Workflow patterns as a means to model task succession in games – a preliminary case study

Over about the last decade, people involved in game development have noted the need for more formal models and tools to support the design phase of games. It is argued that the present lack of such formal tools is currently hindering knowledge transfer among designers. Formal visual languages, on the other hand, can help to more effectively express, abstract and communicate game design concepts. Moreover, formal tools can assist in the prototyping phase, allowing designers to reason about and simulate game mechanics on an abstract level. In this paper we present an initial investigation into whether workflow patterns – which have already proven to be effective for modeling business processes – are a suitable way to model task succession in games. Our preliminary results suggest that workflow patterns show promise in this regard but some limitations, especially in regard to time constraints, currently restrict their potential.

It’s Not Just a Game: Contemporary Challenges for Games Research and the Internet

In this final chapter we will raise a number of issues that we have encountered as we have put this collection of papers together. In doing this, we also reflect upon the seven challenges for video game theory that Bernard Perron and Mark Wolf(2009)put forward in the introduction to the second video game theory reader given it is probably one of the most recent assessments in the area at the time of writing. These challenges are concerned with Terminology and Accuracy, History, Methodology, Technology, Interactivity, Play and the Integration of Interdisciplinary Approaches. These issues will be brought up throughout this chapter, but not necessarily in mutually exclusive fashion...

Design and test of a custom instrumented leg press for injury and recovery intervention

There is an increasing desire and emphasis to integrate assessment tools into the everyday training environment of athletes. These tools are intended to fine-tune athlete development, enhance performance and aid in the development of individualised programmes for athletes. The areas of workload monitoring, skill development and injury assessment are expected to benefit from such tools. This paper describes the development of an instrumented leg press and its application to testing leg dominance with a cohort of athletes. The developed instrumented leg press is a 45° reclining sled-type leg press with dual force plates, a displacement sensor and a CCD camera. A custom software client was developed using C#. The software client enabled near-real-time display of forces beneath each limb together with displacement of the quad track roller system and video feedback of the exercise. In recording mode, the collection of athlete particulars is prompted at the start of the exercise, and pre-set thresholds are used subsequently to separate the data into epochs from each exercise repetition. The leg press was evaluated in a controlled study of a cohort of physically active adults who performed a series of leg press exercises. The leg press exercises were undertaken at a set cadence with nominal applied loads of 50%, 100% and 150% of body weight without feedback. A significant asymmetry in loading of the limbs was observed in healthy adults during both the eccentric and concentric phases of the leg press exercise (P < .05). Mean forces were significantly higher beneath the non-dominant limb (4–10%) and during the concentric phase of the muscle action (5%). Given that symmetrical loading is often emphasized during strength training and remains a common goal in sports rehabilitation, these findings highlight the clinical potential for this instrumented leg press system to monitor symmetry in lower-limb loading during progressive strength training and sports rehabilitation protocols.

Design and implementation of unified communications as a service based on the OpenStack cloud environment

Cloud Computing, based on early virtual computer concepts and technologies, is now itself a maturing technology in the marketplace and it has revolutionized the IT industry, being the powerful platform that many businesses are choosing to migrate their in-premises IT services onto. Cloud solution has the potential to reduce the capital and operational expenses associated with deploying IT services on their own. In this study, we have implemented our own private cloud solution, infrastructure as a service (IaaS), using the OpenStack platform with high availability and a dynamic resource allocation mechanism. Besides, we have hosted unified communication as a service (UCaaS) in the underlying IaaS and successfully tested voice over IP (VoIP), video conferencing, voice mail and instant messaging (IM) with clients located at the remote site. The proposed solution has been developed in order to give advice to bussinesses that want to build their own cloud environment, IaaS and host cloud services and applicatons in the cloud. This paper also aims at providing an alternate option for proprietary cloud solutions for service providers to consider.

Cultural and linguistic localization of games to bridge the digital and cultural divide in indigenous populations

Localization of technology is now widely applied to the preservation and revival of the culture of indigenous peoples around the world, most commonly through the translation into indigenous languages, which has been proven to increase the adoption of technology. However, this current form of localization excludes two demographic groups, which are key to the effectiveness of localization efforts in the African context: the younger generation (under the age of thirty) with an Anglo- American cultural view who have no need or interest in their indigenous culture; and the older generation (over the age of fifty) who are very knowledgeable about their indigenous culture, but have little or no knowledge on the use of a computer. This paper presents the design of a computer game engine that can be used to provide an interface for both technology and indigenous culture learning for both generations. Four indigenous Ugandan games are analyzed and identified for their attractiveness to both generations, to both rural and urban populations, and for their propensity to develop IT skills in older generations.

Burley! (sound design)

A young tetra fish, one of a million in her school, just wants some attention. Feeling lonely and bored, she is attracted by the manic antics of a gang of older fish who spend the hours inventing new extreme sports. She begins a quest to gain their acceptance, but at what cost?

