The tremendous growth in the serious games market presents the opportunity to help people learn through playing games. Defying Disaster is a 2D side scroller serious game designed to teach people how to prepare for and handle an earthquake. Players do a series of mini games that provide earthquake survival tips while interacting with a larger world after an earthquake disaster. An evaluation with thirty people compared learning disaster knowledge through reading materials versus playing games. The results show people learn better through playing Defying Disaster than reading materials.

The tremendous growth in the serious games market presents the opportunity to help people learn through playing games. Defying Disaster is a 2D side scroller serious game designed to teach people how to prepare for and handle an earthquake. Players do a series of mini games that provide earthquake survival tips while interacting with a larger world after an earthquake disaster. An evaluation with thirty people compared learning disaster knowledge through reading materials versus playing games. The results show people learn better through playing Defying Disaster than reading materials.

The tremendous growth in the serious games market presents the opportunity to help people learn through playing games. Defying Disaster is a 2D side scroller serious game designed to teach people how to prepare for and handle an earthquake. Players do a series of mini games that provide earthquake survival tips while interacting with a larger world after an earthquake disaster. An evaluation with thirty people compared learning disaster knowledge through reading materials versus playing games. The results show people learn better through playing Defying Disaster than reading materials.

Master of Arts / Journalism and Mass Communications / Soontae An / This study aims to investigate effects of external aid that can enhance motivation and performance of serious game playing to maximize learning effects. Based on self-determination theory, two types of rationales, intrinsic goal framing and extrinsic goal framing, were examined to know which message type is effective. Also, individual’s level of issue involvement was tested as a moderating variable. To investigate the effects of goal framing on motivation and moderating effects of involvement, this study designed a 2x2 (goal framing x involvement) between subjects with 120 middle school students in Korea. Three procedures involved for the experiment: 1) receiving message for manipulating involvement and goal framing 2) Playing actual serious game, and 3) answering survey questionnaire. Overall, providing intrinsic goal before a serious game was more effective to increase both motivation and performance than presenting extrinsic goal. However, there was no main effects and interaction effect in terms of issue involvement.

The tremendous growth in the serious games market presents the opportunity to help people learn through playing games. Defying Disaster is a 2D side scroller serious game designed to teach people how to prepare for and handle an earthquake. Players do a series of mini games that provide earthquake survival tips while interacting with a larger world after an earthquake disaster. An evaluation with thirty people compared learning disaster knowledge through reading materials versus playing games. The results show people learn better through playing Defying Disaster than reading materials.

Within the Institute of Production of the University of Applied Science Cologne, TH Köln, the logistics IT group has initiated a new project for the 3D Virtual Reality digitization of logistics and manufacturing processes. The 3D Virtual Reality Serious Games learning environment is in accordance with the real physical model factory at the institute, where students of business engineering classes study and exercise the interdisciplinary processes of a whole manufacturing unit. On the basis of this project initiation within the institute of production we want to build and offer a widespread open-source standard framework for programming 3D VR Serious Games for Production & Logistics that can be used by other universities and industrial partners. A sneak preview of the game can be viewed in.

Cette thèse a pour objectif l’étude de la relation entre l’expertise dans les jeux vidéo et les aspects motivationnels et émotionnels de l’expérience-utilisateur dans le contexte d’utilisation des Serious Games. L’objet de cette recherche s’articule autour de deux axes : un 1er axe concernant la construction et la validation d’un questionnaire d’intérêt pour les Serious Games et d’un test évaluatif du niveau d’expertise dans les jeux vidéo, et un 2ème axe concernant l’étude de la relation entre l’expertise dans les jeux vidéo et l’expérience-utilisateur dans les Serious Games, ou « jeux utiles ». Nous proposons une mesure de l’expertise dans les jeux vidéo à partir des connaissances lexicales, imagées et sémantiques. Par ailleurs, nous proposons une mesure de l’intérêt pour les Serious Games. Le développement de ces instruments de mesure a abouti successivement à la validation d’une échelle d’intérêt pour les Serious Games - l’IS2G - et d’un test d’expertise dans les jeux vidéo –le TECEJV-. Enfin nous proposons d’étudier la relation entre l’expertise dans les jeux vidéo, et les aspects motivationnels dans l’expérience-utilisateur. Ce travail nous a conduit à démontrer qu’il existe un effet de l’expertise et du type de Serious Game sur les aspects motivationnels et émotionnels de l’expérience-utilisateur dans le contexte d’utilisation des Serious Games. En effet, l’expertise et le Gameplay du Serious Game agissent de façon significative sur l’intérêt situationnel maintenu et le Flow. Ce nouvel éclairage s’est donc construit à la lumière d’un contexte d’apprentissage via les Serious Games en plein essor. / This thesis aims to study the relation between the expertise in video games and the motivational and emotional aspects of the user experience in the context of using Serious Games. This research is articulated around two axes: a first axis concerning the construction and validation of an interest for Serious Game scale and an evaluative test of expertise in video games, and a second axis concerning the study of the relation between expertise in video games and user experience in Serious Games, or “useful games”. We propose a measure of expertise in video games based on the lexical, pictorial and semantic knowledge acquired in this practice, based on theories on expert memory, the theory of working memory and the theory of encyclopaedic memory. Otherwise, we propose a measure of interest for Serious Games. The development of theses scales resulted successively in validation of an interest scale in Serious Games – the IS2G scale- and an expertise in video games test –the TECEJV. Finally we propose to study the relationship between expertise in video games, and motivational aspects in the user experience. This work led us to demonstrate that there is an effect of Serious Game's expertise and type on the motivational and emotional aspects of the user experience in the context of using Serious Games. Indeed, the Serious Game's expertise and Gameplay significantly affect the situational interest maintained and the Flow. This new light has thus been built in the light of a context of learning via the Serious Games in full swing.

