京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(人間・環境学) / 甲第25377号 / 人博第1119号 / 新制||人||260(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院人間・環境学研究科共生人間学専攻 / (主査)准教授 PETERSONMark, 准教授 中森 誉之, 教授 勝又 直也, 教授 Harrison Richard / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Human and Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DGAM

This study investigates how the layout and structure of battle arenas in a melee-driven multiplayer split-screen game influence player engagement. By iterating on two arenas, making informed design decisions based on data from weekly playtests. Data collection involved observations, interviews, and an automated C# data-collecting tool. Metrics focused on social interaction, success, participation, and area interaction, linked to enjoyment, immersion, and level of interaction. We conducted six playtests with eleven arena iterations. Key findings include a player preference for arenas where they experienced higher success rates, either through hit accuracy or wins; excessive spatial restrictions leading to player frustration and decreased enjoyment due to mobility difficulties; and a general preference for asymmetrical arenas, which were favored for their varied gameplay and strategic opportunities, despite slightly lower active combat participation. The final arena design was asymmetrical, featuring four distinct zones, each providing unique gameplay experiences and strategic opportunities. This study highlights how arena design can enhance player engagement by balancing spatial dynamics and strategic elements.

Purpose: To examine how video-game releases affect the share price, and if video-game reviews have any impact on the share price of gaming corporations.  Method: A quantitative deductive research approach is applied with event study methodology used as basis. The investigated companies were the five largest gaming companies listed on the U.S. NASDAQ exchange. A total of 29 video-game launches and 85 reviews where examined.   Theory: The study is based on The Efficient Market Hypothesis, Agent Theory, Public Relations Theory, Nextopia and previous research. Results: The result contains 114 observations in five companies. The result accounts for the cumulative abnormal return for each video-game. It also accounts for the cumulative average abnormal return for each company ten days after release. Analysis: The hypothesis test accounts for a statistical significant correlation between negative abnormal return and the release. It is also accounted for a cumulative average abnormal return of  -2,29 % of the video-game companies stocks. Conclusion: There is a negative abnormal return for shareholders ten days after a video-game release. The result and the analysis dose confirm a direct correlation between video-game reviews and the abnormal return.

No description available.

Digital games incorporate systems that allow players to customise and develop their controllable in-game representative (avatar) over the course of a game. Avatar customisation systems represent a point at which the goals and values of players interface with the intentions of the game developer forming a dynamic and complex relationship between system and user. With the proliferation of customisable avatars through digital games and the ongoing monetisation of customisation options through digital content delivery platforms it is important to understand the relationship between player and avatar in order to provide a better user experience and to develop an understanding of the cultural impact of the avatar. Previous research on avatar customisation has focused on the users of virtual worlds and massively multiplayer games, leaving single-player avatar experiences. These past studies have also typically focused on one particular aspect of avatar customisation and those that have looked at all factors involved in avatar customisation have done so with a very small sample. This research has aimed to address this gap in the literature by focusing primarily on avatar customisation features in single-player games, aiming to investigate the relationship between player and customisation systems from the perspective of the players of digital games. To fulfill the research aims and objectives, the qualitative approach of interpretative phenomenological analysis was adopted. Thirty participants were recruited using snowball and purposive sampling (the criteria being that participants had played games featuring customisable avatars) and accounts of their experiences were gathered through semi-structured interviews. Through this research, strategies of avatar customisation were explored in order to demonstrate how people use such systems. The shortcomings in game mechanics and user interfaces were highlighted so that future games can improve the avatar customisation experience.

