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Journal articles on the topic 'Video game designers'
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Benvenuti, Dario, Lauren S. Ferro, Andrea Marrella, and Tiziana Catarci. "An Approach to Assess the Impact of Tutorials in Video Games." Informatics 10, no. 1 (January 11, 2023): 6. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/informatics10010006.
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Video games are an established medium that provides interactive entertainment beyond pure enjoyment in many contexts. Game designers create dedicated tutorials to teach players the game mechanisms and rules, such as the conventions for interaction, control schemes, core game mechanics, etc. While effective tutorial design is considered a crucial aspect to support this learning process, the existing literature approaches focus on designing ad hoc tutorials for specific game genres rather than investigating the impact of different tutorial styles on game learnability and player engagement. In this paper, we tackle this challenge by presenting a general-purpose approach aimed at supporting game designers in the identification of the most suitable tutorial style for a specific genre of video games. The approach is evaluated in the context of a simple first-person shooter (FPS) mainstream video game built by the authors through a controlled comparative user experiment involving 46 players.
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Jankowski, Filip. "The Presence of Female Designers in French Video Game Industry, 1985–1993." Games and Culture 15, no. 6 (April 15, 2019): 670–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1555412019841954.
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Increasingly, more people do notice that female designers wrote their first games in the 1970s and 1980s. However, there was another country where women did also design games decades before the #GamerGate movement. This article examines the selected works of three French designers: Clotilde Marion, Chine Lanzmann, and Muriel Tramis. The analysis of those games took into account the self-representation of those designers—and women in general—within the game content. The conducted research has proven that within their games, Marion, Lanzmann, and Tramis included their everyday experiences as women. Using such techniques as simulated point of view and authorial signature, those women indicated their own role in the development and showed how females in general face male oppression against them. This means that the United States is not the only country with a long tradition of female game developers. Thus, video game history remains an undiscovered research field.
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Thomas, Christian. "Interview: Acclaimed Game Designer Ryan Kaufman Discusses Telltale Games, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and How Video Games Can Transform Us." Arts 10, no. 3 (July 8, 2021): 46. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/arts10030046.
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Cunningham, Carolyn. "Girl game designers." New Media & Society 13, no. 8 (June 20, 2011): 1373–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461444811410397.
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Educational programs designed to bridge the digital divide for girls often aim to increase girls’ technological literacy. However, little research has examined what aspects of technological literacy are highlighted in these programs. In this article, I provide a case study of a video game design workshop hosted by a girls’ advocacy organization. Through observations, interviews, and analysis of program materials, I look at how the organization conceptualizes technological literacy as contributing to gender equality. I compare this conceptualization to how technological literacy was taught in the classroom. Finally, I draw on situated learning theory to help explain how girls responded to the class. In the end, both the organization’s limited notion of how technological literacy could increase gender equality as well as gender and race differences between the teachers and the girls influenced girls’ participation in the workshop.
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Le Pelletier de Woillemont, Pierre, Rémi Labory, and Vincent Corruble. "Automated Play-Testing through RL Based Human-Like Play-Styles Generation." Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment 18, no. 1 (October 11, 2022): 146–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1609/aiide.v18i1.21958.
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The increasing complexity of gameplay mechanisms in modern video games is leading to the emergence of a wider range of ways to play games. The variety of possible play-styles needs to be anticipated and taken into account by designers, through automated tests. Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a promising answer to the need of automating video game testing. To that effect one needs to train an agent to play the game, while ensuring this agent will generate the same play-styles as the players in order to give meaningful feedback to the designers. We present CARMI : a Configurable Agent with Relative Metrics as Input. An agent able to emulate the players play-styles, even on previously unseen levels. Unlike current methods it does not rely on having full trajectories, but only summary data. Moreover it only requires little human data, thus compatible with the constraints of modern video game production. This novel agent could be used to investigate behaviors and balancing during the production of a video game with a realistic amount of training time.
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Szymanski, Antonia, and Matthew Benus. "Gaming the Classroom Viewing Learning Through the Lens Self Determination Theory." International Journal of Game-Based Learning 5, no. 3 (July 2015): 62–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/ijgbl.2015070105.
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Educators, designers and curriculum creators are interested in developing educational experiences that replicate the fun aspect of video games to increase student intrinsic motivation. This aspect, which compels players to engage with the game and persist despite failing, has the potential to increase student academic success. Researchers used mixed-methods to investigate the results of an instructional design that attempted to replicate the fun aspect of video games in a remedial algebra class. The study offered insight on the ways in which student motivation might be better developed and refined in educational settings using game-based approaches. Results indicated that some students enjoyed the freedom of choosing their own quests to complete while others felt lost in the new environment. It is important to game and instructional designers to scaffold the transition from traditional classroom to a game-based classroom.
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Aditya, Christian. "The Development Of Visual Aspects In Video Games Over The Years." ULTIMART Jurnal Komunikasi Visual 7, no. 2 (November 12, 2016): 18–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.31937/ultimart.v7i2.385.
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This report investigates the importance of creating a realistic environment in order to create an immersive world in digital games. The discussion will start from the history of Digital game development until now, discussing on the limitations of gaming consoles from time to time, and how game designers nowadays keep pushing the boundaries of the visual aspects of their game. Then focusing the discussion on the technical and art aspect of digital game design. By doing the analysis in this report, we can conclude that there are several reason that affects the visual quality of video games, such as the technology of the game console, the limitation of game engine, and also the skill of the game artist itself.
Key words : Video Games, Digital Games, Game Console, Environment, Game Engine.
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Purnomo, SF Luthfie Arguby, SF Lukfianka Sanjaya Purnama, Lilik Untari, Agung Prasetyo Wibowo, Nabil Aqib, and Yosse Vira Oktaviana. "Ludic Taunting: Does Taunting Work Differently in Video Games?" Journal of Language and Literature 22, no. 2 (September 26, 2022): 466–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.24071/joll.v22i2.4197.
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Studies on taunting in video game context tend to mull over around how players taunt other players via online chat features. Studies on how taunting works in games with in-game taunt features are under investigated. Examining twenty-seven gamestory-wise and gameplay-wise games, we argue, through this sociolinguistic study, that taunting designed for game characters is better termed ludic taunting since it has different functions from that of taunting in games with online chat feature and in real life. Ludic taunting has two major functions namely narrative and mechanical. The former which refers to taunting for game story-bound purposes is classified into archetyping, cameoing, and mythopoesing. The latter, for game play-bound purposes, is classified into buffing, cosmeticizing, cueing, debuffing, hinting, and rewarding. Game designers and scholars could employ this study as a reference in designing games with in-game taunt features.
