More Than Stories With Buttons: Narrative, Mechanics, and Context as Determinants of Player Experience in Digital Games

Recent research has attempted to describe meaningful experiences with entertainment media that go beyond hedonic enjoyment. Most of this research focuses on noninteractive media, such as film and television. When applied to digital games, however, such research needs to account for not only the content of the medium, but also the unique dimensions of digital games that distinguish them from noninteractive media. Experiences with digital games are shaped by the game mechanics that define the users' interaction with game content, as well as by the opportunities for social interaction that many games offer. We argue that the complex interplay of these dimensions (narrative, mechanics, and context) facilitates or inhibits meaningful user experiences in ways that are unique to digital games

Enriching the Experience : Content Analysis on the Twitter Usage of Professional Esports Athletes

The thesis studied the Twitter usage of 50 professional esports athletes by means of a content analysis of the 19-21 tweets on the athletes' Twitter frontpages, 1014 tweets in total. The athletes’ tweets were categorised into a primary category as well as a secondary and tertiary category, when applicable. The research questions were: 1. How do the most followed esports athletes employ Twitter in terms of the main properties in their tweets? 2. In addition to the main property, what additional features do the athletes’ tweets contain? 3. What are the differences and similarities in the emphases of the athletes’ tweets’ main properties and additional features, when examined by game of the athlete? The results showed that the category that the tweets were annotated most frequently into in the primary categorisation was INFORMATION SHARING, indicating that the athletes’ tweets’ main property was most often to share information on topics related to esports. The second most frequent primary category was ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT, signalling that the athletes did at times post tweets with esports-related photos, videos or humorous language as the most prominent property in the tweet. The third most frequently occurring category was DIVERSION, demonstrating that the athletes did post tweets that were unlinked to their status as professional athletes. PROMOTIONAL category was the fourth most frequent. Thus, the athletes employed Twitter also in promoting for their own and their teams’ financial gain by tweeting sponsored material. The two categories with the least tweets were INTERACTIVITY and FANSHIP, indicating that the athletes relatively rarely asked direct esports-related questions or commented on competing athletes and teams as the main property in their tweet. The three most frequent categories in the secondary and tertiary categorisations were ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT, PROMOTIONAL and INFORMATION SHARING. The result showed that that the athletes were prone to include photos, videos and humorous language as a feature in their tweets. The athletes relatively often used promotional aspects in the form of mentioning and tagging esports professionals, events as well as their own teammates in their tweets. Information was a common feature even when it was not the main property of the tweet or when the information was unrelated to esports. There were statistically significant differences in the categorisation results, when compared in groups based on the game played professionally by the athlete (Call of Duty, Fortnite, League of Legends, Counter-Strike and Dota 2 as the games in the study). The only category where there were no statistically significant differences across categorisations was PROMOTIONAL, in terms of which the tweets did not differ enough across games for the differences to be statistically significant

Virtual Band, Actual Reality: The Actualizaton of the Virtual by the Gorillaz

A recent and growing branch of media studies would be a critical approach to video games. Advancing technologies have fostered the developments of 3D virtual worlds, and within those worlds, virtual selves. People began to cultivate a presence on the internet over a spectrum of mediums. What is hard about the virtual self is there doesn't seem to be one consensus on how to define it in relation to our actualized selves. Is it an extension of our identity? Is it a form of self-expression? Is it a new identity entirely? I plan to examine the virtual self in the context of a unique musical online presence: the band the Gorillaz. The Gorillaz is a rare virtual band comprised of four original animated characters. They are the sort of virtual selves I would consider as new identities entirely, even if inspired by certain traits of their creators Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. We will spend much time examining the Gorillaz's presence as a band on the internet, especially in referral to Henry Jenkin's work in convergence culture. I will then examine the virtual self and will refer to the work done by William Echard on virtuality. In his article "Sensible Virtual Selves: Bodies, Instruments and the Becoming-concrete of Music," Echard uses Deleuze's "theory of virtuality as a starting point for rethinking music, instrument and body." Which begs the question, what is a virtual body, if not the avatar? The avatar is a virtual body that occupies the 3D virtual worlds, and depending on the program, may have the ability to interact with other users in this virtual world via avatar. Much of the literature on avatars assumes the avatar interacts solely with other avatars in their own 3D virtual space. But within the context of the Gorillaz, this assumption fails: The Gorillaz's avatars are occupying our personal virtual spaces: our Instagram feeds, our reddits, our Spotifys, places where even we do not have the advantage of a virtual physical presence by avatar. How, then, do we read these avatars' interactions with fans who do not have a virtual body themselves? To further complicate this conversation, I would like to compare the relationships developed through, or maybe by, avatars to the concept of the parasocial, or single sided, relationship. But it is here with the bodiless fans where I would say it is more useful to consider the virtual self an extension of the actual (physical) self. By that logic, though, it seems the only thing preventing a virtual extension of self becoming its own unit would be the possession of or lack of a (virtual) body. Here we might stumble into coming full circle by realizing the parallel role of a body actualizing a virtual presence online and, as Echard points out, in music. And it is here that the Gorillaz live.No embargoAcademic Major: Comparative Studie

