Les jeux vidéo occupent une place importante dans notre société. Cependant, leur conception ne prend aujourd'hui que peu en compte les spécificités de l'interaction joueur-jeu vidéo, qui sont déterminantes pour une expérience de jeu optimale. L'objectif de cette thèse était de comprendre l'influence de différents choix de conception des interfaces visuelles des jeux vidéo sur la performance et le comportement du regard des joueurs. Ces interfaces, généralement dynamiques et complexes, sont composées de trois sources d'information : les objets avec lesquels le joueur interagit et l'arrière-plan, qui composent la scène d'action principale, ainsi que les informations contextuelles superposées à la scène principale. Sept expériences ont été réalisées pour comprendre le partage attentionnel entre ces sources dans le cadre d'une activité de jeu vidéo. Les caractéristiques de l'arrière-plan, des informations contextuelles et de la tâche ont été manipulées. La performance et les mouvements du regard des joueurs ont été enregistrés. Les résultats ont montré que le partage attentionnel entre deux sources d'information (e.g., scène d'action et informations contextuelles) est facilité lorsqu'elles ne se chevauchent pas. Lorsque qu'elles se chevauchent nécessairement (e.g., objets et arrière-plan), les caractéristiques de mouvement et de complexité de l'arrière-plan et la difficulté de la tâche modulent très largement la dégradation de la performance. Un modèle théorique de partage attentionnel entre deux sources visuelles d'information superposées est proposé. Des recommandations sont établies pour la conception des jeux vidéo, mais aussi des environnements virtuels en général. / Video games take an increasingly important place in our society. Nowadays, however, their design doesn't take enough into account the specificity of player-game interaction, which is essential for an optimal play experience. The thesis' goal was to understand the impact of different design choices for video games visual interfaces on players' performance and gaze behavior. These dynamic and complex interfaces include three information sources: the objects that the player interacts with and the background, which make up together the main action scene, and the contextual information superimposed on the main scene. Seven experiments were made to understand how attention is shared between these sources during video game activity. The characteristics of the background, of the contextual information and of the game task were manipulated. The performance was measured while participants' eye movements were recorded. The results showed that attention sharing between two sources (e.g., the action scene and contextual information) is optimal when the two sources do not overlap at all. When they necessarily overlap (e.g., objects superimposed on a background), the nature of background movement, the background visual complexity and the difficulty of the task can strongly modulate the performance decrease. A theoretical model of attention sharing between two superimposed sources of visual information is proposed. Practical recommendations are drawn up for video game design, but also for virtual environments design.

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Esta dissertação analisa a política externa brasileira contemporânea pelo prisma do ingresso do Brasil no G-20, a mais importante estrutura de governança global a se confrontar com a crise financeira desde 2008. É antiga a busca por reconhecimento do país, como marca da identidade internacional brasileira. A pesquisa avalia se o papel do Brasil no G-20 sinaliza o status de global player pelo entendimento teórico das escalas nas relações internacionais, em que a política externa, ao alterar sua escala, pode afetar o comportamento do agente estatal em diferentes agendas. Usando os conceitos de papel, status, identidade e reconhecimento, são analisadas as diferentes identidades internacionais do Brasil nas escalas regionais, Sul Global e internacional. O G-20 é tratado como uma instituição social, em que processos de socialização podem afetar o comportamento do Brasil entre os membros do fórum e fora dele. No G-20, o Brasil já demostrou que é susceptível aos processos de socialização por não confrontar agressivamente com as dinâmicas de poder do status quo, e por comprovar que o país valoriza seu lugar como um insider na mesa de negociações. Foi assim que o Brasil chegou a um marco nas projeções de poder e identidade no G-20. No sistema internacional, entretanto, o Brasil não alcançou o status de global player, devido aos conflituosos papéis que o país assume em sua região, no Sul Global e internacionalmente, além de suas capacidades moderadas de poder material. / The present research analyzes contemporary Brazilian foreign policy through the lens of the countrys entrance in the G-20, the leading global governance structure since the 2008 Financial Crisis. Brazils international identity has long been driven by a desire for recognition as a major actor in international affairs. The research evaluates whether Brazils role in the G-20 signals global player status through a theoretical understanding of the scales of international relations, whereby a countrys foreign policy on one scale may affect its behavior in another. Drawing on role theory, status, identity and recognition theory, Brazils different international identities in the regional, Global South and international scales are analyzed. The G-20 is treated as a social institution whereby socializing processes may affect Brazils behavior within the forum and outside of it. Within the G-20, Brazil has shown that has been susceptible to socialization processes by not aggressively challenging the status quo power dynamics and proving that it values its seat as an insider at the negotiating table. Thus, within the G-20, Brazil has reached a milestone in its power projections and international identity. In international affairs, in general, however, Brazil has not yet reached global player status, due to the countrys conflicting roles, regionally, within the Global South and internationally, as well as its moderate power capacities.

