A Practice-Based Exploration of Natural Environment Design in Computer & Video Games : Volume 2

I offer this thesis as an original and substantial contribution to knowledge in virtual natural environment design practice within computer and video games, by identifying areas of strong/weak practice and to develop a new design framework that utilises a cross-disciplinary approach for practitioners/students/researchers. The thesis combines theoretical frameworks as well practical guidance within a new design framework for virtual natural environment design.The themes relating to this work were examined through a contextual review that focused on previous professional practice as well as critical games produced during the last 30 years. The contextual review involved a detailed textual and visual-based historical survey of virtual landscapes, resulting in a practice-based exploration of virtual natural environment design in computer and video games. One of the main artefacts produced in this research, a three-volume book series titled Virtual Landscapes, presents for the first time these virtual spaces in a digitally enhanced manner through high-resolution panoramic imagery. A review of existing literature and current practice revealed that virtual natural environment design has so far been driven by mainly aesthetic principles and hinted that future emergent design practice should involve a cross/multi-disciplinary approach. The research proposes a new design framework for the creation of virtual landscapes that uses Landscape Character Assessments amongst other elements of environmental design. ShadowMoss Island is a practice-based exploration of how virtual natural environmental design can incorporate elements from Environmental Psychology and Geology, as well as personal reflections and observational analysis based on a field trip. The research proposes that psychological elements added to this new design framework can radically improve the success and impact of the final virtual natural environment.Another practice-based artefact, MindFlow, was created as a pre-production tool for the purpose of environmental design. The proposed tool enables the direct visualisation of collated multimedia (audio, images, video, annotations, design and decisions) in much more natural setting of a single visual space, allowing designers/artists to draw and influence the design and creation of virtual natural environments by bringing together all the different aspects in an intuitive and user-friendly manner. MindFlow helps solve the problem of designers/artists having to retain mental maps of image repositories structure by creating a single visual non-folder tree hierarchy virtual space. The research has significance to both professional and pedagogic practitioners working in the area of computer and video game natural environment design

Aesthetic choices: Defining the range of aesthetic views in interactive digital media including games and 3D virtual environments (3D VEs)

Defining aesthetic choices for interactive digital media such as games is a challenging task. Objective and subjective factors such as colour, symmetry, order and complexity, and statistical features among others play an important role for defining the aesthetic properties of interactive digital artifacts. Computational approaches developed in this regard also consider objective factors such as statistical image features for the assessment of aesthetic qualities. However, aesthetics for interactive digital media, such as games, requires more nuanced consideration than simple objective and subjective factors, for choosing a range of aesthetic features. From the study it was found that the there is no one single optimum position or viewpoint with a corresponding relationship to the aesthetic considerations that influence interactive digital media. Instead, the incorporation of aesthetic features demonstrates the need to consider each component within interactive digital media as part of a range of possible features, and therefore within a range of possible camera positions. A framework, named as PCAWF, emphasized that combination of features and factors demonstrated the need to define a range of aesthetic viewpoints. This is important for improved user experience. From the framework it has been found that factors including the storyline, user state, gameplay, and application type are critical to defining the reasons associated with making aesthetic choices. The selection of a range of aesthetic features and characteristics is influenced by four main factors and sub-factors associated with the main factors. This study informs the future of interactive digital media interaction by providing clarity and reasoning behind the aesthetic decision-making inclusions that are integrated into automatically generated vision by providing a framework for choosing a range of aesthetic viewpoints in a 3D virtual environment of a game. The study identifies critical juxtapositions between photographic and cinema-based media aesthetics by incorporating qualitative rationales from experts within the interactive digital media field. This research will change the way Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated interactive digital media in the way that it chooses visual outputs in terms of camera positions, field-view, orientation, contextual considerations, and user experiences. It will impact across all automated systems to ensure that human-values, rich variations, and extensive complexity are integrated in the AI-dominated development and design of future interactive digital media production

