Denna uppsats undersöker vad spelare vill uppleva i sitt karaktärsskapande iolika spel. Syftet med arbetet har varit att få bättre förståelse för vad enanvändare vill ha ut av sin karaktär och sitt karaktärskapande.Frågeställningen i arbetet löd: ”Vad är för en designer viktigast att tänka pånär man designar en karaktärsskapande del i ett spel?” Förhoppningen varatt få en djupare förståelse för karaktärsskapandets karaktär för att bättrekunna designa den karaktärsskapande delen i ett spel. Undersökningengenomfördes med en kvalitativ metod för att belysa frågorna djupare. Förstskapades en kvalitativ intervju, och efter intervjuerna skapades tre nyafrågor som lades ut på två internetforum med inriktning mot MMORPGs.De spelare som verkade vara mest intresserade av karaktärsskapande ochprocessen kring karaktärsskapandet, var de spelare som ibland ägnade sig åtrollspelande. De spelare som delvis eller helt ägnade sig åt Player versusPlayer verkade ha svårt att se någon mening med att skapa en identitet ellerett unikt utseende överhuvudtaget. Det viktigaste som framkom iundersökningen var att man måste känna sin publik. Som designer behöverman veta för vilka spelstilar man designar spelet. De faktorer som varviktiga för spelarna, för att kunna fördjupa sig i sina karaktärer, var att deraskaraktärer hade möjligheten att bli unika. / This paper is focused on a better understanding of what computer gameplayers want to get out of their character and the character creation. Thequestion addressed in the paper was: "What is most important for a designerto consider when designing a character-creation part of a game?" The aimwas to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of the character creationprocess in order to better design the character creation part of future games.The study has been conducted with a qualitative method to illuminate thequestions in more depth. First, a qualitative interview was made, and afterthe interviews, three new questions were created, which were then postedon two Internet forums focusing on MMORPGs. The players who were themost interested in character creation and the process of this, were theplayers who sometimes engaged in role play. The players who partially orfully engaged in Player versus Player combat, had difficulties seeing anypoint in creating an identity or a unique look at all. The most importantthing that emerged from the investigation was that the designer needs toknow his audience. As a designer, you need to take into account whatplaying styles you design the game for. The important factors for theplayers to immerse themselves in their characters, was that their characterscould be made unique.

Virtual worlds give us the opportunity to explore another self, a virtual character of the real life you. Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) have become extremely popular over the last decade. It has also grown into a lucrative business. To keep the players, the game needs to be more than just a game. This study aimed at finding out what factors that determine which features of the character creation interface that are most important to players. The following research question was formed; “Which underlying factors affect how important different features of the character creation interface are to experienced MMORPG players? To be able to answer the question an extensive literature review was conducted. A qualitative approach was taken. Long interviews were made with five participants, two female and three male players. The interviews took place while they created a number of avatars in different MMORPGs. The interviews were then followed up. During the follow-ups, the impact the character creation process had for the players, were discussed. The findings indicate that the character creation interface is important for the players to get a good gaming experience. However different types of players require different things. Important features for the users to change were mainly; the head; the name; and adding parts of yourself on your character. The factors that determined the importance of these features were found to be; Player types; Identity types; Immersion levels; and whether or not the game or the gaming experience were new to the player. Another finding showed that the longer you have played a game the less bizarre the different races, classes and gender will seem. The study also indicated that the female participants had a hard time identifying with their male characters.

Distributed virtual environments (DVEs) have been an active area of research and engineering for more than 20 years. The most widely deployed DVEs are network games such as Quake, Halo, and World of Warcraft (WoW), with millions of users and billions of dollars in annual revenue. Deployed DVEs remain expensive centralized implementations despite significant research outlining ways to distribute DVE workloads. This dissertation shows previous DVE research evaluations are inconsistent with deployed DVE needs. Assumptions about avatar movement and proximity - fundamental scale factors - do not match WoW's workload, and likely the workload of other deployed DVEs. Alternate workload models are explored and preliminary conclusions presented. Using realistic workloads it is shown that a fully decentralized DVE cannot be deployed to today's consumers, regardless of its overhead. Residential broadband speeds are improving, and this limitation will eventually disappear. When it does, appropriate security mechanisms will be a fundamental requirement for technology adoption. A trusted auditing system ('Carbon') is presented which has good security, scalability, and resource characteristics for decentralized DVEs. When performing exhaustive auditing, Carbon adds 27% network overhead to a decentralized DVE with a WoW-like workload. This resource consumption can be reduced significantly, depending upon the DVE's risk tolerance. Finally, the Pairwise Random Protocol (PRP) is described. PRP enables adversaries to fairly resolve probabilistic activities, an ability missing from most decentralized DVE security proposals. Thus, this dissertations contribution is to address two of the obstacles for deploying research on decentralized DVE architectures. First, lack of evidence that research results apply to existing DVEs. Second, the lack of security systems combining appropriate security guarantees with acceptable overhead.

