Very Important Game People in the History of Computer and Video Games

This thesis covers the history of 30 very important game people (in alphabetical order): David Arneson, Ralph Baer, Daniel Bunten, Nolan Bushnell, John Carmack, Chris Crawford, Richard Garriott, Gary Gygax, Trip Hawkins, Rob Hubbard, Toru Iwatani, Eugene Jarvis, Ken Kutaragi, Ed Logg, Sid Meier, Jeff Minter, Shigeru Miyamoto, Peter Molyneux, Yuji Naka, Alexey Pajitnov, John Romero, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Chris Stamper, Tim Stamper, Yu Suzuki, Satoshi Tajiri, Ken Williams, Roberta Williams, Will Wright and Gunpei Yokoi. It includes their background, their most important games and game-related work. It also provides information about the companies they worked for and the people they worked with. The thesis was created by gathering information from large number of sources, including books, internet, magazines, games and contacting some of the actual people. The thesis also contains a timeline of the most important events in the history of computer and video games and a chapter on the precursors of videogames, namely money game machines and pinball. The thesis is illustrated with several hundred pictures

Encountering Change: Job Satisfaction of Sign Language Interpreters in Finland

The organizational system for providing Finnish sign language interpreter services has recently changed, and this change has influenced the whole interpretation service industry. It poses major challenges for the maintenance of job satisfaction among sign language professionals. The level of job satisfaction of sign language interpreters (in this study, N = 135) was surveyed by means of an online questionnaire. While examining this phenomenon, this study mainly addresses the systemic factors in employment conditions. According to the results, the level of job satisfaction among interpreters is quite high; however, it remains clearly lower than the average for Finnish workers. The key factors in job satisfaction are working conditions, changes in the amount of work and the way that it has been organized. Many of these problems are seen to be the result of the recently reformed Kela2-led interpreter booking system and the interpreting service’s bidding system. As a conclusion, we note that, in future, more attention should be paid to the working conditions and job satisfaction of Finnish sign language interpreters. If the level of job satisfaction continues to decrease, not only will interpreters’ health and well-being be at risk, but the quality of service provided to clients may also be impacted

Each One Counts: Basic Needs Mediating the Association Between Social Support and Vitality at Work

The aim of this study was to provide new detailed information concerning the role of basic psychological needs in the relations between social support and work-related vitality. Drawing on the self-determination theory, it was hypothesized that support from both co-workers and supervisors is associated with work-related vitality via the needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The participants were 109 employees in a preventive vocationally oriented intervention program. Results of the regression and bootstrapping analyses were consistent with the hypotheses, suggesting that each need is essential in the indirect association of social support and vitality at work, regardless of the source of the support. Implications for research and practice are discussed

Wintertime subarctic new particle formation from Kola Peninsula sulfur emissions

The metallurgical industry in the Kola Peninsula, north-west Russia, form, after Norilsk, Siberia, the second largest source of air pollution in the Arctic and subarctic domain. Sulfur dioxide (SO2/emissions from the ore smelters are transported to wide areas, including Finnish Lapland. We performed investigations on concentrations of SO2, aerosol precursor vapours, aerosol and ion cluster size distributions together with chemical composition measurements of freshly formed clusters at the SMEAR I station in Finnish Lapland relatively close (similar to 300 km) to the Kola Peninsula industrial sites during the winter 2019-2020. We show that highly concentrated SO2 from smelter emissions is converted to sulfuric acid (H2SO4/in sufficient concentrations to drive new particle formation hundreds of kilometres downwind from the emission sources, even at very low solar radiation intensities. Observed new particle formation is primarily initiated by H2SO4-ammonia (negative-)ion-induced nucleation. Particle growth to cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) sizes was concluded to result from sulfuric acid condensation. However, air mass advection had a large role in modifying aerosol size distributions, and other growth mechanisms and condensation of other compounds cannot be fully excluded. Our results demonstrate the dominance of SO2 emissions in controlling wintertime aerosol and CCN concentrations in the subarctic region with a heavily polluting industry.Peer reviewe