The visual appearance of video game characters carries great importance in regards to how a player perceives them. This also holds true for characters that are meant to represent the player in games, their avatars. In this thesis, the topic of preferences regarding visual appearance in relation to age of player avatars is explored. Interviews were held with participants from two age demographics in order to find potential differences and analyse them. The two age demographics consisted of middle aged swedes and young adult swedes. In the interviews, the respondents were given choices between eight different characters sketches. These eight sketches consisted of two groups, one meant to appear as being in the same age group as the young adult swedes and one meant to appear as being part of the middle aged swedes age group. After having made their choices, the respondents were asked to explain the motivation behind them. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the thought process that fueled their answers, the respondents were also prompted to answer question regarding their gaming habits, and their preferences in characters in other mediums than games. Results from the interviews indicated that there were trends in the choices made by the participants that differed between the two demographics. A majority of the demographic consisting of young adult swedes chose characters that were designed to appear closer to their age. Similarly, a majority of the middle aged demographic chose characters that were designed to appear closer to their age group. In short, a majority of the participants from both demographics showed a preference towards characters that were closer to their own age group.

abstract: ABSTRACT: The research for this paper is intended to introduce the reader to many of the influential trumpet performers and pedagogues in East Asian countries and territories along the Western Pacific Ocean Rim, including China, Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan (R.O.C.), Thailand, and Vietnam. Shao-Chun Tsai, the author of this research paper, finds it important for musicians to recognize that they are often influenced by other musicians in addition to their own efforts and self-discovery of who they are as artists. The author is a trumpeter and pianist from Taiwan, and would like to acknowledge the many outstanding trumpet players from Asia that have made important contributions to the discipline of trumpet playing. Unfortunately, there are very limited English resources available for the recognition of these pioneers, and as such they are often unknown to the general public and even to aspiring musicians. By gathering a collection of biographies, the author’s goal is to shed greater light on the rich trumpet playing and pedagogy heritage and influence in this region. The research information contained within was primarily gathered through personal interviews conducted by the author in order to ensure that the most up-to-date and accurate information was collected for the project. This project studies nine regions and includes thirty-seven trumpeters deemed to be influential by the author, who has invested her best efforts to acquire the most in-depth and current facts obtainable. The author hopes that the stories behind each of these successful musicians will stimulate trumpeters of all ages and inspire them to pursue their own development and goals in music. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2016

With narrative method, we investigate what happens with football players from Sweden whenthey go from national football to international football. Because of this profession, therespondents move in what Bourdieu calls the social space (Bourdieu 1986). Narrative methodhas given us a deep insight into our respondent´s experiences as professional football players inone of the five highest ranked leagues in Europe (UEFA 2018). The unstructured interviewsthat we used gave us a good empire. Through this approach, we try to capture the subjectiveexperiences of respondents (Kvale &amp; Brinkmann 2014). The narratives of the respondentsdiffer in many ways, because of their background. This is something we have been given theopportunity to analyze with the unstructured interviews. The payroll increases dramatically, asattitude towards the teammates and the whole device around the individual changes. Ouranalyze can answer that a class trip is conducted when respondents go from national tointernational football. / <p>2018-06-07</p>