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Costello, Robert, and Jodie Donovan. "How Game Designers Can Account for Those With Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) When Designing Game Experiences." International Journal of End-User Computing and Development 8, no. 2 (July 2019): 29–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/ijeucd.20190701.oa1.
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Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a prevalent neurodevelopmental disability among gamers where individuals belonging to this group of conditions have difficulty understanding non-verbal cues. Though game accessibility is a focal point in the games industry, there has been a keen focus placed on developing accessibility. Consequently, this study examines the perspective of video games from individuals who have autism to gain further insight into the needs of these individuals. The preliminary study is to discover if autistic users' difficulty reading non-verbal cues extends to their perception of a game environment and if these individuals can experience sensory distress while playing video games. A prototype was created to further understand the non-verbal cues to help shape the foundation of accessibility framework. The preliminary results concluded that autistic users frequently misread or fail to pick up on the non-verbal cues used by developers to drive game flow and narrative (e.g., sign-posting), in addition to experiencing sensory distress while playing video games.
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Qaffas, Alaa A. "An Operational Study of Video Games’ Genres." International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies (iJIM) 14, no. 15 (September 11, 2020): 175. http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijim.v14i15.16691.
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This paper presents a study of the most successful games during the last 34 last years (1986 – 2019). We observed that the 100 most ranked games are represented by 16 genres (adventure, role-playing, shooter, platform, puzzle, strategy, hack and slash/beat 'em up, real time strategy, turn-based strategy, point-and-click, indie, racing, sport, fighting, arcade and simulator). These genres are then compares to show which genres are more attractive for players. As a result, we observed that 6 genres among the 16 represent the most ranked games (adventure, RPG, shooter, platform, puzzle, and strategy). They represent 0.83 of the successful games. This allowed us to recommend to combining the others genres with the 6 selected genres. Also, we analyzed the evolution of the 16 games genres during the last 34 years. We observed that some genres have a great success until the past decades, but they haven’t a success in this decade. Game designers and researchers in the field of games may rethink about how to add attractive elements in the genres non-successful in this decade. Also, we observed that some genres like the indie games haven’t a great success in the past decades, but they have an important increased success in this decade. This may encourage the decision makers and the game designer to invest on these genres.
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Maggiorini, Dario, Laura Anna Ripamonti, and Federico Sauro. "Unifying Rigid and Soft Bodies Representation: The Sulfur Physics Engine." International Journal of Computer Games Technology 2014 (2014): 1–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/485019.
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Video games are (also) real-time interactive graphic simulations: hence, providing a convincing physics simulation for each specific game environment is of paramount importance in the process of achieving a satisfying player experience. While the existing game engines appropriately address many aspects of physics simulation, some others are still in need of improvements. In particular, several specific physics properties of bodies not usually involved in the main game mechanics (e.g., properties useful to represent systems composed by soft bodies), are often poorly rendered by general-purpose engines. This issue may limit game designers when imagining innovative and compelling video games and game mechanics. For this reason, we dug into the problem of appropriately representing soft bodies. Subsequently, we have extended the approach developed for soft bodies to rigid ones, proposing and developing a unified approach in a game engine: Sulfur. To test the engine, we have also designed and developed “Escape from Quaoar,” a prototypal video game whose main game mechanic exploits an elastic rope, and a level editor for the game.
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Geslin, Erik, Laurent Jégou, and Danny Beaudoin. "How Color Properties Can Be Used to Elicit Emotions in Video Games." International Journal of Computer Games Technology 2016 (2016): 1–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/5182768.
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Classifying the many types of video games is difficult, as their genres and supports are different, but they all have in common that they seek the commitment of the player through exciting emotions and challenges. Since the income of the video game industry exceeds that of the film industry, the field of inducting emotions through video games and virtual environments is attracting more attention. Our theory, widely supported by substantial literature, is that the chromatic stimuli intensity, brightness, and saturation of a video game environment produce an emotional effect on players. We have observed a correlation between the RGB additives color spaces, HSV, HSL, and HSI components of video game images, presented ton=85participants, and the emotional statements expressed in terms of arousal and valence, recovered in a subjective semantic questionnaire. Our results show a significant correlation between luminance, saturation, lightness, and the emotions of joy, sadness, fear, and serenity experienced by participants viewing 24 video game images. We also show strong correlations between the colorimetric diversity, saliency volume, and stimuli conspicuity and the emotions expressed by the players. These results allow us to propose video game environment development methods in the form of a circumplex model. It is aimed at game designers for developing emotional color scripting.
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Tokadlı, Güliz, Kaitlyn Ouverson, Chase Meusel, Austin Garcia, Stephen B. Gilbert, and Michael C. Dorneich. "An Analysis of Video Games Using the Dimensions of Human-Agent Interaction." Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting 62, no. 1 (September 2018): 716–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1541931218621163.
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Designers of human-agent interaction techniques may benefit from an analysis of existing video games that include aspects of human-agent teaming. Many popular multi-player video games have been designed to integrate multiple human and computer agents in pursuit of a common objective and can serve as a testbed to explore novel interaction methods in human-agent teams. A guiding framework of human-agent interaction was created to bridge best practices between video game and real-world domains. The framework was used to analyze games on five main dimensions: 1) Levels of Automation, 2) Levels of Interaction, 3) Control Mode, 4) Teaming, and 5) Interaction Timing. Two video games, Final Fantasy XIV and Mass Effect, were assessed to identify human-agent interaction paradigms, and ramifications for real-world applications for human-agent teaming. This research draws on interaction design principles, human-agent interaction theory, and existing video games to offer human-agent team designers potential examples of successful interaction paradigms.
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Thabet, Tamer. "A mente e a máquina: desempenho, design de jogos e humanidades." Boitatá 8, no. 15 (June 29, 2013): 22. http://dx.doi.org/10.5433/boitata.2013v8.e31544.
