Computer game development education at university

This paper articulates some of the challenges for computer game development courses at university level. A typical course development of this type is described. The need to include creative methods alongside more formal software development methodologies as core elements of computer game education is proposed and placed within the context of an industry specific framework. The evolutionary nature of the computer game industry requires that computer game development programmes at university should be equally evolutionary and adaptable to change

Determining the Health Problems of Alaska Military Youth Academy Participants

Alaska Military Youth Academy is an accredited residential high school program that utilizes a quasi-military approach to teach life skills to at-risk youth. Physical fitness is a key component and is modeled after military basic training standards. Participants in the program are largely from disadvantaged backgrounds and frequently disconnected from the healthcare system. The purpose of this project was to identify and describe the most life-threatening and/or prevalent pre-existing health conditions of program participants. A retrospective review of applications and pre-participation physical exams submitted by participants (N = 771) from March, 2012 through February, 2014 was conducted in order to better understand the health risks these adolescents face during the program. The top five most prevalent pre-existing health conditions in this sample included obesity (n = 187), allergies (n = 170), asthma/reactive airway disease (n = 103), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder/attention deficit disorder (n = 88), and depression (n = 81). Other potentially life threatening health conditions included a history of cardiac arrhythmias (n = 5), congenital heart defects (n = 5), hypertension (n = 4) and epileptic seizures (n = 3). In an effort to mitigate the risk of injury these young athletes face in an intense physical fitness program, the PPE Pre-Participation Physical Evaluation (4th ed.) monograph (Bernhardt & Roberts, 2010) was utilized as guidelines to make recommendations for improvement of the preparticipation health history and physical exams used to screen AMYA applicants

Tabletop prototyping of serious games for ‘soft skills’ training

Serious games offer a relatively low cost, highly engaging alternative to traditional forms of soft skills training. The current paper describes an approach taken to designing a serious game for the training of soft skills. A tabletop prototype of the game was created and evaluated with a group of 24 participants. Initial findings suggest that the game successfully created an environment in which it was advantageous to engage in appropriate collaborative decision making behaviors, as well as providing built-in opportunities for a tutor to guide under-performing groups

Co-viewing TV with Twitter: more interesting than the shows?

Social media services, and Twitter in particular, are changing the way in which many people consume traditional broadcast media. Real-time backchannel conversations are now common-place as audiences simultaneously watch TV whilst using Twitter to broadcast their own thoughts, sentiments, opinions and emotions related to what they are watching. This individual behavior, when aggregated, results in a new social experience comprising of mass, real-time, coconsumption of TV services that has, thus far, been neither recognized nor investigated by the HCI community nor the broadcast industry. This paper describes a work-in-progress which aims to understand user behaviour in this burgeoning area and provides some preliminary analysis of viewers’ Twitter activity surrounding the popular UK TV show, The X Factor

Hybridisation for versatile decision-making in game opponent AI

Hybridisation for versatile decision-making in game opponent A

Blowtooth: pervasive gaming in unique and challenging environments

This paper describes Blowtooth, a Bluetooth implemented pervasive game where players smuggle virtual drugs through real airport security with the help of unknowing bystanders. The game explores the nature of pervasive game playing in environments that are not generally regarded as playful or “fun,” and where people are subject to particularly high levels of intrusive surveillance and monitoring. Six participants who were travelling internationally within a two-week period were recruited to evaluate the game. Findings suggest that creating pervasive games that incorporate the unique features of their context as part of the game may provide enjoyable, novel and thought-provoking experiences for players

Thereʼs no ʻIʼ in ʻEmergency Management Team:ʼ designing and evaluating a serious game for training emergency managers in group decision making skills

Serious games are games that are designed to educate rather than entertain. The game outlined and evaluated here was commissioned and designed as a tool to improve the group decision making skills of people who manage real-world emergencies such as floods, fires, volcanoes and chemical spills. The game design exploits research on decision making groups and applies pedagogically sound games design principles. An evaluation of the game design was carried out based on a paper prototype. Eight participants were recruited and assigned to two groups of four participants each. These groups were video recorded while playing the game and the video was analysed in terms of game actions and member participation. Results indicate that the group who behaved in a more appropriate manner for a decision making group were rewarded with more positive feedback from the game state. These findings suggest that the game itself delivers appropriate feedback to players on their collaborative behaviour and is thus fit for the purposes intended in the current project

Software, architecture, and participatory design

Much work in software architecture has been inspired by work in physical architecture, in particular Alexander's work on `design patterns'. By contrast, Alexander's work is little-used in town planning and architecture. In this paper, we examine some of the reasons that this is so, describe some parallels and differences between the fields of physical and software architecture, and identify areas in which future collaboration may be fruitful. The notion of `participatory design' is important in software engineering and in urban regeneration, but the participatory mechanisms in each field are quite different

There's a monster in my kitchen: using aversive feedback to motivate behaviour change

In this paper we argue that “persuasive technologies,” developed to motivate behaviour change in users, have so far failed to exploit the established body of empirical research within behavioural science. We propose that persuasive technologies may benefit from both adapting to individual preferences, and a constructive use of aversive, in addition to appetitive, feedback. We detail an example application that demonstrates how this approach can be incorporated into an application designed to train users to adopt more environmentally friendly behaviours in their domestic kitchens