Grand theft algorithm: purposeful play, appropriated play and aberrant players

"Copyright ACM, 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in MindTrek: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Entertainment and media in the ubiquitous era. pp.3-7 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1457199.1457201"This paper explores ideas about 'appropriated play' within computer games. It identifies different forms of 'purposeful' and 'aberrant' playing and proposes a model of players' motivations. This will enable a discussion about the experience of games players who resist the norms of 'purposeful' or ludic play, while finding reward in their explorations of game possibilities. It provides a new vocabulary for discussing playing outside of the game world, as a way of understanding some of these actions as more than 'cheating'

The therapeutic use of videogames within secure forensic settings: a review of the literature and application to practice

Engagement in leisure pursuits that involves the use of tools and objects and the exploration of a new environment can provide a success experience that leads to increased feelings of competence and mastery. Such experiences are considered important in the rehabilitation of forensic clients. The findings from videogame research within a general population are compared with those among mental health and forensic clients. Within the general population, videogames may provide opportunities for social interaction and the expression of creativity and humour as well as offering a graded approach to building computer skills. Within a forensic population, videogames have been found to be a normalising, age-appropriate and culturally appropriate activity, useful in engaging clients and improving self-concept and locus of control. The findings suggest that videogame play offers access to a safe virtual environment that encourages exploration and mastery and that it may be a useful therapeutic tool in secure settings where such opportunities are often limited. The use and potential contraindications of videogames within a forensic setting, the content of certain games and their possible influence on behaviour and the implications for future research are also discussed

Auditory Experiences in Game Transfer Phenomena:

This study investigated gamers’ auditory experiences as after effects of playing. This was done by classifying, quantifying, and analysing 192 experiences from 155 gamers collected from online videogame forums. The gamers’ experiences were classified as: (i) auditory imagery (e.g., constantly hearing the music from the game), (ii) inner speech (e.g., completing phrases in the mind), (iii) auditory misperceptions (e.g., confusing real life sounds with videogame sounds), and (iv) multisensorial auditory experiences (e.g., hearing music while involuntary moving the fingers). Gamers heard auditory cues from the game in their heads, in their ears, but also coming from external sources. Occasionally, the vividness of the sound evoked thoughts and emotions that resulted in behaviours and copying strategies. The psychosocial implications of the gamers’ auditory experiences are discussed. This study contributes to the understanding of the effects of auditory features in videogames, and to the phenomenology of non-volitional experiences (e.g., auditory imagery, auditory hallucinations)

Internet and gaming addiction: a systematic literature review of neuroimaging studies

In the past decade, research has accumulated suggesting that excessive Internet use can lead to the development of a behavioral addiction. Internet addiction has been considered as a serious threat to mental health and the excessive use of the Internet has been linked to a variety of negative psychosocial consequences. The aim of this review is to identify all empirical studies to date that used neuroimaging techniques to shed light upon the emerging mental health problem of Internet and gaming addiction from a neuroscientific perspective. Neuroimaging studies offer an advantage over traditional survey and behavioral research because with this method, it is possible to distinguish particular brain areas that are involved in the development and maintenance of addiction. A systematic literature search was conducted, identifying 18 studies. These studies provide compelling evidence for the similarities between different types of addictions, notably substance-related addictions and Internet and gaming addiction, on a variety of levels. On the molecular level, Internet addiction is characterized by an overall reward deficiency that entails decreased dopaminergic activity. On the level of neural circuitry, Internet and gaming addiction led to neuroadaptation and structural changes that occur as a consequence of prolonged increased activity in brain areas associated with addiction. On a behavioral level, Internet and gaming addicts appear to be constricted with regards to their cognitive functioning in various domains. The paper shows that understanding the neuronal correlates associated with the development of Internet and gaming addiction will promote future research and will pave the way for the development of addiction treatment approaches

Challenge in Digital Games: Towards Developing a Measurement Tool

Challenge is arguably the most important experience that players seek in digital games. However, without a measure of how challenged players feel during the act of play, it is hard to design games that are neither too easy nor too hard and, therefore, truly enjoyable. Especially in industry, challenge is dominantly assessed by means of manual play testing in ad-hoc trials. The aim of this research is to create a more systematic, complete, and reliable instrument to evaluate the level of players' experienced challenge in games in the form of a questionnaire. This paper presents the key results from an extensive literature survey which will inform further development. We survey definitions of challenge, challenge types, and their relation to player experience based on the observations of game designers. We furthermore draw from empirical findings in a diverse range of fields such as game studies, human-computer interaction (HCI) and artificial intelligence (AI)

Intrinsic Motivation in Computational Creativity Applied to Videogames

PhD thesisComputational creativity (CC) seeks to endow artificial systems with creativity. Although human creativity is known to be substantially driven by intrinsic motivation (IM), most CC systems are extrinsically motivated. This restricts their actual and perceived creativity and autonomy, and consequently their benefit to people. In this thesis, we demonstrate, via theoretical arguments and through applications in videogame AI, that computational intrinsic reward and models of IM can advance core CC goals. We introduce a definition of IM to contextualise related work. Via two systematic reviews, we develop typologies of the benefits and applications of intrinsic reward and IM models in CC and game AI. Our reviews highlight that related work is limited to few reward types and motivations, and we thus investigate the usage of empowerment, a little studied, information-theoretic intrinsic reward, in two novel models applied to game AI. We define coupled empowerment maximisation (CEM), a social IM model, to enable general co-creative agents that support or challenge their partner through emergent behaviours. Via two qualitative, observational vignette studies on a custom-made videogame, we explore CEM’s ability to drive general and believable companion and adversary non-player characters which respond creatively to changes in their abilities and the game world. We moreover propose to leverage intrinsic reward to estimate people’s experience of interactive artefacts in an autonomous fashion. We instantiate this proposal in empowerment-based player experience prediction (EBPXP) and apply it to videogame procedural content generation. By analysing think-aloud data from an experiential vignette study on a dedicated game, we identify several experiences that EBPXP could predict. Our typologies serve as inspiration and reference for CC and game AI researchers to harness the benefits of IM in their work. Our new models can increase the generality, autonomy and creativity of next-generation videogame AI, and of CC systems in other domains

Can We Programme Utopia? The Influence of the Digital Neoliberal Discourse on Utopian Videogames

This article has a dual purpose. The first is to establish the relationship between videogames and utopia in the neoliberal era and clarify the origins of this compromise in the theoretical dimension of game studies. The second is to examine the ways in which there has been an application of the utopian genre throughout videogame history (the style of procedural rhetoric and the subgenre of walking simulator) and the way in which the material dimension of the medium ideologically updates the classical forms of that genre, be it through activation or deactivation. The article concludes with an evaluation of the degree in which the neoliberal discourse interferes with the understanding of utopia on behalf of the medium and with its imaginary capabilities to allow for an effective change in social reality