Although research shows the link between flow and social interaction, this study explores the role of ICT skills in order to experience flow and social interaction. I used constructivism theory as it explains how humans make meaning from personal experiences, social interaction and tools (e.g., language and computer). The theory of flow was applied because it stipulates that people experience flow when they are fully engaged in any activity (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi 2002). Four participants were recruited for this study. A pilot study with three stages was conducted to design a research protocol used in the main study. A pre and post-test was answered to determine the significance of ICT skills in relation to the experience of flow and social interaction during gameplay experience. I described the experiences of each participant using a case study approach and all the participants reported flow and social interaction in relation to their level ICT skills. I found that the participant with low ICT score required more social interaction to experience flow and participants with high ICT score required social interaction to maintain flow.

This thesis studies massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) and their business models. Purpose of this work is to analyze current MMORPG market and business models which are currently used. The main goal and asset of this thesis is concept of new business and payment models that could be used in MMORPGs in order to increase number of customers and to raise profits. Part of the concept is the analysis of possibilities of player's history to create a profile suitable for personalized advertising. The last goal is analysis of ways that developers of MMORPGs use to motivate players to to play long-term, so they use the service and generate profit.

Onlinespel fortsätter att växa för varje år och har på ett decennium gått ifrån att vara en trevlig sidosyssla till att tas som arbete. Nutida studier visar att den stereotypiske gamern inte längre existerar. Gruppen gamers är en diversifierad grupp människor ifrån alla världens länder, båda könen inräknade. Trots detta är dock sexism fortfarande väldigt vanligt förekommande inom gamingkulturen. Denna studie syftar till att undersöka hur könsroller upplevs för de som definierar sig som kvinnor. Frågeställningarna som ligger till grund för studien är hur könsroller reproduceras online samt hur de upplevs påverka den enskilde, vilka förväntningar som könsrollerna medför på individen i en grupp online, och hur maktstrukturer samt rådande hegemoni upplevs styra online och påverka individen i sitt vardagliga liv. Resultaten visar att målgruppen generellt upplever sig marginaliserade på den virtuella arenan. Detta främst genom orealistiska förväntningar, annorlunda förutsättningar, sexistiska strukturer och orimliga skillnader i bemötande efter att deras kön offentliggjorts. / Online games continue to grow for each year and in a decade, it has gone from being a nice side activity to for some, classified as work. Contemporary studies show that the stereotypic gamer no longer exists. The gamer group is a diverse group of people from all the world's countries, including both sexes. Nevertheless, sexism is still very common in gaming culture. This study aims at investigating perceived gender roles in regard to people who define themselves as women. The questions underlying the study are how gender roles are reproduced online and how these perceive to influence the individual, what expectations gender roles bring to an individual in a group online and how power structures and current hegemony are perceived to govern online and affect the individual in their daily life. The results show that the target audience generally feels marginalized on the virtual arena. This mainly through unrealistic expectations, different conditions, sexist structures and unreasonable differences in treatment after disclosing their gender.

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) are a prominent genre in today's video game industry with the most popular MMORPGs generating billions of dollars in revenue and attracting millions of players. As they have grown, they have become a major target for both technological research and sociological research. In such research, it is nearly impossible to reach the same player scale from any self-made technology or sociological experiments. This greatly limits the amount of control and topics that can be explored. In an effort to make up a lacking or non-existent player-base for custom-made MMORPG research scenarios A.I. agents, impersonating human players, can be used to "bootstrap" the research scenario to reach the necessary massive number of players that define the game genre. This thesis presents a system that makes its human players and A.I. players indistinguishable while preserving the basic characteristics of a typical MMORPG. To better achieve identical perception of human and A.I. players, our system centers around the collection, sharing, and exchange of information while limiting the means of expression and actions of players. A gameplay scenario built on the Panoptyk engine was constructed to imitate gameplay experienced in major MMORPGs. We conducted a user-study where subjects play through the scenario with a varying number of A.I. players unknown to them. Three versions of the scenario were created to assess how indistinguishable human and A.I. players were and vice versa. We found, across 24 participants, there were 32% correct identifications, 30% incorrect identifications, and 38% answers of "I don't know". This was broken down into 20% correct identifications, 42% incorrect identifications, and 38% answers of "I don't know" for bot characters and 46% correct identifications, 16% incorrect identifications, and 38% answers of ``I don't know'' for human characters.

