Design, development, and usability evaluation of a system for adding and editing social media banners in the immersive street-level 3D virtual city

Abstract In this paper, we present design and implementation of a system for adding and visualizing social media content in an immersive street-level 3D virtual city environment. The system enables its users to add banners anywhere in the virtual 3D environment, typically on building façades, walls, or on the ground. The banner’s owner is then able to edit the banner and select the social media platform to load the content from, thereby creating a social media content banner with a specific ID. The system supports four social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Flickr. Users can also customize banners’ position, rotation, and the visual elements such as text, images and colors. To evaluate our system’s usability, we conducted an iterative usability evaluation with 12 participants. Each evaluation round with three participants indicated improvements to the system, which were implemented before next evaluation round. Finally, after the last modifications, system was found to be easy to use by average users and only a little help was needed for non-experienced users. We believe this system could provide added value for the business owners and users by enabling social media content to be add on the 3D virtual city and use it as a marketing platform

Combining storytelling tradition and pervasive gaming: Props

Background: Stories told are becoming more immersive and a new type of storytelling has been emerging during the last two decades with the rise of digital media and Web 2.0. What is perceived as gaming and the span of gaming events are expanding with pervasive gaming and possibilities brought by technological convergence and ubiquitous computing. Maybe there is room for slight shift back to the old charm of a more intimate storytelling event where everyone is present in one form or another when the story is told. Context and Objective: During this master’s thesis work pervasive gaming and storytelling were fused in a game called Props. It is a storytelling pervasive game that spans between two realities of 3D virtual and real environment. The game is located in a stage that has representation in two cities, the one in real life and the one in virtual reality. Method: This thesis describes the design science research development and empirical evaluation of Props storytelling pervasive game. Props was evaluated by staging game play events on different occasions. Data gathered varied depending what game event was in question. Props was tested on four occasions in total. First two tests were during the early development. These test events were audio taped. Props was introduced during children’s story hour, where the event was observed and small questionnaire was dealt to the participating performers. The third game event was during six workshop sessions with adolescent school kids who were guided by amateur performers. During that event the participating adolescent were dealt qualitative questionnaires. These events were also videotaped. Related exploratory literature review has been concurrent during the yearlong development and has been revisited whenever new topics have arisen. Results and Conclusions: It is possible to combine storytelling tradition and pervasive gaming. Setting of the game, numbers of participants and guidance have a big role in how adolescent throw themselves into storytelling and improvisational acting when it is mediated by a game like Props

Playful appropriations of hybrid space:combining virtual and physical environments in urban pervasive games

