• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.69-98
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• 2009

We investigated what factors motivate gamers to participate in a guild and why they continue to be engaged as members of the guild. We find that, based on the result of focus group interviews with MMORPG gamers, social support and self-esteem factors play important roles. Considering both prior research and the focus group interviews we have conducted, we define social support and character control as independent variables. Character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem are proposed as mediating variables while guild flow and game loyalty as dependent variables. Accordingly, we develop the research model and hypotheses, and verify them empirically. Based on our experiences of playing the WoW game, we proposed a research model and conducted focus-group interviews (FGIs). FGIs involve formulating a hypothesis and then collecting some relevant data. FGIs were conducted face-to-face with students of C University in Korea. We formulated structured interview schedules, and the questions were based on our research variables and personal experiences. The questions for the interviews encompassed the following areas: (a) the demographic characteristics of the focus group; (b) the number of years for which respondents had played online games; (c) the motive for starting a game; (d) the number of game-characters assumed by each gamer; (e) the type of game played; and (f) other issues such as the reasons for involvement in the play, the willingness to reuse the game in case new versions were released, etc. On average, it took two hours to interview each of three groups. A primary set of FGIs was conducted with three groups on the premise that there would be some differences caused by character race (Horde vs. Alliance) or by playable server (Normal vs. Combat). With respect to the manner of playing, we found that guild members shared information, felt a sense of belonging, and played computer games for quite a long time through the guild; however, they did not undergo these experiences when playing alone. Gamers who belonged to a specific guild helped other players without expecting compensation for that, freely shared information about the game, gave away items for free, and more generous with other members who made mistakes. The guild members were aware of the existence other members and experienced a sense of belonging through interactions with, and evaluations from, other players. It was clear that social support was shown within the guild and that it played an important role as a major research variable. Based on the results of the first FGIs, a second set of in-depth FGIs was carried out with a focus on the psychology of the individual within the guild and the social community of the guild. The second set of FGIs also focused on the guild's offline meetings. Gamers, over all, recognize the necessity of joining a community, not only off-line but also online world of the guild. They admit that the guild is important for them to easily and conveniently enjoy playing online computer games. The active behavior and positive attitudes of existing guild members can motivate new members of the guild to adapt themselves to the guild environment. They then adopt the same behaviors and attitudes of established guild members. In this manner, the new members of the guild strengthen the bonds with other gamers while feeling a sense of belonging, and developing social identity, thereby. It was discovered that the interaction among guild members and the social support encouraged new gamers to quickly develop a sense of social identity and increase their self-esteem. The guild seemed to play the role of socializing gamers. Sometimes, even in the real world, the guild members helped one another; therefore, the features of the guild also spilled over to the offline environment. We intend to use self-esteem, which was found through the second set of FGIs, as an important research variable. To collect data, an online survey was designed with a questionnaire to be completed by WoW gamers, who belong to a guild. The survey was registered on the best three domestic game-sites: 'WoW playforum,' 'WoW gamemeca,' and 'Wow invent.' The selected items to be measured in the questionnaire were decided based on prior research and data from FGIs. To verify the content of the questionnaire, we carried out a pilot test with the same participants to point out ambiguous questions as a way to ensure maximum accuracy of the survey result. A total of 244 responses were analyzed from the 250 completed questionnaires. The SEM analysis was used to test goodness-of-fit of the model. As a result, we found important results