The online game industry grows rapidly in these few years. Attrated by the huge market revenue, many game developers start to produce or publish the online game products. This results in a large amount of online game products. The purpose of this study is to understand the consumer behavior of online games. The lifestyle and the demography will be discussed in this study. The focus of this study is to find out if the consumer behavior will be affected by the difference of the lifestyle and demography. This thesis is based on the E.K.B. Model to develop the structure of consumer behavior, and refers to the A.I.O.structure for the lifestyle dimensions. A structured questionnaire is used to investigate the consumer behavior for online games. The findings are as follows: First, the characteristics of online game consumers are Male, 19 to 30 years old, student, college degree and income per month under 10,000. Second, consumers tend to use internet to find related information. Third, while selecting an online game product, consumers put more emphasis on the company service. Fourth, most consumers purchase the online game and the subscription fee card in the convenience stores, but the percentage of consumers obtain these via internet is increasing. As for lifestyle and demography, demogrphy affects consumer behavior significantly, but the lifestyle doesn¡¦t. Online game developers or publishers should provide good service. Also they can develop different marketing strategies for different market segments based on the demography.

This thesis examines the usage of and attitudes toward data visualization and analytic tools in three genres of online games. Using an online survey, this research analyzes responses from participants regarding their play habits and attitudes online. Several scales are generated identifying different player demographics such as emotional attitudes, competitive attitudes, technological attitudes, spectator involvement, and overall attitudes toward information customization. In addition, several genre specific scales are created for massive multiplayer online games (MMO), real time strategy (RTS) and first person shooting (FPS) games. This research concludes that competitive attitudes are moderately correlated with information customization and implementation of data visualization tools. Additionally, the relationship between the usage of data visualization tools are strongest with the MMO genre compared to the RTS or FPS genres. In addition, my research shows a strong preference between the responses for the usage of data visualization tools amongst those who report higher levels of spectator involvement with online games. Finally, my research concludes that there is a strong relationship between the amount of time players spend playing online games and the attitudes toward and usage of data visualization tools. / text

Earlier research has suggested that online gaming can be an effective way of acquiring English as a second or foreign language. It can both increase language proficiency (vocabulary or oral proficiency) and have a positive impact on affective filters such as motivation or willingness to communicate. The present study further investigates if habitual playing of massively multiplayer online (MMO) games results in achieving higher grades in English as a foreign language (EFL) for the Swedish upper secondary students. Possible gender differences regarding the acquisition of English and grades in the subject are also investigated to see if the female students play MMOs to the same extent as the males do and if the female students’ higher grades can be connected to gaming. 78 upper secondary school students answered a questionnaire about their English-language-related activities in their spare time and their online gaming habits in particular. The students’ most recent grades in the English subject were gathered to see if the habitual gamers achieved higher grades.   The results show that most of the males play MMOs and that most of the females do not. The males also engage more in other English-language-based activities in their spare time than the females do. Still, the informants’ English grades are similar between the genders. Females seem to learn more English in school and the males more in their spare time. However, the group of gamers playing MMOs 4-8 hours a week or more achieved higher grades than the rest of the student informants.

Currently, there are a lot different online games. From the perspective of the players – games were created for entertainment, but in terms of game developers – games were created for getting profit. The aim of this study is to identify factors which cause players to make in-game purchases of “nonprofit” goods in online games. It is important for game developers, since it will help them to increase their profit by providing to the customers (players) exactly what players want. For this study qualitative research design will be used since this method will help to hear opinions of players. Outcomes will be useful for game developers and help them to understand what is good and what is not good in their in-game markets.

