Amplifying applied game development and uptake

The established (digital) leisure game industry is historically one dominated by large international hardware vendors (e.g. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo), major publishers and supported by a complex network of development studios, distributors and retailers. New modes of digital distribution and development practice are challenging this business model and the leisure games industry landscape is one experiencing rapid change. The established (digital) leisure games industry, at least anecdotally, appears reluctant to participate actively in the applied games sector (Stewart et al., 2013). There are a number of potential explanations as to why this may indeed be the case including ; A concentration on large-scale consolidation of their (proprietary) platforms, content, entertainment brand and credibility which arguably could be weakened by association with the conflicting notion of purposefulness (in applied games) in market niches without clear business models or quantifiable returns on investment. In contrast, the applied games industry exhibits the characteristics of an emerging, immature industry namely: weak interconnectedness, limited knowledge exchange, an absence of harmonising standards, limited specialisations, limited division of labour and arguably insufficient evidence of the products efficacies (Stewart et al., 2013; Garcia Sanchez, 2013) and could, arguably, be characterised as a dysfunctional market. To test these assertions the Realising an Applied Gaming Ecosystem (RAGE) project will develop a number of self contained gaming assets to be actively employed in the creation of a number of applied games to be implemented and evaluated as regional pilots across a variety of European educational, training and vocational contexts. RAGE is a European Commission Horizon 2020 project with twenty (pan European) partners from industry, research and education with the aim of developing, transforming and enriching advanced technologies from the leisure games industry into self-contained gaming assets (i.e. solutions showing economic value potential) that could support a variety of stakeholders including teachers, students, and, significantly, game studios interested in developing applied games. RAGE will provide these assets together with a large quantity of high-quality knowledge resources through a self-sustainable Ecosystem, a social space that connects research, the gaming industries, intermediaries, education providers, policy makers and end-users in order to stimulate the development and application of applied games in educational, training and vocational contexts. The authors identify barriers (real and perceived) and opportunities facing stakeholders in engaging, exploring new emergent business models ,developing, establishing and sustaining an applied gaming eco system in Europe.

Stories into games (Workshops and digital work)

In the summer of 2012 - 2013, the State Library of Queensland invited us to run a number of workshops for younger participants as part of the Garage Gamer program. The brief was very much about the local games industry and the SLQ community, the core concept was about participant contribution. The 'Stories into Games' series of workshops ran across three Saturdays (January 5 - March 2). The workshops were aimed at younger audiences (ages 6-12) and the concept was to engage this group with games as game makers and designers, rather than players. Each session saw a group of participants create a shared story, illustrate the story and then make game assets and objects out of their illustrative work. These were then put into a raw framework created in the Unity Game Engine so that the stories could be played.

The RAGE Software Asset Model and Metadata Model

Software assets are key output of the RAGE project and they can be used by applied game developers to enhance the pedagogical and educational value of their games. These software assets cover a broad spectrum of functionalities – from player analytics including emotion detection to intelligent adaptation and social gamification. In order to facilitate integration and interoperability, all of these assets adhere to a common model, which describes their properties through a set of metadata. In this paper the RAGE asset model and asset metadata model is presented, capturing the detail of assets and their potential usage within three distinct dimensions – technological, gaming and pedagogical. The paper highlights key issues and challenges in constructing the RAGE asset and asset metadata model and details the process and design of a flexible metadata editor that facilitates both adaptation and improvement of the asset metadata model.

Making sense of game based user data: learning analytics in applied games

Digital learning games are useful educational tools with high motivational potential. With the application of games for instruction there comes the need of acknowledging learning game experiences also in the context of educational assessment. Learning analytics provides new opportunities for supporting assessment in and of educational games. We give an overview of current learning analytics methods in this field and reflect on existing challenges. An approach of providing reusable software assets for interaction assessment and evaluation in games is presented. This is part of a broader initiative of making available advanced methodologies and tools for supporting applied game development.

Game-­theoretic Resource Allocation with Real-­time Probabilistic Surveillance Information

Game-theoretic security resource allocation problems have generated significant interest in the area of designing and developing security systems. These approaches traditionally utilize the Stackelberg game model for security resource scheduling in order to improve the protection of critical assets. The basic assumption in Stackelberg games is that a defender will act first, then an attacker will choose their best response after observing the defender’s strategy commitment (e.g., protecting a specific asset). Thus, it requires an attacker’s full or partial observation of a defender’s strategy. This assumption is unrealistic in real-time threat recognition and prevention. In this paper, we propose a new solution concept (i.e., a method to predict how a game will be played) for deriving the defender’s optimal strategy based on the principle of acceptable costs of minimax regret. Moreover, we demonstrate the advantages of this solution concept by analyzing its properties.

