Abstract   In this thesis, my aim was to investigate how preschool teachers view their involvement in children's free play. In order to answer this, I chose to do semi-structured interviews with four preschool teachers in three different preschools. My interviews has revealed similarities and support for as how history of research looks at the involvement of educationists. Both research and my results stresses the importance of being active in children's free play and to be a supportive teacher, particulary in conflict situations. For those children who have difficulty entering into the free game its the educationists task to co-play and help the children find the game.

AbstractIn this essay, I have performed a study on peer cultures and how these peer cultures are expressed in a group of pre-school children. My questions are as following:What positions/power positions can be seen in children?s play, and how will these be expressed?How do the children gain access to play?How do children act when they want to exclude other children?In order to understand this I have chosen to do observations as a method. In order to investigate these questions I chose to spend six whole mornings with a group of pre-school children, closely observing their behavior. The focus was on children, three years of age or older.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the consequences following an adaptation from literature to video game formatby comparing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass with American McGee's Alice and,primarily, Alice: Madness Returns. In order to answer this, aspects of both game theory and literary critique are takeninto consideration, regarding for example the narrative potential of the game medium and the gameplay's possibleresemblance with Wolfgang Iser's theory of the reading process.The analysis shows in what ways the original narrative has been altered in order to fit its new medium. Some of thebooks' main ingredients are simply retold in the games' so called information spaces, i.e. text and video sequenceswhere the otherwise playable character is not controlled. Others, instead, have undergone a ludolization or ergodizationwhere the story events are experienced as playable elements in the games' action spaces.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the unintentional learning that happens during the use of computer games. With the use of interviews with students in the ages 13-15 who all have played the game series Assassin?s Creed, and then compared them with students who does not play the game, we have been able to identify that some learning is taking place, but that the student?s attitude towards the subject, and their maturity, also is vital for the learning. Even tough, the students who didn?t really enjoy history as a subject showed better knowledge after playing the game, than the students who hadn?t played at all, which indicates that computer games can be a good source for learning.

AbstractTitle: Interactivity and participation - a qualitative study about the making of machinima withWorld of Warcraft (Interaktivitet och och deltagande ? en kvalitativ studie kring skapandet avmachinima med World of Warcraft)Number of pages: 68 total, 50 without appendixAuthor: Peter BrandbergTutor: Else NygrenPeriod: Autumn 2006Course: Media and Communication Studies CUniversity: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala UniversityPurpose/Aim: The aim of this study is to take a closer look at the phenomenon machinima by analysing a number of specific movies from the site worldcraftmovies.com. This analyse is focusing on how the content of these movies relate to the wider game culture of the MMORPG World of Warcraft, what specific elements in the movies is referring to and if there is differences or similarities between different genres (or categories).Material/Method: The method used in analysing the movies is a combined method inspired by hermeneutic, semiotics and discourse analysis.Main results: Instead of answers this study raises many questions about the diverse content of the movies. A general division can be seen between movies focusing on the games rules and movies that are trying to present a fictive world. But the study also shows how there are many movies moving between these two points.

During a political election the public?s interest in politics and political journalism increases significantly. During the American presidential election in 2012 a big amount of articles on that topic were published in two of Sweden?s largest newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet and Aftonbladet. Political journalism tends to frame politics as sports, game and scandals rather than focusing on the political issues.

Att använda sig av virtuella tv- och dataspel inom rehabilitering är ett relativt nytt medel som det finns begränsat med forskning inom. Syfte: Uppsatsens syfte är att beskriva till vilket ändamål virtuella tv- och dataspel används inom rehabilitering och vad det ger för utfall. Metod: En systematisk litteraturstudie användes som metod i uppsatsen. De databaser som använts är Amed, Cinahl, PubMed och Medline (via Ebsco). De sökord som använts är virtual video game, video game, computer game, rehabilitation, outcome, movement, playthings och occupational therapy.

Abstrakt I den här uppsatsen undersöks hur ett narrativ kan drivas inom digitala spel enbart med hjälp av spelmiljön. Syftet är att få förståelse för vad miljöberättande behärskar som en självständig form av berättande och vad författarna kan göra för att uppnå detta mål. För att undersöka problemområdet genomfördes en spelproduktion där metoder framtagna under undersökningens gång applicerades. Produktionen testades av utomstående studenter i medieteknik och resultaten sammanställdes med reflektioner kring vad som uppnåtts och de metoder som applicerats. Undersökningen beskriver arbetsprocessen och metoder och visar hur dessa kan driva ett narrativ med en spelmiljö.

