{"title":"The Impacts of Virtual Reality Avatar Creation and Embodiment on Transgender and Genderqueer Individuals in Games: A grounded theory analysis of survey and interview data from Transgender and Genderqueer individuals about their experiences with Avatar Creation Interfaces in Virtual Reality","authors":"Zoey Reyes, Joshua A. Fisher","doi":"10.1145/3555858.3555882","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3555858.3555882","url":null,"abstract":"Virtual Reality (VR) developers create experiences that result in both gender dysphoria and euphoria for Transgender and Genderqueer individuals. Avatar Creation Interfaces (ACIs) and the game mechanics associated with them engage with these effects. Since all experiences in VR begin with a body in space, ACI mechanics can inform a more inclusive experience for Transgender and Genderqueer individuals. Research of ACIs’ effects on people with gender dysphoria and euphoria is limited and does not address the subject in VR. Given this knowledge gap, research on the euphoric and dysphoric effects of embodiment that Transgender and Genderqueer individuals have within VR is constructive. To this end, as part of a qualitative study, survey data from 29 individuals and interview data from 7 of those individuals were analyzed using the emergent method of grounded theory analysis. The data suggest that ACI VR experiences that give interactors creative agency, greater gender diversity, and the opportunity to be embodied in mundane and gender-affirming situations are dysphoria relieving and euphoria inducing.","PeriodicalId":290159,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games","volume":"60 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122113172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How to assist designers to model learning games with Petri nets?","authors":"Mathieu Muratet, T. Carron, Amel Yessad","doi":"10.1145/3555858.3555937","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3555858.3555937","url":null,"abstract":"In previous research, we presented a methodological framework that provides players with adaptive feedback. The core of this framework relies on modeling the learning game with a Petri net. However, this modeling is a challenging task. Indeed, Petri nets are well adapted to model dynamic and complex systems but require a mastery of the underlying mathematical formalism to build them manually. In particular, when the learning game is characterized by a large freedom of action. In this paper, we present an authoring tool and its domain-specific language to assist designers to model learning games with Petri nets. We carried out a case study where our contribution was implemented. Results show that our contribution helps designers to build the Petri net in combination with classical Petri net editors which are still useful to visualize, to check and to validate the Petri nets built.","PeriodicalId":290159,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123709338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Pirker, Enrica Loria, Alexander Kainz, Johannes Kopf, A. Dengel
{"title":"Virtual Reality and Education – The Steam Panorama","authors":"J. Pirker, Enrica Loria, Alexander Kainz, Johannes Kopf, A. Dengel","doi":"10.1145/3555858.3555899","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3555858.3555899","url":null,"abstract":"Virtual Reality (VR) is increasingly being used as an education medium also enabled by advances in the consumer market, making the devices less expensive and the setup easier. The hardware is more accessible, and players can use Steam as the leading distribution platform for VR applications. Hence, more and more VR applications are being published, also for educational purposes. However, the VR educational games panorama is yet to be described due to the recent rise of this area, as well as users’ perceptions (both learners and educators) and issues specific to each learning domain. Towards this, we provide a first analysis of the Steam educational VR applications. We report an analysis of user reviews describing the positive and negative characteristics of VR experiences. Finally, we give an overview of popular educational VR experiences and what we can learn from reviewers about the design requirements for specific learning fields.","PeriodicalId":290159,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126538966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Navigating Complexity: Investigating How Students Move Through the Game Design Process","authors":"J. Healy, C. Cullen","doi":"10.1145/3555858.3555905","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3555858.3555905","url":null,"abstract":"Game design has become a common feature at many higher education institutions since the first programmes emerged in the early 90s and a growing body of research around games education has emerged in recent years. This paper is part of an ongoing research project investigating how game design takes place and how designers navigate the complexities of the discipline. Student development logs (DevLogs) were produced throughout a six-week game design project and were analysed using a grounded theory approach. The study took a naturalistic approach and attempted to capture the process by which students moved from project brief to final deliverable. Through this analysis, four specific design approaches applied by students were identified: Open-Ended Design, Player Experience Design, World Design and Technical Design. In addition to this, we observed an overarching process of design moving from initiation to outcome and specifically we discuss the complexity of design approaches and their interrelated nature. Finally, we ask game design educators to consider if this complexity is necessary and if so how can we design learning to better support their academic development.","PeriodicalId":290159,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126681548","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Envisioning a cosmopolitan age for gaming. A case study of a speculative future for the Israeli games industry","authors":"Vered Pnueli, Renard Gluzman","doi":"10.1145/3555858.3555885","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3555858.3555885","url":null,"abstract":"This paper suggests a speculative scenario for the Israeli games industry. In this scenario we live in a cosmopolitan age whereby digital games produced in the peripheral countries will attain global acknowledgement by incorporating local attributes first. We propose cosmopolitanism as a strategy for imagining alternative futures for emergent game endeavors around the globe. Cosmopolitanism can be considered as a global identity that transcends cultures and countries and brings together cultural elements from different parts of the world. It is a perspective that emphasizes the search for more inclusive forms of social relations between “global citizens” and a global outlook and openness to difference. By way of example, we chose several nationally acclaimed Israeli games as a case study. This paper will explore an alternative future for these games. By doing so, we hope to open such dialogue and call developers around the globe to adopt a cosmopolitan way of making games.","PeriodicalId":290159,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130363126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The TaleMaker database of mixed-initiative co-created stories","authors":"M. R. Bueno Perez, Rafael Bidarra","doi":"10.1145/3555858.3555910","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3555858.3555910","url":null,"abstract":"Several datasets of stories and text have been proven useful for a variety of research fields. Yet, many of these datasets