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This article argues in favor of teaching video game design as a humanistic discipline. In The Art of Videogames (2009), Grant Tavinor defines video games as a form of fiction and art. Based on some of the ideas that Tavinor highlights, Chris Crawford’s standpoint on game designers’ preparation in Chris Crawford on Game Design (2003), and Huizinga’s description of the functions of play in Homo Ludens (1964), I will reason for the approach of housing the undergraduate game studies and design in the faculty of humanities as one discipline. The rationale of why the art and technology of games should meet in humanities emerges from the present state of games’ content in the mainstream games; that is, what they show and what they tell. This is of course a case for intellectual, enlightened, inspired, and thought-provoking game stories, and how this could be achieved in the humanities.
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Nyman, Elizabeth, and Ryan Lee Teten. "Lost and Found and Lost Again." Games and Culture 13, no. 4 (November 20, 2015): 370–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1555412015616510.
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The popularity of video games is at an all-time high among today’s population. Game designers and producers spend years on plot and character development, the creation of appropriate settings, and providing the player with a ludic experience that is both enriching and perplexing. This article looks at the creation of virtual utopian societies as the basis for contemporary video games. Just as the world today sees many conflicts over island rights, island sovereignties, and, sometimes, the creation of artificial islands that seek to escape governance of existing countries, video games have embraced the creation of a separate society for settings that explore new or extreme forms of individual, societal, and political development. Examining the BioShock series, this article looks at how video games and their designers have used utopic theories of society to create new experiences, potentialities, and ethical dilemmas for the players.
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Wilson, Jason. "Indie Rocks! Mapping Independent Video Game Design." Media International Australia 115, no. 1 (May 2005): 109–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1329878x0511500111.
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Though many video games scholars and journalists tend to train their sights on ‘big gaming’, there is a vibrant and varied sector of independent game design, production and distribution. Indie gaming is not a unitary field and, as well as producing a diverse range of games, indie designers occupy a range of positions vis-à-vis mainstream video gaming. Therefore, while this article gives examples of this diversity, it is by no means an exhaustive account. Industry watchers and events are together suggesting that low-cost, independent modes of production will become increasingly important and prevalent in the immediate future. Scholars and practitioners alike will do well to understand the historical trajectories of indie design, and to keep pace with its present and future diversity.
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Gee, James Paul. "Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines." E-Learning and Digital Media 2, no. 1 (March 2005): 5–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2005.2.1.5.
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This article asks how good video and computer game designers manage to get new players to learn long, complex and difficult games. The short answer is that designers of good games have hit on excellent methods for getting people to learn and to enjoy learning. The longer answer is more complex. Integral to this answer are the good principles of learning built into successful games. The author discusses 13 such principles under the headings of ‘Empowered Learners’, ‘Problem Solving’ and ‘Understanding’ and concludes that the main impediment to implementing these principles in formal education is cost. This, however, is not only (or even so much) monetary cost. It is, importantly, the cost of changing minds about how and where learning is done and of changing one of our most profoundly change-resistant institutions: the school.
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Pusey, Megan, Kok Wai Wong, and Natasha Anne Rappa. "The Puzzle Challenge Analysis Tool. A Tool for Analysing the Cognitive Challenge Level of Puzzles in Video Games." Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5, CHI PLAY (October 5, 2021): 1–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3474703.
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Video games are often designed around puzzles and problem-solving, leading to challenging yet engaging experiences for players. However, it is hard to measure or compare the challenge level of puzzles in video games. This can make designing appropriately challenging puzzles problematic. This study collates previous work to present refined definitions for challenge and difficulty within the context of video games. We present the Puzzle Challenge Analysis tool which can be used to determine the best metrics for analysing the challenge level of puzzles within video games. Previous research has focused on measuring the difficulty of simple action video games, such as Pac-Man, which can be easily modified for research purposes. Existing methods to measure challenge or difficulty include measuring player brain activity, examining game features and player scores. However, some of these approaches cannot be applied to puzzles or puzzle games. For example, approaches relying on game scores will not work for puzzle games with no scoring system, where puzzles are either solved or not. This paper describes the design and development of the Puzzle Challenge Analysis tool using two case studies of commercial video games The Witness and Untitled Goose Game. The tool is also tested for generalisability on a third commercial puzzle video game, Baba Is You. This proposed tool can help game designers and researchers to objectively analyse and compare puzzle challenge and produce more in-depth insights into the player experience. This has implications for designing challenging and engaging games for a range of player abilities.
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Ruberg, Bonnie. "Empathy and Its Alternatives: Deconstructing the Rhetoric of “Empathy” in Video Games." Communication, Culture and Critique 13, no. 1 (March 2020): 54–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcz044.
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Abstract This article analyzes the contemporary discourse that surrounds video games. Specifically, it confronts the rhetoric of “empathy,” which has become a buzzword in North American industry, academic, education, and media conversations about video games and their supposed power to place players into others’ shoes—especially those games created by queer or otherwise marginalized people. Scholars like Wendy Chun and Teddy Pozo and game designers like Robert Yang have spoken out against this rhetoric. Building from their writing, as well as critiques from the creators of queer independent games commonly mislabeled as “empathy games,” this article delineates the discriminatory implications of the term. Rather than simply dismissing “empathy,” however, this article unpacks it, turning to textual artifacts like news stories and industry presentations, as well as the 2016 video game Unravel (ColdWood Interactive), to deconstruct the term’s many meanings and to identity alternative (queerer) models of affective engagement with video games.
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Maj, Krzysztof M. "O strukturze świata w narracyjnych grach wideo." Images. The International Journal of European Film, Performing Arts and Audiovisual Communication 29, no. 38 (June 15, 2021): 43–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.14746/i.2021.38.03.
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The article On the structure of gameworld in narrative video games proposes to introduce the term ‘ludotopia’ to Polish game studies in order to further compartmentalise the structure of video gameworld. Having reflected on the consequences of so-called world-centered turn in contemporary digital humanities, the author proceeds to defining archetypal structures that compose realities designed for the purposes of narrative video games, namely: locations and clusters of locations, the latter divided further into biomes and anthromes. The hierarchy introduced thereby is presented as an alternative for already influential (though, arguably, in transmedial world-building studies rather than game studies) trichotomy of mythos, topos, and ethos, as defined by Lisbeth Klastrup and Susana Tosca. In the end, the article cross-references the new structural hierarchy of ludotopographical components with a matrix of popular fantastic settings, seeking to delineate possible similarities between ludotopias and allotopias that would inform both game scholars and game designers on the ways of rapid prototyping of aesthetically diverse imaginary worlds.