Esta Tese possui como objeto teórico de investigação a experiência de jogo a partir de um viés fenomenológico, compreendendo o fenômeno lúdico e suas manifestações – no caso, o jogo – em nós, humanos, em seus aspectos ontológicos e relacionados à nossa capacidade de estabelecermos relações significativas com nosso próprio ser, com os outros e com as coisas do mundo em sua totalidade enquanto um processo de abertura de mundo. Partimos das premissas fenomenológicas e, em especial, da obra de Martin Heidegger, para caracterizar a existência, a natureza e a estrutura da experiência de jogo como um processo de afinação do homem no que chamamos de tonalidade afetiva ou Stimmung lúdica. O percurso teórico é iniciado pela abordagem do fenômeno lúdico e do jogo como problema ontológico, relacionado aos modos a partir dos quais estamos no mundo; em seguida, apresentamos o Ingress (2012), LARG utilizado para exemplificar e aplicar os possíveis efeitos que a afinação lúdica que a Stimmung pode desencadear na experiência de jogo em relação ao contexto urbano material, social, espacial e temporal no qual o jogo digital em questão ocorre. Deste modo, abordamos a experiência e a percepção também a partir da fenomenologia, principalmente relacionadas à espacialidade humana Para demonstrar o efeito que a Stimmung lúdica pode desencadear no Ingress, situamos o processo de desencantamento do mundo e suas tensões em relação às possibilidades de reencantamento a partir das experiências do jogador neste LARG. Ao aprofundar o conceito de tonalidade afetiva em Heidegger, também estabelecemos a sua estrutura existencial tríplice: um a priori lúdico; o comprometimento humano com o fenômeno lúdico enquanto antecipação futura; e a concretização da experiência de jogo na afinação da tonalidade afetiva lúdica enquanto atualização dos dois primeiros. Após, apresentamos o exercício de aplicação do conceito de Stimmung lúdico no Ingress, identificando possibilidades de reencantamento, utilizando uma metodologia inspirada na etnografia, com um questionário online e entrevistas presenciais com outros jogadores, além do relato do autor em relação ao mesmo. Por fim, são apresentadas as considerações finais e as referências bibliográficas consultadas para a realização desta Tese. / This Thesis has, as theoretical object of investigation, the experience of play from the phenomenological bias, comprising the play phenomenon and its manifestations - in this case, the game - in us, humans, in their ontological aspects and related to our ability to establish meaningful relationships with our own being, with others and with the things of the world as a process of world-opening. We start from the phenomenological premises, and especially from the work of Martin Heidegger, to characterize the existence, the nature and the structure of the game experience as a process of man's attunement in what we call playful attunement or Stimmung. We start our theoretical framework approaching the play phenomenon and the game as an ontological problem, related to the ways from which we are in the world; and so we introduce the LARG Ingress to exemplify and apply the possible effects that the playful Stimmung can trigger in the players’ experience in relation to the material, social, spatial and temporal urban context in which this game occurs. Therefore, we approach the experience and the perception also from the phenomenology, mainly related to the human spatiality In order to characterize the effect that the playful Stimmung can trigger in Ingress (2012), we approach the idea of the disenchantment of the world promoted by Modernity and situate its tensions in relation to the possibilities of re-enchantment from the players’ experiences in relation to this LARG. With the presentation of the concept of Stimmung in Heidegger, we establish the existential threefold structure of the same: an a priori ludic; the human commitment to the playful phenomenon as future anticipation; and the realization of the game experience as an attunement of the playful Stimmung as an concretion of the first two. After this, we present an exercise of application of the concept of playful Stimmung in the Ingress (2012), identifying the ways in which the re-enchantment it can trigger in the players’ experience, using an methodology inspired by ethnography, with an online survey and also interviews with other players, in addition to the author's report in relation to it. Finally, we present the final considerations and bibliographical references consulted for the accomplishment of this Thesis.

Electronic commerce is the selected field to investigate for this thesis, particularly pure player apparel brands. This has been of interest as consumers struggle when shopping online for apparel since they cannot test the product before purchasing with pure players, therefore, there is information asymmetry. Moreover, when consumers lack trust, they may be more hesitant to purchase online due to the perceived risk, therefore, companies should attempt to relieve their doubts. It has been recognized in previous research that electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) could provide guidance and develop confidence during the purchasing process. The aim of this study was to develop an understanding on how consumers perceive online reviews to assure that they will be satisfied with the order. Moreover, there were several factors identified in previous research that could influence the use of online reviews, therefore, those factors were recognized and analyzed in the context of pure players for this study. In addition, the study revealed two factors that influenced the use of online reviews. A qualitative method was utilized, to gain a deeper understanding on consumers’ opinions on the topic. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to provide the opportunity for individuals to further develop their responses. The results suggested that pure player apparel brands should include online reviews. They could improve the mechanism by considering the factors that were identified in this study.

