Reducing the effect of network delay on tightly-coupled interaction

Tightly-coupled interaction is shared work in which each person’s actions immediately and continuously influence the actions of others. Tightly-coupled interaction is a hallmark of expert behaviour in face-to-face activity, but becomes extremely difficult to accomplish in distributed groupware. The main cause of this difficulty is network delay – even amounts as small as 100ms – that disrupts people’s ability to synchronize their actions with another person. To reduce the effects of delay on tightly-coupled interaction, I introduce a new technique called Feedback-Feedthrough Synchronization (FFS). FFS causes visual feedback from an action to occur at approximately the same time for both the local and the remote person, preventing one person from getting ahead of the other in the coordinated interaction. I tested the effects of FFS on group performance in several delay conditions, and my study showed that FFS substantially improved users’ performance: accuracy was significantly improved at all levels of delay, and without noticeable increase in perceived effort or frustration. Techniques like FFS that support the requirements of tightly-coupled interaction provide new means for improving the usability of groupware that operates on real-world networks

Managing Network Delay for Browser Multiplayer Games

Latency is one of the key performance elements affecting the quality of experience (QoE) in computer games. Latency in the context of games can be defined as the time between the user input and the result on the screen. In order for the QoE to be satisfactory the game needs to be able to react fast enough to player input. In networked multiplayer games, latency is composed of network delay and local delays. Some major sources of network delay are queuing delay and head-of-line (HOL) blocking delay. Network delay in the Internet can be even in the order of seconds. In this thesis we discuss what feasible networking solutions exist for browser multiplayer games. We conduct a literature study to analyze the Differentiated Services architecture, some salient Active Queue Management (AQM) algorithms (RED, PIE, CoDel and FQ-CoDel), the Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) concept and network protocols for web browser (WebSocket, QUIC and WebRTC). RED, PIE and CoDel as single-queue implementations would be sub-optimal for providing low latency to game traffic. FQ-CoDel is a multi-queue AQM and provides flow separation that is able to prevent queue-building bulk transfers from notably hampering latency-sensitive flows. WebRTC Data-Channel seems promising for games since it can be used for sending arbitrary application data and it can avoid HOL blocking. None of the network protocols, however, provide completely satisfactory support for the transport needs of multiplayer games: WebRTC is not designed for client-server connections, QUIC is not designed for traffic patterns typical for multiplayer games and WebSocket would require parallel connections to mitigate the effects of HOL blocking

Watching Androids Dream of Electric Sheep: Immersive Technology, Biometric Psychography, and the Law

Virtual reality and augmented reality present exceedingly complex privacy issues because of the enhanced user experience and reality-based models. Unlike the issues presented by traditional gaming and social media, immersive technology poses inherent risks, which our legal understanding of biometrics and online harassment is simply not prepared to address. This Article offers five important contributions to this emerging space. It begins by introducing a new area of legal and policy inquiry raised by immersive technology called “biometric psychography.” Second, it explains how immersive technology works to a legal audience and defines concepts that are essential to understanding the risks that the technology poses. Third, it analyzes the gaps in privacy law to address biometric psychography and other emerging challenges raised by immersive technology that most regulators and consumers incorrectly assume will be governed by existing law. Fourth, this Article sources firsthand interviews from early innovators and leading thinkers to highlight harassment and user experience risks posed by immersive technology. Finally, this Article compiles insights from each of these discussions to propose a framework that integrates privacy and human rights into the development of future immersive tech applications. It applies that framework to three specific scenarios and demonstrates how it can help navigate challenges, both old and new

Cinematic games : the aesthetic influence of cinema on video games

During its first decade, Game Studies debate mainly revolved around the juxtaposition between two perspectives: the one of ludology and the one of narratology, each positing a primary quality of video games against the other. The study of the relationship between cinema and video games got somehow caught in the crossfire between these two fields. In this work, I investigate the extent to which representation in video games is connected to cinema and its representational codes. A number of authors before challenged this assumption, theorising models that only partially connect the cinematic form to video games. Such investigations have always started from the ludologically educated assumption that video games are different from cinema and, therefore, for the premises of this comparison to be considered “vitiated”, only tangentially useful due to the irreconcilably different nature of the two media. The adjective “cinematic” is a concept constantly evoked in cultural discourses concerning video games. Magazines, reviewers, critics, but also designers, artists, users and commentators (even scholars) often summon the idea of cinematic games in the attempt of describing some peculiar features that share affinities with films and suggesting that video games possess the aura of the big screen. Cinematic games are born at the crossroads between interactive movies and video games, for which the cinematic expression is retained by means of audiovisual representation while keeping the action in the hands of the player. Due to the vast scale of the subject, my work focuses on relatively recent developments in game design which have yet to be fully investigated, and seeks to extend existing attempts to apply the tools of film theory to Game Studies. A secondary value of this work is an annotation on the disengagement of moving image scholars with video games, and it partly serves as an invocation for this to change

