To adolescents, online game provides a rich playground for developing competence in leadership, coordination, teamwork, and cooperation. Adopting the perspective of positive psychology and social cognitive theory, this research investigates how factors such as personal and social factors may impact adolescents' learning outcomes and subjective will-being. The results show that game efficacy, adolescents' game attitudes, and social influences are important factors that influence adolescents' online game behavior. Moreover, playing online games may improve adolescents' psychological affects and learning, which in turn enhance players' subjective well-being. These results provide a new perspective to game researchers, teachers and parents and can help game manufactures and government in designing games and making policies.

Abstract Men and women are born in equal according to our constitution. The right of work for people shall be protected, and basic human rights for men and women are equal according to International Labor Code. However, basing on varied factors, currently the work relationship between men and women is not ideal. Subject to the data statistical records from Directorate-General of Budgets, Account & Statistics, Executive Yuan, the rate share for women manager and administrator in private organizations is only 13.6%. Even in the governmental organization, chief director selected by people and recommended women officials is also only 11.89%. The wage for women in Taiwan is always shared 73% of the men¡¦s. In the environment of practical situation, women are often restricted and affected by social structure, traditional culture value, and dull role-playing. On the other hand, they are often restrained and interfered by acting for different family roles. Those factors bring much pressure for women and their careers are greatly influenced. The researcher of this study is to serve in the governmental organization now. In so many years of working experience, she realizes deeply about the difficulties, obstacle, and decision for women unable to self-implement for achievement in the process of development under old social culture value. As viewing that women play important role gradually for national labor application in the future, and following the upgrade educational standard for women, the rate share for officials in governmental organization is increased year by year. Therefore, through pioneer model of female officials in the administrative organization, who are unable to reach for an equal treatment, this study is to research on personal disposition, sex role-playing, and pressure on role-playing, etc. factors. The successful result of personal presentation on how to overcome the obstacles and which kind of career policies adopted in the process of development are studied. In this study adopts individual interview, and the objects under this visiting are to serve in the administrative organization, including 4 higher/intermediate division women qualified by our national high-class examination, and aged from 35 to 50 years old to have more than 4 years of service span. The information collected is written by words, and after text classification and management, we build a title specified with explanation. Under comparison and analysis, the words told by the object will be directly narrated to prove our points of this study. Finally, the results are concluded below: ¤@¡BIn the aspect on sex role-playing ¡]¤@¡^Traditional social value affected to attitude for sex role-playing: in the traditional social value, women must take most of the duties to the household affairs and child raising. Even the modern women who have career feel guilty on care less for family members resulting from over devoted themselves to the work. ¡]¤G¡^Choosing stable work for themselves under assessment: except being affected by school domain, colleague, or models, etc. women look for stable work to let them can take care of family members and work simultaneously. ¡]¤T¡^Dull sex role-playing affected to their career development: for the factors of family role-playing, discrimination on sex for career and promotion, and not suitable for management, etc., women are restricted for career development. ¡]¥|¡^Sex role-playing and personal disposition affected to their career development: Most of the female officials in the administrative organization are trend to have personal disposition on both men and women with flexible space to meet the demand of actual condition. Women who have such kind of disposition are successful on career development. ¤G¡BIn the aspect of role conflicts ¡]¤@¡^Traditional social value affected to their role conflicts and career progress. ¡]¤G¡^Lower the role conflict, positive influence on career development. ¤T¡BIn the aspect of personal disposition ¡]¤@¡^Women with disposition of inner self-control get higher successful on career: As women who have inner self-control dare to receive challenge and take responsibility for better achievement. Therefore, they have high rate for successful on career. ¡]¤G¡^Smaller influenced by traditional culture value, they have higher motive to achieve the successful. Besides, the rate is higher to act as senior officials in the intermediate and higher division. ¥|¡BSuccessful policy factors for women career ¡]¤@¡^Looking for support and assistance from their family members: Looking for effective support system to cope with pressure, their career will be successful without burdens. ¡]¤G¡^Creating opportunity for competition priority: like to use the policies with ¡§organizational level and structure opportunity¡¨ ¡§increasing on training opportunity¡¨, ¡§striving for professional enrichment and in-service study opportunity¡¨, ¡§assessment on situation priority¡¨, and ¡§letting resistance turn into assistance¡¨, etc. to breakthrough for greater progress on career. ¡]¤T¡^Devoted themselves to the work with great efforts: being fully devoted to the work with progressive attitude and good faith, and this is the basic policy to win for a success. ¡]¥|¡^Having the opinion same as senior officers: Good coordination with senior officers, and appropriate application of the policy to avoid creating negative influence. ¡]¤­¡^Self-selling at appropriate time: self recommendation policy. ¡]¤»¡^Seeking for instruction from good instructor: A good instructor can appreciate your talent and will give instruction to you at appropriate time, and a timing recommendation as well as promotion helps greatly to the development of career without obstacles. ¡]¤C¡^Establishing the human network relations: Participating progressively and actively to expand human relations and set-up good information network. By means of the operation on human network, the development of career will be successful more easily. Key words: Sex role-playing, role conflict, personal disposition, career development, career development policy, men and women to work equal

