Vilka medel använder sig spelarna av för att uppnå immersion, samt skapa emergenta narrativ när de rollspelar i World of Warcraft? 165 rollspelare i World of Warcraft svarade på en enkät med frågor som kretsade kring deras rollspelsvanor, samt vilka medel de använde för att rollspela och skapa immersion. Arbetet tar avstamp i Linderoths (2012) studie där han observerade en rollspelsguild i World of Warcraftunder tio månader, men utvecklar också studien vidare. Både spelet World of Warcraft och hur man rollspelar där har förändrats sedan 2012, och det är tydligt att spelare använder sig av många olika medel för att förhöja sin spelupplevelse för att uppnå immersion. Forskning på rollspel i World of Warcraft är idag bristfällig och efter denna studie står det klart att det fortfarande finns mycket att hämta kring spelarbeteenden och hur de gör för att skapa emergenta narrativ, samt immersion.

World of Warcraft (WoW) är ett onlinespel som spelas av 11,5 miljoner spelare världen över. För vissa av dessa spelare kan livet i WoW ta över nästan allt, så som jobb, skola, andra fritidsintressen och det sociala livet utanför spelet. Förståelsen för detta spelande går isär. Är det bakomliggande faktorer som bidrar till ett högfrekvent spelande eller är det spelet i sig som är beroendeframkallande? Kan man ens bli spelmissbrukare av WoW? Vi kontaktade informanter från fyra olika verksamheter, vilka alla kommer i kontakt med ungdomar, för att få deras åsikter om onlinespelande. Några av de frågeställningar vi har ämnat besvara handlar om: de professionellas föreställningar om spelaren, om de anser att det är ett socialt problem eller inte samt om det är viktigt för professionella att ha kännedom om livet i virtuella världar så som Wow?. Det vi har kommit fram till är att de professionella i sina svar tycks vara färgade av sina respektive yrkesroller. Deras olika förklaringsmodeller, som bl a handlar om bakomliggande orsaker till ett problematiskt spelande, stämmer väl överens med den verksamhet de arbetar i. Det konstateras i intervjuerna att det kan vara svårt att skilja på vad som är vanliga tonårsproblem och vad som är dataspelsberoende samt att det finns en risk för moralpanik då det handlar om dessa frågor. / World of Warcraft (WoW) is an online game that has 11.5 million players all over the world. For some players life in WoW can become more important than real life. The understanding of the game diverges. Is it the excessive amount of time playing the game or the game itself that’s addictive? Is it even possible to get addicted to WoW? We contacted four informants from four different professions, that all work with young people, to get their opinions about online gaming. Some of the questions we have tried to answer is about professional conception of the player, if they consider gaming to be a social problem or not and if it´s important for professionals to have knowledge about the life in virtual worlds such as WoW?.Our findings show that the informants seem to be influenced by their respective roles of profession. Their different explanations, which contain the underlying causes to a problematical gaming, correlates with their profession. We have come to understand that it is difficult to separate what is ordinary teenage problems and what is video game addiction and also that there is a risk for moral panic talking about these questions.

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This study examines how professional social workers relate to problematic computer and video gaming as an addiction. It is a qualitative interview study aimed to describe and analyze how professional social workers, who in some way work with problematic computer gaming, relate to the player’s problems in terms of a concept of dependency. The theoretical approach is based on social constructivist theories of discourses, normality, the definition of dependency and diagnoses. The study was conducted through five qualitative half structured definition interviews with professional social workers that work directly or comes in contact with problematic computer gaming. The results portray a consistent, yet fragmented understanding of the problem. Daily life is described as "reality" and the problematic computer gaming as "escapism". The player can’t meet the normative requirements of its surroundings and is classified as addicted. The informants describe similar problems related to computer gaming, but have different ideas on how the problems arise. The study concludes that professionals specifically describing problematic gaming as an addiction explain their clients in terminology comparable to substance abuse. Those who don’t relate to the concept of dependence as firmly describe the problematic gaming as more of a consequence of the interaction between the player and its surroundings.

