Games as Information Systems

Tabletop gaming is currently experiencing a golden age. The size of the tabletop gaming industry and the number of people engaged with the hobby are at a peak, and are still increasing. However, what motivates people to engage with tabletop games is not well studied. This study aims to understand the motivations for tabletop game play; it does so by introducing a questionnaire, called the tabletop gaming motivation inventory (TGMI), to measure these motivations. The inventory is based on literature, in particular literature which deals with similar inventories used to investigate video gaming motivations. We carried out a survey with tabletop game players (N = 867). Our inventory is validated using factor analyses, which lead to a final questionnaire consisting of 11 factors based on 39 items. Moreover, we investigated how these motivations vary with respect to prior experience of players, their frequency of play and geographical locations.

This chapter describes an approach to evaluating user experience in video games and advanced interaction games (tabletop games) by using heuristics. We provide a short overview of computer games with a focus on advanced interaction games and explain the concept of user-centred design for games. Furthermore, we describe the history of heuristics for video games and the role of user experience of games in general. We propose a framework consisting of three sets of heuristics (game play/game story, virtual interface and tabletop specific) to detect the most critical issues in video games as well as advanced interaction games. To assess its applicability, we compare the results of expert evaluations of five current games with the user experience-based ratings of various game review sites. In the conclusion, we provide an outlook on possible extensions of our approach.

Re‐designing games facilitates interest‐driven learning and immerses learners in systems thinking. However, there are limited studies exploring how the form and function of tabletop games influence learners' design decisions and learning experiences. To address this gap, we conducted a mixed‐methods study in a STEM classroom in western Canada. Third and fourth graders re‐designed a tabletop game called Triominos while we collected data, including classroom videos, photos of students' work‐in‐progress, observation notes, semi‐structured interviews and final game designs. Our analysis was focused on their decisions about form and function during the re‐design process. Our findings revealed how learners translate their ideas about form and function into mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics. Our analyses show that re‐designing tabletop games can surface mathematical reasoning as learners iteratively align representations (tile forms and symbol systems) with rule logic (goals, scoring and constraints) to stabilize playable systems across cycles of prototyping and playtesting. This research underscores the importance of exploring various forms of systems for learning and encourages further research in this area.

The purpose of any social discipline is to understand the society through their theoretical perspectives. Human communication as a social science is also without exception, its purpose is to explain the society by means of inspecting the social information as well as the contents and extensions during the operation of social information system. Social together with its system are complex and comprehensive by nature, which determines human communication existing itself as a comprehensive science with multiple theories, aspects and perspectives. It is reasonable to study with the help of related theories of other subjects in facing concrete research issues and when the existing theories lack enough power to give an explanation. Interpersonal human communication is an important part in human life, the human communication study about is rather few, however. This paper is about to solve this problem, for current human communication cannot explain the barriers occurred in the interpersonal human communication. To deal with such issue that often happens in social life, the author is appeal to information system theories to explain that the trajectory of information changes in the course of human communication could cause barriers.

Evaluation of accessibility within a tabletop context is much more complicated than it is within a video game environment. There is a considerable amount of variation in game systems, game mechanisms, and interaction regimes. Games may be entirely verbal, or completely non-verbal. They might be real-time or turn based, or based on simultaneous actions. They can be competitive or co-operative, or shift from one to the other during a single game session. They might involve visual pattern recognition or force players to memorise game state without visual cues. They may involve touch, or smell. They might involve social deduction or betrayal. They can encompass all sensory faculties, in differing degrees. Almost all games have accessibility considerations that should be taken into account, but there is currently no comprehensive tool by which this can be done that encompasses the rich variety of tabletop gaming interaction metaphors. In this paper, the authors discuss the heuristic lens that is used by the Meeple Centred Design tabletop accessibility project. This is a tool that has been applied to one hundred and sixteen games to date, and the full results of these have been published for analysis and consideration within the wider tabletop gaming community.

