Facebook games

In this paper, we present "Kalema", a system for digitizing Arabic scanned documents for the visually impaired such that it can be converted to audio format or Braille. This is done through a GWAP which offers a simple, challenging game that helps attract many volunteers for this cause. We show how such a tedious task can be achieved accurately and easily through the use of crowdsourcing.

This study aimed at studying the use of English coordinating conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, yet and so) by Libyan university students, as learners of English as a foreign language. The data was collected from (34) students who studied at the Department of English in the Faculty of Arts at Misurata University. They were tested by two questions; filling gaps in seven separate sentences and writing two paragraphs. The students' answers and compositions were analyzed by identifying students' recognition of the semantic functions of the seven coordinating conjunctions, the frequency of occurrence of these conjunctions in their writing, and finally appropriate and inappropriate use of these conjunctions in writing paragraphs. The findings revealed that the majority of participants were unable to recognize the semantic functions of some unfamiliar conjunctions in the given sentences, tended to use some common coordinators than other ones, and employed conjunctions inappropri...

This research aims to determine the effect of learning method enriched with learning objects on students' academic achievement and transferable skills in foreign language teaching. Another purpose of the study is to examine what the experimental group students 'attitudes towards learning objects, the method and teaching process are. To obtain the data for the research, mixed research method, in which quantitative and qualitative research methods were used in combination, was applied. Experimental design to collect quantitative data and the semi-structured interview technique to collect the qualitative data were used in order to support and explain the results obtained from the qualitative data. For data analysis, Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used in order to determine the differences between the control and experimental groups.According to the findings of the study, it has been concluded that both of the methods of teaching English enriched with learning objects and t...

This exploratory case study aimed at investigating the studentteachers’ views on using Facebook games for language learning. The participants were 48 student-teachers at the EFL Department of the Faculty of Education at a Libyan public university. They were required to play Facebook games for two weeks and then present their experiences through oral presentations and reflective journals. Data were collected through student-teachers’ presentations and reflective journals. Data were analyzed qualitatively using a thematic inductive approach. Although few student-teachers had negative views, most of the student-teachers had positive views on using Facebook games for learning. They believed that Facebook games teach players following instructions and provide opportunities for language improvement, especially for vocabulary learning. We expect that our findings would provide teachers and practitioners with ideas for classroom research and encourage researchers to conduct further and more...

In this paper, we present "Kalema", a system for digitizing Arabic scanned documents for the visually impaired such that it can be converted to audio format or Braille. This is done through a GWAP which offers a simple, challenging game that helps attract many volunteers for this cause. We show how such a tedious task can be achieved accurately and easily through the use of crowdsourcing.

In this paper, we present "Kalema", a system for digitizing Arabic scanned documents for the visually impaired such that it can be converted to audio format or Braille. This is done through a GWAP which offers a simple, challenging game that helps attract many volunteers for this cause. We show how such a tedious task can be achieved accurately and easily through the use of crowdsourcing.

This study examines the relationship between social motivations, pro-social relationship outcomes, and two types of game play—habitual and compulsive—in the context of simulation games on Facebook. Social motivations were significantly associated with compulsive game play, but not habitual game play. Compulsive play was a positive predictor of pro-social outcomes whereas habitual use was not. By differentiating two different types of media use that are both associated with problematic use, the authors see that social factors contribute to people's inability to control their gaming behavior, but that the so-called “addictive” behavior can also yield positive relationship outcomes.

In this paper, we present "Kalema", a system for digitizing Arabic scanned documents for the visually impaired such that it can be converted to audio format or Braille. This is done through a GWAP which offers a simple, challenging game that helps attract many volunteers for this cause. We show how such a tedious task can be achieved accurately and easily through the use of crowdsourcing.

Although we know how and why players cheat in videogames released on consoles or via PC, we know less about perceptions and practices surrounding cheating in social networks games. Such games offer players a style of gameplay—often without an ending and with a free-to-play model—that is quite different from other types of games. In addition, new audiences and demographics are being exposed to this type of games and are playing them. How do players decided what is fair and unfair in such games? How do they cheat? This study begins the process of answering those questions by examining how the definition of cheating and its practices have evolved with the rise in popularity of Facebook games. The answers indicate that players often dismiss the seriousness of social network games, and thus cheating was either not needed or not a part of gameplay expectations.

