Entertainment Computing最新文献

{"title":"Digital gaming during the COVID-19 pandemic: Examining the interplay of psychosocial problems, gaming motivations, and gaming disorder severity","authors":"Felix Reer","doi":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100933","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100933","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The current study aimed to provide a deeper understanding of the factors underlying the development of addictive gaming (‘gaming disorder’, GD) during the COVID-19 pandemic. A path model was designed to examine the interplay of COVID-19-related fears, negative daily life impacts experienced during the pandemic, psychosocial problems (stress, depression/anxiety, loneliness), gaming motivations (escapism, coping, fantasy, and social motivations), and GD severity. The model was tested using an online survey administered to 504 German game users. It was found that gaming behaviors changed to a certain degree during the pandemic. Path modeling indicated that fear of COVID-19 and perceived negative daily life impacts may have played roles in the development of GD during the pandemic: they were associated with increased feelings of stress, depression/anxiety, and loneliness experienced during the pandemic, which, in turn, were (directly or indirectly) related to increased levels of GD severity. Gaming driven by escapism motives was identified as a significant predictor of GD severity and was found to mediate the relationship between stress and depression/anxiety and GD severity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55997,"journal":{"name":"Entertainment Computing","volume":"54 ","pages":"Article 100933"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143931807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Child computer interactions: Cognitive development and segmenting unsafe video contents: A review","authors":"Irwa Zahoor,&nbsp;Sajaad Ahmed Lone","doi":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100931","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100931","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Computer Technology (CT) is now an integral part of our daily lives, influencing various aspects of human activity, particularly those of children. Child Computer Interactions a specialized area within CT, focuses on enhancing children’s physical activities, psychology, education, and communication through diverse computer applications. CCI is a steadily growing field that focuses on children as a prominent and emergent user group. This review article highlights the lack of research regarding the effective use of CCI technologies to promote cognitive development while reducing the risks linked to harmful digital content. The paper systematically examines the influence of CCI technologies on the cognitive development of children aged 0 to 12 years, addressing the research problem of inadequate filtering methods for unsafe video content that children are exposed to in today’s screen-dominated environment. It highlights how technological innovations, particularly in gaming, artificial intelligence, and media applications, are designed to enhance children’s skills while safeguarding their digital environment. A critical aspect of this review is the assessment of methods to filter and mitigate exposure to unsafe video content, a growing concern in today’s screen-dominated environment. The findings reveal that CCI programs significantly enhance children’s knowledge and skills with high accuracy. Moreover, the review underscores the importance of machine ethics in guiding the moral behavior of machines and ensuring the usability and safety of these technologies. This comprehensive analysis provides valuable insights into the role of CCI in fostering cognitive development and protecting children from inappropriate content.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55997,"journal":{"name":"Entertainment Computing","volume":"53 ","pages":"Article 100931"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143454444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Using search algorithm statistics for assessing maze and puzzle difficulty","authors":"Elio Valenzuela ,&nbsp;Hans Schaa ,&nbsp;Nicolas A. Barriga ,&nbsp;Gustavo Patow","doi":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100925","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100925","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A video game’s difficulty has a large impact on player engagement. For instance, it is crucial in some genres to give the players a challenge difficult enough without frustrating them. We propose a simple method for assessing game-level difficulty as a precursor to adapting it to a specific player. In particular, we propose using simple performance metrics of algorithms such as <span><math><msup><mrow><mi>A</mi></mrow><mrow><mo>∗</mo></mrow></msup></math></span> and Breadth-First Search (BFS) as a proxy for the difficulty of puzzles. We performed user studies using a 2D maze simulator and a Sokoban game implementation; both built into the Unity game engine. We show that, for 2D mazes generated by Binary Space Partitioning, the number of nodes expanded by BFS highly correlates with the number of steps a human player takes to reach the goal. For Sokoban puzzles, the closed list length of an A* search is highly correlated to perceived difficulty and the number of movements a human player takes to solve the puzzle. These results show that simple metrics are probably good enough to assess a given level’s difficulty, which is a first step towards being able to personalize the difficulty of a maze or a puzzle to a particular player.