Strolls project and website

The Strolls project was originally devised for a colleague in Finland and a cross cultural event event called AU goes to FI – the core concept is both re-experience of and presentation of the ‘everyday’ experience of life rather than the usual cultural icons. The project grew and was presented as a mash-up site with google maps (truna aka j.turner & David Browning). The site is now cob-webbed but some of the participant made strolls are archived here. The emphasis on the walk and taking of image stills (as opposed to the straightforward video) is based on a notion of partaking of the environment with technology. The process involves a strange and distinct embodiment as the maker must stop and choose each subsequent shot in order to build up the final animated sequence. The viewer becomes subtly involved in the maker’s decisions.

Evolutionary game design : automated game design comes of age

The "Humies" awards are an annual competition held in conjunction with the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), in which cash prizes totalling $10,000 are awarded to the most human-competitive results produced by any form of evolutionary computation published in the previous year. This article describes the gold medal-winning entry from the 2012 "Humies" competition, based on the LUDI system for playing, evaluating and creating new board games. LUDI was able to demonstrate human-competitive results in evolving novel board games that have gone on to be commercially published, one of which, Yavalath, has been ranked in the top 2.5% of abstract board games ever invented. Further evidence of human-competitiveness was demonstrated in the evolved games implicitly capturing several principles of good game design, outperforming human designers in at least one case, and going on to inspire a new sub-genre of games.

Second-order quantile methods for experts and combinatorial games

We aim to design strategies for sequential decision making that adjust to the difficulty of the learning problem. We study this question both in the setting of prediction with expert advice, and for more general combinatorial decision tasks. We are not satisfied with just guaranteeing minimax regret rates, but we want our algorithms to perform significantly better on easy data. Two popular ways to formalize such adaptivity are second-order regret bounds and quantile bounds. The underlying notions of 'easy data', which may be paraphrased as "the learning problem has small variance" and "multiple decisions are useful", are synergetic. But even though there are sophisticated algorithms that exploit one of the two, no existing algorithm is able to adapt to both. In this paper we outline a new method for obtaining such adaptive algorithms, based on a potential function that aggregates a range of learning rates (which are essential tuning parameters). By choosing the right prior we construct efficient algorithms and show that they reap both benefits by proving the first bounds that are both second-order and incorporate quantiles.

Using augmented video to test in-car user experiences of context analog HUDs

Automotive interactive technologies represent an exemplar challenge for user experience (UX) designers, as the concerns for aesthetics, functionality and usability add up to the compelling issues of safety and cognitive demand. This extended abstract presents a methodology for the user-centred creation and evaluation of novel in-car applications, involving real users in realistic use settings. As a case study, we present the methodologies of an ideation workshop in a simulated environment and the evaluation of six design idea prototypes for in-vehicle head up display (HUD) applications using a semi-naturalistic drive. Both methods rely on video recordings of real traffic situations that the users are familiar with and/or experienced themselves. The extended abstract presents experiences and results from the evaluation and reflection on our methods.

Overcoming acculturation: Physical education recruits' experiences of an alternative pedagogical approach to games teaching

Background Physical education teacher education (PETE) programmes have been identified as a critical platform to encourage the exploration of alternative teaching approaches by pre-service teachers. However, the socio-cultural constraint of acculturation or past physical education and sporting experiences results in the maintenance of the status quo of a teacher-driven, reproductive paradigm. Previous studies have reported successfully overcoming the powerful influence of acculturation, resulting in a change in PETE students’ custodial teaching beliefs and receptiveness to alternative teaching approaches. However, to date, limited information has been reported about how PETE students’ acculturation shaped their receptiveness to an alternative teaching approach. This is particularly the case for PETE recruits identified in the literature as most resistant to change. Purpose To explore the features and experiences of an alternative games teaching approach that appealed to PETE recruits’ identified as most resistant to change, requiring a specific sample of PETE recruits with strong, custodial, traditional physical education teaching beliefs, and whom are high achieving sporting products of this traditional culture. The alternative teaching approach explored in this study is the constraints-led approach (CLA), which is similar operationally to TGfU, but distinguished by a neurobiological theoretical framework (nonlinear pedagogy) that informs learning design. Participants and Setting A purposive sample of 10 Australian PETE students was recruited for the study. All participants initially had strong, custodial, traditional physical education teaching beliefs, and were successful sporting products of this teaching approach. After experiencing the CLA as learners during a games unit, participants demonstrated receptiveness to the alternative pedagogy. Data Collection and Analysis Semi-structured interviews and written reflections were sources of data collection. Each participant was interviewed separately, once prior to participation in the games unit to explore their positive physical education experiences, and then again after participation to explore the specific games unit learning experiences that influenced their receptiveness to the alternative pedagogy. Participants completed written reflections about their personal experiences after selected practical sessions. Data were qualitatively analysed using grounded theory. Findings: Thorough examination of the data resulted in establishment of two prominent themes related to the appeal of the CLA for the participants: (i) psychomotor (effective in developing skill), and (ii), inclusivity (included students of varying skill level). The efficacy of the CLA in skill development was clearly an important mediator of receptiveness for highly successful products of a traditional culture. This significant finding could be explained by three key factors: the acculturation of the participants, the motor learning theory underpinning the alternative pedagogy and the unit learning design and delivery. The inclusive nature of the CLA provided a solution to the problem of exclusion, which also made the approach attractive to participants. Conclusion PETE educators could consider these findings when introducing an alternative pedagogy aimed at challenging PETE recruits’ custodial, traditional teaching beliefs. To mediate receptiveness, it is important that the learning theory underpinning the alternative approach is operationalised in a research-informed pedagogical learning design that facilitates students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the approach through experiencing and or observing it working.

