The False Dichotomy between Positive and Negative Affect in Game Play

Most of the time games make us happy, but sometimes they are frustrating or make us feel sad. They allow us to experience pleasure, success and joy, but they can also yield feelings of frustration, failure, or sorrow as a result of darker themes. In games, we can experience the full range of emotions – both positive and negative. The workshop goals are to: 1) Investigate positive affect, negative affect, and the interplay between positive and negative affect as a means to create powerful gaming experiences; 2) Identify gaps in our existing knowledge regarding the full range of emotional experiences in games and their impact on the player and play experience; 3) Determine directions for research to advance knowledge in this space; and, 4) Create a community of people interested in developing games that involve powerful and meaningful player experiences. The organizers will provide the structure, questions, scaffolding of discussions, and workshop materials; whereas the participants will provide ideas through positions papers and discussion

Game Mechanics Supporting Pervasive Learning and Experience in Games, Serious Games, and Interactive & Social Media

This workshop investigates the mechanisms for behaviour change and influence, focusing on the definition of requirements for pervasive gameplay and interaction mechanics, procedures, actions, mechanisms, systems, story, etc.) with the purpose of informing, educating, reflecting and raising awareness. By connecting various experts such as designers, educators, developers, evaluators and researchers from both industry and academia, this workshop aims to enable participants share, discuss and learn about existing relevant mechanisms for pervasive learning in a Serious Game (SG) context. Research in SG, as a whole, faces two main challenges in understanding: the transition between the instructional design and actual game design implementation [1] and documenting an evidence-based mapping of game design patterns onto relevant pedagogical patterns [2]. From a practical perspective, this transition lacks methodology and requires a leap of faith from a prospective customer to the ability of a SG developer to deliver a game that will achieve the desired learning outcomes. This workshop aims to present and apply a preliminary exposition though a purpose-processing methodology to probe, from various SG design aspects, how SG design patterns map with pedagogical practicesNo Full Tex

Game Mechanics Supporting Pervasive Learning and Experience in Games, Serious Games, and Interactive & Social Media

This workshop investigates the mechanisms for behaviour change and influence, focusing on the definition of requirements for pervasive gameplay and interaction mechanics, procedures, actions, mechanisms, systems, story, etc., with the purpose of informing, educating, reflecting and raising awareness. By connecting various experts such as designers, educators, developers, evaluators and researchers from both industry and academia, this workshop aims to enable participants to share, discuss and learn about existing relevant mechanisms for pervasive learning in a Serious Game (SG) context. Research in SG, as a whole, faces two main challenges in understanding: the transition between the instructional design and actual game design implementation [1] and documenting an evidence-based mapping of game design patterns onto relevant pedagogical patterns [2]. From a practical perspective, this transition lacks methodology and requires a leap of faith from a prospective customer to the ability of a SG developer to deliver a game that will achieve the desired learning outcomes. This workshop aims to present and apply a preliminary exposition though a purpose-processing methodology to probe, from various SG design aspects, how SG design patterns map with pedagogical practice

Lingering serious experience as trigger to raise awareness, encourage reflection and change behavior

While work in interaction design, human-computer interaction (HCI) and the games literature begins to address experience beyond positive, it just scratches the surface. By turning to drama, literature, music, art and film that has shaped experiences and emotion beyond the positive and fun for many years, we describe what experience beyond positive looks like, show how it is not always "uncomfortable" and argue for the more appropriate term "serious experience". We discuss the importance of the take-away message / serious experience in persuasive technology, persuasive games and serious games to linger or resonate post-encounter for user/players to encourage reflection, affect attitudes and change behaviors in order to fulfill a persuasive purpose. Finally, we describe associated ethical concerns and make recommendations for designers, evaluators and practitioners in order to safeguard players/users

Moving Beyond Fun : Evaluating Serious Experience in Digital Games

Games are normally considered to be 'fun', though recently there is growing interest in how gameplay can promote empathy and encourage reflection through 'serious experience'. However, when looking beyond enjoyment, it is not clear how to actually evaluate serious experience. We present an evaluation of four games that were submitted to a student game design competition; the competition challenged teams to design a game that inspired curiosity around human error and blame culture within the context of healthcare. The entries were judged by a panel of six experts and subjected to a round of play testing by twelve participants. Methods included gameplay observation, questionnaires, post-play interviews and follow-up email questions. We discuss the utility of these methods, with particular emphasis on how they enabled a consideration of the immediate and longer term impact of serious experience on players