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Millamena, Kian, Alvin Kwan, and Nicolei Panlilio. "University Students’ Video Gaming - Reasons, Preferences, and Behavioural Effects." European Conference on Games Based Learning 16, no. 1 (September 29, 2022): 732–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.34190/ecgbl.16.1.856.
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Research on players’ reasons for video gaming, their video game preferences, and the behavioural effects of video gaming on the players tends to study those issues separately. This study attempts to explore all those issues collectively with the aim of facilitating game designers to develop appealing educational games for university students without inflicting negative behavioural impacts on the students. Relevant data from 100 undergraduates were collected from an online survey. Cluster analysis of the eight major reasons for playing video games resulted in grouping the respondents into five clusters. The cluster that rated peer effect as the major reason for playing is male-dominated whereas the cluster that rated family influence as the major reason is female-dominated. A similar analysis of the respondents’ video game genre preferences reveals that the cluster favouring fighting and battle games is male-dominated, whereas the cluster favouring family entertainment games is female-dominated. Both genders enjoy playing challenging adventure-strategy games. Most respondents perceived that their cognitive functioning had improved through video gaming, but no conclusion can be drawn as to whether video gaming can improve their social and psychological functioning. Except for poor sleeping habits, most respondents had not experienced any significant negative effects from playing video games. No statistical evidence supports that playing violent video games would induce aggressive behaviours. As games that involve a high demand for players’ motor skills may not be a good choice for educational games and violent games may induce poor sleep quality, it is concluded that challenging adventure games and strategy games are suitable educational game genres for undergraduate students.
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Auxier, John W. "That Dragon, Cancer Goes to Seminary." Christian Education Journal: Research on Educational Ministry 15, no. 1 (April 2018): 105–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0739891318759725.
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That Dragon, Cancer is a “serious” video game that has garnered wide attention in the gaming community and popular press. The game was created by a team of independent game designers led by Ryan and Amy Green as a way of sharing their family’s journey of caring for their son Joel, who had been diagnosed with pediatric cancer. This article describes the use of the game within a graduate course on pastoral counseling and reflects upon student reactions as an example of the potential usefulness of serious games in theological education.
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Yap, Christopher Michael, Youki Kadobayashi, and Suguru Yamaguchi. "Conceptualizing Player-Side Emergence in Interactive Games." International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations 7, no. 3 (July 2015): 1–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/ijgcms.2015070101.
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The concept of emergence exists in many fields such as Philosophy, Information Science, and Biology. With respect to the modern video game, emergence can potentially manifest as emergent narrative and/or gameplay. In this paper, the authors engage in a critical discussion about what it means for an interactive video game to have emergence. The authors frame the discussion of emergence as a close critical look at the games Papers, Please and Gone Home. From these analyses, the authors propose a concept of “Player-side emergence in games,” in which emergence in the form of narrative is expressible and observable in games which rely not on the game software itself, but also upon the complex system of the human mind for reconstruction of the game experience and a subsequent expression of emergence. The authors contend that such an emergent design consideration is potentially useful for designers who are trying to address the trade-off of Ludo-Narrative Dissonance.
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Katsarov, Johannes, Markus Christen, Ralf Mauerhofer, David Schmocker, and Carmen Tanner. "Training Moral Sensitivity Through Video Games: A Review of Suitable Game Mechanisms." Games and Culture 14, no. 4 (July 20, 2017): 344–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1555412017719344.
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The goal of this study is to support game designers in the selection and implementation of game mechanisms to promote players’ moral sensitivity (MS). A lack of MS may lead people to behave unethically, without awareness for their actions’ moral implications. In this study, we conduct a theory-based evaluation of 20 distinct game mechanisms in view of their potential to promote MS. MS is thereby operationalized in terms of three learning outcomes (LOs): empathic concern for relevant groups, alertness to values/principles, and awareness for one’s vulnerability to biases. This study suggests that MS is best promoted through a careful combination of game mechanisms, addressing all three LOs.
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Ruberg, Bonnie, and Rainforest Scully-Blaker. "Making players care: The ambivalent cultural politics of care and video games." International Journal of Cultural Studies 24, no. 4 (June 14, 2021): 655–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1367877920950323.
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The relationship between care and video games is fraught. While the medium has the potential to allow players to meaningfully express and receive care, the cultural rhetorics that connect video games to care are often problematic. Even among game designers and scholars committed to social justice, some view care with hope and others with concern. Here, we identify and unpack these tensions, which we refer to as the ambivalent cultural politics of care, and illustrate them through three case studies. First, we discuss “tend-and-befriend games,” coined by Brie Code, which we read through feminist theorists Sarah Sharma and Sara Ahmed. Second, we address “empathy games” and the worrisome implication that games by marginalized people must make privileged players care. Lastly, we turn to issues of care in video game development. We discuss Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead series (2012–18) and strikingly care-less fan responses to recent employee layoffs.
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Endresen, Ian, and Dan Nathan-Roberts. "Design to Improve Player On-Boarding and Decision-Making Processes in Video Games: A Systematic Review." Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting 62, no. 1 (September 2018): 1135–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1541931218621260.
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Decision-making performance in video games play a vital role in player success and frustration. As video games become more complex, designers will need to develop appropriate methods to assist players to address the increased learning requirements. To understand current research on player decisions and behaviors, a systematic review was performed, identifying 202 articles and fully analyzing a total of 14 studies. After the analysis of all studies, it was determined that efficient on-boarding and decision-making design strategies requires a multi-disciplinary approach. Future research should bridge the gap of independent disciplines into a cohesive methodology for effective video game design.
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DeJong, Scott. "Playing With Fake News: State Of Fake News Video Games." International Journal of Games and Social Impact 1, no. 1 (January 1, 2013): 94–111. http://dx.doi.org/10.24140/ijgsi.v1.n1.05.
