Today’s students, who are exposed to various kinds of death and loss through SNS and games, require education that responds to the changing ways of perceiving death and life in new media. Games as a form of active learning-type classes can be an educational method that responds to such contemporary situations. In this study, we measured the effects of an intervention using the "Giving Meaning to Loss Experience Scale" and the "Self-Growth Feeling Resulting Scale" on 115 students at X University in order to examine the effects of education through a game on the theme of death and loss. The results of a two-factor analysis of variance using the data of the responses before and after the experience of this game showed that "Giving Meaning to Loss Experience Scale" was significantly higher. In addition, the results of the simultaneous multipopulation analysis showed a different model for the groups with and without death learning experience, suggesting that the impact of games about death and loss such as this game differs depending on whether the group has or has not had a death learning experience.

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In recent years, the "otaku talents" have been gaining increasing attention as a distinctive quality for professionals navigating the VUCA era. Conversely, in industries that are traditionally perceived to have a higher proportion of otaku individuals, it is presumed that these industries hold different expectations for otaku talents compared with mainstream corporations. In this research, the ability expected to be developed or enhanced by deeply engaging in any form of hobby, which can be applied in other domains, is defined as "otaku power." Individuals possessing this ability are termed "otaku talents." Building on this definition, this study employed the M-GTA method to examine the potential of otaku power that corporations in the gaming industry anticipate. Consequently, seven concepts were identified: two related to the strategies for hiring otaku talents, three regarding the potential of otaku power, and two about the environment conducive to harnessing otaku power, cumulatively forming a conceptual framework. The central narrative underscores that the capability acquired from deeply immersing oneself in a subject matter, the drive to proactively disseminate one ’s activities, and the competence to connect with peers encountered through these activities can collectively foster positive effects, offering potential advantages in professional contexts. We further infer that innovative approaches to work selection and interview processes are crucial in recruiting otaku talent. In addition, for the optimal utilization of otaku power, a congenial environment for these talents, complemented by the presence of managers equipped with otaku power, is essential.

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In the field of game graphics, Fresnel's equation is often used to calculate surface reflections. Furthermore, the approximation devised by Schlick is often used when applying Fresnel's equation. However, in the course of studying polarization in real-time ray tracing, we discovered a phenomenon where the approximation by Schlick renders slower than the case where the Fresnel formula is not approximated. In this study, we re-examined the Schlick approximation on modern graphics hardware, and found that in real-time rendering and real-time ray tracing on GPUs in 2023, if we use the Schlick approximation, which is implemented in a simplistic manner based on speed alone, we should replace it with the Fresnel formula proposed in this paper. The proposed Fresnel formula can be used to achieve the unpolarized Fresnel effect without loss of quality at almost equivalent application execution speeds.

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In this paper, we addressed the question of what kind of characters are more likely to be created in fan fiction, a question that has been lacking in conventional studies of fan fiction. To address this, we introduce the agency factor and experience factor as factors that determine the impression of a character from the mind perception model in the field of cognitive psychology. Furthermore, we introduce the concept of classicist and romanticist games and hypothesize that the agency factor contributes to the amount of fan fiction for classicist games, while the experience factor contributes to that for romanticist games. In this paper, "THE IDOLM@STER CINDERELLA GIRLS" was chosen as a representative example of a classicist game and "THE IDOLM@STER SHINY COLORS" as that of a romanticist game. We conducted an online questionnaire survey of several hundred people, calculated the agency and experience of each character, and investigated the correlation with the amount of fan fiction posted on the creative works posting site pixiv. The results support our hypothesis.

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[in Japanese]

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