Videogames são um prolífico negócio no dias de hoje, rivalizando diretamente em cifras com indústrias muito mais antigas, como Hollywood. Tamanha aceitação do público é um indicio de que videogames não podem mais ser julgados como meros joguinhos, mas sim um novo meio comunicativo, com sua própria estética e linguagem. Neste trabalho, será explorado brevemente como se caracteriza a linguagem dos videogames, sua evolução em relação a dos jogos e sua atual formatação. Parte essencial da linguagem contemporânea dos jogos digital diz respeito a sua dependência na interação do jogador e, assim sendo, partiremos para o principal estudo deste trabalho: a análise dos elementos de design que mediam esta interação. Observouse a existência de seis elementos mais recorrentes e explica-se, em mais detalhes, quais suas características e seu funcionamento. Estes elementos são: objetivos claros, feedback, nível de dificuldade, interação e sensação de controle, narrativa e estética, e socialização e imagem pessoal. / Videogames are a prolific business nowadays, catching up and even surpassing figures with much more traditional industries, as Hollywood. Such a public renown is a clear evidence that videogames are not to be judged anymore as silly games, but as a new communicative media, equipped with its own aesthetics and language. In this research, there is a brief exploration on videogames language, its evolution and its contemporary format. As an essential part of videogames language is intimately connected to player\'s interaction, the elements behind such interaction are outlined and studied as the main corpus of this research. Six elements marked themselves more recurring on the studied literature and, as so, were analyzed on more details both their composition and functionality. This elements are: clear goals, feedback, difficulty level, interaction and sensation of empowerment, narrative and aesthetics, and socialization and self image.

This study presents the concept of the pedagogy of the game-master. Written from a bricolage of autoethnographic perspectives, a fractured narrative was (de)composed out of the author’s dual experiences as educator and game-master of fantasy tabletop-role-playing games. The narrative seeks to evoke the blurred boundaries of what it means to occupy each role, dwelling between fantasies, (teaching) realities, and player/person/persona identities (Waskul & Lust, 2004), constructing and remaining in the middle of a bridged pedagogy which spans education and tabletop role-playing. From the narrative, the latter section of this manuscript presents a discussion of how the liminal duties of the game-master might help draw educators to and beyond the boundaries of what is possible in education.

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As an entertainment media, video games provide pleasure and enjoyment through interactions with various game elements. Some games are more successful in one part of the world than others, which sales data have clearly shown over the years. Games designed in various parts of the world often have distinct differences, as developers implicitly or subconsciously convey their values and culture in their creations. Thus, in examining ?what is fun,? one must move beyond technical aspects of game design and look into immersion and emotional experiences. <br /><br /> In this paper, sales data for 2004 were first examined, followed by a case study to investigate any differences between Japan and the US, where major game console manufacturers and game developers reside. Although they indicated differences in popularity of genres and design approaches, results from the survey were not able to verify conclusively major statistical difference between the two groups of respondents. <br /><br /> The survey was constructed with a focus on narrative and game-play elements, in hopes to get a better understanding of players? preferences through the concept of immersion, which were anticipated to be influenced by cultural differences. Although no major differences were found, given the small sample population, it could be seen that there was a greater sense of character attachment from Japanese respondents, while American respondents did not like to be forced away from their actions by ?long? narrative elements.

Before Eternity is a short 3D adventure game that addresses the purpose of our earthly lives, inspired by the Sufi poet Rumi. To support its mystical theme, the design employs impressionistic elements and symbolic activities which deliberately defy many conventions of traditional adventure games. This report explains the design and implementation of the game, as well as its technical and production aspects.

May’s Journey is a game where you help a video game character, May, finding her friend and repairing the broken game world. This is a 3D puzzle game in which players solve an environmental maze by using the game’s pseudo code to manipulate the environment. The game is aimed at 12 to 18 year old girls and the purpose is to attract them into Computer Science fields by teaching them basics of programming by focusing on logics and concepts while still asking them to type simple instructions in our programming language. Players do this in a compelling environment, with characters they can identify with, embedded in a relevant story. Our design process was based on our research on young female preferences in games and current teaching techniques for programming. Each decision we made whether for the teaching content, the art style, or the game mechanics and the techniques used to develop this game are motivated by the goal of making programming more appealing and interesting for girls. For this we developed our own pseudo-code language in order to provide an interface that bridges the gap between drag and drop approach and real programming and introduce typing as part of the experience. We tested our game with 10 teenagers aged from 14 to 17 years old for educational content. We were pleased to see how engaged with the game they were. Overall, the testing results were mostly as expected. The players liked the game (rated 4.8 out of 6) and all of them wanted to play more of it. They all felt that they learned something and 8 of them expressed the will to learn more about programming. Unfortunately, the sample of players is too small to generalize our results so we plan to take the feedback into account, iterate and test it again with a larger study group and get conclusive results. Working on this project has allowed us to understand the importance of iterative design and early play test feedback. We have also learned the importance of tutorials in games and how that might completely change the users’ experience. Finally, a crucial point was the importance of the UI helpers and targeted feedback in serious games.

