Massive Online Games Research Articles

Play and Learn with Tradisional Local Wisdom Game in School

In Indonesia, the number of online game addicted in children was experienting a very dangerous development. One doctor predicted that the highers number of online game addicted was Asia. This is very ironic. Since the first, the Indonesian nation has had many traditional games that can be used in learning activities at school. This traditional game was very beneficial for the development of children's abilities, especially children's motoric skills. In the midst of the dangers of massive online games, the RA Nurul Ulum educational institution in Sumbersalak Village used traditional local wisdom game methods and media in every learning activity. This was done so that the students continue to love and preserve the educational games of traditional local wisdom. From this background, this study aims at describing the application of traditional games in improving the gross motoric skills of early childhood in RA. The research method used was a descriptive qualitative approach. The results of the research show that the traditional local wisdom games used are engklek and jumping rope games. The application of this game can improve gross motoric skills in early childhood, stimulated children in developing cooperation, make children more creative, active, adept at jumping, jumping and being responsible in a game. From the application of this traditional game, children's gross motoric skills developed more rapidly and children get to know traditional games and their types.

The use of Massive Online Games in game-based learning activities

The popularity of massively multiplayer online games such as Minecraft and Roblox has aroused the attention of teachers and educational researchers in the past decade. The purpose of this paper is to provide preliminary classroom experience using Roblox in game-based learning activities through action research. Convenience and quota sampling were used, intervening in four groups from different educational levels: 1 secondary, 1 high school, and 2 colleges. The learning activities with Roblox were conducted during the 2020-2021 academic year during the COVID-19 pandemic that forced Mexican schools to go digital. Roblox was used to learn content (like dinosaurs, contagious diseases, system definition) and interpersonal skills (negotiation, cooperation). The participants’ learning perception was explored through quantitative and qualitative data. Findings suggest that students enjoyed the Roblox learning activity as it allowed social interaction between classmates. The students evaluated the learning through the Roblox activity class on different scales (3,08; 3,18; 4,07 and 4,21 on the Likert scale). The results indicate that there are generational differences between groups. Finally, the paper offers concrete suggestions for the use of Roblox in the educational context.

Tutorials

The tutorials presented at ICWSM 2013 included Advanced Methods for Collecting Social Science Data in the Social Media Field, presented by Riki Conrey; Information-Theoretic Tools for Social Media Analysis, presented by Greg Ver Steeg and Aram Galstyan; Crisis Mapping, Citizen Sensing, and Social Media Analytics: Leveraging Citizen Roles for Crisis Response, presented by Amit Sheth, Patrick Meier, Carlos Castillo, and Hemant Purohit; Multiple Network Models for Complex Online Social Network Analysis, presented by Matteo Magnani and Luca Rossi; and Pulse of Virtual Worlds: Behavioral Mining and SNA in Massive Online Games, presented by Muhammad Ahmad and Jaideep Srivastava.

GCI: A GPU Based Transfer Learning Approach for Detecting Cheats of Computer Game

Cheating in massive multiple online games (MMOGs) adversely affect the game's popularity and reputation among its users. Therefore, game developers invest large amount of efforts to detect and prevent cheats that provide an unfair advantage to cheaters over other naive users during game play. Particularly, MMOG clients share data with the server during game play. Game developers leverage this data to detect cheating. However, detecting cheats is challenging mainly due to the limited client-side information, along with unknown and complex cheating techniques. In this paper, we aim to leverage machine learning based models to predict cheats over encrypted game traffic during game play. Concretely, network game traffic during game play from each player can be used to determine whether a cheat is employed. A major challenge in developing such a prediction model is the availability of sufficient training data, which is sparingly available in practice. Game traffic obtained from a few known players can be easily labeled. However, if such players are not a good representation of the population (i.e., other players), then a supervised model trained on labeled game traffic from these set of players may not generalize well for the population. Here, we propose a Graphics Processing Unit

What's in a name? Ages and names predict the valence of social interactions in a massive online game

Multi-player online battle arena games (MOBAs) are large virtual environments requiring complex problem-solving and social interaction. We asked whether these games generate psychologically interesting data about the players themselves. Specifically, we asked whether user names, which are chosen by players outside of the game itself, predicted in-game behaviour. To examine this, we analysed a large anonymized dataset from a popular MOBA (‘League of Legends’) – by some measures the most popular game in the world.We find that user names contain two pieces of information that correlate with in-game social behaviour. Both player age (estimated from numerical sequences within name) and the presence of highly anti-social words are correlated with the valences of player/player interactions within the game.Our findings suggest that players' real-world characteristics influence behaviour and interpersonal interactions within online games. Anonymized statistics derived from such games may therefore be a valuable tool for studying psychological traits across global populations.

Pink and Blue Pixel$: Gender and Economic Disparity in Two Massive Online Games

Information and communication technologies are blurring the boundaries between work and play. We present the first empirical investigation of gender gaps in virtual game economies. Analyzing big data sets from two major game economies, we find that player gender and character gender influence virtual wealth in different ways in different games. We conclude that this can be explained by different returns on female- and male-dominated play activities, that is, virtual pink- and blue-collar occupations. As the line between work and play increasingly blurs, researchers should track which occupations get to keep their conventional economic rewards, and which end up being remunerated in play money.

Uses of ethnography in image-based virtual worlds

Ethnography is a well-established technique in social sciences research, especially in Anthropology. However, the new communication spaces mediated by technology have presented challenges to its application, in the face of deterritorialization, anonymity and registers limited mostly to the written text. This allowed the appearance of various adaptations of ethnography for the online environment, addressing the typical characteristics of websites, discussion forums, social networks, chats, and MUDs1. Nonetheless, the massive online games, known as MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing) strongly incorporate the image in their interactive experience, featuring graphic avatars2, gesture interactions between characters and a simulated experience of the visual world in three dimensions. Moreover, one can see the formation of identities that expand themselves beyond the game by using other online channels and reaching the offline realm. These innovations open new dimensions for the use of ethnography (including visual anthropology) in online virtual worlds requiring adaptations of the existing techniques. We made a review of the main ethnographic techniques applied to the online environment and we discuss modifications that the specific characteristics of the MMORPGs would make in such techniques. We conclude that the imagetic aspect and the ambiance based on the three-dimensional environment of such games in a certain way enable the application of the most classical techniques of ethnography.

The game-frame guild

Four Brazilian geeks dream of creating the next big hit in massive online games - with creativity a bit of luck, and an IBM mainframe.

Security issues in massive online games

AbstractIn this paper, an investigation is conducted on the security issues in massive multiplayer games. A taxonomy framework for online cheating is provided. Under this proposed framework, online cheating is classified and state of the art counter‐cheating techniques are analysed with emphasis on attacks that pose a considerable challenge to the security of massive multiplayer online games. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.