Automated Playtesting In Videogames

Game industry has recently emerged as a major software development industry. The number of games being developed has increased exponentially over the last few years [20]. And as these numbers grow there is also a need to test these games. Related to the game development workflow in diverse areas (AI, networking, graphics, engines, etc.) a unit testing and play testing component should be associated, which nowadays is rare or even nonexistent. Right now a common approach to testing games is hiring Testers to manually play a large number of potential scenarios that end users may exercise. Current game testing practices are labor intensive and become tedious and monotonous with the passage of time[3]. Furthermore, it gets quite expensive to pay someone to test these sort of games over and over again. Automated testing simplifies and makes these repetitive tasks efficient and automatic. This dissertation consists in the implementation and definition of a framework for a system that simplifies the creation of unit tests and automatic playtesting. The playtests test the integrity of the level and are able to determine whether it is possible to exploit the game in some way. This dissertation has a partnership with the ZPX company that provided a level to use and experiment the framework and manual playtesting in order to get results. The results obtained from the use of this framework are compared with the results of the manual testing performed by testers. These results consist of the time each testing approach takes, how many bugs were found in total and the quality of the report for the game level designer. These results uncover the advantages and disadvantages of the framework and the manual playtesting. One advantage to creating this framework in a highly general and modular way is that this framework can be applied to different games and the tedious work from the developer can be taken away since there is not a need to implement the more general playtests for each new game in development

Design, Design Thinking and Innovation: The Electrolux Professional Practices Assessment

The design thinking label assumed a plurality of minings since its first adoption in the design discipline and its subsequent developments in the management realm. Over its long journey, its different interpretations polarised the academic and practitioner audience eliciting appreciation and critiques. Today, the term coexists in different meanings. Still, both parties seem to agree on the positive impact of design thinking practices on organisations. Electrolux Professional is not an exception. Since the first adoption of the concept, the design department started to expand its influence, arriving to play a strategic role in the organisation’s innovation dynamics. The literature suggests a correlation between design thinking practices and innovation, but what are their real implications and impacts on the company’s innovation infrastructure? This research exploited the Electrolux Professional collaboration to investigate the design thinking practices in context. Firstly, it proposes a historical transdisciplinary interpretation of design thinking. Secondly, it focuses on the Electrolux Professional case, inquiring about its innovation ecosystem, the design department and the implication design thinking had. Thirdly, it describes the development of a multi-level framework and a correlated tool to explore the practices and perceived impacts. Finally, the framework was used to assess the design thinking practices in Electrolux Professional and develop three models summarising the primary characteristic of the design thinking practices. The last part aims to evaluate the design thinking impact on Electrolux Professional’s innovation system. Still, it is not concluded yet. The strategy is defined, and the monitoring system is being implemented, but data have not been collected yet. On the academic side, this study strived to reconnect design thinking with the design discipline, giving the designers and managers new evidence of its impact on innovation. On the practice side, the framework and the evaluation strategy aim to offer practitioners valuable tools to manage and leverage design and design thinking in the organisational innovation discussion.The design thinking label assumed a plurality of minings since its first adoption in the design discipline and its subsequent developments in the management realm. Over its long journey, its different interpretations polarised the academic and practitioner audience eliciting appreciation and critiques. Today, the term coexists in different meanings. Still, both parties seem to agree on the positive impact of design thinking practices on organisations. Electrolux Professional is not an exception. Since the first adoption of the concept, the design department started to expand its influence, arriving to play a strategic role in the organisation’s innovation dynamics. The literature suggests a correlation between design thinking practices and innovation, but what are their real implications and impacts on the company’s innovation infrastructure? This research exploited the Electrolux Professional collaboration to investigate the design thinking practices in context. Firstly, it proposes a historical transdisciplinary interpretation of design thinking. Secondly, it focuses on the Electrolux Professional case, inquiring about its innovation ecosystem, the design department and the implication design thinking had. Thirdly, it describes the development of a multi-level framework and a correlated tool to explore the practices and perceived impacts. Finally, the framework was used to assess the design thinking practices in Electrolux Professional and develop three models summarising the primary characteristic of the design thinking practices. The last part aims to evaluate the design thinking impact on Electrolux Professional’s innovation system. Still, it is not concluded yet. The strategy is defined, and the monitoring system is being implemented, but data have not been collected yet. On the academic side, this study strived to reconnect design thinking with the design discipline, giving the designers and managers new evidence of its impact on innovation. On the practice side, the framework and the evaluation strategy aim to offer practitioners valuable tools to manage and leverage design and design thinking in the organisational innovation discussion

Digital Government Systems: Tackling The Legacy Problem Through A Game-Based Approach To Business Requirements Analysis