While there is a broad theoretic foundation for creating artificial intelligence based solutions for two-player games, such as Chess, the multi-player domain is not as well explored and artificial intelligence solutions for multi-player games is often flawed. This report is an attempt to apply a multi-agent approach to a multi-player game, and use distributed problem solving to create viable plans in an environment of huge search spaces and multiple adversaries. An automated player (bot) for the game Diplomacy was created using distributed methodologies, and tested against other existing bots. The tests show that the bot developed can outperform opposition in score while being competetive in speed.

Obesity has become a worldwide problem that most countries are trying to fight. It affects many people, irrespective of age, race, gender, or religion; anyone can suffer from obesity, which leads to serious problems, both for individuals and for society as a whole. In this study we have selected two groups of people: the basic people who do not exercise on a weekly basis, and the average people who exercise regularly, every week. We have explored the attitude of the two groups in regards to mixing exercises with games, in order to motivate the people with basic activity levels to exercise more frequently. We have used a qualitative standard online questionnaire from AttrakDiff, which evaluates user experience through four important aspects: a) quality; b) subjective understanding of quality and subjective evaluation of quality; c) pragmatic and hedonic features; and d) emotional and behavioural effects. We also did a qualitative study and a quantitative study of some of the important factors present during exercise. The results of the qualitative and quantitative studies were very encouraging as they revealed that mixing games with exercise can transform boring exercises into entertaining ones. It can also motivate players to continue and repeat the exercises. The ANOVA test was applied and it shows that combining games with a stationary bike has a significant effect on the speed and the average rotation per minute of the participants.

The diploma thesis deals with the incorporation of Gamification into a company that provides services. In theoretical part the concept of Gamification is defined first as well as its development, games and their significance. Subsequently typology of players is described. The basic principle of Gamification is explained on the game's elements and mechanisms that motivate players to activity. The initial chapter consists of a summary of basic knowledge of literature, mostly foreign. Then examples of successful applications are described using game elements, which subsequently will be used in the practical part for push-process Gamification into society. The practical part is devoted to a detailed description of the gamificate environment Car4Way company and its implementation into society. First of all company Car4Way is described, especially the process of registration for returning a car. Comparison of individual gamification elements and creation of the concept of service gamification for best practices in Car4Way .

Master’s thesis deals with developing of multimedia application that allow play and receive multimedia files as audio and video. In thesis introduction, there is theory overview about programming language J2ME, its parts and divisions in couple of chapters. The applications developing begin by choosing focus groups and also group of devices that agree with present trends about mobile devices. The next part undertakes selecting development tool NetBeans IDE based on requirements for multimedia develop and also undertakes selecting software development kit Nokia SDK and its short definition. Afterwards, the application and its basic classes and methods are briefly characterized. The chapters of classes and methods are divided according algorithm level, following development description dividing aspect. Program functions are enriched with flow diagrams completing written text, which have marked important points of program. The main chapters describing algorithm parts begin with define audio and video play. The other pages include description of network connection a data transfers. In every part the programmer part, algorithm is analyzed first and than general options and functionality of this area. In file play part, it is selection of file and proceeding to launch playing with function control possibility. In case of network connection, it is access to network and data handling, eventually communication with each other in client - server hierarchy and consequential multimedia content playing. In the end of development part, reader is cognizant of application fault handling that is inherently part of every application working with I/O data. Next chapter is devoted to future development a design resulting to present process. In the thesis it can be found also application description from user’s point of view, user manual a solving incurred problem situations. In the instructions, there are contained screenshots of described parts of program. Reached results and reviews are summarized on the end of the thesis.

Content of this thesis is dedicated to problematics of design and implementation of a web base video player with slides as a JavaScript plugin. As the outcome of this thesis is supposed to replace an already existing player , the first chapter is dedicated to it's throughout analysis . Following chapters are the dedicated to desing , implementation and testing of the player , using information acquired in the phase of analysis .