have suffered from the burden of being manually authored and/or annotated, affecting their size and potential to grow. To overcome this problem, we propose a novel database of stories collected from TaleMaker, an online multiplayer game that facilitates the playful co-creation of a story in order to eliminate the tedious task of authoring and annotating a dataset of stories. TaleMaker’s database relational schema provides a simple story representation, in which stories are named and clearly annotated. A story is composed of a sequence of plot points, each with several slots (e.g. action, character, location) filled with sense-annotated tokens (words) associated with a WordNet synset. In this paper, we describe in detail the database schema of TaleMaker’s stories repository. In addition, we suggest some of the potential applications of this repository of stories, including fostering research in fields such as story generation, narrative world generation, and word sense disambiguation.","PeriodicalId":290159,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games","volume":"170 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132070834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Debugging Procedural Level Designs with Mental Maps","authors":"R. V. Rozen, J. Dormans, Georgia Samaritaki","doi":"10.1145/3555858.3564252","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3555858.3564252","url":null,"abstract":"Procedural Level Generation provides tools and techniques for generating many game levels from a single specification. Instead of creating levels by hand, level designers make use of generators that automate the creation process. However, iteratively improving a level’s design requires encoding generators of adventures, puzzles and encounters in notations that bear little resemblance to generated content. Raising the level quality is difficult, because it is hard to reason about bugs that can manifest inside generated content. We take the position that debugging requires special attention. We argue that advancing the area of PCG calls for tools and debugging techniques that speed up procedural level design and empower level designers. We propose exploring how Domain-Specific Languages can help in authoring a level’s design, validating the generator’s code, and debugging issues in generated content. We introduce Mental Maps, a visual language that expresses the spacial relations between rooms, objects and paths. We discuss how Mental Maps can serve as generator blueprints before the generation happens, and as debugging lenses for projecting issues afterwards.","PeriodicalId":290159,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games","volume":"117 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124917306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Solip Park, Perttu Hämäläinen, Annakaisa Kultima, Laia Turmo Vidal, Elena Márquez Segura, D. Reidsma
{"title":"Move to Design: Tactics and Challenges of Playful Movement-based Interaction Designers’ Experiences during the Covid-19 Pandemic","authors":"Solip Park, Perttu Hämäläinen, Annakaisa Kultima, Laia Turmo Vidal, Elena Márquez Segura, D. Reidsma","doi":"10.1145/3555858.3555925","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3555858.3555925","url":null,"abstract":"Design practices targeting playful movement-based interaction are changing rapidly with both technological and societal developments. In this paper, we provide a snapshot of movement-based interaction designers’ experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic, by interviewing designers working in diverse roles that integrate physical human body movement and digital technologies (i.e., exergame and wearable game designers, playground and landscape architects, sports and dance trainers, and Sports-HCI professionals). Using grounded theory, we have identified two tactics from the designers’ experiences: (i) the significance of face-to-face embodied interactions throughout the entire movement-based interaction design process, and (ii) the importance of positive, yet critical, attitudes to technology for designing bodily experiences, including mixed use of non-technical materials and tools for rapid prototyping and iteration. However, it was evident that such tactics are often not feasible without physical interaction between the designer and users. The restrictions imposed by Covid-19, therefore, further revealed the importance of body movement to designing a playful movement-based interaction — from ideation to execution and testing. This paper offers a worrying view of movement-based interaction design during the Covid-19 era, while calling for further investigation to enrich the discourse that could contribute to this field, possibly also beyond the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic.","PeriodicalId":290159,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games","volume":"66 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126267219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Alexander Coburn, C. Harteveld, Christoffer Holmgård
{"title":"Ticket to the Mind: A Mobile Eye-Tracking Exploration of Game Media and Cognitive Functions","authors":"Alexander Coburn, C. Harteveld, Christoffer Holmgård","doi":"10.1145/3555858.3555927","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3555858.3555927","url":null,"abstract":"Physical and digital games are increasingly used and acknowledged for their cognitive effects, but there is a lack of understanding of how a game’s medium directly impacts cognitive functions. This exploratory case study presents a novel method of using mobile eye-tracking to compare working memory and visual attention between physical and digital versions of the board game Ticket to Ride in natural settings. For visual attention, no significant differences between the versions were measured. However, results indicate that fixation duration is significantly greater while playing the digital version versus the physical version, suggesting the counter-intuitive finding that the digital version increases working memory load. The study design, with evidence for high ecological validity, and its findings provide a foundation for future studies for assessing cognitive processing of game media. This work also provides inspiration for making game media considerations for obtaining specific cognitive experiences and increasing accessibility.","PeriodicalId":290159,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125308636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Procedural Model for Diverse Tree Species","authors":"Rama Hoetzlein","doi":"10.1145/3555858.3564251","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3555858.3564251","url":null,"abstract":"The modeling of trees represents a unique and classical challenge in computer graphics. Models of 3D trees must express the form, complexity, structure, growth and diversity of real trees. Presently the most common methods for the modeling of 3D trees include a) user-based creative modeling, b) direct geometric capture such as LIDAR and photogrammetry, or c) indirect methods such as machine learning from images. These techniques often require significant human effort, large amounts of data, considerable computation resources, or any of the above. While there are methods that consider the direct procedural generation of trees, current models often require some human supervision to focus on naturally plausible variants. Instead, our approach is to construct a botanically-inspired, harmonic, procedural model for trees which directly produces realistic yet diverse trees.","PeriodicalId":290159,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125871232","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}