Background: E-sports is a grand industry and has been gaining momentum in the latest decades. Reaction time (RT) is an important part of most e-sports games and therefore a possible way to evaluate and improve RT is desired. A tool that evaluates the players and shows them what executive functions they should improve on through what physical activity would be a great way to evaluate and improve RT. There has been a lot of studies performed on the effects of physical fitness on RT. Most studies seem to agree that improved physical fitness results in improved RT.   Objectives: The aim of this thesis is to design an experiment that will evaluate the connection between e-sports players physical fitness, their RT and their executive functions through different tests. There will also be an evaluation of if it is possible to reliably find a connection between specific kinds of physical fitness and specific executive functions. The objectives are therefore to find suitable tests to evaluate RT and executive functions as well as finding a physical fitness test that allows for easy comparison between subjects.   Methods: Literature study is used to find the answers to the research questions through reading different studies and papers. Scopus was chosen as the database to find the different studies to read because of the vast amount of material available there.   Results: The test used to evaluate physical fitness will be the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT). The tests that will evaluate RT and executive functions are the Stroop test, the Trail Making Test A & B, Tower of Hanoi and a variation of the n-Back test. It is very difficult to isolate executive functions and evaluate them without something else interfering with the results. This thesis’s hypothesis changed from the beginning of the research to that it was done. At first it was believed that executive functions could be isolated and evaluated separately, but that is no longer the case.   Conclusion: The experiment will most likely show that subjects with greater APFT score will achieve a better overall score on the RT tests than those with lower score. This experiment will most likely not work as a tool to evaluate the executive functions connection to specific physical exercises of e-sports players in the state that the experiment is currently envisioned. More studies are required to link specific physical exercises to specific executive functions before a tool can be created.

Onlinespel fortsätter att växa för varje år och har på ett decennium gått ifrån att vara en trevlig sidosyssla till att tas som arbete. Nutida studier visar att den stereotypiske gamern inte längre existerar. Gruppen gamers är en diversifierad grupp människor ifrån alla världens länder, båda könen inräknade. Trots detta är dock sexism fortfarande väldigt vanligt förekommande inom gamingkulturen. Denna studie syftar till att undersöka hur könsroller upplevs för de som definierar sig som kvinnor. Frågeställningarna som ligger till grund för studien är hur könsroller reproduceras online samt hur de upplevs påverka den enskilde, vilka förväntningar som könsrollerna medför på individen i en grupp online, och hur maktstrukturer samt rådande hegemoni upplevs styra online och påverka individen i sitt vardagliga liv. Resultaten visar att målgruppen generellt upplever sig marginaliserade på den virtuella arenan. Detta främst genom orealistiska förväntningar, annorlunda förutsättningar, sexistiska strukturer och orimliga skillnader i bemötande efter att deras kön offentliggjorts. / Online games continue to grow for each year and in a decade, it has gone from being a nice side activity to for some, classified as work. Contemporary studies show that the stereotypic gamer no longer exists. The gamer group is a diverse group of people from all the world's countries, including both sexes. Nevertheless, sexism is still very common in gaming culture. This study aims at investigating perceived gender roles in regard to people who define themselves as women. The questions underlying the study are how gender roles are reproduced online and how these perceive to influence the individual, what expectations gender roles bring to an individual in a group online and how power structures and current hegemony are perceived to govern online and affect the individual in their daily life. The results show that the target audience generally feels marginalized on the virtual arena. This mainly through unrealistic expectations, different conditions, sexist structures and unreasonable differences in treatment after disclosing their gender.

A growing proportion of young adults report regularly playing video games and using electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS). Although video gaming is often normative and adaptive, excessive gaming is associated with adverse health outcomes and dependency, as seen in gaming disorder/internet gaming disorder (GD/IGD). Possible additive detrimental effects of ENDS use on the physical outcomes of GD/IGD lend particular concern to these concurrent behaviors. The present study explored group differences in concurrent ENDS and GD/IGD dependency by demographic factors, including age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, racial identity, relationship status, and year in school. The interaction effect of symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on the association between ENDS dependency and GD/IGD was also examined. Lastly, group differences in ADHD symptoms for individuals who endorse (1) neither GD/IGD nor ENDS dependency, (2) either GD/IGD or ENDS dependency, or (3) both GD/IGD and ENDS dependency were explored. Data were collected in a large, multi-university sample of college students (N = 1,054). Higher symptoms of GD/IGD were positively associated with greater symptoms of ENDS dependency. Men and individuals with significant symptoms of ADHD were at an increased risk of concurrent GD/IGD and ENDS dependency. These results may be used to identify demographic and psychological associations linked to these comorbidities, ultimately informing future prevention strategies.

