Archaeological Storytelling in Games

Digital games have been increasingly recognized in recent years for their existing and potential contributions as a medium for promoting engagement with history and cultural heritage. Rather than focus on how games can help the public engage with a known (to scholars) past, here we consider instead how the core problems and processes of archeology themselves might be applied as a story-telling technique in games. We consider what this might look like in games and contrast with archeogaming, existing environmental storytelling approaches and examples. Finally, we consider how these techniques could also be applied to developing games to support students learning about archaeology and material culture

Contextual Drama Facilitation for Digital Games

In this position article, we discuss the representation of narrative tra-jectories in digital games and investigate the possibility for Non-Player-Characters (NPCs) AI controllers to react contextually to narrative situations. We propose to define the foundations of a context-based model for NPCs and the remit of intervention of such an approach

The Jomini Engine: a historical MMORPG framework

This short paper discusses the design of the JominiEngine, a serious game engine for massive multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPG), designed as an educational tool for the learning history. The main design principles of the game engine are accuracy in the historic model, flexibility in the scope of content modeling and cover a wide range of historic periods, cooperative team-play embedded in a competitive game in order to reflect historical context, and high security in the interaction with the underlying game engine

The Impacts of Design Elements in Interactive Storytelling in VR on Emotion, Mood, and Self-reflection

Storytelling entertains, educates, and inspires people of all ages and a compelling story has the power to motivate, elicit emotions, behavioural change, and inspire self-reflection. Interactive Digital Narratives (IDN) offer, arguably, a greater potential for impact on their audience due to the participative nature of interaction whilst storytelling in Virtual Reality (VR), benefits from high levels of immersion. This work focuses on the design and development of compelling narrative elements towards a non-narrated and unguided VR experience aimed at portraying and evoking emotions, moods, and self-reflection. We explore how the combined elements of light, colour, shape and music can play a role in creating compelling stories and influence users within an immersive VR experience. Finally, this article presents an extensive study of relevant literature, the design of an impactful immersive VR narrative experience and an exploratory practice-based study

Provocative Approaches to Serious Game Design and Analysis

Small Provoking Games (SPG) are physical or digital serious games that intend to incite reflection, discussion, or a shift in attitude regarding a particular application domain. They are built upon the principles of reflective game design to ``produce cognitive and affective challenge'' and ``emphasise a player’s sense of purpose and aim to create exo-transformation (change in attitudes and/or practice outside the game) SPGs may be stand-alone or integrated into a more structured context such as a serious game jam, in order to provoke discussion and reflection. SPGs challenge the assumption of, and importance placed on `fun' in serious gaming, focusing more on the `serious experience' toward the goal of effective reflection and attitude-shifting as opposed to direct learning of content

INDCOR white paper 1: A shared vocabulary for IDN (Interactive Digital Narratives)

COST Action 18230 INDCOR (Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representations) is an interdisciplinary network of researchers and practitioners intended to further the use of interactive digital narratives (IDN1) to represent highly complex topics. IDN possess crucial advantages in this regard, but more knowledge is needed to realize these advantages in broad usage by media producers and the general public. The lack of a shared vocabulary is a crucial obstacle on the path to a generalized, accessible body of IDN knowledge. This white paper frames the situation from the perspective of INDCOR and describes the creation of an online encyclopedia as a means to overcome this issue. Two similar and successful projects (The Living Handbook of Narratology and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) serve as examples for this effort, showing how community-authored encyclopedias can provide high-quality content. The authors introduce a taxonomy based on an overarching analytical framework (SPP model) as the foundational element of the encyclopedia, and detail editorial procedures for the project, including a peer-review process, designed to assure high academic quality and relevance of encyclopedia entries. Also, a sample entry provides guidance for authors

Serious ‘Slow’ Game Jam - A Game Jam Model for Serious Game Design

The Serious ‘Slow’ Game Jam (SSGJ) is a new model for use in serious game design and research. Game jams contribute to creative, innovative and collaborative design, however, game jams for serious purposes require an alternative model that integrates domain experts within the jammer community to ensure the validity of their designs and content. Furthermore, a rigorous yet accessible design methodology is required to balance pedagogic and game aspects to support jammers, as well as to assist researchers in subsequent analysis and evaluation. A standard entertainment game jam model does not afford support for these aspects. The SSGJ model addresses these needs through an inclusive, collaborative, and creative framework for multidisciplinary teams, which includes: encouraging reflection and knowledge exchange; improving content validity; and providing continuous support and mentoring to participants. Reflection on the model highlights the importance of framing serious game jams as explicitly educational activities and embedding them into existing training contexts. The SSGJ model contributes to a collaborative serious game design methodology for the wider research community, irrespective of application domains

A Formal Approach to Distinguish Games, Toys, Serious Games & Toys, Serious Re-purposing & Modding and Simulators

