Musica ex machina:a history of video game music

The history of video game music is a subject area that has received little attention by musicologists, and yet the form presents fascinating case studies both of musical minimalism, and the role of technology in influencing and shaping both musical form and aesthetics. This presentation shows how video game music evolved from simple tones, co-opted from sync circuits in early hardware to a sophisticated form of adaptive expression

Analyzing the Impact of Spatio-Temporal Sensor Resolution on Player Experience in Augmented Reality Games

Along with automating everyday tasks of human life, smartphones have become one of the most popular devices to play video games on due to their interactivity. Smartphones are embedded with various sensors which enhance their ability to adopt new new interaction techniques for video games. These integrated sen- sors, such as motion sensors or location sensors, make the device able to adopt new interaction techniques that enhance usability. However, despite their mobility and embedded sensor capacity, smartphones are limited in processing power and display area compared to desktop computer consoles. When it comes to evaluat- ing Player Experience (PX), players might not have as compelling an experience because the rich graphics environments that a desktop computer can provide are absent on a smartphone. A plausible alternative in this regard can be substituting the virtual game world with a real world game board, perceived through the device camera by rendering the digital artifacts over the camera view. This technology is widely known as Augmented Reality (AR). Smartphone sensors (e.g. GPS, accelerometer, gyro-meter, compass) have enhanced the capability for deploying Augmented Reality technology. AR has been applied to a large number of smartphone games including shooters, casual games, or puzzles. Because AR play environments are viewed through the camera, rendering the digital artifacts consistently and accurately is crucial because the digital characters need to move with respect to sensed orientation, then the accelerometer and gyroscope need to provide su ciently accurate and precise readings to make the game playable. In particular, determining the pose of the camera in space is vital as the appropriate angle to view the rendered digital characters are determined by the pose of the camera. This defines how well the players will be able interact with the digital game characters. Depending in the Quality of Service (QoS) of these sensors, the Player Experience (PX) may vary as the rendering of digital characters are affected by noisy sensors causing a loss of registration. Confronting such problem while developing AR games is di cult in general as it requires creating wide variety of game types, narratives, input modalities as well as user-testing. Moreover, current AR games developers do not have any specific guidelines for developing AR games, and concrete guidelines outlining the tradeoffs between QoS and PX for different genres and interaction techniques are required. My dissertation provides a complete view (a taxonomy) of the spatio-temporal sensor resolution depen- dency of the existing AR games. Four user experiments have been conducted and one experiment is proposed to validate the taxonomy and demonstrate the differential impact of sensor noise on gameplay of different genres of AR games in different aspect of PX. This analysis is performed in the context of a novel instru- mentation technology, which allows the controlled manipulation of QoS on position and orientation sensors. The experimental outcome demonstrated how the QoS of input sensor noise impacts the PX differently while playing AR game of different genre and the key elements creating this differential impact are - the input modality, narrative and game mechanics. Later, concrete guidelines are derived to regulate the sensor QoS as complete set of instructions to develop different genres or AR games

Jumping Caveman: A Tool for Manipulating Player Experience and Answering Questions in Games Research

Standard tools exist for assessing player experience; however, there are few tools for inducing play experiences. Game researchers without the resources to operationalize an experimental factor of interest as an implemented mechanic in the design of a custom game are therefore limited in the types of controlled experiments they can conduct. Modifying an existing off-the-shelf game leverages the design and resources of game studio development, but researchers are limited in what type of questions they can ask due to the lack of access control on the source code. We present an open-source system that can be used by game researchers to manipulate player experience in a reliable way and at a finer time resolution than has previously been reported. We simulate the experience of success and failure by providing covert assistance or hindrance to a player, as this has been shown to reliably affect player experience measures. Through three studies, we show that the system manipulates experience in an intended and predictable way. With our system, researchers can also modify the experiment design through simple configuration interface - which allows them to quickly create experiment conditions even if they do not possess technical knowledge of game development. There are many research questions that revolve around the experience of in-game success or failure and our tool allows researchers to ask and answer interesting questions in games research through controlled experiments