Beyond energy savings: Exploring how design can extend the scope of eco-feedback for users in the home

As energy use information is becoming increasingly visible and sharable, this research aimed to inform the design of eco-feedback systems for the home. It involved observation and analysis of people's practices, which involve energy use, and their use of a domestic eco-feedback system. The question was asked: how can design best engage people with energy consumption information- making feedback more relevant to home occupants? In addressing this, a specifically bottom-up approach was employed, studying what people actually do with eco-feedback, rather than what technologists imagine eco-feedback will do to people.

Evolutionary optimization and game strategies for advanced multi-disciplinary design : applications to aeronautics and UAV design

Many complex aeronautical design problems can be formulated with efficient multi-objective evolutionary optimization methods and game strategies. This book describes the role of advanced innovative evolution tools in the solution, or the set of solutions of single or multi disciplinary optimization. These tools use the concept of multi-population, asynchronous parallelization and hierarchical topology which allows different models including precise, intermediate and approximate models with each node belonging to the different hierarchical layer handled by a different Evolutionary Algorithm. The efficiency of evolutionary algorithms for both single and multi-objective optimization problems are significantly improved by the coupling of EAs with games and in particular by a new dynamic methodology named “Hybridized Nash-Pareto games”. Multi objective Optimization techniques and robust design problems taking into account uncertainties are introduced and explained in detail. Several applications dealing with civil aircraft and UAV, UCAV systems are implemented numerically and discussed. Applications of increasing optimization complexity are presented as well as two hands-on test cases problems. These examples focus on aeronautical applications and will be useful to the practitioner in the laboratory or in industrial design environments. The evolutionary methods coupled with games presented in this volume can be applied to other areas including surface and marine transport, structures, biomedical engineering, renewable energy and environmental problems.

Electronic games: Can they create value for the moderate drinking brand?

Purpose This paper aims to understand how experiential value can generate awareness, image, perceived quality and loyalty to the moderate drinking brand. Electronic games are increasingly used by social marketers in an attempt to support target audiences uptake of social behaviours. However, little is known of the value this creates for target audiences and its impact on the uptake of a social behaviour brand. Design/methodology/approach A survey of male adolescents (n = 137) was conducted to test proposed relationships between experiential value and consumer-based brand equity dimensions. The research tested the game “Don’t Turn a Night Out into a Nightmare” that was developed by the Australian Federal Government as part of a social marketing campaign. Data were analysed using linear regression and MANCOVA. Findings The findings indicate that there are significant relationships between consumer-based brand equity dimensions for the social behaviour brand of moderate drinking, indicating relevance of a commercial marketing theory for social marketing. Furthermore, findings show that different combinations of experiential value dimensions have an impact on different components of consumer-based brand equity. These findings indicate that when social marketers are developing electronic games, they must create different combinations of value in game play to achieve awareness, positive image, high perceived quality and, ultimately, loyalty to a behaviour. Practical implications Social marketers seeking to use electronic games to influence the uptake of behaviour brands such as moderate drinking must provide a more complete value package. Originality/value This paper is the first to examine how experiential value can influence the creation of brand equity for a social behaviour brand.

Prototyping the self-authored video interview : Challenges and opportunities

Self-authored video- where participants are in control of the creation of their own footage- is a means of creating innovative design material and including all members of a family in design activities. This paper describes our adaptation to this process called Self Authored Video Interviews (SAVIs) that we created and prototyped to better understand how families engage with situated technology in the home. We find the methodology produces unique insights into family dynamics in the home, uncovering assumptions and tensions unlikely to be discovered using more conventional methods. The paper outlines a number of challenges and opportunities associated with the methodology, specifically, maximising the value of the insights gathered by appealing to children to champion the cause, and how to counter perceptions of the lingering presence of researchers.