In recent years, video games have exploded in popularity and the sales of many popular video games now rival Hollywood blockbusters for revenue. While traditionally used as a medium for entertainment, researchers have also recently begun to explore their potential as learning resources. Many educational games have been created in an attempt to combine entertainment with education, but very little research has been done exploring the potential benefits that commercial online video games can have on language learning. This descriptive study is designed to examine whether or not an off-the-shelf (OTS) Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) - World of Warcraft, can act as a medium for language acquisition. Specifically, it examines whether intermediate-level English language learners’ written accuracy, fluency, and lexical complexity can increase through its play, and what the participants’ perceptions of using an MMOG as a language learning resource are. Participants consisted of four intermediate-level adult English language learners and four English as first language (EL1) speakers. Each English language learner was randomly paired with an EL1 speaker and played the MMOG World of Warcraft over a span of four weeks. The participants’ chat transcripts, along with semi-structured questionnaires, and interviews, were used to gather in-depth data from the participants. The participants’ chat logs were analyzed for improvement in the areas of accuracy, fluency, and lexical complexity by comparing the first and last 25% of their exchanges with the EL1 speakers. Two of the four participants showed some improvement in all three areas that were analyzed, while the remaining two participants showed some improvement in one or two of the three language areas. Results from the questionnaires and interviews indicated that all of the participants felt that playing the game with the EL1 speaker contributed positively to their English language skills and provided a positive learning environment. These results contribute to the growing body of research on MMOGs and give credence to the argument that video games do not have to be solely considered as a source of entertainment, but that they can also be useful as pedagogical tools. / Graduate

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) have become highly popular in the last decade and now attract millions of users from all over the world to play in an evolving virtual world concurrently over the Internet. The high popularity of MMOGs created a rapidly growing market and this highly dynamic market has forced the game developers to step up competitively. However, MMOG development is a challenging and expensive process. In this study, we have developed a network simulation tool which can be used to model and simulate typical MMOGs that have client-server architectures. The main objective is to provide a simulation environment to MMOG developers that could be used to test, analyze and verify various aspects of the MMOG network architecture. We have also implemented a graphical user interface which allows constructing the simulation model visually. We have demonstrated the use of simulation tool by experimental simulations.

Recentemente, pesquisadores têm se dedicado a investigar a similaridade entre os mundos virtuais e o que se sabe sobre o comportamento social do mundo real (YEE et al., 2009; JIANG et al., 2009; JONSSON, F., et al., 2011). Muitas relações têm se mostrado apropriadas, dando indicativos de que a atividade on-line pode constituir um verdadeiro laboratório para as ciências sociais. O intuito da pesquisa aqui apresentada é justamente contribuir para essa investigação. Realizamos esforços para identificar aspectos do mundo on-line análogos aos observados em sociedades do mundo real. Estamos especialmente interessados em avaliar, segundo a teoria de Durkheim (1893), qual tipo de solidariedade, mecânica ou orgânica, pode ser observada no mundo on-line. Outro foco de interesse é a existência dos laços fracos, descritos por Granovetter (1973), e sua função no mundo on-line. Elegemos uma guilda1 do jogo \"Zodiac Online\" como o objeto de nossa investigação. Esse jogo foi escolhido devido às suas características sociais e demográficas. Optamos por usar duas metodologias paralelas para proceder a nossa coleta de dados. A primeira destas sendo a netnografia, método análogo à etnografia porem adaptado ao mundo on-line. A segunda coleta de dados é feita automaticamente pelo servidor do jogo que iremos estudar: um registro de toda a atividade de cada jogador é gerado simultaneamente a cada interação realizada dentro do jogo. Com os dados coletados, desenhamos redes que representam as trocas de itens entre os membros da guilda em questão e procedemos então a uma análise das redes. Baseando-nos nesses procedimentos observamos uma tendência a solidariedade orgânica, embora nossos resultados não sejam conclusivos isso torna esse grupo online mais comparável a subcomunidades de mesma natureza do mundo real. Quanto aos laços fracos, pudemos observar sua ocorrência, mas, provavelmente devido ao tamanho e características do grupo observado, sua função parece ser diferente, e menos importante, do que aquela que espera-se observar no mundo real. / Recently, researchers have been devoting remarkable eefort to investigate the similarity between virtual worlds and what is known about the social behavior of the real world (YEE et al., 2009; JIANG et al., 2009; JONSSON, F., et al., 2011). Many relationships have been shown to be appropriate, giving indications that online activity may be a real laboratory for the social sciences. The purpose of the present research is precisely to contribute to this interest. We carry out efforts to identify aspects of the online world similar to those observed in the real world societies. We are especially interested in evaluating, according to Durkheims theory (1893), which kind of solidarity, mechanical or organic, can be seen in the online world. Another interesting point is the existence of weak ties, described by Granovetter (1973), and its role in the online world. We elected a guild game \"Zodiac Online\" as the object of our investigation. This game was chosen because of its social and demographic characteristics. We chose to use two parallel methodologies to make our data collection. The first of these being the netnography, analogous method put the ethnography adapted to the online world. The second data collection is done automatically by the game server you will study: a record of all activity is generated for each player simultaneously held every interaction within the game. We then proceed to Network analysis to elaborate this data. With the data collected, we design networks that represent the exchange of items between members of the guild in question and then proceed to an analysis of networks. Based on these procedures we observed a tendency to organic solidarity, although our results are not conclusive that makes this online group more comparable to subcommunities that display organic organizations of the same nature in the real world. As for weak ties, we could observe their occurrence, but probably due to the size and characteristics of the observed group, its function seems to be different, and less important than what it is expected to observe in the real world.

