A game-based corpus for analysing the interplay between game context and player experience

Recognizing players’ affective state while playing video games has been the focus of many recent research studies. In this paper we describe the process that has been followed to build a corpus based on game events and recorded video sessions from human players while playing Super Mario Bros. We present different types of information that have been extracted from game context, player preferences and perception of the game, as well as user features, automatically extracted from video recordings. We run a number of initial experiments to analyse players’ behavior while playing video games as a case study of the possible use of the corpus.peer-reviewe

Why methods matter: approaching multimodality in translation research

The study of multimodal phenomena calls upon translation scholars to cross disciplinary boundaries and adopt a range of theoretical and methodological approaches. The diversity of the multimodal landscape brings about research challenges that must be carefully addressed to ensure that these research efforts yield useful and credible results. This special issue is dedicated to a discussion on how to engage in multimodal translation research: how traditional research methods can be adapted and what kinds of novel approaches can be adopted or developed in order to deal with a diversity of multimodal data. In this introduction, we first discuss definitions of mode and multimodality and reflect on the nature of multimodality as a topic of research within Translation Studies. We then explain our rationale for dedicating the special issue to research methods and introduce three areas of multimodal translation research that, in our view, merit particular attention from a methodological point of view. Finally, we introduce the articles contained in this special issue

Why methods matter: approaching multimodality in translation research

The study of multimodal phenomena calls upon translation scholars to cross disciplinary boundaries and adopt a range of theoretical and methodological approaches. The diversity of the multimodal landscape brings about research challenges that must be carefully addressed to ensure that these research efforts yield useful and credible results. This special issue is dedicated to a discussion on how to engage in multimodal translation research: how traditional research methods can be adapted and what kinds of novel approaches can be adopted or developed in order to deal with a diversity of multimodal data. In this introduction, we first discuss definitions of mode and multimodality and reflect on the nature of multimodality as a topic of research within Translation Studies. We then explain our rationale for dedicating the special issue to research methods and introduce three areas of multimodal translation research that, in our view, merit particular attention from a methodological point of view. Finally, we introduce the articles contained in this special issue

Towards player-driven procedural content generation

Generating immersive game content is one of the ultimate goals for a game designer. This goal can be achieved by realizing the fact that players' perception of the same game differ according to a number of factors including: players' personality, playing styles, expertise and culture background. While one player might find the game immersive, others may quit playing as a result of encountering a seemingly insoluble problem. One promising avenue towards optimizing the gameplay experience for individual game players is to tailor player experience in real-time via automatic game content generation. Specifying the aspects of the game that have the major influence on the gameplay experience, identifying the relationship between these aspect and each individual experience and defining a mechanism for tailoring the game content according to each individual needs are important steps towards player-driven content generation.peer-reviewe

The discourse structure of video games:A multimodal discourse semantics approach to game tutorials

The article proposes a multimodal discourse semantics approach to the analysis of video game tutorials that provides a discourse pragmatic analysis of the game canvases in these tutorials. The study mainly builds on linguistic approaches to formal dynamic discourse semantics that have already been successfully applied to other multimodal artefacts. The article will showcase the application of the resulting ‘logic of multimodal discourse interpretation’ to two specific cases of video game tutorials. This will outline particular discourse relations holding between events and segments in the tutorials as distinctive features of this video game genre and show the discursive patterns of these instructions

Does your profile say it all? Using demographics to predict expressive head movement during gameplay

In this work, we explore the relation between expressive head movement and user profile information in game play settings. Facial gesture analysis cues are statistically correlated with players' demographic characteristics in two different settings, during game-play and at events of special interest (when the player loses during game play). Experiments were conducted on the Siren database, which consists of 58 participants, playing a modified version of the Super Mario. Here, as player demographics are considered the gender and age, while the statistical importance of certain facial cues (other than typical/universal facial expressions) was analyzed. The proposed analysis aims at exploring the option of utilizing demographic characteristics as part of users' profiling scheme and interpreting visual behavior in a manner that takes into account those features.peer-reviewe

Moving closer to the audience: watching football on television

This article aims to describe specific practices of television spectators based on recordings of English families and friends while watching football on television. Their conversations and the talk and events on television are transcribed and analysed with interactional sociolinguistic and conversation analytical methodologies. By doing 'watching football on television', the spectators constitute themselves as a community of practice. Their strategies include direct address of the television (i.e. the commentator or one of the protagonists of the game) and signalling of independent knowledge and emotions to construct their identities of football fan and expert. Conflict between these two identities may become instantiated in the talk. At times, the spectators mutually negotiate the participant role 'party to the talk at home' for the television. This is done by furnishing second pair parts to the commentators' adjacency pairs. Also, it includes respecting the commentators' turns. Having spent countless hours watching football on television, the spectators manage to carefully construct their talk around the commentators' so that one single, coherent conversation emerges. The practices show how the participants as watchers strive to become part of the spectacle using the television as a bridge to the game itself

General general game AI

Arguably the grand goal of artificial intelligence research is to produce machines with general intelligence: the capacity to solve multiple problems, not just one. Artificial intelligence (AI) has investigated the general intelligence capacity of machines within the domain of games more than any other domain given the ideal properties of games for that purpose: controlled yet interesting and computationally hard problems. This line of research, however, has so far focused solely on one specific way of which intelligence can be applied to games: playing them. In this paper, we build on the general game-playing paradigm and expand it to cater for all core AI tasks within a game design process. That includes general player experience and behavior modeling, general non-player character behavior, general AI-assisted tools, general level generation and complete game generation. The new scope for general general game AI beyond game-playing broadens the applicability and capacity of AI algorithms and our understanding of intelligence as tested in a creative domain that interweaves problem solving, art, and engineering.peer-reviewe

A taxonomy and state of the art revision on affective games

Affective Games are a sub-field of Affective Computing that tries to study how to design videogames that are able to react to the emotions expressed by the player, as well as provoking desired emotions to them. To achieve those goals it is necessary to research on how to measure and detect human emotions using a computer, and how to adapt videogames to the perceived emotions to finally provoke them to the players. This work presents a taxonomy for research on affective games centring on the aforementioned issues. Here we devise as well a revision of the most relevant published works known to the authors on this area. Finally, we analyse and discuss which important research problem are yet open and might be tackled by future investigations in the area of Affective GamesThis work has been co-funded by the following research projects: EphemeCH (TIN2014-56494-C4-{1,4}-P) and DeepBio (TIN2017-85727-C4-3-P) by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity, under the European Regional Development Fund FEDER, and Justice Programme of the European Union (2014–2020) 723180 – RiskTrack – JUST-2015-JCOO-AG/JUST-2015-JCOO-AG-