While the concept of serious game has considerably evolved in the last two decades, it still needs to be clearly differentiated from other types of artifacts. Thus, for most outside the domain, there is a degree of confusion about the relationship between serious games and other related applications such as simulators or the re-purposing of entertainment games within educational practices. This article proposes a formal approach towards classifying Games, Toys, Serious Games, Serious Toys, Serious Re-purposing & Modding and Simulators. The aim of this theoretical work is twofold. Firstly, on a practical level, this approach aims at helping actors from different ecosystems, such as health, for instance, to differentiate between these various devices and use them to their best advantage. Secondly, from a research perspective, based on a formal approach, our work aims to contribute to the development of a taxonomy for gamified intervention with serious purposes. This formal approach allows us to demonstrate that unique combinations can be proposed to distinguish each kind of application. In this context, Serious Games can be seen as a specific purpose and not as a synonym for other existing applications

Game-enhanced learning without the cost: modding analogue games

RATIONALE Games have been shown to be powerful complements to classroom-based education, enhancing both learning and motivation to learn. However, game design requires significant specialist knowledge, and can be very time-consuming and costly. Furthermore, transitions between instructional design and game implementation is acknowledged as lacking methodology (Hauge, et al, 2015) This hackathon focusses on how teachers can adapt existing games and effectively implement them in a variety of learning situations. By teaching teachers how to analyse widely available, inexpensive games and match game mechanics to pedagogic actions, this event will enable informed selection of games which are appropriately aligned to pedagogic goals and provide examples of how to then modify these games for particular learning outcomes. PROPOSED ACTIVITIES The hackathon will begin with an in depth analysis of game mechanics in a variety of mainstream board/card games using gameplay loop analysis (Guardiola, 2016) and Gamebricks (Djaouti et al, 2008). Worked examples will lead to participants undertaking their own analyses. Then, identified game mechanics will be aligned with learning behaviours using the Serious Game Mechanics card game (Hauge, et al, 2015). These activities will allow participants to practice game analysis, understand which game mechanics are most suited to encouraging particular pedagogical goals, and gain an understanding of intrinsic integration in game-based learning and its importance (Arnab, et al, 2015). In the latter half of the hackathon, participants will select a learning situation from their own practice, define their desired pedagogic behaviours, and propose a modification to an existing game to align it directly with their chosen subject. Finally, the group will work together to discuss how ‘modded’ analogue games can be most effectively integrated into teaching activity, within time and cost limitations. By documenting the workshop and inviting participants to feed back in the months following the event, this hackathon will create a legacy of material and relationships on techniques and successes when modding existing games for learning purposes. WHO BENEFITS This hackathon is suitable for anyone who wants to use game-enhanced learning but does not consider themselves a game designer, or does not have the resources to design a game from scratch. The techniques learned are applicable for all levels of education from primary to post-graduate. The workshop team has significant experience of modding board games and publishing in the field of serious games and game-based learning and this hackathon builds on expertise gained in previous events. SUMMARY Modding existing analogue games is a fast and inexpensive way of implementing GBL in the classroom. This hackathon will showcase this technique and develop participants’ critical skills, ensuring that games are selected and modified appropriate for the best possible learning outcomes. REFERENCES Hauge J.M.B., Lim T., Louchart S., Stanescu I.A., Ma M., Marsh T. (2015) Game Mechanics Supporting Pervasive Learning and Experience in Games, Serious Games, and Interactive & Social Media. In: Chorianopoulos K., Divitini M., Baalsrud Hauge J., Jaccheri L., Malaka R. (eds) Entertainment Computing - ICEC 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 9353. Springer, Cham Arnab, S., Lim, T., Carvalho, M. B., Bellotti, F., de Freitas, S., Louchart, S., Suttie, N., Berta, R. and De Gloria, A. (2015), Mapping learning and game mechanics for serious games analysis. Br J Educ Technol, 46: 391–411. doi:10.1111/bjet.12113 Guardiola, E. (2016) The Gameplay Loop: a Player Activity Model for Game Design and Analysis. In: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, ACM New York, NY, USA. doi:10.1145/3001773.3001791 Djaouti, D., Alvarez, J., Jessel, J.P., Methel, G., and Molinier, P., (2008) A Gameplay Definition through Videogame Classification. In: International Journal of Computer Games Technology, Volume 2008 (2008), Hindawi Publishing Corporation, doi:10.1155/2008/47035

A Model for Mapping Serious Game Mechanics to Pedagogical Patterns

Pedagogical patterns facilitate the transfer of expert knowledge in teaching and learning. They are used to scaffold learning design for a particular purpose. Designing games for learning is a challenging, resource intensive, and inherently interdisciplinary activity. In this paper, we map the mechanics of twelve co-designed serious games onto conceptually similar pedagogical patterns in order to identify fruitful common approaches and facilitate knowledge exchange. We present our methodology for this mapping process and provide examples for its usage to improve the quality and accessibility of serious games design