Play Experience Enhancement Using Emotional Feedback

Innovations in computer game interfaces continue to enhance the experience of players. Affective games - those that adapt or incorporate a player’s emotional state - have shown promise in creating exciting and engaging user experiences. However, a dearth of systematic exploration into what types of game elements should adapt to affective state leaves game designers with little guidance on how to incorporate affect into their games. We created an affective game engine, using it to deploy a design probe into how adapting the player’s abilities, the enemy’s abilities, or variables in the environment affects player performance and experience. Our results suggest that affectively adapting games can increase player arousal. Furthermore, we suggest that reducing challenge by adapting non-player characters is a worse design choice than giving players the tools that they need (through enhancing player abilities or a supportive environment) to master greater challenges

Social, Casual and Mobile Games

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Social, casual and mobile games, played on devices such as smartphones, tablets, or PCs and accessed through online social networks, have become extremely popular, and are changing the ways in which games are designed, understood, and played. These games have sparked a revolution as more people from a broader demographic than ever play games, shifting the stereotype of gaming away from that of hardcore, dedicated play to that of activities that fit into everyday life. Social, Casual and Mobile Games explores the rapidly changing gaming landscape and discusses the ludic, methodological, theoretical, economic, social and cultural challenges that these changes invoke. With chapters discussing locative games, the new freemium economic model, and gamer demographics, as well as close studies of specific games (including Candy Crush Saga, Angry Birds, and Ingress), this collection offers an insight into the changing nature of games and the impact that mobile media is having upon individuals and societies around the world

TIME BALANCING OF COMPUTER GAMES USING ADAPTIVE TIME-VARIANT MINIGAMES

Game designers spend a great deal of time developing balanced game experiences. However, differences in player ability, hardware capacity (e.g. network connections) or real-world elements (as in mixed-reality games), make it difficult to balance games for different players in different conditions. In this research, adaptive time-variant minigames have been introduced as a method of addressing the challenges in time balancing as a part of balancing players of games. These minigames were parameterized to allow both a guaranteed minimum play time (the minimum time to complete a minigames to address the fixed temporal constraints) and dynamic adaptability (the ability of adapting the game during the game play to address temporal variations caused by individual differences). Three time adaptation algorithms have been introduced in this research and the interaction between adaptive algorithm, game mechanic, and game difficulty were analyzed in controlled experiments. The studies showed that there are significant effects and interactions for all three factors, confirming the initial hypothesis that these processes were important and linked to each other. Furthermore, the studies revealed that finer temporal granularity leads to less-perceptible adaptation and smaller deviations in game completion times. The results also provided evidence that adaptation mechanisms allow accurate prediction of play time. The designed minigames were valuable in helping to balance temporal asymmetries in a real mixed-reality game. It was also found that these adaptation algorithms did not interrupt the overall play experience

How Digital Platforms Organize Immaturity: A Socio-Symbolic Framework of Platform Power

The power of the digital platforms and the increasing scope of their control over individuals and institutions have begun to generate societal concern. However, the ways in which digital platforms exercise power and organize immaturity—defined as the erosion of the individual’s capacity for public use of reason—have not yet been theorized sufficiently. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capitals, and habitus, we take a socio-symbolic perspective on platforms’ power dynamics, characterizing the digital habitus and identifying specific forms of platform power and counter-power accumulation. We make two main contributions. First, we expand the concept of organized immaturity by adopting a sociological perspective, from which we develop a novel socio-symbolic view of platforms’ power dynamics. Our frame-work explains fundamental aspects of immaturity, such as self-infliction and emergence. Sec-ond, we contribute to the platform literature by developing a three-phase model of platform power dynamics over time

The role of institutional entrepreneurship in standard wars: the case of Blu-ray Disc

The study is to use institutional entrepreneurship perspective to complement the functionalist’s viewpoint to understand the process underlying collective action in a mature eco-system and how institutional entrepreneurs manage critical stakeholder relations, collective action and discursive activities in technical standard change processes. The standard war of Sony Blu-ray Disc vs. Toshiba HD DVD is used as a critical and intrinsic case. The functionalist’s viewpoints have paid much attentions to the numbers of customers adopting new technologies, and etc. By means of institutional entrepreneurship perspective, it claims that it does not matter about the number and amount, but it does matter about how focal firms make the markets believe that they have the abilities to win standard wars. The study further claims that the variables studied in functionalist’s viewpoint also have the meanings of institutional entrepreneurship perspective. Moreover, the BD and HD DVD standards are incremental innovations in a mature field where there are many things are settled down. Focal firms can easily forecast the expectations of the dominant institutional logics. The study contributes that institutional entrepreneurship perspective still provides the process insight to complement the functionalist’s viewpoint. This perspective can be applied in emerging field, where it is no dominant logics and the innovations are likely to be radical. The BD case represents a critical case. It can makes possible naturalistic generalization to other similar contexts. Eisenhardt’s principles are used to build theory from the case study. I borrowed techniques of open coding to analyze the data. The findings show that collective action (including critical stakeholder management and structuring collaboration capabilities) and discursive activities are the central features of institutional entrepreneurship. They have mutual relationship with the institutional entrepreneur’s resources (power and legitimacy). Furthermore, good collective action and discursive activities can lead to network effects and product performance