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Employed almost synonymously with disinformation and misinformation, fake news refers to the increasing discourse of misconfigured news and information being shared online which has prompted global concern. Calls for digital literacy have come from researchers, governments, and public interest groups who developing an array of resources for the public. Games are one intervention. This article explores what it refers to as ‘fake news games’. Not focusing on a specific game genre, it considers video games that discuss or present fake news as central to their play or design. This paper evaluates how fake news is being presented in games and asks how the concept understood across these games. By analyzing the content, skills, and goals in these games, it situates fake news alongside digital literacy skills to see how the term is being re-framed by the medium of games. Twenty-two games were studied from a larger sample collected in late 2020. Through play analysis of twenty-two fake news video games collected in 2020 this paper provides an overview of game’s that discuss fake news. Games were play-tested and recorded to see the range of content, skills and central themes that were invoked in these games. These led to findings discussing the design, core premise, and general discourse around fake news that was promoted through play. The findings in this article offer value for future directions of discussion and game design focused on fake news. By pointing to gaps and differences in games in the field, this article offers potential information for designers while also highlighting how fake news is re-framed by these games. It emphasizes which points of interest around fake news are commonly being brought up, and points to future design and implementation considerations for scholars and designers.
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Churchill, David, and Michael Buro. "Hierarchical Portfolio Search: Prismata's Robust AI Architecture for Games with Large Search Spaces." Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment 11, no. 1 (June 24, 2021): 16–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1609/aiide.v11i1.12787.
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Online strategy video games offer several unique challenges to the field of AI research. Due to their large state and action spaces, existing search algorithms have difficulties in making strategically strong decisions. Additionally, the nature of competitive on-line video games adds the requirement that game designers be able to tweak game properties regularly when strategic imbalances are found. This means that an AI system for a game like this needs to be robust to such changes and less reliant on expert knowledge. This paper makes two main contributions to advancing the state of the art for AI in modern strategy video games which have large state and action spaces. The first is a novel method for performing hierarchical search using a portfolio of algorithms to reduce the search space while maintaining strong action candidates. The second contribution is an overall AI architecture for strategy video games using this portfolio search method. The proposed methods are used as the AI system for Prismata, an online turn-based strategy game by Lunarch Studios. This system is evaluated using three experiments: on-line play vs.~human players, off-line AI tournaments to test the relative strengths of the AI bots, and a survey to determine user satisfaction of the system so far. Our result show that this system achieves a skill level in the top 25% of human players on the ranked ladder, can be modified quickly to create different difficulty settings, is robust to changes in game unit properties, and creates an overall AI experience which is user rated more enjoyable than those currently found in similar video games.
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Brenskott, Krzysztof. "Czy wojna w grach musi być zabawna? O wybranych grach planszowych z perspektywy poetologicznej." Załącznik Kulturoznawczy, no. 8 (2021): 171–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.21697/zk.2021.8.09.
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Marco Arnaudo in Storytelling in the Modern Board Game: Narrative Trends from the Late 1960s to Today – through the lens of game studies and narratology – explores the synergy of board games, designers and players in story-oriented designs. A story can emerge from board game only in interactive and ergodic way, through synergy of game rules, material components and actions taken by players. The aim of this paper is to show that board games – which can be understood as transmedial narrative systems – could be studied on the grounds of poetics. How board games can use well known figures and methods of generating meaning, such as personification? What new we can learn about them in this new environment? Is it possible to adapt categories of immersion and emersion to board game studies? Recognition of board-game-specific ploys, such as physical changing and even destroying game components, can inspire us to look for similar solutions among literature, cinema or video games.
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Aune, R. Kelly, Matthew Sharritt, and Daniel D. Suthers. "l33tsp33k." International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence 5, no. 1 (January 2014): 45–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/ijdldc.2014010104.
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A qualitative case study of student game play is presented that describes how game player communication becomes increasingly complex, efficient, and impenetrable by those who have not actively played the game. Transcripts of gathered video tape reveal how student ‘gamer talk' became increasingly implicit, using terminology provided by the game and their shared context of playing the game. Over time, communication among game player group members generally became more efficient and less penetrable by members outside the group (such as new players), as players engaged in culture-building activities around their shared context. However, players occasionally became more explicit in their communication when grounding was required to reach shared meaning, such as in instances where players disagreed on the purpose of a particular game feature or strategy. Finally, implications are offered to suggest ways in which gamer cultures can be made more accessible to game designers and those guiding classroom interactions.
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Chaichitwanidchakol, Pitsanu, and Witcha Feungchan. "Exploring Mobile Game Interactions." International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE) 8, no. 5 (October 1, 2018): 3954. http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijece.v8i5.pp3954-3965.
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The mobile game industry has been growing rapidly in both the number of games and revenues. Choosing the right interactions for a game has become a major challenge for developers. Some developers use inappropriate interactions in their games which causes them to be less fun than they should be. This research focuses on gathering and defining possible mobile game interactions so as to guide and enable designers and developers to choose the right interactions for their games. The researchers have extensively reviewed and explored various mobile game interactions both through research studies and through existing mobile games. Subsequent to observations, mobile game interactions were then categorized as follows: 1) Touch interaction 2) Motion/Movement interaction 3) Video interaction 4) Sound interaction 5) Special purpose interaction 6) Location interaction 7) Electroencep-halography (EEG) interaction 8) Date/Time interaction 9) Weather interaction 10) Light interaction 11) Proximity interaction 12) Network interaction 13) Social interaction and 14) Bioinformatics interaction. These 14 interactions can be used to support gameplay, ideas, and innovation of mobile games.
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Ayers, William R. "What Is It Like to Be a Dolphin? Echolocation and Subjectivity in Video Games." Journal of Sound and Music in Games 2, no. 3 (2021): 1–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/jsmg.2021.2.3.1.
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Echolocation is a rare ability of some bats, dolphins, and humans with reduced sightedness or visual impairment. Often visualized as a type of auditory sight, echolocation has no true analog for sighted humans without the ability, resulting in a wide range of interpretations when game designers attempt to capture this subjective experience. Video games have depicted echolocation with varying degrees of fidelity and realism, from musical scales and maps to fully realized three-dimensional worlds. This variety may be attributed in part to the inaccessible experience of the echolocating subjects. Designers must rely on their own subjective experiences to create a mental image of this ability. Synthesizing aspects of acoustic and biological sciences, philosophy, and disability studies, this article examines depictions of echolocation in video games, demonstrating that games require players to incorporate their own experiences in order to bridge the “explanatory gap” between the subjective experiences of visually impaired characters and knowledge of the objective processes of echolocation that are accessible to sighted players. With examples from Ecco the Dolphin (1992) and Perception (2017), this article will show that designers support their echolocation mechanics with narrative and supplementary information rather than actualizing the experience with gameplay.