A Gamificação é uma técnica que a utiliza elementos de design de jogos em ambientes que não são jogos, visando aumentar a motivação e engajamento dos usuários e que vem ganhando espaço em diversos áreas como saúde, marketing e também na educação. Porém, ainda que o interesse pela técnica venha crescendo, os meios para sua aplicação nesses ainda não estão bem definidos e os resultados obtidos têm-se mostrado dependentes do contexto e da população alvo. Diversos autores atribuem essa inconstância nos resultados a problemas no design da gamificação, uma vez que a maior parte dos projetos tem utilizado abordagens one-size-fits-all, no qual todos os usuários utilizam o mesmo ambiente independente de suas preferências individuais. Diante desse cenário, tem-se proposto que a gamificação personalizada pode atender uma maior parcela dos usuários, adequando os ambientes gamificados ao perfil dos usuários. Uma das abordagens para a personalização da gamificação consiste no uso de tipologias de jogadores para determinar os elementos mais interessante para o usuário. No entanto, as tipologias utilizam estereótipos, criando constructos que ainda restringem as informações consideradas durante a personalização. Dessa forma, neste trabalho buscou-se investigar a personalização com base na teoria de motivações para se engajarem em jogos, que trata o perfil do usuário como um conjunto de diferentes subcomponentes motivacionais correlacionados, que se agrupam em macro-componentes. Para isso, adaptou-se a teoria para o contexto da gamificação e elaborou-se dois modelos o de Macro-Gamificação, o qual relaciona-se com a teoria de Autodeterminação e às necessidades de Competência, Relacionamento e Autonomia do usuário, e o de Micro-Gamificação, que relaciona os elementos de jogos a um determinado subcomponente motivacional e disponibilizá-lo mediante o interesse do usuário no subcomponente. Para avaliar então se a gamificação personalizada influencia no engajamento dos usuários quando comparada a gamificação não personalizada, os modelos foram implementados em um ambiente virtual de aprendizagem, preparado para criar os perfis de gamificação dos usuários dinamicamente e adaptar interface do em tempo real. Realizou-se então um estudo de caso com N=36, utilizando como domínio o estudo dos silabários do idioma japonês. Ao final do estudo foram identificados dois padrões de atuação no sistema com uma diferença de 65% de participação e que foi utilizado para segmentar os participantes. No segmento menos engajado, os participantes do grupo não personalizado apresentaram um engajamento aos grupos personalizados. Já no segmento dos usuários mais ativos o grupo utilizando o modelo Micro-Gamificado, apresentou-se mais engajado. Desse modo, não é possível afirmar que a gamificação personalizada proporcione um maior engajamento do que a gamificação sem personalização, embora os resultados sugiram que usuários que permanecem utilizando o sistema por mais tempo tem um maior engajamento no ambiente personalizado. Por fim, é possível afirmar que o desenvolvimento de sistemas gamificados com personalização ainda está em sua infância e por isso nesta pesquisa além de buscar evidencias sobre o impacto da gamificação personalizada no engajamento dos usuários, buscou-se também desenvolver ferramental para facilitar o processo para os membros da comunidade em ordem de impulsionar os avanços dessa área de pesquisa. / Gamification is a technique that uses game design elements in non-game context, to increase users motivation and engagement and that has been gaining space in several areas such as health, marketing and also in education. However, although the interest in the technique is growing, the means for its application are still not well defined and the results obtained have been shown to be dependent on the context and the population. Several authors attribute this resultsin the results to problems in gamification design, since most projects have been using an one-size-fitsall approach, in which all users uses the same environment independent of their preferences. Given this scenario, it has been proposed that the personalized gamification can adress a larger portion of users, adapting the gamified environments to users profiles One of the approaches to personalize the gamification is to use player typologies to determine which elements are most interesting to the user. However, typologies uses stereotypes, creating constructs that still restrict the information considered during customization. Thus, in this work, we sought to investigate personalization based on the theory of motivations to engage in games, which treats the user profile as a set of different correlated motivational subcomponents, which are grouped into macrocomponents. For this, the theory was adapted to the context of the gamification and two models were elaborated the Macro-Gamification, which is related to the theory of Self-determination and to the needs of Competence, Relationship and Autonomy of the user, and the Micro-Gamification, which relates the game elements to a particular motivational subcomponent and make it available through the users interest in the subcomponent. In order to evaluate whether personalized gamification influences user engagement when compared to non-personalized gamification, the models were implemented in a virtual learning environment, prepared to dynamically create users gamification profiles and adapt the interface in real time. A case study was then carried out with N = 36, using as a domain the study of syllabaries of the Japanese language. At the end of the study, two patterns of performance in the system with a difference of 65 % participation were identified and used to segment the participants. In the less engaged segment, the non-personalized group participants showed a higer engagement than the personalized groups. However, in the segment of the most active users the group using the Micro-Gamified model, presented itself more engaged. Thus, it can not be argued that personalized gamification provides greater engagement than non-personalized gamification, although the results suggest that users who remain using the system longer have a greater engagement in the personalized approach. Finally, it is possible to affirm that the development of personalized gamified systems is still in its infancy and for this reason, in this research, besides searching for evidence on the impact of personalized gamification on user engagement, we also sought to develop tooling to facilitate the process for the members of the community in order to boost the advances of this area of research.