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Expression and identification through virtual characters in MMORPGs has actively been, and is still being studied throughout the 21st century, and with the growing industry of video games, these studies become more and more relevant than ever. However, the same cannot be said about the subject of self-expression in terms of wearable items of clothing in MMORPGs. How players use the equipment/clothing available to create their own identity in the game, rather than solely rely on their character appearance in terms of the shape of the face or body. This study has chosen to focus its effort to first explore the relevance of player expression through fashion in MMORPGSs, and whether active players in the popular fantasy roleplaying game Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn participate in player fashion activities or gameplay features. For this reason, a hypothesis was also created for this specific study, which states that ‘Player fashion in MMORPGs positively impacts player retention’. The results of this study have shown that the gameplay feature/activity of player fashion does indeed impact how often players tend to come back to the same game, and keep on playing it for years. The result of this study opens the possibility for future studies to explore other areas in player fashion and could also serve as an interesting contrast between games of the same genre, and whether the same result could be said for those games as well.

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are one of the most popular genres in video games that combine massively multiplayer online genres with role-playing gameplay. MMORPGs’ featured social interaction and forms of level pro- gression through quest completion are the core for gaining players’ attention. Varied and challenging quests play an essential part in retaining that attention. However, well-crafted content takes much longer to develop with human efforts than it does to consume, and the dominant procedural content generation models for quests suffer from the drawback of being incompatible with dynamic world changes and the feeling of repetition over time. The proposed solution is to dynamically generate contextu- ally relevant quests with real-time information collected from the players. This thesis is to show that it is possible to generate contextually dynamic quests that could fit into the background story with only the information gathered from the players in real-time. To validate the proposed solution, a text-based MMO scenario is generated from the Panoptyk Engine, an information-driven game engine designed to run massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) without the distinction between NPCs and human players. The engine is intended to serve as a platform for simulating human/robot interaction. In this case, a quest simulation is built where quests are given by the NPC faction leaders utilizing the information gathered through ongoing events; players or robots belonging to certain factions will be taking and completing the quests. ivThe results of the 14-person survey showed some successes and some limitations. There was strong agreement in players understanding of what the quest was asking for, quests were related to other agents the player had seen in the world, quests involved agents that the player had interactions with, quests were related to things happening in the game world, quests were interesting. There was regular agreement on players understanding of quests that were designed entirely before the player started playing, quests were generated using a basic template with details filled in based on the player’s actions, and quests were dynamically generated. It was inconclusive with players understanding of quest motivation and previous quests the player had completed having an impact on the next quests.

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Using a quantitative survey distributed to regular players of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) (N = 777), the current study employed a correlation matrix and a parallel mediation model to assess the relationship between play frequency, motivating factors, and video game addiction. The results demonstrated that each of these elements were related to one another to varying degrees (p < .001). The motivating factors identified by Yee (2006) included achievement, immersion, and social interaction, which were tested as mediators and indicated that achievement (a1 = 0.2817, p < 0.001; b1 = 0.4073, p < 0.001) and immersion (a2 = 0.3217, p < 0.001; b2 = 0.2574, p < 0.001) are mediators in the relationship of play frequency and addiction. Social interaction was not significant as a mediator (a3 = 0.3217, p < 0.001; b3 = -0.0235, p = 0.6753). Higher levels of addiction were present for those who were motivated by achievement (rewards) and immersion (storyline/diversion) to play more frequently per week. However, those who were motivated by social interaction to play frequently did not demonstrate a statistically significant relationship with higher levels of addiction. Findings suggest that motivating factors of gameplay may have a mediating effect on the relationship between play frequency and addiction.