Le trading algorithmique utilisé à des fins spéculatives a pris un véritable essor depuis les années 2000, en optimisant d'abord l'exécution sur les marchés d'ordres issus de décisions humaines d'arbitrage ou d'investissement, puis en exécutant une stratégie d'investissement pré-programmée ou systématique où l'humain est cantonné au rôle de concepteur et de superviseur. Et ce, malgré les mises en garde des partisans de l'Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) qui indiquent que pourvu que le marché soit efficient, la spéculation est vaine.Le Human Computation (HC) est un concept singulier, il considère le cerveau humain comme le composant unitaire d'une machine plus vaste, machine qui permettrait d'adresser des problèmes d'une complexité hors de portée des calculateurs actuels. Ce concept est à la croisée des notions d'intelligence collective et des techniques de Crowdsourcing permettant de mobiliser des humains (volontaires ou non, conscients ou non, rémunérés ou non) dans la résolution d'un problème ou l'accomplissement d'une tâche complexe. Le projet Fold-it en biochimie est ainsi venu apporter la preuve indiscutable de la capacité de communautés humaines à constituer des systèmes efficaces d'intelligence collective, sous la forme d'un serious game en ligne.Le trading algorithmique pose des difficultés du même ordre que celles rencontrées par les promoteurs de Fold-it et qui les ont conduits à faire appel à la CPU humaine pour progresser de façon significative. La question sera alors de savoir où et comment utiliser le HC dans une discipline qui se prête très mal à la modélisation 3D ou à l'approche ludique afin d'en mesurer l'efficacité.La qualification et la transmission de l'information par réseaux sociaux visant à alimenter un système de trading algorithmique et fondé sur ce principe de HC constituent la première expérimentation de cette thèse. L'expérimentation consistera à analyser en temps réel le buzz Twitter à l'aide de deux méthodes différentes, une méthode asémantique qui cible les événements inattendus remontés par le réseau Twitter (comme l'éruption du volcan islandais en 2010) et une méthode sémantique plus classique qui cible des thématiques connues et anxiogènes pour les marchés financiers. On observe une amélioration significative des performances des algorithmes de trading uniquement sur les stratégies utilisant les données de la méthode asémantique.La deuxième expérimentation de HC dans la sphère du trading algorithmique consiste à confier l'optimisation de paramètres de stratégies de trading à une communauté de joueurs, dans une démarche inspirée du jeu Fold-it. Dans le jeu en ligne baptisé Krabott, chaque solution prend la forme d'un brin d'ADN, les joueurs humains sont alors sollicités dans les phases de sélection et de reproduction des individus-solutions.Krabott démontre la supériorité des utilisateurs humains sur la machine dans leurs capacités d'exploration et leurs performances moyennes quelle que soit la façon dont on compare les résultats. Ainsi, une foule de plusieurs centaines de joueurs surperforme systématiquement la machine sur la version Krabott V2 et sur l'année 2012, résultats confirmés avec d'autres joueurs sur la version Krabott V3 en 2012-2013. Fort de ce constat, il devient possible de construire un système de trading hybride homme-machine sur la base d'une architecture de HC où chaque joueur est la CPU d'un système global de trading.La thèse conclut sur l'avantage compétitif qu'offrirait la mise en œuvre d'une architecture de HC à la fois sur l'acquisition de données alimentant les algorithmes de trading et sur la capacité d'un tel système à optimiser les paramètres de stratégies existantes. Il est pertinent de parier à terme sur la capacité de la foule à concevoir et à maintenir de façon autonome des stratégies de trading algorithmique, dont la complexité finirait par échapper totalement à la compréhension humaine individuelle. / Algorithmic trading, designed for speculative purposes, really took off in the early 2000's, first for optimizing market orders based on human decisions and then for executing trading strategies in real time. In this systematic trading approach, human intervention is limited to system supervision and maintenance. The field is growing even though the Efficient Market Hypothesis says that in an efficient market, speculation is futile.Human Computation is an unusual concept which considers human brains as a part of a much larger machine, with the power to tackle problems that are too big for today's computers. This concept is at the crossroads between two older ideas: collective intelligence and crowdsourcing able to involve humans (whether they are paid or not, they realize it or not) in problem solving or to achieve a complex task. The Fold-it project in biochemistry proved the ability of a human community to set up an efficient collective intelligence system based on a serious online game.Algorithmic trading is on same difficulty level of complexity as the problem tackled by Fold-it's creators. In that case “human CPU” really helped in solving 3D puzzles. The question is whether Human Computation could be used in algorithmic trading even though there are no 3D structures or user-friendly puzzles to deal with.The first experiment in this thesis is based on the idea that information flows in social media may provide input to algorithmic trading systems based on Human Computation principles. Twitter, the micro blogging platform, was chosen in order to track (1) words that may have an impact of financial markets and (2) unexpected events such as the eruption of the Icelandic volcano. We demonstrate that a significant increase in P&L can be achieved in the second case by treating the unexpected events as alerts.The second experiment with Human Computation in algorithmic trading aims to get a community of internet users to optimize parameters of the trading strategies, in the way that the Fold-it game did. In this online game called “Krabott” solutions are presented as friendly virtual bots each containing a specific set of parameters for a particular trading strategy in its DNA. Humans who are playing the game, interact in the selection and reproduction steps for each new “Krabott”.In this game the Krabotts “bred” by players outperformed those resulting from a computer optimization process. We tested two different versions of Krabott during the years 2012 and 2013, and in both cases the population bred by the players outperformed the “computer only” ones. This suggests that it may be possible to set up a whole hybrid human-computer system based on Human Computation where each player is a kind of single CPU within a global trading system.The thesis concludes by discussing the types of competitive advantages that structures based on Human Computation have for data acquisition into a trading system or for optimizing the parameters of existing trading strategies. Going further we expect that in the years to come Human Computation will be able to set up and update algorithmic trading strategies, whose complexity exceeds what an individual person could comprehend.