Government agency reliance on legacy systems is problematic: they are costly to maintain, difficult to integrate with and they hinder innovation. However, the replacement of legacy systems is not a straightforward endeavor, and it often results in technology substitution that is not accompanied by business process change. The focus of this dissertation is on the phenomenon of legacy system replication wherein the requirements for applications replacing outdated technologies mimic legacy features and reflect status quo operational processes that have been historically shaped by the legacy system itself. This problem is referred to throughout the dissertation as the “legacy problem.” The dissertation investigates its roots and proposes an approach to overcome it. Specifically, a mixed method research approach is taken, including a survey of public sector practitioners to explore the extent of the legacy problem, and a series of semi-structured interviews with government information technology and management professionals to delve into the dynamics of legacy system replacement projects. Findings indicate that the legacy problem often stems from a lack of critical analysis of business requirements and the desire to minimize the risks associated with organizational change, which often result in missed opportunities for digital government innovation. As a consequence, the dissertation proposes a candidate approach to deal with the legacy problem in the development of a requirements game (RE-PROVO) which supports requirements discussions structured around the themes of legacy (or heritage) preservation and innovation. The game is evaluated by local government practitioners through several iterations and their feedback is analysed to gauge the potential utility of the approach. The results indicate that with a streamlined user interface and accentuated game elements RE-PROVO can be a valuable and effective tool for requirements analysis in legacy system replacement projects

Conundrum: A Serious Game Informed by Bloom's Taxonomy for Teaching Ethics and Social Issues

Building technology to support students who must learn ethics and social issues is a difficult problem. In fact ethics and social issues is an example of an ill-defined domains, which typically are resistant to standard intelligent tutoring systems techniques. An analysis of current pedagogical tools for teaching Computer Science ethics and social issues using Bloom’s Taxonomy shows that the task needs tools for achieving Application, Evaluation and Creation educational goals. One promising approach which has the potential to achieve such goals is educational games. This paper explores a proof of concept educational game called Conundrum. This serious game provides three ways for learners to interact with it, each supporting a level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. An experiment was run in a Computer Science ethics and social issues class showing promising results that the design of Conundrum led to students achieving Application, Evaluation and Creation goals. A multidimensional student model was also developed to aid instructors and learners understand their progress. The experiment showed that the design of Conundrum did have some good aspects but leaves a lot of future work to maximize its potential

AutoPlay – driving pleasure in a future of autonomous driving

Automated driving technologies promise a relief from stressful or frustrating driving situations. Fully-autonomous cars of the future are expected to take over the responsibilities of driving and allow the now inactive driver to perform much more engaging non-driving activities than ever before. However, the design space of the autonomous driving situation is uniquely different from traditional driving. For example, research on advanced driving automation systems have shown that the transfer of the driving task from the driver to the system can be experienced as a loss of autonomy and competency and may result in a feeling of being at the mercy of technology. Furthermore, the relationship with our cars is not only instrumental. The car is a personal artefact, an extension of the driver’s body connoted with feelings of independence and power. The car’s emancipation to an autonomous agent require a new basis of interacting with the inactive driver to facilitate a pleasurable and meaningful driving experience. On the other hand, the relief from the driving task provides a unique opportunity for new types of activities during the piloted journey, amongst them, new forms of in-situ entertainment and games that are grounded in the contextual specificity of the automotive, mobile situation. This leads to the research objectives: What type of activities can support autonomous driving as pleasurable and meaningful? How should they be implemented to compensate for the constraints and drawbacks of the autonomous driving situation, but also to take advantage of the unique affordances of this new technology? To answer those questions, I designed and developed three working prototypes with the goal to envision future autonomous driving as a pleasurable and meaningful activity. Based on a research-through-design approach, I explored the potentials of the design space of autonomous driving by systematically aligning the core-interactions of the prototypes with the contextual constraints of dense urban traffic. Furthermore, I studied the impact of the three prototypes on the driving experience in a simulator set up as well as in a series of in-car user studies. This exegesis introduces the three prototypes as design artefacts and reflects on the findings of the complementary user studies. In doing so, it articulates a novel frame for understanding autonomous driving as a future design challenge for contextual activities. This research contributes to the increasing importance of user experience and game design in the automotive domain. As such, the contribution is threefold: (1) As design artefacts, the prototypes articulate a desired future of driving experiences in autonomous cars. (2) As a contextual design practice, the research contributes intermediate knowledge in the form of novel ideation methods and implementation strategies of non-driving activities. (3) As a conceptual frame for understanding autonomous driving, I propose three motivational affordances of autonomous driving (that were tangible experiences of the prototypes) as targets for aligning non-driving activities. The three prototypes presented in this exegesis articulate a desired pleasurable vision of autonomous driving of the future. As an inspirational frame, the three prototypes are studied to gain experiential insights into the challenge of designing pleasurable and meaningful non- driving interactions in a future autonomous driving context

THEORY INTO PRACTICE: "DOMAIN-CENTRIC HANDHELD AUGMENTED REALITY GAME DESIGN" FOR DESIGNERS

Master'sMASTER OF ARTS (INDUSTRIAL DESIGN

Methods of design, an overview of game design techniques

Key Summary Points The design of games for learning requires knowledge of game design and of instructional design. One cannot merely be layer on top of the other. A learning game must be designed to meet pre-specified learning objectives. Games have specific characteristics that require specific design skills: they are entertaining as well as instructional, interactive, visually appealing, and often replayable