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Naglé, Tim, Scott Bateman, and Max V. Birk. "Pathfinder." Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5, CHI PLAY (October 5, 2021): 1–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3474691.
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Designers of instructional software use gamification to help motivate and engage learners. Typically focusing on gamifying a single task, designers aim to provide a straightforward path through learning. In contrast, video games frequently provide optional secondary tasks using collectibles. Collectibles-like coins-are secondary, non-essential goals that encourage players to selectively take on additional challenges and engage more with a game. While research supports the idea that by increasing engagement learning can be improved, exactly how collectibles-an extremely common element in games-might be employed in gamified learning and how it might affect the play experience is underexplored. We present the results of a study comparing a gamified photo-editing training game that uses collectibles to one without collectibles. Our results show that learners choose to engage more when collectibles are present, and that this has a positive effect on software skills applied to a representative out-of-game challenge. Our findings provide a nuanced view of the tradeoffs in motivation and experience when collectibles are used.
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Miner, Joshua D. "Biased Render." Screen Bodies 4, no. 1 (June 1, 2019): 48–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/screen.2019.040105.
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This article explores the digitality of Indigenous bodies within contemporary 3D video games by mainstream and Indigenous developers. Its analysis relies on a critical examination of digital image synthesis via real-time graphics rendering, which algorithmically generates the visible world onscreen from 3D geometries by mapping textures, generating light and shadow, and simulating perceptual phenomena. At a time when physically based, unbiased rendering methods have made photorealistic styles and open-world structures common across AAA games in general, Indigenous game designers have instead employed simplified “low res” styles. Using bias as an interpretive model, this article unpacks how these designers critique mainstream rendering as a cultural-computational practice whose processes are encoded with cultural biases that frame the relation of player and screen body (avatar). The algorithmic production of digitally modeled bodies, as an essential but masked element of video games, offers a territory where Indigenous developers claim aesthetic presence in the medium.
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Cote, Amanda C. "Writing “Gamers”." Games and Culture 13, no. 5 (December 31, 2015): 479–503. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1555412015624742.
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In the mid-1990s, a small group of video game designers attempted to lessen gaming’s gender gap by creating software targeting girls. By 1999, however, these attempts collapsed, and video games remained a masculinized technology. To help understand why this movement failed, this article addresses the unexplored role of consumer press in defining “gamers” as male. A detailed content analysis of Nintendo Power issues published from 1994 to 1999 shows that mainstream companies largely ignored the girls’ games movement, instead targeting male audiences through player representations, sexualized female characters, magazine covers featuring men, and predominantly male authors. Given the mutually constitutive nature of representation and reality, the lack of women in consumer press then affected girls’ ability to identify as gamers and enter the gaming community. This shows that, even as gaming audiences diversify, inclusive representations are also needed to redefine gamer as more than just “male.”
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Smith, Geneva, and Jacques Carette. "Design Foundations for Emotional Game Characters." Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture 10, no. 1 (April 21, 2020): 109–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.7557/23.6175.
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Recent Computer Role Playing Games such as Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, have entranced us with their expansive, complex worlds. However, the Non-Player Characters (NPCs) in these games remain stale and lackluster outside of scripted events. This is, in part, because game engines generally do not simulate emotions in their NPCs while they wander in the world. Wouldn't these games be much more interesting, potentially even more re-playable, if NPCs reacted more appropriately to the situations they find themselves in?To be able to do this, designers need an engine that models emotion, based on inputs available in the game world and from other designer-defined character elements such as personality, goals, and mood. A full-fledged cognitive architecture could fulfill this task, but it would likely be much too inefficient for use in a real-time environment like a game.There are many psychological models of emotion but only a few have been explored for video game applications. A game requires an emotion engine which generates believable results to enhance NPC agency and player engagement. Unlike AI agents and simulations of cognitive psychology theories, an emotion engine for games does not need to be correct or even justifiable. This enables the exploration of a variety of emotion theories that have not been actively considered for games. One such theory is Plutchik's psychoevolutionary synthesis. He proposes a method of organizing emotions into a cone, where the intensity of an emotion increases as one moves up the sides. It also postulates that primary emotions in the model can be arranged in opposing pairs and that other emotions can be composed from the primary emotions and their intensities. This allows for greater flexibility in the number and type of emotions to include, whereas most models that have been used before define a closed set of emotion types—a serious constraint on designer's freedom. A second theory, Lazarus's cognitive appraisal, better describes emotion elicitation and behaviour selection, and appears to integrate well with Plutchik's work.An emotion engine based on simplified versions of psychoevolutionary synthesis and cognitive appraisal is an understudied approach towards emotional NPCs. Together with readily identifiable elements of emotion processing, such as attention and action selection, an engine can be designed and customized to meet the needs of game designers with minimal impact on computational resources.We will present an overview of some existing cognitive architectures and emotion engines followed by a description of key elements in psychoevolutionary synthesis and cognitive appraisal. Next we list some requirements for an emotion engine for NPCs and how our selected emotion theories meet them. Finally, we propose a design and a collection of game-oriented test scenarios to illustrate how our design handles various facets of NPC emotional responses.
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Poo Hernandez, Sergio, Vadim Bulitko, and Emilie St. Hilaire. "Emotion-Based Interactive Storytelling with Artificial Intelligence." Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment 10, no. 1 (June 29, 2021): 146–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1609/aiide.v10i1.12721.
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques have been widely used in video games to control non-playable characters. More recently, AI has been applied to automated story generation and game-mastering: managing the player’s experience in an interactive narrative on-the-fly. Such methods allow the narrative to be generated dynamically, in response to the player’s in-game actions. As a result, it is more difficult for the human game designers to ensure that each possible narrative trajectory will elicit desired emotional response from the player. We tackle this problem by computationally predicting the player’s emotional response to a narrative segment. We use the predictions within an AI experience manager to shape the narrative dynamically during the game to keep the player on an author-supplied target emotional curve.
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Mustač, Kuzma, Krešimir Bačić, Lea Skorin-Kapov, and Mirko Sužnjević. "Predicting Player Churn of a Free-to-Play Mobile Video Game Using Supervised Machine Learning." Applied Sciences 12, no. 6 (March 9, 2022): 2795. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/app12062795.