Traffic Cop is a game where the player become a traffic police officer trainee and direct the traffic to reduce the car accident rate in MA. The game is a top-down view traffic simulation and the player need to respond to the violations correctly. The game is aimed at new drivers ages from 16-24 and the purpose is to change the drivers' attitude about safe driving. Player will learn what they should stay focused on while driving and what the consequences may be when they choose to violate the traffic signal.

The past decade has seen a gradual but steady increase in the use of games in participatory planning practices. Since the 'Gamification' gained momentum, the thoroughly thought-through simulation and gaming discipline of the 1970s has been replaced by an amalgam of confusion and optimism about the role and added value of games in planning practice. The lack of clarity about what games really are and the scarcity of studies on how they can be used in dealing with contemporary participatory planning concerns have limited the use of digital games in planning to pedagogic and communication purposes. This research contributes to debates on the role and added value of digital games in participatory planning practices by unravelling the types of knowledge that can be produced by digital games and the many ways in which data flows happen between the real world and the imaginary world of games. To do so this research focuses on the epistemological analysis of digital games and core concepts of participatory planning, democracy and power, using a four-staged problem-centred Design Science Research (DSR) approach; 1) it first explores the existing limitations and potentials of the use of games in scientific fields in general; 2) it reviews the role of knowledge in participatory planning practices and its consequent effect on the defined role of games; 3) it proposes a new framework for using games as a research tool in participatory planning which conceptualizes games as artefacts with embedded information system; 4) it validates the framework by designing, testing and evaluating a game, called Mythoplastis with the aim of capturing the perception of the public about various locations in Manchester, UK. The study concludes that while games are powerful tools for capturing mental model of their players, the dominant gaming and simulation legacy and the emphasis on the scientific validity measures cease planners to be open or receptive to the artistic values of digital games and their potential in being used as research tools. It shows that by bridging the gap between commonly ignored theoretical and practical efforts of main stream game designers with the serious game design frameworks, new conceptions and roles of games can be explored. The designed game, Mythoplastis, shows how real world data can be abstracted in the game world for research purposes. It is also argued that for participatory planning to move beyond generalized and deterministic discourses about the role of planners and supporting tools, it is crucial for planners to re-examine the role of knowledge and validity measures in the conception of participation in planning.