Individual Tariffs for Mobile Communication Services

This paper introduces a conceptual framework and a computational model for individual tariffs for mobile communication services. The purpose is to provide guidance for implementation by communication service suppliers or user groups alike. The paper first examines the sociological and economic incentives for personalized services and individual tariffs. Then it introduces a framework for individual tariffs which is centered on user and supplier behaviours. The user, instead of being fully rational, has "bounded rationality" and his behaviours are subject to economic constraints and influenced by social needs. The supplier can belong to different types of entities such as firms and communities; each has his own goals which lead to different behaviors. Individual tariffs are decided through interactions between the user and the supplier and can be analyzed in a structured way using game theory. A numerical case in mobile music training is developed to illustrate the concepts.risks;mobile communication services;Individual tariffs;computational games

Social Preferences and Relational Contracting Performance: An Experimental Investigation

We examine how social preferences affect behavior and surplus in relational contracts. Experimental subjects participate in a contracting environment similar to Brown, Falk, and Fehr [Brown, M., Falk, A. & Fehr, E., “Relational Contracts and the Nature of Market Interactions, Econometrica, 72 (2004):747-780] and in social preference experiments adapted from Charness and Rabin [Charness, G. & Rabin, M. “Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 117(2002): 817-869]. Subjects’ behavior during the Charness and Rabin experiment is a significant predictor of behavior and outcomes observed during the subsequent multi-period, finite-horizon, relational- contracting environment, which features market power, unenforceable performance, reputation formation and endogenous matching of trading partners. Compared to subjects who respond to the Charness-Rabin games in a fashion consistent with purely self-interested, competitive or reciprocal social preferences, buyers and sellers with alternative social preference structures engage in contracts with substantially higher quality and price, which leads to greater surplus for both parties. A key difference is that self-interested, competitive and reciprocal buyers respond to early-period shirking by extending subsequent offers that are less generous to the seller, while buyers with other social preferences extend subsequent offers that are more generous. Reciprocal and competitive sellers and, to a lesser extent, self-interested sellers, deliver sub-contractual levels of quality more often, which substantially lowers buyer and total welfare. We conclude that intentional or ‘cold’ measures of social preferences have considerable predictive power in dynamic, interactive (or ‘hot’) economic settings.Contracts; relational contracts; implicit contracts; market interaction; experimental economics; repeated transaction; social preferences.

Information Security as Strategic (In)effectivity

Security of information flow is commonly understood as preventing any information leakage, regardless of how grave or harmless consequences the leakage can have. In this work, we suggest that information security is not a goal in itself, but rather a means of preventing potential attackers from compromising the correct behavior of the system. To formalize this, we first show how two information flows can be compared by looking at the adversary's ability to harm the system. Then, we propose that the information flow in a system is effectively information-secure if it does not allow for more harm than its idealized variant based on the classical notion of noninterference

Juegos serios educativos como servicio: retos y desafíos

Cloud computing is a distributed computing technology that facilitates access to the resources in a dynamic, scalable and highly available manner. One of its service models is SaaS (Software as a Service) which allows executing Web applications in a flexible and elastic way while offering collaborative characteristics. The integration of SaaS in educational environments promotes academic performance and facilitates knowledge management, allowing for storage, exchange, access and synchronization of information. On the other hand, educational serious games promote among the people involved: collaboration, communication, social abilities, critical thinking and problem solving. The main objective of this investigation is to analyze the challenges that SaaS, with its collaborative and multitenancy characteristics present to the execution of educational serious games. This is named ESGaaS - Educational Serious Games as a Service. The analysis was developed based on a review of the existing literature through the methodology known as Systematic Mapping Studies (SMS) which facilitated the generation of investigation questions, search strategies, key words and inclusion and exclusion criteria applied to identify articles in several sources. This investigation facilitated the development of a list of functional characteristics that the educational serious games will acquire when used as software for service.La computación en la nube es una tecnología de computación distribuida que ofrece acceso a los recursos de manera dinámica, escalable y con alta disponibilidad. Uno de sus modelos de servicio, es el SaaS (Software as a Service) que permite ejecutar aplicaciones Web de manera flexible y elástica, además de ofrecer características colaborativas. La integración del SaaS en los entornos educativos potencia el rendimiento académico y facilita la gestión del conocimiento permitiendo almacenar, intercambiar, acceder y sincronizar información. Por su parte los juegos serios educativos potencian, entre los involucrados, la colaboración, comunicación, habilidades sociales, pensamiento crítico y resolución de problemas. El objetivo principal de esta investigación consistió en analizar los retos que SaaS, con sus características colaborativas y multiinquilino, ofrece a la ejecución de juegos serios educativos, lo cual denominamos ESGaaS – Juegos Serios Educativos como Servicio. El análisis fue realizado a partir de una revisión de literatura existente a través de la metodología denominada Systematic Mapping Studies (SMS) la cual permitió generar preguntas de investigación, estrategias de búsqueda, palabras claves y criterios de inclusión y exclusión que fueron aplicadas para localizar artículos en diversas fuentes. Como resultado del trabajo se elabora una lista de características funcionales que los juegos serios educativos adquirirían al ser utilizados como software como servicio.Facultad de Informátic