This study aims to examine the proficiency level of Libyan EFL (English as a Foreign Language) undergraduate students in terms of the types of subject-verb agreement errors they commit. It also attempts to identify, analyze and categorize the frequency errors related to subject-verb agreement into three categories. These errors are statically analyzed and classified into: subject-verb agreement (SVA) errors with third person singular subjects (TPSS), with third person plural subjects (TPPS), with compound subjects (CS). The participants of this study were 40 intermediate and advanced students whose major is English at the Faculty of Arts in Misurata University, Libya. They were chosen based on their level of English language proficiency during the current study. The data of this study were collected through a written test consisting of six short passages. The results showed that the percentage of errors made by both groups was below 30% which refers to non-significant differences am...

Presentation skills play an indispensable role in undergraduates' education and developing their future careers because this skill assists college students in accomplishing a superior knowledge base and enhancing their public speaking. The study aims to measure English-majored students' reality at the Faculty of Foreign Languages of Van Lang University in Vietnam about speaking skills, especially presentation skills. The quantitative study has been carried out among 600 second-year, third-year, and four-year students at the Faculty of Foreign Languages of Van Lang University in Vietnam. The results of the research paper demonstrated that most students were not confident about their presentation skills because of making mistakes about vocabulary usage, grammar, fluency, and so on when giving presentations. EFL lecturers can consider the results to improve their teaching methods regarding speaking skills and find out more strategies to solve students' speaking challenges.

The best way to learn a language is by immersing yourself into it. One way to immerse into English is by using video games as one of the innovative ways to master English. This media enables gamers to get exposed to the target language since they play it for long times. The aim of this paper is to find out the reason why the subjects of the present research play video games and how it can help them to learn English. Lastly, this paper also wants to find out how viable applying video game in classroom’s lesson. The research methodology is phenomenology approach. The data were garnered from in-depth interview, the participants  answered the questions correctly and coherently to be considered having good English. Subjects of this research are six people with different backgrounds; they were united by their love of video games and their use of English in video games online community. The results of this study were the subjects play video game to entertain themselves through gameplay, st...

The Climate Challenge is an online competition in the tradition of games with a purpose that combines practical steps to reduce carbon footprint with predictive tasks to estimate future climate-related conditions. The application is designed to increase environmental literacy and motivate users to adopt more sustainable lifestyles. Its feedback channels include a leaderboard and a visual tool to compare answers of individual players with (i) the average assessments of their direct social network contacts as well as the entire pool of participants, (ii) a selected group of experts, and (iii) real-world observations.

The focus on social games in recent years has been generated by the rising number of users of MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayers Role Playing Games) such as World of Warcraft (WoW). However, the rise of social games in social networks has also played an interesting part in social games awareness. In this paper we focus on ‘social' casual games in Facebook. Our assumption is that the success of games in the Facebook context is linked to the blending of personal and social aspects. In particular: (i) the engagement in ‘fictional' social actions, (ii) the use of asynchronous actions, (iii) the combination of public and private actions within the game. The three above-mentioned aspects contribute to the emergence of particular social groupings, very similar to Cova's tribes. In order to demonstrate the previous assertions the paper will first define a set of basic concepts and will then describe some practical examples from the Facebook context.

This paper presents a virtual gallery creation game that has been designed for the National Gallery of London, as part of the CrossCult project, with a multipurpose goal. For visitors, the game allows users to virtually move paintings around, reflecting on their visit through gamification, while creating and curating their own virtual galleries. For National Gallery staff, the application allows them to simply visualise planned exhibitions and to accurately record the positions of paintings when they are moved or re-positioned. This paper describes the game's underlying structure, designed to serve both as an expert tool and as a game, and discusses the results obtained from initial experiments with end-users. Some preliminary conclusions can be drawn regarding the extent to which the application allows the end users to reflect on the National Gallery collection while creating and curating their own virtual galleries.

