Mobile apps have emerged ever since the smartphone has been establishedinto most peoples everyday life. Almost half of those available apps in the appstores are mobile games. We study game design patterns speci cally for endlessmobile minigames, as they are one of the emerging categories. This genre hasbecome popular in the app stores with its unique characteristics which include veryshort play session iterations and its minimalist design. Game design patterns arefocused on the interaction with the player and provide knowledge and experiencewith regards to games in general. Not only are they bene cial for game designers,but also for developers, practitioners and possibly researchers, as patterns providea common terminology to share information between di erent professions.We conduct a case study including ve example games and analyze endlessmobile games to identify and create genre speci c game design patterns. We searchfor commonalities and major aspects of endless mobile minigames to facilitate theproduction of such games for developers. To con rm our results, we implementa prototype of an endless mobile minigame, which is then evaluated through asurvey.The result is a collection of game design patterns based on our cases. Thequestionnaire reveals which of those patterns are relevant and should be consideredwhen developing an endless mobile game. The result outlines that game designpatterns are considered supportive when designing a game, however requires ad-justments and revisions.

This research focuses on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and how games focused on making the player feel empathy (empathy games) can increase the public’s general knowledge of the disorder. The disorder is currently commonly misunderstood and is not always taken seriously, something that potentially could hurt those with OCD. The stigma surrounding OCD sometimes makes people avoid getting the help they need, making them suffer in silence. The objective of the research was to define several game design principles that suggests what a developer should focus on when making an empathy game about OCD with the purpose to inform the general public. This was done by analyzing several scientific articles discussing either OCD or empathy games, and concluding the most important parts from them into game design principles. Four game design principles were found; target audience, reality, clarity, and includation. These have not been tested in a practical setting, but can possibly serve as guidelines when making an empathy game focusing on OCD.

This research focuses on pushing forward the understanding of mental disorders portrayals in games, more specifically social anxiety, which still lies as a marginalized topic in this medium. In order to understand honest manifestations of social anxiety in games, the first step is to conduct a close reading of games made by people who suffer from this mental disorder. A collection of five indie games, all of autobiographical nature and featuring social anxiety as an important part of their text, was put together for this analysis. This was done embracing the need to address the representational complexity, in order to tap into such a nuanced and elusive topic as social anxiety, not to identify rights or wrongs, but to engage in a discussion of how experiences are represented in games by people directly affected by this mental disorder. Individual experiences also contribute to expand interpretations and to identify additional keys of social anxiety representation. This is done by reaching informants, people living with a comorbid mental illnesses or disorders, that face or had faced social anxiety, and assess their perspectives through an experiential workshop. This work intends to further explore the practice of game design as mediator of experiences, contributing to both deepen the knowledge of game design and explore nuances of individual experiences present in autobiographical games and how this relates to perspectives of other people living with social anxiety. By combining the games and informants perspectives it is possible to structure a debate about game design patterns based on the findings of the game analysis and further elaborated with the nuanced perceptions gathered from informants. The knowledge acquired through this work is a step towards understanding of how games can represent, in an honest and non-stereotypical way, mental disorders, starting with social anxiety and, hopefully, contribute to spark other studies to broaden the spectrum of how the complexity of adverse mental conditions can be more respectfully addressed in games.

We have not been able to find a lot of research that defines and categorises different kinds of inventory systems. This thesis expands on what makes an inventory system what it is and how different active inventory systems differ from each other. There’s a lack of non-generic language both in research and everyday discussions between friends that we aim to alleviate. We adapt and make use of an existing pattern creation method as well as an immersive-participatory method to play and analyse nine games that all make use of inventory systems in very different ways. Through this method we created three game design patterns that describe the differences in limitation and presentation within active inventory systems; allocated inventories, numerical inventories and spatial inventories.