Stories unfold across a varied landscape of mediums, including video games, tabletop games, interactive films, and traditional literary texts. As that landscape continues to diversify, educators and scholars face growing challenges conceptualizing reading in a way that captures the multifaceted, consequential ways that readers interact with and shape those stories. Building on New Literacy Studies, scholarship from games studies, and reader response theory, this theoretical article proposes a cross‐disciplinary model for understanding narrative interactivity in contemporary reading experiences: The Reader–Player Interactivity Framework. The authors analyze seven layers of narrative interactivity: embodied interaction, navigating and wayfinding, transactional meaning‐making, two forms of reader authorship, co‐constructing stories, and socially embedded meaning‐making. These categories provide a language for analyzing how readers, viewers, and players co‐construct stories in both fixed and variable narrative texts. The framework illuminates how meaning arises not only in explicitly interactive media, but across all forms of narrative, and provides literacy teachers and researchers with theoretical tools and explicit language for navigating varied types of texts and interactions. The article concludes by outlining implications for research and pedagogy in literacy education.

The object of this study is the process of estimation and control of an IT project. During the study, the problem of increasing the accuracy of estimating the efforts of an IT project to build an information system (IS) was solved. Research in this area is aimed at simplifying the original assessment methods or at applying elements of artificial intelligence to these methods. The task of the impact of the features of IS development methodology on effort assessment remains unexplored. During the study, the method of functional point analysis was modified. The proposed modification makes it possible to increase the accuracy of estimating efforts to build an IS under the conditions of re-using its individual functions. These conditions allow the construction of new system functions by reusing a previously developed function of the same system. The developed method was tested during the evaluation of efforts of an IT project to form the functional task "Forming and executing an individual plan for a research and teaching staff member of the department." The option of re-using one of the functions of a task during the construction of two other functions of the same task is considered. For this option, the estimate was 72 function points (the estimate using the standard method was 144 function points). The use of the results allows us to increase the accuracy in assessing the efforts of IT projects to construct IS under the conditions of applying the methodology of reuse of previously developed system elements. This, in turn, makes it possible to improve the accuracy of estimating time costs, personnel requirements, and financial costs for the implementation of IT projects for constructing IS. The results obtained are used to solve the task of estimating efforts during the planning of IT projects for developing information systems and their software

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the timeliness of information received during the implementation of any production process, as well as its qualitative composition, significantly affect the efficiency of this process. This is particularly important for agricultural production, as field operations are highly time-sensitive, both in terms of start-up and duration. The real possibility of a significant increase in the efficiency of production processes in crop production appeared at the current level of information technology and the spread of digitalization of various fields of activity. On the basis of existing methodological approaches to the system representation of objects of reality, we have developed an information system of the production process in crop production. The elements of the system are the amount of knowledge of specialists in the cultivation of crops, information about the composition of cultivation technologies, information about the objects processed in the implementation of production processes, recorded in any form replenished special knowledge, knowledge about the goals achieved in the implementation of production processes. Elements of the system are interconnected, developing in a certain way and, at the same time, limiting each other. The formalization of the relationships between elements of the information system allowed us to obtain ten equations with fifteen unknowns. To solve this system of equations, a set of simultaneous linear equations is presented. Five sets of simultaneous equations can be defined, depending on which of the relationships of the elements of the information system of the type fi will be broken. The obtained solutions will allow to quantify the volume of elements of the information system, which makes it very promising to use information technology management of production processes in crop production.

Emergence of new technologies and modernization of existing information technologies, development of information and telecommunication processing and storage systems have increase the level of information security, necessitating an increase of information security’s effectiveness with the complexity of data storage architecture. Security of information from unauthorized access is an essential measure to prevent material and non-material damage to its owner. So it is very important to take into account the efficiency of the subsystem of access control and data security in order to ensure security of some information system. Accordingly the threat of information leakage has made the means of information security and cyber security one of the mandatory characteristics of information and telecommunication systems and information security has become an integral part of professional function. Under conditions of the hybrid war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine? the number of cyber attacks on military information and telecommunication systems has increased. At the same time their technological complexity has increased too. This process necessitates the improvement of information security systems and the process of providing access to them by using modern types of users identification. Access control is an effective method of information security. It regulates the use of information system resources. User’s identification is an important and integral element of access control system. An analysis of modern types of users identification is presented in the paper. The technology of QR-code is considered: the principle of formation, the types of coding, the structure of elements, the advantages of its usage. The interconnection between its components was established. Prospects for further research are the development of an algorithm and software application for user identification to provide access by QR-code to information and telecommunication systems for military purposes.

