Computer games is a growing market with over millions of players that are playing and/or enjoying the play of games on a daily basis. The nerdy gamers that once were, are now becoming professional athletes in the virtual world called eSport. We have identified a lack of studies in this area which implies that there is little data of what it is. In this paper we have focused on the phenomena that is eSport and more closely on the game series Starcraft made by Blizzard Entertainment. Our focus lies in the game series Starcraft and eSport organisations mainly outside South Korea.

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.

Purpose: The purpose with this paper is to get a deeper understanding for prizes and awards as a marketing tool and phenomena. Further we want companies/organizations that use this should be able to make better decisions concerning marketing towards students. Maybe they will get better results on the basis of our investigations. Method: We used the qualitative method when we did the interview that was also non-standardized. The survey was quantitative, and the case study comprises both qualitative and quantitative method. Conclusion: Companies/organizations that arrange this type of competitions have to look over their marketing of the competition.

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.

In my essay, I write about the work at a pre-school in a segregated suburb. I begin my essay with examples from my workday. In one case, it is about Sara, playing games where other children are excluded and she also exhibits a power game towards me. In the second example, it is about how a group of children conspire and expose both themselves and others for destructive conspiracy patterns. When I write down what happens in the group of children at my pre-school, I see patterns reminiscent of destructive gangs.

During recent years, the trend of Swedish students? negative performance and results in mathematics has been discussed. It is agreed that a change in teaching methods is necessary in order to solve this issue. Thus we found it interesting to take a closer look at an alternative way of teaching. The purpose of this study was to find out what teachers and students associate concrete mathematics with and make a comparison between them.

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.

This essay examines the epideictic genre by using qualitative method to analyze acceptance speeches from the Swedish Grammy awards. These speeches and their speakers are often described as rhetorically mediocre and there seems to be a notion within the music community that an acceptance speech is personal and without deeper meaning. From a functionalistic perspective on genre, these speeches can be seen as working together with other genres that carry information about the winners. Why would skilled performers who know how to entertain an audience choose to repeat rhetorical mistakes? This essay uses different perspectives on rhetorical situation and genre as well as multimodal analysis of verbal- and nonverbal communication, to argue that these particular speeches in this particular situation come with their own set of expectations and values that the speakers have to acknowledge if they are to meet the epideictic purpose: To unite the audience around common values and create an enjoyable collective memory.

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.

Title: And the winner is?Level: Bachelor of JournalismLocation: University of GothenburgLanguage: SwedishNumber of pages: (34)In this study the winners of Sweden's most prestigious journalism award Stora journalistpriset are characterized in the search for the dominant award winner.To find the dominant award winner we used a quantitative method, where we gathered information about the previous winners between the years of 1966-2014. Gender, age at the time of the award, whether they won individually or in groups, their employer at the time of the award, subject of the winning material and where it was first published, were the variables. A total of 268 award winners were characterized from these variables and a statistic analysis were made.The statistic analysis showed that there has been a dominant group among the award winners.Between the years of 1966-2014 the typical award winner was a man between 31-40 years old, who worked individually for public service. The winning material was mainly published in the printed press.

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.