Group items tagged

abstract: "We present the second iteration of the Family Hedge, a tangible digital artifact that was re-designed to elicit enjoyment using principles of game design. The initial aim was to create a device crafted for a family to explore the rich social and relational aspects of their lives by making connections between people, objects and stories. The second iteration facilitated more open interaction and playfulness in its role as an artifact for school children. We examine the key role a game design approach played in its iterative development and a key element in this was ensuring any user, or "gamer", could appropriate the device for personal expressive use."

"We present the second iteration of the Family Hedge, a tangible digital artifact that was re-designed to elicit enjoyment using principles of game design. The initial aim was to create a device crafted for a family to explore the rich social and relational aspects of their lives by making connections between people, objects and stories. The second iteration facilitated more open interaction and playfulness in its role as an artifact for school children. We examine the key role a game design approach played in its iterative development and a key element in this was ensuring any user, or "gamer", could appropriate the device for personal expressive use."

Abstract: "There have been tremendous ways of developing creativity, yet instead of traditionally formal instruction, games are the best media to spur creativity, as creativity can easily and spontaneously be evoked through games. On the other hand, metacognition is a good way to promote creative thinking, as metacognition which contains the abilities such as self-planning, self-monitoring, and self-evaluation can foster creative-relevant cognitive processes. Games are exactly the ideal platform that provides a playful context for metacognitive awareness prompting creative processes. Based on the advantages of games and that design is a creativity-relevant cognitive and constructive process, this research adopts the means of digital game-based learning (DGBL) to propose a metacognitive approach to inspiring creativity through a creativity game of players as game story designers."

Twisted Metal designer David Jaffe argues against ambitious narratives in video game design

"Digital technology empowers one to access vast amounts of on-line data. From a learning perspective, however, it is difficult to access meaningful on-site information within a given context. The Hypercontextualized Game (HCG) design model interweaves on-site resources, translated as content, and the digital game. As a local game design process, HCG builds on the resources available on-site (context) and transfers them beyond their origin (hyper). A successful example is the HCG stories in LieksaMyst, an application developed for the Pielinen Museum, in which the player is guided through a series of activities by a virtual host from the historic past. It took three years of extensive work and research for the LieksaMyst HCG stories to mature from brainstorming concepts to a fully-fledged museum service. Curators, educational technology experts and a total of 476 visitors (from 6 to 77 years old) contributed to the design process. The analysis of the context and feedback from the visitors enabled us to choose media, content and activities suitable to the Pielinen Museum. Our findings indicate that quality time, sincere reflection and communication between local experts and potential players, are indispensable when designing a HCG based game. The analysis benefits researchers and practitioners who are interested in the ways in which a game can bridge the gap between people and relevant on-site information"

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: "Amongst the highly interactive media of modern times, video-games are the highlight of digital interactive story- worlds. With a push towards ever increasing player free- dom, video-games have started oering large explorable worlds for the player to delve into. However exploring the digital space in itself often has no meaningful bear- ing on the story. What could be done to make exploring these vast digital worlds itself the catalyst for unfolding a story? Within my research paper, I will investigate what techniques allow for a story-immersive reason to explore, and how a story may be born from exploring."

Abstract: "As the video game industry grows, both developers and cre- ative authors are seeking new ways to convert story content into scripting code, which is often a difficult process dur- ing game creation. ScriptEase II provides a solution to this common bottleneck in the games design process. Although the goals are similar to the goals of ScriptEase, ScriptEase II is able to generate code for any game engine with a provided translator. It utilizes high-level game design patterns such as cause-effect and quest patterns which can be abstracted between most games. In addition, ScriptEase II further en- hances the use of these patterns with a simple drag-and-drop interface. The generality of the code generation has been tested using two different game engines, and it can be used to further test the benefits of using high-level game design patterns in content creation."

Excerpted in Google Books, Published November 2012."Join videogame industry veteran Michael Thornton Wyman on a series of detailed, behind-the-scenes tours with the teams that have made some of the most popular and critically acclaimed videogames of the modern era. Drawing on insider's perspectives from a wide variety of teams, learn about the creation of a tiny, independent game project (World of Goo), casual game classics (Diner Dash, Bejeweled Twist), the world's most popular social game (FarmVille) as well as the world's most popular MMORPG (World of Warcraft), PC titles (Half Life 2) to AAA console games (Madden NFL 10), and modern-day masterpieces (Little Big Planet, Rock Band, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves). Hear directly from the creators about how these games were made, and learn from their stories from the trenches of videogames production. This book is an excellent resource for those working directly on game design or production, for those aspiring to work in the field, or for anyone who has wondered how the world's greatest videogames get made."