Hard engineering approaches to information systems development seem to be having a hard time recently. the methods are accused of a confusion between the computer based elements of an information system and the system itself (for example, Stowell, 1991) and of a (naive?) assumption that the system objectively exists “out there” (for discussions, see Klein and Hirscheim, 1987; Hirscheim and Klein, 1989; Stowell, 1991; Jayaratna, 1992; Lewis, 1992). in contrast, there is in soft approaches an emphasis that information systems are human activity systems, that they have no independent existence but are socially constructed by the individuals or groups that use them (a sample of discussions in the literature are Lyttinen and Klein, 1985; Liebenau and Backhouse, 1990; Stephens and Wood, 1991). So information systems, it is argued, cannot be investigated or developed using methods that assume they “objectively exist”, but must be interpreted using methods that recognise their subjective and social nature (Checkland, 1981; Boland, 1985; Winograd and Flores, 1987; Oliga, 1988; Jayaratna, 1988).

The essential elements of an informing system are a sender, a communications pathway, and a client. Academic informing systems, however, are best viewed as two interacting informing systems, one that informs clients of a discipline, one that informs clients of the institution. The paper proposes that the greater the degree of overlap between the clients of these two systems, the stronger the position of an individual discipline is likely to be. MIS is presented as an example of a disciplinary informing system that has ceased to inform external clients. This situation, it is argued, is likely to result in the discipline's downfall. The informing sciences transdiscipline itself is then examined using the same lens. While much younger than MIS, the paper argues that informing sciences needs to begin its search for clients in earnest. Building upon lessons learned from another transdiscipline, complex systems, a series of concrete recommendations are presented.

This paper describes the structure of a concept of the land brigade command information system that is a product of the research work of numerous experts throughout the years done in the then-Yugoslav Army, Army of Serbia and Montenegro and today's Army of the Republic of Serbia. The institution formed for this purpose is the Centre for Command Information Systems and Information Support where command information systems are studied continuously and systematically. Today the KIS represents a primary source needed to obtain an efficient military command management system and an instrument for multiplying combat power without increasing the number of units and combat resources. The KIS is a complex multidisciplinary system requiring the implementation of prototype evolution methodology. Due to its complexity, importance end sensitivity, the KIS has to be realized in one's own military R&D institutions belonging to the Ministry of defense, because only these institutions have adequate knowledge and facilities. Fast and ad-hoc solutions in this area are unacceptable from the military, specialized and economic point of view. The primary KIS br KoV structure concept relies on six types of KIS, five technical subsystems and a number of adequate information systems. The key segment are technical systems that represent one open technical and technological (hardware and software) platform in the realization of any KIS type. The KIS is a dynamic permanent system following the users' needs and technical technology changes. It is not, therefore, a closed and finally defined system, it is the system in continuous evolution, under construction and implementations. Introduction The concept described in this paper is the result of work of numerous people, authors included, engaged in the last twenty years of KIS research. The real balance of forces in combat does not depend so much on the potentials of warring parties but rather on the efficiency of command of combat units as well as of the speed of collecting, analyzing and using information with the main goal to make the optimal decision and make the most of one's own potentials, terrain features and enemy's weaknesses. Command and information systems A general definition of command and information systems is that they are the collection of hardware and software solutions used for real-time integration of all organizational structures, military doctrines, technical and technology systems, information flows and processes aiming at the realization of efficient and rational functioning of the military (units, headquarters, etc.). Basic elements in analyzing command management and command information systems A command information system is an element of the land brigade command system intended for the support of command management in securing and leading complex combat operations. The basic principles of the KIS architecture evolution The key factor is the fact that the KIS is a very complex multidisciplinary system requiring the application of the methodology of prototype evolution together with encompassing human and material resources for better effectiveness. Concept of the land brigade command information system On the basis of long-term research and the obtained experiences with practical solutions, the concept of the KIS br KoV is based on the decomposition model of the military command management system which is decomposed onto functional parts (macro-functions) and command unit operations in real time during combat. Conclusion Command information systems (KIS) today represent the basic instrument for efficient military command management systems rather than an instrument for the multiplication of combat power without increasing the number of units and combat resources. The KIS is a complex multidisciplinary system requiring the application of the prototype evolution methodology.

