Group items tagged

Abstract: "In digital games and virtual worlds, like in other digital media, the structure of the medium, its code, influences the emerging interaction and culture. A deliberate modification of this code to facilitate democratic decision making might thus lead to more meaningful interaction in games. If we see virtual worlds as learning environments this might even help players to understand and question real-world power structures. A way to modify the code of a virtual world is by extending its interface with an add-on that interacts with the application programming interface of the game. In this paper we present the design vision and theoretical framework of a digital tool for ethical decision making that will be implemented in the virtual world World of Warcraft. Its purpose will be to supply players with means to modify the power structure built into the code of this virtual world and to support more ethical and democratic decision making in the game."

Abstract: "Serious Games are increasingly used as a tool for various applications contrary to the traditional enterta inment purpose. Many game engines are available, and Unity3D is another example that presents some features such as rapid prototyping and an easy learning curve. The 3D space where action takes place is sometimes hard to map into a logical memory structure providing flexible access to that information. The problem of tracking players ' path as well as their decision s in 3D environments arises when there is no previous knowledge of the scenario representation and the creation of a memory data structure poses an extra effort for the modeller. The proposed solution in this paper, albeit simple, is a straightforward way to track the location of the video game character and map it when he / she passes certain limits. Th is mechanism proved to represent a key step for ward, addressing the important issue of tracking the decision - making process of players for future analysis and behaviour elicitation."

IARPA contract to Raytheon, videogames developed for training, emphasis on cognitive bias in decision making

Abstract: "In this work we investigate whether the innate visual recognition and learning capabilities of untrained humans can be used in conducting reliable microscopic analysis of biomedical samples toward diagnosis. For this purpose, we designed entertaining digital games that are interfaced with artificial learning and processing back-ends to demonstrate that in the case of binary medical diagnostics decisions (e.g., infected vs. uninfected), with the use of crowd-sourced games it is possible to approach the accuracy of medical experts in making such diagnoses. Specifically, using non-expert gamers we report diagnosis of malaria infected red blood cells with an accuracy that is within 1.25% of the diagnostics decisions made by a trained medical professional."

"The high cost of launching resources from the Earth's surface is a significant barrier to future long- duration human space exploration. A future resource economy in space may allow resource production, processing, storage, and transportation at distributed locations, but will have many stakeholders with var- ied and potentially competing objectives. Simulation games provide a medium for communication and learning richer than papers or linear presentations by combining the technical capabilities of simulation models with human interaction. Building on technology powering military wargames, federated simulation architectures such as HLA-Evolved use independently-developed simulation models connected over a dis- tributed network of computers. This paper presents an approach for developing a multi-player simulation gaming environment where human players take on roles of organizations or government agencies within scenarios designed to address the design and operation of a resource economy in space. The game design addresses the number of players, time advancement, level of abstraction, scenario selection, and other de- cisions based on past simulation games in the domains of military-political, educational, disaster response, and business-management games. Future research will focus on evaluating game executions to analyze human decision-making under various scenarios. Quantitative analysis of decisions using game logs com- bined with qualitative analysis of interviews and surveys will contribute to strategies for a future resource economy in space."

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"

This seems the takeaway: ""We don't have a lot of control over how people interpret our findings," Bushman told Ars. ... Still, Bushamn suggests that the basic idea that virtual shooting can help improve real-world shooting performance shouldn't be that controversial at its core. "If you want to learn how to fly an airplane and you want to use the media to help you learn, what would be the best way: read a book about it, watch a TV program about it, or play a flight simulator video game?" he asked rhetorically. "Clearly the more interactive the media, the more you're going to learn. Does that mean by playing flight simulator you're going to be good enough to fly a real plane? I don't know, that's a relative decision, but better than if you'd watched a TV program or read a book about it, I would say.""

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."

"Abstract: Previous research proposes that human beings are motivated to protect endangered species by both instrumental values and intrinsic values of biodiversity. However, it has been difficult to tease apart the two kinds of value at the behavioral level. Using an innovative fishing game, we tested one kind of instrumental value (financial value) and one kind of intrinsic value (existence value) of the endangered Steller sea lion. In the fishing game, players make repeated decisions on how much Pollock to harvest for profit in each period in a dynamic ecosystem. The population of the endangered sea lion depends on the population of Pollock, which in turn depends on the harvesting behavior of humans. The data show that in general, people responded to the financial value, but not the existence value, of the sea lion by cutting down commercial fish harvesting to keep more sea lions in the ecosystem. However, not all people behaved the same regarding the existence value. Females displayed a higher existence value than males, as did people who reported stronger proenvironmental attitudes than those with less pro‐environmental attitudes. Our findings have multiple implications on public opinion elicitation and public policy design."

"This dissertation presents the use of procedural content generation to create expressive design tools: content generators that are accessible to designers, supporting the creation of new kinds of design tools and enabling the exploration of a new genre of game involving the deep integration of procedural content generation into game mechanics and aesthetics. The first of these tools is Tanagra, the first ever AI-assisted level design tool that supports a designer creating levels for 2D platforming games. Tanagra guarantees that levels created in the tool are playable, and provides the designer with the ability to modify generated levels and directly control level pacing. The second tool is Launchpad, which supports a designer controlling both component and pacing features of generated levels; its companion game Endless Web uses the generator to create an infinite world for players to explore and alter through their choices. Endless Web is one of a handful of games in a new genre enabled by content generation: PCG-based games. Finally, this dissertation presents a novel method for understanding, visualizing, and comparing a generator's expressive range, thus allowing designers to understand the implications of decisions they will make during the design process."

"xDELIA Project Number 231830: Xcellence in Decision-making through Enhanced Learning in Immersive Applications"

Interdisciplinary team at University of Albany, supported by Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), in partnership with a local game company