Group items tagged

"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: "We describe an approach to using standard data mining algorithms to help analyse recurring themes in game design across several games, and to help suggest novel game design ideas. This is illustrated with the analysis of 119 different resource systems across 20 games. Clustering is used to validate the assignment of resources into archetypes; frequent pattern mining is used to find commonly co-occurring resource attributes; and decision tree induction is used to visualize the relations between resource archetypes. We discuss the relation between qualitative and quantitative analysis of game design and suggest that qualitative analysis is necessary but that quantitative methods can be of invaluable help."

"Abstract The eective information processing (e.g. search, organi- zation) of the heterogeneous information spaces requires metadata layer above the resources. However, the acqui- sition of resource metadata and domain models are chal- lenging tasks. Here, the crowdsourcing has emerged as an alternative to expert-based and automated semantics acquisition approaches. One of its branches are the games with a purpose (GWAPs) which encapsulate the seman- tics acquisition tasks into the game processes. We analyze existing GWAPs and propose their classication. Fur- thermore we devised our own GWAP-based approaches. For acquisition of lightweight term relationship network, we devised a search query formulation game, usable also for specic domain models. For acquisition of (personal) image tags, we devised a card game, where players mem- orize positions of concealed cards and identify identical pairs. For validation of music metadata, we devised a multi-choice question-based game, where players identify tag sets that are characteristic to music tracks they hear. We also looked at the GWAPs from their design per- spectives. We present a design oriented classication sys- tem for GWAPs, adress several design issues recurring in GWAPs and present new design patterns to solve them"

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."

"a national program that provides scientific leadership and resources to advance the research, design and effectiveness of digital games and game technologies that promote health. It is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio and headquartered at the University of California, Santa Barbara"

"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"

A defunct game releases its code into the public domain. What opportunities does this present for developers and students?

Abstract: "We present a method for simulating the melting and owing of material in burning objects fast enough to be of use in video games where most of the graphical and computational resources are needed elsewhere. The standard practice of us- ing particle engines or uid dynamics for melting are far too costly for use in this environment. We demonstrate that our method, which is based on systematic polygonal expanding and folding, uses only a fraction of the computational power avail- able by implementing the computation on a very modest GPU using CUDA"

From the introduction "The method described in this review is based on the Machinations tool, written based on the book by Dormans (2012) and the accompanying paper, also by Dormans (20 11). After having researched the necessary elements to create this tool and created the first iterations (Dormans, 2008; 2009), Dormans created Machinations as a response to the call of Doug Church (Dormans, 2012, 21) for "formal abstract design tools" whi ch Church (1999) posted on Gamasutra, a game developer website. Machinations is a framework that uses automated, interactive diagrams to simulate and test the gameplay of a game before development, to see if there are any serious flaws in the design and if the game would have plausible (and more importantly, entertaining) progression and emergence. The diagrams represent the flow of resources in a game during, and the feedback structures that exist in, the gameplay, which can be interacted with during the d iagram's runtime."

Abstract :"Immigrants entering the European Community face a range of challenges in adapting to and understanding the culture of their host nation. Failure to address these challenges can lead to isolation and difficulties integrating into the society of the host country, leading to fragmented communities and a range of social issues . As part of a comprehensive suit e of services for immigrants , the European - funded M obile Assistance for Social Inclusion and Empowerment of Immigrants with Persuasive Learning Technologies and Social Network Services (MASELTOV) project seeks to provide both practical tools and le arning services via mobile devices, providing a readily usable resource for immigrants . In this workshop paper, the game - based learning aspect of the MASELTOV project is introduced, with the rationale behind its design presented. In doing so, the b enefits and implications of mobile platforms and emergent dat a capture techniques for game - based learning are discussed, as are methods for putting engaging gameplay at the forefront of the experience whilst relying on rich data capture and analysis to pro vide an effective learning solution. Through comparison to several other projects, a number of recommendations are put forward for games deployed in contexts similar to that of MASELTOV: a focus on establishing a significant audience with which to conduct ethical research into efficacy, the need for robust pedagogical frameworks suited to the learning context, and the evolution of methods for data capture and analysis of player activity."

" Persuasive technology with game mechanics can educate and motivate people to adopt energy efficient lifestyles. "

Abstract: "Serious Games are increasingly used as a training and educational tool. Fire keeps claiming a high number of victims. Some authors allege failures during the evacuation process as the main cause that contributes for that number. Fire drills are used to train buildings' occupants for emergency situations. However, fire drills' participants often have prior knowledge of their schedule and as result they are not as focused as they should. Moreover, fire drills require the mobilization of some resources, leading to financial costs. Performing a fire drill will always affect the normal functioning of the place where they take place; for this reason, sometimes they are not performed at all. In some special locations, like hospitals, fire drills are unsuitable. Emergency planning is crucial to prevent and minimize damage and victims. Albeit the improvement on safety measures, many occupants and employers in this type of buildings still lack adequate knowledge and training on how to behave in such hazardous situations. EVA is presented as a possible solution, which is based on the concept of Serious Game that can be used as a training tool for healthcare professionals. A preliminary prototype was developed. A sample of 20 subjects was selected to test it giving promising results. Results also showed that users who had training in fire prevention appear to perform better in the course. Moreover, participants who regularly play computer games overcame easily the game challenges. Further research and development are still to be explored, which are discussed in the concluding part of this paper."

