There is a significant and previously unidentified ethics problem with many e-games; many of them are designed in such a way that they encourage and train game players to follow a narrow and dangerous model of decision making. It is argued that extending this model of decision making beyond an e-game's virtual reality has significant negative societal consequences. Unfortunately most e-game courses focus primarily on game engine design and other technical issues. E-game curricula and e-game designers need to follow standards which recognize this ethical concern and recognize that their work is not independent from the societal impacts of the technology they develop. Modifying design approaches can reduce the problems caused by the ethical decision making model.

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The prevalence of regular video game use among populations of all ages, genders, geographic locations, and life experiences has grown exponentially in recent years (Entertainment Software Association, 2021). Gaming provides many players with an opportunity to engage in an immersive, engaging, and enjoyable activity that has the power to positively impact many facets of quality of life and well-being (Jones, 2021; Britnell & Goldberg, 2002). Despite monumental strides made in the gaming industry to ensure gaming controllers and software settings are accessible for players with disabilities, many players still face barriers to video game access following the onset of injury, illness, or an existing condition. The relationship between the occupational therapy profession and the prevalence of video game technologies is multifaceted. First, occupational therapists are tasked with adapting tasks or environments to facilitate access and independence in activities that a particular client finds meaningful. Additionally, occupational therapists ground the nature of their work in creating evaluation methods and intervention approaches that leverage a client’s established meaningful occupations in producing functional outcomes through therapeutic exercise and activity (AJOT, 2020). Given the large and growing population of clients who consider gaming a meaningful occupation, this project asserts that occupational therapists have the following responsibilities related to adequately serving the needs of their current and future clients: 1. Acquiring knowledge needed to successfully adapt gaming hardware and gameplay tasks through assistive technologies to facilitate access and independence in gameplay for leisure or social participation purposes 2. Acquiring knowledge needed to successfully embed game-based activities within occupational therapy interventions to ensure treatment sessions remain occupation based, meaningful, and engaging to applicable client populations. Despite these factors, gaming knowledge and adoption among occupational therapists remains relatively low due to a variety of factors discussed in further detail throughout this paper (Hills et al., 2016; Jones, 2021; Levac et al., 2017; Thomson et al., 2016). This project assessed the current body of evidence-based literature related to the therapeutic implications of gaming, the nature of current barriers contributing to low technology adoption rates, and established approaches deemed effective in mitigating these barriers in detail. This large body of data and evidence was used to create the Gaming and Occupational therapy Adoption Training Program (G.O.A.T.). This program leverages a multidimensional approach in providing a comprehensive intervention program for occupational therapists that ultimately seeks to increase the adoption of gaming technologies within the occupational therapy profession.

Royal Blood is a piece of software that confronts the author's childhood traumas and attempts to empower the audience through interactive emergent theater. On the surface Royal Blood is a multiplayer action video-game, however the roots of this game lay in the Psychomagic therapeutic practices that were first established by the cult film director Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Video game development is a high-risk effort with low probability of success. The interactive nature of the resulting artifact increases production complexity, often doing so in ways that are unexpected. New methodologies are needed to address issues in this domain.<p> Video game development has two major phases: preproduction and production. During <i>preproduction</i>, the game designer and other members of the creative team create and capture a vision of the intended player experience in the game design document. The game design document tells the story and describes the game - it does not usually explicitly elaborate all of the details of the intended player experience, particularly with respect to how the player is intended to feel as the game progresses. Details of the intended experience tend to be communicated verbally, on an as-needed basis during iterations of the production effort.<p> During <i>production</i>, the software and media development teams attempt to realize the preproduction vision in a game artifact. However, the game design document is not traditionally intended to capture production-ready requirements, particularly for software development. As a result, there is a communications chasm between preproduction and production efforts that can lead to production issues such as excessive reliance on direct communication with the game designer, difficulty scoping project elements, and difficulty in determining reasonably accurate effort estimates.<p> We posit that defining and capturing the intended player experience in a manner that is influenced and informed by established requirements engineering principles and techniques will help cross the communications chasm between preproduction and production. The proposed experience requirements methodology is a novel contribution composed of:<p> <ol> <li>a model for the elements that compose experience requirements,</li> <li>a framework that provides guidance for expressing experience requirements, and</li> <li>an exemplary process for the elicitation, capture, and negotiation of experience requirements.</li> <ol><p> Experience requirements capture the designer' s intent for the user experience; they represent user experience goals for the artifact and constraints upon the implementation and are not expected to be formal in the mathematical sense. Experience requirements are evolutionary in intent - they incrementally enhance and extend existing practices in a relatively lightweight manner using language and representations that are intended to be mutually acceptable to preproduction and to production.