<p>Abstract</p><p>Title: The game of playing: A media ethnographic study of children playing videogames on a Swedish after school recreation centre. Spelet om spelandet: En medieetnografisk studie av barns dataspelande på en fritidsklubb.</p><p>Number of pages: 46</p><p>Author: Peter Brandberg</p><p>Tutor: Amelie Hössjer</p><p>Period: Spring term 2008</p><p>Course: Media and Communication studies D</p><p>University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University</p><p>Purpose/Aim: The aim with this study is to describe how children play video games in an everyday context. In this study this context consists of a Swedish after school recreation centre. By combining three different aspects on the activity this study tries to understand how both the video game and the social and cultural context in which the activity takes place in influences it. This by taking one analyse of the specific game that the children played at the time of the study and how the overall environment is structured into account. Together these two perspectives contribute to the understanding of the playing as a complex and dynamic activity.</p><p>Material/Method: The material and method consists primary of a participatory observation which were conducted for eight days in an after school recreation centre. The analyse of the video game uses specific parts from the ludologist Aki Järvinens “applied ludology” to understand the game Guitar Hero.</p><p>Main results: The main results of this study shows how the social context influences the play activity in which the children needs to negotiate about the resources needed to play. They used different strategies to try to gain control over the interfaces to the game. The study also shows how the children didn’t relate to the fact that these interfaces looked like guitars in their use of them. Instead the children used knowledge about other interfaces and played the game by “pressing buttons in the right time”.</p><p>Keywords: media ethnographic, participatory observation, ludology, applied ludology, video game, game studies, guitar hero, children, after school recreation centre, situated play</p>

No description available.

Ce mémoire étudie la dynamique communicationnelle et interactionnelle entre un joueur et un système de jeu par l’entremise des théories de l’énonciation et de la cognition. Par une analyse des jeux vidéo d’horreur en perspective à la première personne, il s’agit de conceptualiser une spirale heuristique de l’énonciation à partir des principes théoriques du Cycle Magique (Arsenault et Perron, 2009). Le propos se focalise sur la manière dont le joueur expérimente et traite les propositions ludiques et les propositions ludodiégétiques. L’intérêt est d’observer comment la valeur réflexive des marques de jeu et des marques de jouabilité sert à départager des relations d’attribution entre des formulations énonciatives (textuelles, verbales, visuelles, sonores ou procédurales) et des agents énonciatifs. Cette recherche rend compte, d’une part, de la gestion cognitive des faits énonciatifs et, d’autre part, de la modulation de leurs valeurs d’immédiateté-hypermédiateté et de leurs rapports de liaison/déliaison avec les agents énonciatifs. Il est expliqué que cette activité cognitive du joueur dirige la schématisation d’attitudes interactionnelles servant à structurer la signification – ludique ou narrative – des propositions ludiques générées au cours de l’activité de jeu. L’analyse cible des processus de mise en phase performative et de mise en phase méta-systémique ludique permettant la détermination de vecteurs d’immersion. En fonction du caractère d’opacité ou de transparence des vecteurs, il est question d’indiquer comment la posture d’expérience du joueur oscille entre un continuum immersif qui polarise une expérience systémique et une expérience diégétisée. / This master thesis studies the communicative and interactional dynamics between a gamer and a game system through the theories of film enunciation and cognition. By analyzing first-person survival horror video games, the purpose is to conceptualize a heuristic spiral of enunciation following the theoretical frame of the Magic Cycle (Arsenault and Perron, 2009). It will be explained that the self-reflexive nature of “game mark” (marque de jeu) and “gameplay mark” (marque de jouabilité) serve to assigned a relationships between an enunciative formulation (textual, verbal, visual, auditory or procedural), the contextual details, and an agent of enunciation. This methodology aim to analyze the gamer’s cognitive negotiation of the immediacy-hypermediacy value through the setting of “linking relations” (rapport de liaison) and “unlinking relations” (rapport de déliaison). This will explained how the gamer produced meaning from some “ludics propositions” and “ludodiegetics propostitions” in order to proceed with the cognitive mapping of interactional attitudes. It will be discuss that through the process of “performative attuning” (mise en phase performative) and “meta-systemic ludic attuning” (mise en phase méta-systémique ludique), these propositions are then introduced as immersive vector. Depending on the vector’s immediacy-hypermediacy value, the gamer’s experience oscillates on an immersive continuum which polarized a systemic experience and a diegetic experience.