Recentemente, pesquisadores têm se dedicado a investigar a similaridade entre os mundos virtuais e o que se sabe sobre o comportamento social do mundo real (YEE et al., 2009; JIANG et al., 2009; JONSSON, F., et al., 2011). Muitas relações têm se mostrado apropriadas, dando indicativos de que a atividade on-line pode constituir um verdadeiro laboratório para as ciências sociais. O intuito da pesquisa aqui apresentada é justamente contribuir para essa investigação. Realizamos esforços para identificar aspectos do mundo on-line análogos aos observados em sociedades do mundo real. Estamos especialmente interessados em avaliar, segundo a teoria de Durkheim (1893), qual tipo de solidariedade, mecânica ou orgânica, pode ser observada no mundo on-line. Outro foco de interesse é a existência dos laços fracos, descritos por Granovetter (1973), e sua função no mundo on-line. Elegemos uma guilda1 do jogo \"Zodiac Online\" como o objeto de nossa investigação. Esse jogo foi escolhido devido às suas características sociais e demográficas. Optamos por usar duas metodologias paralelas para proceder a nossa coleta de dados. A primeira destas sendo a netnografia, método análogo à etnografia porem adaptado ao mundo on-line. A segunda coleta de dados é feita automaticamente pelo servidor do jogo que iremos estudar: um registro de toda a atividade de cada jogador é gerado simultaneamente a cada interação realizada dentro do jogo. Com os dados coletados, desenhamos redes que representam as trocas de itens entre os membros da guilda em questão e procedemos então a uma análise das redes. Baseando-nos nesses procedimentos observamos uma tendência a solidariedade orgânica, embora nossos resultados não sejam conclusivos isso torna esse grupo online mais comparável a subcomunidades de mesma natureza do mundo real. Quanto aos laços fracos, pudemos observar sua ocorrência, mas, provavelmente devido ao tamanho e características do grupo observado, sua função parece ser diferente, e menos importante, do que aquela que espera-se observar no mundo real. / Recently, researchers have been devoting remarkable eefort to investigate the similarity between virtual worlds and what is known about the social behavior of the real world (YEE et al., 2009; JIANG et al., 2009; JONSSON, F., et al., 2011). Many relationships have been shown to be appropriate, giving indications that online activity may be a real laboratory for the social sciences. The purpose of the present research is precisely to contribute to this interest. We carry out efforts to identify aspects of the online world similar to those observed in the real world societies. We are especially interested in evaluating, according to Durkheims theory (1893), which kind of solidarity, mechanical or organic, can be seen in the online world. Another interesting point is the existence of weak ties, described by Granovetter (1973), and its role in the online world. We elected a guild game \"Zodiac Online\" as the object of our investigation. This game was chosen because of its social and demographic characteristics. We chose to use two parallel methodologies to make our data collection. The first of these being the netnography, analogous method put the ethnography adapted to the online world. The second data collection is done automatically by the game server you will study: a record of all activity is generated for each player simultaneously held every interaction within the game. We then proceed to Network analysis to elaborate this data. With the data collected, we design networks that represent the exchange of items between members of the guild in question and then proceed to an analysis of networks. Based on these procedures we observed a tendency to organic solidarity, although our results are not conclusive that makes this online group more comparable to subcommunities that display organic organizations of the same nature in the real world. As for weak ties, we could observe their occurrence, but probably due to the size and characteristics of the observed group, its function seems to be different, and less important than what it is expected to observe in the real world.