This exploratory case study aimed at investigating the studentteachers’ views on using Facebook games for language learning. The participants were 48 student-teachers at the EFL Department of the Faculty of Education at a Libyan public university. They were required to play Facebook games for two weeks and then present their experiences through oral presentations and reflective journals. Data were collected through student-teachers’ presentations and reflective journals. Data were analyzed qualitatively using a thematic inductive approach. Although few student-teachers had negative views, most of the student-teachers had positive views on using Facebook games for learning. They believed that Facebook games teach players following instructions and provide opportunities for language improvement, especially for vocabulary learning. We expect that our findings would provide teachers and practitioners with ideas for classroom research and encourage researchers to conduct further and more...

This exploratory case study aimed at investigating the student-teachers' views on using Facebook games for language learning. The participants were 48 student-teachers at the EFL Department of the Faculty of Education at a Libyan public university. They were required to play Facebook games for two weeks and then present their experiences through oral presentations and reflective journals. Data were collected through student-teachers' presentations and reflective journals. Data were analyzed qualitatively using a thematic inductive approach. Although few student-teachers had negative views, most of the student-teachers had positive views on using Facebook games for learning. They believed that Facebook games teach players following instructions and provide opportunities for language improvement, especially for vocabulary learning. We expect that our findings would provide teachers and practitioners with ideas for classroom research and encourage researchers to conduct further...

This paper presents an analysis of the rise of do support and the gradual loss of verb movement during the period of Early Modern English. The analysis focuses on studying the structures in which do support was first used as an alternative to verb raising to I. It takes into consideration the analysis of the relationship between the position of the negation marker not in negative interrogative structures and the position of the subject and the object pronouns in these structures. The analysed structures are negative interrogatives taken from Shakespeare’s works in the period of Early Modern English. The results of the data analysis show that in most cases, there is do support when the subject pronouns are above negation, while there is no do support when object pronouns appear above negation. This suggests that do was first inserted here to avoid object raising with the verb to I or to C to avoid putting object and subject pronouns in subsequent positions.

This paper discusses the effectiveness of using a computer assisted language learning (CALL) software, DynEd, in different grade levels at secondary schools in Bursa, Turkey. Over 400 students were given pretest and posttest with 114 students attendeding the both. Data were gathered during Fall 2009 and Spring 2010 semesters. The results of the study revealed that DynEd is not utilized by the students as much as wanted. Two types of DynEd activities (lesson presentations and problem solving) significantly predicted student growth scores but these activities contradicted with each other. These findings lead to question the continuation of the fierce campaign for DynEd. Should it be reconsidered?

Understanding students' strengths and weaknesses can help in the design of teaching materials to successfully bridge identified gaps. Formal exams are useful to gauge the extent of learners' memorised information, but have been critiqued for not reflecting the true extent of learners knowledge. Diagnostic assessment assists teachers in setting task-specific plans and goals, for both individual students, and the learner-group as a whole. In this paper, we describe Treasure Explorers, a Game With a Purpose (GWAP) with a multilayered structure that facilitates the learning process, promotes user retention, and is designed to reward contributing players. A comprehensive evaluation based on game log and TAM model was conducted. The log of over 5,500 records reveals that aspects of engagement and learning had occurred, and qualitative evaluations show the applicability and usability of games as diagnostic assessment tools. Treasure Explorers assists teachers in identifying student...

Creating descriptive labels for videos is an important task, with application in video retrieval, Web accessibility and computer vision. However automatic creation of such labels is difficult and, alternatively, having professionals manually describing content is too expensive. Engaging end-users in the process of describing multimedia assets may lead to good results and enables creating the sense of participation which is currently one of the key factors to attract customers to a service. The existing approaches are highly successful in terms of number of engaged players and number of collected labels, but hardly create comprehensive tag sets, contributing both with generic or too narrow meaning tags. "Games With A Purpose" are one of the approaches that have been used in an attempt to create comprehensive video descriptions by harnessing the intelligence of human players and have them contributing and collaborating towards a common goal that is recognized if successful. This paper describes a game which implements two mechanisms for collecting data via human-based computation games. Tags introduced by registered players, in a given timecode, are validated based on a collaborative scoring mechanism that eliminates irregular annotations. Additionally, a voting mechanism that enables players to endorse or refuse existing tags, provides an extra instrument to guarantee the quality of the annotations.