Creating relation : how some game features can be applied to digital contemporary art

The evolution of technology has increasingly improved the quality of long-distance communication, but with a price: the seemingly decreased value of local direct human contact. Simultaneously, art theories like the Relational Aesthetic posit that contemporary art is increasingly preoccupied in closing this distance gap by providing sociability contexts that are based on creating proximity and relation among the public, leading to an enhanced form of public interaction in art. This study comes as an attempt to join these two factors in the same problematic by suggesting the use of technology in different ways; in ways that enhance local social contexts instead of fighting against them. And in order to improve upon other efforts, it suggests the application of game theory in these technology based art works. Games have a well-known potential for generating proximity between people that play together, so by applying select characteristics that make games desirable to digital contemporary art works it is possible to leverage this technological advantages to perform meaningful sociability contexts. This study aims to explain some of these game characteristics and their application in fields other than video games: like for example art works. As a proof of concept, it also contains a detailed description of an example interactive installation: from the technology that powers it to the aesthetic and functional choices that ultimately define it. The feedback and analysis of this interactive installation led to the conclusion that this is in fact a valid and effective approach towards the building of socially significant contexts. This success does not mean that the application of game theory to other contexts is a panacea for all social problems, though, but instead prompts for further discussion about the impact of video games on contemporary culture.Os crescentes avanços tecnológicos deram origem a evoluções incontornáveis nas telecomunicações, tornando-as cada vez mais fiáveis e inclusivas. No entanto, esta confiança na conquista da distância pode ser vista como tendo um efeito secundário muito significativo: o relegamento para segundo plano do contato humano local, cara-a-cara. Ao mesmo tempo, teorias artísticas como a Estética Relacional propõe que a arte contemporânea se está a voltar cada vez mais para a criação de contextos de sociabilidade que se baseiem na proximidade e relação entre o público, o que leva a formas cada vez mais inclusivas de interação do público na arte. Esta dissertação surge como uma tentativa de juntar estas duas questões numa mesma problemática. E tenta fazê-lo sugerindo a utilização da tecnologia disponível de formas específicas: trabalhos artísticos que fortalecem a importância e relevância de ambientes de relação e participação locais em vez de os negarem. E como forma de acrescentar valor relativamente a outros esforços, sugere a aplicação de teoria dos jogos a estes trabalhos. O potencial para criar proximidade entre jogadores que os jogos contêm é amplamente conhecido. Aplicando algumas das caraterísticas que tornam os jogos experiências socialmente enriquecedoras à arte contemporânea digital permite que as suas caraterísticas tecnológicas sejam usadas em prol da criação de contextos de relação mais significativos. Esta dissertação surge com o propósito de explicar algumas destas caraterísticas dos jogos, e de que forma estas podem ser aplicadas em outros contextos: nomeadamente na arte. Por forma a verificar a viabilidade desta abordagem, o documento inclui também a descrição detalhada de um exemplo de uma instalação interativa que segue estes princípios: desde a sua componente tecnológica até às opções estéticas e funcionais que a definem. As opiniões recebidas e a análise feita a esta instalação permitiram concluir que esta abordagem à construção de contextos de sociabilização é viável e eficiente. Este sucesso, no entanto, não implica que a aplicação de teoria dos jogos a outros contextos seja uma panaceia para todos os problemas sociais. Em vez disso, as conclusões atingidas convidam a discussões posteriores acerca do impacto dos videojogos na cultura contemporânea

Toward Strategic Usability - User Knowledge as a Basis for New Service Development