This thesis establishes a theoretical framework for understanding virtual spaces and roleplaying in relation to Ian Bogost's theory of "procedural rhetoric," the art of persuading through rule systems alone. Bogost characterizes the persuasive power of games as setting up an Aristotelian enthymeme--an incomplete argument--that one completes through play; however, I argue that the dominant rhetoric intended by a team of game designers is subject to manipulation through player choice. Discrete structures within the play experience cause the meaning-making possibilities of a game object to pullulate in a number of directions. Procedural rhetoric is not comprehended or created when reflected back upon after play: we interrogate it, piece it together, and change it through play. If rules are how the designers express themselves through videogames, then the player expresses herself by forming a personal ruleset--a modus operandi or ethical system--in response to the dominant rhetoric. Furthermore, game space is not merely the place where this dialectic occurs; it also embodies a ruleset in the way it organizes objects and directs the flow of play. The thesis proposes a model by which games, which are "half-real" according to theorist Jesper Juul, can be judged intersubjectively--that is, in a way that accounts for the objectivity of their rulesets and the subjectivity of player experience. By fully understanding the dynamic between the three procedural influences of rules, space, and identity, we can learn more about designing persuasive game systems and enhance the possibilities of subversive play.

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This dissertation concerns live action role-playing (larp). Larp may be described as improvised theater without an audience, as participants simultaneously embody both audience and actor in their constant interaction with one another.  Hence, larp can be seen as a participatory culture.  The study is based on participant observation, interviews and online ethnography in Denmark, Latvia, Sweden and Norway. The aim of the thesis is to analyze how bodies materialize, take and are given space in larps. At the heart of the study lie questions on how processes of embodiment are enacted before, during and after the game. Two central concepts - larp chronotope and matrix of interpretation – shape the analysis. The first denotes the specific timespace in which a larp takes place, e.g a Soviet military camp or a fantasy world. The second concept stands for a general matrix of norms that informs participants on how to enact their characters in the larp chronotope. The thesis shows that participants strive to act in ways that are intelligible according to the matrix of interpretation that reigns during the game days. In addition, although game and everyday matrixes of interpretations are always inseparable, while attending a larp the participant’s ordinary lives are temporarily allowed to fade into the background. Thus, larps are complex combinations of objects, spaces and bodies that are given new relations and new meanings. Furthermore, the thesis shows that larp embodiment is conditioned by normative ideas of what it means to be an intelligible live action role player. White male bodies are more likely to access the sphere of larp intelligibility than others, which is evident in many of the stories and made up worlds portrayed in the study. Yet, the collaborative narration of game worlds that take place before larps can include all sorts of bodies. Consequently, larps provide an opportunity for alternative forms of embodiment and experiences.

One approach to studying media is uses and gratifications, a model that suggests media audiences can explain why and for what purpose they use the media. This study took a Uses and Gratifications approach to the Internet social interaction site LambdaMOO. On LambdaMOO, users log on and create an alternate persona to interact with other users. Using a set of questions, 222 selected LambdaMOO users were asked about why they use LambdaMOO, their actions as an alternate persona and their opinions on LambdaMOO. Answers from the subjects were content analyzed to find commonality against several preselected categories and sub-categories. Upon analysis, the subjects were found to use LambdaMOO for talking to other users, "building" up the site through programming and surveying the current events and political movements on the site. Also, the subjects were determined not to act different from their real life actions and preceived attitudes, although the opportunity for freedom through anonymity was everpresent. / Department of Journalism

Non-Player Character (NPC) behaviors in todays computer games are mostly generated from manually written scripts. The high cost of manually creating complex behaviors for each NPC to exhibit intelligence in response to every situation in the game results in NPCs with repetitive and artificial looking behaviors. The goal of this research is to enable NPCs in computer games to exhibit natural and human-like behaviors in non-combat situations. The quality of these behaviors affects the game experience especially in story-based games, which rely heavily on player-NPC interactions. Reinforcement Learning has been used in this research for BioWare Corp.s Neverwinter Nights to learn natural-looking behaviors for companion NPCs. The proposed method enables NPCs to rapidly learn reasonable behaviors and adapt to the changes in the game environment. This research also provides a learning architecture to divide the NPC behavior into sub-behaviors and sub-tasks called decision domains.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Melbourne, Dept. of History, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-68).

Zugl.: Fribourg, Univ., Diss., 2007