WRITING FOR EACH OTHER: DYNAMIC QUEST GENERATION USING IN SESSION PLAYER BEHAVIORS IN MMORPG

Role-playing games (RPGs) rely on interesting and varied experiences to maintain player attention. These experiences are often provided through quests, which give players tasks that are used to advance stories or events unfolding in the game. Traditional quests in video games require very specific conditions to be met, and for participating members to advance them by carrying out pre-defined actions. These types of quests are generated with perfect knowledge of the game world and are able to force desired behaviors out of the relevant non-player characters (NPCs). This becomes a major issue in massive multiplayer online (MMO) when other players can often disrupt the conditions needed for quests to unfold in a believable and immersive way, leading to the absence of a genuine multiplayer RPG experience. Our proposed solution is to dynamically create quests from real-time information on the unscripted actions of other NPCs and players in a game. This thesis shows that it is possible to create logical quests without global information knowledge, pre-defined story-trees, or prescribed player and NPC behavior. This allows players to become involved in storylines without having to perform any specific actions. Results are shown through a game scenario created from the Panoptyk Engine, a game engine in early development designed to test AI reasoning with information and the removal of the distinction between NPC and human players. We focus on quests issued by the NPC faction leaders of several in-game groups known as factions. Our generated quests are created logically from the pre-defined personality of each NPC leader, their memory of previous events, and information given to them by in-game sources. Long-spanning conflicts are seen to emerge from factions issuing quests against each other; these conflicts can be represented in a coherent narrative. A user study shows that players felt quests were logical, that players were able to recognize quests were based on events happening in the game, and that players experienced follow-up consequences from their actions in quests

Assessing COVID-19 impact on user opinion towards videogames - Sentiment analysis and structural break detection on steam data

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceAs we live in a world where the videogame industry grows day by day and new media is constantly emerging, user feedback can be widely found online. User reviews are a highly valuable data source when studying player perception of a videogame. They are also apparently volatile to updates released by developers and other external events, which may change user opinion over time. Here we assess whether the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak fell in this category, having or not a noticeable impact on the player view and popularity of videogames. In this research, we build and implement a method to collect active player data and user reviews, identifying the sentiment contained in the expressed opinions. Furthermore, we investigate the existence of structural breaks in the time series we target. For this purpose, we targeted user-reviews and active player data collected of Steam’s twenty most popular Massive Multiplayer Online Role- Playing Games. To collect sentiment polarity values, two Natural Language Processing Python libraries were used, TextBlob and VADER, and structural break detection was put into practice using strucchange R package. The results of this work show us that despite having a great effect on the number of active players, the COVID-19 pandemic did not produce the same impact on Steam user reviews. Nonetheless, we were able to identify one of the platform’s major reviewing related updates as a structural break. We believe this approach can be used for further assessments on public opinion towards a specific product, in the future

DOOM: SCARYDARKFAST

A close examination about what is considered the most important first-person video game ever made and its influence on how we play games toda

Crystalline

Crystalline is a fast action arena shooter with a focus on gunplay. The core objective of this project was to create a fun multiplayer First Person Shooter. To achieve this goal as a team we had to best leverage the tools and technology available to us. As First Person Shooter games typically have teams far larger than our own, we had to work hard and smart on Crystalline. Unreal Engine 4 was used in lieu of Unity or an in-house engine, saving hours of development time and allowing us to focus on gameplay and assets more. Thanks to Unreal Engine 4, we were able to produce a game that, based on playtesting, appears to meet our core objective. Due to the limited time available for the project, there are still far more designed features to be implemented. However, the core gameplay has been completed leaving opportunity for expansion and future work. This document is divided into nine chapters and an appendix. Chapter 1 will introduce readers to the core concepts of Crystalline. Market analysis and background research are covered in Chapters 2 and 3 respectively. The prototypes and general process that took Crystalline from concept to game are outlined in Chapter 4. Chapters 5 and 6 outline the core design of the final iteration of Crystalline, technical or otherwise. Chapter 7 describes overall visual designs of the game, both 2D and 3D. Playtesting data is reported and assessed in Chapter 8, and a post mortem is detailed in Chapter 9. This document concludes with an appendix containing an asset bible

Generating creative ideas through crowds: An experimental study of combination

The crowd is emerging as a new source of innovation, and here a new way of organizing the crowd to produce new ideas is discussed: an idea generation system using combination in which participants synthesize new designs from the efforts of their peers. A crowd generates designs; then another crowd combines the designs of the previous crowd. In an experiment with 540 participants, the combined designs are compared to the initial designs, and to a control condition in which fresh idea generation rather than combination is used. The results show that designs become more creative in later generations of the combination system, and the combination produces more creative ideas than the fresh idea generation. The model of crowdsourced idea generation discussed here may be used to instantiate systems that can be applied to a wide range of design problems. The work has pragmatic implications, and also theoretical implications: new forms of coordination are now possible, and, using the crowd, it is possible to build and test existing and emerging theories of coordination and design