Modding the Apocalypse: (Re)Making Videogames as Post-Structuralist Free Play

This dissertation is about seeing videogames, and videogame design, through the lens of Gregory Ulmer ™s electracy apparatus theory. Videogame modding is emphasized an electrate approach to intervening in existing media. Mods have the potential to make potent rhetorical arguments, but they are little-understood in the field of rhet-comp, and there are numerous obstacles to carving a space for them in academic curricula; nevertheless, they are an increasingly common form of participatory engagement that make use of a broad digital skillset. Modders fit into Gregory Ulmer ™s electracy apparatus as egents ”agents of change in the Internet age ”and their playful appropriation of objects from various archives resembles the electrate genre of MyStory (personal alternative-history). By positioning modding as electrate composition praxis, a new gateway for academic game study and production is opened, one where play is integral to the process of knowledge formation. Fallout 4 (2016) serves as an example of a moddable game whose rhetorical affordances can be adapted to craft MyStories and MEmorials

New Game Physics - Added Value for Transdisciplinary Teams

This study focused on game physics, an area of computer game design where physics is applied in interactive computer software. The purpose of the research was a fresh analysis of game physics in order to prove that its current usage is limited and requires advancement. The investigations presented in this dissertation establish constructive principles to advance game physics design. The main premise was that transdisciplinary approaches provide significant value. The resulting designs reflected combined goals of game developers, artists and physicists and provide novel ways to incorporate physics into games. The applicability and user impact of such new game physics across several target audiences was thoroughly examined. In order to explore the transdisciplinary nature of the premise, valid evidence was gathered using a broad range of theoretical and practical methodologies. The research established a clear definition of game physics within the context of historical, technological, practical, scientific, and artistic considerations. Game analysis, literature reviews and seminal surveys of game players, game developers and scientists were conducted. A heuristic categorization of game types was defined to create an extensive database of computer games and carry out a statistical analysis of game physics usage. Results were then combined to define core principles for the design of unconventional new game physics elements. Software implementations of several elements were developed to examine the practical feasibility of the proposed principles. This research prototype was exposed to practitioners (artists, game developers and scientists) in field studies, documented on video and subsequently analyzed to evaluate the effectiveness of the elements on the audiences. The findings from this research demonstrated that standard game physics is a common but limited design element in computer games. It was discovered that the entertainment driven design goals of game developers interfere with the needs of educators and scientists. Game reviews exemplified the exaggerated and incorrect physics present in many commercial computer games. This “pseudo physics” was shown to have potentially undesired effects on game players. Art reviews also indicated that game physics technology remains largely inaccessible to artists. The principal conclusion drawn from this study was that the proposed new game physics advances game design and creates value by expanding the choices available to game developers and designers, enabling artists to create more scientifically robust artworks, and encouraging scientists to consider games as a viable tool for education and research. The practical portion generated tangible evidence that the isolated “silos” of engineering, art and science can be bridged when game physics is designed in a transdisciplinary way. This dissertation recommends that scientific and artistic perspectives should always be considered when game physics is used in computer-based media, because significant value for a broad range of practitioners in succinctly different fields can be achieved. The study has thereby established a state of the art research into game physics, which not only offers other researchers constructive principles for future investigations, but also provides much-needed new material to address the observed discrepancies in game theory and digital media design

Space and place as expressive categories in videogames

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis sets out to explore some of the ways in which videogames use space as a means of expression. This expression takes place in two registers: representation and embodiment. Representation is understood as a form of expression in which messages and ideas are communicated. Embodiment is understood as a form of expression in which the player is encouraged to take up a particular position in relation to the game. This distinction between representation and embodiment is useful analytically but the thesis attempts to synthesise these modes in order to account for the experience of playing videogames, where representation and embodiment are constantly happening and constantly influencing and shaping each other. Several methods are developed to analyse games in a way that brings these two modes to the fore. The thesis attempts to arrive at a number of spatial aesthetics of videogames by adapting methods from game studies, literary criticism, phenomenology, onomastics (the study of names), cartographic theory, choreography and architectural and urban formation analysis