Evaluation of a Pervasive Game for Domestic Energy Engagement Among Teenagers

In this article, we present Power Agent—a pervasive game designed to encourage teenagers and their families to reduce energy consumption in the home. The ideas behind this mobile phonebased game are twofold; to transform the home environment and its devices into a learning arena for hands-on experience with electricity usage and to promote engagement via a team competition scheme. We report on the game’s evaluation with six teenagers and their families who played the game for ten days in two cities in Sweden. Data collection consisted of home energy measurements before, during, and after a game trial, in addition to interviews with participants at the end of the evaluation. The results suggest that the game concept was highly efficient in motivating and engaging the players and their families to change their daily energy-consumption patterns during the game trial. Although the evaluation does not permit any conclusions as to whether the game had any postgame effects on behavior, we can conclude that the pervasive persuasive game approach appears to be highly promising in regard to energy conservation and similar fields or issues

Marketing in Game Design

In my thesis, Marketing in Game Design, I wanted to inspect how developing a game from a purely commercial perspective affects on the game design. The purpose of this thesis is to define the valid aspects of product marketing for games, how they are perceived in game industry and how those aspects affect to the game design. The question I am asking is how to make marketing a fluent part of indie game development process. Through my thesis project, Puzzleplatform, I study how the marketing aspects affect the game concept itself and how these aspects can be implemented in the game concept

Audio design in mid-core mobile games

This thesis explores practical aspects of audio design in mid-core games – a massive segment of the modern mobile game market. Despite there is no shortage of professional literature about game audio in general, most of it describes either purely technical or very general matters, taking video games as undivided whole. Games, however, can be broken up into distinct categories, based on genres, platforms, audiences and other criteria. This is the direction I take with my research, focusing on a specific type of games, developed for mobile devices and targeted towards a well-defined audience. The goal of my thesis was to find out if mid-core mobile games require special approach to audio design and what this approach would be. The first two chapters focus on critical aspects of mobile game audio and audio design principles of mid-core games. Two latter chapters describe practical matters of audio design for an actual video game, starting with design principles and ending with project-specific challenges and creative choices. The results show that audio design for mid-core mobile games has a few special aspects on top of existing principles of mobile game audio. These aspects result from the design patterns shared by majority of mid-core games developed for mobile platforms

Re-shaped by mobile technologies' disruption: the videogame industry in Turkey

In this study, we investigate the business disruption effects of mobile technologies for the videogame industry in Turkey. Previous research shows that before mobile gaming became prevalent globally, the Turkish videogame industry was extremely small and lacked any success stories for either console or PC platforms. The rise in mobile and the so-called “casual” gaming gave the local industry a competitive advantage on a global scale. To capture the nuances of this disruptive transition, we performed structured interviews with gaming industry experts and analyzed prominent discussion forums for primary and secondary data collections, respectively. We especially focused on answering the following questions: (1) how prepared were Turkish videogame development companies in handling the mobile disruptive change; (2) what kind of transformations they experienced in their business plans and practices as a result; (3) how the disruption affected the way they viewed their customer base; and finally (4) what future disruptions they expect in their industry

Heuristics and Biases in Travel Mode Choice

. This study applies experimental methods to analyze travel mode choice. Two different scenarios are considered. In the first scenario, subjects have to decide whether to commute by car or by metro. Metro costs are fixed, while car costs are uncertain and determined by the joint effect of casual events and traffic congestion. In the second scenario, subjects have to decide whether to travel by car or by bus, both modes in which costs are determined by the combination of chance and congestion. Subjects receive feedback information on the actual travel times of both modes. We find that individuals exhibit a marked preference for cars, are inclined to confirm their first choice and demonstrate travel mode stickiness. We conclude that travel mode choice is subject to heuristics and biases that lead to robust deviations from rational choice.travel mode choice, learning, information, heuristics, cognitive biases.