SpaceChem

SpaceChem is a 2D logic puzzle game designed by Zach Barth. Players assume the role of a space-faring reactor engineer who is responsible for setting up new reactors across a series of planets. This involves challenging players to design processes that take sets of chemical compounds as inputs and converting them into specified forms as outputs. Although the game is themed around futuristic chemistry, its simplicity serves abstract and symbolic purposes. The core game mechanic centers upon algorithm design. As illustrated in Figure 1, players program the reactor using a visual drag-and-drop interface. Players drag instructions from the menu at the bottom of the screen, and place them onto the reactor grid, which is reminiscent of a top-down view of a claw crane arcade machine. The system deposits chemicals into the input areas (alpha and beta). So, when players start the reactor by selecting the play icon, the “waldos” (the claws that grab and drop the atoms, marked in red and blue) move around the reactor according to the instructions that they have placed in each cell. For example, the turn instructions allow players to define the path of each waldo. The grab/drop instruction makes the waldo pick up or deposit the chemical on that particular cell. As the game progresses, it introduces other reactor components that perform operations such as: bonding; sensing; teleporting; fusing; and fissioning. These activate when a waldo moves over a cell containing the corresponding instruction. Once all of the operations execute to produce the desired chemical, players must ensure that their program deposits the chemical into the designated output area (psi and omega)

It Takes Two to Tandem: Tandem Analysis as a Novel Method for the Critical Analysis of Games

Many players engage in ‘tandem play’ with others, usually close friends, who talk about what they play as they play it - particularly in cases of single player videogames where one player plays and the other observes. Begy et al. (2017, p.149) have studied ‘tandem play’ extensively, however, this practice of tandem play has not up until now been suggested as a formal method for analysis, directly carried out by the analysts themselves. Proposed here is a novel form of critical analysis, tandem analysis, that makes use of a pair of analysts who engage in tandem play of a videogame together, recording live discussion of the play session and then conducting a thematic analysis of the recording for qualitatively different insights to those provided by other analytical methods. Observations may be more accurately expressed in-situ so that the analysis is more direct in its expression. While three or more researchers could theoretically conduct a tandem analysis, the focus for now is establishing a functioning method with a dyad

Industry-inspired guidelines improve students' pair programming communication

Novice pair programmers find communication within their pairs to be one of the greatest difficulties they face when starting to pair program. However, developers cannot pair program without a certain amount of communication. This research describes the development of an analytic coding scheme derived from the observation of the communication of expert pairs working in industry. Communication patterns identified from these expert pairs are being used to help novices learn to be more effective in their pair communication