Générer du gameplay est un incontournable objectif de la réalisation d’un jeu. Nous le recherchons lorsque nous nous rentrons dans la bulle ludique. Pourtant, les éléments produits par les game designer sont des systèmes de jeu, des règles, une simulation, etc. Pour que ce système permette la naissance du gameplay, les game designers doivent nécessairement tenter de modéliser le joueur. Empiriquement ils manipulent des modèles psychologiques et sociologiques du joueur : Courbe d’apprentissage, gestion de la difficulté, degré d’efficience (etc.). Au cœur de la session de jeu industriel et chercheur ont besoin de moyens pour mieux cerner le joueur. La question que nous nous posons est celle de la détection des traits psychologiques, d’éléments caractérisant du joueur, au travers du gameplay ou, pour le moins, engagé dans une expérience ludique. Nous proposons une méthode de game design dédiée à la création d’un profil psychologique du joueur. Nous avons pu l’expérimenter lors d’un travail de collaboration avec INETOP et Paris Ouest sur la question des tests d’orientation professionnelle. Il s’agit du serious game JEU SERAI, développé en partenariat avec l’industriel Wizarbox. Cette première expérimentation nous permet d’envisager un développement de ce champ de recherche à la croisée des sciences de l’informatique, de la psychologie et des sciences cognitives. / Can we track psychological player’s traits or profile through gameplay or, at least, when the player is engaged in a ludic experience? We propose a game design methodology dedicated to the generation of psychological profile of the player. The main experimentation, a vocational guidance game, was created with academic experts and industrial game developpers. The first results set the basis of the exploration of a field at the crossover of computer sciences, in particular game design, psychology and cognitive sciences.