Background: Due to technological outbreak Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) has become very popular leisure time occupation for people of various age ranging from not only children to also mid-age gamers. Although computer gaming is not officially classified as a disorder within ICD-10, it shows obvious signs of behavioral disorder. Despite there is a great number of research within this area, there is still lack of unified definition and classification. In addition to numerous publications in this field, there is still a space for additional research. One of those areas to explore is an impact on partner life and relationship. Aims: The main objective of the thesis is to describe the impact of Massively Multiplayer Online gaming on partner relationship. Furthermore, the work will partially focus on the role of playing MMO games in a partnership and what the impact of playing Massively Multiplayer Online games are in the common social life of partners. Methods and sample size: Qualitative research, where data has been collected from semi-structured interview, has been chosen. Subsequently the data has been extrapolated by method of Grounded Theory. Sample size was chosen based on online questionnaire with 733 participants out of those there were 5 male gamers and 4 female partners. Results: The...

Solicitud de envío manuscrito de artículo científico. / Los usuarios están protestando activamente contra los anuncios digitales invasivos descargando software de bloqueo de anuncios. Los desarrolladores de juegos recientes introducen publicidad dinámica e interactiva en mundos virtuales. En este contexto, videojuegos como el NBA2K18, lanzaron diferentes plataformas como vallas publicitarias y otros medios publicitarios dentro del juego. Este estudio tiene como objetivo analizar cómo es la experiencia del usuario en NBA2K18 con respecto a la participación de las marcas en él. Se posiciona en el paradigma interpretativo y se realizaron entrevistas semiestructuradas. Los participantes fueron 15 jugadores NBA2K18, considerados "Hard Core Players" cuyas edades oscilaron entre los 18 y los 25 años. Se estudiará MyCareer, un modo de juego en NBA 2K18. Los resultados muestran que todos los participantes estuvieron de acuerdo en que las marcas son necesarias en este juego, ya que ayudan a los jugadores a cumplir con todas sus fantasías. Las percepciones de los jóvenes giraban en torno a cómo las marcas les ayudaban a perseguir sus sueños. Las marcas en NBA2K18, no sometieron la experiencia del juego a sus objetivos; más bien, lo mejoran, para que los jugadores lo sientan mucho más cercano a la vida real. / Users are actively protesting against invasive digital ads by downloading adblocking software. Recent games developers introduce dynamic and interactive advertising into virtual worlds. In this context, video games like NBA2K18 launched different platforms like billboards and other advertising media within the game. This study aims to analyze how the user’s experience in NBA2K18 is regarding the participation of brands in it. It is positioned in the interpretive paradigm and semi-structured interviews were conducted. The participants were 15 NBA2K18 players, considered "hard-core players" whose ages ranged from 18 to 25. MyCareer, a game mode in NBA 2K18 will be studied. Findings show all participants agreed that brands are necessary in this game because help the players fulfilled every fantasy requirement. Young people's perceptions revolved around how the brands help them pursuing their dreams. Brands in NBA2K18, do not undergo the experience of the game; rather, they enhance it, so that players feel it much more like real life. / Tesis

Magister Commercii - MCom / The humble Pong arcade game at the corner store ignited a fundamental culture shift in the 1970s and it is increasingly gaining momentum. A generation of gamers is already permeating organisations. The socio-cultural phenomenon of digital gaming has become pervasive. The intersection point of the three trends, Ubiquitous Computing, Ubiquitous Gaming and Social Networking, is the focus point of this study. It is at this intersection point that both social online gaming and cutting-edge leadership competencies co-exist and have the potential to flourish when implemented with caution and circumspection. Leadership is frequently touted as an almost mystical holy grail in modern business. Leadership :pevelopment is therefore often recognised as a critical pivot for business success. If business leaders can successfully utilise game-based learning to maximise their return on investment in Leadership Development initiatives, this may not only increase business metrics, but also enable business leaders to leave a lasting legacy by sculpting new generations of leaders who are ready and able to face the future. Social Online Simulation Gaming (SOSG) as a learning design and learning technology can prove particularly valuable as a leadership and skills development tool within the "digimodem" world. Current literature, however, does not provide a clearly focused framework for the implementation of ICT supported game-based Leadership Development technologies within the information economy. Current literature fails to integrate and take into account aspects critical to the successful utilisation of SOSG, such as the principles of "Flow Design", the often "Puppet Master" role and the interrelatedness, even interdependence, of the required utilisation competencies There is currently not a clear and specific framework for evaluating the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) competencies, knowledge, skills and attitudes required to successfully use Socia1 ·bnline Simulation Games software within the context of Organisational Leaden;hip Development. This study aimed to create and refine a framework for evaluating the ICT competencies required to successfully implement SOSG as Leadership Development tool.

