Denna studie berör områdena participatory design, speldesign samt idégenerering och syftar till att undersöka hur spelföretag interagerar med sina slutanvändare vid speldesign samt om participatory design kan användas i speldesign för att främja känslor av delaktighet och ägandeskap. Studien har genomförts med intervjuer och undersökningar i form av en analys av fyra svenska spelföretags hemsidor och sociala medier för att se på deras interaktion med sina slutanvändare vid speldesign, samt en participatory designworkshop. Resultaten från litteraturstudien och workshopen visar på att participatory design kan användas för att främja känslor av delaktighet och ägandeskap hos deltagarna. Vidare visar undersökningen av de svenska spelföretagen att interaktionen med sina slutanvändare över lag är låg. De slutsatser som studien visar på är att genom att erbjuda sina användare möjligheten att bli delaktiga och att interagera med spelföretaget så får man en aktiv och stimulerande miljö vilken gynnar både spelföretaget och deras slutanvändare. Vad gäller participatory design så visar studien att det är ett förhållningssätt som går att använda inom speldesign. Vidare så visar det också sig att, om behovet för att välja ut mellan flera olika metoder och tekniker inom participatory design uppstår, så är ett ramverk ett mycket användbart och hjälpsamt verktyg..

Wildlife is a valuable and renewable resource that promotes economical, ecological and social values. These values are important for developing and maintaining many rural societies. However, growing ungulate populations have led to increased browsing pressure on valuable forest trees and crops. Previous studies have proposed supplementary feeding and gamefields as potential methods for controlling the ungulate foraging and reducing browsing damage by providing other attractive food resources. However, quantitative estimates of potential biomass production of various gamefield crops and browsing pressure on the surrounding forest have been lacking.

Detta kandidatarbete undersöker problemet med konvergeringen av narrativ och interaktion och varför en konvergering mellan dessa hämmar deltagarens inlevelse i ett spel. Utifrån spelet Traverser redovisas i detta kandidatarbete processen och resultatet av hur ett interaktivt narrativ kan väcka inlevelse hos deltagaren genom att låta berättandet ske subtilt och icke-linjärt, där spelaren uppmanas till att vilja utforska narrativet på egen hand i form av en miljö i Traverser. This bachelor?s thesis discusses the problem of converging narrative and interaction and why the convergence between the two tends to arrest the participants immersion within a game. Through an interactive narrative by letting the narration take place subtly and nonlinearly, this bachelor?s thesis reports the process and result of how an interactive narrative could provoke immersion within the game Traverser, where the actor is urged to explore the narrative independently in the shape of an environment..

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to give a contribution to the studies of what strategies those are of importance for challengers in consumer technological markets aiming for the market leader position. To be able to investigate this phenomenon we have chosen to study Microsoft?s second position in the video game console industry. In addition, we want to illuminate Microsoft?s competitive advantages, how Microsoft can take advantage from Sony?s setbacks and what strategies those are of importance for Microsoft in the battle of becoming the market leader.

Abstrakt I detta arbete undersöks hur konceptet lek går att applicera på digitala spel och hur man presenterar ett fiktivt universum och de regler som definierar det universumet. Syftet med denna undersökning är att öka kvaliteten på digitala spel för spelare genom att öka förståelsen för hur sådana regler introduceras. Frågeställningen som ämnas att besvaras är ?hur kan man introducera realistiska, semi-realistiska och fiktiva regler i ett spel??. Undersökningen baseras delvis på analyser kring varför vissa introduktioner av regler ofta accepteras och andra inte, dels på utvärdering av en gestaltning och dels på tidigare forskning. Denna undersökning är indelad i två delar; en researchdel och en produktionsdel.

This thesis was developed as an assignment from Ludosity Interactive where the goal was to develop a copy of the Xbox Live Indie Games-marketplace from the Xbox 360. Ludosity Interactive had a necessity to easily test a game's attractiveness to potential customers using testing people from outside the company in a simulated Xbox Live Indie Games test environment; excluding this developed system there is no other way to do such an analysis without actually releasing the game on the Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace and then analyze the resulting sales from the product.The finished system had to be similar to the original system to the degree that a user could see past the interface itself and use the system just as he/she would have used the real marketplace. It also had to be easy to change and add games to the system so that Ludosity Interactive easily could show the games and the data that they deemed interesting for their tests. The final product was developed using C#, XNA and XML together with an Agileinspired development method in combination with Pivotal Tracker. This report describes how this product was developed..