This dissertation is an exploration of the practice of social digital gaming, using a mixed methods approach with complementary data and analytical methods. The main themes are the prevalence and meaning of gamers’ experiences of social gaming and the underlying structures limiting or assisting social gaming, both material and social. Applying an everyday perspective, focus is on gamers’ day-to-day practices and experiences. Studies I and II enquire into relational aspects of social gaming based on interviews and survey data. Study III investigates the relationship between game design and gamer agency and its importance for social interaction with strangers, using in-game participant observation. Lastly in Study IV, building on interviews, female gamers come to the fore as their gender construction in an online game is examined with the aim of understanding the connection between online and offline. The main result concerns how social gaming takes place in various social relations. How gaming comes to be―what it means―is dependent on the relations between gamers, be they family members, real life friends, Internet friends or strangers. In these interactions, gender and sexual identity are realized; in the relations between gamers, physical proximate or online. Finally, virtuality is shown to be a social accomplishment of the people engaging in games rather than a property of the games themselves. Focus on the relational unveils how gaming comes to be in the process of interaction, a process at the same time dependent on underlying structures, i.e. games as designed platforms with certain affordances for social behaviour. We are able, thus, to reconcile the social constructivist position that (social) gaming is created in the relations between gamers engaging in games with the more formalist approach that games are rule based structures. Games create a foundation for interaction that can further develop into the creation/maintenance of relationships and identity. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Manuscript. Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.</p>

<p>The growing role of communication using computers in people’s everyday lives is reflected by the debates about massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMOs) like World of Warcraft and the Internet as a whole. While people may be driven by the same psychological drives that have spurred interaction between people in the past, this interaction is increasingly facilitated with the use of computer mediated communication (CMC). Can strong relations form between people that are separated by great distances in space using CMC? The presence of strong relations in MMOs could open the possibility for MMO communities to thrive.</p><p>A social network analysis of a MMO guild with 50 members was conducted using an online survey, which produced a non-response rate of 50 percent. Participants were asked about their age, the time they had spent in the guild and their gender in order to explain the social structure of the networks. They were then asked to state the strength of their relations with each of the other members of the guild on a scale from ―one, neutral‖ to ―five, strong friendship‖. The social network analysis program Pajek was used to investigate the characteristics of the social network using so called sociograms.</p><p>The essay concludes that numerous strong relations exist within the guild and that a long time spent in the guild increases the number of strong relations a guild member has. The results show that guilds may form the cohesive backbone of MMO communities and proposes that future research be conducted on the brokerage between guilds in MMO communities in order to produce a comprehensive view of the social structure of MMO communities.</p>

The growing role of communication using computers in people’s everyday lives is reflected by the debates about massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMOs) like World of Warcraft and the Internet as a whole. While people may be driven by the same psychological drives that have spurred interaction between people in the past, this interaction is increasingly facilitated with the use of computer mediated communication (CMC). Can strong relations form between people that are separated by great distances in space using CMC? The presence of strong relations in MMOs could open the possibility for MMO communities to thrive. A social network analysis of a MMO guild with 50 members was conducted using an online survey, which produced a non-response rate of 50 percent. Participants were asked about their age, the time they had spent in the guild and their gender in order to explain the social structure of the networks. They were then asked to state the strength of their relations with each of the other members of the guild on a scale from ―one, neutral‖ to ―five, strong friendship‖. The social network analysis program Pajek was used to investigate the characteristics of the social network using so called sociograms. The essay concludes that numerous strong relations exist within the guild and that a long time spent in the guild increases the number of strong relations a guild member has. The results show that guilds may form the cohesive backbone of MMO communities and proposes that future research be conducted on the brokerage between guilds in MMO communities in order to produce a comprehensive view of the social structure of MMO communities.

This essay will focus on video and computer game violence. We hope to uncover, with the help of semiotics, according to Barthes design, if this kind of violence can have a negative effect on youth and adolescents. How intense is the violence and how graphic is it?. PEGI is the European measurement for game age limits. In our essay we will analyze five different games, each game in its own PEGI-value, except two games that share the limit of 18+ were we instead will try to uncover what differences in the two games that puts them on the same age limit. The games we will be investigating are “Pokemon Black Version”, “Megaman X: Command Missions”, “World of Warcraft Cataclysm”, “Call of Duty: Black Ops” and “Gears of War 2”, “Gears of War 2” and “Call of Duty: Black Ops” are the games which shares the age limit of 18+. With the help of our semiotic findings and various studies from researchers C A. Anderson, Jesper Juul and Clive Thompson we hope to be able to categorize the different types of violence in said games, according to the amount of violence, how intense it is, the amount of blood and death, how realistic the violence is and what kind of messages the different games contains and compare our findings to PEGI´s own guidelines.

This paper seeks to investigate leading global brands‘ social media presence. The analysis of the Interbrand’s 100 Best Global Brands (2010) social media pages was conducted in the current study. Based on Kaplan & Haenlein‘s classification of social media, seven social media application cases were examined. The findings suggest that there are differences in global brands‘ social media presence by brand categories and social media applications. The findings also suggest that there are different levels of global brands‘ social media control. Managerial implications and guidelines for social media marketing are also provided. / text