This thesis tries to provide a comparative study and complimentary data analysis into the effectiveness of game design patterns such as LEGO Serious Play, Leaderboards and Collective voting in terms of the impact that gamification has in change management framework. The study is looking at how gamification impacts employees from a motivational and engagement, in change management tasks, perspective. In a first instance, the researcher/author references and reviews key theories such as theory of fun for game design, motivational theory and change theory. Furthermore, a literature search/review for those theories has taken place to identify what the current scientific base has captured around gamification impact in engagement, motivation and performance of individuals and all potential limitations as well. This led to a clear and specific existing baseline framework. At a later stage, researcher/author describes the research strategy and methodology used to apply three specific gamification techniques to a real organisation (participants – n=20) which delivers change and is going through a transformation process. This included two different data collection methods; semi-structured interviews with organisation’s employees and participant observations within the organisation’s headquarters offices. The participant observation data collection compliments the interviews’ one, which acted as the primary method. The study examines the impact the gamification techniques had on the organisation’s employees while they deliver change daily, their interactions within sessions and meetings, decision making events and other. Findings, through the thematic analysis process, include the participants’ feedback on their overall experience, reward and joyfulness when use gamification. Results show that gamification tools and techniques compliment positively employees within the change management framework, increasing the enjoyment of participation in change activities without increasing competitiveness and also enables more effective decision making. It is important to highlight that creativity seems that is increased as well, through gamification application. It is hoped that knowledge and understanding of the impact of gamification techniques in change management framework could be found useful in an industry related environment and the results of this study could be extended to other areas as well.

Procedural content generation (PCG) can be a useful tool for aiding creativityand efficiency in the process of designing game levels. Mixed-initiative level genera-tion tools where a designer and an algorithm collaborate to iteratively generate gamelevels have been used for this purpose – taking advantage of the combination of com-putational efficiency and human intuition and creativity. However, it can be difficultfor designers to work with tools that do not respond to the common language of games:game design patterns.It has been demonstrated that game design patterns can be integrated into PCGalgorithms, but formally-defined and hierarchically-arranged game design patternshave not yet been used as a means of increasing gameplay-based control in mixed-initiative dungeon generators. We present a method for evolving dungeon rooms usingmulti-level game design patterns in the objective function of a genetic algorithm, aswell as an instantiation of this method in a mixed-initiative dungeon design tool. Ourresults show that we are able to control the frequency and type of design patterns ingenerated rooms using pattern-related input parameters, enabling us to create dungeonrooms containing a wide variety of patterns on different levels of abstraction.Results from a small-scale user study of professional game developers suggest thatthe use of game design patterns in mixed-initiative level design tools can be a promisingway of providing a good starting point when designing a level, as well as offeringmeaningful gameplay related feedback throughout the design process. We also identifychallenges that will need to be faced if game design pattern-based mixed-initiative leveldesign tools are to become a part of the game designer’s toolkit.

Communicating design is in many aspects a difficult process. Game design is not only directives on look and feel, but also carries intentionality. To properly convey intentionality, a common abstract vocabulary is a well-established method for expressing design. Game design patterns are an attempt to formalize and establish such a vocabulary. Game design patterns are a debated tool and this paper aims to examine the practical application of a pattern through a quantitative study in order to strengthen the potential for a more cohesive definition of the term. This is done by first establishing a game design pattern through observation of RTS games. The pattern is then studied through implementation in three commercial RTS games. The results focus on quantitative data gathered from AI vs AI matches related to game pacing. Through testing and analysis of the AI matches it can be stated that game design patterns in a contextualized setting supports the idea of using game design patterns as a formal tool. It was further concluded that the AI also came with limitations in how the collected data is applicable to the overall design of the games. Additional studies using quantitative data in conjunction with qualitative observations could lend further support to game design patterns as a useful tool for both researchers and developers. / Kommunikation av design är i många avseenden en invecklad process. Design av spel innebär inte enbart riktlinjer för utseende och känsla, utan också intentionalitet. En beprövad metod för att uttrycka design och intentionalitet är skapandet av ett gemensamt vokabulär. Game design patterns är ett försök att upprätta och formalisera just ett sådant vokabulär inom speldesign. Game design patterns är ett debatterat verktyg och detta arbetet ämnar undersöka den praktiska tillämpningen av ett pattern genom en kvantitativ studie för att stärka potentialen för en mer sammanhängande definition av termen. Detta utförs genom att först etablera ett game design pattern med hjälp av observation av RTS-spel. Sedan studeras det genom implementation i tre kommersiella RTS-spel. Resultatet fokuseras på kvantitativ data relaterat till pacing som insamlas från matcher mellan två AI. Genom analys av AI-matcherna kan det anses att game design pattern i en kontextualiserad inramning stöder teorin att använda design patterns som ett formellt designverktyg. Vidare drogs slutsatsen att användandet av AI också innebär begränsningar i hur tillämplig den insamlade datan är i den övergripande designen av spel. Fler studier med kvantitativ data ihop med kvalitativa observationer kan ytterligare stödja idén om game design pattern som ett användbart verktyg för både forskare och utvecklare inom spel.