Indonesia is known as a country with high disaster risk. Many disasters occur such as earthquakes, tsunami, landslides, and floods. Therefore an efficient and effective disaster management system becomes a priority among the government programs. One element of disaster management system is the humanitarian logistics, which is important in handling the logistics of the stuff needed by the victims of the disaster. There are red cross application from many countries, however only few application that relate donor, volunteer and logistics. By implementing this system, the victims of the disaster can receive any stuff needed on time and in sufficient quantity. Information system is an important factor in handling an efficient logistics. Therefore this paper is discussing a humanitarian information system that has been developed. The system is developed using deep interview process, on side visitation and modelling process. The information system is developed using an integrated web-based model under the coordination of Red Cross Indonesia (IRC), East Java province. In this research, the integration system involves many parties such as supermarkets, donors, volunteers, and disaster posts. The result of this research is a logistics information system design including Web-based User Interface for the administrator, donors, shelters, supermarkets and mobile device user interface designed for volunteers. The user interface will help Indonesia Red Cross to collect stuffs and distribute them to victims more efficient after the user interfaces have been approved the head of Indonesia Red Cross.

Introduction In every working area, assets are exposed to risk of various harms. In the information technology area, there is risk of damaging or losing resources. Risk assessment is a process that determines what information resources require protection, and it documents potential risks from IT security failures that may cause loss of information confidentiality, integrity, or availability. The purpose of risk assessment is to help management create appropriate strategies and controls for the steering of information assets (BSI Standard 100-1,2,3), (ENISA Regulation). IT resources are tangible assets (such as hardware, equipment, buildings), data, documents, software, users, and intangible resources (reputation, confidence, etc.) Management of the information system (IS) is a component of the company management and makes its inherent part. The planning of the continuity of IS operation and development must be entirely coordinated with the same activities on the company level. Both short-term and long-term strategies must be harmonized within the framework of business, development, changes, and planning. Risk management and its maintenance on an acceptable level is part of the work process and its development. Its basic characteristic must be continuity (Nikolic, 2007). The chosen acceptable risk level after the implementation of particular measures also means a decision on balance referring to costs concerning the achievement of the selected risk level and benefits, i.e., profit of the company. Methodology The methodology of risk assessment implies recognized procedure (Macdonald, 2004), detailed system description, identification of hazards, defining causes of emphasized hazards, risk assessment, measures for risk reduction and mitigation, risk reassessment according to remaining hazards, and conducting measures for maintaining risk at an accepted level. Figure 1 displays the methodology of risk assessment with elements of the risk management system. Risk assessment in the IT area can be conducted by way of various methods. We use the method established and developed by our expert team (Nikolic & Laban 2008). The method was created for the occupational health and safety area, and is successfully applied in the IT area as described in Nikolic and Ruzic-Dimitrijevic (2009). This method enables the achievement of one of the main goals of risk assessment: risk assessment for every employee, workplace, and work environment, i.e., the assessment of all risks. The work environment can be a company, building, floor, or office. It can also be a plant, building site, park, field, or any system, as well as an information system and its components, such as hardware, communication equipment (network), and system software. The workplace in an information system is application software with data as final products, and it can be considered in the same way as in the occupational health and safety area. IT resources are buildings, hardware, communication equipment, software, data, and, of course, people who take part in IT processes. Risk assessment is carried out on more levels (items in the work environment). Software also has several levels--environmental software, operating system, program supported application, and finally a single application--as well as the data used and gained in application executing. Risk assessment of each level involves conducting appropriate protective measures in order to obtain the layered protection. Therefore, the risk assessment of an information system (IS) is conducted through the risk assessment of every application and through the evaluation of the system's state. Risk identification involves the knowledge about the organization (internal and external), as well as earlier experiences about risk issues. The evaluation of risk classifies risk in certain categories (quantitative and/or qualitative) according to which adequate measures are carried out. …