Literature indicates that the United States has fallen behind other countries in the world in terms of creativity. At the same, children's self-motivated gaming and involvement in gaming communities have grown as a major pass time. The literature is inconsistent on the relationship between games and creativity with some indicating benefit while others indicate harm. Might the observed level of creative thinking among children be associated with the level of a priori self-motivated engagement with creative games and associated social media? Given the wide spectrum of the kinds of games, this research considers the "builder" (e.g. Minecraft) genre and related social media. The research question examined is, given a STEM-oriented middle and high school student population, what is the strength of the correlation between the observed level of creative thinking and the level to which a student plays and/or succeeds in a builder game and engages in its social media culture? Level of play is measured in terms of time and level of achievements within Minecraft. Level of engagement is measured in terms of posting and sharing behavior on Minecraft forums, YouTube and other social media platforms. The level of creative thinking is measured by Urban's Test for Creative Thinking – Drawing Production test. Correlations with TCT-DP and time spent, achievements in the games, and social media engagement levels were found to be statistically insignificant across all factors. However, a closer inspection of the individual distributions found evidence that supports an alternative perspective on the role of Minecraft in the play engagement of children.

The primary purpose of conducting this research was to establish game assessment guidelines and characteristics for integrating elected characteristics of games into ongoing instructional approaches. The cost of repurposing commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) games could offer a considerably lower cost alternative than the cost of creating a new instructional game developed for a specific instructional goal. The McNeese Game Assessment Tool (MGAT), created for the assessment of games in this usability study, is currently in a beta stage and was found to have potential for future game assessment. The overall assessment indicated that the tool was effective in analyzing game products for reuse potential and that the five instruments that make up the tool did meet the purpose of the design. However, the study also indicated that the instruments needed recommended modifications and further testing with a larger population group before the tool could be utilized. The assessment process identified in this study was a step forward in the area of game and simulation integration research. This study indicated that more research is needed in the area of instructional design to enhance instructional integration goals for future game, simulation and training applications.

Gamification, the implementation of game elements in a non-game context, is a rapidly growing field of research. One element of gamification that has experienced a rapid growth in popularity is the use of digital badges. Despite widespread adoption in educational settings, there are still gaps in the understanding of their effects on motivation, engagement, learning, and other factors. Furthermore, feedback delivered through badges can include a symbolic reward for successful completion of a task, providing a credential for gaining a skill, or acknowledging mastery of a particular piece of knowledge. This study implemented digital badges in online courses at a large urban two-year college. Badges were used to deliver embedded feedback and analyze the results on motivation, engagement, and learning. An experimental group received badges over the course of a three week module composed of various learning activities targeting course learning outcomes. A control group experienced the same learning activities without receiving the digital badges. Results indicated insignificant differences in perceived motivation, learning gains, and perceived engagement between the two groups. Positive results were observed regarding increased peer-to-peer engagement evidenced by a significant increase in discussion board activity. The increased engagement of peers leads to the subsequent building of a strong learning community. This positive group association can provide a feeling of support which leads to increased effort, persistence, and goal achievement. Potential causes are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided.

Critical making is an approach to scholarship which combines discursive methods with creative practices. The concept has recently gained traction in the digital humanities, where scholars are looking for ways of integrating making into their research in ways that are inclusive and empowering to marginalized populations. This dissertation explores how digital humanists can engage critical making as a form of activism in electronic literature, specifically in the interactive fiction platform Twine. The author analyzes the making process of her own activist Twine game The Deserters and embeds the project within digital humanities discourses on activism and social justice, hypertext, electronic literature, critical making, and hacker culture. The Deserters is a text-based digital game based on the experiences of the author's family as refugees from East Germany. The player's objective in the game is to research a family's history by searching the game-world for authentic documents, including biographical writings, journal entries, photographs, and records, thereby retracing historical events through personal experience. The Deserters aims at inspiring a compassionate and empathetic stance towards immigrants and refugees today. The author reflects on the ethical, narrative, aesthetic, and technical choices she made throughout the creation process of The Deserters to create a critical activist game. The results of the analysis demonstrate that Twine offers a unique environment for composing politically impactful personal narratives. From the project, the author derives best practices for activist critical making, which emphasize the importance for makers to imagine the needs and perspectives of their audience. The work expands digital humanities' theoretical and practical toolkit for critical making.

