Becker Video Game Design

Abstract Virtual worlds give us the opportunity to explore another self, a virtual character of the real life you. Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) have become extremely popular over the last decade. It has also grown into a lucrative business. To keep the players, the game needs to be more than just a game. This study aimed at finding out what factors that determine which features of the character creation interface that are most important to players. The following research question was formed; "Which underlying factors affect how important different features of the character creation interface are to experienced MMORPG players? To be able to answer the question an extensive literature review was conducted. A qualitative approach was taken. Long interviews were made with five participants, two female and three male players. The interviews took place while they created a number of avatars in different MMORPGs. The interviews were then followed up. During the follow-ups, the impact the character creation process had for the players, were discussed. The findings indicate that the character creation interface is important for the players to get a good gaming experience. However different types of players require different things. Important features for the users to change were mainly; the head; the name; and adding parts of yourself on your character. The factors that determined the importance of these features were found to be; Player types; Identity types; Immersion levels; and whether or not the game or the gaming experience were new to the player. Another finding showed that the longer you have played a game the less bizarre the different races, classes and gender will seem. The study also indicated that the female participants had a hard time identifying with their male characters."

"Given the accessibility of games, Fiellin and other Yale researchers see them as an ideal way to teach kids the skills they need to prevent HIV infection. The project is being funded by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars program at Yale."

Abstract: "Search-based procedural content generation methods allow video games to introduce new content continually, thereby engaging the player for a longer time while reducing the burden on developers. However, games so far have not explored the potential economic value of unique evolved artifacts. Building on this insight, this paper presents for the first time a Facebook game called Petalz in which players can share flowers they breed themselves with other players through a global marketplace. In particular, the market in this social game allows players to set the price of their evolved aestheticallypleasing flowers in virtual currency. Furthermore, the transaction in which one player buys seeds from another creates a new social element that links the players in the transaction. The combination of unique user-generated content and social gaming in Petalz facilitates meaningful collaboration between users, positively influences the dynamics of the game, and opens new possibilities in digital entertainment."

"Smartphone devices are becoming the de facto personal com- puting platform, rivaling the desktop, as the number of smartphone users is projected to reach 1.1 billion by 2013. Unlike the desktop, smartphones have a constrained energy budget, which is further challenged by increasingly sophisti- cated applications. Amongst the most popular applications on smartphone devices are games and virtual environments that rely on 3D graphics. Due to the computational inten- sity of geometry and rasterization, as well as the perpetually illuminated display, these applications are extremely power- hungry. To prolong the battery life of devices running these applications, we propose two new energy-aware adaptation schemes that can be employed in 3D graphics applications: lighting limitation and textural transformation. Our results show that we can conserve between 20% and 33% of energy with acceptable sacrices to a user's visual experience."

"ABSTRACT The art form of the video game has a very idiosyncratic reliance on the process and practice of its designers. We work with creative and computational problems that form a web of deep complexity. And yet, as I have noticed in my professional practice as a game designer, we do not use tools to support our design process. For more than a decade, designers and researchers have argued for the development and use of both conceptual and concrete tools. To this end, formal and semi-formal game design models have been proposed and, more recently, experimental software-based tools have been developed by the research community. To date, however, none of these tools or models have been adopted into mainstream practice within the game design community. In this paper I argue that it is difficult, if not methodologically flawed, to assess the work in the field of game design support without more qualitative data on how such tools fare in actual game design practice. Evaluation research would be an essential contribution towards answering the question of whether - and if so, how - these experimental formal models and tools can support and improve the game design process."

From the introduction: "This paper describes why and how an introductory video game design course was conceived and implemented, the best practices developed, and lessons learned since its first implementation in spring 2009. Introduction to Video Game Design was conceived at Johns Hopkins University as a creative, design-based course in which undergraduates work in collaborative, interdisciplinary teams on authentic projects. Students gained a broad knowledge of the gaming industry, along with practical development skills, through regular lecture-discussion sessions coordinated with weekly labs. The interdisciplinary student teams were mentored by industry professionals and worked throughout the semester to produce video games. The course development team faced a variety of challenges stemming from the inter-institutional, inter-departmental collaboration. The authors hope the case study described and evaluation data shared can help other schools planning to implement design-based courses, whether it is based on video game design or not."

Abstract: "Collision avoidance and multi-agent navigation is an important component of modern video games. Recent developments in commodity hardware, in particular the utilization of multi-core and many-core architectures in personal computers and consoles are allowing large numbers of virtual agents to be incorporated into game levels in increasing numbers. We present the hybrid reciprocal velocity obstacle and optimal reciprocal collision avoidance methods for reciprocal collision avoidance and navigation in video games and described their implementations in C++ as HRVO Library and RVO2 Library. The libraries can efficiently simulate groups of twenty-five to one thousand virtual agents in dense conditions and around moving and static obstacles."

"MakeGamesWithUs is a new iOS game publishing company with a twist: its focus is on helping high school and college students to build games. MakeGamesWithUs us will take the kids' creations, provide professional graphics and art and publish them in the App Store."

"In this thesis, the objective is to study the technical framworks in game development startups and compare them to medium size game development organizations with established product lines. The thesis was done as qualitative research applying grounded theory method in analysis of the data. Based on the results, the game organizations, regardless of their size, are pleased with the tools they have chosen. The main selection criterias for the tools are support for fast iterations, -sharing and -prototyping regardless of the organization size. Game development projects are adaptable and features can change rapidly. The technical framework in game development has to support these features."