Abstract Modern urban space, technological infrastructure, and sociability combine into a hybrid space that is the arena for urban pervasive games. Over the past two decades the changes in this game arena have been stealthy although substantial. Technological developments have helped to achieve true mobility of gaming devices, increased precision in localization, improved connectivity, and reduced orchestration required per player. Current pervasive location-based games can be played anytime anywhere. Subsequently, doors have been opened for a growing number of commercial games. These changes demand a new conceptualization of the urban game arena. This thesis focuses on playful appropriations of hybrid space. Hybrid space is urban space that entails ubiquitous technologies. Therefore, playful appropriations of hybrid space are always, to some extent, digital as well as urban. Prior research has identified two metaphors for urban pervasive games —true mobility and true sociability. This thesis proposes an additional metaphor, called synchronicity, for binding together different realities in pervasive games. They can be anything from mirror world like realistic virtual environments, such as 3D virtual representations of a city, to abstract realities, such as the backstory of the game, or the space identity of a certain location. While location awareness is an important binding factor between the virtual and physical worlds in pervasive gameplay, synchronizable elements can be anything from encouraged collocated gameplay to semantic similarities between the combined realities. This thesis is based on five game constructs that have been specifically designed and implemented as pervasive research games. Research data has been collected and analyzed with a mixed methods approach from field trials conducted in the wild. Constructive research is complemented with a literature review that maps the characteristics of current location-based mobile games and the game space. The main contribution of this thesis is the identification of the digital, abstract, and physical layers of reality in digital urban pervasive games. The second contribution is the identification and categorization of the synchronizable elements that bind these realities together. This thesis offers initial insights into translating this knowledge into the design of future pervasive games.Tiivistelmä Urbaanitila on jatkuvassa muutoksessa, sillä se muotoutuu ja järjestyy uudelleen siellä kulkevien kaupunkilaisten kautta. Ubiikin teknologian, ihmisten kanssakäymisen ja modernin tilakäsityksen yhteisvaikutuksesta syntyy niin sanottu hybriditila, joka muodostaa peliareenan monille pervasiivisille peleille. Viime vuosikymmeninä tällä peliareenalla on tapahtunut vaivihkaisia mutta perustavaa laatua olevia muutoksia. Pelilaitteista on tullut aidosti mobiileja, ja ne kulkevat kaikkialla pelaajien mukana. Pelijärjestely vaatii vähemmän vaivaa pelaajaa kohden, paikannuksen tarkkuus on parantunut ja muutosten kautta myös kaupallisia pelejä on enemmän saatavilla. Nykyisiä pervasiivisia sijaintipohjaisia pelejä voi pelata milloin vain ja missä vain. Edellä mainittu kehitys edellyttää pervasiivisten pelien ja pelitilan uudelleen konseptualisointia. Väitöstyön aihe ei ole pelillisyys sellaisenaan, vaan “pelillisyys ja sen hyödyntäminen hybriditilassa”. Hybriditila on aina urbaani ja sisältää ubiikkia teknologiaa, minkä vuoksi pelit tässä tilassa ovat lähes poikkeuksetta myös digitaalisia. Aiempi tutkimus esittää, että saavutetut kehitysaskeleet voi niputtaa kahden metaforan alle. Nämä metaforat ovat: aito mobiilius sekä aito sosiaalisuus. Tämä väitöskirja esittää kolmannen, vielä määrittelemättömän tai saavuttamattoman metaforan näiden jatkoksi: synkronisuus. Synkronisoitavat piirteet tai elementit sitovat todellisuuksia yhteen pervasiivisessa pelitilassa. Tilassa olevat todellisuudet voivat olla realistisia pelimaailman kaltaisia virtuaalitiloja tai abstrakteja todellisuuksia, kuten pelitarinan muodostama todellisuus tai jonkin tietyn paikan tilaidentiteetti. Vaikka sijaintipohjaisuus on tärkeä todellisuuksia yhdistävä piirre, synkronisoitavat elementit voivat olla muutakin kuin sijaintikoordinaatteja. Pervasiiviset pelit nivoutuvat pelaajiensa päivittäiseen elämään, mikä tekee pelin kontekstista erottamattoman osan peliä. Tämä ominaisuus oikeuttaa ”in the wild” -menetelmien käytön tutkimuksessa, mikä tarkoittaa, että pelaamista ja pelejä tarkkaillaan luonnossa todellisessa ympäristössään. Tässä väitöstyössä käytetään konstruktioina varta vasten tätä tutkimusta ajatellen suunniteltuja ja toteutettuja pervasiivisia tutkimuspelejeä. Konstruktiivista tutkimusta tukee lisäksi teoreettinen tutkimusosio, joka koostuu kirjallisuuskatsaukseen pohjautuvasta nykyisten sijaintipohjaisten pelien ja pelitilan kategorisoinnista. Pervasiiviset pelit nivoutuvat pelaajiensa päivittäiseen elämään, mikä tekee pelin kontekstista erottamattoman osan peliä. Tämä ominaisuus oikeuttaa ”in the wild” -menetelmien käytön tutkimuksessa, mikä tarkoittaa, että pelaamista ja pelejä tarkkaillaan luonnossa todellisessa ympäristössään. Tässä väitöstyössä käytetään konstruktioina varta vasten tätä tutkimusta ajatellen suunniteltuja ja toteutettuja pervasiivisia tutkimuspelejeä. Konstruktiivista tutkimusta tukee lisäksi teoreettinen tutkimusosio, joka koostuu kirjallisuuskatsaukseen pohjautuvasta nykyisten sijaintipohjaisten pelien ja pelitilan kategorisoinnista

Karelian language and culture:a qualitative user study of mobile and web games

Abstract Revitalizing endangered minority languages is important from the perspective of preserving cultural diversity. Games and gamified application can provide ways to support learning minority languages and their dialects. We present user experience insights from a small-scale user study conducted for a selection of freely available Karelian language and culture related games. By sharing our findings, we want to raise discussion about how gamification and serious games can help in revitalizing minority languages such as Karelian language. It is important to find out different ways for co-creation and cooperation in minority language also from the perspective of game development. For this study we recruited five participants, whose age varied between 4 to 72. The reception of games depended on the previous experiences of Karelian language and personal history. We noticed that the expectations for learning games vary with different aged participants