Background: Gaming has emerged from a niche industry to a major global player making billions of dollars in revenue year after year. Many companies and industries alike are taking note of the increasing prominence and investing into the market. However, historically there have been many issues with diversity and inclusion due to the gaming and technology sphere largely being recognized as a male space. A phenomenon has been occurring of women carving out their own gaming spaces into cyberbalkanized communities to avoid gendered discrimination and harassment. Purpose: Research has been conducted on the topic of gender in esports and gaming by many academics but there is still room for further studies as many areas have not been explored. Limited studies have been conducted on female gaming organizations. Therefore, this study seeks to determine if women have a perception of value in relation to these organizations. Method: The method selected was a qualitative method to further explore this issue. Eleven semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the perceptions of Swedish gamers on the topic of female gaming organizations. Thematic analysis was guided. Conclusion: The results show that while some of the previous criticisms are deemed applicable to this phenomenon, there continues to be a need for female organizations as they provide great resources to female gamers. Many are holding out hope that they will become unnecessary in the future but agree that they still hold value.

Tourism is a sector that is constantly expanding and diversifying and plays a very importantrole in society, culture and the global economy. Today, the approach to travel has changed,people are no longer looking for traditional tourism but prefer other tourism activities. Sportstourism is one of the most sought-after offerings in the 21st century.As tourism and technology have evolved, the sports sector has developed with this changingtrend, and electronic sports (eSports) events have become an important part of modernsociety. gaining interest particularly among young people. Sports events are a touristattraction for eSports enthusiasts where spectators have the opportunity to watch the bestplayers in the world and meet their favourite players or share their enthusiasm with otherparticipants with similar interests. For this reason, various proposals have been made inrecent years to increase the visibility of these events, to increase competition venues and tohelp promote the brand of the city or region in which they are to be held for tourismpurposes.It is a new and an emerging market, where there are not many studies that address this issuefrom the tourism perspective. eSports uses digital technology to provide players with highlycompetitive platforms that can create audiences and tournaments that in turn lead to eventsthat attract people who have an interest to visit and participate in eSports activities. Thisreport draws parallels of the digital and traditional sports systems and delves into thedevelopment of eSports and eSports tourism.

<p>Esports have been a growing market segment for recreation and competition. Few works of research examine the decisions that competitors need to make to maximize the probability of winning. Game theory Nash equilibriums are used to evaluate options available for players to select out of game decisions related to side selection, character selection, and stage selection. Backward induction techniques are used to solve these subgame decisions. The introduction of a rating system for players is derived from traditional sport statistics. The primary factor tracked in damage dealt and damage received using the same framework from sabermetrics was used to predict outcomes of baseball games. Conclusions demonstrated tracking damage can be used to predict the outcome of a match. Other techniques such as principal component analysis did not provide adequate data to measure individual metrics for the use of predictive application.</p>

Cloud Gaming systems are among the most challenging networked-applications, since they deal with streaming high-quality and bulky video in real-time to players’ devices. While all industry solutions today are centralized, we introduce an AI-assisted hybrid networking architecture that, in addition to the central cloud servers, also uses some players’ computing resources as additional points of service. We describe the problem, its mathematical formulation, and potential solution strategy. Edge computing is a promising paradigm that brings servers closer to users, leading to lower latencies and enabling latency-sensitive applications such as cloud gaming, virtual/augmented reality, telepresence, and telecollaboration. Due to the high number of possible edge servers and incoming user requests, the optimum choice of user-server matching has become a difficult challenge, especially in the 5G era where the network can offer very low latencies. In this thesis, we introduce the problem of fair server selection as not only complying with an application's latency threshold but also reducing the variance of the latency among users in the same session. Due to the dynamic and rapidly evolving nature of such an environment and the capacity limitation of the servers, we propose as solution a Reinforcement Learning method in the form of a Quadruple Q-Learning model with action suppression, Q-value normalization, and a reward function that minimizes the variance of the latency. Our evaluations in the context of a cloud gaming application show that, compared to a existing methods, our proposed method not only better meets the application's latency threshold but is also more fair with a reduction of up to 35\% in the standard deviation of the latencies while using the geo-distance, and it shows improvements in fairness up to 18.7\% compared to existing solutions using the RTT delay especially during resource scarcity. Additionally, the RL solution can act as a heuristic algorithm even when it is not fully trained. While designing this solution, we also introduced action suppression, Quadruple Q-Learning, and normalization of the Q-values, leading to a more scalable and implementable RL system. We focus on algorithms for distributed applications and especially esports, but the principles we discuss apply to other domains and applications where fairness can be a crucial aspect to be optimized.