Ragnarök Online en plats på nätet, ett online-spel, där människor från hela världen möts och samverkar. Det är i detta möte personer emellan som den virtuella miljön Ragnarök Online skapas. Målet med denna uppsats är att visa på hur människor interagerar i, och skapar denna plats på nätet. Varför spenderar folk tid i virtuella miljöer? Är det annorlunda att agera i en virtuell miljö? Dessa är några av de frågor vi kommer att möta i texten. Detta kommer vi att göra tillsammans med invånarna i Ragnarök Online, med dem kommer vi att slåss, jaga och göra hattar. Tillsammans kommer vi att utforska den virtuella miljön av Ragnarök Online. / Ragnarök Online a place on the net, an online game, where people from all over the world meet and interact. In this meeting the virtual environment of Ragnarök Online is created. Because it’s in the meeting between people this virtual place is founded. The goal of this essay is to show how people interact in, and create this place on the net. Why do people spend time in virtual environments? Is it any different to act in a virtual environment? These are some of the questions we will meet in the text. This we will do together whit the inhabitants of this place, we will fight, hunt and make hats ­­– together we will explore the virtual environment of Ragnarök Online.

Submitted by Mariana Dornelles Vargas (marianadv) on 2015-05-28T17:37:20Z No. of bitstreams: 1 analise_teorica.pdf: 2320370 bytes, checksum: 39a0442ca47ea6d39922c940e3b20eba (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-28T17:37:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 analise_teorica.pdf: 2320370 bytes, checksum: 39a0442ca47ea6d39922c940e3b20eba (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Nenhuma / Nesta dissertação realiza-se um estudo de caso em uma organização e em dois dos seus fornecedores com o objetivo analisar os processos relacionados a gestão da cadeia de suprimentos e as melhorias dos processos após a aplicação da recomendação MMOG/LE. Analisa-se a execução prática e a evolução histórica nos processos da cadeia de suprimentos, a partir de indicadores, desde o início da aplicação da recomendação MMOG/LE. Este estudo possibilitou perceber que essa recomendação poderia ser mais detalhada e que as organizações possuem diferentes performances em seus processos, devido ao modelo em que estes são formulados. / This dissertation is realized a case study in an organization and two of its suppliers with the objective to analyze the processes related to supply chain management and process improvements after the implementation of the recommendation MMOG/LE. Is analyzed the practical implementation and historical evolution in the processes of the supply chain, based on indicators since the beginning of the implementation of the recommendation MMOG/LE. This study enabled us to realize that this recommendation could be more detailed and organizations have different performances in their processes because of the model in which they are formulated.

As social interactions migrate to the ubiquitous Internet we are facing a change in theway we relate to each other, which presents interesting new opportunities foranonymity to create identities. An aspect of this radically evolving technology thatexhibits strong possibilities for altering or producing identities is the rapidly growingonline game genre MMOG (Massive Multiplayer Online Game) which isentertainment that millions of people all over the globe engage in daily. Thisrelatively new platform for socialising has become of cultural and social significance,which is why it calls for examination and research. Thus, the main research questionsasked in this thesis are as following: How does players of MMOGs utilise the nighcomplete anonymity to present or modify their identities online? In which ways areMMOGs used as a platform for socialising and development of social groupdynamics? After observing a large group of players in a popular MMOG, as well asconducting several interviews with key identities within the group, I discovered three fundamental parts of identity creation, and created a model for use and applicationin different social situations and constellations.

