A game designer has to consider several aspects when he or she is designing a game. One of those aspects is the perceived freedom in the game by the player. There exist several methods to facilitate this perceived freedom in the design phase of the game. This thesis presents, in a qualitative methodology, a number of these methods a game designer might utilize to give the player a heightened sense of freedom for an improved gaming experience. Included herein are such elements as indirect control, linearity, storytelling and level design..

To encourage and increase the motivation to physical activity by using new information and communication technology, in order to change our behaviours into a more healthy lifestyle, could be one approach to promote public health. In our study we examine how gamification, which is about implementing classical game design elements from the computer world in a non-gaming context, can be a tool to increase the motivation for physical activity. Since similar studies already have been done we chose to focus on analyzing how different Player types from Bartle?s taxonomy can be affected by the usage of a gamification application. A group of students were therefore picked and during a two weeks? period they used the application Fitocracy where they logged their daily excercise.

Numera är multimedia på webbsidor mycket vanligt. Användare kan tillexempel se på filmer på sinadagstidningars webbsidor. Webbsidor har också blivit mer interaktiva. Detta beror dels på de högahastigheterna användare har på sina internetuppkopplingar, som tillåter tyngre multimedia påwebbsidorna, så som video. Teknikerna bakom de här multimedia webbsidorna heter HTML 5 ochFlash Player.

This thesis examines the gender boundaries in sports. I do this by exploring three cases in which these boundaries, at least on the surface, have been questioned: the transsexual tennis player Renée Richards, the east European runners Marita Koch and Jarmila Kratochvilova and the Swedish golf player Annika Sörenstam. The results point out different mechanisms that contain the"danger"and restore"security". But they also point out a criticism against the struggle for equality in sports, which is based on the preserving of differences and therefore cannot challenge the ideological assumptions about gender in sports..

Immersion is a construct that measures how deeply engrossed a user is with any mediated situation. In the field of game design, immersion is a significant aspect of what makes a game enticing, and as such it is of pivotal importance to create and maintain it to keep the player's mind off the real world while inside the confines of a game framework. According to the GameFlow theory, it is one of seven key tenets of evaluating and implementing a successful game design. Yet, certain multiplayer online games are designed in a fashion that in some cases seem to break immersion, where the player is frequently put out of action, sometimes for minutes on end. In this study, using online questionnaires, we discover that players, despite claims otherwise, seem to be in several ways affected negatively by this breaking of immersion.

Immersion is a construct that measures how deeply engrossed a user is with any mediated situation. In the field of game design, immersion is a significant aspect of what makes a game enticing, and as such it is of pivotal importance to create and maintain it to keep the player's mind off the real world while inside the confines of a game framework. According to the GameFlow theory, it is one of seven key tenets of evaluating and implementing a successful game design. Yet, certain multiplayer online games are designed in a fashion that in some cases seem to break immersion, where the player is frequently put out of action, sometimes for minutes on end. In this study, using online questionnaires, we discover that players, despite claims otherwise, seem to be in several ways affected negatively by this breaking of immersion.

Immersion is a construct that measures how deeply engrossed a user is with any mediated situation. In the field of game design, immersion is a significant aspect of what makes a game enticing, and as such it is of pivotal importance to create and maintain it to keep the player's mind off the real world while inside the confines of a game framework. According to the GameFlow theory, it is one of seven key tenets of evaluating and implementing a successful game design. Yet, certain multiplayer online games are designed in a fashion that in some cases seem to break immersion, where the player is frequently put out of action, sometimes for minutes on end. In this study, using online questionnaires, we discover that players, despite claims otherwise, seem to be in several ways affected negatively by this breaking of immersion.

This study explores the relatively new phenomenon of online poker. More specifically, it elaborates on who the online poker player is, why s/he plays online poker, what the fascination of the game is, why s/he continues to play, and what the experience is. The study is delimited to focus on individuals who mainly play Texas hold?em online. The empirical material is based on semi-structured interviews with active online poker players, as well as on secondary data such as articles and literature.

This study examines the in-game encyclopaedia Codex as it appears within the videogame Mass Effect. The purpose of this study is to analyse the Codex with emphasis on how the reading process is affected by the videogame medium. In this regard the study seeks to uncover what characterises the Codex as a fictional encyclopaedia, what it entails and how it interacts with the rest of the game. The theoretical basis of this study is derived from a combination of the writings of Wolfgang Iser concerning the process of reading, Jesper Juul's writings on the relationship between games and narratives, and the concept of intermediality as discussed by Hans Lund and Jørgen Bruhn.      This study is based on a close examination of the PC and Playstation 3 versions of the videogame Mass Effect, created by Bioware, with particular emphasis placed on the Codex. Mass Effect is a science fiction third-person shooter and RPG set in a future where mankind has begun interacting with aliens civilizations and colonising new planets.

Syftet med studien var att skapa en bättre förståelse för hur några juniorishockeyspelare och deras tränare ser på hur faktorerna lagsammanhållning, spelaromsättning, roller och prestation förhåller sig till varandra och hur de arbetade med dessa faktorer. Instrumenten som användes var GEQ (Group Environment Questionnaire) och två helstrukturerade intervjuguider. Deltagarna i studien var ishockeyspelarna i ett J18-lag (n=18) och deras tränare (n=1) i en medelstor klubb i Sverige. Resultatet visade att samtliga intervjudeltagare upplevde ett positivt samband mellan lagsammanhållning, spelaromsättning, rollklarhet och prestation. Sambandet beskrevs dock som cirkulärt, att alla faktorerna var beroende av varandra och påverkades av varandra.

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..

The aim of this study is to find out how the tv-program I Zlatans fotspår (English: In Zlatan's footprints) broadcasted on Swedish public service television represent the participating young players and the Swedish football player Zlatan Ibrahimovi?. Our question formulation reads as follows:?        How is the participating youths being represented in the tv-program I Zlatans fotspår??        How is the football player Zlatan Ibrahimovi? being represented in the tv-program I Zlatans fotspår? Our thesis is qualitative and in order to find out how the participants are being represented we used a discourse analysis. We have focused on the theories discourse, identity, representation, stereotypes, discrimination and the perspective social constructionism.

This master thesis examines commercial video games and their relation to the concept of immersion and realism. Games as a communicative medium is quite a new area of interest within rhetorical research in Sweden. Most of the research conducted has, however, been focused on gaming and formation on opinion ? games that explicitly tries to persuade the player, unlike commercial games that focus on entertainment, that is. But that does not mean that commercial games cannot influence us.

This study examines how professional social workers relate to problematic computer and video gaming as an addiction. It is a qualitative interview study aimed to describe and analyze how professional social workers, who in some way work with problematic computer gaming, relate to the player?s problems in terms of a concept of dependency. The theoretical approach is based on social constructivist theories of discourses, normality, the definition of dependency and diagnoses. The study was conducted through five qualitative half structured definition interviews with professional social workers that work directly or comes in contact with problematic computer gaming.

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.