L’omniprésence de la musique populaire dans le paysage médiatique contemporain fait en sorte qu’il est fréquent de retrouver la même chanson dans plusieurs trames sonores. En s’appuyant sur des théories de l’intertextualité et de la communication, ce mémoire cherche à définir la relation qui s’établit entre deux ou plusieurs oeuvres narratives et / ou interactives partageant une chanson, ainsi qu’à appréhender les effets de ces recontextualisations multiples sur l’expérience spectatorielle et vidéoludique. Le premier chapitre examine les principales fonctions narratives et ludiques de la musique à l’aide d’une synthèse des principaux travaux sur la musique de film, de télévision et de jeu vidéo. Le deuxième chapitre interroge la notion de référence dans le contexte des usages répétés d’une même chanson populaire. Le concept d’interférence musicale est proposé à partir de différentes déclinaisons du terme « interférence » issues des travaux de Michel Serres, Sébastien Babeux et Philip Tagg. Les assises théoriques sont appliquées à l’analyse des trajectoires médiatiques respectives de deux chansons aux chapitres trois et quatre. La figure du réseau est finalement déployée afin d’illustrer la complexité des relations entre les œuvres intégrant une même chanson à leur mise en scène. / Given the pervasiveness of popular music in the contemporary media landscape, it is not unusual to find the same song in multiple soundtracks. Based on theories of intertextuality and communication, this thesis seeks to define the relationship which develops between two or more narrative and / or interactive works that share the same song, and to understand the effects of such recontextualizations on the spectator’s and gamer’s experience. The first chapter reviews the narrative and ludic functions of music with a summary of major works on film, television and video game music. The second chapter questions the notion of reference in the context of repeated uses of the same popular song. The concept of musical interference is proposed using different variations on the term « interference » derived from the works of Michel Serres, Sébastien Babeux and Philip Tagg. The theoretical framework is applied to the analysis of the media trajectories of two songs in chapters three and four. Finally, the complex relationships between works incorporating the same song to their narrative are illustrated with the figure of the network.

Ce mémoire analysera les différents procédés de transmission à l'oeuvre dans Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015) et Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (2014) afin de saisir l'ensemble de la vision auctoriale du réalisateur de la série Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima, ce qui nous permettra dans un second temps de comprendre la signification du réseau communicationnel rhizomatique qui précède et accompagne ces jeux vidéo. Ma recherche sera ainsi divisée en trois sections. La première section s'intéressera à la publicité entourant les deux volets de Metal Gear Solid V, laquelle sera étudiée en tant que signe social. La deuxième section présentera une analyse scénaristique dans laquelle il sera question des inspirations historiques et intermédiales qui contribuent à former l'univers narratif de notre corpus. La troisième section sera une analyse du modèle interactif de Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes et de Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Il y sera question de l'avantage parfois insoupçonné de l'encadrement de systèmes logiques vidéoludiques afin d'influencer le joueur à abandonner ou à adopter de nouvelles perspectives sociopolitiques. Ce mémoire démontrera comment Metal Gear Solid V utilise et unit un maximum de méthodes de transmission afin de convaincre son public de se laisser séduire par son message auctorial, ce qui servira finalement à prouver le potentiel rhétorique d'une union songée du paratexte et du contenu d’une œuvre vidéoludique. / This memoir will analyse the different processes of transmission used in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015) and Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (2014) in order to grasp the whole auctorial vision of the Metal Gear Solid series director, Hideo Kojima, which will in turn allow us to understand the meaning of the rhizomatic communicational network that precedes or accompanies these video games. My research will be divided in three sections. The first section will focus on the publicity (and therefore social signs) that surrounds the two parts of Metal Gear Solid V. The second section will present a story analysis where historical and intermedial inspirations of both games will be discussed. The third section will analyse the interactive model of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. That chapter will focus on the often unsuspected advantages of the logical videoludic systems as means to influence the player to abandon or to adopt new sociopolitical perspectives. This memoir will decompose how Metal Gear Solid V uses and unites a maximum of transmission methods to persuade its public to give in to its auctorial message, which will hopefully demonstrate the rhetorical potential of a thoughtful union of paratext and content within videoludic works.