understanding of the gaming role in the teaching and learning processes, kept being resignified.

The power of digital technology serves developers of new services as an access funnel to the vast amount of customer behavioural information. The utilization of this information is forecasted to differentiate the winners from the losers in the market and benefit the new service development process. This study explores the phenomenon of customer information in new service development empirically by looking at the industry at the forefront, the gaming industry. By conducting three case studies with leading Swedish game developers, it challenges the previous research assumptions that acquired and disseminated customer information is implicitly used. This study has made significant contributions by investigating the broader context of customer information use and differentiating among three types of use. The findings show that behavioural information is used to backup own decisions or to enhance the developers understanding, but is not directly applied to the decision task. Despite the great potential, this advanced type of customer information is only used in the post-launch stages of new service development, for service iterations. To further validate the findings and explore information use in new service development more in-depth, future research generating contextual detailed realtime data is needed.

This research paper investigates the language that is used by upper secondary students both in gaming and in school related situations. The overarching aim is to compare the language that students in upper secondary school use during online gaming and in classroom situations and how one influences the other and what attitudes students have regarding spoken English during online gaming and in the classroom. A questionnaire was used to gather information about the students’ gamer habits and how they perceive the connection between online games and second language learning. The results provided by the questionnaire showed that there is a positive attitude among the students regarding how online games can provide opportunities for expansion of a second language vocabulary. Many of the students felt that the online sphere provided a more secure and more accessible setting for learning than what their school could give them. It also showed that second language learning through online gaming is possible, but at the same that the language provided through online games has limited use in for example a school environment. Words and phrases that the students have picked up from online gaming are in many cases not useful outside of the speech community of gamers. Therefore, the conclusion that was made was that online gaming is a large part of many students’ second language learning and that many students feel that is a more accessible way to learn a second language. Therefore, a didactic implication is that it is important that teachers start to include online gaming language in their education.