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This report started with the guideline project that revolved around two problems in the game industry, the hypersexualization of female characters and their stereotypical designs in games, and a wish to solve these problems. Fashion was chosen as a new approach to solving them and the question formulation for the guideline project was: how can we incorporate fashion in order to strengthen a female characters personality, role and overall design in games? 

Three methods were used; firstly a systematic literature review to gather knowledge about the fashion industry as well as the game industry’s character design process. Secondly, the creation of the guideline, “The design handbook – how to improve female character design”, which would serve by presenting a solution to the problem. Thirdly, qualitative interviews to test whether or not the guideline could serve as a possible solution against the problems of sexist and stereotypical designs and if it could overall improve female character design in games.   

The results of the qualitative interviews deemed the project a success; nine out of ten interviewees answered that it would serve as a solution against the problem of both hypersexualization and stereotypical designs. The results of the guideline project and the interviews answered the bachelor’s thesis’ question formulation about how to improve female character design through fashion in the following way:  

• Be inclusive. The priority should be to design interesting characters, regardless of gender.
•  Know who your character is. Give the character a complex and interesting personality and design with that personality in mind; it should be strengthened through all the other design choices (be it color, silhouette or outfit details).  
• Make it believable. The outfit needs to work like a second narrator and should not contradict the setting, the personality or the character’s role.  

This study investigates the feasibility of enhancing community engagement through gamification, using a prototype third-person 3D adventure game called Harmoni. The research targets international students in Gotland, Sweden, aiming to reduce cultural barriers and promote community involvement. By integrating game elements such as altruistic missions, language learning, and historical exploration, the prototype seeks to motivate real-life participation in community activities. Data collected from pre- and post-surveys and follow-up interviews with a small sample size (n=10) suggest that gamification can positively impact community involvement. Despite the limitations of sample size, the findings indicate that thoughtfully designed gamified experiences can foster a sense of belonging and encourage active participation in community life. The study underscores the potential of gamification in educational and social contexts, offering insights for future applications and improvements in game-based community engagement strategies.

League of Legends (Riot Games, 2009) and Valorant (Riot Games, 2020) are both team-based competitive multiplayer games that do not feature any form of story-based game mode, but both feature a large cast of fleshed-out playable characters, each with their own design, backstory, and set of abilities. This study focuses on comparing both games’ approaches to characterization to understand how they incorporate elements of characterization in theircharacter design. This was done with the hope of informing future developers of multiplayer hero games, as well as identifying similarities in their character design despite how different both games are. This study compared two sets of two characters, one from each game, which featured similarities with each other. These similarities served as this study’s starting point to analyze, and then compare both games’ approach to characterization. Many similarities were found between both games in their approach to characterization, despite their core gameplay differences. But it also found many differences, both gameplay-dependent, and dependent on other factors.

Monetization is now a fundamental aspect of video game creation and currently, all developers are trying to utilize it in the various designs of their games. Contemplating the monetized aspect of video games, this research has seen a gap in the studies pertaining to monetization from the perspective of the consumers, who are also the gamers and the buyers of these monetization designs. This paper approaches monetization from the perspective of consumers to bridge that lacuna. It aims to gain insights into the consumer mind by initiating a conversation between previous theories and present discussions to arrive at a middle ground on monetization in AAA games between consumers and game designers. It achieves this by the use of an online survey and semi-structured interviews with core and casual consumers. Furthermore, this research is supported by a discourse analysis on YouTube by game critics and reviewers. The results of the study showed that monetization is beneficial to independent developers and mobile games, it is also beneficial in AAA games if it is left to the part of the game design that does not affect the quality of the game. For example, cosmetics and DLCs, as long as those DLCs are not gated game lore that consumers are forced to buy. The impact of monetization on AAA games is a fifty-fifty issue on the part of the consumer and developer. The financial impact consumers project to developers justifies the rationale for the continuity of monetization models regardless of the quality of the games design. In the future research is needed to better understand consumer perspectives on monetization, particularly among consumers who have grown up in different gaming eras. Additional studies with larger sample sizes should be conducted in order to make valid generalizations and capture the perspectives of teens. Future studies should also focus on games and game studios that have implemented micro-transactions successfully, considering game design quality, revenue, and customer satisfaction.