This study explores Environmental Storytelling techniques and whether these can beused in combination with each other to lead a player through a game scene in aspecific pattern, affect the player?s narrative and exploratory view and explorewhether Self-paced Exploration can be combined with these techniques.It is a qualitative study conducted by six gaming sessions with accompanyinginterviews in which six people get to play one of three versions of the same gamescene. The only differences between the scenes are the different guidance techniquesused. The informants' movement patterns are identified and interviews recorded byaudio, as well as screen recording. The results shows that Environmental Storytellingtechniques can very well be used to control the player's exploration patterns, bothnarratively and navigation purposes and Self-paced Exploration can be utilized to agreater efficiency in combination with these..

Detta kandidatarbete undersöker hur digitala spel kan skapas med någon annans synsätt. Vi ville se vad som hände om vi försökte göra spel på ett posthumanistiskt sätt och om detta hade förändrat något. Det har uppkommit speciella möjligheter och konsekvenser under processen, det har även dykt upp frågor. En av dessa frågor är hur skapandet av varelser inom digitala spel kan utföras. Likväl har det under projektet skett diskussioner och tester runt hur ett verktyg för detta ändamål skulle kunna fungera.

This study treats the possibility of breeding mallards and pheasants on our own farm, Björnslund. From the beginning I considered to breed them from eggs to adults but after visiting several breeders I changed my mind. It seemed to be a lot of work with no economic profit in comparison with buying already hatched birds and then feed them to adults. If the business shall be profitable I have to be soll the hunting for the birds and then sell the dead birds to game purchasers. There are also calculations that show which price you have to charge for the hunting that will give a positive result. Another possibility is to own a slaughterhouse and sell the meat to restaurants and supermarkets.

In this study, we investigate various lighting applications in a virtual environment, where we compare between light based in naturalism (natural light) and pictorialism (artistic light). The purpose of this study is to gain further knowledge in lighting, which is increasingly important for game graphics. Theory are examined to gather information and recommendations on how to use various light settings that convey different emotions. We then use this information to illuminate the environment that we have built. The environment is presented in Unreal 4 for respondents who are allowed to move around freely in the environment.

BACKGROUND: Today?s societal changes, including high rate of change and increasing information flows, are increasing the demand on the individual mental capacity. It becomes increasingly difficult to analytically process all the different dilemmas and everyday decisions as individuals have a limited mental capacity available to make these decisions. Thus, it has been suggested that ego-depleted relies more heavily on intuition, which is less burdensome, when making decision. However little is known about to what extent intuitive decisions differ from analytic.

ABSTRACTTitle: Violence and women representation in video games (Vålds? och kvinnoskildringar i TV?spel)Number of pages: 42Author: Karolin BodlingTutor: Göran SvenssonCourse: Media and Communication Studies DPeriod: Autumn 2005University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University.Purpose/Aim: The aim is to investigate how violence and women are presented in video games and in game reviews.Material/Method: The study includes theories that consider violence and gender in media and video games. The material of the essay exists of two games and five reviews. The method that is being used is a content analysis. The games that are being analysed are Jade Empire and Grand Theft Auto ? San Andreas.Main results: The video games are often connected to brutal violence but the analysis of the game Jade Empire shows that it is possible to hve control of the violence in the games and that the player has a possibility to choose the outcome of violence.

The gaming market has become the fastest growing market for leisure and is one of the most popular forms of homeentertainment. This has generated a media debate about how people are affected by gaming and concernes how we are affected by the violence that may occur in games. Games proponents argues that gaming is the future of teaching and computer games are becoming a sustainable and popular instruction strategy. Some studies have long used computer games for educational purposes. By interviewing high school students in focus groups as qualitative research, I studied their attitudes towards computer games as a learning tool.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the impact on children playing at a preschool yard that is designed with traditional playground equipment, and a nature-like yard without traditional playground equipment. How these respective environments influence children?s play, which other factors in the external environment that affect the game and whether the theories in the literature correspond with the results were important questions for the essay. To answer these questions a case study was applied onto two specific preschool centers, both located in Malmö. Through literature studies, inventories, observations and interviews with staff and children, a picture become clear of how the children use the yard and how their play is affected by the design of it.

Stratego is a boardgame not very different from chess, that contains hidden information. Because of this, existing programs play at beginner level. The purpose of this thesis is to adjust a minimax algorithm so that it passes the demands of Stratego, and then build a Stratego agent around it. Tests with existing minimax algorithms leads to the development p-e-minimax. This algorithm uses two different values in its nodes to simulate the different information available to the agent and its opponent.