ARTigo is a gaming platform with two goals: The development of a semantic search engine for art works and a study on art work reception. Even though ARTigo quite successfully achieves its goals, it is so far still deficient at collecting “deep semantics” tags. This article first discusses why this is the case, then proposes two approaches we call “squaring” and “scripting” to collecting deep semantic tags that both consist in deploying the ESP Game in unconventional manners. Finally, the relevance of squaring and scripting for other GWAPs ...

This exploratory case study aimed at investigating the student-teachers' views on using Facebook games for language learning. The participants were 48 student-teachers at the EFL Department of the Faculty of Education at a Libyan public university. They were required to play Facebook games for two weeks and then present their experiences through oral presentations and reflective journals. Data were collected through student-teachers' presentations and reflective journals. Data were analyzed qualitatively using a thematic inductive approach. Although few student-teachers had negative views, most of the student-teachers had positive views on using Facebook games for learning. They believed that Facebook games teach players following instructions and provide opportunities for language improvement, especially for vocabulary learning. We expect that our findings would provide teachers and practitioners with ideas for classroom research and encourage researchers to conduct further and more rigorous testing on integrating Facebook games into the EFL classroom.

The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of authentic learning activities organized within the scope of the social studies course of 5th grade students on the academic success. Quasi-experimental design which is one of the quantitative research methods was used in the research. The study was carried out in the academic year of 2017-2018 in schools that represent three different socioeconomic statuses in Ankara province. 62 students from Çankaya Province; 61 students from Yenimahalle Province and 61 students from Altındağ Province; a total of 184 students participated in the study. Academic achievement test developed by a researcher was used as a data collection tool in the study. According to the results, the academic success of experimental groups where authentic learning activities were used was found to be higher than the academic success of the control groups where the available programs were used. Again, in the groups where authentic learning was applied, it was found out that the girls were more successful than the boys. It was also found out that authentic learning activities increase success in all classes with socioeconomic status.

We address the design of point scoring mechanisms in games for crowds, to promote user motivations to contribute knowledge. We measure the effectiveness of the scoring mechanism on users' performance across three types of crowd: general public, students in their field of study, general students. The conditions were: reward-free games (control group) and two reward-based systems differing in the algorithm applied (linear y=3x vs. exponential y=6e x ). Results support the importance of the mathematical function of scores assignment as a motivator for knowledge contribution, and indicate that the effect of the scoring mechanism design should be tailored according to the type of crowd. These findings provide insights for designers of gamified systems on how to improve knowledge contributions in crowd-based systems.

The present study reports the usefulness of online games in vocabulary learning of Iranian EFL students. The participants, (24) low-intermediate EFL learners, were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group learnt some new words via online computer games in 15 weeks. A vocabulary-based test, acting as pre-test and posttest, was conducted in the first and 15th weeks. The findings of the analyzed data indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group statistically significant in the post-test. Therefore, on line games proved to be more effective in learning English vocabulary for these students.

The present study reports the usefulness of online games in vocabulary learning of Iranian EFL students. The participants, (24) low-intermediate EFL learners, were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group learnt some new words via online computer games in 15 weeks. A vocabulary-based test, acting as pre-test and posttest, was conducted in the first and 15th weeks. The findings of the analyzed data indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group statistically significant in the post-test. Therefore, on line games proved to be more effective in learning English vocabulary for these students.