This thesis´ aim is to discuss how different levels of details can contribute to creating perceived levels of representation and relatability. This was firstly done through a pilot study, which was made to gather more intel about female opinions on set player characters in games. Then through the creation of six stylized 3D busts, and finally through a main study, serving to find trends in female informants’ opinions about the levels of details, representation and relatability in said busts. Earlier research is presented and discussed, and notable connections between the earlier research and this thesis´s findings are presented.

Vehicular Cloud Computing (VCC) is a contemporary paradigm that includes the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and vehicular networking technologies. VCC offers vehicle-to-device, vehicle-to-infrastructure, and vehicle-to-vehicle communication in which the vehicles can communicate using sensing abilities. VCC is exploiting the IoT environment, cloud architecture, and vehicle resources. However, the energy-efficient privacy of communicators and security of communication are assertive problems in VCC. To accomplish this goal, we present an identity-based authentication scheme for VCC which also uses radio frequency identification (RFID). The security and robustness of the devised scheme are evaluated using informal and formal analysis. The informal analysis shows that our scheme is vigorous to resist various attacks. The formal analysis is done through Random Oracle Model (ROM) which shows that the scheme is secure and efficient. The performance of our scheme is also determined and compared with various related schemes which clearly illustrate the efficiency of the proposed scheme. Thus, our scheme is very efficient for employment in the VCC environment.

Learning to read body language is something we do throughout our whole life. It is a complex non-verbal language that can express more than words. In this study we investigate the possibility to use only body language to portray emotions to the viewer. In a background of a game project we have used a character that has his face covered, therefore, facial expression is not visible during the online survey, which we used as a method for our investigation. As a foundation we have created four character animations to portray anger, frustration, exhaustion and hurt. To find the answer if it is possible to recognize those five emotions in the character animations survey, participants were obligated to name the emotion expressed on each of the video clips. The results of this study show that the characters body language could be sufficient to portray those five emotions. However, it was concluded that body language could be enough to represent the character's emotional state to the viewer; but by including facial expressions we could help to portray the emotion even further.

Representation in RPGs seeks to understand how queer masculinity is represented and performed within the magic circle of a Dungeons and Dragons adventure. By creating our own adventure focused on gender studies and characters with traits and flaws concerning queer representation, we put players within the magic circle to experience and perform according to their characters. Doing this we found out that players feel more safe to explore sexuality and gender within the magic circle. 

Designing games around complex emotions and experiences can be seen as quite difficult for game designers. Therefore, this paper sought to research how to convey the emotional state of an individual through design based on a chosen experience. The chosen experience was the feeling of loneliness with connection to the fear of rejection. This paper will be using Rusch’s (2017) method of designing deep games as a way of modeling an experience of loneliness as perceived by one of the authors. This model will be based on a conversation between the two authors with one acting as an experience expert and the other one as a listener. The results from this method seek to gain a catalog of experiences and thoughts about the experience expert’s feelings of loneliness that can be used to construct metaphors. These metaphors are then used to create game mechanics that combined hope to achieve a sincere recreation of the experience expert feelings of loneliness. This paper will go into depth on the design decisions made during the production of the deep game modeling the emotion loneliness.

An exploratory discourse analysis was performed on a community of practice based on Discord, an instant messaging platform. The community of practice is a group of gamers (people who play video games), dedicated to the cross-platform free-to-play game Genshin Impact. A corpus of messages was gathered from the community’s public message logs, which spanned a period of three days during the release of Genshin Impact’s most financially lucrative character banner. From the corpus, numerous themes in players’ discussions have been observed; such as reactions to the gacha’s probability system, displays of problem gaming, sexualization of female characters, and opinions regarding monetization & the game’s developers. This study would be beneficial for future studies that pertain to player behavior and gamer culture that can also use communities of practice on platforms such as Discord, in order to gain insight into niche communities of engaged users.

Lootboxes currently cause a frequent debate in the games industry where the discussion is often focused on the connection to gambling. In this thesis an addition to this debate is made by taking a closer look at Gacha design – a way to design games around monetization – through theory and player opinions. Conclusions point to that if Gacha is viewed as a spectrum of strength the discussion can benefit from an increased understanding of all monetization systems within games regardless of their abstract definitions. The data was collected through focus groups and analyzed based on current research of the common topics that surfaced during the focus group discussions. The thesis found that overall knowledge surrounding Gacha was lacking and by looking at Gacha as a design method opened up for a broader discussion with connections to Lootboxes.

