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The UK video game industry was ecstatic today after the Chancellor of the Exchequer (akin to the US Secretary of the Treasury) announced that the government would make tax credits available to UK video game developers in the next budget.

"the aim of this study has been to explore the value of digital games, their significance in our culture, and the current status of their preservation. Investigating the relationship of games to culture; reviewing current preservation activities and drawing conclusions about the value of digital games and the significance of their preservation were the study s objectives. These have been achieved through interviews with key stakeholders the academic community, as potential users of collections; memory institutions, as potential keepers of collections; fan-based game preservation experts; and representatives from the games industry. In addition to this, case studies of key game preservation activities were explored. Through this research, a clearer picture of attitudes towards digital games and opinions on the need for preservation of these cultural products has been established. It has become apparent that there is a need for more coherent and collaborative efforts to ensure the longevity of these important aspects of digital heritage. "

"Cuban programmers have unveiled a new 3D video game that puts a distinctly revolutionary twist on gaming, letting players recreate decisive clashes from the 1959 uprising in which many of their grandparents fought."

A report by the National Foundation for Research in the UK

"A WOMAN from Aylesbury has won a top competition to design a video game for the iPhone. Catherine Forsyth's team won the first ever UK competition to set up, make and design their own computer games, held at the Gadget Show Live at Birmingham's NEC."

A student in Kingston University in the UK designs a video game console "examining the possibility of transporting the enjoyment and skills of electronic gaming into the more mundane world of practical electronic devices," according to his professor.

Abstract: "As computer games are an increasingly large industry, it is becoming increasingly important for people working in the eld to understand what elements of the game engage the player so as to improve the design of the game. By studying common techniques used in modern games, this paper looks to highlight how the techniques work and thereby provide developers and designers with more information to improve the use of these techniques in future games. The paper also re ects upon the applicability of these techniques outside of games specifically."

"We report on a new game design where the goal is to make the stereoscopic depth cue suciently critical to success that game play should become impossible without using a stereoscopic 3D (S3D) display and, at the same time, we investigate whether S3D game play is affected by screen size"

From the abstract: "Here we demonstrate for the first time the iterative development of agent behaviour for a real-time strategy game (here StarCraft) utilising Behaviour Oriented Design (BOD) [7]. BOD provides focus on the robust creation and easy adjustment of modular and hierarchical cognitive agents. We demonstrate BOD's usage in creating an AI capable of playing the StarCraft character the Zerg hive mind, and document its performance against a variety of opponent AI systems. In describing our tool-driven development process, we also describe the new Abode IDE, provide a brief literature review situating BOD in the AI game literature, and propose possible future work."

Abstract: "This paper proposes a new framework for automated analysis of game-play metrics for aiding game designers in nding out the critical aspects of the game caused by factors like design modications, change in playing style, etc. The core of the algorithm measures similarity between spatial distribution of user generated in-game events and automatically ranks them in order of importance. The feasibility of the method is demonstrated on a data set collected from a modern, multiplayer First Person Shooter, together with application examples of its use. The proposed framework can be used to accompany traditional testing tools and make the game design process more efficient."

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."

"If you're a fighting game fan, you'll have seen the videos. Street Fighter producer Yoshinori Ono and his Tekken equivalent, Katsuhiro Harada, at the San Diego Comic Con, battling it out over a series of ridiculous competitive tasks."

"we can highlight the relationships between the different motivational and value aspects associated with cool products. By understanding these factors, we can better design for cool,"

Shadowboxer, potential challenger to the Wii Fit

"A BUDDING games designer is set to launch his first major title at The Gadget Show Live at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre this week."

Monica M. McGill's blog, assitant professor at Bradely University, one of her areas of study is game design curricula in US, UK and Canada. "Creating proposals in production courses, particularly games courses, is important in order to teach students to think about what they want to do for their project and why they want to do it."

Her name is Angelina: she runs on a heavy-duty Mac server and she's building some addictive computer games for you. Angelina (a tail-recursive acronym for "A Novel Game-Evolving Labrat I've Named ANGELINA") is a project in evolutionary computing by Michael Cook, a PhD candidate at Imperial College in the UK.

"A detailed set of guidelines has been published online to help video-games developers cater for users with accessibility issues."

applied behavior analysis