Sandbox '11Pub Date : 2011-08-07DOI: 10.1145/2018556.2018564
Teun Dubbelman
{"title":"Designing stories: practices of narrative in 3D computer games","authors":"Teun Dubbelman","doi":"10.1145/2018556.2018564","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2018556.2018564","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on theories from game-, film-, and theatre studies, this paper explores two primary ways in which 3D computer games deal with stories. As evident in how these games are creatively designed and publically discussed, one of these approaches focuses on players as implied authors who guide heroes through challenging trials and tribulations. The other approach focuses on players as embodied participants in the story world; players become the hero and experience adventures of their own. This paper argues that in order to understand the differences between these two distinctive design practices it is necessary to critically review the representational logic of narrative as developed once in structuralist narratology and to develop an additional presentational logic, applicable to both marginal narrative practices of the past as well as mainstream practices of the present.","PeriodicalId":376622,"journal":{"name":"Sandbox '11","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114257127","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}
Sandbox '11Pub Date : 2011-08-07DOI: 10.1145/2018556.2018560
M. Rice, M. Wan, Min-Hui Foo, Jamie Ng, Zynie Wai, Janell Kwok, Samuel Lee, L. Teo
{"title":"Evaluating gesture-based games with older adults on a large screen display","authors":"M. Rice, M. Wan, Min-Hui Foo, Jamie Ng, Zynie Wai, Janell Kwok, Samuel Lee, L. Teo","doi":"10.1145/2018556.2018560","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2018556.2018560","url":null,"abstract":"Gesture-based games offer lucrative opportunities to engage users across all segments of the population. However, this requires that associated features go beyond mere expectations to meet the needs and requirements of diverse audience groups. Focusing on designing games for healthy older adults, we present a study exploring the usability and acceptability of a set of three gesture-based games. Designed for a large projection screen display, these games employ vision-based techniques that center on physical embodied interaction using a graphical silhouette. Infrared detection, accompanied by back-projection is used to reduce the effects of occluded body movements. User evaluations with 36 older adults were analyzed using a combination of pre- and postgame questionnaires, direct observations and semi-structured group interviews. The results demonstrate that while all the games were usable, they varied in their physical and social engagement, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. In particular, items associated with physical wellbeing were rated highly. During the discussion, we highlight strengths and weaknesses of our findings, including related interaction and application features.","PeriodicalId":376622,"journal":{"name":"Sandbox '11","volume":"114 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124642247","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}
Sandbox '11Pub Date : 2011-08-07DOI: 10.1145/2018556.2018558
A. Macvean, Mark O. Riedl
{"title":"Evaluating enjoyment within alternate reality games","authors":"A. Macvean, Mark O. Riedl","doi":"10.1145/2018556.2018558","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2018556.2018558","url":null,"abstract":"Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are interactive narrative experiences which use the real world as the platform of the game. By bringing play out into the real world, ARGs provide players with an opportunity to enjoy both the gameplay, and benefit from the rich social experiences and physical activity which come synonymously with the genre. Due to its recent emergence, very little is known on what makes for an enjoyable ARG experience. What can we take from traditional game literature and where does this genre demand changes in our understanding? In this paper we present out work on understanding the player experience within ARGs. We look at the existing literature on enjoyment within video games, and use this to devise a set of new criteria. Through a preliminary validation of our metric, we found that a game which scores well using our analysis is significantly more likely to be enjoyed than a game which scores relatively low. In the process, we found that some of the key components of an enjoyable traditional video game experience are not so essential when considering ARGs.","PeriodicalId":376622,"journal":{"name":"Sandbox '11","volume":"83 7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132491300","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}
Sandbox '11Pub Date : 2011-08-07DOI: 10.1145/2018556.2018566
Nicholas Taylor, S. Castell, J. Jenson, Megan Humphrey
