This paper is about how the location based game Pokemon Go motivates players to play the game outdoors and defining the games design principles and how they encourage social interaction between players. The paper has made use of three different qualitative data gathering methods, a brief ethnographical field study, semi structured interviews and an analysis based on theoretical frameworks used for conducting research about video games. Players were found to play outside for three reasons, the freedom of using a smartphone to play location based games, Pokemon Go’s location based game technology that creates rewards that are given to a player if they complete tasks done outside and the games feedback to reality via the avatars movement correlating with the physical movement of the player. Pokemon Go was also found to only encourage social interaction with other players through indirect means. The game does this by putting players outside and making it very easy to recognize other players, and through the use of lures, Pokestops and Pokegyms, the incentive to approach these other players and engage in some form of social interaction increases. The game functions primarily as a catalyst as well as a safety net for social interactions, where players will recognize each other and initiate an interaction using the game as a basis for conversation.

Seminario de Investigación Tesis para optar al grado de Licenciado en Comunicación Social / El autor no autoriza el acceso a texto completo de su documento / El objetivo de la presente investigación es estudiar la lectura de la japoanimación a través del dibujo infantil, concretamente la lectura de la serie "Pokémon". Los dibujos provienen de niños y niñas, entre los 6 y 13 años de edad, de sectores medios, recolectados en la Quinta Región. Los protocolos empíricos de lectura de la japoanimación no han sido estudiados, siendo el caso de la japoanimación y sus efectos, una preocupación de la sociedad chilena. Esto se ve reflejado en la gran cantidad de artículos y reportajes aparecidos recientemente en todos los medios masivos de comunicación. El Consejo Nacional de Televisión ha realizado estudios de audiencia infantil, detectándose un alto consumo de la japoanimación. También se ha estudiado la percepción de los niños de los contenidos de violencia de dichas series. Sin embargo, el instrumento utilizado ha sido fundamentalmente lingüístico: el cuestionario. Éste presenta la limitación que, en las preguntas planteadas, ya va enunciada la problemática a los niños. De esta manera, se prefigura la respuesta de antemano. Es por ello, que pienso que mi investigación contribuirá a la descripción de un espacio no antes visto: la lectura empírica de los niños a través del dibujo. De esta manera, la investigación realizada, permite a los niños dibujar libremente a los Pokémon, sin colocarles la pregunta, sino que descubrir en los dibujos mismos, su visión, su lectura de la Pokemanía. El objetivo, entonces, es aprehender la lectura visual de los niños respecto del fenómeno Pokémon, detectada en el dibujo. Se trata de un estudio exploratorio, de índole semiótico, que tiene como intencionalidad descubrir un modelo interpretativo de la percepción visual de los niños de la Pokemanía, susceptible a desarrollar posteriores investigaciones que enfrenten el fenómeno y a descubrir la viabilidad inferencial o estadística de la interpretación estatuida. El razonamiento para seleccionar como tema de investigación a la serie animada Pokémon, radica en que, en la actualidad, es la de mayor sintonía nacional, y su línea de merchandising tiene la mayor demanda a nivel internacional. Además, la película de igual nombre - estrenada mundialmente hace unas semanas -, ha arrasado con todos los récords de taquilla del segmento de films animados, y, amenaza con hacer lo mismo en el total de géneros del universo cinematográfico. Lo anterior quedó en evidencia al solicitar a más de 200 niños de 6 a 13 años de edad de la Quinta Región, dibujos – a libre elección - de la serie de monos animados de su preferencia. De los dibujos recbidos, los resultados dieron como mayoritario – con un 85% aproximado del total del universo – al subconjunto compuesto con representaciones de mundo Pokémon. Así, se confirmó mi apreciación acerca de la popularidad actual de la serie y se determinó que sería la japoanimación a analizar en profundidad.

Syfte Syftet med den här studien är att undersöka om spelet Pokemon Go kan få elever att röra på sig mer på sin fritid och på så sätt minska stillasittandet där ofta mobil/tv-spel och tv-tittande ingår. Kan ett mobilspel motivera barnen till en aktivare fritid? Hur kan skolan ta hjälp av den nya tekniken för att motivera elever till mer rörelse i skolan? Hur många steg tar eleverna de dagar de inte letar efter Pokemons?  Hur många steg tar eleverna de dagar de letar efter Pokemons?                 Sitter de mindre framför datorn/tv och spelar nu än innan de började spela Pokemon GO? Metod För att besvara syftet användas främst en kvantitativ metod dels genom enkätundersökning och stegräknare men även kvalitativa intervjuer har genomförts. I enkätundersökningen fick en lågstadieskola i årskurs 2-6 svara på ett antal frågor om Pokemon Go. 108 elever besvarade enkäten. Genom ett strategiskt urval valdes fem elever i årskurs 6 där deras stegräknare avlästes av varje dag under en månad för att få reda på antal steg de tog när de spelade applikationen och hur många steg det tog när de inte spelade.     Resultat De eleverna som fick sin stegräknare avläst rörde på sig mer de dagar de spelade applikationen. Eleverna fick sin stegräknare avläst i två månader. Två veckor valdes ut avlästes och i snitt gick de fem elever 12458 steg när de spelade Pokemon Go och 1587 steg de dagar som de inte spelade. Enkätundersöknigen visade att 72 av eleverna spelade och 36 elever spelade inte Pokemon Go. Motivationen var en viktig faktor visades sig under intervjuerna, de som spelande gjorde det för att det var roligt och de som inte spelade gjorde det för att de tyckte att det var tråkigt eller att de inte ägde en mobiltelefon.   Slutsats Slutsatsen blev att så länge eleverna tyckte att de är roligt så var de ute och spelade. De spelade för att det var kul inte för att må bättre ur ett hälsoperspektiv. De flesta svarade att de satt mindre framför dator/Ipad sedan de började spela Pokemon Go. Barnen tog mer antal steg de dagar dem spelade Pokemon Go. / <p>Fristående kurs Idrott III.</p>