En utmaning knutet till onlinespel och sociala relationer online är svårigheten att bibehålla kontakten, vilket leder till att många relationer och vänskaper online påverkas negativt när användare går från ett spel till ett annat. Tidigare forskning pekar på att den kontakt som uppstår till följd av onlinespel består av svaga relationer utan större känslomässiga och personliga band mellan spelarna. Syftet med denna studie är således att undersöka uppkomsten av sociala relationer online för att sedan dra slutsatser knutet till hur dessa relationer bildas med hjälp av digitala plattformar. För att genomföra detta genomfördes en kvalitativ forskningsstudie som grundar sig i tidigare litteratur, intervjuer samt kompletterande enkätutskick. Denna studie  har resulterat i ett kunskapsbidrag genom att identifiera digitala plattformar som på ett eller annat sätt bidrar till skapandet av sociala relationer i onlinespel. / There is an existing challenge associated with online games and social relationships onlineregarding the difficulty of maintaining contact, resulting in many online relationships andfriendships being affected negatively as users move from one game to another. Previous researchindicates that the contact that arises as a result of online games consists of weak relationshipswithout major emotional and personal ties between the players. The purpose of this study is thusto investigate the emergence of social relationships online in order to draw conclusions linked tohow these relationships are formed using digital platforms. To achieve this, a qualitative researchstudy was conducted based on previous literature, interviews and supplementary questionnaires.This study has resulted in a contribution of knowledge by identifying digital platforms that inone way or another contribute to the creation of social relationships in online games.

Online gambling related problems is a growing societal problem. Hence, the online gambling companies are meeting increased pressure to take social responsibility for their impact. In this way, a paradox is created between making money from increased gambling and reducing gambling addiction. This thesis examines how a Swedish online gambling company, LeoVegas, works with social responsibility (CSR) and how they present this work in their external communication. Furthermore, the thesis examines if working with social responsibility can give gambling companies legitimacy. The theoretical framework for this study consists of Max Weber’s Concepts of legitimacy, Mark C. Suchman’s legitimacy theory and corporate social responsibility. The method used for this thesis was a semi-structured interview with two employees at LeoVegas and a content analysis of LeoVegas external communication. The results show that LeoVegas takes its social responsibility in its external communication based on what is expected of a licensed gambling company. The social responsibility can be seen in the form of communicating help tools to gambling users who exhibit unhealthy gambling behavior, and through CSR commitment to prove to be a serious gambling company in the industry. The conclusion for the study is that despite active work with CSR, gambling companies can not be seen as fully responsible for society due to the negative impact the product has on so many individuals. On the other hand, it will be beneficial for a gambling company to actively show its CSR-commitment in its external communication in order to be considered legitimate by the public. This study is relevant because it contributes with a more in depth knowledge within the field and the gambling industry, which affects a lot of individuals in different ways.

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Cette recherche aborde le thème des jeux en ligne et plus précisément celui des MMORPGs. L'objet de notre étude consiste à mieux comprendre en quoi « la guilde », une forme d'organisation sociale propre à ce type de jeu, constitue un facteur favorable aux comportements de citoyenneté organisationnelle (CCO). Ces comportements sont définis au travers de la littérature comme des comportements discrétionnaires qui ne sont pas exigés par la tâche et qui contribuent au succès de l'organisation. Cette étude s'intéresse aux comportements de citoyenneté organisationnelle chez les membres d'une guilde. L'échantillon interrogé témoigne d'une perception différente en termes de citoyenneté organisationnelle. L'analyse des réponses révèle que les membres d'une guilde se considèrent davantage comme de bons citoyens organisationnels que les joueurs indépendants. Ainsi, ces divers entretiens ont fait ressortir des liens entre l'appartenance à une guilde et les comportements de citoyenneté organisationnelle en soulignant notamment l'influence de l'engagement affectif et du soutien organisationnel perçu dans ce processus de mobilisation. / This research approaches the topic of the online games and more preciselyMMORPGs. The purpose of our study is to better understand how «the guild», a particular form of social organization to this kind of play, constitutes a favourable factor for the organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB’s). These behaviors are defined, through the literature, as discretionary behaviors, that go beyond prescribed formal role requirements and duties and which contribute to the overall success of the organization. Our study focuses on the organizational citizenship behaviors of guild members. The sample of survey respondentsaccurate knowledge of a different perception in terms of organizational citizenship behaviors. The analysis of the answers also shows that the guild members consider themselves more as organizational citizens than the independent players. These semi-structured interviews emphasized the bond between the guild membership and organizational citizenship behaviors by underlining the influence of two factors such as the affective commitment and the perceived organizational support in this process of mobilization.