Study of emotion in videogames : understanding presence and behaviour

Only when videogames are released are we able to look at them and analyse them. Nowadays, platforms to share our thoughts and opinions about a videogame, or part of it, are everywhere, with both positive and negative commentaries being shared daily. However, what makes a game be seen as a positive experience and what components satisfy and engage players in it? In this Dissertation, we aim to comprehend how players perceive videogames and what motivates and triggers emotions one has during play. We will take a look at several different concepts that all work together when playing a videogame. We will start by understanding what Interaction is and how humans behave. Afterwards, we will better investigate the widely used topic of Immersion, and its unknown and unrecognized brother Presence. From there, we will divide involvement in game play in two parts, the technological side, which relates to natural interfaces and mastery of controls, and the side of design and implementation of content, more specifically the concept of Agency and how it plays a huge part in making players feel part of the game.Só quando um videojogo é lançado é que o podemos analisar e rever. Atualmente, encontramos plataformas para partilhar a nossa opinião acerca de um videojogo, ou parte dele, em qualquer lado, com comentários positivos e negativos a serem partilhados diariamente. No entanto, o que é que faz um jogo ser visto como uma experiência positiva e quais são os componentes que satisfazem e envolvem jogadores? Nesta Dissertação, pretendemos compreender como é que jogadores percecionam um videojogo e que emoções são despoletadas que os motiva a jogar. Iremos analisar diferentes conceitos que contribuem para o jogar de um videojogo. Começaremos por ver o que é a Interação e como é que o ser humano se comporta e age. Prosseguindo, iremos analisar o já bastante usado conceito de Imersão, e o seu desconhecido e menos reconhecido irmão, Presença. Daí iremos dividir o envolvimento com um videojogo em duas partes, no lado tecnológico, relacionado com interfaces naturais e mestria de controlos, e no lado de design e implementação de conteúdo, mais especificamente no conceito de Agência e a maneira como esta integra os jogadores no jogo

An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities

Assessment and development of cognitive skills using tangible electronic board games : serious games on the TUI TagTiles

When designing the educational tools and methods of the future, putting the child and its natural way of developing at the center offers great benefits. The child will be more motivated and at the same time the educational yield will be higher and more targeted. In this dissertation it is shown that electronic tangible systems like the TagTiles console can offer integral, personalized development of children in the areas of cognitive, fine motor and social skills for assessment, education and therapy, in a manner that builds on natural forms of play of children. Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) are potentially highly effective tools for education combining physical interfaces with computing power, enabling easy-to-use and robust applications that are enjoyable and motivating. The topic of this dissertation is whether and how TUIs can be developed that are effective for developing cognitive skills of children. Classical theories on cognitive development were used as a theoretical foundation for the development of a TUI-based educational application, such as the role of sensorimotor abilities for cognitive development as described by Piaget. Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development was used to inspire the implementation of adaptivity in the educational application. The research described consisted of three phases, each including an empirical study conducted at primary schools. In the first phase the influence of the type of interface on the performance of children on an educational task was investigated. The use of a virtual, pc-based interface was compared to the use of a tangible, non-electronic interface for the same puzzle task. It was found that children (N=26, aged 5-7 years) were able to solve the tangible puzzle tasks on average almost twice as fast as the PC based task, and needed considerably less instruction for the tangible version. The results of the study support the hypothesis that tangible interfaces offer a more suitable interface than a pc-based interface to educational tasks, at least for young children. In the second phase it was validated whether a range of TUI-based tasks can be used to address nonverbal, cognitive skills. The applied tasks had been developed for use with ‘TagTiles’. TagTiles is a tabletop electronic console with tangible game pieces developed by Serious Toys B.V. (www.serioustoys.com). The console includes a sensing board with an array of LED lights underneath and audio output. The system is controlled by manipulating game pieces on the TagTiles surface. Eight visual-spatial tasks were created, intended to address different nonverbal cognitive skills such as (working) memory and spatial reasoning. Each task included abstract patterns consisting of colored tiles. For each task a different assignment is given to the player, such as mirroring the pattern, or repeating a sequence of tiles that lit up on the board. To validate which skills can be addressed with these tasks, children’s performances on the TagTiles tasks were correlated with performances on several conventional psychometric instruments. This study included children aged 8-10 years and consisted of a pilot study (N=10) and an experiment (N=32). Significant correlations were found between the performances of children on the TagTiles tasks and the performances on nonverbal subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children IIINL (WISC IIINL). Some tasks also showed significant correlations with Raven’s Progressive Matrices, which is an intelligence test measuring deductive reasoning skills. The results of this study indicate that the developed tasks can be used to train skills that are measured in IQ tests. In the third phase it was investigated whether the developed visual-spatial tasks kept their ability to address cognitive skills when embedded in a game. It was also tested whether children experienced this game, called ‘Tap the little hedgehog’, to be fun and intrinsically motivating. A fantasy theme was added to include the tasks in a natural way, to minimize and simplify the instructions needed to understand the game play and to make the tasks more fun to play. The difficulty of the task levels was made adaptive to the player’s achievements. A reward structure was added to increase children’s motivation to reach certain goals in the game as well as a support structure, created to help the child when needed, enabling independent play. The results of the empirical study (N=52, aged 7-9 years) with this game indicated that the added game context had not changed the essence of the tasks, as the performances were similar to those in the study in phase two. These findings support the hypothesis that TagTiles tasks applied in a game context can be used to assess and train a range of nonverbal skills. For assessment purposes we concluded that TagTiles can be used to test at least part of the cognitive skills that are addressed with the applied conventional psychological measures, given the significant correlations that were found. Studies by others have shown that training of relevant skills such as working memory can improve aspects of intellectual functioning, in particular executive functioning and efficient use of working memory. This opens the exciting prospect that by practicing with TagTiles the performance on the mentioned skills may be enhanced, or that these skills may be more effectively used. This means that it would be useful to investigate whether, after further refinement and validation, the TagTiles tasks can be used for assessment and training of specific cognitive skills. Based on the results of the conducted studies, it was concluded that the integral and personalized development of children in the areas of cognitive, fine motor and social skills for assessment, education and therapy can be facilitated with TUIs like TagTiles. Educational TUIs can profoundly change current education and assessment practices, offering an alternative that is enjoyable to the child and effective and accurate to the educational or assessment expert. The described way of creating a challenge using the Zone of Proximal Development can also be used to improve the experience with educational games