I detta arbete som fokuserar på hur neurala nätverk kan appliceras på och hur väl de presterar i en spelmiljö undersöks två nätverksarkitekturer applicerat på en simulation av ett så kallat urvalsbaserat spel. I arbetet så är ett urvalsbaserat spel ett spel som går ut på att en spelare skall göra en mängd val innan spelet börjar, och de två nätverksarkitekturerna som utvärderas är Feed Forward och NEAT. Experimenten låter nätverken skapa lag för en förenklad version av spelet Pokemon och kommer sedan att låta dessa lag tävla emot varandra i en deterministisk testmiljö för att bedöma hur bra nätverken presterar.

abstract: This dissertation shares the results of a study of the community of the mobile augmented reality game Pokémon Go. It also serves to build on and expand the framework of Distributed Teaching and Learning (DTALS), which here is used as a framework through which to explore the game’s community (Gee & Gee, 2016; Holmes, Tran, & Gee, 2017).  DTALS serves to expand on other models which examine learning in out-of-school contexts, and in particular on the connections between classroom and out-of-school learning, which numerous scholars argue is of critical importance (Sefton-Green, 2004; Vadeboncoeur, Kady-Rachid, & Moghtader, 2014). This framework serves to build bridges as well as fill gaps in some key literature on learning in out-of-school contexts, including connected learning (Ito et al., 2009), participatory culture (Jenkins, Purushotma, Weigel, Clinton, & Robison, 2009), learning ecologies (Barron, 2006), and affinity spaces (Gee, 2004; Gee & Hayes, 2012). The model also focuses on teaching in addition to learning in and across informal contexts. While DTALS can be used to examine any number of phenomena, this dissertation focuses on the community around Pokémon Go. The game, with its emphasis on geography and community, presents unique opportunities for research. This research draws on existing video game research which focuses on not only games but their communities, and in particular the learning and literacy activities which occur in these communities (Gee & Hayes, 2012; Hayes & Duncan, 2012; Squire, 2006; Steinkuehler, 2006). The results here are presented as three separate manuscripts. Chapter Two takes a broad view of a local community of players, and discusses different player types and how they teach and learn around the game. Chapter Three focuses on families who play the game together, and in particular three focal parents who share their perceptions of the game's merits, especially its potential to promote family bonding and learning. Chapter Four discusses teaching, in particular guides written about the game and the ways in which they are situated in particular Discourses (Gee, 2014). Finally, Chapter Five offers implications from these three chapters, including implications for designers and researchers as well as calls for future research. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Learning, Literacies and Technologies 2018

This essay will focus on video and computer game violence. We hope to uncover, with the help of semiotics, according to Barthes design, if this kind of violence can have a negative effect on youth and adolescents. How intense is the violence and how graphic is it?. PEGI is the European measurement for game age limits. In our essay we will analyze five different games, each game in its own PEGI-value, except two games that share the limit of 18+ were we instead will try to uncover what differences in the two games that puts them on the same age limit. The games we will be investigating are “Pokemon Black Version”, “Megaman X: Command Missions”, “World of Warcraft Cataclysm”, “Call of Duty: Black Ops” and “Gears of War 2”, “Gears of War 2” and “Call of Duty: Black Ops” are the games which shares the age limit of 18+. With the help of our semiotic findings and various studies from researchers C A. Anderson, Jesper Juul and Clive Thompson we hope to be able to categorize the different types of violence in said games, according to the amount of violence, how intense it is, the amount of blood and death, how realistic the violence is and what kind of messages the different games contains and compare our findings to PEGI´s own guidelines.

Video game popularity and time playing in children, adolescents, and adults is steadily increasing due to heightened accessibility, advanced technological game design, and a rising sedentary lifestyle among Americans. The advent of exergames and virtual reality paradigms has led to a new wave of mobile video games that can be played anywhere, involve the combination of mobility and gaming, and may be used to improve cognition, affect, and perhaps empathy. The aim of the present study was to examine if the exergame Pokémon Go would improve visual and verbal working memory, attention, positive and negative affect, and empathy. Additionally, the current study is an extension of seminal research that discovered being in nature alone has positive effects on working memory and affect. Participants (N = 62) from a Florida University were assessed on the Alloway Working Memory Assessment (AWMA), the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) before and after playing Pokémon Go outdoors around the most natural parts of the campus (e.g., ponds, dense foliage). The participants then returned several days later, completed the assessments, and spent time outdoors not playing. The study was counterbalanced over the course of a year to control for seasonal differences. Main findings included increased verbal working memory scores and decreased negative affect after playing Pokémon Go with no changes in empathy. The results have important implications for those interested in using Pokémon Go to improve working memory and decrease stress and negative affect in adult populations.