Video games and the social effects that they inflict upon society and the individual have been a highly debated subject. While studies have been made in regards to several social issues and their connection to video games, there was little research in regards to physical game gatherings like LAN-parties, as well as larger game gatherings like Dreamhack, and what the social effects of having physical contact with other people are at these gatherings. The goal with this study was to answer the question: “What are the social effects for the individual when participating in physical video game gatherings?”. This was done through a qualitative study by conducting five semi-structured interviews at the physical game gathering called Umeå Game Night that was located in the Umeå cultural center Klossen at Ålidhems Centrum. Four of the participants were male and one female. “Snowball-sampling” was used to gather the participants for the study through Game Night’s Facebook group. However, this sampling was unsuccessful when no participants were gained from it. Instead I had to take direct contact with people at the game gathering. The interviews were all done during the game gathering in their facility and were then transcribed for analysis with two types of methods; an inductive analysis that was backed up by a deductive analysis in the form of Activity Theory using Engeström’s model of Activity Theory. The results of this study showed that physical game gatherings helped to overcome some negative social effects that the participants thought surrounded online game as well as other social problems that they brought up during the interviews, like toxic behaviour, discrimination, and the feeling of not being welcome. There was an overwhelmingly positive reaction from the participants when being at the game gathering. Being able to socialize with other people proved to be the main motivation. However, even though physical game gatherings showed to improve negative social effects surrounding game, the learning process was still difficult to overcome for new players, and participating in these game gathering may even have negative results in keeping the new players interested in wanting to play as well as participate at the physical game gatherings. This was mainly because of the skill disparity between the experienced players, who were the majority at the game gathering, and the new players, who would feel potentially frustrated from seeing the experienced players being much better than themselves. However, the less experienced female participant in the study indicated that this issue may still be overcome, but more research needs to be done to see how big the issue surrounding the learning process when playing games at game gatherings actually is, and if there are ways to solve it.

Sedan Twitch startade sin livestreaming site 2011 så har livestreaming vuxit otroligt fort. År 2014 hade Twitch 100 miljoner unika tittare varje månad. De som streamar på Twitch är allt från esport spelare till personer som streamar för nöjets skull. Idag finns det streamers som inte jobbar utan livnärar sig på att streama och få microdonationer från sina tittare. Vi är nyfikna på hur en streamer kan leva genom att bara spela datorspel. De samlar på sig en publik som återkommer så fort streamern börjar streama. Utöver reklam på deras sida så får streamers in microdonationer via sina tittare. Dessa microdonationer står för en stor del av deras inkomst. Vi har valt att fokusera extra på de som tittar och inte de som streamar. Hur kommer det sig att någon kan tänka sig att donera pengar till en streamer? Vi har då valt att göra en enkät om motivation och microdonationer som Twitchtittare kommer svara på. I vår undersökning så var det endast 36.5% som spenderade mindre än 4 timmar per vecka på Twitch, restrerande svar var från personer över 4 timmar. Enligt vår undersökning så påverkas många inte av andra när det kommer till val av streams. Många väljer stream på grund av att streamern är underhållande eller att man spelar likadana spel som streamern. Trots att vissa personer i undersökningen spenderar mycket tid på Twitch så donerar de inte ofta. 43% har varken donerat eller subscribat till en stream innan. Endast 5.5% donerar mycket (över 10 $) och ofta. Enligt vår undersökning så har endast 56.1% donerat eller subscribat till en stream innan. Man får ta hänsyn till att 75,6% är ungdomar under 24 år och kanske inte har en inkomst, därav är det svårt att donera trots att man vill. Trots att många donerar väldigt små summor så finns det personer som donerar otroligt stora summor där en streamer kan nästan hamna i chocktillstånd. Det fanns ett antal olika faktorer som motiverade personer att donera sina pengar till streamers. De tre mest framstående faktorerna var "Entertaining streamer" en streamer som engagerar publiken och får dem att skratta, "I play the same game" tittarna känner igen spelet och spelar det under sin egen tid och "I want to learn something" tittarna vill förbättra sina egna färdigheter och lära sig något nytt. Mer än hälften av de personer som svarat skulle vara villiga att spendera minst 10 dollar i månaden på Twitch relaterat material. De flesta av de personer som svarade var män och cirka 1525 år. “Benefits” dvs få något i utbyte mot en donation hade en mycket lägre effekt på folks motivation än väntat. / Since Twitch started its livestreaming site in 2011 live streaming have grown incredibly fast. In 2014 Twitch had 100 million unique viewers monthly. The streams on Twitch range from esports players to people streaming for fun. Today there are streamers that are not working but instead create a living based on streaming and micro donations from its viewers. We are curious and want to explore how a streamer can live just by playing computer games. They accumulate an audience who will return as soon streamer begins streaming. In addition to advertising on their page to get streamers into micro donations through their viewers. These micro donations account for a large portion of their income. We focus on those watching rather than those who stream. How is it that someone would be willing to donate money to a streamer? We then decided to do a survey on motivation and microdonations Twitch viewers will answer. The questions is focused on what kind of genre, user prefer to watch and and what motivates them to donate. In our study, it was only 36.5% who spent less than 4 hours per week on Twitch, the rest of the responses were from people who spent over 4 hours. According to the responses of our survey people were not affected by others when it came to the choice of stream to watch. Many people choose the stream due to the streamer being entertaining or playing the same game as the streamer. Even if the people who answered our survey spent alot of time on Twitch only a part of them choose to donate 43% of them have neither donated or subscribed to a stream before. Only 5.5% donates much (over $ 10) and often. According to the answers only 56.1% have donated or subscribed to a stream before. We must take into account that 75.6% are young people under 24 years old and may not have an income, hence it is difficult to donate despite the fact that they want. Although many are donating very small sums, there are people who donate incredibly large sums which a streamer can almost fall into a state of shock. There was a number of different factors that motivated people to donate their money to streamers. The three most prominent factors were “Entertaining streamer” a streamer who engages the audience and makes them laugh, “I play the same game” the viewers recognize the game and play it during their own time and “I want to learn something” the viewers want to improve their own skills and learn something new. More than half the people who responded would be willing to spend atleast 10$ a month on Twitch related material. Most of the people who answered were men and around 1525 years. Benefits i.e getting something in return for a donation had a much lower impact towards motivating people than expected.