Harmony and Technology Enhanced Learning

New technologies offer rich opportunities to support education in harmony. In this chapter we consider theoretical perspectives and underlying principles behind technologies for learning and teaching harmony. Such perspectives help in matching existing and future technologies to educational purposes, and to inspire the creative re-appropriation of technologies

Advancing performability in playable media : a simulation-based interface as a dynamic score

When designing playable media with non-game orientation, alternative play scenarios to gameplay scenarios must be accompanied by alternative mechanics to game mechanics. Problems of designing playable media with non-game orientation are stated as the problems of designing a platform for creative explorations and creative expressions. For such design problems, two requirements are articulated: 1) play state transitions must be dynamic in non-trivial ways in order to achieve a significant level of engagement, and 2) pathways for players’ experience from exploration to expression must be provided. The transformative pathway from creative exploration to creative expression is analogous to pathways for game players’ skill acquisition in gameplay. The paper first describes a concept of simulation-based interface, and then binds that concept with the concept of dynamic score. The former partially accounts for the first requirement, the latter the second requirement. The paper describes the prototype and realization of the two concepts’ binding. “Score” is here defined as a representation of cue organization through a transmodal abstraction. A simulation based interface is presented with swarm mechanics and its function as a dynamic score is demonstrated with an interactive musical composition and performance

Participatory Patterns in an International Air Quality Monitoring Initiative

The issue of sustainability is at the top of the political and societal agenda, being considered of extreme importance and urgency. Human individual action impacts the environment both locally (e.g., local air/water quality, noise disturbance) and globally (e.g., climate change, resource use). Urban environments represent a crucial example, with an increasing realization that the most effective way of producing a change is involving the citizens themselves in monitoring campaigns (a citizen science bottom-up approach). This is possible by developing novel technologies and IT infrastructures enabling large citizen participation. Here, in the wider framework of one of the first such projects, we show results from an international competition where citizens were involved in mobile air pollution monitoring using low cost sensing devices, combined with a web-based game to monitor perceived levels of pollution. Measures of shift in perceptions over the course of the campaign are provided, together with insights into participatory patterns emerging from this study. Interesting effects related to inertia and to direct involvement in measurement activities rather than indirect information exposure are also highlighted, indicating that direct involvement can enhance learning and environmental awareness. In the future, this could result in better adoption of policies towards decreasing pollution.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, 1 supplementary fil