Because games set in persistent virtual game worlds (VGWs) have massive numbers of players, these games need methods of characterisation for playable characters (PCs) that differ from the methods used in traditional narrative media. VGWs have a number of particularly interesting qualities. Firstly, VGWs are places where players interact with and create elements carrying narrative potential. Secondly, players add goals, motives and driving forces to the narrative potential of a VGW, which sometimes originates from the ordinary world. Thirdly, the protagonists of the world are real people, and when acting in the world their characterisation is not carried out by an author, but expressed by players characterising their PCs. How they can express themselves in ways that characterise them depend on what they can do, and how they can do it, and this characterising action potential (CAP) is defined by the game design of particular VGWs. In this thesis, two main questions are explored. Firstly, how can CAP be designed to support players in expressing consistent characters in VGWs? Secondly, how can VGWs support role-play in their rule-systems? By using iterative design, I explore the design space of CAP by building a semiautonomous agent structure, the Mind Module (MM) and apply it in five experimental prototypes where the design of CAP and other game features is derived from the MM. The term semiautonomy is used because the agent structure is designed to be used by a PC, and is thus partly controlled by the system and partly by the player. The MM models a PC’s personality as a collection of traits, maintains dynamic emotional state as a function of interactions with objects in the environment, and summarises a PC’s current emotional state in terms of ‘mood’. The MM consists of a spreading-activation network of affect nodes that are interconnected by weighted relationships. There are four types of affect node: personality trait nodes, emotion nodes, mood nodes, and sentiment nodes. The values of the nodes defining the personality traits of characters govern an individual PC’s state of mind through these weighted relationships, resulting in values characterising for a PC’s personality. The sentiment nodes constitute emotionally valenced connections between entities. For example, a PC can ‘feel’ anger toward another PC. This thesis also describes a guided paper-prototype play-test of the VGW prototype World of Minds, in which the game mechanics build upon the MM’s model of personality and emotion. In a case study of AI-based game design, lessons learned from the test are presented. The participants in the test were able to form and communicate mental models of the MM and game mechanics, validating the design and giving valuable feedback for further development. Despite the constrained scenarios presented to test players, they discovered interesting, alternative strategies, indicating that for game design the ‘mental physics’ of the MM may open up new possibilities. The results of the play-test influenced the further development of the MM as it was used in the digital VGW prototype the Pataphysic Institute. In the Pataphysic Institute the CAP of PCs is largely governed by their mood. Depending on which mood PCs are in they can cast different ‘spells’, which affect values such as mental energy, resistance and emotion in their targets. The mood also governs which ‘affective actions’ they can perform toward other PCs and what affective actions they are receptive to. By performing affective actions on each other PCs can affect each others’ emotions, which - if they are strong - may result in sentiments toward each other. PCs’ personalities govern the individual fluctuations of mood and emotions, and define which types of spell PCs can cast. Formalised social relationships such as friendships affect CAP, giving players more energy, resistance, and other benefits. PCs’ states of mind are reflected in the VGW in the form of physical manifestations that emerge if an emotion is very strong. These manifestations are entities which cast different spells on PCs in close proximity, depending on the emotions that the manifestations represent. PCs can also partake in authoring manifestations that become part of the world and the game-play in it. In the Pataphysic Institute potential story structures are governed by the relations the sentiment nodes constitute between entities.

This thesis is about the effects of online game addiction on both Swedish and Chinese undergraduate students at University of Gävle, Sweden. It aims at investigating the impact that online games have on undergraduate students at University of Gävle, Sweden. As most of the previous researchers in this area conducted a quantitative research, we decided to do a qualitative research which can help us to get a deeper and better understanding of online game addiction.

This dissertation conducts a phenomenological analysis of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) – networked computer applications that thousands of people play simultaneously using avatars to interact with one another and with computer-controlled entities within a game-world typically rendered in 3D. Part 1 argues that existing studies of MMOGs often utilize concepts that, while presumed to be well understood, are often problematic in ways that conflict with the actual claims of the studies in which they play a central role. Three issues in particular are highlighted. It is argued, first, that common conceptions of virtual should not influence understanding of MMOGs; second, that there are prima facie problems with how existing studies frame the subject of avatars; and, third, that there are substantive problems with accounts of avatars that involve notions of representation or embodiment. Part 2 develops an interpretation of MMOGs that both extends understanding of these games, and reflexively unsettles the traditional phenomenological perspective that orients this interpretation itself. The analysis begins by arguing that MMOGs are worlds – understood as places of meaningful, fallen, thrown, collective conduct – and introduces the idea of conjuncture to account for how Dasein and avatars function together at an existential-ontological level. In so doing, the dissertation puts pressure on the fundamental-ontological distinction between Dasein and entities other than Dasein, the idea that Dasein alone discloses world, and the notion that whatever Dasein uses in its environment only obtains a place because of the de-severing and directionality of Dasein. By interpreting the virtuality of MMOGs as the creative repetition of ontological structures of existence, the dissertation provides insight into the phenomena of virtual death and time. This in turn draws into question the idea that quantifying time blocks access to original human temporality, and that the transcendence of Dasein uniquely involves self-overcoming.