AbstractThe purpose of the study was to examine if manual signs used as support to spoken and written language can be a god mnemonic for learning of word-pictures. I performed my study as an experiment in which I made a Memory game with word-pictures. I played the game with the children twice. The first time, we played without manual signs and the second time I used sign as a support. I observed the children and noted the words they learned to read with and without the support of manual signs.

Episodic gaming is a relatively new phenomenon, that hasn?t been as extensively explored as other areas in game research. In this paper we research how episodic narratives and gameplay engage players compared to regular continuous storytelling. By exploring this we get a better understanding of how to design games that captivate players to the point of them wanting to play the next episode.  A user study is conducted where ten players play two episodes each of an episodic game. We apply observations and interviews to capture a large amount of empirical data.

This essay is about the use of narrative in video games, and the discussion surrounding it. For years ludologists (game researchers) and narratologists (narrativity researchers) have been arguing about how to analyze narrativity in games. While ludologists have chosen to see games as a product by itself, and therefore something to be analyzed separately, narratologists instead see games as a narrative medium alongside film, theater and books. This essay starts by taking a look at the arguments from both sides, and then introduces three questions regarding narrative in games, and how this phenomenon has changed over the past 13 years. To answer these questions, five case studies are carried out, analyzing games with the help of a new framework built on narrative theory.

Denna studie har undersökt hur en användares motivation att samla mynt i ett serious game påverkas av att dessa är sammankopplade med spelets gameplay. För att undersöka detta har två versioner av ett serious game skapats, ett där mynt endast kan användas för att köpa kosmetiska uppgraderingar och ett där uppgraderingarna som kan köpas, utöver kosmetiska förändringar, även påverkar spelets gameplay. 12 personer har deltagit i testet och värderat hur mycket motivation de känt då de spelat spelen. Resultatet tyder på att det inte existerar någon markant skillnad mellan hur mycket motivation testdeltagarna kände inför att samla mynt i de båda versionerna. Undersökningen skulle kunna utvecklas genom att fler tester utförs på flera olika typer av mjukvaror..

The purpose with this qualitative interview study was to try to describe, through a phenomenological viewpoint, the meaning that Counter-Strike players put on there contemporary world. We started to explore this Game World with field research studies on the world?s biggest Game exhibition Dreamhack in the city of Jönköping. This helped us to develop our main question for this study.The thirteen participants of the interview were selectively chosen from a Game Café in the city of Karlstad. They were interviewed with five questions that dealt with their experiences of playing Counter-Strike and their experience of time perception in their world.

Uppsatsen syftar till att diskutera och jämföra tre olika metoder för karaktärsutveckling och diskutera dessa i förhållande till The Female Assassin; ett spelmanuskript som utspelar sig under Franska Revolutionen. För att få en god bakgrund för examensarbetet valde jag att läsa ett antal böcker om Franska Revolutionen, karaktärsutveckling och Game Writing. Jag har använt mig av personlighetsdiamanter och mallen Character Template för att skapa karaktärer till manuskriptet. I rapporten diskuterar och jämför jag dessa två metoder samt arketyper. Jag kom fram till att de tre metoderna för att utveckla spelkaraktärer fungerar utmärkt och kan kombineras för att få fram mer avancerade karaktärer.Spelmanuskriptet är skrivet utifrån mitt High Concept om spelet La Meurtrière (se Bilaga 2) framtaget för kursen Modellkonstruktion för Interagerbara Medier/Spel A11.

This essay focuses on the construction of so called "computer game addiction" or "computer game abuse" in the Swedish press during 2000-2006. During this period computer game addiction went from an obscure phenomenon to a legit reason for the involuntary commitment of a fourteen-year-old.The study's theory is based on several social constructionist ideas. Kitsuse and Spector's theories about constructing social problems as claims-making activities are used for understanding the actions of the individual and groups involved. Hewitt and Hall's article about quasi-theory is used to explain the construction of explainations for the new social phenomenon. Blumer's five-stage model is used for categorizing the construction of the new social problem.