Serious Games in Cultural Heritage

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-of-the-art review

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result, the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

Towards a more natural and intelligent interface with embodied conversation agent

Conversational agent also known as chatterbots are computer programs which are designed to converse like a human as much as their intelligent allows. In many ways, they are the embodiment of Turing's vision. The ability for computers to converse with human users using natural language would arguably increase their usefulness. Recent advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in general have advances this field in realizing the vision of a more humanoid interactive system. This paper presents and discusses the use of embodied conversation agent (ECA) for the imitation games. This paper also presents the technical design of our ECA and its performance. In the interactive media industry, it can also been observed that the ECA are getting popular

Recent Advances in General Game Playing

The goal of General Game Playing (GGP) has been to develop computer programs that can perform well across various game types. It is natural for human game players to transfer knowledge from games they already know how to play to other similar games. GGP research attempts to design systems that work well across different game types, including unknown new games. In this review, we present a survey of recent advances (2011 to 2014) in GGP for both traditional games and video games. It is notable that research on GGP has been expanding into modern video games. Monte-Carlo Tree Search and its enhancements have been the most influential techniques in GGP for both research domains. Additionally, international competitions have become important events that promote and increase GGP research. Recently, a video GGP competition was launched. In this survey, we review recent progress in the most challenging research areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI) related to universal game playing

On the definition of non-player character behaviour for real-time simulated virtual environments.

Computer games with complex virtual worlds, which are populated by artificial characters and creatures, are the most visible application of artificial intelligence techniques. In recent years game development has been fuelled by dramatic advances in computer graphics hardware which have led to a rise in the quality of real-time computer graphics and increased realism in computer games. As a result of these developments video games are gaining acceptance and cultural significance as a form of art and popular culture. An important factor for the attainment of realism in games is the artificially intelligent behaviour displayed by the virtual entities that populate the games' virtual worlds. It is our firm belief that to further improve the behaviour of virtual entities, game AI development will have to mirror the advances achieved in game graphics. A major contributing factor for these advancements has been the advent of programmable shaders for real-time graphics, which in turn has been significantly simplified by the introduction of higher level programming languages for the creation of shaders. This has demonstrated that a good system can be vastly improved by the addition of a programming language. This thesis presents a similar (syntactic) approach to the definition of the behaviour of virtual entities in computer games. We introduce the term behaviour definition language (BDL), describing a programming language for the definition of game entity behaviour. We specify the requirements for this type of programming language, which are applied to the development and implementation of several behaviour definition languages, culminating in the design of a new game-genre independent behaviour definition (scripting) language. This extension programming language includes several game AI techniques within a single unified system, allowing the use of different methods of behaviour definition. A subset of the language (itself a BDL) was implemented as a proof of concept of this design, providing a framework for the syntactic definition of the behaviour of virtual entities in computer games

Large-scale Foundation Models and Generative AI for BigData Neuroscience

Recent advances in machine learning have made revolutionary breakthroughs in computer games, image and natural language understanding, and scientific discovery. Foundation models and large-scale language models (LLMs) have recently achieved human-like intelligence thanks to BigData. With the help of self-supervised learning (SSL) and transfer learning, these models may potentially reshape the landscapes of neuroscience research and make a significant impact on the future. Here we present a mini-review on recent advances in foundation models and generative AI models as well as their applications in neuroscience, including natural language and speech, semantic memory, brain-machine interfaces (BMIs), and data augmentation. We argue that this paradigm-shift framework will open new avenues for many neuroscience research directions and discuss the accompanying challenges and opportunities

Art and technology: archiving video games for humanities research in university libraries

Over the past half-century video games have become a significant part of our cultural environment, in part, by leading advances in both technology and artistic innovation. In recent years librarians and researchers have recognized these games as cultural objects that require collection and curation. Developing and maintaining collections of this fast moving and somewhat ephemeral media, however, poses challenges due to constantly advancing technology and a corresponding lack of consistent terminology. This article addresses the literature and critical issues surrounding collections of video games within libraries and presents a case study of the University of Michigan’s Computer and Video Game Archive (CVGA), one of the largest academic archives of its kind. Moreover, video games are situated in a humanistic approach to the field of game studies as the article draws on the relevance of methods from art history and film studies.https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146267/1/art_and_technology_archiving_video_games_for_humanities_research_in_university_libraries.pdfDescription of art_and_technology_archiving_video_games_for_humanities_research_in_university_libraries.pdf : Main articl

Towards a more natural and intelligent interface with embodied conversation agent

Conversational agent also known as chatterbots are computer programs which are designed to converse like a human as much as their intelligent allows. In many ways, they are the embodiment of Turing's vision. The ability for computers to converse with human users using natural language would arguably increase their usefulness. Recent advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in general have advances this field in realizing the vision of a more humanoid interactive system. This paper presents and discusses the use of embodied conversation agent (ECA) for the imitation games. This paper also presents the technical design of our ECA and its performance. In the interactive media industry, it can also been observed that the ECA are getting popular