Desarrollo de videojuegos innovadores

El objetivo de este proyecto es sentar las bases dentro del ámbito educativo para realizar videojuegos innovadores en términos de mecánicas, estéticas e interfaces hombre-máquina poco comunes.Eje: Ingeniería de Software.Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informátic

Believable exploration : investigating human exploration behavior to inform the design of believable agents in video games

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.By nature, human beings are curious about their environment. Arriving in a new place, they observe, recognize and interact with their surroundings. People collect information about the new place, and locate objects in that space that help them to make further decisions. This is a typical scenario of spatial exploration. Spatial exploration is common human behavior, where humans explore unknown environments to acquire information and resources. It is pervasively seen in real-world and virtual environments, from exploring new living/working spaces to charting the oceans or venturing beyond the boundaries of our planet. Just as humans explore ‘real’ environments, they also investigate artificial environments in video games. Computer agents, which perceive surrounding environments with limited visual range, often appear in exploration activities, acting as tools or partners for explorers. Despite the broad range of human activities that employ exploration behavior, this element has been insufficiently investigated and understood. Additionally, even though it is commonly accepted that believable agents benefit people in human-computer interaction systems, the research into creating computer agents with believable exploration behavior has been neglected. To solve these issues, I extract the patterns of human exploration behavior in virtual environments, and explore the methodologies of developing believable agents, which explore spatial environments in human-like ways. In the pursuit of this goal, this thesis makes the following four contributions to the emerging field of believable agent exploration: 1) I employed video games as a testbed to investigate human behavior of spatial exploration. Human players played specialized exploration games, verbalized their behavior during playing and discussed their thoughts in the post-play interview. Behavioral patterns were extracted based on replays of playing, think-aloud data and interview data via thematic analysis. 2) Differences of exploration behavior between human and computer agents were identified through a third-person-observation assessment of believability. 3) A heuristic agent was developed, which mimics human exploration methods reflected via the behavioral patterns. Three heuristics, as components of the heuristic agent, were designed to filter potential options when the agent decides where to explore in each step. 4) An integrated agent was developed by filling the behavior gaps between human and computer agents, where an integrated architecture embedded expectations of human-like exploration from mid-level players. Both the heuristic agent and the integrated agent passed the third-person-observation assessment of believability. Therefore, findings in this thesis contribute to fill the gaps in the fields of understanding human exploration behavior as well as developing believable agent

HCI Lessons From PlayStation VR

PlayStation VR has quickly built up a significant user-base of over a million headsets and its own ecosystem of games across a variety of genres. These games form part of a rapidly evolving testing ground for design solutions which can usefully inform HCI design for virtual reality. This paper reviews every PlayStation VR title released in the first three months of its lifecycle in order to identify emerging themes for locomotion. These themes are discussed with respect to the lessons learned as part of the on-going development of an Environmental Narrative game for PlayStation VR as part of the Horizon 2020 REVEAL project

Interaction Design in Virtual Reality Game Using Arduino Sensors

Virtual reality (VR) is the use of computer simulation to produce a virtual world, providing users with a variety of sensory simulation, which enables users to feel as though they are in the virtual world. Currently, mature three-dimensional (3D) computer graphics technology can present realistic 3D visual effects. However, system interaction is still mainly through specific interactive devices for system control, such as the Vive controller for HTC Vive. In order to enable the user to control the game intuitively, this study employed a currently popular Arduino technology to carry out design of interactive control devices for virtual reality. The interaction design in this study is based mainly on a virtual reality baseball game. To let users carry out swings more intuitively in the baseball game, this study used actual baseball bat–installed sensors, called “Arduino baseball bat,” as a replacement for the VR joystick. The implemented system was roughly divided into two components: a transmitter system module on the bat and a receiver system module connecting to the server host. According to the results, our system cannot only realistically display 3D visual effects, but the Arduino baseball bat can also provide intuitive real-time game interaction for the user

A Palette of Deepened Emotions: Exploring Emotional Challenge in Virtual Reality Games

Recent work introduced the notion of ‘emotional challenge’promising for understanding more unique and diverse player experiences (PX). Although emotional challenge has immediately attracted HCI researchers’ attention, the concept has not been experimentally explored, especially in virtual reality (VR), one of the latest gaming environments. We conducted two experiments to investigate how emotional challenge affects PX when separately from or jointly with conventional challenge in VR and PC conditions. We found that relatively exclusive emotional challenge induced a wider range of different emotions in both conditions, while the adding of emotional challenge broadened emotional responses only in VR. In both experiments, VR significantly enhanced the measured PX of emotional responses, appreciation, immersion and presence. Our findings indicate that VR may be an ideal medium to present emotional challenge and also extend the understanding of emotional (and conventional) challenge in video games

Virtual reality genres: Comparing preferences in immersive experiences and games

5 pagesEven though virtual reality (VR) shares features with video games, it offers a wider range of experiences. There is currently no cohesive classification for commercial VR offerings. As a first step to account for this deficiency, the work in progress considers the relationship between game genres and users’ ratings and downloads of VR experiences. We found Action, Shooter, and Simulation to be the most frequently downloaded genres; Action and Music/Rhythm the most highly rated; and Simulation and Music/Rhythm to occur at a statistically higher rate in VR compared to non-VR. Finally, we learned that VR experiences are less likely to receive positive ratings than 2D games. The findings can inform developers’ marketing decisions based on demand

Could people with stereo-deficiencies have a rich 3D experience using HMDs?

People with stereo-deficiencies usually have problems for the perception of depth using stereo devices. This paper presents a study that involves participants who did not have stereopsis and participants who had stereopsis. The two groups of participants were exposed to a maze navigation task in a 3D environment in two conditions, using a HMD and a large stereo screen. Fifty-nine adults participated in our study. From the results, there were no statistically significant differences for the performance on the task between the participants with stereopsis and those without stereopsis. We found statistically significant differences between the two conditions in favor of the HMD for the two groups of participants. The participants who did not have stereopsis and could not perceive 3D when looking at the Lang 1 Stereotest did have the illusion of depth perception using the HMD. The study suggests that for the people who did not have stereopsis, the head tracking largely influences the 3D experience

"They’re Just Tixel Pits, Man": Disputing the 'Reality' of Virtual Reality Pornography through the Story Completion Method

Pornography is a substantial part of humans' everyday interaction with computers, yet to date the topic has been underconsidered by HCI. Here, we examine some of the common cultural ideals non-experts constructed of a 'new' pornographic experience - Virtual Reality (VR) Porn - through use of the 'Story Completion Method'. Forty five participants completed a story stem about a male character who was about to have his "very first virtual reality porn experience". Through our analysis, we demonstrate a narrative of a 'perfect', idealised sexual experience, as well as one which emphasised the imagined 'precarious' and dangerous consequences around this technology use. We indicate how the stories reproduced ideals around heteronormativity and hegemonic masculinity, suggesting an agenda of 'Designing for Eroticism' as a tactic which could avoid such problematic discourses. We also suggest the opportunities and challenges presented through use of the 'Story Completion Method'