AI-based game design patterns

This paper proposes a model for designing games around Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI-based games put AI in the foreground of the player experience rather than in a supporting role as is often the case in many commercial games. We analyze the use of AI in a number of existing games and identify design patterns for AI in games. We propose a generative ideation technique to combine a design pattern with an AI technique or capacity to make new AI-based games. Finally, we demonstrate this technique through two examples of AI-based game prototypes created using these patterns

TIME BALANCING OF COMPUTER GAMES USING ADAPTIVE TIME-VARIANT MINIGAMES

Game designers spend a great deal of time developing balanced game experiences. However, differences in player ability, hardware capacity (e.g. network connections) or real-world elements (as in mixed-reality games), make it difficult to balance games for different players in different conditions. In this research, adaptive time-variant minigames have been introduced as a method of addressing the challenges in time balancing as a part of balancing players of games. These minigames were parameterized to allow both a guaranteed minimum play time (the minimum time to complete a minigames to address the fixed temporal constraints) and dynamic adaptability (the ability of adapting the game during the game play to address temporal variations caused by individual differences). Three time adaptation algorithms have been introduced in this research and the interaction between adaptive algorithm, game mechanic, and game difficulty were analyzed in controlled experiments. The studies showed that there are significant effects and interactions for all three factors, confirming the initial hypothesis that these processes were important and linked to each other. Furthermore, the studies revealed that finer temporal granularity leads to less-perceptible adaptation and smaller deviations in game completion times. The results also provided evidence that adaptation mechanisms allow accurate prediction of play time. The designed minigames were valuable in helping to balance temporal asymmetries in a real mixed-reality game. It was also found that these adaptation algorithms did not interrupt the overall play experience

Are Video Games Art?

In this paper I argue that by any major definition of art many modern video games should be considered art. Rather than defining art and defending video games based on a single contentious definition, I offer reasons for thinking that video games can be art according to historical, aesthetic, institutional, representational and expressive theories of art. Overall, I argue that while many video games probably should not be considered art, there are good reasons to think that some video games should be classified as art, and that the debates concerning the artistic status of chess and sports offer some insights into the status of video games

Exact Tests for Two-Way Contingency Tables with Structural Zeros

Fisher's exact test, named for Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, tests contingency tables for homogeneity of proportion. This paper discusses a generalization of Fisher's exact test for the case where some of the table entries are constrained to be zero. The resulting test is useful for assessing cases where the null hypothesis of conditional multinomial distribution is suspected to be false. The test is implemented in the form of a new R package, aylmer.

Through Her Eyes: The Gendering of Female First-Person Shooters

While the video game industry has attempted to address their years of mistreatment towards women, within games and how they are produced, by hiring more women and including more female characters as playable options, these fixes have been superficial at best. Not only are there still few females as main characters in video games, but that there are so few female video games. By this I refer to the fact that video games told through the eyes of female characters often do not feature a gendered narrative, unlike multiple games with male POVs in which the storyline directly reflects their gender. This issue, however, is not just about inclusion of more female stories, but also execution. Female FPSs may lack a narrative reflecting their gender, but they often feature gameplay that represents a stereotype of females as weaker and less aggressive than men. The purpose of this analysis is to explore how first-person shooter video games gender (or not) their female texts, through both narrative and gameplay

Infinite majesty : disabled and athletic métis in David Foster Wallace’s tennis writing

As John Jeremiah Sullivan remarks in his introduction to String Theory, a collection of David Foster Wallace’s essays on tennis, tennis “may be [Wallace’s] most consistent theme at the surface level.” As once an elite junior professional himself, Wallace reflects on and writes from his own involvement in the sport, with the conditioning, strategy, and body-mind training that goes into it. In other essays of String Theory, Wallace reaches beyond his personal playing experience, observes professional tennis players with their incredible grace, and creates his own tennis playing students in Infinite Jest. Throughout these fictional and nonfictional accounts, he conceptualizes what such eminent athleticism entails. This paper will show that celebrated athleticism in Wallace’s work exhibits an embodimental métis, or an acute, crafty body-mind knowledge of its movement through space. Beyond only characterizing athletic movement, however, this paper argues that the same concept of métis extends to people with disabilities, including characters with disabilities in Infinite Jest. The same hyperawareness of corporeality, versatile methods of adjusting to oppositional contexts, and extraordinary complexity are shared by both groups. Using rhetorical scholarship on métis and disability theories of embodiment and social representation, this paper will draw parallels between the moving body-minds of athletic and disabled bodies and trace the implications of this analogy for Wallace’s work and disability studies.Englis

OntoJogo: an ontology for game classification

Games are no longer just an entertainment activity. Various games are being adopted in different fields, such as psychology, education, and healthcare. Their usage requires professionals to be capable of categorizing games to take the most advantage out of them. Therefore, we argue that a uniform classification for games can facilitate and improve the work on numerous investigations that focus on the usage of games. Along with research work on the matter, in this paper, we present an ontology, OntoJogo, for the classification of games according to different perspectives or categorization axes. In the paper, OntoJogo is described in detail (classes and relations are explained), and examples of use are shown.This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020

Pirate stealth or inattentional blindness?:the effects of target relevance and sustained attention on security monitoring for experienced and naïve operators

Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) operators are responsible for maintaining security in various applied settings. However, research has largely ignored human factors that may contribute to CCTV operator error. One important source of error is inattentional blindness--the failure to detect unexpected but clearly visible stimuli when attending to a scene. We compared inattentional blindness rates for experienced (84 infantry personnel) and naïve (87 civilians) operators in a CCTV monitoring task. The task-relevance of the unexpected stimulus and the length of the monitoring period were manipulated between participants. Inattentional blindness rates were measured using typical post-event questionnaires, and participants' real-time descriptions of the monitored event. Based on the post-event measure, 66% of the participants failed to detect salient, ongoing stimuli appearing in the spatial field of their attentional focus. The unexpected task-irrelevant stimulus was significantly more likely to go undetected (79%) than the unexpected task-relevant stimulus (55%). Prior task experience did not inoculate operators against inattentional blindness effects. Participants' real-time descriptions revealed similar patterns, ruling out inattentional amnesia accounts