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Free-to-play mobile games monetize players through different business models, with higher player engagement leading to revenue increases. Consequently, the foremost goal of game designers and developers is to keep their audience engaged with the game for as long as possible. Studying and modeling player churn is, therefore, of the highest importance for game providers in this genre. This paper presents machine learning-based models for predicting player churn in a free-to-play mobile game. The dataset on which the research is based is collected in cooperation with a European game developer and comprises over four years of player records of a game belonging to the multiple-choice storytelling genre. Our initial analysis shows that user churn is a very significant problem, with a large portion of the players engaging with the game only briefly, thus presenting a potentially huge revenue loss. Presented models for churn prediction are trained based on varying learning periods (1–7 days) to encompass both very short-term players and longer-term players. Further, the predicted churn periods vary from 1–7 days. Obtained results show accuracies varying from 66% to 95%, depending on the considered periods.
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Fernández Galeote, Daniel, and Juho Hamari. "Game-based Climate Change Engagement." Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5, CHI PLAY (October 5, 2021): 1–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3474653.
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Video games have risen as a popular medium with the potential to become a powerful tool for public climate change engagement. However, little is known about how existing digital games can fulfill this role. This study systematically compiles 150 video games that represent climate change, including serious (n = 109) and for entertainment (n = 41). The games are analyzed by adapting an existing framework (15 dimensions: achievable, challenging, concrete, credible, efficacy-enhancing, experiential learning, feedback-oriented, fun, identity-driven, levelling-up, meaningful, narrative-driven, reward-driven, simulating, social) and statistically compared. The analysis reveals that most games comply with most recommended attributes, but credibility, achievability, meaningfulness, and social features are uncommon or rare. Statistical results comparing serious games and games for entertainment associate six attributes with serious games (achievable, challenging, credible, efficacy-enhancing, experiential learning, feedback-oriented), and one (narrative-driven) with games for entertainment. The findings suggest that researchers would benefit from widening their lens to detect previously overlooked opportunities for game-based climate change engagement, communication, and education. The study also provides a systematic mapping of extant games depicting climate change for interested developers, designers and educators.
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Сахибгареева, Гульнара Фаритовна, and Влада Владимировна Кугуракова. "Interactive Structure Editor for Scenario Prototyping Tool." Russian Digital Libraries Journal 24, no. 6 (January 26, 2022): 1184–202. http://dx.doi.org/10.26907/1562-5419-2021-24-6-1184-1202.
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The task of automating the routine work of computer game writers and narrative designers, set forth in earlier works, has been continued in the presented work. The issues of visualization of branching narrative structures of computer games are considered, the analysis of various approaches to visualization of the plot and other important components of a video game is performed, a technological stack is selected and specific solutions for storing in the form of a structured script, allowing the generation of continuing narrative branches and testing of the narrative prototyping stage using the automatically generated text novelette are given.
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Thomas, Christian. "Writing for Emotional Impact in Film and Video Games: Lessons in Character Development, Realism, and Interactivity from the Alien Media Franchise." Arts 10, no. 2 (March 24, 2021): 20. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/arts10020020.
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This article compares Ridley Scott’s film Alien (1979) with Creative Assembly’s video game Alien: Isolation (2014), which is based on Scott’s film. Guidance for academics who teach creative writing—as well as for working screenwriters and video game narrative designers—emerges in the comparison, particularly with regard to the importance of developing strong yet vulnerable main characters who put themselves in danger in order to protect other characters with whom they have meaningful relationships. Examples from other media, including Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby (1967), James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead (2012), and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us (2013), are also discussed as they relate to larger principles involved in crafting sympathetic characters, realistic settings, and compelling gameplay for media within the horror and sci-fi genres.
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Cameron, David, and John Carroll. "‘The Story So Far …’: The Researcher as a Player in Game Analysis." Media International Australia 110, no. 1 (February 2004): 62–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1329878x0411000109.
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This article outlines some preliminary research into the learning discourses of computer and video games, as expressed through the printed materials that accompany games, and the instructional elements built into game narratives. This leads to discussion of an interesting methodological dilemma — how does the interpretative ethnographic researcher analyse this content when he or she becomes part of the playing process? How do you analyse the learning mechanisms of games when you are being reflexively engaged in the training materials and systems mapped into the text by the games' designers? This article examines this ‘crisis of representation’ in interpretive ethnographic research approaches to games research.
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Shaw, Adrienne, Kate Kenski, Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Rosa Mikeal Martey, Benjamin A. Clegg, Joanna E. Lewis, James E. Folkestad, and Tomek Strzalkowski. "Serious Efforts at Bias Reduction." Journal of Media Psychology 30, no. 1 (January 2018): 16–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000174.
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Abstract. As research on serious games continues to grow, we investigate the efficacy of digital games to train enhanced decision making through understanding cognitive biases. This study investigates the ability of a 30-minute digital game as compared with a 30-minute video to teach people how to recognize and mitigate three cognitive biases: fundamental attribution error, confirmation bias, and bias blind spot. We investigate the effects of character customization on learning outcomes as compared with an assigned character. We use interviews to understand the qualitative differences between the conditions. Experimental results suggest that the game was more effective at teaching and mitigating cognitive biases than was the training video. Although interviews suggest players liked avatar customization, results of the experiment indicate that avatar customization had no significant effect on learning outcomes. This research provides information future designers can use to choose the best medium and affordances for the most effective learning outcomes on cognitive processes.
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Acharya, Anitha, and Manish Gupta. "Do Skills and Challenge Affect Perceived Learning? Mediating Role of Engagement." Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations 18, no. 2 (April 2020): 64–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/jeco.2020040105.
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Gamification, the usage of elements relating to game design to non-game activities, has gained considerable attention from academia and industry. It is uncertain as to whether students require skills and challenges to engage them in the game for enhancing their learning. Thus, the objective of this article is to examine the mediating role of engagement in the relationship between skill and perceived learning as well as between challenge and perceived learning in game-based learning environments. Data was gathered using a survey of Player Unknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) players. A total of 233 young Indian players participated in the study. The results showed that engagement fully mediates the relationship between skill and perceived learning as well as between challenge and perceived learning. This study contributes to the literature on game-based learning by providing evidence for the educational video games to be one of the effective means of learning. Results of the present study imply that the educational game designers can design challenging games to engage the students.
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Zhao, Richard, and Duane Szafron. "Using Cyclic Scheduling to Generate Believable Behavior in Games." Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment 10, no. 1 (June 29, 2021): 94–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1609/aiide.v10i1.12709.