Abstract: "In recent years, there has been a dramatic proliferation of research concerned with game based learning and intelligent system s . Although the intelligent agent bas ed system has existed for many years, only recently its surge of mainstream popularity motivated researchers to acknowledge its educational value. With the increasing usage of game based learning, reliability requirements for intelligent system s or multi - a gent system s have become more critical. Quiz game is one of the game types which is easy to develop and not restrict ed by any specific subject and any people . And the m ulti - agent based system is flexible and saving resource . Hence we integrate the quiz gam e into multi - agent system s , we called it m ulti - agent based quiz game and also d evelop a framework to build personalized assessment game . For the instructor, they can understand student's playing situation and experience . For the students, they have p ersona lized assessment game . In this paper, we proposed a framewor k of multi - agent based Quiz - MASter , and describe each service from each agent briefly."

From the introduction::"The main objective of this chapter is focused on how to exploit the evolution of technology to improve user interaction in game environments through digitalized objects with identifi‐ cation technology (such as RFID or Near Field Communication). Digitalized objects are used as interaction resources. They are used in conjunction with mobile devices providing the performance of tasks with a simple and intuitive gesture. In the first place, mobile devices offer sophisticated methods to provide users with services to make use of information and to interact with objects in the real world. In the second place, physical objects are associated with digital information through identification technologies such as RFID. In this context, physical mobile interactions allow users to play games through natural interaction with ob‐ jects in the real world. This chapter has six sections. Section 2 describes some concepts such as: Ubiquitous Computing, the Internet of Things and the types of interaction used in games. Section 3 presents the general infrastructure of RFID systems. In section 4, we de‐ scribe the development of two RFID games. In section 5 their advantages and disadvantages are presented. Finally, conclusions are set out in Section 6."

Abstract: "Cloud gaming provides game-on-demand (GoD) services over the Internet cloud. The goal is to achieve faster response time and higher QoS. The video game is rendered remotely on the game cloud and decoded on thin client devices such as tablet computer or smartphone. We design a game cloud with a virtualized cluster of CPU/GPU servers at USC GamePipe Laboratory. We enable interactive gaming by taking full advantage of the cloud and local resources for high quality of experience (QoE) gaming. We report preliminary performance results on the game latency and frame rate. We find 109 ~ 131 ms latency in using the game cloud, which is 14% ~ 38% lower than 200 ms latency experienced on a thin local computer. Moreover, the frame rate from the cloud is 25% ~ 35% higher than that of using a client computer alone. Base on these findings, we anticipate game cloud to have a performance gain or QoS improvement of 14% ~ 38% over video gaming on a thin client device such as a smartphone or a tablet computer."

From the abstract: "n the last decade the popularity of MMOGs has exploded. Unfortunately, the demand has far outweighed the resources commercial game providers can provide. Many MMOGs are suffering from scalability issues, resulting in game world partitioni ng, service down time and server crashes. The centralized server architecture of most modern day MMOGs is unable to cope with this increase in the number of participating players. Hence, there is a need for a scalable network architecture which can support these large number of players without affecting the overall gaming experience for each player. In this paper, we provide a review on the existing networking infrastructure solutions for MMOGs. This includes description and comparison of different im plementation techniques for the deployment of massive multiplayer on-line games, which work as a client/server and peer-to-peer paradigms. "

The Learning Games Network, a non-profit spin-off of the MIT Education Arcade that bridges the gap between research and practice in game-based education, today announced a $1.99 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to expand Xenos, its flagship integrated social learning environment gaming platform, for Hispanic adults learning English (ESL) in libraries and workplaces. The goal of the Play Games-Learn English Project is to provide self-directed ESL instructional resources to adults in informal learning and vocational training settings. Pilot sites include the Boston and San Francisco Public Libraries and BJ's Wholesale Clubs."

"Sustainability education has become an international imper- ative due to the rising cost of energy, increasing scarcity of natural resource and irresponsible environmental practices. My research seeks to investigate how to build a customiz- able serious game engine for sustainability called Makahiki. This work is motivated by the encouraging results of the in- augural residence hall energy competition at the University of Hawaii in Fall 2011. Makahiki is intended to provide a production quality, pluggable component-based open source game engine and an experimental test bed for game-related research in the context of sustainability."

A battlefield game anticipates strategic importance of Arctic region's resources

International trade association welcoming "developers, artists, programmers, publishers, project leads, administrators, faculty, human resource personnel, middleware and tool companies, service providers, vendors, researchers, analysts, marketing, advertising and public relations personnel, consultants and students."