Det finns många olika sätt att genomföra inlärningsaktiviteter i det moderna utbildningssystemet som det nu finns i skolorna. Men i en tid som snabbt digitaliseras har utbildningssystemet inte lyckats fånga eller lyckas med att implementera digitaliseringen på ett meningsfullt och effektivt sätt. Denna oförmåga att digitalisera har blivit alltmer utbredd för varje år som passerar med en minskning i matematisk prestanda hos studenterna, vilket tydligt framgår av det senaste resultaten som PISA utför varje år [1]. Utifrån dessa här upplysningar utarbetade den svenska regeringen ett finansierat forskningsprojekt för att förstå och undersöka orsakerna till detta fall i matematisk prestanda hos de testade studenterna. Men denna studie kommer inte att fokusera på PISA-resultatet. I den här undersökningen undersöker vi huruvida pedagogiska spel kan vara ett svar för att negera eller stoppa dessa fall i matematiska prestanda hos studenterna. Syftet med denna studie är att skapa ett pedagogiskt spel som är centrerat på att lösa matematiska problem på ett nytt sätt, som oftast inte ses i pedagogiska spel, detta genom att implementera designalternativ som oftast ses i högutvecklade videospel. Resultaten av denna studie visar att det finns några bevis som bekräftar att mer högutvecklade spel kan vara ett bra sätt att lära sig och eventuellt kanske nästa steg i skolsystemets utveckling, men resultatet visar också att den pedagogiska delen av spelet måste verkligen vara flexibelt och utmanande nog för att få spelaren eller studenten att komma tillbaka till spelet och lära sig mer. / There are many different ways to implement learning activities in the modern educational system as seen in schools nowadays. But in an era that is rapidly being digitized, the educational system has not really managed to catch up or succeed in implementing these digitalization’s in a meaningful and effective way. This inability to digitize has been growing more prevalent by each passing year with droppings in mathematical performance as shown in the latest result for the tests carried out by PISA [1]. Out of this enlightenment the Swedish government set out funding research projects in order to understand and examine the reasons behind this drop. But this study will not be focusing on the PISA result. In this study, we investigate whether educational games could be an answer to negate or halt these dropping in performance.The aim of this study is to create an educational game centered on solving mathematical problems in a new way not often seen in educational games, by implementing design choices mostly seen in highly developed video games. The results of this study show that there is some evidence that confirms that more highly developed games could be a good way of learning and possibly also the next evolution in the educational system seen in schools, however the result also show that the educational part of the game really has to be flexible and challenging enough for the player or student in order to have them coming back to the game and learn more.

Ethiopia has one of the highest maternal and child mortality rates in the world. The main reason for this isthe low accessibility of educational content regarding healthcare in the rural regions. In this thesis weinvestigate the possibility to address this issue through a serious game, something that has proven efficientas a tool for learning in many situations. By designing and creating a game for rural Ethiopians, we aim tointerest them in learning about healthcare and nutrition by playing a game that reflects their culture andlife. In order to validate our solution we conducted a field study in Ethiopia, where we organized andcarried out a usability test with Ethiopian mothers. Our findings suggest that educational games has apotential in developing countries.

This study has examined what design principles help make more understandable UI icons and what aspects are most important when understanding the functionality of UI elements. Prior to this study, 15 UI icons representing items and actions were drawn asstudy subjects together with a prototype game to provide game context to the testers.Through applying surveys, think-aloud, playtesting, and interviews, 10 participantswere included to see how their unique backgrounds impact their understanding ofvideo game icons. Their age; country of origin; gaming habits, genre, platform, andgame preferences; and game development experience were considered to see if therewas a connection between cultural backgrounds and icon understanding. The results showed that the group was fairly homogenous, yet still had a unique set of expectations, preferences, and understandings of the icons which indicates that background impacts how people understand UI icons in games. However, with a small sample, this was merely the beginning of a discussion on how interpretation and cultural differences can be used as a lens to study how people understand video game icons that are relevant to video games. Further, this could help UI/UX designers better understand universal and culture-specific references in order to understand how their users make assumptions about symbols which in turn could help improve the user experience.