This study explores the implications of misogyny in the virtual and physical worlds. The 2014 GamerGate scandal shed light on the immense violence to which female gamers and gaming entertainment consumers are so frequently exposed to. Minecraft is the most played mass online multiplayer game in the world with over 100 million copies sold. The open gameplay mode of Minecraft and the non-linearity of the objective of the game has grown into a lush ground for violence, as there are seldom physical or virtual repercussions for verbal violence online. Gendertrolling has become a pastime within the gaming world on its own and focuses on specifically targeting women and ranges from benign jokes to violent threats of rape and murder. There seems to be a feeling of lack of physical world consequences for those that keep women from fully participating online. By drawing upon the concept of digital dualism, this study discusses the implications of being exposed to online threats online and women’s self-regulation and ways of navigating the hostility of the online gaming world.

At the apex of the human kind and our ability to strengthen our own resources lies our ability to educate and further develop our own people. As the future development requires more and more knowledge and use of technology, new tools such as the internet must be used to further our world’s evolution. The world of video games is only one of many areas that must be explored and exploited for the best possible gain for humanity. Very little is known about how to use video games to enhance our learning and this paper means to shed some light upon the media in a more formal learning context than the living room hobby reputation it has developed over the years. In order to get a broad and diverse perspective both computer game developers and teachers were interviewed. The results show that while there are a large number of positive aspects and effects closely related to video games, they are not always suitable to be used independently and may fit better into a blended environment of both more traditional ways to study and computer game experiences. Something new and extraordinary every once in a while was shown to have great effect. A lot of opinions arose regarding strategies to utilize the media of computer games to our advantage but one thing was very clear throughout, the teachers and even to some extent, students of our world are simply not fully prepared to embrace this new form of knowledge. Thus, in order to be able to utilize its full potential, we must strive to improve our knowledge on how entertaining games and pedagogic theory blend together. This in order to create a new, creative, motivational and inspiring way to learn that will last for decades.

In the recent years, the mobile gaming has been tremendously increased because of its enormous entertainment features. Mobile cloud gaming is a promising technology that overcomes the implicit restrictions such as computational capacity and limited battery life. GamingAnywhere is an open source cloud gaming system which is used in this thesis to measure the Quality of service of mobile cloud gaming. The aim of the thesis is to measure the QoS used in GamingAnywhere for mobile cloud gaming. Games are streamed from the server to the mobile client. In our study, QoS is measured using Differentiated Service (DiffServ) architecture for the traffic shaping. The research method is carried out using an experimental testbed. Dummynet is used for traffic shaping. Performance is measured in terms of bitrate, packet loss, jitter, and frame rate. Different resolutions of the game are considered in our empirical research and our results show that the framerate and bitrate have increased with the impact of network delay. / <p>Ganesh Grandhi: +46767671612</p>

Competitive computer gaming, under the name e-sport, have become a popular activity inSweden and worldwide. Within the e-sport community the question about the relationbetween the e-sport and sport has been discussed. Despite of this, very few sport scientistshave studied e-sport. The aim of this licentiate thesis is to create an understanding of thephenomenon e-sport. As a theoretical framework the concept of sportification was used. Inthree articles aspects of sportification in e-sport was studied. E-sport as a concept evolvedin the late 1990 and is used by many people and organizations. The reasons why theconcept of e-sport is used are probably manifold. In the thesis three reasons are presented,namely higher legitimacy, social recognition and autonomy. Furthermore, the results showsimilarities between e-sport and contemporary sport. E-sport has, in contrast tocontemporary sports, developed from commerce around computer games to sport, and notonly from spontaneous play. In conclusion, e-sport is e-sport. By that I mean that e-sport issomething that goes beyond contemporary sport. Probably, it is due to the fact that e-sportevolved in a time when industrial society was transformed into an information- andcommunication society.