This paper aims to describe users' tagging behavior in catalogues and in Flickr. Six platforms of two institutions and one consortium are analyzed: the main catalogue Discovery and Flickr page of the National Archives of the United Kingdom, the main catalogue Explore, the catalogue Archives and Manuscripts and Flickr page of the British Library, and the consortial search engine of the pan-European eBooks on Demand Library Network. The results of the document and user data analysis point to differences between archival and library collections, between catalogues and Flickr, illustrate the impact of different authorization and procedural rules, and confirm previous studies as regards to the small size of the active user group. Based on the data analysis, we offer eight recommendations for social tagging in libraries and archives concerning the issues of interface functionality and management, data collection, reflection of tags and maintaining the community.

The purpose of this study is to determine the difference between two groups of students as regards to vocabulary size levels after the implementation of vocabulary enhancement activities. While the students in control group followed the regular curriculum including the second one thousand most frequent words in English, the students in experimental group had a fourteen-week schedule of vocabulary implementation with enhancement activities consisting of the second one thousand most frequent words in English integrated into the regular curriculum. The sampling of the study consists of the students from a vocational school in Yalova. A total of 88 male, second-grade students participated in the study in the academic year of 2010–2011. This study adopted Version 1 of the Vocabulary Levels Test (Schmitt, 2000) as an instrument to examine the students' general vocabulary size levels. After the implementation period, it was observed that there was a significant difference between the experimental and the control groups in favour of the experimental group in terms of vocabulary size levels.

Based on the uses and gratifications perspective, personality was expected to relate to violent video game play frequency and game preferences. Participants completed measures of personality and frequency of violent video game play, and identified their most frequently played video games. Results indicate that individuals higher in openness but lower in agreeableness played violent video games more frequently. In addition, more open and extroverted but less agreeable and neurotic individuals generally preferred to play video games that are more violent. Results suggest personality may be more predictive of violent video game use than traditional media use, though the predictive personality dimensions may be consistent across media types.

This research examines the effect of a Facebook game (Pearl Peril) that requires English
vocabulary knowledge on students’ English vocabulary development. The participants of the
study include 7th year students in a private middle school in Turkey. Of the experimental
models, this study uses a pretest-posttest control group model. Initially, a vocabulary test that
was developed by the researchers was conducted on 81 middle school students in Edirne for
analyzing validity and reliability. Subsequently, this test was applied as a pretest to both control
and experiment groups. Following the application of the pretest, students in the experiment
group were required to play Pearl Peril for one month. In the course of this one month, the
words in Pearl Peril were taught to control group in regular classes as a part of the syllabus. At
the end of this procedure, the vocabulary test that was used as a pretest was administered to
both groups this time as a posttest. The study results show a significant difference between the
test scores of the control and experiment groups. Thus, the current study is important in terms
of exemplifying how to benefit from various social media applications in educational practices.

Son yıllarda internet alanında yaşanan hızlı gelişim ve değişim insanların paylaşma duygularını da sanal ortama taşımıştır. İnsanlardaki bu gelişim, değişim ve etkileşim sayesinde oldukça popüler bir hal alan sosyal ortamlar hemen her yaştan kullanıcısıyla devamlı ziyaret edilen siteler konumundadır. Gençlerin sosyal ağları sadece paylaşım ve iletişim amaçlı değil de, aynı zaman da çeşitli oyunlar oynayarak eğlence ve keyif alma aracı olarak da kullandığı genel olarak bilinmektedir. Eğitimciler arasında, sosyal ağlarda çevrimiçi oyunlar için harcanan önemli zamanların akademik, kişisel ve sosyal olarak olumsuz etkilere sebep olabileceği hakkında genel bir kanı vardır. İnternet yoluyla öğretimde öğretimsel oyun, her zaman bir "oyun" olarak görülmez, çünkü oyun oynarken öğrenmekte bir öğrenmedir. 248 öğrenci ile yapılan bu araştırmanın sonuçları gösteriyor ki sosyal ağ oyunları eğitsel yararlar da sağlayabilir. Bu araştırmanın sonuçları öğrencilerin farkında olmadan sosyal ağlar üzerindeki popüler oyunlardan önemli sayıda yabancı kelime öğrenebileceklerini göstermektedir.