Scrum är ett arbetssätt som implementeras för att främja kommunikation och produktivitet för företaget. I många fall används Scrum inte korrekt hos dataspelsföretag och dessa företag väljer medvetet eller omedvetet att inte implementera några av de viktiga delarna. Scrum tappar då effektivitet och kan i värsta fall bli ett negativt påverkande verktyg. Denna studie menar att undersöka och kartlägga hur Scrum används i spelutvecklingen i Skövde och har därmed behandlat frågeställningen “Vilka är de framträdande utvecklingsriktningarna i användandet av Scrum inom Spelutveckling?”Scrumpraxis kartlades hos de intervjuade företagen. Resultatet för studien är att scrum inte används korrekt i spelindustrin i Skövde och att många av de viktiga delarna förkastas eller görs mer sällan än vad de borde. Ett exempel på detta är sprintåterblick och sprintgranskning som används av väldigt få företag och är en väsentlig del av Scrum. Studien har även identifierat en generell avsaknad av en scrummaster bland de intervjuade företagen.

This licentiate thesis describes the development of the Swedish computer and video game industry. The main focus is on the Swedish game development industry. Little research on the industry has been done and the purpose is to define the companies involved and to create an initial overview of the development of the industry. This overview will later be used as a platform for the doctorial thesis. Games are a growing culture form and today a lot of people are playing different types of computer and video games. Internationally the industry has expanded and some of the successful games have generated spectacular revenues. In Sweden the industry has received attention from different actors like universities, government bodies and media. There are today educations that are focused on game development and there are programs which allocates grants towards game companies. The rapid development in the computers technology has had a great impact on the game industry, which is dependent on hardware development to create games. The first computer games were made for some of the very first computers in the 1940´s and 1950´s. In the 1970´s a market for games was created when arcade machines and somewhat later home consoles were introduced. The industry has grown and includes today some of the largest companies in the world. The Swedish industry follows the international pattern but developed a bit later and the first Swedish game companies were founded in the late 1980´s. The industry has expanded, especially between 1998 and 2002. In 2005 the number of people employed in the industry had increased to over 600. During the period under study the industry seems to have had a constant problem with making a profit. Especially in 2002 and 2003 the industry has had economic problems and some of the lager companies were bankrupt.

Boid-based systems are typically used to simulate flocks of animals in nature, such as avian flocks or fish schools. The naïve implementation has a time complexity of $O(n^2)$, as each boid perceives and reacts to every other, and thus scales poorly with flock size. Several optimizations and strategies have previously been explored to mitigate this fact, such as space partitioning of the game world where the simulation runs. This thesis explores the performance bottlenecks in an implementation utilizing some of these optimizations, mainly spatial hashing. The findings indicate that the major performance bottleneck is the aggregation of positions and headings required to enact the boid steering behaviors. This performance bottleneck can be alleviated by spatially hashing the game world, using a cell-based neighborhood, and parallelizing the computations over these cells. In addition, parameters controlling the simulation can be tweaked and upper-bound limits imposed on the number of interactions to further improve performance.

Claymation is an animation technique developed around a century ago and featured inseveral video games. However, traditional claymation production is not most accessible togame developers due to its specialized skill requirements. This research aims to make theclaymation visual style more accessible by digitally emulating its characteristics usingmethods widely used in game development. Our approach involved developing and iteratingdigital techniques to replicate the surface texture of clay models and the jittery animationquality in a 3D physics-based game, the emulated results of which were evaluated throughinternal and external playtesting. The research team concluded that a combination ofdisplacement maps, normal maps, and color adjustments could be used to emulate realisticclay surface textures. Meanwhile, 3D animation and physics-based animation approacheswere explored to recreate the jittery animation look. The team found that, within 3Danimation, strategic use of still frames and manual motion variance addition to each in-motionpose are effective jitter emulation methods, with the latter being more effective. With physics-based animation, adding a randomized value to an object’s physically simulated motionsimulates motion jitters. The research compiled the emulation process into steps, serving asemulation guidelines for future projects.