The Eldritch Portal : an analysis of ludonarrative immersion & user experience in interactive weird fiction : an exegesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Enterprise at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand

This research exegesis functions as a companion piece that contextualises the principles expressed within the creative work, ‘Project: Mystic’. In this research I contend that the role of user experience design has not been closely studied or documented when discussing the relationship between atmospheric spatial design and ludonarrative principles inside interactive digital environments. The purpose and aim of this research is to determine how the aesthetics of atmosphere influence the principles of ludonarrative immersion and user experience design in the context of weird fiction and the sublime. Using a pragmatic methodological approach I use interactive demonstrations accompanied with qualitative surveys to determine the effectiveness of atmosphere design in a players experience and engagement. Using these results I form a discussion around the concepts of aesthetic experiences, non-euclidean narratives, and Burke’s notions of sublimity and the role of the ‘Deity’ figure in weird fiction

Athletes on Twitter: an investigation of communication patterns during the Olympic Games 2012 in London

Recent studies have shown an increasing impact of online social networks such as Twitter on sports media. The following study aims to provide insight about communication patterns of athletes during the Olympic Games 2012 in London. Drawing on literature from traditional fields such as social capital (Field 2003), the 'uses and gratifications' approach (Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch 1974), self- presentation (Goffmann 1971) and recent studies about social media in sports (Kassing and Sanderson 2012), a Twitter-analysis of ten athletes was conducted during the Olympic Games 2012 in London. Following a content analysis of 1042 tweets (including 246 pictures), the research findings of this study reveal that athletes predominantly use Twitter as a platform for self- presentation. Furthermore, the analysis showed the possibility for fans to use Twitter in order to overcome the parasocial orbit (Kassing and Sanderson 2012) of virtual space and engage in actual social interaction with athletes. It is concluded that linkages of athletes with various stakeholders and the official framework of social media guidelines by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), result in self- restricting communication patterns of the athletes during the Olympic Games 2012

Evaluating the User-Experience of Existing Strategies to Limit Video Game Session Length

Digital video games are an immensely popular form of entertainment. The meaningful positive experiences that games facilitate are fundamental to the activity; players are known to invest a lot of time playing games in search of those experiences. Digital games research is polarized. Some studies find games to be a healthy hobby with positive effects; games promote well-being through regular experience of positive psychological experiences such as flow and positive emotions. Others have identified rare problematic use in those players who devote excessive amounts of time to gaming, associating them with social dysfunction, addiction, and maladaptive aggression. While it remains unclear if games cause these effects, or merely coincide with play, the negative effects historically receive more attention in both popular media and academia. Some authorities attempt to reduce the harms associated with games to such an extent that their methods have become national policy affecting all players including those who exhibit no negative outcomes. In South Korea and Taiwan, policing authorities employ a behaviour policy that sets strict daily limits on session length, thereby controlling the amount of time people spend playing games each day. In China, the General Administration of Press and Publication employ a design policy requiring that games service-providers fatigue their games’ mechanics after a period to coax them to take a break sooner than they ordinarily would. Both policy types alter player interaction with games in any given session and it is unclear how these policies affect players in general. This research aims to compare sessions affected by the behaviour policy, design policy, and policy-free sessions in terms of session length, measurable subjective user-experience, the player's intention to return to the game, and their reasons for choosing to stop playing in a particular session. For use in a repeated-measures experiment, we modified the action RPG Torchlight II to simulate both policies. Participants had one session at the same time each week for three consecutive weeks. In varied sequences, participants played a control session unaffected by policy, a one-hour shutdown session representing behaviour policy, and a fatigue session representing design policy. After each session, we recorded their session's length, their user-experience in terms of flow and affect, their intention to return to the game, and their reason for ending the current session. We found that our shutdown condition successfully decreases session length, when compared to the other conditions. The condition facilitates strong flow, moderate positive-affect, and weak negative-affect. The shutdown event does not appear to degrade positive experiences and makes participants slightly more upset (statistically significant) than they would be after choosing to stop playing. This is because players do not get to make that decision, and because players are unable to complete the goals they have set for themselves. Most players intended to play the game again immediately or sometime later in that same day, much sooner (statistically significant) than they would after choosing to stop. This also may be due to satisfaction associated with choosing to stop, or being unable to complete their self-set goals. We found that our fatigue condition increases session length when compared to the other conditions. This result contradicts the intentions associated with design policies: shorter sessions. The fatigue mechanics make the game more difficult, which increases the time required for players to complete the goals they have set for themselves, whether it is to complete a level, quest, or narrative sequence. The condition facilitates high levels of flow, moderate positive-affect and low negative-affect; the condition does not appear to degrade these positive experiences, nor increase negative experience. Most players intended to take the longest breaks between sessions of at least one day, and although we observed that these were longer than the control condition, the differences is not statistically significant. We found that most participants chose to stop playing when the game stopped providing them with positive experiences, or begins to generate discomfort. A large group of participants chose to stop because another activity took priority. Few participants chose to stop because they were satisfied with their session. Less than one third of players explicitly referenced the fatigue mechanics in their decision to stop. Neither policy is holistically better than the other. Both provide strong positive experiences, and have different effects on session length. Whereas it appears that the fatigue condition fails to reduce session length, it also appears that players intend taking longer breaks between sessions, which may reduce total play-time across all sessions. Similarly, the shutdown condition may increase total play time, or at least bring it closer to normal amounts of play-time while also making players more upset. Our operational definition of user-experience is bi-dimensional, and does not include many experiential constructs commonly associated with digital games. During this research, several reliable and valid, and more representative experience measures became available. Any future work on this topic should make use of one of these. Our experiment tested the effects of player experience associated with a single game, genre, and context. Future research should reduce the variation of player factors by focusing on single personalities, typologies, or risk-factors rather than generalizing to all players. We tested out participants only as they played in the early stages of Torchlight II. It is possible that the game's narrative elements, rather than the gameplay mechanics fatigued by the design policy, motivated continued play. We suggest a longitudinal study of the individual policies to explore their effects over many sessions

