The middle ages is a time in our history that is often used as a frame when portraying fantasy on tv. HBOs immensely popular series Game of Thrones could easily be counted as one of these. But to what extent does the creators of the series approach the history of our world while creating their own? The aim of this essay is to analyse a number of characters from the tv- series out of gender- and their place in the social structure and then compare the findings with the image of the middle ages that is given in academic research. By analysing the two released seasons of Game of Thrones the study has shown that there are many similarities between the fictional world and the actual world but that it also differs through choices made by the creators of the series. .

Starting out as a minor form of amusement, the game industry has become one of the most lucrative andsuccessful in the entertainment business competing against giants such as television, movies and music.As the internal competition within the developer community grows companies work hard at discoveringnew ways to attract and keep customers. By having a playcentric approach focusing on user experiencethey hope to achieve that goal. This thesis describes the process of designing a game with focus on theplayer. We apply the concept of flow on game development and investigate through research throughdesign if we are able to create a game that keeps the player in flow.Play tests showed several elements such as control issues and too difficult challenges early in the game,affecting the possibility for players to experience flow while playing. These negative factors came to becalled flowleakers.

In this study we examine how much latency is required in an RTS-game (Real-Time Strategy) before the player quits the game. In the study latency is simulated in the games Age of Mythology and Starcraft: Brood War with the program WANem, and then the testplayers are asked ?Do you want to quit because of latency??. This data is then gathered and compiled into graphs to show the results. These results show that the limit for when players want to quit differs between the two games and that there are two factors that play into this.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate what kinds of writing activities that are offered to children and young people in Sweden and if, how and why libraries are involved with them. The issues illuminated in this thesis are how children and youth can be motivated and advance in their writing, what the purpose of writing activities can be, and if writing activities can be suitable as a part of the work in libraries. The theory is based on a study with writing youth made by Catharina Nyström. In order to study the issues six interviews have been completed with persons who all have played a part in writing activities for children and youth.

Vi beskriver i denna rapport hur vi, som två studenter vidÖrebro universitet, utvecklade ett nätverksbaserat action-spel för datorer i Windows-miljösomsedanvarmed ochtävladei nordens största spelutvecklar-tävling, Swedish Game Awards. I spelet,som vi döpt till Battle of Life, tar sig spelaren an en farlig och oförlåtande värld och måste slåss mot andra spelareför att överleva. Vi förklarar i denna rapport hur vi, under tio veckors tid,utvecklar ett spel från grundenoch vilka verktyg och metoder vi använde oss av för att genomföra uppgiften. Vi beskriver projektets mot-och framgångar samt hur vi löste de problem vi komi kontakt med under utveklingens gång.Vi går in djupare på varför vi gjordevissa designbeslut och hur de påverkade vårt slutliga resultat.Avslutningsvis diskuterarviom utveklingsprocessen och spelets eventuella framtid, både från vårt eget perspektivsom utvecklaremen även från ett samhällsenligt perspektiv..

To have motivated employees is important for companies so that they are able to keep valuable competence within the organization. This report treats a relatively new concept for increasing the motivation of employees. It is however, a concept that gets more and more attention. It is called gamification.Gamification is defined as ?using game design elements in non-gaming contexts?, i.e.

The purpose of this discourse-analytical study is to investigate teachers? beliefs about writ-ing and writing instruction and how their beliefs and writing instruction can be understood in relation to the Lgr11 syllabus in Swedish. The study included five teachers who teach in grade 6 of primary school, where I applied Roz Ivani??s theories of written discourses, based partly on interviews with teachers and classroom observations of teaching, partly on the Swedish curriculum for grades 4?6. The result shows that teachers move within creativi-ty, process, genre and social practice discourse, while the skills of discourse and the socio-political discourse lack matching.

This study examines the players experience, environments and objects in the videogame World of Warcraft. The purpose of this study is to get more knowledge about the players experience in the game with the focus on factors contributing to some form of immersion or/and presence. The data for this study were gathered using interviews as method and then analyzed with relevant literature in the chosen field. A game content analysis and a group of questions are tested with the results of the study which is presented at the end in with an analytic discussion. .

