Umit Tellioglu, G. Xie, Justin P. Rohrer, Charles Prince
{"title":"Whale of a crowd: Quantifying the effectiveness of crowd-sourced serious games","authors":"Umit Tellioglu, G. Xie, Justin P. Rohrer, Charles Prince","doi":"10.1109/CGames.2014.6934151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/CGames.2014.6934151","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper we analyze several Crowd-Sourced Serious Games (CSSGs), a new genre focused on advancing widely respected causes such as social equality and science. We observe that the general effectiveness of these games has remained largely unknown. Existing performance analyses have been limited to documenting experiences with individual systems. More importantly, existing game analytics approaches are designed for games that provide personal experience and entertainment. In contrast, CSSGs attract participants by evoking their sense of social responsibility and sympathy for others. Intuitively, social awareness and sympathy alone may not result in the same level of consistent participation as personal achievement, or fun. Consequently, the success of a CSSG may be more tightly linked to the contributions of few highly-dedicated players (whales).","PeriodicalId":307340,"journal":{"name":"2014 Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Multimedia, Educational and Serious Games (CGAMES)","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128111236","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}
D. Brown, Hussamuddin Nasir, Charles Carpenter, Onur Ascigil, J. Griffioen, K. Calvert
{"title":"ChoiceNet gaming: Changing the gaming experience with economics","authors":"D. Brown, Hussamuddin Nasir, Charles Carpenter, Onur Ascigil, J. Griffioen, K. Calvert","doi":"10.1109/CGames.2014.6934146","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/CGames.2014.6934146","url":null,"abstract":"When playing online games, the user experience is often dictated by the performance of the network. To deliver the best possible gaming experience, game developers often find themselves developing work-arounds that try to mask the lack of control they have over of the existing TCP/IP Internet. ChoiceNet, an emerging future Internet architecture, attempts to give applications enhanced control (choice) over the service they receive from the network. In particular, ChoiceNet supports an economic plane in which applications can purchase services from any provider. Because providers are compensated, they are motivated to offer a variety of innovative, excellent services, enabling applications to select the service best suited for its needs. Instead of coding work-arounds, game developers can obtain precisely the network service that is needed to optimize the game experience. In this paper, we describe the emerging ChoiceNet architecture and show how computer games can benefit from the alternatives enabled by ChoiceNet. To demonstrate the benefits of the ChoiceNet architecture, we implemented a first person shooter game that uses ChoiceNet to “purchase” and then send data over the purchased path resulting in substantially lower latency than the default path. We describe the ChoiceNet services used to implement the game, and we present performance results that show a significant reduction in latency. We also show how ChoiceNet can be used to purchase reliable (non-lossy) communication paths that improve the user's experience.","PeriodicalId":307340,"journal":{"name":"2014 Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Multimedia, Educational and Serious Games (CGAMES)","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128462349","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}
Mikhail M. Shashkov, Connie S. Nguyen, Mario Yepez, Mauricio Hess-Flores, K. Joy
{"title":"Semi-autonomous digitization of real-world environments","authors":"Mikhail M. Shashkov, Connie S. Nguyen, Mario Yepez, Mauricio Hess-Flores, K. Joy","doi":"10.1109/CGames.2014.6934145","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/CGames.2014.6934145","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, the computational power and graphics capabilities of our computers and gaming consoles has advanced to the point that we can render photo-realistic realworld environments in real-time. This capability has been utilized to make immersive games, serious games, and simulations. While computers and consoles are affordable for the consumer, the technology used to scan environments can be too expensive or time-consuming for most developers. In this paper, we seek to find a viable low-cost alternative to these expensive technologies by analyzing the efficacy of cheap hardware (Kinect and personal cameras), computer vision algorithms (KinectFusion and structure-from-motion), and post-processing tools (MeshLab) in the context of a popular free game engine, Unity. Our results demonstrate workflows that are viable for the needs of many developers.","PeriodicalId":307340,"journal":{"name":"2014 Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Multimedia, Educational and Serious Games (CGAMES)","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126625065","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":"Empirically measuring control quality of gesture input","authors":"J. Chastine, D. Franklin, Chao Peng, J. Preston","doi":"10.1109/CGames.2014.6934144","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/CGames.2014.6934144","url":null,"abstract":"As new input devices emerge new paradigms of interaction must emerge with them. Recent advances in technology have lowered the cost of gesture-based hardware, enabling them to be adopted by and integrated into mainstream applications. Given the novelty of these devices, however, little is known about how this form of interaction can be integrated into existing computing paradigms or how it compares with existing input methods. It is therefore important to examine the role of gesture control across current applications in various contexts. While gesture-based input is likely to yield a variety of novel interaction techniques for immersive 3D environments, it is important to understand how spatial controls map to 2D interfaces and how lessons learned in the 2D space map into these 3D environments. In this paper, we present the results of a study of using gesture alone to control a top-down shooter game using two novel techniques; interaction via a gamepad was used to establish a baseline of performance. We measured users' performance of basic tasks (moving and aiming), and then utilized a subjective post-study survey. The motivation of this study is not to directly compare the performance of the gamepad with gesture controls (given a time-on-task bias in favor of gamepad control), but rather to establish a baseline of expected user performance for those with no prior gesture-based experience. The contributions of this research include the design and evaluation of two new gesture-based techniques for 2D control and the presentation and analysis of our results.","PeriodicalId":307340,"journal":{"name":"2014 Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Multimedia, Educational and Serious Games (CGAMES)","volume":"82 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133899163","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}
Antonio Losavio, Svetlana Polyakova, T. Hayden, M. Losavio