[pt] Game Analytics é uma área que envolve o processamento de dados de videogames com a finalidade de proporcionar uma melhor experiência de jogo para o usuário. Também ajuda a verificar os padrões de comportamento dos jogadores, facilitando a identificação do público-alvo. A coleta de dados dos jogadores ajuda os desenvolvedores de jogos a identificar problemas mais cedo e saber por que os jogadores deixaram o jogo ou continuaram jogando. O comportamento desses jogadores geralmente segue um padrão, fazendo com que se encaixem em diferentes perfis de jogadores. Especialistas em análise de jogos criam e usam modelos de tipos de jogadores, geralmente variantes do modelo de Bartle, para ajudar a identificar perfis de jogadores. Esses especialistas usam algoritmos de agrupamento para separar os jogadores em grupos diferentes e identificáveis, rotulando cada grupo com o tipo de perfil definido pelo modelo proposto. O objetivo principal deste projeto é criar um plugin Unity genérico para ajudar a identificar perfis de jogadores em jogos. Este plugin usa uma API Python, que lida com os dados do jogo armazenados em um banco de dados MongoDB, para agrupar e rotular cada partida ou nível do jogo escolhido enquanto o jogo está em execução. Neste plugin, os desenvolvedores de jogos podem configurar o número de tipos de jogadores que desejam identificar, os rótulos dos jogadores e até os algoritmos que desejam usar. Essa abordagem de agrupamento online não é usual no desenvolvimento de jogos. Até onde sabemos, não há nenhum componente de software na literatura de análise de jogos com a mesma direção e recursos. / [en] Game Analytics is an area that involves the processing of video game data, in order to make a better game experience for the user. It also helps to check the patterns in players behaviour, making it easier to identify the target audience. Gathering player data helps game developers identify problems earlier and know why players left the game or kept playing. These players behavior usually follows a pattern, making them fit in different player profiles. Game analytics experts create and use models of player types, usually variants of Bartle s model, to help identify player profiles. These experts use clustering algorithms to separate players into different and identifiable groups, labeling each group with the profile type defined by the proposed model. The main goal of this project is to create a generic Unity plugin to help identify Player Profiles in games. This plugin uses a Python API, which deals with the game data stored in a MongoDB database, to cluster and label each match or level of the chosen game while the game is running. In this plugin, game developers can configure the number of player types they want to identify, the player labels, and even the algorithms they wish to use. This online clustering approach is not usual in game development. As far as we are aware, there is no software component in the game analytics literature with the same direction and features.

I denna studie undersöks hur de grafiska aspekterna av karaktärsskapande påverkar spelare och deras engagemang i singleplayerspel. Syftet med studien är att undersöka vilken betydelse utseendet på spelarskapade karaktärer har för spelares engagemang och ifall det påverkar deras spelande. Semi-strukturerade intervjuer utfördes med sex deltagare där teman som bl.a. inspiration, motivation, form vs funktion och rollspelande uppkom. Slutsatsen var att det visuella utseendet har stor betydelse för spelare och bidrar till deras engagemang i spelet. Studien kan hjälpa spelutvecklare med att skapa spel med character creation som är uppskattade av spelare och ger dem en meningsfull upplevelse. / This study examines how the graphical aspects of character creation affects players and their involvement in single-player games. The purpose of the study is to investigate what significance the appearance of player created characters has to player commitment and whether it affects their gaming. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six participants where themes such as inspiration, motivation, form vs function and role playing arose. The conclusion was that the appearance of the player created character had a big significance for players and that it contributed to player involvement in the game. The study can help game developers create games with character creation which are appreciated by players and give them a meaningful experience.

