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No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Video games represent the largest and fastest-growing segment of the entertainment industry. Despite its popularity in practice, it has received limited attention from the operations community. Managing product monetization and engagement presents unique challenges due to the characteristics of gaming platforms, where players and the gaming platform have repeated (and endogenously controlled) interactions. These practices have also led to new customer concerns and thus regulation challenges. In this thesis, we describe a body of work that provides the first analytical results for revenue management and matchmaking problems in video games, as well as the fairness issues in many e-commerce platforms. In the first part, we discuss a prevailing selling mechanism in online gaming known as a loot box. A loot box can be viewed as a random bundle of virtual items, whose contents are not revealed until after purchase. We consider how to optimally price and design loot boxes from the perspective of a revenue-maximizing video game company, and provide insights on customer surplus and protection under such selling strategies. In the second part, we consider how to manage player engagement in a game where players are repeatedly matched to compete against one another. Players have different skill levels which affect the outcomes of matches, and the win-loss record influences their willingness to remain engaged. Leveraging optimization and real data, we provide insights on how engagement may increase with optimal matchmaking policies and adding AI bots. In the third part, we consider an increasingly important concern in many e-commerce platforms: the inequality induced by price discrimination. While the practice of discriminatory pricing is generally widespread, it can result in disparate impact against protected groups. We consider the problem of setting prices for different groups of customers under fairness regulations, which limit the differences of various metrics (such as price and demand) across the groups. We show that different types of fairness constraints may not coexist in general, and the impact of fairness levels on social welfare could be non-monotonic and non-trivial.

Video games are often thought of as a type of social media, yet social media are not often thought of as a type of video game. Due to the fact that both are media that arguably play a large role in identity formation and perception of reality, this paper argues that social media should be looked at as providing a type of video game experience. While the study is not limited in its scope to teens, they play an important role. This paper explores identity as being social and interactive and also affected by media. The relationship between representation and reality is also explored and applied to the current celebrity culture. Social media and video games are explored through their similarities, including their goals of becoming a hero/celebrity, exemplified in social media through users acting like their own paparazzi. A systematic analysis is conducted to compare research regarding identity and reality in social media and video games since 2005. While similar themes emerged, the way that these themes are studied within video games and social media differ. These gaps in research lead me to four new research area suggestions for social media: mirrors, stereotypes, immersion and definitions. Through these new research areas, I propose five possible future studies. / Mass Media and Communication

Success in spatial skills can be an indicator of success in mathematics and sciences. Wayfinding, the ability to purposefully navigate, is one such important spatial skill. Spatial skills can be developed in a number of ways, one of which may include playing video games. Research gathered from a survey and mapping exercise, indicates that though video games may not have a statistically significant impact on wayfinding, experience does. When properly utilized, video games could become part of that important spatial skill training experience. / Geography

Video games as a system are composed of two component systems: the player and the game. The interaction between these two create specific gameplay experiences which can be described mechanically by player actions and gameplay challenges. We systematically look at potential player actions (as defined by basic cognitive and motor abilities) and gameplay challenges to understand how they relate to each other. We quantify these relationships by the importance of each action to the completion of a challenge. We summarize these relationships in several tables, separated by controller context. From these tables we draw conclusions about areas for novel gameplay, game analysis, and the impact of challenge design on people of differing abilities by examining trends in the data. We end by exploring ways to improve our methodology, refine our data, and other avenues to explore in the future. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

The center of this thesis proposal is a translation of the first book of AUGUST Software’s Eustia of the Tarnished Wings 穢翌のユースティア, a 2011 dark fantasy visual novel. As visual novels are practically unknown in English or Japanese academic writing, this thesis will provide an introduction to the medium’s history, as well as common display and organizational formats of the medium; a literary overview of Eustia of the Tarnished Wings and its characters and themes of choice and sacrifice; and a discussion of translation methodology and goals pursued in the accompanying excerpts. The translation presented consists of selected excerpts from the Prologue of Eustia of the Tarnished Wings, introducing the main characters, the floating city-state of Novus Aether, and the uneasy social climate of the city. Presented scenes are selected on the basis of plot or thematic relevance or translational interest, as well as scenes that are necessary to contextualize plot or character developments discussed in the critical introduction. This thesis will serve as an introduction to a developing medium that has been overlooked by most academics in the field of Japanese popular culture, as well as a look at the utilization of choice mechanics and branching story structure to In addition, it will present a personal methodology of and approach to translation as related to Eustia’s many and varied characters, social strata and situations, and maintaining individual and consistent voices for different characters and a first-person narrator in fiction.