Proceedings of CGAMES’2007

One of the aims of modern First-Person Shooter (FPS) design is to provide an immersive experience to the player. This paper examines the role of sound in enabling such immersion and argues that even in ‘realism’ FPS games, it may be achieved sonically through a focus on caricature rather than realism. The paper utilizes and develops previous work in which a conceptual framework for the design and analysis of run and gun FPS sound is developed and the notion of the relationship between player and FPS soundscape as an acoustic ecology is put forward (Grimshaw and Schott 2007a; Grimshaw and Schott 2007b). Some problems of sound practice and sound reproduction in the game are highlighted and a conceptual solution is proposed

Player Relationships as Mediated Through Sound in Immersive Multi-player Computer Games

This essay examines the relationship between player and diegetic sound FX in immersive computer game environments and how this relationship leads, in large part, to the contextualization of the player within the virtual world of the game. This contextualization presupposes a primarily sonically-based perception of objects and events in the world and, in a multi-player game, this ultimately leads to communication between players through the medium of diegetic sound. The players’ engagement with, and immersion in, the game’s acoustic environment is the result of a relationship with sound that is technologically mediated. The game engine, for example, produces a range of environmental or ambient sounds and almost every player action has a corresponding sound. A variety of relevant theories and disciplines are assessed for the methodological basis of the points raised, such as film sound theory and sonification, and, throughout, the First-Person Shooter sub-genre is used as an exemplar. Such games include the «Doom» and «Quake» series, the «Half-Life» series and derivatives and later games such as «Left 4 Dead». The combination of the acoustic environment, the interactive placement of the player – as embodied by his virtual, prosthetic arms – in the environment and the sonic relationships between players produces the acoustic ecology. An exposition of this multi-player communication and the resultant acoustic ecology and player immersion, is the main objective of the essay

Gameplay experience in a gaze interaction game

Assessing gameplay experience for gaze interaction games is a challenging task. For this study, a gaze interaction Half-Life 2 game modification was created that allowed eye tracking control. The mod was deployed during an experiment at Dreamhack 2007, where participants had to play with gaze navigation and afterwards rate their gameplay experience. The results show low tension and negative affects scores on the gameplay experience questionnaire as well as high positive challenge, immersion and flow ratings. The correlation between spatial presence and immersion for gaze interaction was high and yields further investigation. It is concluded that gameplay experience can be correctly assessed with the methodology presented in this paper.Comment: pages 49-54, The 5th Conference on Communication by Gaze Interaction - COGAIN 2009: Gaze Interaction For Those Who Want It Most, ISBN: 978-87-643-0475-

Measuring the impact of game controllers on player experience in FPS games

An increasing amount of games is released on multiple platforms, and game designers face the challenge of integrating different interaction paradigms for console and PC users while keeping the core mechanics of a game. However, little research has addressed the influence of game controls on player experience. In this paper, we examine the impact of mouse and keyboard versus gamepad control in first-person shooters using the PC and PlayStation 3 versions of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. We conducted a study with 45 participants to compare player experience and game usability issues of participants who had previously played similar games on one of the respective gaming systems, while also exploring the effects of players being forced to switch to an unfamiliar platform. The results show that players switching to a new platform experience more usability issues and consider themselves more challenged, but report an equally positive overall experience as players on their comfort platform. © 2011 ACM

“Game over, man. Game over”:looking at the Alien in film and videogames

In this article we discuss videogame adaptations of the Alien series of films, in particular Alien: Colonial Marines (2013) and Alien: Isolation (2014). In comparing critical responses and developer commentary across these texts, we read the very different affective, aesthetic and socio-political readings of the titular alien character in each case. The significant differences in what it means to ‘look’ at this figure can be analyzed in terms of wider storytelling techniques that stratify remediation between film and games. Differing accounts of how storytelling techniques create intensely ‘immersive’ experiences such as horror and identification—as well as how these experiences are valued—become legible across this set of critical contexts. The concept of the ‘look’ is developed as a comparative series that enables the analysis of the affective dynamics of film and game texts in terms of gender-normative ‘technicity’, moving from the ‘mother monster’ of the original film to the ‘short controlled burst’ of the colonial marines and finally to the ‘psychopathic serendipity’ of Alien: Isolation

Concepts Regarding Sound Immersion And Interactivity In Fps Game Audio Technology

Penyelidikan ini akan meneroka darjah bunyi dan muzik yang akan meningkatkan immersi pemain dan interaktiviti pemain dalam pengalaman permainan. Dengan kata lain, ia ialah satu kajian immersi dan interaktiviti dalam permainan-permainan digital terpilih di konteks audio This research will explore the degree of sound and music affect and enhance the immersion and interactivity of an FPS game player in selected digital games. In other words, this is a study of immersion and interactivity of selected digital games in the context of game audi

Profiling the educational value of computer games

There are currently a number of suggestions for educators to include computer games in formal teaching and learning contexts. Educational value is based on claims that games promote the development of complex learning. Very little research, however, has explored what features should be present in a computer game to make it valuable or conducive to learning. We present a list of required features for an educational game to be of value, informed by two studies, which integrated theories of Learning Environments and Learning Styles. A user survey showed that some requirements were typical of games in a particular genre, while other features were present across all genres. The paper concludes with a proposed framework of games and features within and across genres to assist in the design and selection of games for a given educational scenari