There is a high demand for program developers, but the dropouts from computer science courses are also high and course enrolments keep decreasing. In order to overcome that situation, several studies have found serious games as good tools for education in programming learning. As an outcome from such research, several game solutions for programming learning have appeared, each of them using a different approach. Some of these games are only used in the research field where others are published in commercial stores. The problem with commercial games is that they do not offer a clear map of the different programming concepts. This dissertation addresses this problem and analyses which fundamental programming concepts that are represented in commercial games for programming learning. The study also identifies game design patterns used to represent these concepts. The result of this study shows topics that are represented more commonly in commercial games and what game design patterns are used for that. This thesis identifies a set of game design patterns in the 20 commercial games that were analysed. A description as well as some examples of the games where it is found is included for each of these patterns. As a conclusion, this research shows that from the list of the determined fundamental programming topics only a few of them are greatly represented in commercial games where the others have nearly no representation. This shows potential spots for future research in games for programming teaching.

Lootboxes currently cause a frequent debate in the games industry where the discussion is often focused on the connection to gambling. In this thesis an addition to this debate is made by taking a closer look at Gacha design – a way to design games around monetization – through theory and player opinions. Conclusions point to that if Gacha is viewed as a spectrum of strength the discussion can benefit from an increased understanding of all monetization systems within games regardless of their abstract definitions. The data was collected through focus groups and analyzed based on current research of the common topics that surfaced during the focus group discussions. The thesis found that overall knowledge surrounding Gacha was lacking and by looking at Gacha as a design method opened up for a broader discussion with connections to Lootboxes. / Lootboxes orsakar för närvarande en återkommande debatt inom spelindustrin där diskussionens fokus ofta är kring kopplingen till hasardspel. I detta examensarbete görs ett tillägg till debatten genom en närmre undersökning av Gacha design – vilket är ett designverktyg för inkomstgenerering – genom teori och spelares åsikter. Slutsatserna pekar mot att om Gacha är sett som ett spektrum av styrka kan diskussionen nyttjas för att bidra till en ökad förståelse av alla former av inkomstgenereringssystem inom spel oberoende av deras abstrakta definitioner. Data samlades genom fokusgrupper och analyserades utifrån nuvarande forskning runt de vanligaste ämnen som uppstod under fokusgruppernas diskussioner. Detta examensarbetet fann att den övergripande kunskapen kring Gacha var begränsad och genom att titta på Gacha som en design method öppnade upp för en bredare diskussion med kopplingar till Lootboxes.

Online gaming is today a popular everyday activity among both young people and adults. This has led to several new design methods such as dark game design patterns which aim to manipulate the user to act in a certain way that may not necessarily be in their best interest, with features that can be destructive to the user.  The purpose of this study is therefore to examine the presence of dark patterns on two popular gaming platforms – a free to play mobile game and a slot game at a popular online casino – to then investigate what the implementation of these patterns means for the given context. This was considered important to study to identify if the implementation of dark patterns is used differently depending on the gaming platform’s target group, especially as several studies show that it is mainly children and teenagers who play mobile games that are free to play, while slot games are aimed towards adults. The conclusion of this study has shown that the amount of identified dark patterns primarily depends on the game’s construction rather than it’s target group, but also that dark game design patterns are implemented to encourages the user to actively play online games, which in the long run should make the user want to support the gaming companies monetarily.