ITC/USA 2007 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Third Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 22-25, 2007 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Tactical training ranges provide an opportunity for all of the armed forces to assess operational readiness. To perform this task the various training ranges have deployed numerous telemetry systems. The current design efforts in place to upgrade the capabilities and unify the ranges under one telemetry system do not address the training ranges' need to maintain their training capability with the legacy systems that have been deployed until the new systems are ready. Two systems that have recently undergone sustainment efforts are the Player and Event Tracking System (TAPETS) and the Large Area Tracking Range (LATR). TAPETS is a telemetry system operated by the U.S. Army Operational Test Command. The TAPETS system is comprised of the ground mobile station Standard Range Unit (SRU) and the aircraft Inertial Global Positioning System (GPS) Integration (IGI) Pod. Both systems require a transponder for the wireless communications link. LATR is an over the horizon telemetry system operated by the U.S. Navy at various test ranges to track ground based, ship based, and airborne participants in training exercises. The LATR system is comprised of Rotary Wing (RW), Fixed Wing (FW) Pods, Fixed Wing Internal (FWI), Ship, and Ground Participant Instrumentation Packages (PIPs) as well as Ground Interrogation Station (GIS) and relay stations. Like the TAPETS system, each of these packages and stations also require a transponder for the wireless communications link. Both telemetry systems have developed additional capabilities in order to better support and train the Armed Forces, which consequently requires more transponders. In addition, some areas were experiencing failures in their transponders that have been deployed for many years. The available spare components of some systems had been depleted and the sustainment requirements along with the increased demand for assets were beginning to impact the ability of the systems to successfully monitor the training ranges during exercises. The path to maintaining operational capability chosen for the TAPETS system was a mixed approach that consisted of identifying a depot level repair facility for their transponders and funding the development of new transponder printed circuit boards (PCB's) where obsolescence prevented a sufficient number of repairable units. In the case of LATR, the decision was made to create new transponders to take advantage of cost effective state-of-the-art RF design and manufacturing processes. The result of this effort is a new transponder that is operationally indistinguishable from the legacy transponder in all installation environments. The purpose of this paper is to present two successful system sustainment efforts with different approaches to serve as models for preserving the current level of training range capabilities until the next generation of telemetry systems are deployed. While the two programs illustrated here deal primarily with the transponder components of the systems, these same methods can be applied to the other aspects of legacy telemetry system sustainment efforts.

We study a message passing network where nodes keep a numeric attitude toward a subject. Messages are created by a message factory and each is sent to a random seed-node, which then gets eventually propagated in the network. Each message has some information about the subject, which is interpreted by the receiving node based on its features. Hence, the same message could be interpreted quite differently by two different nodes. Once a message is interpreted, the attitude of the node toward the subject is updated. In this setting, the thesis is that an external agent can influence (in a desired way) the average attitude of the network, by sending the messages to specific nodes (rather than sending them randomly) based on the message content. We call this agent a leader which its goal is to minimize (maximize) the average attitude of the network, and its actions are choosing one of the seed-nodes for a given message. The leader does not have any information about the nodes in advance, instead, it eventually learns the interests of the seed-nodes through sending messages and receiving the feedback of the network. We formulate this as a contextual bandit problem and study the effectiveness of a leader in different network configurations. Moreover, we study the case that there are two adversarial leaders, and present different policies and evaluate their effectiveness. Finally, we study the leader's performance when there are dynamic changes in the nodes features and network's topology.

Throughout the history of the NFL, several head coaches have found significantly more success than their peers. The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of what personal and tactical dimensions have set these coaches apart. This paper will study the most successful coaches of the past, as well as today’s most successful coach, Bill Belichick. Through case studies, this paper identifies possible explanation for Belichick’s current run of success in an NFL that grows more competitive each season. Specifically, this paper looks at the relationship between players and coaches, and how Leader- Member exchange plays a very important role in the success coaches will find. Leader- member exchange (LMX) has not been studied in the NFL, and this paper predicts that future research in this area will find the most important factors of LMX to be trust, respect, and predictability of actions. This paper also looks at the role of the head coach outside of his player relationships, and how vast football knowledge is not enough to lead an NFL team to success. Head coaches that are most successful differentiate themselves from others through the tactical side of the game, in many different aspects, including player acquisition, game preparation and tactics, personnel management and decision- making. Last, this paper examines the coaching career of Bill Belichick, and why he has found immense success in the NFL. Further research in the field of player-coach relationships would provide a clearer answer for successful coaches in the NFL.

Haptic mice, computer mice modified to have a tactile display, have been developed to enable access to computer graphics by individuals who are blind or visually impaired. Although these haptic mice are potentially very helpful and have been frequently used by the research community, there are some fundamental problems with the mouse, limiting its acceptance. In this paper we have identified the problems and have suggested solutions using one haptic mouse, the VT Player. We found that our modified VT Player showed significant improvement both in terms of the odds of obtaining a correct responses and the time to perform the tasks.