Supporting engagement in research through a game design competition

Digital games are an engaging medium that have previously been used for communicating research to different audiences. However, there is an opportunity for engaging people more deeply by involving them in creating games. This article reports on a game design competition, based on participatory design principles and game jam practices, which challenged university students to design games within the context of a research project. Based on their interpretations of research on human error in healthcare, teams created four games to be disseminated online to a wider public audience. We outline the competition format and reflect on the extent to which it was successful

Squeezy Green Balls: Promoting Environmental Awareness through Playful Interactions

We need collective action to tackle global warming. However, research shows that people switch off from being concerned about the environment because they are often too busy, or fail to appreciate their ability to make a difference. An alternative approach is to run campaigns that are able to engage large numbers of people and engender feelings of concern and empowerment. This could then kick-start a range of pro-environmental habits. We present the development and evaluation of a playful installation that aimed to attract attention, and stimulate discussion about environmental issues amongst university staff and students. The first prototype was shown to successfully attract people to engage and interact with the installation. The second prototype was deployed in-the-wild, over the course of a week. We evaluated the extent to which the installation was successful at attracting attention, and in encouraging people to interact with it, to reflect on their habits and to discuss environmental issues with others. We found the Green Ball Kiosk was a fun way to raise discussions about green issues, to encourage the adoption of new environmentally friendly behaviours and to prompt people to maintain existing ones. We suggest that interactive installations such as this can be effective at promoting awareness and generating a ‘social buzz’ about environmental topics when exhibited as a temporary installation

The Effects of Surprising Events on Promoting Social Change in Unwinnable Persuasive Games

Surprising events can be beneficial for unwinnable persuasive games, especially since they can evoke players to reflect on their failure to win the game. Despite its presence in some titles, the usage of surprising events still lacks empirical support. This study aims to gain insight into it by comparing the effects of revealing the game’s context from the beginning to delaying it until the game ends. In addition, we also examine the interaction effects with playing duration since it is possible that longer playtime will lead to smaller effects for a game with surprising events, whereas longer playtime will result in greater effects for a game without surprising events. To do so, we conducted a 2 x 2 factorial between-subject experiment with an additional no-treatment control group. The results suggest that delaying the revelation to create a surprising event can promote the same level of donation from players, regardless of their playing time. On the other hand, longer playtime is important if players know the context from the beginning. Additional results about the effect of playing duration on donation and willingness to help were also discussed in this paper

A Framework to Democratise the Design of Educational Games on Social Issues during Game Jams

Game Jams are events organised to create computer games, usually taking place during weekends. These events have become a popular way to enable participants to experience processes and practices of game development as well as to offer multidisciplinary learning opportunities, accessed through the variety of skills involved in game design. However, these events tend to be attended predominantly by male game developers and present barriers to participation for more diverse groups. This thesis investigates how to support diverse group participation in Game Jams, including people from different ethnicities, genders, ages, sexual orientations and who do not have any prior experience of designing games; and explores Game Jam participation as an opportunity to discuss social issues. To this end, a framework to democratise the design of educational games on social issues in Game Jams is proposed. The framework consists of a process with structured resources and activities to enhance learning by supporting egalitarian participation and agency. It offers collaborative learning opportunities for groups to engage with a social issue, relying on storytelling and on the exchange of perspectives and experiences. It also provides support and access to research-based principles to design games for education, and egalitarian opportunities to acquire game development skills, considered relevant opportunities given the wide-spread use of games and increasing interest in games as engaging tools for online education. The development of the framework is grounded in Critical Pedagogy, an educational approach providing principles and processes to democratise learning initiatives based on egalitarian participation and agency. Following a Design-Based Research methodology, the framework is developed through a case study on creating educational games on everyday sexism. A set of formative design studies are undertaken to co-design resources and activities that enable participants to elaborate solutions to the social issue and create educational games themselves. An evaluative study is then presented with the realisation of two Game Jams to assess and validate the proposed framework. The theoretical contributions of this work validate two new applications of Critical Pedagogy. The first one is to apply Critical Pedagogy to shape Game Jams to enhance learning through the active involvement of participants as equal learners and agents of social change. The second one applies Critical Pedagogy to democratise knowledge of design principles to create educational games on social issues. Lastly, access to a co-created tool for raising awareness of everyday sexism and insights on how to enable broad audiences to acquire games development skills are some of the practical contributions of this thesis