In this thesis a non-centralized algorithm is proposed to locate nearby servers based on their players’ positions in a massive multiplayer online game server cluster. The purpose of this is to enable that players can visually see each other even though they are connected to different servers. By utilizing peer to peer connection between the servers the algorithm is tolerant against possible hardware failures. The algorithm simplifies the data sent over the network with a new concave polygon creation algorithm which works in linear execution time, enabling fast computations for real-time games. The algorithm works by finding colliding polygons from other servers and the closest polygons based on distance to find nearby servers which information should be shared with. Those two algorithms at this time work in quadratic execution time which is a point of improvement, which could require the concave polygon to be converted into one or several convex polygons. The algorithm is designed to give the user good access on the amount of network traffic sent over the cluster which gives better control and understanding on how much network traffic that will be sent in the cluster. It shows that the algorithm is dependent on how players in the world are distributed over the servers. By having players nearby each other on the same server improves the result of the algorithm. It is shown that compared to having a centralized server, the network traffic on every single node have reduced network traffic than compared to a centralized server. / In den här uppsatsen presenteras en icke-centraliserad algoritm som hittar närliggande servrar baserat på deras spelares positioner i ett massivt multi-spelare online spel med flera servrar. Syftet är att möjliggöra att spelare från olika servrar kan se varandra visuellt även fast de är uppkopplade till olika servrar. Genom att använda sig av ”peer-to-peer” kommunikation i klustret blir algoritmen tolerant mot hårdvarufel. Algoritmen simplifierar data som skickas genom en ny typ av konkav polygon algoritm vilken fungerar i linjär exekveringstid, vilket möjliggör snabba beräkningar för realtidsspel. Algoritmen fungerar genom att hitta kolliderande polygoner från andra servrar och även de mest närliggande baserat på distans för att lokalisera närliggande servrar att dela information med. De här två algoritmerna arbetar i kvadratisk tid vilket skulle kunna förbättras. Detta kan kräva att konkava polygonen konverteras till en eller flera konvexa polygoner. Algoritmen är designad för att ge användaren bra tillgång till hur mycket nätverkstrafik som bör skickas inom klustret vilket ger en bättre kontroll och förståelse över hur mycket data som kommer att skickas totalt. Det visas att algoritmen är beroende av hur spelarna är distribuerade över servrarna. Genom att ha närliggande spelare i världen på samma server förbättras resultatet av algoritmen. Det visas även att jämfört med en centraliserad server så förbättras nätverkstrafiken på varje enskild nod jämfört med trafiken som mottogs av den centraliserade servern.

Nos últimos anos Jogos Online Massivamente Multijogadores (MMOG) têm se expandido em popularidade e investimento, influenciado, especialmente, pela evolução da conexão residencial (conexões mais rápidas a preços mais baixos). Com o crescimento dessa demanda, surgem problemas na utilização da arquitetura cliente-servidor, normalmente utilizada em jogos comerciais. Entre as arquiteturas alternativas de suporte a MMOGs estão as arquiteturas peer-to-peer. Porém essas arquiteturas apresentam problemas relativos a segurança, problemas esses que possuem, muitas vezes, soluções de baixo desempenho, sendo impraticáveis em jogos reais. Entre os problemas de segurança mais significativos para MMOGs encontra-se o cheating, ou a ação que um ou mais jogador toma para burlar as regras em favor próprio. A preocupação com cheating agravase quando o efeito desse cheating pode causar danos irreversíveis à economia virtual e, potencialmente, afetar todos os jogadores. O presente trabalho faz uso de uma divisão celular do mundo virtual para restringir o impacto de um dado cheating a uma única célula, evitando que este se propague. Para tanto é realizada uma classificação do estado do jogador e utiliza-se uma técnica de detecção de cheating para cada uma das classificações. Foram realizados experimentos através de simulação para testes de aplicabilidade do modelo e análise de desempenho e acuracidade. Os testes indicam que o modelo proposto consegue, de forma eficaz, realizar a proteção da economia virtual, impedindo que a ocorrência de um cheating atinja todos os jogadores. / In the past few years, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) grew in both popularity and investment. This growth has been influenced by the evolution of residential connection (faster and cheaper connections). With the demand, some limitations imposed by the client-server architecture becomes more significant. Peer-to-peer architectures aim to solve those problems by distributing the game among several computers. However, those solutions usually lack security, or presents low performance. Among the problems, cheating can be considered the most significant to MMOGs. Cheating can be defined as the action taken by a player when this action is against the rules. This may be aggravated when this action can cause irreversible damage to the virtual economy and, potentially, affect all players in the virtual world. This work’s goal is to restrict the cheating impact using a cellular world division. The proposal is to restrict the cheating in a limited virtual space, preventing the propagation. A state classification is presented, and different cheating detection techniques are presented to each element of this classification. Simulation is used to make the experiments aiming to test the performance and accuracy of the proposal. Results indicate that the proposed solution can efficiently protect the virtual economy, restraining the effects of a cheating occurrence to a small portion of the virtual world.