This is an exploratory research study aimed toward steadying attendance across a semester of higher education video game development labs with attention to cooperation as a co-factor. Following the observation of unusually strong attendance in a highly cooperative game development lab class which aligns with these theories, this paper seeks to explore whether subfactors of positive social interdependence are co-factors with lab attendance. Sparked by previous case data, this exploratory study examines data from the Fall 2019 iteration of the introductory video game development course, defining and measuring potential co-factor variables during an individual-focused half of the course supplemented with group activity, and a fully group-focused half of the semester, with future interest in investigating a correlation between attendance and positive interdependence. Empirical studies of both the performance impact of attendance, and the financial reliance of residential higher education institutions on student attendance and retention suggest that understanding how to operationalize students’ motivation to attend class is epistemically and fiscally valuable. Studies of positive interdependence raise interest as a co-factor contextually through high commitment, joint efficacy, and mutual benefit, strongly overlapping with empirical antecedents of higher education retention and seminal social psychological frameworks. Therefore, the author began an intended extensive analysis of consecutive semesters. All students enrolled in the Fall 2019 introductory game development course (n=56 for students with matched data sets, 59 retained participant students total) were engaged in cooperatively-designed lectures and lab activities, with the first half of the semester’s lighter collaborative activity and independent assigned work to be compared to the second half’s full-time group project work. Between these designed halves, two null hypotheses were assessed: 1) lab attendance in the first half of the semester is equivalent to the second half, and 2) subfactors of positive interdependence in the first half of the semester are equivalent to the second half. Attendance proportions and surveyed positive interdependence measures for the Fall 2019 semester were analyzed using paired sample t-tests. Attendance, and a majority of positive interdependence subfactors were not significantly different across halves of the semester, suggesting that collaboration had evened results across the whole, but not all effects reached their target results. The Classroom Life Instrument was used to formally measure the presence of a positive interdependent context before and after group project work.

Horror, one of the most popular genres of entertainment, can be quite hard to get right. This report explores the visual subject of psychological horror in games, aiming to answer the following questions: How is the genre handled in movie production? How have previous game developers done this, both for bigger productions as well as indie games? How well did the chosen movies and games manage to translate the horror feeling into the visuals? The chosen method to determine this is image analyses and surveys. The results showed that there are not many differences between how the genre is handled in movies compared to games, though there are a few. Results from the surveys showed that games are more often perceived scary and disturbing on a higher degree than movies. / Skräck, en av de mest populära genrerna inom underhållning, kan vara ganska svår att få till. Den här rapporten utforskar de visuella ämnenena inom psykologisk skräck i spel, utifrån följande frågeställningar: Hur hanteras genren inom filmproduktion? Hur har tidigare spelutvecklare genomfört detta, både för större produktioner och för indiespel? Hur väl har de utvalda filmerna och spelen lyckats översätta skräckkänslan i det visuella? Den valda metoden för att fastlägga detta är bildanalyser och enkätundersökningar. Resultaten visar att det inte finns många skillnader mellan hur genren hanteras inom film jämfört med spel, även om det finns några. Resultat från enkätundersökningarna visar på att spel oftast ses som läskigare och obehagligare på en högre nivå än filmer.

Educational video games – especially for the PC market – do not seem to perform as well commercially as games from other genres. We argue that there is room for independent – ’indie’ – developers to break into the marketplace, by identifying certain niches and innovating on the genre. This would generate commercial value for such actors and knowledge value for the players. Design decisions of high importance made during development of an educational video game demo at the small Swedish company Toleap Consulting AB were analysed in the pursuit of contributing to effective indie development of such games. Three main problems that arose during development were identified, and three design decisions where implemented to combat these respective problems; (1) Interpreted educational game pattern utilising XML, (2) Function-based game views and (3) Community created assets, open source, and no costly dependencies. In our case, the formulated design decisions effectively solved our problems, and we argue that they generalise. If a developer creating a similar game (educational video game) in a similar situation (independent development with limited resources) encounters one or more of these problems, the suggested design decisions may help the developer solve the problems, in turn making more educational video games available on the market, generating the aforementioned commercial and knowledge values.