Value in play: Games Items in Digital Environments

Game items have become valuable objects that can be traded by both players and game companies. However, valuable game items are typically misunderstood by the public as something unreal or unserious that should not be treated as something valuable. In this thesis, I examine how game items play a significant role as valuable objects in the culturally situated contexts of gameplay and beyond. In current mainstream discourses, the reasons why game items are so valuable to players can be understood from two main perspectives derived from two traditional approaches: the labour theory of value and the subjective theory of value. On the one hand, followers of the labour theory of value argue that the value of game items is manifest when players make efforts to obtain them. On the other hand, advocators of the subjective theory of value suggest that this value is given by players’ subjective personal preferences. Although these two perspectives provide useful insights for understanding the value of game items, neither on its own is enough to provide sophisticated explanations for how the value of game items is created and used in different contexts of gameplay that involve much more complexity. This thesis argues that the value of game items is a result of the interplays between different factors involved with both the production and consumption processes in digital gaming. Drawing on theoretical concepts from different disciplines including media studies, economics, game design, performance studies, and sociology, this thesis argues that the value of game items should also be understood in three alternative contexts: game design; players’ in-game social performance; and player groups. The role of game items as valuable objects therefore does not only originate from players’ efforts and personal preferences, but is also created and affected by game mechanics and the strategies of game companies, the way players perform their online identities, and the influence of player groups in digital environments. This thesis suggests that a multi-perspective and an interdisciplinary approach are appropriate and necessary to provide a more comprehensive picture of how game items have become significantly valuable

Rulemaking as Play: A Transdisciplinary Inquiry about Virtual Worldmaking

In the age of computing, we rely on software to manage our days, from the moment we wake up until we go to sleep. Software predicts the future based on actualized data from the past. It produces procedures instead of experiences and solutions instead of care. Software systems tend to perpetuate a normalized state of equilibrium. Their application in social media, predictive policing, and social profiling is increasingly erasing diversity in culture and identity. Our immediate reality is narrowing towards cultural conventions shared among the powerful few, whose voices directly influence contemporary digital culture. On the other hand, computational collective intelligence can sometimes generate emergent forces to counter this tendency and force software systems to open up. Historically, artists from different artistic moments have adopted collaborative making to redefine the boundary of creative expression. Video Gaming, especially open-world simulation games, is rapidly being adopted as an emerging form of communication, expression, and self-organization. How can gaming conventions such as Narrative Emergence, Hacking, and Modding help us understand collective play as countering forces against the systematic tendency of normalization? How can people from diverse backgrounds come together to contemplate, make, and simulate rules and conditions for an alternative virtual world? What does it mean to design and virtually inhabit a world where rules are rewritten continuously by everyone, and no one is in control

A Data-driven Statistical Approach to Customer Behaviour Analysis and Modelling in Online Freemium Games

The video games industry is one of the most attractive and lucrative segments in the entertainment and digital media, with big business of more than $150 billion worldwide. A popular approach in this industry is the online freemium model, wherein the game is downloadable free of cost, while advanced and bonus content have optional charges. Monetisation is through micro payments by customers and the focus is on maintaining average revenue per user and lifetime value of players. The overall aim of this research is to develop suitable data-driven methods to gain insight about customer behaviour in online freemium games, with a view to providing recommendations for successful business in this industry.Three important aspects of user behaviour are modelled in this research - engagement, time until defection, and number of micro transactions made. A multiple logistic regression using penalised likelihood approach is found to be most suitable for modelling and demonstrates good fit and accuracy for assigning observations to engaged and non-engaged categories. Cox’s proportional hazards model is adopted to analyse time to defection, and a negative binomial zero-inflated model results in the best fit to the data on micro payments. Cluster analysis techniques are used to classify the wide variety of customers based on their gameplay styles, and social network models are developed to identify prominent ‘actors’ based on social interactions. Some of the significant predictors of engagement and monetisation are amount of premium in-game currency, success in missions and competency in virtual fights, and quantity of virtual resources used in the game.This research offers extensive insight into what drives the reputation, virality and commercial viability of freemium games. In particular it helps to fill a gap in understanding the behaviour of online game players by demonstrating the effectiveness of applying a data analytic approach. It gives more insight into the determinants of player behaviour than relying on observational studies or those based on survey research. Additionally, it refines statistical models and demonstrates their implementation in R to new and complex data types representing online customer behaviours

