Group items tagged

Abstract: "The aim of this paper is to address imaginative experiences of emotions by drawing Kendall Walton's theory of make-believe. Moreover, we use a design case as means for investigating how a child's felt emotions towards a hospital situation relates to his or her imaginative experiences of emotions towards a !ctive character in a computer game simulating the real-world situation. In so doing, we contribute with new insights to existing theories of emotions in design, which tend to focus narrowly on felt and measurable emotions."

"This project involves developing an action-platformer game for the Flash platform. The user controls a character who must progress through levels, while avoiding obstacles, collecting items and fighting many types of enemies. Role-playing game elements such as equipment and upgrades support user customization and varied battle strategies. Developing a successful Flash game involves several factors. Flash games must be simple to get into, yet rewarding to play in both short and long sessions. Flash games must be accessible to a wide audience; both in terms of user preferences and technical limitations. Finally, Flash games must offer something unique to stand out from the crowd, in a market where hundreds of free games are published every month. This report covers the research, design and implementation done to achieve these requirements, in terms of game mechanics, interface, level design, visual design, accessibility options, and replay value. Technical challenges include building, testing and optimizing a game engine and interface from scratch, balancing the game mechanics and difficulty, and structuring the whole development process in a way that enables easy creation of new content. In addition to game design and development, this project also deals with the business aspects of developing online games; how games generate revenue, how they are marketed and distributed, and developing trends in the consumer market. Project success in different areas has been evaluated through usability studies, user ratings and reviews, and vast quantities of usage and distribution statistics. Overall, the project has been a success in terms of user reception and generated revenue, and the final section of this report includes plans for a second game, utilizing and building upon the same game engine and mechanics."

"Create the Gotham for your Batman, the African savannah for your Simba, or the bustling newsroom for your Clark Kent. Background, setting, environment...whatever you call it, it is the silent character in the visual story, and a dynamic and compelling setting can define and hone the action and drama of your story."

Abstract: "How much time will a player spend in an interactive scene? For the majority of game scenarios this is impossible to predict. Therefore, their musical accompaniment is usually disposed to continuously loop until player interaction triggers a change. This approach involves an existential danger: Sooner or later the player becomes aware of the repetitive character of the ambience design; the game scenario emerges as a mere mechanical arrangement and loses much of its integrity. In this survey paper we systematize and discuss the common approaches to conceal musical repetition. Furthermore, we complement them by a number of approaches that incorporate arrangement techniques, aspects of expressive music performance, and generative variation methods that work actively against repetitiveness."

"Without achieving a clear understanding of the learning domain, it is difficult to develop a successful serious game that enables users to achieve the desired learning outcomes. Thus, the first step in serious game design is to establish an understanding of the particular learning domain, usually through consultation with domain experts. Whilst game design is inherently a creative process, we believe the capturing of the knowledge domain can be systematised and we present a structured approach to knowledge elicitation and representation as a basis for serious game design. We have adapted and extended the applied cognitive task analysis (ACTA) method and have combined it with additional knowledge representation frameworks. We explain how the outputs of this approach can inform the game mechanic and the development of non-player characters, and apply it to the design of a serious game aimed at reducing time-tocompetence in soft project management skills for professionals working in corporate environments. A total of 26 domain experts from five different countries were involved in a two-stage interview process. The interviews yielded more than 300 task elements, and information about the cognition underlying the more challenging tasks. This data was incorporated into several representation frameworks and used to indicate features to be implemented in the game and the game mechanics of the supported features."

questioning dominant paradigms in video game narrative and design and studies

Method for generating avatar with input from the game player, patent awarded to Lyle Corporate Development

Feminist critique of representation of female game characters and gamers

"Abstract-While component reuse is a common concept in software engineering, it does not yet have a strong foothold in Computer Game development, in particular the development of computer-controlled game characters. In this work, we take a modular Statechart-based game AI modelling approach and develop a reuse strategy to enable fast development of new AIs. This is aided through the creation of a standardized interface for Statechart modules in a layered architecture. Reuse is enabled at a high-level through functional groups that encapsulate behaviour. These concepts are solidified with the development of the SkyAI tool. SkyAI enables a developer to build and work with a library of modular components to develop new AIs by composing modules, and then output the resulting product to an existing game. Efficacy is demonstrated by reusing AI components from a tank to quickly make a much different AI for a simple animal."

Excerpt from the 2011 book by Harold Goldberg, All Your Base Are Belong to Us, arguing about the potential for video games, how some scenes in games are executed better than in wel-known films, and showing how movies and pop music were not considered culturally serious until they were, and that the same future exists for games, with the potential coming from such advances in 3D technology or holography.

a site created to offset female representation in action video games which depicts women fighters in outfits "in which they'd be easily killed"

"Training was accomplished using a videogame paradigm that emphasizes associations among sound categories, visual information, and players' responses to videogame characters"