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Abstract: "Through the use of an online discussion, this study collected the detailed perspectives of 29 'hardcore' and 'casual' gamers, regarding the topic of FPS video games. It investigates what the gamers want in a FPS by means of an online discussion which builds on the benefits of both ethnography and focus group methodologies. Since the study's main goal was exploratory, a qualitative approach was considered the most appropriate; in addition to this, the method used to collect the data was done within a grounded theory framework. This study finds that, though graphics have historically been a major factor in driving the success of a FPS video game, this is no longer the case. Gamers expect there to be a balance between the different components, with a more holistic gaming experience desired, and that too much focus on one component at the expense of another will result in an unsatisfactory video game experience. This can be seen in comments given by the participants indicating too much emphasis of the graphics quality in a FPS and not enough on story or the multiplayer aspects results in a video game which is neither fun nor praiseworthy. The latter is perceived significant as with such an oversaturation in the video game market, developers rely heavily on positive word of mouth to advertise their games. This study's main goal was to develop a better understanding of the expectations of gamers regarding FPS; in doing so, it has laid out the basis for producing a 'magic formula' for a great FPS video game. It has also highlighted several other areas which need further investigation in order to better understand the behavioural motives and actions of gamers from both 'hardcore' and 'casual' communities."

"Many games and consoles today allow for a player to substitute a personal music playlist into the video game. We examined the influence that a player's choice of music has on the player's experience in one particular game, Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage. "

"effect of game reviews on player experience and perceptions of quality. We show that negative reviews cause a significant effect on how players perceive their in-game experience, and that this effect is a post-play cognitive rationalization of the play experience with the previously-read review text. To address this effect we designed and deployed a new heuristic evaluation technique that specifically uses game reviews to create a fine-grained prioritized list of usability problems based on the frequency, impact, and persistence of each problem. By using our technique we are able to address the most common usability problems identified by game reviews, thus reducing the overall level of negativity found within the review text. Our approach helps to control and eliminate the snowballing effect that can be produced by players reading reviews and subsequently posting their own reviews, and thus improve the commercial success of a game."

"Game design is a sibling discipline to software and Web design, but they're siblings that grew up in different houses. They have much more in common than their perceived distinction typically suggests, and user experience practitioners can realize enormous benefit by exploiting the solutions that games have found to the real problems of design." (published 2012, excerpts in Google Books)

Abstract: "Using aleatoric compositional principles borrowed from the American avant-garde composer John Cage, we have created a work that explores the auditory experience of video game play. IJCno1 is interactive, relying on live video game play to provide sonic input, input that is manipulated using a soundboard."

"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: "Our study was carried out in order to improve our understanding of the relationship between 3D audio and video, and user experience in video games. In order to determine the best way to attempt to measure these effects, we researched several methods of 3D video and 3D audio delivery. We decided to use two different games to gauge the effectiveness of 3D video, Mario Kart 7 and Crysis 2. Due to a small sample size, we were unable to conclude strongly in either way about many of the factors we believed that 3 D video and audio would effect, but were able to see an increase in enjoyment and perceived ability from our surveys."

Abstract: "Obesity has become an outstanding public health issue in most countries around the world. Many attempts have been made to address this issue that ranges from taking medication to doing exercise to follow- ing a diet plan to playing games. Few approaches combine exercise and game to engage the obese people in playing fun-based games or pur- poseful games, also known as serious games, while monitoring their bio- signals. However, existing work hardly provides a configurable, scalable and context-aware serious game framework that can be used as a sup- port for obesity treatment. In this paper, we take an attempt to propose such a framework. The proposed framework facilitates bio-signal monitor- ing based on body sensor network, context-awareness based on perva- sive sensors, and on-the-spot activity recommendation based on current game-playing context. It uses the cloud computing platform as infrastruc- tural support that ensures the scalability of the framework. In order to demonstrate the suitability of the proposed framework, we developed a sample serious game; deploy it over a cloud platform; and experiment with it by capturing some psycho-physical data while the obese are en- gaged in game-play. We observed that the obese people were very much engaged in game-play and they had positive experience using the system"

From the abstract: " this paper, we challenge the assumption that feedback during learning hinders sense of presence. Ac ross three experiments, we examined how an ITS that provided extrinsic feedback during a serious game affected presence. Across different modalities and conditions, we found that feedback and other ITS features do not always affect presence. Our results suggest that it is possible to provide extrinsic feedback in a serious game without detracting from the immersive power of the game itself. "

"A collaborative English language video game experience for students ages 12-16. Learn English and explore American culture through puzzles, games, and adventures in an interactive world. "

Abstract: "In our energy-restricted world, planners and engineers have to cope with problems of CO2 emissions and oil- and gas-shortages. Many planning activities not captured under the heading of "futures studies" share common goals like dealing with an uncertain, complex future. We focus on two novel approaches: agent-based modelling and serious games. These approaches, even though they stem from the same general systems theory roots, allow its users to experience "reality" in different ways. This has implications for when and how to use these methods in scanning future developments and how these are communicated."

"A Slower Speed of Light is a first-person game prototype in which players navigate a 3D space while picking up orbs that reduce the speed of light in increments. Custom-built, open-source relativistic graphics code allows the speed of light in the game to approach the player's own maximum walking speed. Visual effects of special relativity gradually become apparent to the player, increasing the challenge of gameplay. These effects, rendered in realtime to vertex accuracy, include the Doppler effect (red- and blue-shifting of visible light, and the shifting of infrared and ultraviolet light into the visible spectrum); the searchlight effect (increased brightness in the direction of travel); time dilation (differences in the perceived passage of time from the player and the outside world); Lorentz transformation (warping of space at near-light speeds); and the runtime effect (the ability to see objects as they were in the past, due to the travel time of light). Players can choose to share their mastery and experience of the game through Twitter. A Slower Speed of Light combines accessible gameplay and a fantasy setting with theoretical and computational physics research to deliver an engaging and pedagogically rich experience."

