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Abstract: "Video games that customize to a player's experience level and abilities have the potential to allow a broader range of players to become engaged and maintain interest as they progress in experience level. A game that uniquely customizes the player's experience could attract additional demographics to gaming, which will result in a distinct edge in marketability and potential revenue. This thesis examines a subsection of adaptive gaming systems from the perspective of identifying game factors that alter the level of difficulty. Our focus is to provide a solution useful to both research and commercial gaming communities by developing a system that simulates results offline yet can be integrated into online play. While online performance is the main goal of an adaptive system, the offline simulation provides several benefits. Offline simulation allows the elimination of insignificant factors from inclusion in the training and evolution phase of machine learning algorithms. In addition it provides commercial games with a useful tool or method for performing game balancing and level tuning. To test our approach we designed a test-bed version of the game Pac-Man. The experimental testbed alters environment variables to evaluate their effect on a set of selected response variables. Observing the results of several response variables provides the potential to represent multiple player states, though our focus is on controlling the difficulty for a player. The testbed will simulate the actions of both Pac-Man and the ghosts over a variety of different settings and strategies. The evaluation of a factor's significance and its effect size are calculated using a factorial analysis approach. This method allows the identification of factors relevant to both individual strategies, and the set of all player strategies. Finally, as a proof of concept for both the online and adaptation prospects of this method, we developed a prototype adaptive system. Utilizing the releva

Abstract: "A recent trend within computational intelligence and games research is to investigate how to affect video game players' in-game experience by designing and/or modifying aspects of game content. Analysing the relationship between game content, player behaviour and self-reported affective states constitutes an important step towards understanding game experience and constructing effective game adaptation mechanisms. This papers reports on further refinement of a method to understand this relationship by analysing data collected from players, building models that predict player experience and analysing what features of game and player data predict player affect best. We analyse data from players playing 780 pairs of short game sessions of the platform game Super Mario Bros, investigate the impact of the session size and what part of the level that has the major affect on player experience. Several types of features are explored, including item frequencies and patterns extracted through frequent sequence mining."

Abstract: "In this paper, we describe a methodology for capturing player experience while interacting with a game and we present a data-driven approach for modeling this interaction. We believe the best way to adapt games to a specic player is to use quantitative models of player ex- perience derived from the in-game interaction. Therefore, we rely on crowd-sourced data collected about game context, players behavior and players self-reports of dierent aective states. Based on this informa- tion, we construct estimators of player experience using neuroevolution- ary preference learning. We present the experimental setup and the re- sults obtained from a recent case study where accurate estimators were constructed based on information collected from players playing a rst- person shooter game. The framework presented is part of a bigger picture where the generated models are utilized to tailor content generation to particular player's needs and playing characteristics."

"The article will illustrate and explain how we worked with research and our own and secondary literature to create a game that had the potential to create social change. The game Junomi was designed to address the problem of loneliness among Danish teenagers and create opportunities for the families to play and experiment with the ways in which they communicate together. The game is a location based smart-phone game that takes place in players' everyday environments around the city. Players invite close family members to play for an agreed period of time (for example a week or a couple of months). Throughout the game period, players create questions, each with three possible multiple choice answers, and place them on a map to be found by other players. When other players pass by the question locations on their everyday routes around the city, the questions pop up on the phones."

Abstract Virtual worlds give us the opportunity to explore another self, a virtual character of the real life you. Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) have become extremely popular over the last decade. It has also grown into a lucrative business. To keep the players, the game needs to be more than just a game. This study aimed at finding out what factors that determine which features of the character creation interface that are most important to players. The following research question was formed; "Which underlying factors affect how important different features of the character creation interface are to experienced MMORPG players? To be able to answer the question an extensive literature review was conducted. A qualitative approach was taken. Long interviews were made with five participants, two female and three male players. The interviews took place while they created a number of avatars in different MMORPGs. The interviews were then followed up. During the follow-ups, the impact the character creation process had for the players, were discussed. The findings indicate that the character creation interface is important for the players to get a good gaming experience. However different types of players require different things. Important features for the users to change were mainly; the head; the name; and adding parts of yourself on your character. The factors that determined the importance of these features were found to be; Player types; Identity types; Immersion levels; and whether or not the game or the gaming experience were new to the player. Another finding showed that the longer you have played a game the less bizarre the different races, classes and gender will seem. The study also indicated that the female participants had a hard time identifying with their male characters."