A game palette and guidelines for game development for minority languages:case Karelian language

Abstract Games can enhance language learning. Especially vocabulary learning can be targeted with simple games, that are affective and affordable to create. Opportunities are scarce for learning a minority language as a second language; however, teaching can be augmented with distance learning provided by learning games. One game or a narrow selection of games can provide an over simplistic base vocabulary that does not fully reflect the richness of the underlying culture. In this paper we present a palette of simple vocabulary games, that have been designed and implemented to teach Karelian language to native Finnish speakers. As a solution for teaching vocabulary for non-native speakers we propose guidelines creating a selection of variable and accessible language games in situations where accessibility to guided learning is low and unintentional learning using existing games is not possible

Designing learning games and tools for Karelian language:considerations based on beginners’ experiences of gameplay

Abstract According to our knowledge, there are only few existing mobile games for learning Viena Karelian dialect and culture. Karelian is classified as a minority and endangered language. Different actions for revitalizing the Karelian language and culture have been made during the several past years in Finland and Russia. However, more effort is needed, especially to developed digital and easily accessible ways to learn and teach Karelian. This paper presents simple games developed for beginners to learn Viena Karelian. We also present findings from a small-scale user study. In addition, we propose a concept idea of the tool for teachers to create simple learning exercises

Unblurring the boundary between daily life and gameplay in location-based mobile games, visual online ethnography on Pokémon GO

Abstract Observing blending of realities, daily life and gameplay in location-based mobile games is challenging. This study aims at observing this blending by targeting a vast number of images (N = 2432), which have been taken during gameplay of a well-known game, Pokémon GO. Images were collected from social media communities of Pokémon GO players in Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and analysed using visual and online ethnography. To keep the sample size manageable for analysis, the images were collected only from Nordic Pokémon GO player communities in eight cities during 2016–2018. The findings show that the blending of daily life and gameplay is observable from the shared photos especially from the augmented reality screenshots which is why in this article the context of gameplay, both outdoors and indoors, in Pokémon GO is described in more detail than in previous studies

Design challenges for social interactions at factory floor

Abstract Industry 4.0, describes the transition of labor into more digitized and automated era. This transition makes it possible to develop a plethora of solutions for factory floor spanning from purely utilitarian to gamification. In this paper we present the initial step in recognizing the design challenges for a project developing social gamified eHealth applications to the factory floor.</P

Between beats:linking player engagement to advertisement frequency and intrusiveness

Abstract Mobile phones are a popular platform for gaming in addition to being the most ubiquitous one. Monetization of free to play games with embedded and interstitial advertisements is one of the main sources of income for mobile game creators. We used a constructive approach in this study. A mobile game developed during the study, Between Beats, was used to survey the influence of interstitial advertisement on selected aspects of player experience. The study was conducted by deploying the game to Google Play and guiding the players, after gameplay, to an online survey. The survey was answered by 51 participants who were divided randomly into four groups based on how much they were subjected to interstitial or rewarded advertisements while playing. Our results show that embedding rewarded advertisements to a situation where there already is interstitial advertisements, resulted in reduction of perceived advertisement intrusiveness and increase in advertisements viewed. Player engagement remained constant in all groups. Our findings comlement earlier findings on the use of rewarded advertisements in mobile games

Approaching collaborative flow in collaborative gaming, a survey study

Abstract Flow is an aspect of player experience that has been often targeted in game studies. Still, similar to presence it can be ambiguous and difficult to quantify. In this study, we approach the concept of flow in cooperative gaming and frame the target of this study as ”collaborative flow”. Team-play and Flow relevant aspects of player experience, Flow, Co-presence, Sensory Immersion, Imaginative Immersion, Behavioral involvement, Social Presence, and Engagement, were mapped in an online survey with 75 participants. We noticed small significant differences between semi-professional gamers and hobbyists in some flow related aspects of player experience. In addition, weekly gaming time influenced the results. In this study we used existing validated questionnaires and can only state that better metrics and definitions for this aspect of player experience are needed for future research