Chronotope in western role-playing video games

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThe development of the video game industry and the increasing popularity of the medium as a form of entertainment have led to significant developments in the discipline of game studies and a growing awareness of the cultural significance of video games as cultural artefacts. While much work has been done to understand the narrative aspect of games, there are still theoretical gaps on the understanding of how video games generate their narrative experience and how this experience is shaped by the player and the game as artefact. This interdisciplinary study investigates how meaning is created in Western Role Playing Games (WRPGs) video games by analysing the narrative strategies they employ in relation to those commonly used in Heroic Epic and Fantasy narratives. It adopts the Bakhtinian concepts of chronotope and dialogue as the main theoretical tools to examine the creation and integration of narratives in WRPGs with a special focus on the time-space perspective. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Dragon Age Origins were chosen as representatives of the WRPG video game genre while Beowulf and the tale of Sigurd, as it appears in the Poetic Edda and the Volsung Saga, were chosen as representatives of the Heroic Epic poetic tradition. References are also made to Fantasy novels, especially the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. Textual analysis along with some techniques employed by researchers working with visual methodologies and compositional interpretation were used to analyse relevant aspects of the texts and games. The findings suggest that intertextual and genre materials considerably shape the narrative of WRPGs and exercise a profound dialogical effect on the ludonarrative harmony of the games investigated through their interaction with the game world and gameplay systems. This relationship is most visible in the chronotopic (time-space) aspect of the chosen games. The findings also suggest that Epic material dialogically orients the WRPG players‘ experience and adjusts their expectations and understanding of the fictional world. This study as well as the refining of chronotopic analytical tools to encompass chronotopic awareness, transportation, and flow may be of use in further chronotopic investigations of different games, literary genres, and/or other media artefacts

Pastplay: Teaching and Learning History with Technology

In the field of history, the Web and other technologies have become important tools in research and teaching of the past. Yet the use of these tools is limited—many historians and history educators have resisted adopting them because they fail to see how digital tools supplement and even improve upon conventional tools (such as books). In Pastplay, a collection of essays by leading history and humanities researchers and teachers, editor Kevin Kee works to address these concerns head-on. How should we use technology? Playfully, Kee contends. Why? Because doing so helps us think about the past in new ways; through the act of creating technologies, our understanding of the past is re-imagined and developed. From the insights of numerous scholars and teachers, Pastplay argues that we should play with technology in history because doing so enables us to see the past in new ways by helping us understand how history is created; honoring the roots of research, teaching, and technology development; requiring us to model our thoughts; and then allowing us to build our own understanding

Chernobyl's Radioactive Memory: Confronting the Impact of Nuclear Fallout

This dissertation examines the accretive violence wrought by nuclear power on bodies and spaces through a study of Chernobyl’s transnational memory. By examining this infamous disaster, I clarify the process by which power renders those impacts invisible, as well as the ways in which memory can assist in making the real impacts of nuclear power visible. I use the term ‘radioactive memory’ to explain the potential of these memories to combat dominant narratives of nuclear power that attempt to contain the disaster’s radioactive excess. The term also encompasses the potential of any engagement with Chernobyl to provoke a deeper understanding of how nuclear power affects communities and the environment. I show how memory of nuclear disaster is conditioned in a variety of ways through multimodal and multifaceted interactions and encounters with Chernobyl in film, literature, tourism, and memorial practices. I employ a wide variety of theoretical approaches and frameworks in order to account for the myriad of possible engagements with the disaster’s memory. This dissertation challenges the idea that Chernobyl is a singular and isolated event, and instead locates it within a constellation of nuclear violence that includes an expansive history of nuclear disaster. Recent examinations on Chernobyl nuclear disaster have centered on its historical Soviet context, which while valuable, do not account for the influence of states, the nuclear industry, and other vested institutions in maintaining the global nuclear apparatus. Memory offers a generative arena for revealing the human costs and risks of living in a nuclear-powered world. A close examination of Chernobyl’s memory reveals how its impacts, along with the impacts of all nuclear disasters, concern everyone, because radiation cannot be contained within set spatial and temporal boundaries. In bringing more awareness to the mechanisms of memory that offer evidence of nuclear power’s destructive consequences, we might then be able to take responsibility for the bodily and psychological trauma inflicted by our own complicity in allowing nuclear power to develop unchecked. In doing so, we might also be able to envision a non-nuclear alternative for the future.PHDSlavic Languages & LiteraturesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162952/1/hallauri_1.pd