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In this thesis I investigated empathy field in games and I explored how to create a game fostering empathy. In a first part I defined empathy, game and game mechanics and I analyzed four games fostering empathy through the prism of these definitions. I noticed these games used role-playing so then I focused my research on role-play games. In a second part I proposed an interactive story based on game mechanics fostering empathy. This interactive story is a mix of LARP and escape room. The player embodies a role and follows a goal. This game tries to foster empathy for the main character, a young woman who just found out that her mother had passed away. Through the iterations of testing I could improve the game and highlight some issues. Empathy is difficult to evaluate and puzzle solving prevents the player from being empathic. This thesis intends to contribute to the research areas in different ways. It outlines game mechanics fostering empathy and it suggests a new kind of game, the interactive story using these game mechanics.

One in five children are born highly sensitive (HS), with nervous systems that are more sensitive to sensory subtleties. The highly sensitive child (HSC) presents with behaviour that is often a way of coping with sensory overload from their environment. The symptoms of HS are often mistaken for shyness, introversion, timidity and a low sensory threshold. Because of their lack of understanding, teachers mislabel and misdiagnose these children as being mentally ill, or as suffering from, inter alia, ADHD or learning problems. When such children (HSC) are misunderstood, they begin to feel ‘different’ and ‘flawed’, which can lead to low self–esteem. The purpose of this study is to explore perceptions by HS children in middle childhood, to explore how aware they are of HS, and to discover the extent to which they have been affected by negative labelling often caused by being misunderstood, misdiagnosed and misinterpreted. The structured interviews conducted with HSC comprised of an interactive story, which had been written and illustrated to create explicit awareness of HS. After the storybook had been read, an interview schedule on HS was applied. Next, a focus group interview was conducted with the teachers to gather more rich data, thereby ensuring its trustworthiness. The aim was to explore the teachers’ perceptions of HSC in middle childhood. This exploration was necessary for making effective recommendations for managing and supporting HSC, so that the children can reach their full potential. Many HSC are gifted, and often become visionaries and pioneers in their particular fields. / Thesis (M.A. (Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

One in five children are born highly sensitive (HS), with nervous systems that are more sensitive to sensory subtleties. The highly sensitive child (HSC) presents with behaviour that is often a way of coping with sensory overload from their environment. The symptoms of HS are often mistaken for shyness, introversion, timidity and a low sensory threshold. Because of their lack of understanding, teachers mislabel and misdiagnose these children as being mentally ill, or as suffering from, inter alia, ADHD or learning problems. When such children (HSC) are misunderstood, they begin to feel ‘different’ and ‘flawed’, which can lead to low self–esteem. The purpose of this study is to explore perceptions by HS children in middle childhood, to explore how aware they are of HS, and to discover the extent to which they have been affected by negative labelling often caused by being misunderstood, misdiagnosed and misinterpreted. The structured interviews conducted with HSC comprised of an interactive story, which had been written and illustrated to create explicit awareness of HS. After the storybook had been read, an interview schedule on HS was applied. Next, a focus group interview was conducted with the teachers to gather more rich data, thereby ensuring its trustworthiness. The aim was to explore the teachers’ perceptions of HSC in middle childhood. This exploration was necessary for making effective recommendations for managing and supporting HSC, so that the children can reach their full potential. Many HSC are gifted, and often become visionaries and pioneers in their particular fields. / Thesis (M.A. (Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Despite advancements in asthma treatment and diagnosis, asthma still remains the number 1 cause for hospitalizations in school-aged children. This usability study aimed to develop a child-friendly interactive narrative, Okay with Asthma v2.0, based on the Biopsychosocial Family Model using feedback from children. This fun and kid-friendly program encourages children to manage their own asthma with the help of peers, families, communities, and health care services. With these support structures, children can identify and avoid triggers, monitor their asthma, manage their condition with medications based on an action plan, and learn to live happily with asthma.

