Deriving Quests from Open World Mechanics

Open world games present players with more freedom than games with linear progression structures. However, without clearly-defined objectives, they often leave players without a sense of purpose. Most of the time, quests and objectives are hand-authored and overlaid atop an open world's mechanics. But what if they could be generated organically from the gameplay itself? The goal of our project was to develop a model of the mechanics in Minecraft that could be used to determine the ideal placement of objectives in an open world setting. We formalized the game logic of Minecraft in terms of logical rules that can be manipulated in two ways: they may be executed to generate graphs representative of the player experience when playing an open world game with little developer direction; and they may be statically analyzed to determine dependency orderings, feedback loops, and bottlenecks. These analyses may then be used to place achievements on gameplay actions algorithmically.Comment: To appear at Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) 201

Generating Levels That Teach Mechanics

The automatic generation of game tutorials is a challenging AI problem. While it is possible to generate annotations and instructions that explain to the player how the game is played, this paper focuses on generating a gameplay experience that introduces the player to a game mechanic. It evolves small levels for the Mario AI Framework that can only be beaten by an agent that knows how to perform specific actions in the game. It uses variations of a perfect A* agent that are limited in various ways, such as not being able to jump high or see enemies, to test how failing to do certain actions can stop the player from beating the level.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, PCG Workshop at FDG 2018, 9th International Workshop on Procedural Content Generation (PCG2018

A monument to the player: Preserving a landscape of socio-cultural capital in the transitional MMORPG

This is the pre-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the links below - Copyright @ 2012 Taylor & Francis LtdMassively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) produce dynamic socio-ludic worlds that nurture both culture and gameplay to shape experiences. Despite the persistent nature of these games, however, the virtual spaces that anchor these worlds may not always be able to exist in perpetuity. Encouraging a community to migrate from one space to another is a challenge now facing some game developers. This paper examines the case of Guild Wars® and its “Hall of Monuments”, a feature that bridges the accomplishments of players from the current game to the forthcoming sequel. Two factor analyses describe the perspectives of 105 and 187 self-selected participants. The results reveal four factors affecting attitudes towards the feature, but they do not strongly correlate with existing motivational frameworks, and significant differences were found between different cultures within the game. This informs a discussion about the implications and facilitation of such transitions, investigating themes of capital, value perception and assumptive worlds. It is concluded that the way subcultures produce meaning needs to be considered when attempting to preserve the socio-cultural landscape

Dead Rising and the Gameworld Zombie

This chapter investigates how the open-world game Dead Rising (Capcom 2006) uses zombies in its construction of the gameworld interface. Drawing on Weise’s (2009) research on ludic adaptations of the zombie and in particular his analysis of Dead Rising; as well as Jørgensen’s theory of gameworld interfaces (Jørgensen 2013a; 2013b; 2016), which highlights the gameworld as an activity space that designed for a particular kind of gameplay, the chapter argues that the zombie is a defining feature of the gameworld in Dead Rising. The chapter focuses on how the zombie trope works in relation to gameworld interfaces, and argues that zombies are detrimental to understanding the game environment both as a fictive universe and a gameworld meant for play in Dead Rising.acceptedVersio

Dissipative Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) model

Collapse models explain the absence of quantum superpositions at the macroscopic scale, while giving practically the same predictions as quantum mechanics for microscopic systems. The Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) model is the most refined and studied among collapse models. A well-known problem of this model, and of similar ones, is the steady and unlimited increase of the energy induced by the collapse noise. Here we present the dissipative version of the CSL model, which guarantees a finite energy during the entire system's evolution, thus making a crucial step toward a realistic energy-conserving collapse model. This is achieved by introducing a non-linear stochastic modification of the Schr\"odinger equation, which represents the action of a dissipative finite-temperature collapse noise. The possibility to introduce dissipation within collapse models in a consistent way will have relevant impact on the experimental investigations of the CSL model, and therefore also on the testability of the quantum superposition principle.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure; v2 title changed, closer to published versio

Bringing Light into the Dark - Improving Students’ Black-Box Testing Competencies using Game-Design Elements

As software becomes increasingly complex, there is a growing need to enhance quality assurance in software engineering. However, the lack of qualified human resources is a barrier to performing software testing activities in software companies. At the same time, software testing can be considered a tedious task and is often not done at the necessary level of detail, e.g., designing test cases. However, it is crucial for novice programmers and testers to acquire and improve their testing competencies, and to utilize testing techniques, e.g., black-box testing. Teaching software testing is often based on theoretical instructions, resulting in limited practical experience. As a result, students may not develop the necessary testing mindset, highlighting the need for more extensive software testing education. To address this issue, this paper utilizes a design science research approach to implement a gamified learning system that promotes black-box testing competencies with empirical insights from a field test

Texts and reading in virtual environments : history and prospects

textThis thesis examines the activity of pleasure reading as conducted within three kinds of virtual environments: role-playing and adventure video games, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) such as World of Warcraft, and graphical online social worlds such as Second Life. I ask how and to what extent different types of virtual environments are able to provide immersive reading experiences. This analysis relies upon the concepts of telic (purpose-driven) and paratelic (pleasure-driven) modes of reading, and I examine how virtual environments provide affordances for one or the other mode. How they do so usually has to do with how their situate reading materials in relation to the environment’s diegetic world, as well as whether the diegetic world is coherent and bounded. I conclude that while paratelic reading is encouraged in all virtual environments, role-playing and adventure video games are conducive to partially telic reading experiences, with players reading in order to better understand the diegetic world in which they act. MMOGs feature largely immutable diegetic worlds lacking normal relations of causality, but they still manage to some degree to encourage telic reading by circumscribing and enriching the world with lore. Virtual social worlds are generally unable to provide this sort of telic reading experience due to their lack of coherent diegetic worlds, and their effectiveness for paratelic reading is currently hampered by unwieldy interfaces and lack of innovation in the format of virtual books. Although MMOGs and social virtual worlds both feature synchronous collaboration between players with the potential for emergent narratives, neither has been able to leverage this advantage for the creation of immersive reading experiences. Finally, all three forms of virtual environment have inspired innovative user-created narratives and interfaces, but they have done so outside the contexts of their diegetic game worlds, in the sphere of participant culture.Informatio

Mobile virtual worlds

This thesis examines the role of mobile access to virtual worlds in massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG:s). Online gaming worlds have existed for decades, but ever since the smartphone has become more common, new interaction possibilities to these worlds have emerged. We have conducted a literature review to clarify existing gaps in the research community regarding mobile virtual worlds. Through this review, we have constructed a research model containing previously established motivation factors for MMORPG:s, interconnected with possible categories of how to improve the game experience with mobile features. An online survey on this topic was sent out to World of Warcraft players and the results show that many aspects of gameplay through mobile access could improve the gaming experience of virtual gaming worlds. The responses showed very mixed feelings about using many game features from the mobile phone, especially those that tie in with real life. An important finding among the results is the strong reluctance among the players to pay extra money for the addition of mobile access to the virtual world, and a low motivation to use synchronous gameplay features via a mobile computing device