Bridging the gap: building better tools for game development

The following thesis is about questioning how we design game making tools, and how developers may build easier tools to use. It is about the highlighting the inadequacies of current game making programs as well as introducing Goal-Oriented Design as a possible solution. It is also about the processes of digital product development, and reflecting on the necessity for both design and development methods to work cohesively for meaningful results. Interaction Design is in essence the abstracting of key relations that matter to the contextual environment. The result of attempting to tie the Interaction Design principles, Game Design issues together with Software Development practices has led to the production of the User-Centred game engine, PlayBoard

Fatal crashes involving young male drivers: a continuous time Poisson change-point analysis.

In an effort to reduce road trauma, the New Zealand government implemented a series of intervention programs over the last decade, with young male drivers as the main target audience. Previous research, however, found little or no evidence that these programs had any impact on this group of drivers despite an apparent decrease in their crash involvement

The prisoners' dilemma: A game theoretic approach to vehicle safety

This paper assessed the policy implications of the changing demand for passenger vehicles in Australia and debunked the myth that bigger vehicles are safer. In particular, we examined the increasing demand for small cars and four-wheel drive using the classic prisoners' dilemma framework in game theory. We found that the current emphasis on occupant protection may result in a pareto inferior outcome whereas a shift in the emphasis towards non-aggressiveness of a vehicle would result in a pareto superior outcome. Among the pure strategy equilibria, the one with only small cars provides the lowest overall level of road trauma. Furthermore, we found no mixed strategy equilibrium that would produce a lower level of trauma than the pure strategy equilibria, implying that mixing vehicle type would definitely increase road trauma. In a mixed fleet, however, medium cars produced the least trauma and thus were the safest type of passenger vehicle

Time-Varying Incentives in the Mutual Fund Industry

This paper re-examines the incentives of mutual fund managers arising from investor flows. We provide evidence that the convexity of the flow-performance relationship varies with economic activity. We show that the effect is economically large and is not driven by abnormal years. We test two possible channels through which this pattern may arise. We investigate implications of the time-varying convexity for the incentives of managers to alter strategically the risk of their portfolios. We provide evidence that poor mid-year performers increase the risk of the portfolio only when economic activity is strong. Finally, we briefly discuss some methodological implications.Mutual funds, incentives, Flow-Performance Relationship, Convexity, Business cycles

Interactive product catalogue with user preference tracking

In the context of m-commerce, small screen size poses serious difficulty for users to browse effectively through a product catalogue, given the limited number of products that may be presented on-screen. Despite the availability of search engines, filters and recommender systems to aid users, these techniques focus on a narrow segment of product offering. The users are thus denied the opportunity to do a more expansive exploration of the products available. This paper describes a novel approach to overcome the constraints of small screen size. Through integration of a product catalogue with a recommender system, an adaptive system has been created that guides users through the process of product browsing. An original technique has been developed to cluster similar positive examples together to identify areas of interest of a user. The performance of this technique has been evaluated and the results proved to be promising

Strategic investment and excess capacity: A study of the Taiwanese flour industry.

The Taiwanese flour industry’s capacity utilization rate has maintained an extremely low level of 40% for more than 20 years. This article sets up a two-stage game model and uses the strategic effect of the firm’s capital investment on its rivals’ outputs to explain the nature of this excess capacity. The model is tested with panel data from the Taiwanese flour industry by using non-linear three-stage least squares. The evidences indicate that a large capacity built in the past could have been used strategically to reduce other firms’ outputs, in the context of a concerted action among the incumbent firms.strategic investment, two-stage game, collusion, conjectural variation

Variational study of J_(1)-J_(2) Heisenberg model on kagome lattice using projected Schwinger-boson wave functions

Motivated by the unabating interest in the spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnetic model on the kagome lattice, we investigate the energetics of projected Schwinger-boson (SB) wave functions in the J_(1)-J_(2) model with antiferromagnetic J_(2) coupling. Our variational Monte Carlo results show that Sachdev’s Q_(1)=Q_(2) SB ansatz has a lower energy than the Dirac spin liquid for J_(2) ≳ 0.08J_(1) and the q=0 Jastrow-type magnetically ordered state. This work demonstrates that the projected SB wave functions can be tested on the same footing as their fermionic counterparts

Financial Variables as Predictors of Real Output Growth

We investigate two methods for using daily stock returns to forecast, and update forecasts of, quarterly real output growth. Both methods aggregate daily returns in some manner to form a single stock market variable. We consider (i) augmenting the quarterly AR(1) model for real output growth with daily returns using a nonparametric Mixed Data Sampling (MIDAS) setting, and (ii) augmenting the quarterly AR(1) model with the most recent r -day returns as an additional predictor. We discover that adding low frequency stock returns (up to annual returns, depending on forecast horizon) to a quarterly AR(1) model improves forecasts of output growth.Forecasting, Mixed Frequencies, Functional linear regression