In this paper we argue that Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), also known as Large Games are an interesting research tool for policy experimentation. One of the major problems with lawmaking is that testing the laws is a difficult enterprise. Here we show that the concept of an MMOG can be used to experiment with environmental laws on a large scale, provided that the MMOG is a real gam...

Although conflict is widely acknowledged as critical to virtual teams, little is known regarding the interplay between different types of conflict and the corresponding conflict management styles in virtual teams. This paper examines the influence of relationship as well as process conflict on team performance together with adequate conflict management styles. Using survey and archival data fro...

0747-5632/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. A http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.04.018 ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (B.D. Hom edu (E.O. Hayward), [email protected] (J. Frye), ja The present study explores the relation among different characteristics of preadolescents and their video game habits and preferences. Specifically, the predictive power of age...

This paper proposes a model for co-creation of games as alternative media. The model uses actual play practices to understand the political and cultural influence co-creation might have in the relationship between the owner of the game and the players. The model requires for player creation of a text or communication infrastructure that changes the properties of the game from which play emerges...

Recent research suggests that infants' understanding of the physical world is more complex and adult-like than previously believed. One of the most impressive discoveries has been infants' ability to reason about medium-sized, material objects. They are able to individuate objects in a scene, and to enumerate and reason about them. This article reports a series of experiments investigating 8-mo...

Nowadays the product warranty is considered to be a valuable attribute of the product. It is a tool to enforce the competing power of the producer on the market place. There are two types of problems the product warranty addresses. Firstly, warranty deals with the malfunctioning of the product and, secondly, it addresses the information asymmetry, i.e., the misunderstanding and misinterpretatio...

Manufacturers supplying products under warranty need a strategy to deal with failures during the warranty period: repair the product or replace it by a new one, depending on e.g. age and/or usage of the failed product. An (implicit) assumption in virtually all models is that new products to replace the failed ones are immediately available at given replacement costs. Because of the short life c...

Molecular chaperones assist de novo protein folding and facilitate the refolding of stress-denatured proteins. The molecular chaperone concept was coined nearly 35 years ago, and since then, tremendous strides have been made in understanding how these factors support protein folding. Here, we focus on how various chaperone proteins were first identified to play roles in protein folding. Example...

Despite offering themselves as universes vastly alternative to our own, the majority of 3D Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games work to a strict profi le of reward systems which serve to group players and places around sets of action types. In contradiction to the promised inexhaustibility of a “VR,” today’s MMORPGs are designed and held together by amplifi ed constructions of passag...