Pervasive Gaming: Testing Future Context Aware Applications

More and more technical research projects take place that weave together elements of real and virtual life to provide a new experience defined as pervasive. They bank on the development of mobile services to drive the expansion of pervasive applications and in particular pervasive games. Using geolocalisation, local networks and short range radio frequencies technologies like RFID or other tagging technologies, pervasive games rely on a close relationship to the environment and thus explore the space between fiction and reality. This is their main quality but possibly their main weakness as the development relies on the production of specific contents in relation to the context of use. In this article, we propose to explore what this entirely new paradigm for game design implies in terms of production and how to overcome the limitations due to this dependency of contents and context. Based on our experience of three pervasive games developed within research projects on adhoc wifi (ANR-Safari and ANRTranshumance) and RFID networks (ANR-PLUG), this paper presents different options to reducing the cost of content production relying on either traditional editors or grass root contributions.pervasive games, content production, game design, geolocalised technologies.

The Challenge of Believability in Video Games: Definitions, Agents Models and Imitation Learning

In this paper, we address the problem of creating believable agents (virtual characters) in video games. We consider only one meaning of believability, ``giving the feeling of being controlled by a player'', and outline the problem of its evaluation. We present several models for agents in games which can produce believable behaviours, both from industry and research. For high level of believability, learning and especially imitation learning seems to be the way to go. We make a quick overview of different approaches to make video games' agents learn from players. To conclude we propose a two-step method to develop new models for believable agents. First we must find the criteria for believability for our application and define an evaluation method. Then the model and the learning algorithm can be designed

Data Science Solution for User Authentication

User authentication is considered a key factor in almost any software system and is often the first layer of security in the digital world. Authentication methods utilize one, or a combination of up to two, of the following factors: something you know, something you have and something you are. To prevent serious data breaches that have occurred using the traditional authentication methods, a fourth factor, something you do, that is being discussed among researchers; unfortunately, methods that rely on this fourth factor have problems of their own. This thesis addresses the issues of the fourth authentication factor and proposes a data science solution for user authentication. The new solution is based on something you do and relies on analytic techniques to transfer Big data characteristics (volume, velocity and variety) into relevant security user profiles. Users’ information will be analyzed to create behavioral profiles. Just-in-time challenging questions are generated by these behavioral profiles, allowing an authentication on demand feature to be obtained. The proposed model assumes that the data is received from different sources. This data is analyzed using collaborative filtering (CF), a learning technique, that builds up knowledge by aggregating the collected users’ transaction data to identify information of security potential. Four use case scenarios were evaluated regarding the proposed model’s proof of concept. Additionally, a web based case study using MovieLens public dataset was implemented. Results show that the proposed model is successful as a proof of concept. The experiment confirms the potential of applying the proposed approach in real life as a new authentication method, leveraging the characteristics of Big data: volume, velocity and variety

The business and dynamics of free-to-play social-casual game apps

Thesis (S.M. in Engineering and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 95-100).The rapid growth of social media platforms, specifically Facebook, has caused startup firms to develop new business models based on social technologies. By leveraging the Facebook platform, new entertainment companies making free-to-play social-casual games have created a multi-billion dollar market for virtual goods, a revenue model in which the core product is given away for free and ancillary goods are sold on top of it. Zynga, the most successful firm in this space, held the largest initial public offering for an Internet-based company since Google in 2004. However, concerns about Zynga's longevity (as well as the longevity of other social-oriented firms, including Groupon) persist for a variety of reasons, including the novelty of its business model, the dependence on hit products with short lifecycles, and the stress placed on internal development teams. This thesis analyzes some of the key problems faced by Zynga and its competitors, including how to monetize free products, how to maintain a user base over time (using platform strategy concepts), and how to develop short and long-term product management and new product development policies (using System Dynamics). An additional chapter develops principles for launching social platforms and products by comparing and contrasting key factors that influenced the growth of five major social media websites. The principles are then discussed as they pertain to Zynga and social-casual gaming, in which case there are notable applications and key exceptions based on Zynga's circumstances. The thesis concludes by discussing several future areas of research that pertain to the socialization of products and technology.by Thomas Hughes Speller, III.S.M.in Engineering and Managemen

RFCs, MOOs, LMSs: Assorted Educational Devices\ud

This paper discusses implicit social consequences of four basic internet protocols. The results are then related to the field of computer-assisted teaching. An educational on-line community is described and compared to the emerging standard of web-based learning management.\u