Tunteiden ja sosiaalisten tekijöiden vaikutus pelikokemukseen

Arguably, the emotions elicited by playing are the reason why people play digital games. Social interaction is an important source of emotion during game play, but research on it is rather sparse. In this dissertation I briefly review the emotion-theoretic literature in order to better understand what emotion means in the context of games, and how this should be taken into account when measuring emotions related to a game experience. Study I presents a review of the use of psychophysiological methods in game research. I show that the theoretical background behind these methods generally tends to be neglected. This could be remedied by a theoretical framework that integrates the understanding of emotions and explicitly describes the links between different emotion measures and the theoretical concepts they are professed to reflect. I present my proposition for the first step towards such a framework in Study II. I employ the sociality characteristics framework by de Kort and IJsselsteijn (2008) and my interpretation of the social factors in order to study the effect of the central social context factors on the emotional game experience. Study III presents evidence that in addition to tonic physiological levels, the relationship between the participants also affects the momentary, phasic responses to the key game events victory and defeat. In particular, although physiological signals can, to a certain extent, be used to assess emotional experiences (such as positive responses to a victory), in some cases the typical psychophysiological mappings may even be completely opposite. Interpreting these signals requires a broader theoretical understanding than what is typically acknowledged. Study IV supports the earlier findings that competition is experienced more positively than cooperation but that the effect is dependent on gender, as this was found only in males. For females, there was no difference between the two modes, and no difference in negative activation. In addition, self-reports concerning social presence suggested that this concept is not always associated with higher positive emotions, while a form of friendly rivalry (associated with lower social presence) might be experienced positively a finding apparently new in existing literature. Finally, Study V provides insight into the practical significance of the measurements with a predictive validity study, showing practical effects how the certain kinds of game experiences may lead to greater game use and preference, but that these links are not as simple as previously suggested. In sum, this work offers new knowledge on how social context factors are generally related to the game experience, on how emotions can be studied in game research and what theoretical considerations should be taken into account, and on the emotional effects of particular social context factors during play. The results are mainly useful for further basic game research, but they have also potential implications for general emotion research, the game industry, and in the long run, society at large.Digitaalisten pelien herättämiä tunnekokemuksia on pidetty tärkeänä selittäjänä näiden suosiolle. Sosiaalinen vuorovaikutus pelin aikana taas on merkittävä tunnekokemuksien lähde, mutta sitä on tutkittu melko vähän. Tässä väitöskirjassa käyn osaksi läpi tunteita selittävää emootioteoriakirjallisuutta tarkastellakseni mitä tunteen tai emootion käsite tarkoittaa pelikontekstissa ja kuinka tämä tieto tulisi ottaa huomioon kun tunnekokemusta halutaan mitata pelitutkimuksessa. Tutkimus I esittää katsauksen psykofysiologisten menetelmien käytöstä pelitutkimuksessa, jonka avulla osoitan kuinka näiden menetelmien taustalla oleva teoreettinen perusta jätetään usein huomiotta. Tähän tyypilliseen puutteeseen olisi avuksi kokonaisvaltainen teoreettinen emootioiden ja niiden mittaamisen viitekehys. Esitän oman ehdotukseni kyseisenlaisen viitekehyksen suuntaan Tutkimuksessa II. Käytän tutkimukseni empiirisessä osuudessa tulkintaani de Kortin ja IJsselsteijnin (2008) teoreettisesta viitekehyksestä sosiaalisuuspiirteistä tutkiakseni merkittävien sosiaalisten tekijöiden merkitystä pelaamisen tunnekokemukselle. Tutkimuksessa III esitän todisteita, että pelaajien väliset suhteet vaikuttavat pitkien jaksojen keskiarvojen lisäksi myös yksittäisten tilanteiden voiton ja häviön laukaisemiin hetkellisiin reaktioihin. Tulokset osoittavat kuitenkin, että joissain tilanteissa reaktiot voivat olla odottamattomat, minkä vuoksi fysiologisten mittausten tulkinnassa tulisi käyttää laajempaa teoreettista ymmärrystä kuin on yleistä. Tutkimus IV:n tulokset tukevat aiempia löydöksiä, että peleissä kilpailu koetaan positiivisemmin kuin yhteistyö, mutta että tämä vaikutus riippuu sukupuolesta: tulos pätee vain miehiin, kun taas naiset eivät osoittaneet eroa näiden pelimuotojen välillä positiivisen eivätkä negatiivisen tunnereaktion suhteen. Lisäksi huomattiin, että sosiaalisen läsnäolon kokemuksella, joka on yleensä yhdistetty positiiviseen kokemukseen, ei ole selvää yhteyttä positiivisuuteen, kun taas emootiokirjallisuudessa esitetyn selityksen vastaisesti tietynlainen ystävällismielinen vahingonilo voidaan kokea positiivisena. Lopuksi, Tutkimus V esittää kuinka emootiomittauksilla voi olla käytännöllistä ennustevaliditeettia, missä tietynlaiset pelikokemukset voidaan yhdistää tulevaan pelikäyttäytymiseen, mutta että nämä yhteydet eivät ole niin yksinkertaisia kuin on aiemmin esitetty. Yhteenvetona, työni tarjoaa uutta tietoa siitä, mikä on sosiaalisten taustatekijöiden yleinen yhteys pelikokemukseen, kuinka emootioita voidaan tarkastella pelitutkimuksessa ja mitä teoreettisia näkökohtia tällöin tulisi ottaa huomioon, sekä siitä mitä ovat tiettyjen sosiaalisten taustatekijöiden emootiovaikutus pelikokemuksen aikana. Työn tuloksia voidaan käyttää lähinnä pelaamisen perustutkimuksessa, mutta niillä on myös mahdollista merkitystä yleisessä emootiotutkimuksessa, pelitutkimuksen käytännöllisessä soveltamisessa peliteollisuuden hyödyksi, sekä pitkällä aikavälillä myös laajempien yhteiskunnallisten kysymysten kannalta