This paper features a study about cooperation and how it can be encouraged via level layout.The research team developed a game with a research intent focused on cooperation driven bythe question: How can player cooperation be encouraged through the placement of incentivesand challenges in the level layout of a local cooperative game? To be able to answer thequestion, the research team looked into papers about cooperation, level design, nudge theory,Cooperative Performance Metrics, and design patterns. The research was conducted by usingiterative design, where three iterations were tested with two groups of four players and thedesign was iterated upon after each test. After all playtests were conducted and all data hadbeen analyzed, evidence was found that the placement of the challenges and incentives in alevel can have an effect on cooperation. This paper makes a contribution to the subject of thecorrelation between cooperation and level design.

This thesis investigates the level of focus a player is displaying while playing a role-playing game. The thesis tries to answer the questions if the level of focus is different while a player is watching an event scene versus during gameplay and if there is a difference in the level of focus displayed by new players versus experience ones. To answer this question a playtest was performed in the role-playing game Final Fantasy XIII and the player’s reaction was recorded and documented. The result suggests that the level of focus a player is displaying is lower during event scenes than during gameplay.

This thesis investigates how the color red can potentially affect the player’s perception of horror game environments. The test was conducted by asking participants to play through a horror level made in Unreal Engine 4 which used realistic-looking assets. The study was performed using a mixed methodology of A/B/C testing with surveys and interviews to gather the data. The A, B, and C versions of the test used the same game-level in all versions however the color of the lighting was different in all of them. Version A used white lights, version B used red lights, and version C used red flickering lights. The results revealed that the players found the version with the white lights to be the scariest and the version with the flickering lights to be the second scariest. This was most likely due to the order in which the players played the levels, the version with white being the first that the players played. The players indicated that the realistic colors in version A added to the sense of immersion, whereas the continuous red lights in version B were perceived by some players as overdone or unnatural and would have been better suited for localized areas associated with supernatural elements. The flickering lights were well received by players and associated with a higher potential for danger and jump scares

Puzzles have always been a central part of games. One of the simplest manifestations of a puzzle in games is an obstruction that prevents the player from progressing and an object that removes the obstruction. The system of unlocking new areas with keys is used in order to provide interesting level design and help build narrative in games. This examination intends to provide knowledge and insight into how this type of system is commonly portrayed visually and thus provide a basis for designers to build upon when creating similar challenges, providing a greater awareness of the design norms that are commonly applied. In the majority of the cases that have been examined during this study, text-based information is used to convey the majority of the essential information given to the players regarding the relationship of the key and the lock. In many cases the graphics serve only to highlight important features of the objects and help the player to quickly tell the different items apart in the inventory.

In the field of Game Design, multiple frameworks have emerged to give an ontological understanding of iterative Game Design and game creation. However, following critique of the MDA framework in regards to how it treats narratives, our group in this paper utilized the alternative DDE framework, as a tool to investigate any of deeper detail in player-game interactions within the game Cities: Skylines II as compared to the MDA framework. The study was done as an inductive narrative analysis of recorded gameplay found on video-hosting websites, such as YouTube where we would discuss the ways the two frameworks operate in terms of narratives.

In recent years, there has been an increased popularity in games with permanent death. This thesis investigates what mechanics makes the player return after continuously losing in permanent death games. The mechanics of four bestselling games featuring permanent death, which implies the complete restart of the game each time the player avatar dies, are played for six hours and analysed. The games analysed are Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, Spelunky, Rogue Legacy and Don‟t Starve.  

Based on the mechanics found in the games and using Raph Kosters definition of fun, “if games stop teaching us they become boring”, it is established that a number of different reasons exist to bring a player back, not just necessarily only the mechanics themselves.

This paper covers the subject of abstract art in video games. The main purpose is to find out if abstract graphics are enough to evoke feelings among players. A study is conducted where players of the game Thomas was Alone answer a survey about the game and their thoughts about it, as well as an analysis of the games graphics. The results indicate that it is the narrative in the game that makes the distinct impact on the players, rather that the graphics. It is concluded that the survey should be revised and future studies are proposed.