as follows: First, according to the statistics, social support had statistically significant impacts on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Second, character control had significant effects on character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity shows its clear impact on self-esteem and game loyalty. Fourth, guild identity affected self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Fifth, self-esteem had a positive influence on the guild flow. These days, the number of virtual community is rising along with its significance largely because of the nature of the online games. Accordingly, this study is designed to clarify the psychological relationship between gamers within the guild that has been generally established by gamers to play online games together. This study focuses on the relationships in which social support influences guild flow or game loyalty through character control, character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem, which are present within a guild in the MMORPG game environment. The study results are as follows. First, the effects of social support on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem are proven to be statistically significant. It was found that character control improves character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Among the seven variables, social support, which is derived from FGIs, plays an important role in this study. With the active support of other guild members, gamers can improve their ability to develop good characters and to control them. Second, character identity has a positive effect on self-esteem and game loyalty, while guild identity has a significant effect on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Self-esteem affects guild flow. It was found that the higher the character and guild identities become, the greater the self-esteem is established. Contrary to the findings of prior research, our study results indicate that the relationship between character identity and guild flow is not significant. Rather, it was found that character identity directly affects game players' loyalty. Even though the character identity had no direct effect on increasing guild flow, it has indirectly affected guild flow through self-esteem. The significant relationship between self-esteem and guild flow indicates that gamers achieve flow, i.e., a feeling of pleasure and excitement through social support. Several important implications of this study should be noted. First, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to conduct this study. Through FGIs, it was observed that both social support and self-esteem are important variables. Second, because guilds had been rarely studied, this research is expected to play an important role in the online community. Third, according to the result, six hypotheses (H1, H5, H6, H7, H8, and H11) setup based on FGIs, were statistically significant; thus, we can suggest the corresponding relationships among the variables as a guideline for follow-up research. Our research is significant as it has following implications: first, the social support of the guild members is important when establishing character control, character identity, guildidentity and self-esteem. It is also a major variable that affects guild flow and game loyalty. Second, character control when improved by social support shows notable influence on the development of character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity and guild identity are major factors to help establish gamers' own self-esteem. Fourth, character identity affects guild flow through self-esteem and game loyalty. The gamers usually express themselves through characters; the higher character identity is, the more loyalty a gamer has. Fifth, guild identity, established within the guild, has clear effects on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Sixth, qualitative and quantitative methods are employed to conduct this study. Based on the results of focus group interviews and SEM analysis, we find that the social support by guild members and psychological factors are significant in strengthening the flow of guild and loyalty to the game. As such, game developers should provide some extra functions for guild community, through which gamers can play online games in collaboration with one another. Also, we suggest that positive self-esteem which is built up through social support can help gamers achieve higher level of flow and satisfaction, which will consequently contribute to minimizing the possibility for the players to develop negative attitude toward the guild they belong to.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.178-180
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• 2000

오늘날 온라인 게임은 TCP망을 이용하여 동시에 수백에서 수천명이 접속하여 게임을 증길 수 있는 클라이언트/서버 모델의 표준이지만 서버에 접속하는 클라이언트의 수가 증가함에 따라 나타나는 많은 문제점을 가지고 있다. 본 논문에서는 기존 네트웍 게임 엔진 구조적 단점을 보완한 3-tier 방식을 적용한 분산 네트웍 게입 서버를 위한 부하 분산기의 연구 및 개발에 대하여 서술한다. 이 시스템은 클라이언트/서버 모델의 2-tier 방식에서 오는 클라이언트 수 증가에 따른 네트웍 부하 가중에 대한 처리 문제와, 분산된 2-tier 방식을 적용한 서버에서 각 서버간의 통신, 데이터 공유에 대한 문제 등을 다루고 이에 대한 해결책으로 3-tier 방식을 적용하여 클라이언트/서버 사이에 각 서버의 사용자나 이동되는 데이터를 분산하고 모니터링하는 부하 분산기 시스템을 적용하여 위와 같은 문제점을 해결하였다.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2014.11a
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• pp.609-612
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• 2014

오늘날 신뢰할 수 있는 정보통신기술(Information and Communication Technology, ICT) 시스템의 중요성은 증대되고 있으며 그에 맞춰 고위험 시스템의 검증(Verification) 작업도 점점 체계화되고 있다. 반면 여전히 일반적인 소프트웨어들은 검증 과정을 인력에 의한 테스팅과 같은 기초적인 방법에 의존하고 있다. 본 논문에서는 그 대표적인 예인 온라인 게임 서버를 대상으로, SPIN 모델 체커(SPIN model checker)를 이용한 자동화 검증방법을 적용하는 실험적인 연구를 수행한다. 연구 결과 기존의 검증 과정으로는 파악하지 못한 오류를 파악할 수 있었고, 검증 비용도 납득할 만한 수준이라는 것을 확인하였다.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.377-387
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• 2004

This paper describes a tree-based conversational interface supporting efficient presentation of turn relations on online conversation. Most of conventional conversational interfaces are difficult to make use of formal conversation such as group meeting, decision-making, etc. due to very simplicity of a con versational interface and restriction of data structure of conversational messages. And a tree-based conversational interface supports formal conversation, but they are difficult to present turn relations because of jumpy display by locations of replied turns and distance between replied turns, etc. So this paper suggests a tree-based conversational interface to present efficiently turn relations using XML-based messages with merits of a text-based interface. The suggested conversational interface was implemented by using XML-, DOM, and JDK. And this paper showed that the conversational interface could be applied to conversation system using client- server architecture. Applications for the conversational interface are as follows: collaboration, distance teaming, online game, etc.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.55-61
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• 2024

In a hybrid architecture that combines the technological advantages of P2P(peer-to-peer) and cloud computing, it is possible to efficiently supply resources and allocate loads. In other words, by appropriately utilizing the processing power of the players constituting P2P as well as the server in the cloud computing environment, MMOG(Massively Multiplayer Online Game) can be configured that considers the scale of economic cost and service quality. In fact, the computing power and communication bandwidth of servers in the cloud are important demand-based resources. The more it is used when renting, the higher the cost, while the quality of service improves. On the other hand, if the player's processing power is utilized a lot, the quality of service deteriorates relatively while the economic cost decreases. In this paper, a bandwidth adjustment technique between servers and players for MMOG based on this hybrid structure is described. When the number of players running at the same time increases, the players' actions are appropriately distributed to servers and players to effectively utilize the server's computing power and communication volume. Simulation results show that in the MMOG based on cloud and P2P hybrid architecture, the bandwidth of the server is proportionally decreased as the bandwidth directly handled by players is increased.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.1183-1188
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• 2016

Kinect sensor version 2 is a kind of camera released by Microsoft as a computer vision and a natural user interface for game consoles like Xbox one. It allows acquiring color images, depth images, audio input and skeletal data with a high frame rate. In this paper, using depth image, we present a surveillance system of a certain area within Kinect's field of view. With computer vision library(Emgu CV), if an object is detected in the target area, it is tracked and kinect camera takes RGB image to send it in database server. Therefore, a mobile application on android platform was developed in order to notify the user that Kinect has sensed strange motion in the target region and display the RGB image of the scene. User gets the notification in real-time to react in the best way in the case of valuable things in monitored area or other cases related to a reserved zone.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.864-870
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• 2012

Voice pattern recognition technology to solve the problems of the existing problems and common issues that you may have in language learning content analysis. This is the first problem of language-learning content, online learning posture. Game open another web page through the lesson, but the concentration of the students fell. Have not been able to determine the second issue according Speaking has made the learning process actually reads. Third got a problem with the mechanical process by a learning management system, as well by the teacher in the evaluation of students and students who are learning progress between the difference in the two. Finally, the biggest problem, while maintaining their existing content made to be able to solve the above problem. Speaking learning dedicated learning programs under this background, voice pattern recognition technology learning process for speech recognition and voice recognition capabilities for learning itself has been used in the recognition process the data of the learner's utterance as an audio file of the desired change to a transfer to a specific location of the server or SQL server may be easily inserted into any system or program, any and all applicable content that has already been created without damaging the entire component because the new features were available. Contributed to this paper, active participation in class more interactive teaching methods to change.