Tämä työ tehtiin Elisa Oyj:ssä tuotekehitysprojektin lomassa syksyn 2007 ja kevään 2008 aikana. Tavoitteena oli tutustua strategisen käytettävyyden käsitteeseen ja selvittää, kuinka sitä voitaisiin hyödyntää luotaessa uuden tyyppisiä palveluita uusille markkinoille. Perinteisesti käytettävyyssuunnittelun roolina on ollut varmistaa, että kehitettävät tuotteet ovat tarkoituksenmukaisia ja helppoja käyttää sekä tarjoavat miellyttävän elämyksen. Strategisessa käytettävyydessä syvällistä käyttäjäymmärrystä hyödynnetään jo aiemmassa vaiheessa: päätettäessä, millaisia tuotteita aletaan ylipäänsä kehittää . Työn empiirinen osa koostuu kahdesta kokonaisuudesta. Käytettävyystyön roolia Elisalla tutkittiin kvalitatiivisen haastattelututkimuksen avulla. 13 päällikkö- ja johtajatason edustajan kanssa käytyjen keskustelujen pohjalta luotiin käsitys käytettävyyden roolista Elisan tuotteiden elinkaarimallissa. Toinen empiirinen kokonaisuus esittelee tuotekehitysprojektista saatuja kokemuksia. Hankkeessa kehitettiin Pelihylly-nimisen web-palvelun konsepti. Alkuperäisenä kimmokkeena projektille oli Elisan syksyllä 2006 toteuttama etnografinen Asiakaspäivätutkimus, jossa Elisan työntekijät jalkautuivat päiväksi asiakkaiden pariin selvittämään näiden arjessa kohtaamia ongelmia. Pelihyllyn suunnittelussa seurattiin tiiviin käyttäjäkeskeistä lähestymistapaa, ja käyttökokemus oli merkittävässä osassa palvelun suunnittelussa. Diplomityössä havaittiin, että vaikka Elisa suhtautuu kunnianhimoisesti uusien mahdollisuuksien tunnistamiseen ja haluaa hintakilpailun sijaan toimia palvelujohtajana, varsinaiset prosessit eivät aina sovellu iteratiiviseen käyttäjäkeskeiseen suunnitteluun. Myöskään käytettävyyden roolia ei ole varsinaisesti määritelty päätöksentekoprosessissa. Tämän vuoksi lopulliset tuotteet eivät usein vastaa alkuperäiseen tarpeeseen niin hyvin kuin olisi mahdollista. Pelihyllyä ei ole toteutettu valmiiksi tuotteeksi asti, mutta suunnitteluprosessi havainnollisti, kuinka alkuvaiheen tarkkaavaisella käyttäjien ymmärtämisellä kyettiin kehittämään palvelukonsepti, joka ratkaisi olemassa olevien kilpailijoiden ongelmia. Lisäksi se oli hyödyksi tunnistettaessa tarpeita, joita aiemmat palvelut eivät olleet huomioineet lainkaan.This thesis was written in conjunction with a service development project at the communications service company Elisa between the fall 2007 and spring 2008. The goal was to investigate the concept of strategic usability and find out how usability work could contribute to the process of creating new kind of services to new markets. Traditionally user-centered design has been used to ensuring that the developed products are both useful and easy and pleasant to operate. Strategic usability utilizes the profound user knowledge already at an earlier stage, when deciding what to develop. The empirical part of the thesis comprises of two components. A qualitative study was conducted to find out the current state of usability work at Elisa. Based on the discussions with 13 project and business managers, a general view of the role of usability in the product life-cycle model was formed. The other empirical component presents the experience gained from a service design project where a concept for the web-service Game Shelf was created. The roots of the project lie in the ethnographic Customer day study, in which Elisa employees spent a day observing the life of the customers. The approach to the design was highly user-centric and user experience was specifically considered throughout the process. In the thesis it was noticed that even though Elisa is ambitious about discovering new business opportunities and becoming the service leader instead of competing with prices, the existing processes are not always suitable for iterative, user-centered design. Moreover, usability lacks an official role in the decision-making process. This is why the final products often do not meet the original needs as well as they could. The Game Shelf service has not been realized but the design process demonstrated how early focus on users was helpful when designing a service concept that would solve the problems of the existing competitors. The approach was also beneficial for recognizing needs that had not been addressed at all by the earlier services

Video Design and Interactivity: The Semiotics of Multimedia in Instructional Design

This creation-as-research thesis examines the semiotics of multimedia and interactivity within the context of instruction, focusing on theoretical and practical representations in video game design, and the cultural models therein. There are 4 parts to this thesis 1) A traditional written document; 2) A 15-Module Online Course in video game design entitled Gaming, Interactive, and Multiplatform Media; 3) 15 Summary Videos of the online course in video game design; 4) The performative creation-as-research dissertation presentation. This thesis highlights the teaching practices surrounding video game design principles, while emulating those design principles as part of the instructional platforms. The 4 parts of this thesis, collectively, are a manifestation of the findings in the written component, which suggests that video games, through their innate interactivity via the inclusion of multimedia as part of their design, hold critical implementation frameworks for course-based instructional design, when multimedia is used as part of the instructional process