Urbanization and the flight of the creative class drains the countryside when it comes to creativity and talent. Especially the young leave sleepy societies. Richard Florida claims that the city attracts the creative class and enables for economic growth to flourish. Robert Putnam adds to the picture by saying social capital might be equally effective as nourishment for growth. In Uddebo, a rural village in the south of Sweden one combines the two creating a vivid society where creativity flies high and ideas fertilize each other?s.

Technology evolves quickly, with innovative ideas growing everywhere. Still, no technology is anywhere near challenging the mouse and keyboard for navigation of your standard computer. This study focuses on comparing the traditional technologies of mouse and keyboard with the new technology of gestures - in this case Leap Motion - in purpose of finding how the usage differs and what the potential users want from the competing technology. The experiment was executed in a controlled environment, with as few external factors as possible. We found that although the test subjects found Leap Motion fun, the test subjects do not want to surf the web with gestures.

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..

Every place is a stage where people interact. The nature of the stage and its scenography to some extent shapes the interaction. Considered as a place, the school ground gives rise to many varying expectations. Lower school pupils often have clear ideas of how they are expected to behave and how they are expected to use the place. But as the pupils age, the purpose of the school ground grows less obvious.

Play is an important part of children´s everyday life, it is through play children develop. Play occurs a lot in kindergarten and in this study, the aim is to examine how play activities play is used in preschool teaching and the role of the teacher´s in the play. Video recordings of play activities done and qualitative methods (conversation analysis) has been used to analyze the video recordings. The results of this study show that play are widely used as a pedagogical tool in preschool. It is through play children develop.

The purpose of the study was to examine possible aspects concerning the choice to play as good or evil with a focus on the players´ subjective experience. A form was constructed and the material was interpreted according to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The games Mass Effect I and II were used as an example of the choice to play as good or evil since the choice between Renegade (evil) and Paragon (good) is present. The sample consisted of individuals who had played Mass Effect I and/or Mass Effect II and were over 18 years old. The end result concerning who played a Renegade or a Paragon came to be very uneven (15 out of 16 participants played a Paragon) which means that the result mostly relates to possible aspects concerning the choice to play a Paragon.

Enligt oss så är det största problemet med att processuellt generera en pseudo-oändlig spelvärld i realtid är att få genereringen att ske så sömlöst som möjligt samtidigt som världen upplevs som konsekvent. För att finna lösningar på detta problem så analyserar vi andra studier och spel som utnyttjar processuell generering. Vi använder sedan de metoder och tekniker vi funnit för skapandet av en egen applikation för att få en djupare förståelse för hur dessa fungerar i praktiken och hur mycket varje metod påverkar prestandan. I vår slutsats beskriver vi de problem vi fann, deras orsak och ger förslag på lösningar. På grund av studiens tekniska karaktär så riktar den sig främst till programmerare.

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..

The purpose of the study was to examine possible aspects concerning the choice to play as good or evil with a focus on the players´ subjective experience. A form was constructed and the material was interpreted according to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The games Mass Effect I and II were used as an example of the choice to play as good or evil since the choice between Renegade (evil) and Paragon (good) is present. The sample consisted of individuals who had played Mass Effect I and/or Mass Effect II and were over 18 years old. The end result concerning who played a Renegade or a Paragon came to be very uneven (15 out of 16 participants played a Paragon) which means that the result mostly relates to possible aspects concerning the choice to play a Paragon.

Through interviews with children of ages 4-5 years old and by observing children children at play at three preschools with different types of outdoor surroundings, I have investigated if the preschools outdoor surroundings have any influences on the children´ choice of play. The hypothesis was that natural surroundings can entice children´s interest in nature being in it and play. I have also investigated if the children know why it is important to be outdoors and if they know it has a positive influence on their health.The result of my investigation is that the children play about the same games at the three different preschool gardens, but at the preschool with more natural surroundings, the children have more contact with plants and animals, and could learn of the different phenomena of nature by the preschool teacher answering their questions. Most of the children in the interviews know it´s useful to be outdoors and be on the move and get fresh air, but many of them thought it was most important to play. By being outdoors the children get exercise, fresh air, play and at the same time they establish an understanding of the nature and a healthier life..

This thesis analyses how friendship between children is described in four Swedish childrens books, published in 1995-2001 and recommended in Barnbokstipset, which is used in libraries for recommending books. Today there are many childrens books that describe various aspects of childrens everyday lives and these books can have an influence on the children who read them. But I found that there has not been much research about how friendship is described in childrens books, although much has been written about the importance of social relationships with peers for childrens lives and development. I analyze the books one by one with the help of a number of questions and categories that I have constructed beforehand. In the analysis I apply Zick Rubins theory of two different stages in childrens understanding of friendship and William Corsaros theory of interactive space which deals with who is allowed to join in games and friendships and who is not allowed to do so and how this is played out.

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.

This bachelor thesis has as its aim to investigate theSwedish librarians? views and opinions about censorshipof their libraries' collections as well as buildinginformation about the context of challenges against thesame collections. In Sweden the public can't, unlike in theUSA, formally challenge material and are forcedto?complain? the subject with a librarian. What is deemedas controversial, both by the public and by the librariansthemselves are explored through qualitative interviewswith six librarians.The librarian's find that they rarely experience anythingthat can be called aggression or organized protests likethose found in the USA.

Efter fyra månader som ljudpraktikant på det svenska spelföretaget Starbreeze i Uppsala, var det dags att ta steget vidare i ytterligare fyra månader. Från ljuddesign till scriptning, idéer och tankar, samt en inblick i hur scriptning fungerar. Detta arbete handlar om framtagandet av en ljuddesign-prototyp åt ett externt företags framtida spelprojekt. En utveckling som från början var tänkt att öka kunskaperna om scriptning, och att skapa ett sammanhängande spelscenario, men som sedan utvecklades till att leda mycket längre. Förklaring: Ljuddesign = Ljudläggning av någon form, i detta fall spel. Scriptning = Enklare programmering, kan vara saker som händer eller saker man kan göra i spelet Nyckelord: Soundvolume 2.0, Starbreeze, ljuddesign, spel, sounddesign, 3D.

This report intends to analyze the difference between the original rules and a modification of the rules for the Scandinavian version of the world famous dice game yatzy (yahtzee). Several works are made previously existing strategies for yatzy and Yahtzee.The study was conducted using the optimal strategy calculated and implemented in the programming language Java. The execution of the application to create the file containing the optimal strategy was running on leased powerful servers from Amazon and took just over six hours each.A simulated player played 100,000 games based on the strategy, to obtain data which then was used to plot graphs and analyze the expected score and its standard deviation. The expected value (mean) and standard deviation of the score for the possibility of three or four throws were 233.00 ± 44.82 and 280.07 ± 41.25.In view of the results drawn the expected conclusion that the four possible throws provides increased probability of getting a high score, unlike the case where the player may only be able to throw the dice three times. The fact that the variance is lower in the case of four throw session is equivalent to that the likelihood to get close to the expected value increases..