Languages of games and play: A systematic mapping study

Digital games are a powerful means for creating enticing, beautiful, educational, and often highly addictive interactive experiences that impact the lives of billions of players worldwide. We explore what informs the design and construction of good games to learn how to speed-up game development. In particular, we study to what extent languages, notations, patterns, and tools, can offer experts theoretical foundations, systematic techniques, and practical solutions they need to raise their productivity and improve the quality of games and play. Despite the growing number of publications on this topic there is currently no overview describing the state-of-the-art that relates research areas, goals, and applications. As a result, efforts and successes are often one-off, lessons learned go overlooked, language reuse remains minimal, and opportunities for collaboration and synergy are lost. We present a systematic map that identifies relevant publications and gives an overview of research areas and publication venues. In addition, we categorize research perspectives along common objectives, techniques, and approaches, illustrated by summaries of selected languages. Finally, we distill challenges and opportunities for future research and development

Contextual sensing : integrating contextual information with human and technical geo-sensor information for smart cities

In this article we critically discuss the challenge of integrating contextual information, in particular spatiotemporal contextual information, with human and technical sensor information, which we approach from a geospatial perspective. We start by highlighting the significance of context in general and spatiotemporal context in particular and introduce a smart city model of interactions between humans, the environment, and technology, with context at the common interface. We then focus on both the intentional and the unintentional sensing capabilities of todays technologies and discuss current technological trends that we consider have the ability to enrich human and technical geo-sensor information with contextual detail. The different types of sensors used to collect contextual information are analyzed and sorted into three groups on the basis of names considering frequently used related terms, and characteristic contextual parameters. These three groups, namely technical in situ sensors, technical remote sensors, and human sensors are analyzed and linked to three dimensions involved in sensing (data generation, geographic phenomena, and type of sensing). In contrast to other scientific publications, we found a large number of technologies and applications using in situ and mobile technical sensors within the context of smart cities, and surprisingly limited use of remote sensing approaches. In this article we further provide a critical discussion of possible impacts and influences of both technical and human sensing approaches on society, pointing out that a larger number of sensors, increased fusion of information, and the use of standardized data formats and interfaces will not necessarily result in any improvement in the quality of life of the citizens of a smart city. This article seeks to improve our understanding of technical and human geo-sensing capabilities, and to demonstrate that the use of such sensors can facilitate the integration of different types of contextual information, thus providing an additional, namely the geo-spatial perspective on the future development of smart cities.(VLID)165464

Interim research assessment 2003-2005 - Computer Science

This report primarily serves as a source of information for the 2007 Interim Research Assessment Committee for Computer Science at the three technical universities in the Netherlands. The report also provides information for others interested in our research activities

Fully generated scripted dialogue for embodied agents

This paper presents the NECA approach to the generation of dialogues between Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs). This approach consist of the automated construction of an abstract script for an entire dialogue (cast in terms of dialogue acts), which is incrementally enhanced by a series of modules and finally ''performed'' by means of text, speech and body language, by a cast of ECAs. The approach makes it possible to automatically produce a large variety of highly expressive dialogues, some of whose essential properties are under the control of a user. The paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of NECA's approach to Fully Generated Scripted Dialogue (FGSD), and explains the main techniques used in the two demonstrators that were built. The paper can be read as a survey of issues and techniques in the construction of ECAs, focusing on the generation of behaviour (i.e., focusing on information presentation) rather than on interpretation

From Walking Simulator to Ambience Action Game

When Dear Esther (The Chinese Room, 2012) was released in 2012 as a standalone game, the new “walking simulator” genre name came into popular use. The term implies a banalization of game design while also missing the core characteristics of the games subsumed under it and, therefore, lacks epistemological value. Following this notion, we offer “ambience action game” as an alternative to provide an epistemological tool which enables researchers to appreciate the genre’s cultural significance as a continuation of practices of atmospheric experience.The proposed term offers myriad starting points for analysis and future research by unifying well-received game studies theories with the barely recognized—at least in game studies discourse—philosophical theory of atmospheres. Consequently, this article is a contribution to an affective turn in game studies, which takes player experience beyond the act of play seriousl

Modeling Reader's Emotional State Response on Document's Typographic Elements

We present the results of an experimental study towards modeling the reader's emotional state variations induced by the typographic elements in electronic documents. Based on the dimensional theory of emotions we investigate how typographic elements, like font style (bold, italics, bold-italics) and font (type, size, color and background color), affect the reader's emotional states, namely, Pleasure, Arousal, and Dominance (PAD). An experimental procedure was implemented conforming to International Affective Picture System guidelines and incorporating the Self-Assessment Manikin test. Thirty students participated in the experiment. The stimulus was a short paragraph of text for which any content, emotion, and/or domain dependent information was excluded. The Analysis of Variance revealed the dependency of (a) all the three emotional dimensions on font size and font/background color combinations and (b) the Pleasure dimension on font type and font style. We introduce a set of mapping rules showing how PAD vary on the discrete values of font style and font type elements. Moreover, we introduce a set of equations describing the PAD dimensions' dependency on font size. This novel model can contribute to the automated reader's emotional state extraction in order, for example, to enhance the acoustic rendition of the documents, utilizing text-to-speech synthesis

Letters from the War of Ecosystems – An Analysis of Independent Software Vendors in Mobile Application Marketplaces