This paper explores the integration of social networks with crowdsourcing games for generating archival metadata. We studied crowdsourcing, gamification and social dynamics from the perspective of cultural heritage and combined their features in a metadata game prototype on the Facebook platform. We tested our prototype and evaluated its results by analysing participation, contribution and player feedback. The two-week testing phase showed promising results in terms of user engagement and produced metadata. We conclude that deploying metadata games on social networking platforms is a feasible method for digital archives to harness human intelligence from large shared spaces.

Social network games embedded within social network sites (SNSs) such as Facebook facilitate play with "Friends" within the SNS. In this study, we look at different dimensions of how game play contributes to relationship initiation and development using qualitative data collected from adult Facebook users (N=18). Our data suggest that interpersonal motivations are a primary driver of initial game play and that while game play doesn't facilitate direct social interaction, participants perceive indirect interaction and sharing game-based content as useful in maintaining and even enhancing relationships.

The online games market has matured in recent years. It is now a multi-billion dollar business with hundreds of millions players worldwide. At the same time, social networking platforms have witnessed unprecedented growth rates and increasingly offer developer interfaces to leverage and extend their built-in core functionality. Benefiting from these trends, games with a purpose are a proven way of leveraging the wisdom of the crowds to address tasks that are trivial for humans but still not solvable by computer algorithms in a satisfying manner. This paper presents an application framework to develop interactive games with a purpose on top of social networking platforms, suitable for deployment in both mobile and Web-based environments. A set of analytic tools helps to evaluate the results and to pre-process the gathered data for use in external applications.

"Wohn, D. Y., & Lee, Y-H. (2013). Players of Facebook games and how they play. Entertainment Computing, 4(3), 171-178

This study examined the characteristics of people who play social network games–games that incorporate network data from social network sites. Using the framework of uses and gratifications with social
cognitive theory, we conducted a survey (N= 164) of Facebook game players and identified four motivations and unpacked play into seven different types. We then looked at the relationships between motivations, types of play, and individual characteristics such as gender, age, and cultural differences. We
found that motivations previously identified as being ‘‘social’’ split into two categories: building common
ground with existing acquaintances, and design-driven reciprocal behavior. Building common ground
was associated with stronger use of space customization, spending real money, communicating about
game achievements, and exchanging gifts. However, we found that more people were using the games
as a coping mechanism and to pass time rather than using it for social purposes. Individual differences
are also discussed."

Social network games embedded within social network sites (SNSs) such as Facebook facilitate play with "Friends" within the SNS. In this study, we look at different dimensions of how game play contributes to relationship initiation and development using qualitative data collected from adult Facebook users (N=18). Our data suggest that interpersonal motivations are a primary driver of initial game play and that while game play doesn't facilitate direct social interaction, participants perceive indirect interaction and sharing game-based content as useful in maintaining and even enhancing relationships.

Abstract Social network games embedded within social network sites (SNSs) such as Facebook facilitate play with" Friends" within the SNS. In this study, we look at different dimensions of how game play contributes to relationship initiation and development using qualitative data collected from adult Facebook users (N= 18).

Abstract This article describes a novel approach to linguistic field research consisting in exploiting the self-regulation of a market for collecting data on language use. The market is conceived as an output-agreement game with a purpose called Borsa Parole. The agreement can be traded with by the players what makes it adjustable. Borsa Parole has been conceived and is deployed for a linguistic study on the divergence of Italian dialects and vernaculars.

Abstract Creating descriptive labels for pictures is an important task with applications in image retrieval, Web accessibility and computer vision. Automatic creation of such labels is difficult, especially for pictures of artworks.“Games With A Purpose” strive to create image descriptions by harnessing the intelligence of human players. Existing implementations are highly successful in terms of player count and number of collected labels, but hardly create comprehensive tag sets containing both general and specific labels.