Video game development is a high-risk effort with low probability of success. The interactive nature of the resulting artifact increases production complexity, often doing so in ways that are unexpected. New methodologies are needed to address issues in this domain.<p> Video game development has two major phases: preproduction and production. During <i>preproduction</i>, the game designer and other members of the creative team create and capture a vision of the intended player experience in the game design document. The game design document tells the story and describes the game - it does not usually explicitly elaborate all of the details of the intended player experience, particularly with respect to how the player is intended to feel as the game progresses. Details of the intended experience tend to be communicated verbally, on an as-needed basis during iterations of the production effort.<p> During <i>production</i>, the software and media development teams attempt to realize the preproduction vision in a game artifact. However, the game design document is not traditionally intended to capture production-ready requirements, particularly for software development. As a result, there is a communications chasm between preproduction and production efforts that can lead to production issues such as excessive reliance on direct communication with the game designer, difficulty scoping project elements, and difficulty in determining reasonably accurate effort estimates.<p> We posit that defining and capturing the intended player experience in a manner that is influenced and informed by established requirements engineering principles and techniques will help cross the communications chasm between preproduction and production. The proposed experience requirements methodology is a novel contribution composed of:<p> <ol> <li>a model for the elements that compose experience requirements,</li> <li>a framework that provides guidance for expressing experience requirements, and</li> <li>an exemplary process for the elicitation, capture, and negotiation of experience requirements.</li> <ol><p> Experience requirements capture the designer' s intent for the user experience; they represent user experience goals for the artifact and constraints upon the implementation and are not expected to be formal in the mathematical sense. Experience requirements are evolutionary in intent - they incrementally enhance and extend existing practices in a relatively lightweight manner using language and representations that are intended to be mutually acceptable to preproduction and to production.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Music Johannesburg, 2016 / In this part-written, part-composed creative research project I consider the music of ‘indie’ video games, specifically exploring some of the myriad dynamic compositional approaches in this particular category of game development. In my written work I analyse three indie video games – Braid (2008), Fez (2012) and Journey (2012) – each of which use unique methods to apply music dynamically. I use interviews with the games’ creators, as well as close analysis and transcription of significant sections of each video game, in order to reveal how music is used to provide the player with a more immersive, satisfying, and involving gaming experience. I also consider the use of ambient music in indie video games, a common feature of a large number of contemporary games, weighing up its merits and limitations. Musical concepts and compositional approaches raised in my written work have informed the portfolio of compositions submitted for this degree, and, similarly, my creative work has informed my analytical research. My creative work explores, amongst other aspects, indeterminate form, ambient music, and ways of ‘looping’ material in the creation of unrepeatable structures. This thesis also considers music which functions narratively in games – a function that might necessitate a greater degree of musical linearity — and how this musical role might be incompatible with the demands of interactivity. After briefly introducing the concepts dealt with across this thesis in Chapter 1, Chapters 2 to 4 take the form of case studies of the indie games mentioned above, with each chapter tackling unique challenges that game composers face when writing music for non-linear games, by which I mean games structured so that not all players will experience the content in the same order due to player agency. More specifically, Chapter 2 deals with the game Braid and its use of pre-composed, licensed music and how the game’s developer applies this music dynamically to the game. Chapter 3 deals with Fez and its mainly adaptive musical approach, its built-in software music engine, ‘Fezzer’, which allows for a composer to input and manipulate musical loops in the game, and nostalgia in indie video game aesthetics. Chapter 4 centres on the video game Journey and on how autonomous, ‘narrative’ music in video games might be seen to exist in opposition to music’s ability to be truly dynamic. Finally, Chapter 5 reflects on my own creative work for this thesis; how concepts from the case studies have informed my creative work and vice versa. / MT2017