This dissertation conducts a phenomenological analysis of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) – networked computer applications that thousands of people play simultaneously using avatars to interact with one another and with computer-controlled entities within a game-world typically rendered in 3D. Part 1 argues that existing studies of MMOGs often utilize concepts that, while presumed to be well understood, are often problematic in ways that conflict with the actual claims of the studies in which they play a central role. Three issues in particular are highlighted. It is argued, first, that common conceptions of virtual should not influence understanding of MMOGs; second, that there are prima facie problems with how existing studies frame the subject of avatars; and, third, that there are substantive problems with accounts of avatars that involve notions of representation or embodiment. Part 2 develops an interpretation of MMOGs that both extends understanding of these games, and reflexively unsettles the traditional phenomenological perspective that orients this interpretation itself. The analysis begins by arguing that MMOGs are worlds – understood as places of meaningful, fallen, thrown, collective conduct – and introduces the idea of conjuncture to account for how Dasein and avatars function together at an existential-ontological level. In so doing, the dissertation puts pressure on the fundamental-ontological distinction between Dasein and entities other than Dasein, the idea that Dasein alone discloses world, and the notion that whatever Dasein uses in its environment only obtains a place because of the de-severing and directionality of Dasein. By interpreting the virtuality of MMOGs as the creative repetition of ontological structures of existence, the dissertation provides insight into the phenomena of virtual death and time. This in turn draws into question the idea that quantifying time blocks access to original human temporality, and that the transcendence of Dasein uniquely involves self-overcoming.

There are several weaknesses in the popular transport protocol TCP (Transmission Control Protocol). A possible replacement to TCP would be the newer protocol SCTP (Steam Control Transmission Protocol). This thesis presents three different proposed implementations of SCTP: HTTP over SCTP, online games over SCTP and IP mobility over SCTP. The proposed implementations are analyzed, based on relevant literature, and recommendations are issued on the importance of moving forward with them. The result of the thesis is that HTTP over SCTP is recommended. SCTP features such as multi-streaming, multi-homing and the four-way handshake addresses the inherent weaknesses with using TCP for HTTP traffic. IP mobility over SCTP is also recommended since it results in lower delay in the handover process compared to MIPv6 (Mobile IPv6). Online games over SCTP, however, is not recommended since the existing implementations of SCTP results in poor latency for the kind of traffic online games produce.

The policy and practice of media regulation in China is quickly evolving to cope with the regulatory challenges presented by the rapid development and convergence of new media technology. These challenges include the increasing economic power of international and private stakeholders within this space, as well as the constantly evolving uses of highly converged media. Online games are a central part of this evolving dynamic, which is characterized by strong tensions between producers and operators, government regulators, and users of online games. This research explores the changing dynamic of online games regulation in China as it responds to the forces of internationalization and privatization. It also seeks to identify critical issues for policy development in China that are raised by the new and innovative ways that this media is being used. It draws from and contributes to scholarship from a number of disciplines, but primarily approaches the research from a media studies and area studies perspective. The thesis is presented in five chapters. Chapter I begins with a discussion of emerging practice in online games and its wider policy implications. This is followed by a literature review and an explanation of the methodological approach, which included: case study methodology, participant observation, and key informant Interviews with policy, legal, and game industry experts in China. The core research is then presented in three chapters. Chapter II is a detailed contextual narrative that describes China’s online games policy and places it in historical perspective. Chapter III is an exploratory analysis of key institutions, stakeholder interests, and interactions that shape practical regulation of online games in China. Chapter IV presents a focused analysis and discussion of the gold farming case. The thesis concludes with a summary and discussion of research contributions in Chapter V. The final discussion highlights how the thesis contributes to knowledge in three key areas: new media in China, policy studies of China, and media convergence.