Abstract: "Games with a strong notion of story are increasingly popular. With the increased amount of story content associated with games where player decisions significantly change the course of the game (branching games), comes an increase in the effort required to author those games. Despite the increased popularity of these kinds of games, it is unclear if a typical player is able to appreciate the rich content of these games, since any given player typically only experiences a small amount of that content. We create a non-branching game that simulates branching choices by providing players with choices followed by immediate textual feedback. We hypothesize that this game, where player decisions do not significantly change the course of the game, will maintain the player's sense of agency. Experimentation showed that in a text-based story with forced-choice points there were in most cases no significant difference in players' reported feelings of agency when they experience a branching story vs. a linear story with explicit acknowledgement of their choices."

Abstract: "People experience emotions when playing videogames. It can be argued that these emotions are their main reason for playing. In this paper, we investigate whether colors can be used in videogames to elicit specific emotions. We ran an experiment with a videogame in which four different colors, associated with four specific emotions, were used in four different conditions (in this case, four different rooms in the game). After each condition we measured the players' emotional responses by means of a Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) questionnaire. Our analysis revealed that the color red evoked a highly-aroused, negative emotional response, while the color yellow evoked a positive emotional response. These results were significantly different from the emotional responses measured for other colors. Furthermore, we found that inexperienced players showed much more explicit reactions to colors than experienced players. We conclude that the use of colors is a suitable method for game designers to elicit specific emotional responses from the players, in particular from novice players."

From the abstract: "Our goal is to create a better understanding on how to design encounters that affect interest levels in linear FPS games. Specifically, how exactly a player's interest levels can be raised intentionally. To accomplish this, we developed a method for measuring and comparing player interest levels based on electroencephalogram (EEG) data measured using a "Neurosky Mindset" unit, which is a commercially available EEG device. We measured player EEG data for the first 4 levels of the FPS game "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" and calculated player interest levels for the entire length of gameplay. By referring to recorded gameplay videos, we were able to associate each increase in interest levels for each player to a specific point in game. From this data, we found and isolated points in each level where most players showed a rise in interest levels, and discovered that certain patterns existed between these situations. These findings led to another study where we further analyzed these situations and found out what factors caused most players to show a rise in interest levels. We were able to divide these factors into 6 different categories called Triggers: "Anticipation", "Concentration", "Surprise", "Frustration", "Overwhelm" and "Fear". As these triggers represent mutually exclusive elements that affect a player's interest levels, we found that in most situations where many test subjects showed a rise in interest levels, more than one trigger is present, a phenomenon we call Stacking. While our study is still ongoing, we believe that by using these triggers as guidelines, game designers will be able to intentionally plan and control the player's interest level for FPS games with a certain level of guarantee"

Abstract: "Cloud gaming now makes any computer game playable on a thin client without the previous worries and frustrations about the hardware requirements. It frees players from the need to frequently upgrade their computers as they can now play games that are hosted on remote servers with a broadband Internet connection and a thin client. However, cloud games are intrinsically more susceptible to latency than online games because game graphics are rendered on cloud servers and thin clients do not possess game state information that is required by delay compensation techniques. In this paper, we investigate how the response latency in cloud gaming would affect users' experience and how the impact of latency on players' experience varies among different games. We show that not all games are equally friendly to cloud gaming. That is, the same degree of latency may have very different impacts on a game's quality of experience depending on the game's real-time strictness. We thus develop a model that can predict a game's real-time strictness based on the rate of players' inputs and the game screen dynamics. The model can be used to simultaneously enhance players' gaming and optimize the operation cost of data centers."

