Who are with us: MOOC learners on a FutureLearn course

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) attract learners with a variety of backgrounds. Engaging them using game development was trialled in a beginner’s programming course, “Begin programming: build your first mobile game”, on FutureLearn platform. The course has completed two iterations: first in autumn 2013 and second in spring 2014 with thousands of participants. This paper explores the characteristics of learner groups attracted by these two consecutive runs of the course and their perceptions of the course using pre- and post-course surveys. Recommendations for practitioners are offered, including when the audience is different to the one expected. A MOOC is unlikely to please everyone, especially with such large cohorts. Nevertheless, this course, using game development as a vehicle to teach programming, seems to have offered a balanced learning experience to a diverse group of learners. However, MOOC creators and facilitators should accept that a course cannot be made to please everyone and try to communicate clearly who the intended audience for the course are.

Geração procedural de cenários orientada a objetivos

The game industry has been experiencing a consistent increase in production costs of games lately. Part of this increase refers to the current trend of having bigger, more interactive and replayable environments. This trend translates to an increase in both team size and development time, which makes game development a even more risky investment and may reduce innovation in the area. As a possible solution to this problem, the scientific community is focusing on the generation of procedural content and, more specifically, on procedurally generated levels. Given the great diversity and complexity of games, most works choose to deal with a specific genre, platform games being one of the most studied. This work aims at proposing a procedural level generation method for platform/adventure games, a fairly more complex genre than most classic platformers which so far has not been the subject of study from other works. The level generation process was divided in two steps, planning and viusal generation, respectively responsible for generating a compact representation of the level and determining its view. The planning stage was divided in game design and level design, and uses a goaloriented process to output a set of rooms. The visual generation step receives a set of rooms and fills its interior with the appropriate parts of previously authored geometry

Jogo digital e analogias: uma proposta para o ensino de Cinética Química

Pós-graduação em Educação para a Ciência - FC

Exploración y desarrollo de diferentes técnicas de desarrollo de videojuegos multijugador

[ES] En la actualidad, no cabe duda de que la industria del videojuego se ha ganado un puesto más que imperante en el mercado. Además, se trata de una industria que ha evolucionado vertiginosamente, desde los sencillos juegos de la era de los 8-bit hasta llegar a los juegos multijugador masivos actuales. Así como los juegos han cambiado, las técnicas de desarrollo también lo han hecho. El presente proyecto, titulado “Beat Fighters!: Exploración y Desarrollo de diferentes Técnicas de Desarrollo de Videojuegos Multijugador” es, en realidad, un estudio y desarrollo de distintas técnicas utilizadas en el desarrollo de videojuegos, haciendo hincapié en dos campos en concreto: la inteligencia artificial y la red.

Desarrollo de un videojuego multiplataforma en Java

[ES] El trabajo consistirá en abordar el desarrollo de un videojuego utilizando el lenguaje de programación Java y una librería especializada en desarrollo de videojuegos. Crearemos un videojuego del género plataformas. Para ello utilizaremos una vista en dos dimensiones, el jugador controlará un personaje humanoide con el que deberá atravesar una serie de niveles. Los niveles estarán agrupados en mundos con distintas temáticas (nieve, espacio, etc.) y en ellos el jugador se encontrará con múltiples obstáculos y enemigos. Los mundos se definen como agrupaciones de diez niveles en las que en el décimo nivel de cada mundo (nivel final) el jugador se enfrenta a un enemigo con una complejidad mayor al resto. Un ejemplo de videojuego de plataformas similar al que se va a desarrollar sería: "Super Mario Bros.". La librería que utilizaremos permite el desarrollo de videojuegos de escritorio y para móviles utilizando el mismo código. Es multiplataforma y soporta Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, y navegadores con soporte WebGL.

Avoimen datan käyttäminen peleissä

Tämä kandidaatintyö keskittyy avoimen datan käyttämiseen peleissä nyt ja tulevaisuudessa. Sen tavoitteena on tutkia avoimen datan hyötyjä, saatavuutta ja mahdollisuuksia. Tuloksena selvisi, että useimmissa tapauksissa datan avaamisesta hyötyvät kaikki osapuolet. Runsaasti erilaista avointa dataa on saatavilla monissa erilaissa tiedostomuodoissa, moniin eri tarkoituksiin. Avoin data on hyödyllistä peleissä, koska sen avulla voidaan luoda monenlaista sisältöä niihin. Joitakin onnistuneita kokeiluja on jo tehty peleillä ja avoimella datalla, joten se voi olla hyvin tärkeä osa pelialaa tulevaisuudessa.

The Development of TASTER, a Cognitive Training Game Using Human-Centered Design, Tailored for Children with Global and Specific Cognitive Impairments

Children with Prader-Willi syndrome often exhibit challenging behavior in response to changes to routine. This phenomenon has been linked to a deficit in task switching ability which has been observed in children with the syndrome. TASTER is a cognitive training game which is being designed with input from a group of children with Prader- Willi syndrome, which aims to train task switching ability and thus reduce associated challenging behavior.

Introduction to Game Design and Development

This is the introductory lecture to COMP3218. We introduce ourselves, cover the philosophy of the course, the structure and assessment process, and lead an initial game design exercise.

Real options and game theoretical approaches to real estate development projects: multiple equilibria and the implications of different tie-breaking rules

This paper contributes to a fast growing literature which introduces game theory in the analysis of real option investments in a competitive setting. Specifically, in this paper we focus on the issue of multiple equilibria and on the implications that different equilibrium selections may have for the pricing of real options and for subsequent strategic decisions. We present some theoretical results of the necessary conditions to have multiple equilibria and we show under which conditions different tie-breaking rules result in different economic decisions. We then present a numerical exercise using the in formation set obtained on a real estate development in South London. We find that risk aversion reduces option value and this reduction decreases marginally as negative externalities decrease.

The influence of career histories on team perfomance in new product development: a study of the video game industry

The purpose of this research is to contribute to the literature on organizational demography and new product development by investigating how diverse individual career histories impact team performance. Moreover we highlighted the importance of considering also the institutional context and the specific labour market arrangements in which a team is embedded, in order to interpret correctly the effect of career-related diversity measures on performance. The empirical setting of the study is the videogame industry, and the teams in charge of the development of new game titles. Video games development teams are the ideal setting to investigate the influence of career histories on team performance, since the development of videogames is performed by multidisciplinary teams composed by specialists with a wide variety of technical and artistic backgrounds, who execute a significant amounts of creative thinking. We investigate our research question both with quantitative methods and with a case study on the Japanese videogame industry: one of the most innovative in this sector. Our results show how career histories in terms of occupational diversity, prior functional diversity and prior product diversity, usually have a positive influence on team performance. However, when the moderating effect of the institutional setting is taken in to account, career diversity has different or even opposite effect on team performance, according to the specific national context in which a team operates.