Tradicionalmente, utiliza-se um servidor central para prover suporte a MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games, ou jogos online maciçamente multijogador), nos quais o número de participantes é da ordem de dezenas de milhares. Muitos trabalhos foram realizados com o intuito de criar um modelo de suporte completamente descentralizado, par-a-par, para este tipo de aplicação, minimizando o custo de manutenção da sua infraestrutura, mas algumas questões críticas persistem. Exemplos de problemas do modelo de suporte par-a-par são: vulnerabilidade a trapaça, sobrecarga da banda de envio dos pares e dificuldade para manter a consistência da simulação entre os diferentes participantes. Neste trabalho, é proposta a utilização de nodos de baixo custo geograficamente distribuídos, operando como um servidor distribuído de jogo. O modelo de distribuição proposto e alguns trabalhos relacionados também são apresentados. Para tratar o custo de comunicação imposto aos servidores, foi projetado aqui um novo refinamento para a técnica de gerenciamento de interesse, reduzindo significativamente a largura de banda necessária ao jogo. Foram realizadas simulações utilizando o simulador ns-2, comparando diferentes algoritmos de área de interesse. Os resultados demonstram que a nossa proposta é a que tem a menor utilização de largura de banda, com uma redução em 33,10% do tráfego máximo, e em 33,58% do tráfego médio, quando comparada com outros algoritmos de gerenciamento de interesse. Além disso, em uma arquitetura de servidor distribuído para MMOGs, com recursos heterogêneos, os nodos servidores podem ser facilmente sobrecarregados pela alta demanda dos jogadores por atualizações de estado. Neste trabalho, é proposto também um esquema de balanceamento de carga que utiliza o tráfego de rede como a carga a balancear entre os servidores e tem como objetivos principais: alocar a carga nos servidores proporcionalmente à capacidade de cada um e reduzir tanto quanto possível o overhead introduzido pela própria distribuição. O esquema de balanceamento é dividido em três fases: seleção local de servidores para participarem, o balanceamento em si e o posterior refinamento da divisão de carga. Quatro algoritmos foram propostos: ProGReGA, ProGReGA-KH, ProGReGA-KF e BFBCT. Destes, o ProGReGA foi o que introduziu o menor overhead de todos e o ProGReGA-KF foi o que se mostrou mais eficiente para reduzir o número de migrações de jogadores entre servidores. / Traditionally, a central server is used to provide support to MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games), where the number of participants is in the order of tens of thousands. Much work has been done trying to create a fully peer-to-peer model to support this kind of application, in order to minimize the maintenance cost of its infra-structure, but critical questions remain. Examples of the problems relative to peer-to-peer MMOG support systems are: vulnerability to cheating, overload of the upload links of the peers and difficulty to maintain consistency of the simulation among the participants. In this work, it is proposed the utilization of geographically distributed lower-cost nodes, working as a distributed server to the game. The distribution model and some related works are also presented. To address the communication cost imposed to the servers, we specify a novel refinement to the area of interest technique, significantly reducing the necessary bandwidth. Simulations have been made with ns-2, comparing different area of interest algorithms. The results show that our approach achieves the least bandwidth utilization, with a 33.10% maximum traffic reduction and 33.58% average traffic reduction, when compared to other area of interest algorithms. Besides, in a distributed MMOG server architecture, with heterogeneous resources, the server nodes may become easily overloaded by the high demand from the players for state updates. In this work, we also propose a load balancing scheme, which considers the network traffic as the load to balance between the servers, and it has the following main objectives: allocate load on the servers proportionally to the power of each one of them and reduce as much as possible the overhead introduced by the distribution itself. It is is divided in three phases: local selection of servers, balancing and refinement. Four algorithms were proposed: ProGReGA, ProGReGA-KH, ProGReGA-KF and BFBCT. From these, ProGReGA has proved to be the best for overhead reduction and ProGReGA-KF is the most suited for reducing player migrations between servers.