Feedback-Based Gameplay Metrics and Gameplay Performance Segmentation: An audio-visual approach for assessing player experience.

Gameplay metrics is a method and approach that is growing in popularity amongst the game studies research community for its capacity to assess players’ engagement with game systems. Yet, little has been done, to date, to quantify players’ responses to feedback employed by games that conveys information to players, i.e., their audio-visual streams. The present thesis introduces a novel approach to player experience assessment - termed feedback-based gameplay metrics - which seeks to gather gameplay metrics from the audio-visual feedback streams presented to the player during play. So far, gameplay metrics - quantitative data about a game state and the player's interaction with the game system - are directly logged via the game's source code. The need to utilise source code restricts the range of games that researchers can analyse. By using computer science algorithms for audio-visual processing, yet to be employed for processing gameplay footage, the present thesis seeks to extract similar metrics through the audio-visual streams, thus circumventing the need for access to, whilst also proposing a method that focuses on describing the way gameplay information is broadcast to the player during play. In order to operationalise feedback-based gameplay metrics, the present thesis introduces the concept of gameplay performance segmentation which describes how coherent segments of play can be identified and extracted from lengthy game play sessions. Moreover, in order to both contextualise the method for processing metrics and provide a conceptual framework for analysing the results of a feedback-based gameplay metric segmentation, a multi-layered architecture based on five gameplay concepts (system, game world instance, spatial-temporal, degree of freedom and interaction) is also introduced. Finally, based on data gathered from game play sessions with participants, the present thesis discusses the validity of feedback-based gameplay metrics, gameplay performance segmentation and the multi-layered architecture. A software system has also been specifically developed to produce gameplay summaries based on feedback-based gameplay metrics, and examples of summaries (based on several games) are presented and analysed. The present thesis also demonstrates that feedback-based gameplay metrics can be conjointly analysed with other forms of data (such as biometry) in order to build a more complete picture of game play experience. Feedback based game-play metrics constitutes a post-processing approach that allows the researcher or analyst to explore the data however they wish and as many times as they wish. The method is also able to process any audio-visual file, and can therefore process material from a range of audio-visual sources. This novel methodology brings together game studies and computer sciences by extending the range of games that can now be researched but also to provide a viable solution accounting for the exact way players experience games

Exploring the cause of game (derived) arousal: What biometric accounts of player experience revealed

The function of this paper is to present research findings that ordinarily would never see the light of day, not because they have no value or significance, but they might seem marginal and less significant given the main focus of the research conducted. When studying player experience, there is value in widening the focus of research to avoid attributing too much value to one kind of experience over others. The findings presented here come from a much larger three-year research study into player experiences with games containing violence. The broad intent of the study was to query the strong association between effects research and responsive regulation measures (game classification). The research was guided by the idea that exploring “the extent to which the public’s perception of causal links between game playing and various social ills’ might be ‘moderated or even undermined by [knowledge of] how players actually respond to and negotiate their way through the content and characteristics of the medium” (OFLC, 2009, p. 24). To do this, the research employed a mixed methodology to examine player experience (as introduced in Schott et al., 2013a). The study produced a number of data points in order to characterize the multi-dimensional nature of players’ experiences. This paper focuses specifically on the outcome of utilizing a biometric measure (GSR) as a guide for determining which aspects, from game experiences that required hours of game play, should be assessed for their significance. The value of employing GSR as a textually neutral method for detecting which aspects of a game had an impact on players is assessed

Virage : Une réflexion pluridisciplinaire autour du temps dans la création numérique

We present in this article the development of the Virage project. This project aims to create a platform software for writting time and interaction in the context of digital stage management for living art. This project tries to answer some questions risen by a work group of AFIM (the french association for computer music). The project intends to produce a state of the art of the digital stage management, and to use this state to develop a prototype sotware. This propotype will be used in real conditions of stage management to get manager's points of view about our choices

The 'dominant effect' of games: Content vs. medium

Digital games receive an age-restriction rating based on the depiction of harmful content and its possible impact on players. Following on from film, the relationship between media content and its psychological impact on audiences is assumed to be further heightened by the interactive nature of the medium as it makes players responsible for constructing the moving-image on screen. While classification processes continue to serve as an exercise in caution, there remains little evaluation of a particular rating decision’s accuracy via any subsequent examination of the interactions between player and game text. This paper argues for the benefits of researched accounts detailing the interactive experience of games for its capacity to challenge public understanding of the medium. In doing so, the paper will introduce a research design that is currently being employed to achieve an understanding of player experiences. The intention is to produce an empirically validated model of media ‘usage,’ capable of accounting for the ‘actual’ experience of play and the ways game texts are activated under the agency of players once they enter everyday life and culture

Sites de rencontre en ligne : comment se gamifie l’amour 2.0 !

« Tinder, Meetic, Adopte Un Mec, Grindr… », ces noms résonnent dans la tête (et le cœur) de nombreux célibataires engagés dans une quête amoureuse, afin de gagner en expérience ou de trouver le Graal tant convoité : l’âme sœur ! Alors que les sites et applications de rencontre promettent des mises en relation facilitées et des affinités idylliques, sous-entendant une réussite à court terme (garante de leurs efficacités), la réalité est bien souvent différente, avec des utilisateurs qui y trouvent refuge, à la fois quotidiennement et sur le long terme. Si de nombreux paramètres entrent en compte pour expliquer cette implication régulière, des mécanismes particuliers, empruntés aux jeux vidéo, semblent être la nouvelle pierre angulaire de cette fidélisation.“Tinder, Meetic, Adopte Un Mec, Grindr…”, these names echo in the head (and heart) of a many single person engaged with a romantic quest, in order to gain experience or to find the long coveted grail: the soulmate! While dating sites and applications vow to create facilitated relationships and idyllic affinities, implying a short term success (proving their efficacity), the reality is often different, with users finding refuge within them, both daily and on the long-run. If various parameters should be taken into account to justify this regular implication, specific mechanisms, borrowed from video game, seem to be the new keystone of this loyalty