Game design principles have been discussed and developed since the late 1990's and are still created and discussed today. There have been many efforts to collect, identify, and create these principles, yet no effort has been made to test their implementation. This thesis presents an approach to formally analyzing games with game design principles. We gathered 50 game design principles from textbooks, Internet journals, collection efforts, and academic papers. Informal analysis of all 50 were performed, specifically looking at their ability to apply directly to games itself, as well as how much knowledge of things external were required. Of these 50, 5 were selected and a more in depth analysis was done. For each of these 5 principles we present a specification one would use to model their game, and verify that the game design principle at hand applies. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc) / We present a formal analysis of many Game Design principles, giving formal models for each.

Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2016-08-22T12:57:26Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação - Rodrigo Brandão.pdf: 2163145 bytes, checksum: 8af388e9eb2a173f8b26e3c970b2202f (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-22T12:57:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação - Rodrigo Brandão.pdf: 2163145 bytes, checksum: 8af388e9eb2a173f8b26e3c970b2202f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-01-29 / Devido ao diferencial da interatividade, os jogos digitais possuem um singular potencial narrativo que permitem os jogadores construírem suas próprias narrativas mesmo em gêneros lúdicos com pouca ou nenhuma história explícita. Consolidada como uma linguagem própria dos jogos digitais, a narrativa emergente usufrui princípios multidisciplinares do game design para prover a multiformidade nos games, principalmente nos gêneros sandbox e mundo aberto. Apesar do frequente questionamento da validade da experiência do jogador como uma narrativa pela indústria do entretenimento interativo, a crítica especializada e a comunidade gamer, a narrativa emergente também contém diferentes tipos e efeitos de imersão narrativa, além de atender a todas as funções narrativas, porém colocando o jogador num papel ativo e de coautoria da história. A pesquisa exploratória realizada neste trabalho identificou doze elementos emergenciais provenientes da mecânica e do comportamento dos jogadores que fomentam a narrativa emergente nos jogos digitais, servindo de base para o estudo de caso do jogo Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Além de servir como modelo de análise para jogos de gêneros afins, esse doze elementos emergenciais também podem auxiliar na concepção de mecânicas de jogos digitais com elevada narrativa emergente. / Due to the differential of interactivity, digital games have a singular narrative potential that let players build their own narratives even in ludic genres with little or no explicit story. Consolidated as a language of digital games, the emergent narrative enjoys multidisciplinary principles of game design to provide the multiformity in games, especially in the sandbox and open world genres. Despite the frequent questioning of the validity of the player's experience as a narrative by the interactive entertainment industry, specialized press and the gaming community, the emergent narrative also contains different types and effects of narrative immersion, in addition to service all narrative functions, but putting the player in an active role and co-author of the story. Exploratory research performed in this work identified twelve emergency elements from mechanical and behavior of the players that promote emerging narrative in digital games, providing the basis for the case study of the game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. In addition to serving as an analytical model for game related genres, this twelve emergency elements can also assist in the conception of game mechanics with high emergent narrative.

How can activists and scholars design serious game projects that attract and engage people, that are inviting for many types of players, and that empower players to create positive change? My hypothesis was that the Activist-Casual Game Design Framework I published in 2021 could facilitate this work. I took a design-based research approach to answer my research question by way of demonstration and self-reflection through a creative case study of the production of an activist-casual game called Climate Somnia. Chapter 1 explains the literature review and synthesis behind the creation of the original framework, and Chapter 2 reviews the first four major iterations of my prototype and the lessons I learned from the experience of making them. Chapter 3 details additional theoretical research that went deeper than my original review and synthesis, providing me with nuanced understandings of the meaning and importance of player agency, inclusivity, and optimism in the context of activist game design. That chapter then proceeds to describe the design and development of the "core game loop" prototype for my game, and the learnings from that experience informed the subsequent design of Climate Somnia version 0.6, the creative case study at the heart of my design-based research method and the subject of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 begins by revisiting the framework I published in 2021 to critique the text of its ten hybrid design principles in light of the experience I gained in the years since. After that critique, I present my revision — the Activist-Casual Framework for Game Design, Planning, and Development — and explain its reorganized design principles as well as the "descent-ascent" planning model that goes with it. I also propose a direction for future research, in light of the revolutionary advances in publicly available artificial intelligence tools that have happened during my dissertation work.