{"title":"Modeling play: re-casting expertise in MMOGs","authors":"Nicholas Taylor, S. Castell, J. Jenson, Megan Humphrey","doi":"10.1145/2018556.2018566","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2018556.2018566","url":null,"abstract":"With the increasing popularity of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) such as World of Warcraft, EVE Online, and Maple Story, attempts have been made to define and measure player expertise both within and across online games. Apart from nuanced ethnographic accounts of elite players, which are deliberately localized and small-scale, studies of MMOG expertise to date have either deployed one-dimensional variables such time spent playing and in-game titles and accomplishments, or a combination of the these. These approaches risk obscuring a host of complex considerations, such as players' prior experience with the game or genre, their relationships to other players, and the ludic affordances and limitations of specific games. And they are also significantly less sophisticated than the criteria and tools players themselves use to measure expertise.\u0000 Our study of expertise in online games is guided by Bruno Latour's injunction to \"follow the actors\"---which for us in this case meant paying careful attention to how players themselves characterize and pursue `expertise' in the everyday realities of their everyday/everynight MMOG lives. Drawing from a multisite, mixed-methods study of 250 MMOG players in 8 sites (both university laboratory and public LAN events), this paper proposes a model for identifying and assessing expertise that is better able to take into consideration the multiple forms, components and expressions of `expert' game playing that players themselves are guided by. This model divides expertise into four inter-related modalities, each addressing a different set of competencies: investment, skill, discourse, and game knowledge. Reviewing each modality in turn, the paper frames this model as an attempt to preserve the complexity of qualitatively-driven, ethnographic accounts of expertise, mobilized in a quantifiable and measurable way.","PeriodicalId":376622,"journal":{"name":"Sandbox '11","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128974812","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}
Sandbox '11Pub Date : 2011-08-07DOI: 10.1145/2018556.2018561
Ian J. Livingston, L. Nacke, R. Mandryk
{"title":"The impact of negative game reviews and user comments on player experience","authors":"Ian J. Livingston, L. Nacke, R. Mandryk","doi":"10.1145/2018556.2018561","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2018556.2018561","url":null,"abstract":"Game reviews and player ratings have an effect on the commercial success of games. They are used extensively by game developers to gauge the success of their titles and by potential buyers to make more informed purchase decisions. However, their potential influence on player experience remains uncertain. We investigated how game reviews and user comments influence players' affective states and experiences during game play. We found that both professional reviews and user comments (especially the negative comments) affected experience measured through game ratings, and that this effect was not mediated by changes in players' moods. Our results are important to the game industry because of the meaningful negative effect that user and critic comments can have on individual player experience and the resulting commercial success of a game.","PeriodicalId":376622,"journal":{"name":"Sandbox '11","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125415910","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}
Sandbox '11Pub Date : 2011-08-07DOI: 10.1145/2018556.2018559
Dinara Moura, M. S. El-Nasr, C. Shaw
{"title":"Visualizing and understanding players' behavior in video games: discovering patterns and supporting aggregation and comparison","authors":"Dinara Moura, M. S. El-Nasr, C. Shaw","doi":"10.1145/2018556.2018559","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2018556.2018559","url":null,"abstract":"As video games become more popular, there is an urge for procedures that can support the analysis and understanding of players' behaviors within game environments. Such data would inform game and level designers of game design issues that should be fixed or improved upon. By logging user-initiated events in video games, analysts have exhaustive information regarding players' actions within games. However, visualizing such data is a challenging task due to the amount of data one has to deal with; the necessity of a deep understanding of the game and players' possible actions within the game plus a deep understanding of questions one wants to answer; the computation that has to be done on the data; and the limitations and/or complexities of current analysis tools. In this paper, we present a new visualization system that allows analysts to build visualization and interact with telemetry data, to identify patterns and identify game design issues efficiently. Besides the system itself, we propose a new approach to visualize players' behavior that has not been explored so far. For example, instead of using heat maps to visualize a single metric (e.g. deaths), our system allows analysts to superimpose and visualize a series of actions players take in the game. This is especially important when one should understand cause and effect within the game. We present examples of the visualizations using an RPG game, Dragon Age Origins (BioWare/EA, 2009). It should be noted that the system is currently under development and testing with analysts working at BioWare.","PeriodicalId":376622,"journal":{"name":"Sandbox '11","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129030241","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}
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