Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, May, 2009. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis explores how heritage museums can engage more visitors to take part of cultural heritage in context to digital culture, and going deeper in on what implementation of gamification and alternate reality games can contribute with. Through the establishment of how the heritage museum space has changed since the implementation of technology, gives a response concerning new perspective in the experience economy. Connecting Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s characteristics of flow together with Jane McGonigal’s theory of alternate gaming can serve the visitor to invest in their own learning outcomes, thus invest more in cultural heritage. Nevertheless also how visitors can experience cultural heritage as one but at the same time as a community, participating through a common ‘goal’.

No description available.

Transmedialt berättande innebär berättande som sker över flera medium som samverkar för att berätta samma berättelse, där varje medium dessutom enskilt bör hålla god form, för att sedan skapa en större summa när det sammanförs med de andra. En sådan produktion kräver mycket ur publiken, såväl som forskare, då man behöver analysera och värdera varje enskild del av berättelsen varpå man kan ta sig an den fulla konstellationen. Denna uppsats syfte är att belysa transmedia och hur det kan brukas, samt undersöka hur webserien Marble Hornets utnyttjar sin transmedialitet för att forma flera berättare. Seriens berättarform kommer därefter jämföras med filmtolkningen av serien, Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story, för att belysa vad transmedialiteten tillför för möjligheter, vilket sedan diskuteras. I studien utnyttjades en blandning av narrativa och semiotiska analysmetoder och tyder på att transmedia och alternate reality gaming öppnar många dörrar för manusskribenter för att förändra hur berättelsen skildras, på flera olika sätt.

What makes some marketing campaigns so immensely big and well known when they are marketed through social media or with a viral approach? How can a company reach out to customers through viral marketing and how can they make use of today’s social media to achieve it? In this article we will try to understand and further explore what a campaign have to accomplish in order to achieve a viral spread, using a descriptive model which uses a number of factors and terms necessary in order to properly analyze viral marketing campaigns. This model as it stands today is at its first steps towards being a tool for producers to incorporate in their analytic research and design process when creating viral campaigns.

Alternate Reality Games (ARG) have been one of the first and most prominent viral marketing tools. In a dynamic marketing world, where new practices appear every other day and seemingly ‘old’ practices lose their appeal very quickly, Blizzard Entertainment – a leading video game developer – gained much attention regarding its marketing strategy promoting the release of a new playable hero called ‘Sombra’ for their online game Overwatch, which is the third most-played game in the world with over 20 million unique users. For the campaign, the publisher used in-game hints as well as short clips with further hints (such as ASCII algorithms and hidden QR codes), which had to be decrypted by the users. This virtual scavenger hunt even included seemingly real websites of fictional companies with telephone numbers that could be called leading to further hints. In this paper we take a closer look at this particular campaign that has been praised internationally for its marketing both pre- and post-release. However, parts of the Overwatch community have complained on various online platforms about numerous aspects of the ARG experience. The paper serves two main purposes. Firstly, we explore the ARG participants’ experiences in terms of their customer satisfaction. Secondly, from a theoretical viewpoint, we investigate the applicability of the expectancy disconfirmation theory in this particular case. Thus, this paper may assist future ARG developers in creating engaging content by providing insights concerning the satisfaction of its participants. [... from the introduction]

Educational simulations can help mitigate the natural gap between traditional education styles and the current professional world. Researchers at BYU have developed an educational simulation solution called Playable Case Studies (PCSs). PCSs are simulations that expose the user to real world scenarios and problems within a pre-built environment. With rising demand and use of these educational simulations, there is a need for easy and inexpensive ways to develop these simulations or Playable Case Studies (PCSs). We propose a content management system (CMS) that is tied to a system that utilizes dynamic modules that make up these simulations. We present a basic design and identify core functionality of the system. We include our results from utilizing this system and what future developments can enable the goal of easy and inexpensive development of PCSs. In this study, we identify the design features needed for an easy to use, efficient content management system for educational playable case studies. We began by identifying both pain points in our old system and the features that would address these issues. We then designed and built a new system that included these features. In the testing of this new system, we primarily looked at the ease of building a new PCS with minimal technical knowledge. Although this project was a success overall, there are still points of failure due to the direct manipulation of JSON by content creators (who were not all developers), among other minor issues that need correcting. Overall, we found that our design was effective in providing an efficient platform for creating and maintaining PCSs.

The main drawback of Alternate Reality Gaming, compared to other genres, is that it lacks reusability; typically it cannot be played freely by anyone, anytime, anywhere. However, with the help of modern technology, especially in the mobile devices section, this can be overcome, at least to a certain extent. Therefore, we propose a conceptual framework built upon these challenges raised by other ARGs, a framework meant for game designers and developers that wish to create reusable ARGs, to add reusability to their own ARGs or even turn their digital games into a mixed experience. We designed it by reviewing relevant literature of past ARGs that had a reusable or a digital component, from which we have drawn conclusions and mixed them with our own ideas. Then we tested it iteratively by developing two prototypes and evaluating them through user feedback.

Research in second language acquisition has typically focused on classroom and laboratory settings. This study explores second language use in a non-classroom setting. It is based on research from divergent fields including theories of social interaction from sociology, theories of practice from anthropology, and nonlinear dynamics from the physical sciences. This study is a qualitative study, which employs both ethnographic and discourse analytic methods. The study examines native and non-native English speaker interactions on a MUD, a text-based online game. Data was collected for one year. The data for analysis consist primarily of logs of online interactions. The major conclusion of this study was that individuals acquire language appropriate to a particular environment by interacting with others in that environment. As individuals come to an environment and strive towards particular non-linguistic goals, they necessarily interact with others in the environment. As they do, they create shared ways of interacting. Through interaction, they refine the ways in which they speak. By employing multiple perspectives to guide the analysis, new insights into second language use and interaction can be obtained. This broadens our understanding of second language use in non-classroom settings. Implications for pedagogy in foreign language education are discussed.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.