Abstract: "Herein is proposed the creation of an Application Program- ming Interface (API) for the Unity 3 and 4 video game de- velopment engine that not only reads behavioral measures from traditional video game input devices (such as if there has been an increase in mouse movements and clicks) but also takes into account physiological measures from biomet- ric devices (such as an increase in respiratory rate). The API parses these inputs based on study results that correlated player performance and engagement with physio- logical signs across several dierent game genres. Through the use of several rudimentary machine learning algorithms, raw physiological data is transformed into data relevant to a developer, including player engagement. The results of these calculations allow a game designer to have powerful tools for detecting when players experience certain emotions, and al- low for the design of aective games. Furthermore, the API also exposes the raw data to de- velopers wishing to propose and utilize their own learning algorithms, to allow for a rich development environment for developers of all skill levels. These development tools will enrich the game experience for the player, as well as prepare designers for the use of the next wave of non-traditional in- put hardware. This report serves to illustrate the current status of the API. A brief overview of the signicance of galvonic skin re- sponse (GSR), heart rate (HR), and respiratory rate (RR) in detecting player performance and engagement will be fol- lowed by a discussion of the API itself and the design choices therein."

"The UT^2 game bot, created by computer scientists Jacob Schru, Igor Karpov and Risto Miikkulainen, won the Humanlike Bot Competition at the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2012). "The idea of the competition is to evaluate how we can make game bots, non-player characters (NPCs) controlled by AI algorithms, appear as human as possible," explains Miikkulainen, professor of computer science in the College of Natural Sciences. "It is generally recognized that NPCs are relatively weak in most video games: their behavior is predictable and mechanical, and they often make mistakes that human players would be unlikely to make. Players often enjoy playing against other humans, because it provides a more interesting game experience. The goal of the competition is to promote more research in human-like bots, as well as evaluate how well we are currently doing in this area."

Abstract :"We present an attempt at exploring the search space of weapons in team-based multiplayer First-Person Shooters (FPS). At the foundation of the experiment is Team Block- head Wars (TBHW), a game that we developed for the pur- poses of this project. TBHW allows human players to enjoy classic multiplayer FPS gameplay and uses a genetic algo- rithm to continuously generate new weapons. A weapon's genome consists of ten real-valued parameters, which to- gether form a vast search space that includes common FPS weapon tropes. The evaluation function scores weapons on the basis of their use by players. The game also generates 3D meshes to visually represent the generated weapons for easy player recognition. While TBHW is work in progress, preliminary results are encouraging."

Abstract :"Quality of experience (QoE) is a measure of the customer's experience with a service. In an online gaming scenario, players expect the experience to be realistic, continuous and precise. It is important to know not just the end user's experience but also the probable cause of the experience, good or bad. Understanding the cause is essential for improving the game design via a feedback loop, which in turn con- tributes towards game longevity. We begin by focussing on two broad categories of the QoE measurement tech- niques for gaming scenario, subjective and objective measurement. We then study two frameworks, One-Click[4] and Perceptual View Inconsistency[5] from the perspec- tive of the scenarios in which they can be applied, their ability and more importantly, their inability to measure certain aspects of end user experience, and the diculties encountered while applying these techniques. Subsequently, we try to propose a sim- ple scheme in which both of these techniques can be used to complement each other in a real life scenario, and get the best out of both."

Abstract: "Cinematography is a key aspect in the development of mod- ern computer games. The quality of the visuals depends, not only on the accuracy of the rendering, but on the way that the scene is presented to the player. Which element should be included in the frame, from which point of view and in which positions are all aspects that have been widely stud- ied in classical cinematography. However, it is still unclear how the principles developed for the lm medium are ap- plicable to an interactive medium such as computer games. This article presents a study, which explores the interplay between cinematography and player experience. The results of the experiment demonstrate the existence of an impact of the cinematographic behaviour of camera on both player's aect and her in-game behaviour. Furthermore, this impact is dependent on the game mechanics highlighting once more the dierence between classic cinematography and game cin- ematography"

Abstract: "Design techniques can have an important effect on how video games teach and players learn. The ability to harness these techniques in the design of educational video game can impact the motivation and engagement of playing and learning by creating more options for players to connect with game content as well as to other players. This article focuses on the design phase of the game development process and highlights the role of some techniques that can be used to design a successful educational video game (guidelines and design patterns). These techniques provide information on good practice and form a basis for evaluating the educational video game quality, acting as useful tools for developers to enhance video game playability. To this end, we have presented a set of guidelines and design patterns in order to provide an acceptable level of playability and, in this way, a better player experiences and learning achievement."

