AXMEDIS 2008

The AXMEDIS International Conference series aims to explore all subjects and topics related to cross-media and digital-media content production, processing, management, standards, representation, sharing, protection and rights management, to address the latest developments and future trends of the technologies and their applications, impacts and exploitation. The AXMEDIS events offer venues for exchanging concepts, requirements, prototypes, research ideas, and findings which could contribute to academic research and also benefit business and industrial communities. In the Internet as well as in the digital era, cross-media production and distribution represent key developments and innovations that are fostered by emergent technologies to ensure better value for money while optimising productivity and market coverage

Videogames, persuasion & deceit

Tese de doutoramento, Informática (Engenharia Informática), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2014Videogames have grown to be one of the most important forms of entertainment. Designers and developers constantly strive to innovate and include mechanics which provide the best experiences to consumers. Games typically integrate a diversity of instruments and mechanisms (among these, persuasive technology) which attempt to offer players the best experience possible, leading them to a state of optimal experience. The relation between these instruments and their effects on player experience suffer from scarce documentation and empirical sustainment, resulting in a lack of insight regarding how players are affected by them. This thesis documents how we addressed these research opportunities, tied videogames, persuasive technology and players as well as driven existing knowledge about persuasion forward. This research’s goal concerns the gathering of empirical evidence showing that different types of persuasive instruments can be employed in videogames to steer players towards a state of optimal experience. Our analysis focuses exclusively on how these mechanisms impact on the player’s performance and emotional state. In addition to this goal, we explored alternative persuasion strategies which are often disregarded due to existing and preconceived negative coverage – deceit. This effort lead us to cover how deceitful persuasive interventions are designed, in what circumstances they are employed and the relation between them and the videogames domain. Treading throughout these research goals resulted in a set of theoretical and empirical contributions tying both persuasive technology and videogames. We present player experience data supporting the role of persuasive technology in attaining an optimal experience state, addressing both performance and physiological evidence. We also a model, created with the intent of supporting designers and developers in establishing deceitful persuasive interventions. This model is put into practice, allowing us to test and show that deceitful and real persuasive instruments can have equivalent effects on player experience.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT