58 research outputs found

    Being creative is mandatory:experiences of communication in game development from the perspective of creative employees

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    Abstract. Although game development is a form of software development, it cannot be compared directly to traditional software development. The audio-visual elements of games and their fundamental requirement to be “fun” make them exceptionally challenging to implement. Traditional software development has been extensively studied for decades, but research on game development is still in its early stages. More research is needed on game development because traditional software development processes and methods may not directly fit the needs of the gaming industry or may even be harmful. This thesis answers the question of how professionals who work in creative jobs in the gaming industry experience communication and feedback in the game development process and what factors they consider to be obstacles to the process. An interview study was conducted with six Finnish game developers as part of this thesis. Many of the interviewees also worked as leaders of creative workers. The interview material was subjected to a qualitative content analysis, and the results were compared with literature. The analysis revealed that creative workers consider communication and its quality to be an important part of their work. It was a source of encouragement and motivation for them, as well as a tool for ensuring the quality of their work and guidance. It was noteworthy that communication difficulties, such as those related to work instructions or feedback, were considered by the interviewees to be obstacles that slowed down the game development process. Other obstacles included poor project management and planning. Good communication is one of the most important pillars of the game development process. It helps ideas to grow by sharing a common vision and navigating through the toughest challenges. If we better understand what game development team members see, experience, and feel, we can help them thrive and persevere in their work. This can produce better games, successful companies, and happier people behind them

    Strategies Global Virtual Team Leaders Use to Improve Trust and Communication

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    Global virtual team (GVT) members’ inability to effectively build trust and communication has the potential to negatively impact organizational outcomes. Organizational leaders are concerned with team members’ inability to build trust and communication, as it is the leading cause of reduced productivity and efficiency levels within GVTs. Grounded in the social exchange theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies GVT leaders use to improve trust and communication among GVT members. The participants were 18 GVT business leaders from six organizations located in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Data were collected using semistructured interviews and a review of organizational documentation. Through thematic analysis, four themes were identified: (a) information sharing through transparency, (b) the creation and iteration of best practices/strategies, (c) localization development, and (d) the development of cross-functional work tools. A key recommendation is for GVT leaders to define team meeting styles/frequency, which leads to trust development, improved communication, productivity, and team efficiency. The implications for positive social change include the potential for organizations to increase human resources in other regions of the globe and support the local communities and economies of their workforce

    The Dark Arts. A Future For Practitioners of Architecture.

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    Many practitioners experience dissonance between the potential of their field and the realities of practice as defined by status-quo conventions. The forces that shape practice create inefficiencies, barriers to opportunity, and amplify contingency across the built environment. This work aims to establish a new mode of practice that can flow around the status-quo, with the extended goal of accessing a means to impact problems on a systemic plane. This dissertation follows a practice-based design science research methodology. Beginning with a critical dissection of the architectural profession, it progresses via a series of representational and reflective tools that illustrate an emergent framework for the ‘creative project’: the conception, design, and implementation of a novel strategic design practice, called ‘Future Workshop’ (FW). This is developed in parallel with (and in contrast to) an existing architectural practice (DWA). The strategic design approach synthesizes new professional methods from architecture and other disciplines, allowing client organizations to target higher-order problems upstream of typical design engagements, focusing the impact of future design efforts on the most important goals and priorities. The research traverses the tensions between the pragmatic and intellectual hemispheres of practice and establishes metrics for considering these abstract problems through a particular series of diagrams and representational tokens, or ‘glyphs’. The contribution of this work is multivalent, including a novel way of operating a design practice (FW), and new means of inquiry, proposing situated methodologies for research within professional practice

    A View of Ecosystem Building: The Ecosystem of Incubators & Accelerators in Scandinavia and The Nordics. A Cooperation between Finland and The Basque Country

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    Entrepreneurship is one of the fastest-growing modalities in the fields of business and economics, characterized by having a strong innovation and social impact-driven blueprint. Therefore, building proper and tailored-to-demand ecosystems is imperative to ensure both entrepreneurs and their offspring startups survive. The objective of this dissertation is to understand why and how entrepreneurship is created, as well as, how to ignite it through proper ecosystem modeling, differentiate and identify the actors and factors that play a key role in ensuring entrepreneurial success, and how the latter differs from one regional cluster to another, in this regard, Finland and the Basque Country. Therefore, finding a linking point that enables the practice of exporting ecosystem- and entrepreneurship-related practices from one country to another driven by a collaborative ecosystem duality could benefit entrepreneurship regionally and internationally. This thesis can be divided into both empirical research and theoretical frameworks. The empirical research focuses on giving a comprehensive analysis of the current nascent and already established conditions of the Finnish and Basque entrepreneurial ecosystems with a specific focus on ecosystem building and on the application of The Nordic Model in other entrepreneurially-strong ecosystems. Additionally, all the data collected and currently present in this thesis consists of secondary data. The research successfully reveals a previously little-known executive map of the activity levels of two distant entrepreneurial regions and latitudes, and how diverse and distinct ecosystem models can foster collaborative international networks, distancing from the traditional models of primarily relying solely on local markets and fostering the improvement of global internationalization capacities. These results are of great significance for both practice and theory and can be relevant for additional researchers, experiential marketing initiatives, public organizations, higher education institutes, entrepreneurship societies, and startups in Finland and the Basque Country

    Learning through business unit failure: a study of individuals and mid-level managers

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    Research on business failure focuses primarily on entrepreneurs and largely ignores individuals and mid-level managers who comprise most corporate populations. This study aimed to mitigate this gap by exploring how 15 individuals and mid-level managers working in a Fortune 50 technology company experienced failure and how their beliefs impacted their experience and learnings. Qualitative interview data were analyzed using a schema from the literature. The results suggested that emotional regulation, belief in personal agency, and separation of self from work supported learning and positive outcomes. Future research would create deeper insights into the social impacts on emotions and sensemaking and the importance of dynamics such as relative power

    DATA INSECURITY LAW

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    By broad consensus, data security laws have failed to stem a rising tide of data breaches. Lawmakers and commentators blame these failures on some combination of underenforcement and the laws failure to recognize the full range of data breach harms. Proposed solutions would augment or expand existing data security laws. These proposed solutions share a fatal flaw: they are rooted in traditional theories of deterrence by punishment. Data security laws come in three forms: duties to protect data, duties to notify consumers after a breach, and post-breach remedies. Almost every data security law is enforced through sanctions, most of which are applied after a company discovers a data breach. In theory, companies increase their data security efforts to avoid sanctions. While appropriate for companies that purchase software, this approach is ineffective when applied to companies that build and provide software as an online service. In the cloud context, improving cybersecurity practices increases expected sanctions. And the cloud context matters. Online data security implicates almost all personal data; online services hold the lion’s share of personal data and offline firms rely heavily on cloud software to operate their businesses. This Article calls for a new approach to data security regulation, founded on a systemic view of data security practice. By focusing on system-level incentives instead of individual outcomes, lawmakers can bring data security law back into harmony with policy goals

    The use of post mortem analysis in game development

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    Post mortem analysis (PMA) is a method of development retrospection that has found its way into software development. PMA was the topic of a number of research papers in the 90s and early 2000s, but the research has since moved on to other subjects, despite leaving the discussion on some areas of PMA unfinished. Notably, the unsatisfactory rate of PMA adoption in the industry was identified but not addressed, while the new lightweight method of PMA was developed but not revisited with experience from the industry. PMA research is also very limited on the subject of game development, despite its interesting and unorthodox ways of utilizing PMA reports. The thesis aims to study the adoption of PMA in the game industry, with a focus on the game industry’s PMA adoption rate and the PMA methods currently being used. Software development has trended towards more agile methodologies in the last decades and game development industry in particular is often noted to only use very lightweight or even ad-hoc methodologies during development, so the game industry offers a good viewpoint for studying if the traditional PMA methods are still in use and how they may have changed over the years. Besides examining PMA adoption and methods in modern game development, this thesis also goes through the uses of PMA reports in game development. Game developers have publicly released hundreds of PMA reports, which is not a common practice in traditional PMA. The goals that the game developers have for the public reports also differ from the traditional ones. This thesis will focus particularly on public PMA report usage in game development research and the thesis will include a literature analysis on several game development research papers. The analysis shows that the game development research on PMA reports is consistent with other research and that it can also be complementary to other research, though limited in the discussed topics. The study also features a questionnaire survey aimed at Finnish game industry professionals. The survey helps to answer the research questions of this thesis as it shows that PMA is a common practice and that the PMA method in modern game development has some similarities with traditional methods though it has adopted new lightweight practices in some aspects. The survey also brings to light that even though public PMA reports are well known in the games industry, the common uses for PMA reports in the industry have not changed from the orthodox uses presented in the prior research

    Implementing Agile practices in a large game development company

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    Abstract. Large game development companies working with complex projects need to find ways to work iteratively and adjust to changing requirements in order to succeed. To achieve this, many of them turn to Agile frameworks and practices. In this thesis, the purpose is to analyze how these large game development companies implement Agile working practices and what are the related benefits and challenges. The roles of human skills in the implementation process are also examined. This is done by conducting a single-case study of the Agile implementation process in a case company. The findings of the study indicate that the Agile implementation process in the case company follows a general change process structure, which consists of seven core activities: recognition and start, diagnosis, planning, implementation and review, sustaining change, learning, and managing people issues. During the implementation process, the most significant challenges the case company faced were connected to implementing Agile ways of leading development, such as Product Ownership and Products Backlog. In addition, the relationship of human skills and Agile implementation appears to be cyclical; while well-developed human skills such as support, communication, and conflict solving skills make the implementation process easier, properly implemented Agile practices may also improve human skills. This study contributes to Agile implementation research by expanding the knowledge of Agile implementation in large game development organizations and elaborating the connection between the implementation process and change management theory. The findings of the study can also help those implementing Agile in game companies to predict the structure of the process and anticipate the potential challenges of it.Tiivistelmä. Suurten ja monimutkaisten projektien parissa työskentelevien pelialan yritysten täytyy löytää tapoja työskennellä iteratiivisesti ja sopeutua muutoksiin menestyäkseen. Tästä syystä monet niistä kääntyvät ketterien menetelmien puoleen. Tässä diplomityössä tarkoitus on analysoida sitä, miten nämä yritykset ottavat käyttöön ketteriä menetelmiä ja mitä hyötyjä ja haasteita prosessiin liittyy. Myös inhimillisten taitojen rooleja käyttöönottoprosessissa tutkitaan. Tutkimuksessa perehdytään ketterien menetelmien käyttöönottoon kohdeyrityksessä yksittäistapaustutkimuksena. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että kohdeyrityksessä ketterien menetelmien käyttöönottoprosessi mukailee yleisen muutosprosessin rakennetta, joka koostuu seitsemästä toiminnosta: muutostarpeen tunnistamisesta ja prosessin aloittamisesta, diagnosoinnista, suunnittelusta, käyttöönotosta ja arvioinnista, muutoksen ylläpitämisestä, oppimisesta ja ihmisiin liittyvien asioiden johtamisesta. Keskeisimmät kohdeyrityksen käyttöönottoprosessin aikana kohtaamat haasteet liittyivät ketterien menetelmien mukaisten johtamistapojen käyttöönottoon kuten tuoteomistajuuteen ja tuotteen tehtävälistoihin. Inhimillisten taitojen ja ketterien menetelmien käyttöönoton suhde puolestaan vaikuttaa sykliseltä; samalla kun hyvät inhimilliset taidot kuten tuki-, kommunikaatio-, ja konfliktienselvittelytaidot tekevät käyttöönottoprosessista helpomman, voivat ketterät menetelmät puolestaan kehittää inhimillisiä taitoja. Tämä tutkimus edistää ketterien menetelmien käyttöönottoon liittyvää tutkimusta kasvattamalla ymmärrystä menetelmien käyttöönotosta suurissa pelialan yrityksissä ja lisäämällä tietoa käyttöönottoprosessin ja muutoksenhallinnan teorian välisestä yhteydestä. Tutkimuksen tulokset voivat myös auttaa ketterien menetelmien käyttöönottoa pelialan yrityksissä johtavia henkilöitä ennakoimaan käyttöönottoprosessin kulkua ja siihen liittyviä haasteita

    The Experience of Being Creative at Work: Embracing Paradox, Polarity and Tension

