Exploiting P2P in the Creation of Game Worlds

Peer-to-peer networks are a promising platform for supporting entirely decentralized, distributed multi-user gaming; however, multi-player games typically require highly predictable performance from the underlying network. This is at odds with the inherently unreliable nature of peer-to-peer environments. Existing approaches to providing peer-to-peer support for multi-player gaming focus on compensating for the unpredictability of the underlying network. We propose that rather than trying to compensate for these factors, they can be exploited together with information about the peer-to-peer network in order to address the problem of maintaining a novel gaming experience in the absence of a central authority. In order to explore our proposition, we model the measurable properties of P2P networks within a distributed multi-player game – NetWorld. We do this in such a way that the heterogeneous and unpredictable nature of the peer-to-peer environment becomes a positive part of the player’s experience

Pervasive Games in a Mote-Enabled Virtual World Using Tuple Space Middleware

Pervasive games are a new and exciting field where the user experience benefits from the blending of real and virtual elements. Players are no longer confined to computer screens. Rather, interactions with devices embedded within the real world and physical movements become an integral part of the gaming experience. Several prototypes of pervasive games have been proposed by both industry and academia. However, in such games the issues arising from the integration of players and real world, the management of the context surrounding the players, and the need for communication and distributed coordination are often addressed in an ad-hoc fashion. Therefore, the underlying software fabric is often not reusable, ultimately slowing down the diffusion of pervasive games. In this paper we describe the design and implementation of a pervasive game on top of TinyLIME, a middleware system supporting data sharing among mobile and embedded devices. By illustrating the design of a pervasive game we developed, we argue concretely that the programming abstractions supported by TinyLIME greatly simplify the data and context management characteristics of pervasive games, and provide an effective and reusable building block for their development. TinyLIME was originally designed to support applications where mobile users collect data from sensors scattered in the physical environment. We build upon this capability to put forth a second contribution, namely, the use of wireless sensor devices (or motes) as a computing platform for pervasive games. Besides reporting physical data for the sake of the game, we use motes to store information relevant to the game plot, e.g., virtual objects. Motes are typically very small in size, and therefore can be hidden in the environment, enhancing the sense of immersion in a virtual world. To the best of our knowledge, this original use of wireless sensor devices is novel in the scientific and gaming literature. Furthermore, it is naturally supported by TinyLIME, yielding a unified programming abstraction that spans the heterogeneous gaming platform we propose

The design and implementation of serious games for driving and mobility

The automotive and transportation sectors are showing consistent improvements in trends and standards concerning the safe and convenient travel of the road users. In this growing community of road users, the driver performance is a notable factor as many on-road mishaps emerge out of poor driver performance. In this research work, a case-study and experimental analysis were conducted to improve driver performance through the deployment of serious games. The primary motive of this work is to stimulate the on-road user performance through immediate feedback, driver coaching, and real-time gamification methods. The games exploit the cloud-based architecture to retrieve the driver performance scores based on real-time evaluation of vehicle signals and display the outcomes on game scene by reflecting the game parameters based on real-world user performance (in the context of driving and mobility). The deployment of games in cars is the topic of interest in current state-of-the-art, as there are more factors associated with it, such as safety, usability, and willingness of the users. These aspects were taken into careful consideration while designing the paradigm of gamification model. The user feedback for the real-time games was extracted through pilot tests and field tests in Genova. The gamification and driver coaching aspects were tested on various occasions (plug-in and field tests conducted at 5 European test sites), and the inputs from these field tests enabled to tune the parameters concerning the evaluation and gamification models. The improvement of user behavior was performed through a virtuous cycle with the integration of virtual sensors to the serious gaming framework. As the culmination, the usability tests for the real-time games were conducted with 18 test users to understand the user acceptance criteria and the parameters (ease of use and safety) that would contribute to the deployment of games. Other salient factors such as the impact of games, large-scale deployment, collaborative gaming and exploitation of gaming framework for 3rd party applications were also investigated in this research activity. The analysis of the usability tests states that the user acceptance of the implemented games is good. The report from usability study has addressed the user preferences in games such as duration, strategy and gameplay mechanism; these factors contribute a foundation for future research in implementing the games for mobility