"This paper presents a design methodology that allows technical leads in the game industry to introduce story designers with low technical background to generative techniques for automatic plot creation, in particular to a specific method of AI-based planning. The approach provides support to convey necessary technical knowledge by paper prototyping. Further, it demonstrates that paper prototypes are not only useful to learn these concepts but also as tools of creation."

Abstract: "As computational capability continues to increase, the tools available to designers of digital games have become more robust, allowing high fidelity graphics and sound to become common, and resulting in a market saturated with kinetic-based games. However, consumers and educators are eschewing such games for more complex and immersive stories, the creation of which has proven a difficult mountain for designers to climb. A central reason is that story-immersive games rely on dialogue between the player character (PC) and nonplayer characters (NPCs), the writing and coding of which is time consuming and inefficient. This paper documents the author's experiences with complex, branching dialogue systems, and examines the possibility of system automation through natural language processing (NLP)."

VIDEO game developers at Nottingham Trent University scooped top awards at a design event. The teams of designers were challenged to create new games in just 48 hours. One Trent team took first prize at the IndieCity Global Game Jam category for their multiplayer game Flerbs, in which players have to guide jellies from one flag to another.

A hub of career information in the video game industry, including industry news, news stories, career advice, online communities, and other material of interest to aspiring game designers and developers

Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games: Analyzing Words, Design and Play Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture, 2012 Publisher Description: In this timely new book, Christopher Paul analyzes how the words we use to talk about video games and the structures that are produced within games shape a particular way of gaming by focusing on how games create meaning, lead to identification and division, persuade, and circulate ideas.

"Doctors in a domed laboratory in Montreal are designing a virtual world where they hope to one day treat traumatized children with colourful avatars using toylike medical gadgets. Sensory stimulation could be used to make a burn victim feel she is encased in a block of ice."

Highlights two games, one designed an American and one designed by Chinese, one taking as its subject the end of American military hegemony, the other portraying American soldiers as "the enemy." Socio-political implications of these developments are discussed, particularly how these represent a break from mainstream video game content.

CCP Games partners with the fashion industry to design virtual fashion environments and avatars and recently hired a fashion consultant to design outfits for one its games

"Sam Anderson, critic at large for The Times Magazine, wrote this week's cover story on stupid digital games. He has most recently written for the magazine on Haruki Murakami and on the theme park called Dickens World. Some readers seemed irate that you described these games as "stupid.""

"construction of a social cues and training demonstrator (a serious game) that enables its users to improve their social behaviour. In this report, a distinction is made between strong story and strong autonomy approaches to narrative management. The former rely on central management of the narrative through drama managers, not giving their agents much freedom. Inversely, the latter focus on the autonomy of agents, without explicit top-down control over the narrative. The autonomy of such agents allows an unscripted narrative to emerge from the user's interaction with the system. The trade-off between a strict storyline and freedom of action in these approaches is called the narrative paradox. It is concluded that a strong autonomy approach can feature social behaviour of agents more easily than a strong story one, because it is inherent with this approach that its agents have more complex models. For the demonstrator, some control over the narrative is required to let its users reach given goals in the created scenarios. Therefore, our future work will focus on creating a hybrid approach that enables agents to direct the story autonomously."

Abstract: "Game Artificial Intelligence (Game AI) is a subdiscipline of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) that explores the ways in which AI and ML can augment player experiences in computer games. Storytelling is an integral part of many modern computer games; within games stories create context, motivate the player, and move the action forward. Interactive Narrative is the use of AI to create and manage stories within games, creating the perception that the player is a character in a dynamically unfolding and responsive story. This paper introduces Game AI and focuses on the open research problems of Interactive Narrative."

How do you look back on a year of gaming and try to find a common thread? I tried to look for something that connected the stories that are presented here as being some of the best-or most interesting-investigations into different aspects of gaming and the surrounding culture.