Digital games embedded in social network sites are one of the driving forces behind the expansion of digital gamer populations. Previous studies have observed different usage patterns between users in different ethnic groups and countries, suggesting that culture orientations may affect how people play and interact through social network games. This study examined how people’s culture orientations affect usage patterns with measures of vertical and horizontal individualism–collectivism. The findings indicate that culture does not directly affect usage patterns. Instead, the effects on usage patterns are mediated by people’s expected outcomes of playing social network games. Vertical culture orientations predicted social expected outcomes. Individualism predicted status expected outcomes, but in different directions on the dimensions of vertical or horizontalness. Vertical collectivism was the only culture orientation that indirectly predicted buying in-game products with real money. Implications for game designers and markers are discussed

This study tests assumptions that media consumption is, for the most part, automatic
behavior. A regression model examining predictors of time spent playing social
network games indicates that habit strength, not conscious motivations, is the most
salient and significant predictor. Furthermore, specific features of game play that
require repetitive activities contribute to habit. The results were consistent with literature in automaticity, and suggest that habit be included in future studies exploring
online media use.

Recently the use of social network sites have emerged as one of the most important and time-consuming online activities. In the large and diversified social network scenario Facebook emerged as one of the most important sites at least in the United States and in Europe. In the Facebook-based gaming scene Playfish, a UK based company, has recently gained a leading position with more than 50 million registered players. The paper will analyze these five games, observing, starting from Playfish’s games, on Facebook games use the social network site and the social relationships between players as a core element for the game experience. In SNS several different contexts of life seems to exist one near the others and eventually overlapping. Closest friends with co-workers, relatives with ex-schoolmates: the paper will present how the new SNS environment can be used for gaming and how gaming activities change when they enter the collapsed context of SNSs.
Author Keywords:
SOCIAL NATWORKS, SOCIAL GAMES, SOCIAL CAPITALS, ONLINE GAMING, FACEBOOK

The audience of social network games is an as of yet unexplored group. Given the growing number of users and people spending time playing social network games, a better understanding of the audience, and how they are using social network games is important to crafting better social networking tools in the future. Respondents of this survey reported personality factors, demographics, habit strength, self-efficacy of social network games, and types of use by different features.

Social network games embedded within social network sites (SNSs) such as Facebook facilitate play with "Friends" within the SNS. In this study, we look at different dimensions of how game play contributes to relationship initiation and development using qualitative data collected from adult Facebook users (N=18). Our data suggest that interpersonal motivations are a primary driver of initial game play and that while game play doesn't facilitate direct social interaction, participants perceived indirect interaction and sharing game-based content was useful in maintaining and even enhancing relationships.

Social network games (SNG) are an extremely popular and rapidly growing application of social network sites (SNS). But are SNGs really social? A survey based on a social cognitive theory approach to uses and gratifications revealed that people are motivated to play the game to create common ground, reciprocate, cope, and pass time.

People play SNGs to create common ground for future social interaction rather than seeking direct social interaction in the game. Customization was strongly correlated with social motivations; in particular, use of avatar customization was different from use of space customization. Reciprocity was facilitated more by the design of the game than social motives.

Social network games embedded within social network sites (SNSs) such as Facebook facilitate play with “Friends” within the SNS. In this study, we look at different dimensions of how game play contributes to relationship initiation and development using qualitative data collected from adult Facebook users (N=18). Our data suggest that interpersonal motivations are a primary driver of initial game play and that while game play doesn’t facilitate direct social interaction, participants perceive indirect interaction and sharing game-based content as useful in maintaining and even enhancing relationships.

This thesis work researches the hypothesis that people with certain personality traits would prefer certain video game genres. The motivation is to contribute to demographic game design by identifying gamers’ personality profiles in order to better satisfy their needs and enjoyment. A Gaming Preferences Questionnaire was developed and validated to identify gamers’ preferences. The NEO-FFI questionnaire based on the Five Factor model was selected for measuring gamers’ personality traits.
Data from 545 participants was analyzed by multiple linear regression. Eight game genre models were found statistically significant, and accounted for 2.6% to 7.5% of gamers’ preferences for game genres based on personality factors. The relevant personality traits of the models matched game elements of the genre. This work shows that a refined itemization helps to begin to understand the psychological human complexity that drives players’ preferences.

Keywords: personality; game elements; game preference; genre; demographic game design.