Implementation and playtesting for a world adventure game’s procedural content generation system

This paper presents an experimental methodology of procedural content generation (PCG) for natural environments focusing on game design and visualization. This approach allows us to define a set of instructions to shape the content generation to meet the requirements of game design and level design teams. For the validation process, we have discussed and analyzed a playtesting session.info:eu-repo/semantics/submittedVersio

Design: Episteme and Doxa. Co-design as an Opportunity to Share Choices

This paper delves into the concept of co-design, a collaborative approach involving stakeholders in the conceptualization and design phases to understand diverse perspectives and jointly define project directions. Examining the relationships between co-design, Design Thinking, and user-centred design, the paper emphasises distinctions in their goals and methods. It addresses potential biases in co-design processes, providing strategies to mitigate analogical relations, cognitive effort minimization, and emotional influences. Epistemological reflections highlight the efficacy of participatory methods in generating theoretical hypotheses while underscoring the need for evidence-based validation. The article explores co-design’s applications in speculative design and ludo-didactics (game design). In speculative design, co-design aids in framing problems and generating plausible contextualizations, while in game design, participatory processes, particularly playtesting, enhance the exploratory and refinement phases. The paper suggests avenues for further research, emphasising the strategic placement of Co-design processes in project phases, considering potential biases, and exploring its application in disruptive innovation contexts.Co-design, defined as “processes of creative participation” (Steen, 2013) is an approach that includes a group of stakeholders — “any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organisation’s objectives” (Freeman, 1984, p. 49) — during the conceptualization and design phase of a concept, artefact or service with the aim of understanding the needs of each people and jointly defining the direction of a project. The co-design activities are structured in such a way as to transform all the participants into design partners. People with different skills and operational levels will work together. Through a vo-design process they will be able to convey and align their ideas towards a common goal. The aim is that of defining some of the criteria that will affect the future development of the project

Adapting Cognitive Task Analysis to Elicit the Skill Chain of a Game

Playing a game is a complex skill that comprises a set of more basic skills which map onto the component mechanics of the game. Basic skills and mechanics typically build and depend on each other in a nested learning hierarchy, which game designers have modelled as skill chains of skill atoms. For players to optimally learn and enjoy a game, it should introduce skill atoms in the ideal sequence of this hierarchy or chain. However, game designers typically construct and use hypothetical skill chains based solely on design intent, theory, or personal observation, rather than empirical observation of players. To address this need, this paper presents an adapted cognitive task analysis method for eliciting the empirical skill chain of a game. A case study illustrates and critically reflects the method. While effective in foregrounding overlooked low-level skills required by a game, its efficiency and generalizability remain to be proven

Towards Democratisation of Games User Research:Exploring Playtesting Challenges of Indie Video Game Developers

Playtesting is a games user research (GUR) method used to evaluate design decisions based on feedback gathered from players with the goal to improve player experiences (PX). HCI games research has been actively working on and promoting best practices in GUR. However, these practices often require resources, knowledge and expertise, which are not readily available for indie video games developers. Thus, to better understand how GUR can support these developers, we conducted an interview study with 13 indie games professionals to learn about their practices and the challenges they face when doing playtesting. We report on the key findings from this study, including challenges with finding appropriate participants and handling the data from playtests. We provide a discussion of how existing GUR practices can be adapted and what HCI games research can do to help mitigate these challenges to make playtesting more accessible and impactful to indie video games developers

Creating immersive, play-anywhere handheld augmented reality stories, through remote user testing

This thesis outlines new instances of Extended Reality (XR) stories as well as associated user studies with them, to create more immersive story experiences delivered at a user’s choice of location through a mobile phone. This extends prior work on Location Based Experiences (LBEs), which have typically been designed to offer a game or story at a pre-determined location. A play-anywhere experience offers potential to open up LBEs to a wider audience, as well as to those may prefer to take part individually or closer to home, such attitude shifts becoming increasingly more common. The current research adopted an in the wild approach combining practice, studies and theory, with most user data being collected remotely. Each story application developed is subsequently referred to as an app, with each app offering a bespoke story incorporating Augmented Reality (AR) features, to better bring users’ location inline with the narrative. Testing the apps across various locations matched their intended use, and resulted in new guidelines for both incorporating AR into such LBEs, as well as for conducting remote user studies. A final app offered a site-specific curated story, with all study participants taking part under similar conditions at the same location, the ability to observe them using the app providing additional insights. The story apps used available local map data alongside Handheld Augmented Reality (HAR), to overlay interactable virtual objects on top of the physical environment, and visible on the phone’s display. Guidelines from related methodologies were used to better allow for the variety of factors that might influence different users’ immersion and engagement. These included the implementation of the AR features, the story itself, real world activity, and personal preferences including onboarding requirements. The approach taken contributed a reverse methodology to a lot of related research, that would typically begin with laboratory testing before moving to public spaces. User studies with the five mobile apps contributed guidelines for such experiences, that could benefit both practitioners and researchers in related fields. In the later case, a need was identified to develop new research tools specifically suited to the subtleties of handheld play-anywhere LBEs, such issues explored within the apps tested. The guidelines identified for offering more effective XR LBEs were also implemented in the creation of a new open source Unity project, called Map Story Engine. This offers a tool to test new features, as well as providing a fully customisable template for practitioners to author their own play-anywhere HAR stories and games