The Squares Family is a game developed as a learning aid in mathematics. With its graphical representation of the decimal system, the four basic arithmetic operations and positive and negative numbers together with a learning agent as pedagogical approach, the game?s primary purpose is to motivate students in their learning of mathematics. Although the game is strictly based on mathematical rules it attempts to encourage students to play and work with math without experiencing it as mathematics as this is initially not obvious. The game being internationally tested on normal performing students, this project introduced the game to six Swedish students who experience low motivation for and/or difficulties in mathematics.

The objective of this thesis is to examine the capital structure of Swedish small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Accounting data from Swedish game developers, combined with the result from a survey, is used to examine their financial conditions and capital structure decisions. We find that non-debt tax shield, firm size, growth opportunities and age are, to various extents, the determinants of capital structure in the game industry, while effective tax rate and asset structure have marginal effects. Our study also implicates that most of the existing capital structure theories can explain SMEs leverage decisions to some extent; however, some adaptation is needed to fit these theories into the SME context. Additionally, we find the existence of a financial gap in the game industry which might need efforts from both demand side and supply side to eliminate..

The aim of this master thesis?s is to examine what functions writing activities can have in the public library. Some public libraries offer their visitors writing activities, for example courses and camps. The public library is an institution with a particular identity, with special norms and properties which participants within the institution construct and reproduce. The main question of this thesis is to investigate how writing activities can be a part of the public library?s institutional identity and what functions writing activities in the public library can have.

This bachelor´s thesis analyzes the video game Red Dead Redemption and the historical use of the environment and atmosphere in the game. The theory and method used is media research and social memory studies. Two questions were asked: how does Red Dead Redemeption convey and produce the historical environment and the historical atmosphere. Furthermore subqueries/criterias were used to help answer the main questions.The analysis was divided into two parts, the first part we analyze and discuss the games historical environment and the second part analyzes and discusses the historical atmosphere of the game.The conclusion is that both the historical environment and the historical atmosphere is present in the game through picture and sound, the text only works as a guide. The picture and sound live in a symbiotic relationship and depend on each other to fully immerse the player to the game.

The aim of my study is to investigate if and in that case how the writing process and texts written by students in the upper secondary school are affected by the writing tool; does it matter if they write their texts on a computer or by longhand? Another objective is to compare such an effect with the findings of previous studies performed on earlier generations of writers. The first part of my study was a survey. It showed that two thirds of the 67 students participating thought that they would have written better texts in the national writing test if they had been able to use computers. In the second part of the study each of the fourteen participants wrote one text on computer and another by hand.

The aim of this study is to examine ways of writing experiences of the strange and different, experiences of the other in his or her otherness and experiences of suffering. The study focuses possibilities and limits for the writing of these experiences and aims at finding a tangible way of writing literature. Part of the aim of this study is to elaborate a proposal for a way of writing experiences of the strange and different, experiences of the other in his or her otherness and experiences of suffering.    The material for the study consists of three different approaches to literature, in which theories on literature or analyses of literary works are presented. This material is initially analysed in separate analyses in which conceptions, strategies and methods for writing experiences of the strange and different, the other and suffering are identified. Secondly, the material is analysed in a comparative analysis, aimed at finding similarities and differences between the approaches but above all to let the approaches supplement and challenge each other.

The aim of this studyhas been to capture preschool children's strategies, when they include and exclude each other in play. My aim was also to find out how children choose to integrate into an already existing game. My questions were: What strategies are used by the children at the preschool when they want to exclude or include each other? How to integrate the children when they want to be involved in an ongoing game and how they will be received during the time of play? My theoretical starting points are from Vygotsky's theory of proximal development zone, and Michel Foucault's perspective on power, and also research on the subject.The empirical study was conducted using the observations at two preschools. The children I observed were between four to five years old.The results show that children used different strategies, and when the strategy did not work so the child could switch to another.