The overall aims of this thesis were to develop and evaluate a screening instrument designed to detect gaming addiction symptoms in adolescents, to study associations between problematic gaming and psychiatric symptoms, to investigate the stability of problematic gaming, and to examine possible associations between gaming at baseline (W1) with problem gambling three years later (W2). The study population consisted of adolescents from the Survey of Adolescent Life in Västmanland SALVe Cohort (adolescents in Västmanland born in 1997 and 1999, and their parents), in two waves (2012, n = 1887; 2015, n = 1576), and adolescents from child and adolescent psychiatric clinics in Västmanland (2014, n = 242). The development of the Gaming Addiction Identification Test (GAIT) was based upon the research literature on gaming, gambling, and addiction. An expert panel estimated the content validity of the GAIT and found it to be excellent. Additional psychometric evaluations of the GAIT and the parent version, GAIT-P, were conducted and it was found that both versions showed promising psychometric results, with high internal consistency, high concurrent validity, high concordance, unidimensionality, and high factor loadings, although poor model fit in exploratory factor analysis. Self- and parent-rated prevalence of gaming addiction symptoms were estimated at 1.3% with the GAIT and 2.4% with the GAIT-P in 13- and 15-year-olds. Self-rated problematic gaming above the cutoff had a boy to girl ratio of approximately 5:1 in both the SALVe Cohort and the clinical sample, whereas more girls than boys reported symptoms above the cutoff for ADHD, depression, anxiety, and psychotic-like-experiences. ADHD, depression, and anxiety symptoms were associated with odds ratios of 2.43, 2.47, and 2.06, respectively, in relation to coexisting problematic gaming. Furthermore, problematic gaming was stable over time, and problematic gaming at the first wave was associated with problem gambling three years later. It is important to screen for possible co-occurring symptoms among those who seek treatment and among those who appear to have symptoms of gaming, gambling, or psychiatric symptoms. Ongoing evaluation of adequate screening and diagnostic measurements, and the development and evaluation of treatments for problematic gaming, gaming addiction, and comorbid conditions are needed.

Video games provide a competitive, goal-oriented environment. They involve individuals who often seek intentionally to frustrate their opponents’ goals. The gaming community is made up of players who vary in their interpersonal style, learning histories, and skill levels. In this rich and dynamic environment, stress is a common experience. Given the prevalence of gameplay in the population and the frequency of gameplay among gamers, it is important to examine coping responses to stressors, particularly maladaptive ones. The present research entails three studies. In Study 1, I use exploratory factor analyses to develop three scales purported to measure maladaptive coping strategies in response to frustration in multiplayer video games: aggression (CIV-A), catharsis (CIV-C), and self-condemnation (CIV-S). In Study 2, I provide further evidence of the single factor structure identified in Study 1 using confirmatory factor analyses. I additionally provide evidence that the three CIV scales can be used as a single, three-factor measure (CIV-III). Moreover, I conduct a path analysis to provide initial evidence of the scale’s construct validity, wherein I provide evidence that measures of personality (anger and arousal) predisposition predict CIV-III subscale scores. Finally, in Study 3, I examine patterns of these coping styles by running a Latent Profile Analysis. I found evidence for four maladaptive coping profiles: low maladaptive coping, external maladaptive coping, internal maladaptive coping, and low maladaptive coping. Finally, I provide evidence that measures of personality and motivations for video gaming can predict coping profile membership.

Title: Playing skills in floorball (evaluation criteria). Target: To create a list of playing skills which an ideal player should demonstrate. Find and verify the evaluation criteria of these skills and inspire trainers to develop these skills in the best way. Methods: Informal interviews, individually structured interviews, analysis and verification of data, pilot testing. Results: Defined playing skills in floorball, developed scale of values of floorball playing skills, creation of exercises serving to develop playing skills in floorball. Key words: Playing skills, evaluation criteria and player development.

This research aimed to investigate game developers' preferences and graphical differences between Chinese and Western female game characters. Parts of the survey were conducted in China and in cooperation with Game Hub Scandinavia (2015). For this research, an image analysis and two models were made. The image analysis analyzed common elements that exist between different female characters from Chinese and Western game toplists. One model was based on a Chinese game toplist and the other model was based on a Western game toplist. The survey was conducted through Internet surveys and interviews. Results showed that there were graphical differences between games from Chinese and Western game lists, but there is not a significant difference between game developers' preferences.