FLOW EXPERIENCE IN VIDEOGAME GENRES ABSTRACT: The thesis Flow experience in videogame genres focuses on the critical dialogue with Csikszentmihalyi's concept of the flow phenomenon. The flow is a standard term for the optimal mental state during playing videogames. The author of this text discusses the original conception of flow as a universal state in all types of activities. He acknowledges a high probability of various ways of experiencing that occurs in relation to different genres and types of activities. With help of qualitative research inspired by the narrative methodology based on eight interviews with videogame journalists, he aims to present a revised dimensional model of flow experience. This thesis indicates three basic types of flow - climax, ilinx and ludic trance - that can be examined on the basis of the ten dimensions of flow (interactivity, intentionality, challenge, exploration, time urgency of executive operations, attention, level of consciousness, experience of power, source of stimul ation and value). The author opines that the revised model of flow is the first step towards a deeper understanding of the diversity of involvement in videogaming which can serve a further research of the optimal experience and categorization of playing styles corresponding with these three different...

Before Eternity is a short 3D adventure game that addresses the purpose of our earthly lives, inspired by the Sufi poet Rumi. To support its mystical theme, the design employs impressionistic elements and symbolic activities which deliberately defy many conventions of traditional adventure games. This report explains the design and implementation of the game, as well as its technical and production aspects.

L’objet jeu vidéo interroge de plus en plus la psychologie clinique depuis le début des années 2000. Au centre de divers controverses quant à ses usages et ses prétendus méfaits ; certaines pratiques videoludiques tendent aujourd’hui à se banaliser. Pour autant, le discours des addictologues, des médias, des parents et éducateurs, des joueurs eux-mêmes, voire de la psychanalyse, véhiculent souvent une vérité masquée par le langage qui ne cesse de nous interroger. Notamment, c’est la question des origines, de l’histoire, et des effets de cette vérité sur le sujet qui nous intéresse. Dire que jouer « peut-être comme la drogue » en dit long sur les représentations que nous nous faisons, en tant que société, du jeu, comme du jeu vidéo. Mais cela en dit long, également, sur un certain malaise à propos des nouvelles technologies et de la jeunesse en général. C’est ce malaise, que nous pensons percevoir dans certaines demandes de soin, et dans certaines manifestations cliniques symptomatiques, voir « synthomatiques ». La présente thèse tente de s’interroger sur l’histoire et les caractéristiques du jeu vidéo en tant qu’objet du champ du ludique, avant de présenter les rapports du jeu vidéo à la clinique, pour enfin conclure sur une réflexion autour des discours propos du vidéoludique et de leurs possibles effets en clinique. / Video games interrogate more and more the clinical psychology since early 2000's. They are in the center of numerous controversies about its uses and its alleged misdeeds. Despite this, some videogame practices tend to trivialize today. However, the discourse of addictologists, media, parents and educators, players themselves or of psychoanalysis, often convey a truth obscured by the language that continues to question us. Notably, it raises the issue of the origins, history, and the effects of this truth on the subject that interests us. Say that play "maybe like drugs" is very eloquent about the representations we make, as a society, relating to the game, as the video game. But it's very eloquent, too, about some discontent about new technologies and youth in general. It is this discontent, we think carefully collect in certain demands, and in some symptomatic clinical manifestations, even in some "synthomatical" manifestations. This thesis attempts to question the history and characteristics of the video game as a playful object, before presenting the reports of the video game to the clinic, to finally conclude with a reflection on the discourse about the videogame and their possible effects in the clinic.