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"The goal of this Interactive Qualifying Project is to examine game art's influence on people and its aesthetic implication. The video game industry was brought to its prosperity by improvement in technology and the introduction of digital medias. It has developed to be a source of communication from one generation to the next. Game art is a prominent representation of digital art, an art form made possible by current technology. This report discusses how much game art has evolved over the years and how similar game art have or have not become."

Excerpts available on Google Books, published in May 2012. Praise for The Gamification of Learning and Instruction"Kapp argues convincingly that gamification is not just about adding points, levels and badges to an eLearning program, but about fundamentally rethinking learning design. He has put together a brilliant primer for learning professionals on how to gamify learning, packed with useful advice and examples."

Excerpted in Google Books: "Learn to design games for tablets from a renowned game designer!Eager to start designing games for tablets but not sure where to start? Look no further! Gaming guru Scott Rogers has his finger on the pulse of tablet game design and is willing to impart his wisdom and secrets for designing exciting and successful games."

A game designed to handle large datasets to speed up disease diagnosis through crowdsourcing

Excerpts of a late 2011 book

Abstract: "Twenty three interviews and four surveys were conducted as case studies investigating the perceptions of expertise, expertise acquisition, and gaps in employment readiness for novice game developers. Participants were primarily game development production staff and educators involved in game related programs. Research results were compared to employability skills research. The findings indicated that there is a great deal of alignment between them, but employability skills may be insufficient on their own to be a reliable standalone source for curriculum development in the game development field because of the industry's unique characteristics. Implications from the research results, and insights from the in-depth interviews, that may be relevant to curriculum developers include evidence for a mismatch of the values, needs, and expectations of stakeholders; and a delineation of key characteristics of expertise and long-term success that may be valuable for inclusion in curriculum outcomes and measures. Two of the key characteristics identified were goal-focused passion, and holistic perspectives. Holistic perspectives included an awareness of heuristic use of tacit knowledge. The model of an expert learner was supported as a potential curriculum outcome focus that encapsulated the main characteristics of expertise that novices or advanced beginners could acquire. Another implication is that there may be a relation between expert characteristics and characteristics of functional behaviours that are related to positive psychology and cognitive behavioural therapy."

Abstract: "The most popular Facebook games are being played by millions of users, sometimes only a few weeks after introduction. Although several of these games and their users have been studied, there currently exists no open-source version of such a game. In this thesis we present the design, implementation, and performance analysis of WebHack, a Facebook-integrated multiplayer game. WebHack is built upon the classic, but still popular, game of Nethack. We discuss the technical difficulties with file handles, process limits, communication networks, and handling failures. Further, we consider aspects specific to legacy applications, for example legal issues and technical limitations. We propose methods to circumvent these issues, and show a successful integration of the legacy game Nethack into our Facebookintegrated game system. We present the design of our system and evaluate the performance of the design in various scenarios. Among other results, we show that WebHack is a highperformance system, able to support over 300,000 concurrent players, handle arrival rates for up to 1,750 new players per second for over 60 seconds, and is able to recover within 10 seconds from a server failure."

via FoldIt and video-game interface, players engage in protein engineering

From a book on haptic interfaces ,"Currently, a diverse spectrum of games available in the market take advantage of the force feedback stimuli effects offered by mainstream haptic interfaces. Here we intend to give a broad view of past and present developments aimed at enabling game environment with haptic augmented interfaces, while discussing the strengths and weaknesses of such developments."

A Game Jam involves designing a game in as much as an entire weekend,either individually or in teams

From the abstract: "In this paper, I present and compare a number of cross-platform compilers. While the overview alone indicates which cross-compiler may be appropriate for the needs of a given project, the study in this paper reaches beyond that. I also present tools to support the development process and using them I create a working title. It leads to a series of tests measuring the quality of experience and showing that even very simple methods may have impact on the end-user."

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.

Highlights two games, one designed an American and one designed by Chinese, one taking as its subject the end of American military hegemony, the other portraying American soldiers as "the enemy." Socio-political implications of these developments are discussed, particularly how these represent a break from mainstream video game content.

Announced at the New Game Conference on Wednesday, a library of sound files to help improve problems with web games

Design patent awarded to Microsoft Corporation