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    This research explores how creative workers experience being creative at work and how parts of the organisational system influence and shape the experience of creativity, through the theoretical lens of social and systems models of creativity. Whilst creativity is acknowledged as important to businesses involved in this research, there is limited understanding of the emotional experience of creativity or how creative workers might be better managed and supported to facilitate creativity. Three studies were conducted using multiple qualitative methods. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Study 1 explored, through semi-structured interviews, how 11 creative workers within eight different organisations experienced being creative. Findings highlighted participants' needs for close and supportive relationships and to feel valued for their work. Study 2 was a case study of how one creative organisation, its creative employees and leaders experienced and coped with the creative process as a team. Data were collected through five semi-structured interviews with leaders, three focus groups with junior creative workers, observation of three meetings and analysis of corporate documentation. Findings highlighted tensions arising from the need to balance the childlike qualities of creativity with the ability to safely function within a rational organisational context. Study 3, an autoethnography, reflected on how the research changed my approach to work and proposed ways in which managers might behave to lead creativity more effectively. The research expands Amabile and Pratt’s (2016) and Csíkszentmihályi's (1988) social and systemic models of creativity by highlighting the subjective, phenomenological experience of being creative at work, considering how the individual and organisational context contribute to this. By explicitly examining the emotional experience of creativity, a theoretical perspective that considers creativity's impact on employee wellbeing is provided. The research proposes MERMA-ID as a new third wave positive psychology model of creativity, reflecting the complex and paradoxical nature of creativity. The research contributes to positive organisational scholarship (Cameron et al., 2003) by articulating individual and systemic experiences of creativity, describing systemic tensions and ways in which managers might lead creativity more effectively

    Design and Instantiation of an Interactive Multidimensional Ontology for Game Design Elements – a Design and Behavioral Approach

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    While games and play are commonly perceived as leisure tools, focus on the strategic implementation of isolated gameful elements outside of games has risen in recent years under the term gamification. Given their ease of implementation and impact in competitive games, a small set of game design elements, namely points, badges, and leaderboards, initially dominated research and practice. However, these elements reflect only a small group of components that game designers use to achieve positive outcomes in their systems. Current research has shifted towards focusing on the game design process instead of the isolated implementation of single elements under the term gameful design. But the problem of a tendency toward a monocultural selection of prominent design elements persists in-game and gameful design, preventing the method from reaching its full potential. This dissertation addresses this problem by designing and developing a digital, interactive game design element ontology that scholars and practitioners can use to make more informed and inspired decisions in creating gameful solutions to their problems. The first part of this work is concerned with the collation and development of the digital ontology. First, two datasets were collated from game design and gamification literature (game design elements and playing motivations). Next, four explorative studies were conducted to add user-relevant metadata and connect their items into an ontological structure. The first two studies use card sorting to assess game theory frameworks regarding their suitability as foundational categories for the game design element dataset and to gain an overview of different viewpoints from which categorizations can be derived. The second set of studies builds on an explorative method of matching dataset entries via their descriptive keywords to arrive at a connected graph. The first of these studies connects items of the playing motivations dataset with themselves, while the second connects them with an additional dataset of human needs. The first part closes with the documentation of the design and development of the tool Kubun, reporting on the outcome of its evaluation via iterative expert interviews and a field study. The results suggest that the tool serves its preset goals of affording intuitive browsing for dedicated searches and serendipitous findings. While the first part of this work reports on the top-down development process of the ontology and related navigation tool, the second part presents an in-depth research of specific learning-oriented game design elements to complement the overall research goal through a complementary bottom-up approach. Therein, two studies on learning-oriented game design elements are reported regarding their effect on performance, long-term learning outcome, and knowledge transfer. The studies are conducted with a game dedicated to teaching correct waste sorting. The first study focuses on a reward-based game design element in terms of its motivatory effect on perfect play. The second study evaluates two learning-enhancing game design elements, repeat, and look-up, in terms of their contribution to a long-term learning outcome. The comprehensive insights gained through the in-depth research manifest in the design of a module dedicated to reporting research outcomes in the ontology. The dissertation concludes with a discussion on the studies’ varying limitations and an outlook on pathways for future research
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