People in all known cultures play games and today digital gaming is an important leisure activity for hundreds of millions of people. At the same time game design has developed into a profession of its own. There are several practical game design guidelines and text books but they rarely manage to connect their findings into relevant areas of research such as psychology and design research. Understanding game design, both as an activity and as an end result of that activity, in a more profound way could alleviate this problem. The main goals of this thesis are to understand in a more profound way how to design games and based on that understanding develop frameworks and methods for aiding game design. By extending knowledge about game design can not only improve the quality of the end-products but also expand the potential design space even in unpredictable ways. Game design contains many sub-areas. Character, story, and environment design are integral parts of the current game development projects. The aim of this thesis, however, is to have a critical and exploratory look at structures of gameplay as design material. Gameplay is the interaction between the game rules, challenges, elements, and players.In one sense gameplay defines the game. The focus of the thesis is mainly analytical, although parts of the results are based on practical research through design activities. The thesis contributes to game research in three interralated ways: (1) An analytical contribution to understanding gameplay was done in the gameplay design patterns work. The patterns are described as an approach to both analyse existing games and aid in designing new games. The patterns describe recurrent gameplay and also analyse these structures from the design material point of view. (2) A theoretical study of basis for gameplay experiences was conducted through review of relevant models and theories in neuroaesthetics, cognitive and social psychology and game research. The framework offered in the thesis explains why certain gameplay structures are more recurrent based on defining gameplay as caricatures of intentional behaviour. (3) The game design patterns approach and research through design projects have contributed to the analysis of game design as an activity and practical guidelines for concrete design work in more specific areas of game design. The goals of this thesis are ambitious and many questions are left unanswered. Using the patterns approach in conjunction with game design and ideation methods is still in its infancy. The concept of gameplay as caricatures of intentional behaviour should be explored further, especially in conjunction with other theories and frameworks relevant for understanding gameplay experience such as user engagement, immersion, and presence. Empirical experiments validating or falsifying this view on gameplay would be valuable as further contributions to game research.

This essay is about common problems that can arise during game development projects. It is focused around the production cycle and how the game industry treats the game development pipeline. It mainly describes issues with communication within game development teams, problems concerning planning and how the design process affects members of the game development team’s work process and efficiency. It includes an analysis of common problems that I have found during my studies of literature describing the game industry, a short research study of post mortems written by game developers and a survey about game design documentation and communication sent out to game developers and game design students. / Den här uppsatsen behandlar vanliga problem som kan uppstå under spelprojekt. Den är fokuserad kring produktionscykeln och hur industrin behandlar produktionscykelns olika delar. Den beskriver framförallt problem rörande kommunikationen inom team som utvecklar spel, problem kopplade till planering av spelprojekt och hur designprocessen påverkar spelutvecklares arbetsprocesser och effektivitet. Den inkluderar en analys av vanliga problem jag har funnit då jag studerat litteratur som beskriver spelindustrin, en kort studie av post mortems skrivna av spelutvecklare och en undersökning om speldesigndokumentation jag skickat ut till spelutvecklare och spelstudenter.

Cette thèse a pour objectif de donner une définition générale et mesurable de la difficulté du gameplay dans un jeu vidéo. Elle propose une méthode et un outil pour mesurer cette difficulté. La méthode de mesure couramment employée est en effet principalement heuristique et propre au contexte de chaque jeu. Nous proposons une approche générique d’analyse du gameplay qui prend en compte l’apprentissage du joueur et permet une évaluation statistique de la difficulté d’un gameplay. Dans un premier temps, la thèse explore les liens entre difficulté, game design, et plaisir de jouer. Nous étudions diverses formes de difficultés : sensorielles, logiques et motrices. Après diverses expérimentations d’analyse automatique de gameplay, nous détaillons notre modèle de mesure de la difficulté, et l’analyse en challenges et capacités d’un gameplay, ainsi que le logiciel associé. Finalement, nous présentons une expérience, dont l’objectif est de tester la faisabilité et la précision de notre modèle. / The goal of this thesis is to propose a general and measurable definition of the difficulty in video games. The current approach, widely adopted, is mainly heuristic, and depends on each game’s context. We propose a generic way to analyse a gameplay, taking into account the player’s apprenticeship, which allows to statistically evaluate the gameplay’s difficulty. The thesis first explores the links between difficulty, game design and the player’s enjoyment. Then, we study different types of difficulties, sensory, logical and motor. After a few experiments on automatic gameplay analysis, we detail our measurement model, base on the splitting of gameplay into challenges and capacities. We present the developed software, and report an experiment that we ran to test the feasibility and accuracy of our measuring technique.