The recent emergence of a new generation of mobile application marketplaces has changed the business in the mobile ecosystems. The marketplaces have gathered over a million applications by hundreds of thousands of application developers and publishers. Thus, software ecosystems—consisting of developers, consumers and the orchestrator—have emerged as a part of the mobile ecosystem. This dissertation addresses the new challenges faced by mobile application developers in the new ecosystems through empirical methods. By using the theories of two-sided markets and business ecosystems as the basis, the thesis assesses monetization and value creation in the market as well as the impact of electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) and developer multihoming— i. e. contributing for more than one platform—in the ecosystems. The data for the study was collected with web crawling from the three biggest marketplaces: Apple App Store, Google Play and Windows Phone Store. The dissertation consists of six individual articles. The results of the studies show a gap in monetization among the studied applications, while a majority of applications are produced by small or micro-enterprises. The study finds only weak support for the impact of eWOM on the sales of an application in the studied ecosystem. Finally, the study reveals a clear difference in the multi-homing rates between the top application developers and the rest. This has, as discussed in the thesis, an impact on the future market analyses—it seems that the smart device market can sustain several parallel application marketplaces.Muutama vuosi sitten julkistetut uuden sukupolven mobiilisovellusten kauppapaikat ovat muuttaneet mobiiliekosysteemien liiketoimintadynamiikkaa. Nämä uudet markkinapaikat ovat jo onnistuneet houkuttelemaan yli miljoona sovellusta sadoilta tuhansilta ohjelmistokehittäjiltä. Nämä kehittäjät yhdessä markkinapaikan organisoijan sekä loppukäyttäjien kanssa ovat muodostaneet ohjelmistoekosysteemin osaksi laajempaa mobiiliekosysteemiä. Tässä väitöskirjassa tarkastellaan mobiilisovellusten kehittäjien uudenlaisilla kauppapaikoilla kohtaamia haasteita empiiristen tutkimusmenetelmien kautta. Väitöskirjassa arvioidaan sovellusten monetisaatiota ja arvonluontia sekä verkon asiakasarviointien (engl. electronicWord-of-Mouth, eWOM) ja kehittäjien moniliittymisen (engl. multi-homing) — kehittäjä on sitoutunut useammalle kuin yhdelle ekosysteemille — vaikutuksia ekosysteemissä. Työn teoreettinen tausta rakentuu kaksipuolisten markkinapaikkojen ja liiketoimintaekosysteemien päälle. Tutkimuksen aineisto on kerätty kolmelta suurimmalta mobiilisovellusmarkkinapaikalta: Apple App Storesta, Google Playstä ja Windows Phone Storesta. Tämä artikkeliväitöskirja koostuu kuudesta itsenäisestä tutkimuskäsikirjoituksesta. Artikkelien tulokset osoittavat puutteita monetisaatiossa tutkittujen sovellusten joukossa. Merkittävä osa tarkastelluista sovelluksista on pienten yritysten tai yksittäisten kehittäjien julkaisemia. Tutkimuksessa löydettiin vain heikkoa tukea eWOM:in positiiviselle vaikutukselle sovellusten myyntimäärissä. Työssä myös osoitetaan merkittävä ero menestyneimpien sovelluskehittäjien sekä muiden kehittäjien moniliittymiskäyttäytymisen välillä. Tällä havainnolla on merkitystä tuleville markkina-analyyseille ja sen vaikutuksia on käsitelty työssä. Tulokset esimerkiksi viittaavat siihen, että markkinat pystyisivät ylläpitämään useita kilpailevia kauppapaikkoja.Siirretty Doriast

A Design Exploration of Affective Gaming

Physiological sensing has been a prominent fixture in games user research (GUR) since the late 1990s, when researchers began to explore its potential to enhance and understand experience within digital game play. Since these early days, it has been widely argued that “affective gaming”—in which gameplay is influenced by a player’s emotional state—can enhance player experience by integrating physiological sensors into play. In this thesis, I conduct a design exploration of the field of affective gaming by first, systematically exploring the field and creating a framework (the affective game loop) to classify existing literature; and second by presenting two design probes, to probe and explore the design space of affective games contextualized within the affective game loop: In the Same Boat and Commons Sense. The systematic review explored this unique design space of affective gaming, opening up future avenues for exploration. The affective game loop was created as a way to classify the physiological signals and sensors most commonly used in prior literature within the context of how they are mapped into the gameplay itself. Findings suggest that the physiological input mappings can be more action-based (e.g., affecting mechanics in the game such as the movement of the character) or more context-based (e.g., affecting things like environmental or difficulty variables in the game). Findings also suggested that while the field has been around for decades, there is still yet to be any commercial successes, so does physiological interaction really heighten player experience? This question instigated the design of the two probes, exploring ways to implement these mappings and effectively heighten player experience. In the Same Boat (Design Probe One) is an embodied mirroring game designed to promote an intimate interaction, using players’ breathing rate and facial expressions to control movement of a canoe down a river. Findings suggest that playing In the Same Boat fostered the development of affiliation between the players, and that while embodied controls were less intuitive, people enjoyed them more, indicating the potential of embodied controls to foster social closeness in synchronized play over a distance. Commons Sense (Design Probe Two) is a communication modality intended to heighten audience engagement and effectively capture and communicate the audience experience, using a webcam-based heart rate detection software that takes an average of each spectator’s heart rate as input to affect in-game variables such as lighting and sound design, and game difficulty. Findings suggest that Commons Sense successfully facilitated the communication of audience response in an online entertainment context—where these social cues and signals are inherently diminished. In addition, Commons Sense is a communication modality that can both enhance a play experience while offering a novel way to communicate. Overall, findings from this design exploration shows that affective games offer a novel way to deliver a rich gameplay experience for the player