Becker Video Game Design

Published 2013, excerpted in Google Books

Abstract: "We present the Brigade renderer: an efficient system that uses the path tracing algorithm to produce images for real-time games. We describe the architecture of the Brigade renderer, and provide implementation details. We describe two games that have been created using Brigade."

From the abstract: "This study presents the defining usability quality metric for game prototype using software attributes by referring to ISO Standards 9126 - 3: Software Engineering - Product Quality, with the adaptation for the quality as surance and measurement during game p rototyping period. In order to be fully utilized and optimized the effectiveness of the proposed quality metric, it is best to define the development process environment and its application simultaneously."

From the abstract: "Objective: We report the design of a trial to assess the educational efficacy of InsuOnline, a game for education of primary care physicians (PCPs). The goal of InsuOnline was to improve appropriate initiation and adjustment of insulin for the treatment of DM. InsuOnline was designed to be educationally adequate, self-motivating, and attractive. Methods: A multidisciplinary team of endocrinologists, experts in medical education, and programmers, was assembled for the design and development of InsuOnline. Currently, we are conducting usability and playability tests, with PCPs and medical students playing the game on a desktop computer. Adjustments will be made based on these results. An unblinded randomized controlled trial with PCPs who work in the city of Londrina, Brazil, will be conducted to assess the educational validity of InsuOnline on the Web. In this trial, 64 PCPs will play InsuOnline, and 64 PCPs will undergo traditional instructional activities (lecture and group discussion). Knowledge on how to initiate and adjust insulin will be assessed by a Web-based multiple choice questionnaire, and attitudes regarding diabetes/insulin will be assessed by Diabetes Attitude Scale 3 at 3 time points-before, immediately after, and 6 months after the intervention. Subjects´ general impressions on the interventions will be assessed by a questionnaire. Software logs will be reviewed. Results: To our knowledge, this is the first research with the aim of assessing the educational efficacy of a computer game for teaching PCPs about insulin therapy in DM. We describe the development criteria used for creating InsuOnline. Evaluation of the game using a randomized controlled trial design will be done in future studies. Conclusions: We demonstrated that the design and development of a game for PCPs education on insulin is possible with a multidisciplinary team. InsuOnline can be an attractive option for large-scale continuous medical education to help imp

Published March 2013 and excerpted in Google Books

Abstract: Through a retrospective account of the evolution of China's online game industry, this paper examines the political, economic and cultural factors, with an emphasis on formal policy making, that have shaped the industry. Drawing on the theory of fragmented authoritarianism, this study finds that 10 Chinese online games are deeply shaped by the political environment of the autocratic Chinese system, which features inter-ministerial competition and intertwined state control and commercial interests. The current Chinese online market is combined with a strong private sector presence and a considerable government role. The Chinese government seems to have achieved its policy goal of helping Chinese companies to dominate the domestic market. However, the extensive and ambiguous government 15 policy and regulations, have, to some extent, restrains innovation. To that end, whether China can accomplish its three-stepped importation-substitution-creation strategy in this highly creative industry remains to be seen and warrants future investigation."

Published 2013 and excerpted in Google Books

From the abstract: "Here we demonstrate for the first time the iterative development of agent behaviour for a real-time strategy game (here StarCraft) utilising Behaviour Oriented Design (BOD) [7]. BOD provides focus on the robust creation and easy adjustment of modular and hierarchical cognitive agents. We demonstrate BOD's usage in creating an AI capable of playing the StarCraft character the Zerg hive mind, and document its performance against a variety of opponent AI systems. In describing our tool-driven development process, we also describe the new Abode IDE, provide a brief literature review situating BOD in the AI game literature, and propose possible future work."

Abstract: "This paper describes the creation of a 2D game engine, the ULL Introductory Game Engine (UIGE), for use in an introductory video game programming course as part of an undergraduate computer science curriculum. Having the right tools available can make illustrating the concepts of game development and design substantially easier. In creating the engine, a number of factors such as ease of use and accessibility, were considered. Furthermore, course instructors must determine how much assistance (in the form of tools for the engine) is too much assistance, as students may miss core principles if development with the engine is made too abstract. Successful implementation of tools like UIGE allow students to produce games quickly and the concepts of game development to be taught more effectively."

Abstract: "Game design and development still needs complex technical skills that only some people master. This can be a huge barrier to game creation by end-users limiting the emergence of a participatory culture around games - similar to the one we have seen with Web 2.0. While there have been approaches to lessen that problem, such as level editors and content creation tools, we think we could go further. We propose that considering and developing design interfaces that make use of common natural skills such as drawing could be a key step to achieve that phenomenon. Therefore we describe and present the Playsketch concept, and it's current implementation, a game creation approach based on the Paper Prototyping concept which invites the users to create simple personalized games."

From the abstract: "In this paper, we propose the integration of two PCG-based approaches (experiencedriven and context-driven PCG) to support the generation of adaptive mobile game levels. We present and discuss the implementation of our approach in an existing game, 7's Wild Ride. Gameplay semantics and player modeling are used to steer a level generator, featuring a time-dependent dynamic diculty adjustment mechanism. From our two user studies, we conclude that (i) context-driven levels are preferable over traditional ones, and (ii) the game can adapt to dierent player types, keeping its gameplay balanced and player satisfaction."

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."

"The National STEM Video Game Challenge is a multi-year competition that aims to motivate interest in STEM learning among America's youth by tapping into students' natural passion for playing and making video games. Join the new faces of game design and start designing today! .. Deadline is April 24, 2013.

"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."

To be published in May 2013, excepts in Google Books. "From the text adventures of Zork, to the arcade game of Pac-Man, to the corridors of Doom, and on to the city streets of Grand Theft Auto IV, the maze has often been used as a space to trap and confuse players in their navigation of gameworlds. However, the maze as a construction on the landscape has a long history before the invention of the videogame. By examining the change in the maze from the landscapes of open spaces and closed gardens through to the screen of the videogame, both mazes and labyrinths are discussed in terms of historical reference, alongside the author's personal experiences of walking and playing these structures. This book shows how our cultural experiences of real world maze landscapes may have changed, and how we negotiate videogame worlds along the various paths and meanings they so often create for us."

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"

From the abstract: "Model Driven Engineering (MDE) goes some way to provide the techniques required to generate a wide variety of interoperable serious games software solutions whilst encapsulating and shielding the technicality of the full software development process. In this paper, we present our Game Technology Model (GTM) which models serious game software in a manner independent of any hardware or operating platform specifications for use in our Model Driven Serious Game Development Framework."

A slide presentation illustrating game players as co-creators of game content