Group items tagged

"This thesis proposes the development of a video game platform to increase the publics knowledge of required protective actions in the event of a nuclear terrorism attack. Current scientific analyses have identified elementary steps the public should take to increase the likelihood of survival in the event of a nuclear terrorism incident; however, a knowledge gap currently exists with regard to the publics understanding of these required actions. Unfortunately, todays preparedness initiatives do not have the efficacy required to impact significant improvements in this area. Video games, more specifically a sub-genre of games known as serious games, are uniquely postured to address this knowledge gap. Not only do video games provide a motivating, enriching and engaging educational medium, but also they are unique in that they address the emerging educational needs of todays games generation, which desires more interactive educational environments since they have been immersed in technology for the majority of their lives. As such, leveraging this technology can help close the current knowledge gap and increase the nations resilience to nuclear terrorism."

Focus on MassDiGi's efforts to bring together game companies and aspiring students, a panel from the MIT Enterprise Forum will be held on December 1 and feature Becker's Timothy Loew among others.

Thu, Apr. 25, 2013 5:30 p.m. - 8 p.m. US/Pacific Where? SNR Denton 1530 Page Mill Road, Suite 200 Palo Alto, CA

Abstract: ""Sequence Breaking" is a type of feature interaction conflict that exists in video games where the player gains access to a portion of a game that should be inaccessible. In such instances, a game's subsuming featur e - its storylin e - is disrupted, as the predefined set of valid event sequences - event s being uninterruptable unit s of functionality that further the game's story - is not honoured, as per the game designer s' intentions. We postulate that sequence breaking often arise s through bypassing g eographic barriers, chea ting, and misunderstanding on the player's behalf. Throughout this dissertation, we pre sent an approach to preventing seque nce breaking at run - time with the help of Use Case Maps. We create a "narrative manager" and traversal algorithm to monitor the playe r's narrative progress and check the legality of attempted event calls. We verify our solution through test cases and show its feasibility through a game , concluding t hat our solution is sufficient and feasible."

Abstract: "Procedural generation of games has become an active re- search eld. We present a system that automatically gen- erates an interactive ction (IF) by learning from crowd- sourced corpora of example stories. We ask crowd workers from Amazon Mechanical Turk to write short stories about a given situation with simple language, from which a plot graph is learned, containing plot events, temporal prece- dence and mutual exclusion relations between the events. The plot graph describes an IF where players and non-player characters choose from executable events as determined by the plot graph. We demonstrate an IF learned from the domain of bank robbery"

Criteria for IGDA Scholarships 2012, to three industry related events, dealine Jan 20, 2012, (GDC 2012, SXSW, PAX East,) full time college students in game programs and members of IGDA

" In March 2012, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan expressed his conviction that "technology is a game-changer in the field of education." One year ago President Obama put out a call for "investments in educational technology that will help create digital tutors that are as effective as personal tutors, educational software as compelling as the best video game." What are the sorts of promising innovations living up to this challenge? How are they accelerating the quality of and access to education? Is gaming an effective tool? What are the challenges in adapting these technologies in everyday practice? And how can we trust that they will deliver on the promises? Are there compelling opportunities for entrepreneurs? The Churchill Club has assembled a diverse set of thought leaders to offer unique perspectives on these questions and explore big changes looming over the horizon."

"Keywords for Video Game Studies Colloquium Saturday, May 19, 2012 8 AM to 4 PM Communication 202 University of Washington, Seattle" "The Keywords for Video Game Studies colloquium invites game scholars, artists, designers, developers, and enthusiasts to participate in roundtable discussions, presentations of individual and collaborative work, scholarship, and play. This year's colloquium, broadly themed by the keywords "research/design," is the capstone event to a year-long series of workshop sessions on democracy, time, altplay/fandom, gold farming, and hack/mod. The colloquium, now in its second year, hopes to foster the growing engagement with what it means to study or make or play digital games."

SAN FRANCISCO, March 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- UBM TechWeb Game Network's 2012 Game Developers Conference® (GDC), the world's largest and longest-running event serving professionals dedicated to the art and science of making games, hosted a record-breaking 22,500 game industry professionals last week at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, a 17% increase in attendance over the previous year's event.

"One Shrewsbury company is bringing online, tech. and video game-related jobs to the area. Elevation Exhibits & Events, an exhibit design and event-planning firm, announced a new client, Rooster Teeth. The newly added user is one of the fastest-growing online communities in the comic book, video, film and gaming industry."

Report from November 19 event at Game Design Building

Speaking of which, what happened to Playerevolution? Update: then there's this, a precursor? http://www.becker.edu/events/event/video-game-tournament

A father describes how, despite his efforts to the contrary, both his sons are deeply involved in video games, highly accomplished, and travel great distances and time to visit fellow players and participate in gaming events. Whether this is at the expense of social skills, interactions and real life is considered.

"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: "The Global Games Jam (GGJ) attracts many people who are passionate about games development , co ming from a range of educational backgrounds. Therefore , the event can be experienced by novices and student developers as an opportunity for learning. This provi des an op ening to promote themes and ideas that could help form future thinking about games design, emerging as a form of induction on key design issues for new practitioners . Such an approach aims to raise awareness about issues which learners c ould help develop and take with them into industry . However, t he experience itself affords a deep experiential rhetoric and dialogue with experts that could be an effective pedagogical tool for issues seldom addressed deeply in formal educational settings . This pape r describes an account by one such individual, being introduced to game accessibility through participation in the GGJ . As such, it is not intended as a rigorous empirical analysis , but rather a perspective on one way a game jam can be experienced , invitin g further research on the topic."

"At the April 22 Edtech MeetUp, educators, business friends, and community members will be invited to experience the excitement and engagement of game based learning. Through interactive play, attendees will explore the digital worlds that are shaping curricula across the world. Specifically, the Minecraft digital sandbox will be on full display so attendees can dive into this fascinating digital realm. After a short series of talks by Professor Seann Dikkers and EdTech Link Fellows Molly Adams and Justin Eames on utilizing games in their classrooms, attendees will circulate through the Federal Hill Rec 2 Tech center and play several educational games, including Minecraft, Portal II, and World of Warcraft."

Abstract :"Petri nets are graphical and mathematical tool for modeling, analyzing, and designing discrete event applicable to many systems. They can be applied to game design too, especially to design serous game. This paper describes an alternative approach to the modeling of serious game systems and classification of motivation behavior with Petri nets. To assess the motivation level of player ability, this research aims at Motivation Behavior Game (MBG). MBG improves this motivation concept to monitor how players interact with the game. This modeling employs Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ) for optimizing the motivation behavior input classification of the player. MBG may provide information when a player needs help or when he wants a formidable challenge. The game will provide the appropriate tasks according to players' ability. MBG will help balance the emotions of players, so players do not get bored and frustrated. Players have a high interest to finish the game if the players are emotionally stable. Interest of the players strongly supports the procedural learning in a serious game."

Scheduled for MIT Stratton Student Center 84 Massachusetts Ave Cambridge, MA 02139 Saturday, September 14, 2013 from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM (EDT) Contributions accepted via Kickstarter

An event scheduled in Toronto February 20-24 at multiple venues exhibiting art based on video games

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."