Three Essays on Effective Social Media Marketing: Overcoming Challenges and Maximizing Opportunities in Today's Business Environment

The current dissertation is a collection of three essays in the context of social media challenges. As social media (SM) has become an essential tool for businesses, it has also brought new possibilities for marketers to connect with their customers. Social media marketing (SMM) has gained increasing importance in recent years, but it also poses several challenges for individuals and organizations. Essay 1 presents a comprehensive review of the challenges of SMM by examining more than 80 publications from 2007 to 2021, categorizing them based on different metrics, and extracting a theoretical framework of common SMM challenges. This research highlights the need for decision-makers to identify and assess these challenges to better allocate resources and increase the effectiveness and efficiency of SMM. Essay 2 focuses on the beauty industry in Iran and identifies the main SMM challenges faced by companies in this sector. Drawing on the theoretical framework developed in essay one, this study uses a Delphi survey to gather data from eight marketing and SMM managers and practitioners from various Iranian beauty companies. The findings highlight the most challenging aspects of SMM in this industry, including coordination across different company functions engaged in SMM, maintaining security and privacy of company channels and customer data, and limited IT resources of some companies in adopting SMM. The results of this study provide practical implications for beauty industry practitioners and contribute to the academic domain of SMM and business marketing practice in the beauty industry. Essay 3 focuses on the key factors influencing the selection of social media influencers (SMIs) for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This study uses interviews and survey methodology to identify and evaluate the key factors influencing the selection of desired SMIs for SMEs. The findings indicate that engagement, SMI traits, content relevance, compensation, and SMI workstyle are the most significant factors that positively influence SMEs' choice of SMI. This study provides a framework for future work to assess, compare, and select the most influential SMIs in different organizational contexts and helps marketers choose SMIs who resonate well with designated customers to enhance poFsitive brand association and increase product sales

Project knole: an autocosmic approach to authoring resonant computational characters

Project knole, consisting of this thesis and a mixed reality installation artwork centred around a computational simulation, is a practice-based response to the question of how a character in a work of computational narrative art might maintain their defining quality of dynamic agency within a system (arguably one of the key potentials of the form), while achieving the ‘resonant’ qualities of characters in more materially-static artforms. In all aspects of this project, I explore a new design philosophy for achieving this balance; between the authorship of a procedural computational system, and the ability of that system to ‘resonate’ with the imagination of an audience. This philosophy, which I term the ‘autocosmic’, seeks inspiration for the curation of audience response outside the obvious boundaries of artistic discipline, across the wider spectrum of human imaginative engagement; examples often drawn from mostly non-aesthetic domains. As well as defining the terms ‘resonance’ and ‘autocosmic’, and delineating my methodology more generally, this thesis demonstrates how the ‘autocosmic’ was employed within my creative work. In particular, it shows how some of the perennial problems of computational character development might be mediated by exploring other non-aesthetic examples of imaginative, narrative engagement with personified systems. In the context of this project, such examples come from the historio-cultural relationship between human beings and the environments they inhabit, outside of formal artistic practice. From this ‘autocosmic’ launchpad, I have developed an artwork that starts to explore how this rich cultural and biological lineage of human social engagement with systemic place can be applied fruitfully to the development of a ‘resonant’ computational character