A unity-based framework for sound transmission and perception in video games

The ability for humans to hear, attend to, and understand incoming sounds is affected, at least, by environmental, morphological, and cognitive factors. Conversely, current implementations of audition in virtual characters often only consider as constraint to the auditory process the distance between the sound emitter and the sound receiver. To cope with this limitation, this dissertation presents a novel framework, directed to game developers interested in implementing non-player characters with noisy, characterspecific, and context-dependent auditory perception. The framework is prepared to be integrated with games developed in Unity's game engine, providing custom made Unity scripts that simplify the integration into Unity games. A First Person Shooter game named Fortress was developed, which was integrated with the framework in order to test the mechanisms for sound transmission and perception provided by the framework. The framework allows developers to enable the ability for virtual characters to perceive sound from their surroundings, while keeping the ability of perception closely binded to the current context the virtual character is in. The developer may then customize each virtual character's physical and psychological traits that react the way the virtual character perceives sound from its surroundings. Consequently, the level of immersion for players is increased, as the characters from the virtual world react to sound from their surroundings in a more human way.A capacidade humana de ouvir, percepcionar e compreender sons é afetada, no mínimo, por fatores ambientais, físicos e cognitivos. Implementações atuais de audição em agentes virtuais apenas consideram a distância entre o emissor do som e o seu receptor como fator influenciador da sua receção. De forma a superar essa limitação, esta dissertação apresenta uma framework direcionada a programadores de jogos de vídeo interessados em dotar os seus personagens virtuais de audição reactiva a ruído, às características do agente e dependente do contexto. A framework é direcionada a jogos desenvolvidos para o motor de jogo Unity, através da disponibilização de ferramentas que facilitam a integração em jogos do motor de jogo Unity. Um jogo do tipo First Person Shooter , Fortress, foi desenvolvido com o objectivo de integrar e testar as funcionalidades de transmissão e percepção de som disponibilizadas pela framework. Os programadores de jogos de vídeo passam a poder dotar as suas personagens virtuais de perceção de sons provenientes do ambiente virtual, relacionando a capacidade de perceção com o contexto do personagem virtual. Os programadores podem costumizar os atributos físicos e psicológicos que afetam a capacidade de perceção do som por parte dos personagens virtuais. Em consequência da melhor aproximação da capacidade auditiva dos personagens virtuais com a capacidade auditiva humana, os personagens apresentaram um comportamento mais el à realidade, aumentando a imersão do jogador no mundo do jogo

Techno-historical limits of the interface: the performance of interactive narrative experiences

This thesis takes the position that current analyses of digitally mediated interactive experiences that include narrative elements often lack adequate consideration of the technical and historical contexts of their production.From this position, this thesis asks the question: how is the reader/player/user's participation in interactive narrative experiences (such as hypertext fiction, interactive fiction, computer games, and electronic art) influenced by the technical and historical limitations of the interface?In order to investigate this question, this thesis develops a single methodology from relevant media and narrative theory, in order to facilitate a comparative analysis of well known exemplars from distinct categories of digitally mediated experiences. These exemplars are the interactive fiction Adventure, the interactive art work Osmose, the hypertext fiction Afternoon, a story, and the computer/video games Myst, Doom, Half Life and Everquest.The main argument of this thesis is that the technical limits of new media experiences cause significant ‘gaps’ in the reader’s experience of them, and that the cause of these gaps is the lack of a dedicated technology for new media, which instead ‘borrows’ technology from other fields. These gaps are overcome by a greater dependence upon the reader’s cognitive abilities than other media forms. This greater dependence can be described as a ‘performance’ by the reader/player/user, utilising Eco’s definition of an ‘open’ work (Eco 21).This thesis further argues that the ‘mimetic’ and ‘immersive’ ambitions of current new media practice can increases these gaps, rather than overcoming them. The thesis also presents the case that these ‘gaps’ are often not caused by technical limits in the present, but are oversights by the author/designers that have arisen as the product of a craft culture that has been subject to significant technical limitations in the past. Compromises that originally existed to overcome technical limits have become conventions of the reader/player/user’s interactive literacy, even though these conventions impinge on the experience, and are no longer necessary because of subsequent technical advances. As a result, current new media users and designers now think of these limitations as natural.This thesis concludes the argument by redefining ‘immersion’ as the investment the reader makes to overcome the gaps in an experience, and suggests that this investment is an important aspect of their performance of the work

Demystifying the educational benefits of different gaming genres

As research continues into the use of computer games for educational purposes, educators still appear reluctant to incorporate them into their teaching. One contributing factor to this reluctance is the lack of information regarding the benefits offered by the different games available today. These differences appear to have been largely overlooked by the academic community, resulting in a lack of information being made available to both the academic and education communities alike. Without this information, educators will find it difficult to determine whether a game will suit their teaching needs, and will continue to avoid using them. This paper studies a selection of games from several different genres, assessing each one in its ability to fulfil a set of previously identified requirements for a good educational resource. The results of the investigation showed that there were indeed strong differences between the genres, allowing for some suggestions to be made regarding their use in education, as well as leaving room for some interesting future work