Livelihood and Community Development: LforS learning and simulation game

Up to 15 people can participate in the game, which is supervised by a moderator. Households consisting of 1-5 people discuss options for diversification of household strategies. Aim of the game: By devising appropriate strategies, households seek to stand up to various types of events while improving their economic and social situation and, at the same time, taking account of ecological conditions. The annual General Community Meeting (GCM) provides an opportunity for households to create a general set-up at the local level that is more or less favourable to the strategies they are pursuing. The development of a community investment strategy, to be implemented by the GCM, and successful coordination between households will allow players to optimise their investments at the household level. The household who owns the most assets at the end of the game wins. Players participate very actively, as the game stimulates lively and interesting discussions. They find themselves confronted with different types of decision-making related to the reality of their daily lives. They explore different ways to model their own household strategies and discuss risks and opportunities. Reflections on the course of the game continually refer to the real-life situations of the participants.

A marketingeszközök és –tevékenységek részvényesi értékre gyakorolt hatása (The effect of marketing assets and activities on shareholder value)

A vállalati marketing pénzügyi teljesítményre, különösen részvényesi értékre gyakorolt hatásának kimutatása mind fontosabbá válik a marketingráfordítások nagyságának növekedésével, valamint annak felismerésével, hogy a részvényesek számára vevői érték nélkül nem lehet hosszú távon értéket biztosítani, azonban kedvező piaci eredményekkel sem feltétlenül valósul meg a pénzügyi teljesítmény növekedése. A szerzők tanulmányukban a marketingeszközök és -tevékenységek részvényesi értékre gyakorolt hatását vizsgálják, rámutatnak arra, hogy milyen módon befolyásolhatják a részvényeseket megillető szabad pénzáramot, a tulajdonosi megtérülést, a stratégiai tervezési időhorizontot és a végértéket. A marketing néhány lehetséges negatív hatását is kiemelik. Ezt követően felvázolják a marketingjellegű beruházások reálopciós karakterisztikáit, valamint játékelméleti összefüggéseit dinamikusan változó környezetben. ________ Proving the effect of corporate marketing on financial performance, especially on shareholder value, becomes more and more important as marketing expenditures increase. Furthermore by the recognition that for shareholders without customer value it is not possible to provide value in the long run, however, neither good market results can assure the growth of financial performance. In this paper the authors examine the effect of marketing assets and activities on shareholder value, they point out how these can influence free cash flow to equity, shareholder return, strategic planning time period and terminal value. They emphasize also some possible negative effects of marketing. The authors outline the real optional characteristics of marketing investments and their game theoretical relations in dynamic environment.

D3.3 – First Social Gamification Assets

This deliverable is software, as such this document is abridged to be as succinct as possible, the extended descriptions and detailed documentation for the software are online. The document consists of two parts, part one describes the first bundle of social gamification assets developed in WP3, part two presents mock-ups of the RAGE ecosystem gamification. In addition to the software outline, included in part one is a short market analysis of existing gamification solutions, outline rationale for combining the three social gamification assets into one unified asset, and the branding exercise to make the assets more developer friendly.Online links to the source code, binaries, demo and documentation for the assets are provided. The combined assets offer game developers as well as a wide range of software developers the opportunity to readily enhance existing games or digital platforms with multiplayer gamification functionalities, catering for both competitive and cooperative game dynamics. The solution consist of a flexible client-server solution which can run either as a cloud-based service, serving many games or have specific instances for individual games as necessary.

D3.1 – First Bundle of Core Social Agency Assets

This deliverable presents and describes the first delivery of assets that are part of the core social agency bundle. In total, the bundle includes 16 assets, divided into 4 main categories. Each category is related to a type of challenge that developers of applied games are typically faced with and the aim of the included assets is to provide solutions to those challenges. The main goal of this document is to provide the reader with a description for each included asset, accompanied by links to their source code, distributable versions, demonstrations and documentation. A short discussion of what are the future steps for each asset is also given. The primary audience for the contents of this deliverable are the game developers, both inside and outside of the project, which can use this document as an official list of the current social agency assets and their associated resources. Note that the information about which RAGE use cases are using which of these assets is described in Deliverable 4.2.