A Model-driven Framework for Educational Game Design

Educational games are a class of serious games whose main purpose is to teach some subject to their players. Despite the many existing design frameworks, these games are too often created in an ad-hoc manner, and typically without the use of a game design document (GDD). We argue that a reason for this phenomenon is that current ways to structure, create and update GDDs do not increase the value of the artifact in the design and development process. As a solution, we propose a model-driven, web-based knowledge management environment that supports game designers in the creation of a GDD that accounts for and relates educational and entertainment game elements. The foundation of our approach is our devised conceptual model for educational games, which also defines the structure of the design environment. We present promising results from an evaluation of our environment with eight experts in serious games

A Game Design Framework for Alleviating Negative Emotions of Cancer Patients

Cancer has been, and still is, one of the most widespread diseases of the last decades, the predominant cause of death in people under the age of 65 in the European Union, and the reason for people to feel fear, shame, loneliness, to name only but a few emotions. The application of games in healthcare offers i) high levels of immersion, ii) increased motivation, especially from younger people, and iii) the ability to build environments providing an experience that is impossible to have in real-life. The aim of this paper is to propose a comprehensive game design framework based on two pillars: 1. a methodology for designing games specifically targeted at alleviating negative emotions in cancer patients, and 2. a methodology for choosing the technology with which the game will be implemented.QC 20220525Part of proceedings ISBN 9781665426497</p

A Model-driven Framework for Educational Game Design

Educational games are a class of serious games whose main purpose is to teach some subject to their players. Despite the many existing design frameworks, these games are too often created in an ad-hoc manner, and typically without the use of a game design document GDD. We argue that a reason for this phenomenon is that current ways to structure, create and update GDDs do not increase the value of the artifact in the design and development process. As a solution, we propose a model-driven, web-based knowledge management environment that supports game designers in the creation of a GDD that accounts for and relates educational and entertainment game elements. The foundation of our approach is our devised conceptual model for educational games, which also defines the structure of the design environment. We present promising results from an evaluation of our environment with eight experts in serious games

A Participatory Simulation Framework for Agent-Based Model Validation in Air Traffic Management

The European Air Traffic Management (ATM) system is responsible for the safe and timely transportation of more than a billion passengers annually. It is a system that depends heavily on technology and is expected to stay on top of the technological advancements and be an early adopter of technologies. Nevertheless, technological change in ATM has historically developed at a slow pace. As a result, an agent-based model (ABM) of the ATM technology deployment cycle has been developed. This ABM is part of a larger project, which intends to recommend new policy measures for overcoming any barriers associated with technology adoption in ATM. In this paper, a participatory simulation framework validating this ABM is proposed. The aim of the framework is to be able to provide evidences with regards to validation both in an agent as well as in a system level.QC 20210810</p

The Tacit Knowledge in Games: From Validation to Debriefing

Game sessions consist of three phases: briefing, gameplay, and debriefing, with the latter being considered the most important feature of games. Nevertheless, given that games are considered by many to be more of an artistic form rather than a scientific artifact, a question that rises is: Can game sessions in general and debriefing in particular be analyzed and performed in a rigorous scientific way? In other words, can they be consistently structured, given the different characteristics of games, and can clear criteria on what would constitute a successful game session and debriefing be defined? The answer to these questions is yes. Yet, it remains a challenge to extract the knowledge of experts, which resides to a large extent in the tacit knowledge spectrum. Hence, the aim of this paper is to shed some light in this tacit knowledge possessed by experts and to gain understanding on why certain practices are more prone to success than others as well as bring into the surface other practices that have remained well hidden. In order to accomplish this goal, three rounds of interviews were conducted.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Policy Analysi

An Auction Game for Railway Capacity Allocation

The deregulation of railway systems across western countries have brought the subject of pricing railway slots to the surface. The majority of the infrastructure remains under the ownership and supervision of governments, which in turn further complicates the pricing of slots, since profit does not become the sole aim. This paper proposes an auction model for pricing railway slots aimed at been applied in the Swedish railways. Moreover, in this paper, a game built on top of the auction model is presented as an interface that would enable testing the auction model with railway operators.QC 20210810</p

Technology Adoption in Air Traffic Management: A Combination of Agent-Based Modeling with Behavioral Economics

The European Air Traffic Management (ATM) system is responsible for the safe and timely transportation of more than a billion passengers annually. It is a system that depends heavily on technology and is expected to stay on top of the technological advancements and be an early adopter of technologies. Nevertheless, technological change in ATM has historically developed at a slow pace. In this paper, an agent-based model (ABM) of the ATM technology deployment cycle is proposed. The proposed ABM is part of a larger project, which intends to recommend new policy measures for overcoming any barriers associated with technology adoption in ATM. It is a novel and one of the first approaches aiming at simulating the adoption of technology in ATM that combines the organizational point of view, i.e. stakeholders’ level, the focus on policy testing and the inclusion of behavioral economics aspects.QC 20210618</p

The Tacit Knowledge in Games: From Validation to Debriefing

Game sessions consist of three phases: briefing, gameplay, and debriefing, with the latter being considered the most important feature of games. Nevertheless, given that games are considered by many to be more of an artistic form rather than a scientific artifact, a question that rises is: Can game sessions in general and debriefing in particular be analyzed and performed in a rigorous scientific way? In other words, can they be consistently structured, given the different characteristics of games, and can clear criteria on what would constitute a successful game session and debriefing be defined? The answer to these questions is yes. Yet, it remains a challenge to extract the knowledge of experts, which resides to a large extent in the tacit knowledge spectrum. Hence, the aim of this paper is to shed some light in this tacit knowledge possessed by experts and to gain understanding on why certain practices are more prone to success than others as well as bring into the surface other practices that have remained well hidden. In order to accomplish this goal, three rounds of interviews were conducted