Curriculum Circus: Juggling Curriculum, Science, and The Arts

Education should open the door to better lives and better jobs. The fact is that it does not. In part, there are many causes including rigidity, political interference, and the separation between disciplines that we teach without context and without dialogue with our students. Specifically, I think that we should use education as a way to help students make better choices and have a better life. One way we can do it is by reconciling science with the other disciplines. And that is what is at the heart of curriculum studies. There is a pervasive belief that the Western ideology of knowledge is neutral, and therefore must be good for all peoples in all cases. As a result education here in the West has not changed to address the needs of citizens in the 21st century. We have become a global community, and outsourcing our ideas has met with disastrous consequences. I believe that we have a societal obligation to help our fellow citizens navigate within an increasingly complex world. Curriculum Circus uses the many metaphors of the circus to defend a polymerization of arts and science, a return to their common history. I start with the reconceptualization of William Pinar arguing for a “marriage of two cultures: the scientific and the artistic and humanistic” (W. F. Pinar, 1975/ 2000, p. xv). I then addres

Emergent Arguments: Digital Media and Social Argumentation

This dissertation proposes a new framework for understanding how argumentation and rhetorical action unfold in digital space. While studies in the field of rhetorical theory often address new discursive practices in spaces like Twitter and Facebook, they do not always assess the ways that the platforms themselves can influence the forms and conventions of argumentation. Similarly, the field of new media studies has attended to the structural and technical components of digital platforms, but rarely views these details through a rhetorical lens. Thus, this dissertation combines the two disciplines by approaching its thesis from two angles. First, it employs major scholarly and theoretical work from the field of rhetorical studies to determine the ways in which digital rhetorical practices align with or differ from previous ones. Second, it combines new media scholarship with close readings of digital texts, in order to examine how argumentation functions across different media platforms. This interdisciplinary approach provides unique insight into the ways that media platforms and rhetorical practices coevolve. The dissertation’s central term, “emergent arguments,” marks an epistemological shift away from the idea that an argument resides within a single text or narrative. Instead, arguments emerge from sustained and engaged interactions with digital communities, from explorations of hyperlinked trails of information, from patterns of images, words, and datasets. In digital space, knowledge is constructed communally, meaning that argumentation takes place in collaboration with a community. The project follows closely with the work of Aristotle and Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, where argumentation is an inherently social act driven by cultural context and shared knowledge. The dissertation builds upon this premise by claiming that digital media make this sociality visible, traceable, and more dynamic than previous communicative platforms. It ultimately argues that in digital space, meaning itself is social, intertextual, and multimodal

Rethinking Change

UIDB/00417/2020 UIDP/00417/2020No seguimento da Conferência Internacional sobre Arte, Museus e Culturas Digitais (Abril 2021), este e-book pretende aprofundar a discussão sobre o conceito de mudança, geralmente associado à relação entre cultura e tecnologia. Através dos contributos de 32 autores, de 12 países, questiona-se não só a forma como o digital tem motivado novas práticas artísticas e curatoriais, mas também o inverso, observando como propostas críticas e criativas no campo da arte e dos museus têm aberto vias alternativas para o desenvolvimento tecnológico. Assumindo a diversidade de perspectivas sobre o tema, de leituras retrospectivas à análise de questões e projectos recentes, o livro estrutura-se em torno de sete capítulos e um ensaio visual, evidenciando os territórios de colaboração e cruzamento entre diferentes áreas de conhecimento científico. Disponível em acesso aberto, esta publicação resulta de um projecto colaborativo promovido pelo Instituto de História da Arte, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa e pelo maat – Museu de Arte, Arquitectura e Tecnologia. Instituição parceira: Instituto Superior Técnico. Mecenas: Fundação Millennium bcp. Media partner: revista Umbigo. Following the International Conference on Art, Museums and Digital Cultures (April 2021), this e-book seeks to extend the discussion on the concept of change that is usually associated with the relationship between culture and technology. Through the contributions of 32 authors from 12 countries, the book not only questions how digital media have inspired new artistic and curatorial practices, but also how, conversely, critical and creative proposals in the fields of art and museums have opened up alternative paths to technological development. Acknowledging the different approaches to the topic, ranging from retrospective readings to the analysis of recent issues and projects, the book is divided into seven sections and a visual essay, highlighting collaborative territories and the crossovers between different areas of scientific knowledge. Available in open access, this publication is the result of a collaborative project promoted by the Institute of Art History of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, NOVA University of Lisbon and maat – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology. Partner institution: Instituto Superior Técnico. Sponsor: Millennium bcp Foundation. Media partner: Umbigo magazine.publishersversionpublishe