Agents for educational games and simulations

This book consists mainly of revised papers that were presented at the Agents for Educational Games and Simulation (AEGS) workshop held on May 2, 2011, as part of the Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS) conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The 12 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers are organized topical sections on middleware applications, dialogues and learning, adaption and convergence, and agent applications

Eliciting Behavior From Interactive Narratives: Isolating the Role of Agency in Connecting With and Modeling Characters

A key component differentiating interactive storytelling from non-interactive media is agency, or control over character choices. A series of experiments show that providing agency over a character increased the user-character connection, which then increased engagement in a character-consistent charitable act. Findings were observed in technologically simple online narratives that controlled for navigation/controller differences, graphics, sounds, lengthy play, and avatar customization. Effects emerged even though users did not practice these acts by making their character behave charitably. Findings were robust across happy and unfortunate endings and across first-, second-, and third-person narrative perspectives. Findings suggest promise for developing inexpensive ‘‘storygames’’ to encourage supportive behaviors

Towards automatic personalized content generation for platform games

In this paper, we show that personalized levels can be automatically generated for platform games. We build on previous work, where models were derived that predicted player experience based on features of level design and on playing styles. These models are constructed using preference learning, based on questionnaires administered to players after playing different levels. The contributions of the current paper are (1) more accurate models based on a much larger data set; (2) a mechanism for adapting level design parameters to given players and playing style; (3) evaluation of this adaptation mechanism using both algorithmic and human players. The results indicate that the adaptation mechanism effectively optimizes level design parameters for particular players.peer-reviewe

Potential and effects of personalizing gameful fitness applications using behavior change intentions and Hexad user types

Personalizing gameful applications is essential to account for interpersonal differences in the perception of gameful design elements. Considering that an increasing number of people lead sedentary lifestyles, using personalized gameful applications to encourage physical activity is a particularly relevant domain. In this article, we investigate behavior change intentions and Hexad user types as factors to personalize gameful fitness applications. We first explored the potential of these two factors by analyzing differences in the perceived persuasiveness of gameful design elements using a storyboards-based online study (N=178). Our results show several significant effects regarding both factors and thus support the usefulness of them in explaining perceptual differences. Based on these findings, we implemented “Endless Universe,” a personalized gameful application encouraging physical activity on a treadmill. We used the system in a laboratory study (N=20) to study actual effects of personalization on the users’ performance, enjoyment and affective experiences. While we did not find effects on the immediate performance of users, positive effects on user experience-related measures were found. The results of this study support the relevance of behavior change intentions and Hexad user types for personalizing gameful fitness systems further

Factors to Consider for Tailored Gamification

International audienceGamification is widely used to foster user motivation. Recent studies show that users can be more or less receptive to different game elements, based on their personality or player profile. Consequently, recent work on tailored gamification tries to identify links between user types and motivating game elements. However findings are very heterogeneous due to different contexts, different typologies to characterize users, and different implementations of game elements. Our work seeks to obtain more generalizable findings in order to identify the main factors that will support design choices when tailoring gamification to users' profiles and provide designers with concrete recommendations for designing tailored gamification systems. For this purpose, we ran a crowdsourced study with 300 participants to identify the motivational impact of game elements. Our study differs from previous work in three ways: first, it is independent from a specific user activity and domain; second, it considers three user typologies; and third, it clearly distinguishes motivational strategies and their implementation using multiple different game elements. Our results reveal that (1) different implementations of a same motivational strategy have different impacts on motivation, (2) dominant user type is not sufficient to differentiate users according to their preferences for game elements, (3) Hexad is the most appropriate user typology for tailored gamification and (4) the motiva-tional impact of certain game elements varies with the user activity or the domain of gamified systems