Abstract: "This thesis explores role-playing games, an existing genre within the current game industry. Role-playing games have many different parts which together create the whole game experience for the user. However, this research has focused on what arguably can be said to be the core gameplay feature of role-playing games: The battle system. This was mainly conducted by analyzing existing games using different methods, primarily by identifying gameplay design patterns in the games, and comparing them using a cluster method. The use of patterns allowed basic elements for observing and analyzing the relation between different role-playing games while the clusters provide overviews of the subcategories of the role-playing genre. This thesis presents view of the role-playing genre from the perspective of combat systems through two main results. The first result is the trees created by the clusters which explain subgenres through the presence of specific gameplay design patterns. The second result is four categories of patterns: those which illustrate patterns found in nearly all role-playing games; those that define the tree result; those that can have strong impact on gameplay but without affecting subgenre membership; and those that link combat system to other parts of the gameplay. Through this, the research has established a view on the design space of role-playing games and created visualizations of how different role-playing games relate to each other. From this relation a designer can further understand how to design for different gameplay experiences for the user."

Abstract: "Design techniques can have an important effect on how video games teach and players learn. The ability to harness these techniques in the design of educational video game can impact the motivation and engagement of playing and learning by creating more options for players to connect with game content as well as to other players. This article focuses on the design phase of the game development process and highlights the role of some techniques that can be used to design a successful educational video game (guidelines and design patterns). These techniques provide information on good practice and form a basis for evaluating the educational video game quality, acting as useful tools for developers to enhance video game playability. To this end, we have presented a set of guidelines and design patterns in order to provide an acceptable level of playability and, in this way, a better player experiences and learning achievement."

Abstract: "In recent years videogame companies have recognized the role of player engagement as a major factor in user experience and enjoyment. This en-couraged a greater investment in new types of game controllers such as the WiiMote™, Rock Band™ instruments and the Kinect™. However, the native software of these controllers was not originally designed to be used in other game applications. This work addresses this issue by building a middleware framework, which maps body poses or voice commands to actions in any game. This not only warrants a more natural and customized user-experience but it al-so defines an interoperable virtual controller. In this version of the framework, body poses and voice commands are respectively recognized through the Ki-nect's built-in cameras and microphones. The acquired data is then translated into the native interaction scheme in real time using a lightweight method based on spatial restrictions. The system is also prepared to use Nintendo's Wiimote™ as an auxiliary and unobtrusive gamepad for physically or verbally impractical commands. System validation was performed by analyzing the per-formance of certain tasks and examining user reports. Both confirmed this ap-proach as a practical and alluring alternative to the game's native interaction scheme. In sum, this framework provides a game-controlling tool that is totally customizable and very flexible, thus expanding the market of game consumers."

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."

Abstract :"We present an attempt at exploring the search space of weapons in team-based multiplayer First-Person Shooters (FPS). At the foundation of the experiment is Team Block- head Wars (TBHW), a game that we developed for the pur- poses of this project. TBHW allows human players to enjoy classic multiplayer FPS gameplay and uses a genetic algo- rithm to continuously generate new weapons. A weapon's genome consists of ten real-valued parameters, which to- gether form a vast search space that includes common FPS weapon tropes. The evaluation function scores weapons on the basis of their use by players. The game also generates 3D meshes to visually represent the generated weapons for easy player recognition. While TBHW is work in progress, preliminary results are encouraging."

Abstract: Joseph Campbell's Monomyth not only provides a well-proven pattern for successful storytelling, it may also help to guide teams and team leaders through the challenges of change and innovation processes. In project "HELD: Innovationsdramaturgie nach dem Heldenprinzip" researchers of the University of the Arts Berlin and the Berlin Gameslab, part of the University of Applied Sciences HTW-Berlin, team up to examine the applicability of the Hero's Journey to change management using an adaptation of Campbell's pattern called „Heldenprinzip®". The project's goal is not to teach the stages of the Monomyth as mere facts but to enable participants of training courses and interventions to actually experience its concepts using a portfolio of creative and aesthetic methods. While a pool of aesthetic methods - like drawing, performing or role-playing - is already being used, the Gameslab subproject qualitatively researches the potentials for enriching and complementing these methods with interactive digital media and games. This paper discusses three types of game based learning treatments to be used in training and intervention sessions as well as teaching the Monomyth in a game based learning university course. The first option is providing participants with a game that follows the Hero's Journey and inducing them to reflect on the experience and its relation to the learning goal. An alternative strategy is to make participants go through a game sequence broaching issues that are relevant for a stage or the journey of change in general. Last but not least, digital equivalents of the non-digital aesthetic methods can be constructed using digital games or digitally enhanced set-ups for playful interactions. All three treatments have their merits and pitfalls, which are discussed in relation to the identified game-based learning scenarios: self-study, blended game-based learning and face-to-face sessions"

Audio doesn't effect user engagement but effects on interest in the narrative are observed

abstract: "Demon Dissension provides a strategic twist on the traditional fighting game experience to players and showcases co mplex game logic, networking, and fighting game design principles. Built entirely in the Unity engine and programmed in C#, Demon Dissension pits two players against one another in a battle for glory, challenging them to not only fight against the charact er in game, but the strategies being employed by the actual opponent . A team of two artists and two programmers took four terms to create a deep multiplayer battle experience." Becker student Breeze Grigas participated in this project.