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Problematic use of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) is an emerging societal challenge worldwide. There are increasing numbers of incident of problematic use of MMOGs and even reported cases of death from playing MMOGs excessively. With its prevalence, problematic use of MMOGs has received increasing awareness from the scientific community, the general public, and the media. Since information systems (IS) research traditionally emphasizes the positive and productive values of system usage, relatively few published studies on problematic use of MMOGs are found in mainstream IS journals. In addition, research on problematic use of MMOGs is hindered by a lack of uniform conceptualizations, valid measurement instruments, and theory-guided study. As a step towards bridging these gaps and fostering the understanding of problematic use of MMOGs, this study aims (1) to conceptualize problematic use of MMOGs and distinguish it from its counterparts, (2) to develop and validate an instrument of it using a rigorous approach (Study 1), and (3) to propose and empirically test a theory-driven model explaining the development of problematic use of MMOGs (Study 2). Study 1 aims to conceptualize problematic use of MMOGs, and develop and validate an instrument of it. First, drawing on the literature of problematic use of MMOGs and behavioral addiction, this study distinguishes among the often interchangeably used terms of “addiction, “problematic use, “excessive use, and “dependence, suggesting that their use requires careful consideration of the research scope and context. Second, following the robust paradigm in the IS literature, the instrument development process is carried out in three stages, including item generation, scale development, and instrument testing. The instrument is empirically validated with 517 active MMOG players. The final instrument, consisting of 37 items, exhibits adequate levels of reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and nomological validity. The validated instrument adds to the repertoire of rigorous research instruments available to future IS researchers, helping to establish a tradition of IS research on problematic use of MMOGs and other hedonic technologies. Study 2 aims to advance theoretical understanding of the development mechanism of problematic use of MMOGs. Drawing on the hedonic management model of addictions, this study proposes a theoretical model explaining how the duality of hedonic experiences, mood enhancement and emotional relief, derived from playing MMOGs lead to problematic use. The research model is empirically tested with 468 active MMOG players with the majority of the hypotheses supported. The findings suggest that both mood enhancement and emotional relief are important mechanisms leading to salience of gameplay, which in turn, explains the development of problematic use of MMOGs. This study adds to the growing body of knowledge on technology usage-related problems and advances theoretical understanding of development mechanism of problematic use of MMOGs. In addition, the findings provide MMOG developers, policymakers, and educators with insights on how to alleviate problematic use of MMOGs

At the beginning of this study I wanted to discover what effects competition in games and simulations had on learning. I also wished to gain a deeper understanding of how people learn from games so that I could produce findings which would be useful to practitioners of games and simulations. My research has revealed that competition can become too great an influence on students' decisions and behaviour and then becomes harmful to learning. I found that students adopt different approaches to competitive games which I labelled Competitive or Opportunist, Learning, Skill Specific, Rhino (Really Here In Name Only) and Confused. Their approach depends upon their prior experience, age, maturity, expectations and the quality of the tutor involvement. These different approaches lead in turn to different types of decisions, behaviour and eventually, learning. I also found that tutors need to be deeply involved during the whole game in order to guide students away from over-competitive behaviour and decisions,and towards a more rational and learning orientated approach. In addition tutors need to devote considerable time and effort at the end of the game to resolving conflicts and misunderstandings. In order that my study should prove useful to practitioners I have designed models of student approaches to games and simulations as well as a model of a business game. In addition I have drawn up, on the basis of my findings, a list of suggested guidelines for tutors who use (or are thinking of using) games and simulations. I hope they will indeed prove to be beneficial to both tutors and students.

Educational systems can benefit from Virtual Reality’s (VR) ability to support experiential learning. In particular, VR based games, especially role-playing serious games (RPGs), can promote learning through the simulation of various educational scenarios. This thesis proposes an immersive VR-RPG to educate players about the behavior of honeybees. The player adopts the role of a honeybee and experiences a virtual world mimicking the real one from the honeybee’s perspective. Unlike most studies in educational VR, we assess the impact of immersion on knowledge gain by testing the players’ knowledge on the subject before, immediately after, and one week following the use of the system. We also compare the proposed system with both a conventional and a desktop VR-RPG approach. The results indicate that students significantly gained knowledge in all methods compared to the pre-test. We found that the immersion level for both tested VR-RPGs did not have a significant effect on learning. However, the study showed an improvement in knowledge retention for the desktop VR-RPG users compared to those of the conventional method. Moreover, the results revealed that users of the immersive and desktop VR-RPGs were more motivated and engaged compared to those of the conventional method.

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Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T16:32:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo996_1.pdf: 2485239 bytes, checksum: e5762fa2eb077d99cffbb8a20c04bfca (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Com o crescimento da indústria de video games, torna-se cada vez mais evidente a necessidade de pesquisa e desenvolvimento de métodos que solucionem problemas enfrentados durante a produção de um jogo para garantir às empresas um lugar no mercado em meio a uma concorrência globalizada. Este trabalho acompanhou o desenvolvimento de três experimentos de criação de jogos e analisou os resultados da utilização de prototipagem na fase inicial de criação do conceito destes jogos. Caracterizou-se desta forma o concept demo como um artefato que pode ser usado para mitigar problemas comuns de comunicação entre desenvolvedores, clientes e usuários. Levanta-se também a possibilidade de que as conclusões encontradas nos experimentos acompanhados possam ser aplicadas em outros contextos, nacionais e internacionais, com igual sucesso