Despite advancements in asthma treatment and diagnosis, asthma still remains the number 1 cause for hospitalizations in school-aged children. This usability study aimed to develop a child-friendly interactive narrative, Okay with Asthma v2.0, based on the Biopsychosocial Family Model using feedback from children. This fun and kid-friendly program encourages children to manage their own asthma with the help of peers, families, communities, and health care services. With these support structures, children can identify and avoid triggers, monitor their asthma, manage their condition with medications based on an action plan, and learn to live happily with asthma.

The current study investigates the effectiveness of a multimodal interactive story, student use and perceptions of the interactive story, and one teacher’s beliefs regarding the use of multimodal resources in upper-secondary L2 literature education. The study aims to draw conclusions on the potential effectiveness of the tool, student interaction behaviour with interactive story, student perceptions on the tool, and teacher receptibility toward new multimodal tools. Findings revealed that no statistically significant differences were found within or between groups in regard to the effectiveness of the interactive story from pre-test to post-test scores in the control and treatment groups. Students chose to use the help functions significantly more often than not in the interactive story, and significantly selected multimodal help aids more than the unimodal help aid. In regard to student perceptions of the interactive story, a significantly greater number of students felt visual help enhanced their understanding of the story. Overall mean scores from student five-point Likert-scale survey questions indicate generally positive attitudes toward the interactive story. Finally, the findings revealed the teacher was receptive toward the utilisation of multimodal tools but expresses concern about the realistic implementation of such tools in her classroom due to lack of resources and time restraints.  This research contributes that student engagement increases when presented with multimodal resources and the need for teachers to be provided allocated time to learn and implement new digital resources.

近年來GPS導航軟體正蓬勃發展，但市面上的導航軟體大多只能帶領使用者到達旅遊景點，無法更進一步提供旅遊資訊與行程建議。因此，本研究結合行動裝置與「3D擴增實境」（3D Augmented Reality），試圖規劃一套新型的導覽模式。我們以淡水為例，結合當地古蹟景點與歷史典故，使導覽系統能提供豐富的數位內容。在設計的過程中，本研究建構出「新科技敘事模式」，在「故事」、「影音效果」、與「互動機制」之間取得平衡，讓使用者體驗到故事、感官刺激、和旅遊合而為一的導覽經驗。此外，在「3D擴增實境」上，本研究建構了不同精細度的3D模型，並且在行動裝置上測試其效能。結果發現，「局部精化」的新形態建模概念，能夠兼顧美觀與運算效能。最後，本研究針對行動裝置硬體效能的負荷進行了權重測試，並獲得GPU（Render）＞CPU（PR）的結論。 / In the past few years we have witnessed the rapid growth in the sales of GPS related products on the market. Nonetheless, most navigation software solely provides route planning rather than travel information or tour guidance. This research aims to combine mobile devices and 3D augmented reality (AR) to create a novel form of navigational experience. Taking the famous tourist spot Tamsui as an illustration, materials adapted local monuments and historical allusions are re-arranged creatively to provide substantial digital contents with helpful navigation information. During the design process, this research creates different modes of narration, enabling users to undergo a brand new navigation experience through the blending of various media sources, including story, video and interaction. Additionally, this research constructs 3D models of different levels of detail and examines their efficiency on mobile devices. The experimental results indicate that 3D model built with partial fineness provides a balance between artistic fidelity and computational efficiency. Also, the results from the experiment suggest that the loading of the GPU (responsible for rendering the model) is greater than that of the CPU (responsible for pattern recognition).

This study examines correlations between player choice and identification in a multiple protagonist video game, seeking to determine whether a player’s identification with one or more player characters affects the way they make choices while playing. It discusses various definitions and types of identification as well as ways to create a successful narrative with multiple protagonists. The artefact created for the study is a text-based game with a branching narrative, where the player is required to make choices for three different characters, and a qualitative research method based on interviews with a small group of participants. The results show that players seek to identify with the player character even when there are more than one, and often use this as a basis for the choices they make, either by imagining themselves in the situation of the main character or by imagining that they are the main character. They do not usually base their choices while playing as a character on their identification or lack thereof with another, and regardless of how they made choices, most players made more or less the same ones. However, it did show that lack of identification made making choices more difficult for that character, which lessened their enjoyment of that storyline. / <p>Artefakten som användes i arbetet utvecklades i samarbete med Amanda Thim</p>

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