Abstract : "This paper explores how supernormal stimuli may have contributed to the remarkable popularity of several types of video games: first-person shooters (FPSs), massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), and Minecraft. Human culture, technology, and environments have advanced so rapidly in the last 10,000 years that the brains of Homo sapiens have not been able to keep up. Humans survive in the modern world, but still retain a mind stuck in the Pleistocene. Supercharged representations of ancient stimuli, which appealed to prehistoric human ancestors in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA), appear in many video games and may be hyper-stimulating humans' adaptive instincts. These supernormal stimuli appear to correlate with the remarkably engaging, pleasurable, and satisfying experiences human players derive from playing these games. This paper goes on to propose that greater recognition of the potential of supernormal stimuli, and experimentation with the creation of virtual worlds stand to improve not only digital games, but the way in which humans live, work, and play in the real world."

Abstract: "Predation games--games in which the player is actively encouraged and often required to hunt and kill in order to survive-have historically been the purview of male players. Females, though now much more involved in digital games than before, are generally encouraged to play games that stress traditionally feminine values such as socializing with others, shopping and nurturing. This paper argues that playing games that virtually simulate predation (which is true of most violent videogames) has many benefits for female players. Predation play teaches participants how to survive and excel in stressful, competitive, aggressive environments. To remain in the game, players have to sharpen their wits, learn to face fear, accept challenges and come back from defeat to play again. Negative effects are also discussed."

Mass DiGi summer program including eighteen students from nine colleges

An argument for the value of narrative in video games through historical exploration

Abstract: "This article discusses the application of an Alexandrian pattern language to the design of interactive systems. It grew out of an University course titled A Pattern Approach to Action Game Design, which was offered as an elective in the Creative Technologies program at Auckland University of Technology, NZ, in 2011. We sketch out the idea of design patterns and describe our experiences with the process of using them for designing oldschool action games, that is, finding patterns, making a language, using it for creating several game designs and realizing one of these designs collaboratively. We discuss the concept of the course and present our pattern language and the game we made. While the language is arguably more like a patchy pattern collection, the various game designs quite loose and the realized game unfinished, the process was challenging and intense, and offered students a new perspective on design. In the spirit of design patterns, we only did what the task at hand required, not artificial exercises. We attempted to connect theory and practice in a natural, direct way as we presented, discussed and used everything we did in order to continue our journey. Our course was not aimed at fixed or frozen products, but on a process that is constantly in flux through collaboration by people who interact and share a common pattern language, use, test, revise and refine it while moving on."

from the abstract: "In this dissertation, a study of the serious games' validity for assessing the in-vehicle information systems ergonomics is presented. Results show that by using low-cost serious game it is possible to successfully predict the interactions' impact on driving performance. Moreover, the developed serious game obtained very promising driving performance approximations to a high fidelity driving simulator. This simulator was used, along with the serious game, to study the impact of two elementary tasks in the current in-vehicle information systems: read text and navigate menus manually. Both tasks affected significantly the vehicle's lateral control, and less significantly the longitudinal control. A final experiment was conducted to confirm the existence of the serious game influence over the behaviour of subjects. It was possible to observe that the game applied a positive impact to drivers' behaviour by improving their lateral and longitudinal control over the vehicle."

Abstract: "This thesis aims to study the design possibilities for supporting explorative form-finding in 3D modeling applications. For today's many design professions, 3D forms are achieved partly in engagement with digital environments. Use of software has far exceeded final idea execution, extending to the early phases of design work in which the outcome is not predetermined. This insight led designers of interactive systems support sketching and ideating activities by reducing the risk of experimentation and cognitive effort demanded from user. Yet, there has been less emphasis on traditional design and craft practice that acknowledges engagement with materials and effort spent on work as an integral part of creative process. The notion of exploration in the scope of this thesis attempts to incorporate such aspects. Relevant literature about workshop practice in design and craft has been reviewed, as well as examples of CAD technologies that aid designers. In this light, HCI perspectives on the design of creativity support tools and games have been discussed. The thesis work aimed to concretize this background by building a design strategy and an interactive artifact. A 3D form-finding application concept using objects in modeling space to indirectly manipulate geometry, "kfields", has been developed and evaluated with users at various stages. The thesis concludes by reflecting on the findings of different design stages and proposing further directions for design. Keywords: 3D Modeling, CAD, digital material, form"

From the abstract:"Based on game qualities like simplification and coherence, my approach aims at designing aesthetically holistic games. Other aesthetic qualities that are treated in relation to the design process include representation, embodiment, presence, immersion, flow, fun, pliability and pace. The approach is argued to have strengths in the sense that it does not conform to pre-established genres, is more player oriented, can create coherent experiences and aid innovation. The backdraws are that it is not effective and does not guarantee that the outcome is neither pleasurable nor playable."

Abstract: "With the advent of the increasingly participatory Internet and the growing power of the crowd, "Serious Games" have proven to be a fertile approach for gathering task-specific natural language data at very low cost. In this paper we outline a game we call Doodling, based on the sketch-andconvey metaphor used in the popular board game Pictionary ®2, with the goal of generating useful natural language data. We explore whether such a paradigm can be successfully extended for conveying more complex syntactic and semantic constructs than the words or short phrases typically used in the board game. Through a series of user experiments, we show that this is indeed the case, and that valuable parallel language data may be produced as a byproduct. In addition, we explore extensions to this paradigm along two axes - going online (vs. face-to-face) and going crosslingual. The results in each of the sets of experiments confirm the potential of Doodling game to generate data in large quantities and across languages, and thus provide a new means of developing data sets and technologies for resource- poor languages."

Abstract: "There are a number of existing game frameworks that make use of simplified programming languages with the goal of lowering the barrier of entry into content creation for noncoders. However, existing tools do not support the creation of social, multiplayer games that creators can easily deploy among their family and friends. To address this, we conducted formative interviews to determine the design goals for a tool that would allow non-coders to create such games. We then created Donburi, a web application that enables anyone to design and publish a mobile, social board game."