Hitting the “play” button: the aesthetic values of videogame experience

In just a few decades, there's been the birth and fast rise of a recreational activity that implies the interaction between one or multiple players with electronic devices, normally, known as videogames. Being a very complex process and a multi-sensorial practice, playing with videogames produces intense and fulfilling experiences for all those who engage in such activity. Here, I intend to show how those experiences entail relevant aesthetic – and also cognitive and ethical – values for philosophical discussion

A First Amendment for Second Life: What Virtual Worlds Mean for the Law of Video Games

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, video games have finally taken their place alongside movies, comic books, and drawings as a form of protected First Amendment speech. Since the Seventh Circuit\u27s 2001 decision in American Amusement Machine Association v. Kendrick, court after court has struck down ordinances and statutes aimed at restricting violent video games--on the grounds that such violate game designers\u27 and players\u27 First Amendment speech rights. This series of rulings marks a stark change from courts\u27 previous stance on video games, which consigned them to the same realm of unprotected non-speech conduct as games like tennis, chess, or checkers. Video games were able to escape from this unprotected realm--and become First Amendment expression--largely because advances in computer graphics and design made them more and more like interactive movies and television shows, and less and less like digitized board games and pinball machines. But instead of simply forging ahead in this jurisprudential evolution, as video games evolve from personal forms of recreation to virtual worlds, this Article suggests that virtual worlds should make us rethink the First Amendment theory that got us to this point. This is because, while video games may have become First Amendment speech by becoming intricate movie-like stories, many virtual worlds are decidedly not scripted stories. They are rather stages for a multitude of expressive activity, some of which is an electronic analogue of the chess-playing, tennis-playing, car racing, or aimless lounging and wandering, that the courts excluded from the realm of First Amendment speech in an earlier era. This Article argues that this exclusion was a mistake. Virtual worlds are realms of First Amendment expression not because of the stories and role play they make possible, but rather because they provide a setting for giving form to imagination in sounds and imagery, a setting that can be walled off from the business of civil government and thus reserved for more unconstrained exercises of individual freedom. Stories and messages are an optional part of this setting and are not a necessary ingredient of First Amendment speech. This is not to say that government has no role to play in regulating virtual worlds: where individuals bring harm-threatening activity into virtual worlds involving acts that abuse others\u27 money or reputation, for example, government might have to regulate such worlds. But such regulation must take place alongside of, and not simply displace, the First Amendment\u27s application to virtual worlds

Game and Train: A Targeted Game-Based Mobile Intervention for the Treatment of Incarcerated Psychopathic Offenders

The treatment of psychopathic offenders has been a neglected topic in the clinical field. Most interventions available have failed to address core psychopathic traits and instead, use generalized treatments that solely target criminal risk reduction. These current treatments have been shown to yield unsuccessful results related to behavior change and lead to recidivism. The proposed intervention, Game and Train, acts as a response to the inadequate treatments currently available. Two hundred male incarcerated psychopathic offenders will be recruited and asked to participate in an intensive 6-week intervention, Game and Train, that will be accessed via a smart mobile device. The proposed intervention will target the psychopathic specific deficits associated with empathetic response, response modulation and manipulative tendencies. Game and Train will incorporate gamified techniques in order to keep participants motivated to engage with the tasks and cognitive trainings. It is hypothesized that Game and Train will lead to superior outcomes, compared to existing treatments, associated with successful behavior change in three core deficits of psychopathy. The proposed work serves as a captivating alternative to traditional behavioral interventions which will hopefully evoke a transition in the clinical approach to incarcerated intervention methods

Player agency in interactive narrative: audience, actor & author

The question motivating this review paper is, how can computer-based interactive narrative be used as a constructivist learn- ing activity? The paper proposes that player agency can be used to link interactive narrative to learner agency in constructivist theory, and to classify approaches to interactive narrative. The traditional question driving research in interactive narrative is, ‘how can an in- teractive narrative deal with a high degree of player agency, while maintaining a coherent and well-formed narrative?’ This question derives from an Aristotelian approach to interactive narrative that, as the question shows, is inherently antagonistic to player agency. Within this approach, player agency must be restricted and manip- ulated to maintain the narrative. Two alternative approaches based on Brecht’s Epic Theatre and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed are reviewed. If a Boalian approach to interactive narrative is taken the conflict between narrative and player agency dissolves. The question that emerges from this approach is quite different from the traditional question above, and presents a more useful approach to applying in- teractive narrative as a constructivist learning activity