<p>Previous research has shown that student-teacher interaction is very important in motivating students to learn a second language. However, it is unclear whether facial expression, which is one of the most important portions of interaction, affects in-game language learning motivation or not. The purpose of this study is to find out the evidence demonstrating the facial expressions of the other party, in this case, virtual characters in game, will or will not influence the learning motivation <a>of Japanese L2 students</a>. The researchers of this study developed four versions of a 3D animated Japanese role-playing game. Each version of the game represents one facial expression that is neutral, happy, sad or angry. The entire research consists of two experiments: a validation study and a motivation study. After validating all the facial expressions of five main characters in the game, <a>eighty-four college students from 200/300 level Japanese courses </a>joined in the motivation study voluntarily. They played a version of the game assigned randomly to them and then did a post-questionnaire. Conclusions were drawn based on the survey results. The findings of this research suggested that virtual characters’ facial expressions in game had no significant effect on participants’ <b>learning motivation</b>. However, significance was found in <b>years of learning Japanese</b> and <b>gender</b>. Meanwhile, it was found <b>facial expression</b> and <b>years of learning Japanese</b> had an interactive effect on the variable <b>immersion into game.</b> </p>

Bakgrund: Datorspel kan ge en ökad dagtrötthet och försämrad sömnkvalitet hos individer som spelar mer än 2h/dag. Fysisk aktivitet har en akut positiv inverkan på många delar i sömnen såsom sömnkvalitet och dagtrötthet. Syftet med studien var att kartlägga den fysiska aktivitetsnivån och sömnsvårigheter hos datorspelande vuxna, samt undersöka ett eventuellt samband mellan fysisk aktivitet och sömnsvårigheter.  Metod: Författarna genomförde en icke experimentell kvantitativ tvärsnittsstudie med vuxna individer som spelade datorspel minst 2h/dag. 116 svar inkluderades till frågeställning 1 (internt bortfall till frågeställning 2 &amp; 3 n = 20). En webbenkät publicerades i tre svenska Facebook-grupper inriktade mot datorspel för att kartlägga deltagarnas sömn samt fysisk aktivitet. Sömnen mättes med Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) och den fysiska aktiviteten mättes med International Activity Questionnaire Short Form (IPAQ-SF). Resultat: 70% av studiens respondenter hade “Inga kliniska sömnsvårigheter” enligt ISI och 59% bedömdes ha en hög aktivitetsgrad enligt IPAQ-SF. Det förekom inget signifikant samband mellan respondenternas sömnbesvär och fysiska aktivitet.  Diskussion: Förekomsten av sömnbesvär och antal deltagare som uppfyllde kriterierna för insomni var jämförbar med den svenska populationen. Vidare var respondenternas aktivitetsgrad högre än vad som tidigare setts i den svenska befolkningen. För att kunna se ett tydligare samband mellan dessa faktorer är bedömningen att det skulle krävas ett större urval med respondenter. / Background: Computer games can negatively impact sleep in individuals who play more than 2 hours/day. Physical activity can improve many parts of sleep such as sleep quality and less daytime fatigue. The purpose of the study was to map the level of physical activity and sleep difficulties in computer-gaming adults, and to investigate whether there is a correlation between physical activity and sleep difficulties. Method: The authors conducted a non-experimental quantitative cross-sectional study with computer-gaming adults who played at least 2 hours/day. 116 answers were included to question 1 (internal dropout to question 2 &amp; 3 n = 20). A web-survey was published in three Swedish computer game-oriented Facebook groups to map the participants' sleep and physical activity. Sleep was measured with the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) and physical activity was measured with the International Activity Questionnaire Short Form (IPAQ-SF) Results: 70% of the study respondents had “No clinical sleep difficulties” according to ISI and 59% were classified to have a high activity level according to IPAQ-SF. There was no significant association between the respondents' sleep difficulties and physical activity. Discussion: The occurrence of sleep difficulties and the number of participants who met the criteria for insomnia was comparable to the Swedish population. Furthermore, the respondents' degree of physical activity was higher than previously seen in the Swedish population. In order to be able to see a clearer connection between these factors, the assessment is that a larger selection of respondents would be required.

The purpose of this independent project is to give teachers of young ESL-students a collected knowledge of what kind of digital extramural activities the students often do on their spare time and what consequences this have for the formal primary classroom and students’ vocabulary skills. The studies used are found on EBSCO’s ERIC and SwePub, peer reviewed, published between 2010 and 2020, and all available in full text through Malmö university. Informal learning is shown to have a big impact on formal learning, especially for boys who learn mainly through gaming. Girls still score higher on English tests within formal learning, though boys who are frequent gamers score higher within the studies. Gaming seems to help boys keep up with girls in formal English as a second language. The main skill which gaming gives the students is to communicate, hold a conversation and increase their vocabulary. Since gaming is the extramural activity which seems to give the student the most, and at the same time there are students whose families could not afford to game due to costs of computer, tv, games and, in some cases, internet. This could become a socioeconomic factor which the school and the teacher need to consider, especially since results from some of the studies claim gaming to be how the boys keep up with the girls. Not to forget the students who, thanks to informal learning, speak English on a higher level and their right to be educated at their own level.