{"title":"Linguistic implementations in computer game and virtual world design","authors":"Antonio Losavio, Svetlana Polyakova, T. Hayden, M. Losavio","doi":"10.1109/CGames.2014.6934142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/CGames.2014.6934142","url":null,"abstract":"Computer gaming is a rich multimedia environment that players experience across the human sensorium. Game design uses linguistic engagement to enhance and expand that experience. Linguistics offers a variety of services and benefits to computer gaming, from successful commercial localization of games to enhanced engagement, immersion and authenticity of the game play. We examine linguistic applications in computer gaming and the cross- cultural/cross-language artifacts produced.","PeriodicalId":307340,"journal":{"name":"2014 Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Multimedia, Educational and Serious Games (CGAMES)","volume":"212 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133997140","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}
Matthew Fahrbach, J. Jaromczyk, Roy David Mobley, N. Moore
{"title":"Video game bots as a theme for student software competitions","authors":"Matthew Fahrbach, J. Jaromczyk, Roy David Mobley, N. Moore","doi":"10.1109/CGames.2014.6934158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/CGames.2014.6934158","url":null,"abstract":"Software and programming competitions are attractive and educationally powerful ways to engage excelling students. They assume different formats depending on the purpose, level of preparation and background of participants. We describe a new type of student software competition organized for the 2014 IEEE SoutheastCon conference. We designed a task related to video game bots - a novel format for this contest event running in conjunction with the annual IEEE Region 3 Student and Technical conference. In addition to testing abilities and programming skills in solving algorithmic problems in a limited time, this new format emphasizes the importance of engineering aspects of the software development process, and provides a model that can be reproduced for other competitions as well as used in the classroom.","PeriodicalId":307340,"journal":{"name":"2014 Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Multimedia, Educational and Serious Games (CGAMES)","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133255481","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":"Embedded standards-based digital gaming assessments: Pilot study with teachers","authors":"M. L. Prater, J. Mazur","doi":"10.1109/CGames.2014.6934152","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/CGames.2014.6934152","url":null,"abstract":"Although the research on digital gaming has recently shown that collaboration, problem solving and critical thinking are in evidence with K-12 students who design games; researchers still need to make the case that digital game design content meets rigorous new Common Core standards for Language Arts and mathematics. No class time will be devoted to game design unless proponents of digital gaming can develop and demonstrate this argument. This preliminary data focus on a feasibility implementation of an assessment designed to embed these standards. Three elementary level classroom teachers and their students used the process and demonstrated that (1) teachers can learn to design and use this process and (2) their students demonstrate elements of computational thinking that not only includes the Common Core standards but extends them.","PeriodicalId":307340,"journal":{"name":"2014 Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Multimedia, Educational and Serious Games (CGAMES)","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115256723","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":"Identification features and pedagogical agents in a mathematical game","authors":"Shyh-Chii Tzeng, Pei-Ting Wang","doi":"10.1109/CGames.2014.6934153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/CGames.2014.6934153","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigated the influence of adding identification features and a pedagogical agent to a serious game on students' learning of areas of parallelograms. Eighty-one fifth graders from a public school in Taiwan participated in the experiment that used 2 × 2 factorial designs. The participants were randomly assigned to one of the four treatment groups. The dependent variables of the experiment were identification feature (i.e., yes or no) and pedagogical agent (i.e., yes or no) while the independent variables were posttest as well as cognitive load and motivation.","PeriodicalId":307340,"journal":{"name":"2014 Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Multimedia, Educational and Serious Games (CGAMES)","volume":"100 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123687056","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}
A. Basterretxea, A. M. Zorrilla, B. G. Zapirain, A. Madariaga-Ortuzar, I. Lazcano-Quintana
{"title":"Serious games to promote independent living for intellectually disabled people: Starting with shopping","authors":"A. Basterretxea, A. M. Zorrilla, B. G. Zapirain, A. Madariaga-Ortuzar, I. Lazcano-Quintana","doi":"10.1109/CGames.2014.6934159","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/CGames.2014.6934159","url":null,"abstract":"The project described in this article consists of the design and implementation of a serious games application to promote independent living for adolescents/adults with intellectual disability (ID). We present this first stage of a broader project which aims to teach this group how to shop. Given the wide acceptance of new technologies among people with ID, iPads were used as a support tool. The application is based on a set of games with different features and aims and includes advice for shopping. The design includes real situations which focus on making the application useful and attractive, thus motivating users. The results obtained after the tests carried out with real users were positive and encouraging.","PeriodicalId":307340,"journal":{"name":"2014 Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Multimedia, Educational and Serious Games (CGAMES)","volume":"2012 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127386544","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":"Quantifying software development: Applying mobile monetization techniques to your software development process","authors":"Tommi Ketola","doi":"10.1109/CGames.2014.6934143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/CGames.2014.6934143","url":null,"abstract":"There are many well defined factors and metrics for the monetization of mobile free to play games, as well as direct solutions and strategies to increase such metrics. Technology and market changes have allowed us to provide software to our customers digitally, which has predicated a shift over to a live service model of development, and business methods emphasizing a minimum viable product followed by incremental changes based on customer responses to our product. Software development methodologies themselves have traditionally been measured only against their costs in development. The same methods that have driven changes in the business models for software development can now be applied to software development methodologies so that architecture decisions can be measured against future revenue in a consistent fashion. This paper presents an example of how such measurements can be made and applied.","PeriodicalId":307340,"journal":{"name":"2014 Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Multimedia, Educational and Serious Games (CGAMES)","volume":"30 7","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114103681","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}