"A Slower Speed of Light is a first-person game prototype in which players navigate a 3D space while picking up orbs that reduce the speed of light in increments. Custom-built, open-source relativistic graphics code allows the speed of light in the game to approach the player's own maximum walking speed. Visual effects of special relativity gradually become apparent to the player, increasing the challenge of gameplay. These effects, rendered in realtime to vertex accuracy, include the Doppler effect (red- and blue-shifting of visible light, and the shifting of infrared and ultraviolet light into the visible spectrum); the searchlight effect (increased brightness in the direction of travel); time dilation (differences in the perceived passage of time from the player and the outside world); Lorentz transformation (warping of space at near-light speeds); and the runtime effect (the ability to see objects as they were in the past, due to the travel time of light). Players can choose to share their mastery and experience of the game through Twitter. A Slower Speed of Light combines accessible gameplay and a fantasy setting with theoretical and computational physics research to deliver an engaging and pedagogically rich experience."

Abstract: "As a way to support developers , we propose the creation of specialized tools to deal with accessibility. The hypothesis defined was that it is possible to produce tools that coul d reduce the cost and effort needed to adapt games for people with special needs while achi eving a sufficient level of usability and a pleasant player exper ience . Because of the ambitious of the approach , the goal of the project is to explore if it is feasible through preliminary research . T hree experiments were set up to cover and explore different alternatives , given the diversity of player characteristics and game develop ment approaches . In these experiments we targeted t wo different platforms: a desktop game authoring tool oriented to educators , and a mobile game development framework oriented to programmers . In these experiments we used the to ols developed to produce several games that were also tested by end users . While the project focuses on disability, the ideas proposed can be generalized and applied to support optimizing game interfaces for a wide and diverse audience."

"effect of game reviews on player experience and perceptions of quality. We show that negative reviews cause a significant effect on how players perceive their in-game experience, and that this effect is a post-play cognitive rationalization of the play experience with the previously-read review text. To address this effect we designed and deployed a new heuristic evaluation technique that specifically uses game reviews to create a fine-grained prioritized list of usability problems based on the frequency, impact, and persistence of each problem. By using our technique we are able to address the most common usability problems identified by game reviews, thus reducing the overall level of negativity found within the review text. Our approach helps to control and eliminate the snowballing effect that can be produced by players reading reviews and subsequently posting their own reviews, and thus improve the commercial success of a game."

Abstract: "Non-player Characters (NPCs) that accompany the player en- able a single player to participate in team-based experiences, improving immersion and allowing for more complex game- play. In this context, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) teammate should make good combat decisions, supporting the player and optimizing combat resolution. Here we investigate the target selection problem, which consists of picking the op- timal enemy as a target in a modern war game. We look at how the companion's different strategies can influence the outcome of combat, and by analyzing a variety of non-trivial First Person Shooter (FPS) scenarios show that a mathemat- ically simple approach significantly improves over common strategies typically found in games, and can achieve results similar to much more expensive look-up tree approaches. This work has applications in practical game design, show- ing that simple, computationally efficient target selection can make an excellent target selection heuristic"

From the abstract: "Traditionally, the tasks associated with game AI revolved around non player character (NPC) behavior at dierent levels of control, varying from navigation and pathnding to decision making. Commercial-standard games developed over the last 15 years and current game productions, however, suggest that the traditional challenges of game AI have been well addressed via the use of sophisticated AI approaches, not necessarily following or inspired by advances in academic practices. The marginal penetration of traditional academic game AI methods in industrial productions has been mainly due to the lack of constructive communication between academia and industry in the early days of academic game AI, and the inability of academic game AI to propose methods that would signicantly advance existing development processes or provide scalable solutions to real world problems. Recently, however, there has been a shift of research focus as the current plethora of AI uses in games is breaking the non-player character AI tradition. A number of those alternative AI uses have already shown a signicant potential for the design of better games. This paper presents four key game AI research areas that are currently reshaping the research roadmap in the game AI eld and evidently put the game AI term under a new perspective. These game AI agship research areas include the computational modeling of player experience, the procedural generation of content, the mining of player data on massive-scale and the alternative AI research foci for enhancing NPC capabilities."