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Video game virtual characters should interact with the player, each other, and the environment. However, the cost of scripting complex behaviors becomes a bottleneck in content creation. Our goal is to help game designers to more easily populate their open world with background characters that exhibit more believable behaviors. We use a cyclic scheduling model that generates dynamic schedules for the daily lives of virtual characters. The scheduler employs a tiered behavior architecture where behavior components are modular and reusable. This research validates the designer usability of an implementation of this model. We present the results of a user study that evaluates the scheduling system versus manual scripting based on three metrics of behavior creation: behavior completeness, behavior correctness and behavior implementation time. The results indicate that the behavior architecture produces more reliable behaviors and improves designer efficiency which will reduce the cost of generating more believable character behaviors.
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Radtke, Rebekah, Eduardo Santillan-Jimenez, and Margaret Mohr-Schroeder. "Collaboration by Design: Development of a Video Game for Energy Literacy." International Journal of Designs for Learning 11, no. 2 (May 18, 2020): 46–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.14434/ijdl.v11i2.24109.
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University students, faculty, and staff from science, engineering, education, entrepreneurship, and design (SEE(E)D) backgrounds developed a video game to leverage outreach efforts promoting sustainability, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics ((S)STEM) to underserved students. This was accomplished by transforming a board game—previously developed and used to teach elementary students about complex and often misunderstood energy and sustainability issues—through a collaborative design process. The process of taking a tangible board game into the digital realm required significant design and pedagogical adaptations to maintain student learning outcomes and content delivery. Scientists, educators, and designers strengthened the graphical and pedagogical aspects of the game collaboratively to ultimately expand and deepen the energy literacy of elementary school students. This design case seeks to elucidate the multidisciplinary collaborative design process used by SEE(E)D faculty and researchers as well as students to redesign a board game into a didactic video game that is easier to both deploy and disseminate for the benefit of K-12 students and teachers.
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Tunnel, Raimond-Hendrik, and Ulrich Norbisrath. "A Survey of Estonian Video Game Industry Needs." Journal of Education and Learning 11, no. 5 (July 29, 2022): 183. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/jel.v11n5p183.
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Designing a video game design and development curriculum in higher education is a challenging task. Information about the needs of the respective industry certainly helps. In this paper, we have surveyed Estonian video game development companies to determine their current needs when it comes to knowledge areas, software tools, languages, abilities, and contextual fluencies. The survey is based on a similar survey conducted a decade ago and this paper compares the current results with those found earlier.
Compared to the prior survey, we have found significant differences in the rated importance of knowledge in optimization, version control technologies, the C, C++, and C# programming languages, and the time management ability for video game development companies looking to hire university graduates. We have also extended the previous survey to include a contemporary selection of game design and development tools. Based on that, we have determined a strong need for graduates with skills specifically in Unity and Unreal Engine game engines, Photoshop raster image editing software, and Git version control software.
While most of our results are largely consistent with the previous research, our added survey items like visual languages and game engines bring the results to the modern context. This allows curriculum designers and managers to see the differences regarding the landscape of industry needs for their graduates and thus make more informed decisions in their work.
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Leuchter, Inbal, and Gila Kurtz. "Effects of Instructions, Assistance, Narrative, Competition, Challenge, and Age on Performances in Digital Learning Games." International Journal of Advanced Corporate Learning (iJAC) 15, no. 2 (November 29, 2022): 16–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijac.v15i2.30867.
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Studies have shown that digital game-based learning (DGBL) can stimulate learners and increase motivation. However, in order to accomplish these goals, we must understand the role and impact of the game elements. This study aimed to examine the effects of four-game elements on player performance: Instructions and assistance, narrative, Competition, and Challenge. An additional factor examined was players' age. The data was collected using BIG DATA from the game platform, which recorded the scores of 3,281 users across nine different games, during the period 2015-2020. Users played as part of their visit to 'Musa', a multidisciplinary museum of local cultural materials in Tel-Aviv, either in 'Family' game mode or in 'Group' mode. According to the results of our study, players performed better on 'Group' games. In addition, players' performances improved when narrative depth was significant and the play area was smaller. Separating our data into two groups led to additional results: players in 'Family' mode performed better when the game instructions included a video, while in 'Group' modes participants performed better when a human guide was available to some extent. The results of this study and their implications can assist educators and game designers in planning more accurate and effective learning games.
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Sullivan, Anne, Sherol Chen, and Michael Mateas. "Integrating Drama Management into an Adventure Game." Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment 4, no. 1 (September 27, 2021): 222–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1609/aiide.v4i1.18703.
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Often, video game designers must choose between creating a linear experience, and designing an open world with many different story lines that fail to form a tightly crafted narrative arc. A drama manager (DM) can provide a solution to this dilemma. ADM monitors an interactive experience, such as a computer game, and intervenes to shape the global experience so that it satisfies the author's expressive goals without decreasing a player's interactive agency. In this demo we present the first integration of declarative optimization-based drama management (DODM) into an adventure-style dungeon game called EMPath.
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Patterson, Christopher B. "Making Queer Asiatic Worlds: Performance and Racial Interaction in North American Visual Novels." American Literature 94, no. 1 (January 27, 2022): 17–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-9696973.
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Abstract This paper argues that video games expose the presumptions separating “Asian America” and “Asia” in the traditional senses of isolation, origination, and presumed distance. It does so by focusing on the most “Asiatic” genre of video games today, the North American visual novel, which offers a counterdiscourse to normative modes of play and attempts to offer utopic spaces to reflect upon the “real” genres of race and neo–Cold War geopolitics. Using theories of performance from Dorinne Kondo and others, the author shows how queer indie visual novels are primarily aspirational, in that they build queer, utopic, and seemingly anti-racist worlds through the Asiatic space of the visual novel form. In so doing, they also allow players to explore the Asiatic as a means of repairing the traumas and distances of American imperial cultures. The article analyzes four visual novels to make this argument: three by non-racially-identifying North American designers—Doki Doki Literature Club! (2017) by Dan Salvato, Analogue: A Hate Story (2012) by Christine Love, and Heaven Will Be Mine (2018) by Aevee Bee—and Butterfly Soup (2017), a game by the queer Asian/American designer Brianna Lei. If games make the boundaries of Asia and America irrelevant, visual novels explore this irrelevance through Asiatic irreverence.