As an entertainment media, video games provide pleasure and enjoyment through interactions with various game elements. Some games are more successful in one part of the world than others, which sales data have clearly shown over the years. Games designed in various parts of the world often have distinct differences, as developers implicitly or subconsciously convey their values and culture in their creations. Thus, in examining ?what is fun,? one must move beyond technical aspects of game design and look into immersion and emotional experiences. <br /><br /> In this paper, sales data for 2004 were first examined, followed by a case study to investigate any differences between Japan and the US, where major game console manufacturers and game developers reside. Although they indicated differences in popularity of genres and design approaches, results from the survey were not able to verify conclusively major statistical difference between the two groups of respondents. <br /><br /> The survey was constructed with a focus on narrative and game-play elements, in hopes to get a better understanding of players? preferences through the concept of immersion, which were anticipated to be influenced by cultural differences. Although no major differences were found, given the small sample population, it could be seen that there was a greater sense of character attachment from Japanese respondents, while American respondents did not like to be forced away from their actions by ?long? narrative elements.

In the present day, the worldwide competition has emerged in the high-tech industry, such as semi-conductor, information, and software etc. Industry observers have perceived a dilemma companies encountered. A large number of companies have accumulated some valuable resources, but they can¡¦t transfer their valuable resources into useful capabilities, let alone using them to build the long-term competitive advantage. However, in the shadow of worldwide recession, game software industry acts in the opposite way. Due to the prosperity of online games, increasing numbers of game software companies perform quite well, even more go on pubic offerings. In fact, the game software industry is a highly competing and turbulent context. In this industry, understanding how these firms striving to accumulate and make use of their resources and capabilities to achieve the expected performance brings the motive of this research. The focal point lies in the interrelationship between these processes. To react to the new type of competition, the research starts from dynamic capability viewpoints, analyzing the operating processes of game software industry firms towards resources and capabilities and interrelationship between them and organizational performance. The result shows in two dimensions: 1. The mutual influence between dynamic capabilities In the evolutionary process of a firm, the development of a successful path has been influenced by the intensity and direction of firm¡¦s learning capability. In a high velocity market, learning capability has obtained not only from the performance and trial and error experiences from events, but also from external environment. Besides, learning capability facilitates the fostering of resources reconfiguration when it¡¦s necessary to make any prompt correction. In such a turbulent context, in order to lower the increasing complexity of internal resources position resulted from external risks, firms tend to enhance the elaboration towards managerial process, such as the capabilities of integration, learning, reconfiguration, and transformation. Systematic tools used in traditional managerial process have difficulty when applying to the high velocity markets. To improve the timeliness of integration, informal interactions become the most important parts of internal operations. 2. The relationship between dynamic capability and organizational performance Due to high organizational flexibility firms in the game software industry need, more emphasis should be put on the integration of managerial processes and routines of execution. The consistency within process and routine can be regarded as one of the standards of performance evaluation because the well development of managerial process and routine will facilitate the building of competitiveness. Meanwhile, research shows, in a high velocity market, both the technological capabilities and timeliness of interaction between complementary assets are the two main factors in the process of commercialization of new technology, thus become another factors that influence on the market performance of organizations. In responding to the change of external industrial structure, in order to improve the performance by external resources, firms tend to make use of their high popularity and reputation to form alliance with different industries. This move not only improves their popularity but also facilitates the fostering and obtaining of new capabilities.

The development of online game in Taiwan is matured and there are also many derived products about it. The total output value of online game industry is still growing at present and the growing rate is at about 8.5% in 2010. There are still many issues worthy to be discussed at the same time. First of all, this research classified the virtual products of online game. Secondly, by analyzing the documents about network externality, the research discussed the effect that those products could influence online game players. Next, with the game model which constructed in the research, the interaction of ¡§paid-player¡¨, ¡§free player¡¨ and ¡§potential player¡¨ were discussed. Finally, the research also analyzed the consumer behavior under different situation of network externality and gave some pricing reference for online game firms. There is the conclusion of the research. To maximum the profit, the online game firms must set higher price for those virtual products which may have negative effects compared to those products which do not have negative effects.

Thesis (PhD (Veterinary Tropical Diseases, Veterinary Science))--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print format.