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55997,"journal":{"name":"Entertainment Computing","volume":"53 ","pages":"Article 100925"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143429767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"DEEP: A model of gaming preferences informed by the hierarchical nature of goal-oriented cognition","authors":"Edgar Dubourg,&nbsp;Valérian Chambon","doi":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100930","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100930","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Video game design and player engagement revolve around the concept of agency, which refers to the ability to shape one’s environment through personal choices and actions. However, different types of agentive experiences can be distinguished according to the nature of the agent’s goal. Recent models of voluntary action suggest that goals are organized hierarchically. In this paper, we test the ability of these models to explain variability in gaming preferences. First, we performed a factor analysis on game-related actions that participants ( N = 750) were asked to rate on an interest scale. We found that game preferences varied along 4 dimensions organized along gradients of goal abstraction and exploration (Discovering, Experimenting, Expanding, Performing, or DEEP dimensions). We then automatically annotated video games ( N = 16,000) on each of these dimensions and tested the hierarchical structure of goal-directed actions in video games. Finally, in a pre-registered study ( N = 1000), we show that the DEEP dimensions predict participants’ preferred video games and correlate with expected psychological factors. We suggest that this research can help improve existing taxonomies of videogame types, better understand player preferences, and refine the relationship between game design and human psychology.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55997,"journal":{"name":"Entertainment Computing","volume":"53 ","pages":"Article 100930"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143465048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Music genre classification using deep neural networks and data augmentation","authors":"Thanh Chu Ba ,&nbsp;Thuy Dao Thi Le ,&nbsp;Loan Trinh Van","doi":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100929","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100929","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Music is an indispensable part of spiritual life. Today, humanity’s musical treasure is truly huge and precious, and the number of musical works is constantly increasing. Computers, machine learning, and deep learning have greatly aided in the storing, organizing, searching, and enjoying of musical works in priceless treasures. Many music databases have been built for such music-data processing studies. One operation that needs to be handled automatically for musical works is musical genre classification (MGC). This paper presents new research results on MGC for GTZAN music data. Deep neural networks, such as convolutional neural networks (CNN), long short-term memory (LSTM), gated recurrent units (GRU), and capsule neural networks (CSN), have produced excellent results when combined with data augmentation methods such as splitting audio files, noise addition, and pitch shifting. A classification accuracy of 99.91% for the ten musical genres of GTZAN was achieved using the CSN model with the Mel spectrogram as input features and data enhanced by the aforementioned methods. This classification accuracy outperformed that of all previous GTZAN classification accuracy studies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55997,"journal":{"name":"Entertainment Computing","volume":"53 ","pages":"Article 100929"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143438206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Towards a new generation of digital games designed with the basics of psychological theories to improve primary school pupils’ psychological and technical skills in learning arithmetic","authors":"Karima Boussaha ,&nbsp;Samia Drissi ,&nbsp;Abdelhafid Rahab ,&nbsp;Khelifa Khelifi Touhami ,&nbsp;Charef Eddine Abdelaziz Tayeb Boudraa","doi":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100927","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100927","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recent studies have shown that pupils learn more effectively through play, which inspired us to design an educational digital game aimed at enhancing their arithmetic performance. This paper addresses various skills, focusing on psychological skills derived from the learning challenges identified by psychologist Jean Piaget. We proposed key skills such as motivation, initiative, engagement, concentration, and behavioral management among pupils. Additionally, we identified technical skills related to arithmetic, including calculation speed, accuracy rate, and overall learning achievement.</div><div>We developed <strong><em>“GAME-calcul,”</em></strong> an innovative digital game for primary school pupils to help them overcome common difficulties in learning arithmetic. The main contribution lies in incorporating Piaget’s cognitive development theory into the game’s design, facilitating various arithmetic operations through an engaging and effective approach.</div><div>To investigate the short and long-term impacts of this Piagetian game on both technical and psychological skills, we conducted an experiment using a hybridization between quantitative and qualitative approaches. The quantitative approach aimed to confirm the game’s positive effects on pupils’ technical skills. For this goal, we selected forty-five (45) pupils, dividing them into three groups: a control group that learned arithmetic using traditional methods, a first experimental group that engaged with the <strong><em>“Finger Fun Math”</em></strong> game designed for first-year pupils, and a second experimental group that used the <strong><em>“Sabstracto”</em></strong> game intended for second-year pupils. The two proposed games accommodate the characteristics of <strong><em>the preoperational</em></strong> and <strong><em>concrete operational</em></strong> stages of a child’s cognitive development identified by psychologist Jean Piaget.</div><div>We employed Multivariate Analysis of Variance “MANOVA” and “Post Hoc Levene” tests to analyze the performance of the three groups before and after the game integration in the learning activity. The results indicated that pupils using the <strong><em>“Sabstracto”</em></strong> game achieved significantly better outcomes compared to those using the <strong><em>“Finger Fun Math”</em></strong> game and those in <strong><em>the control group</em></strong>.</div><div>Equally, the qualitative aspect of the study involved gathering insights from pupils and teachers through interviews and questionnaires, confirming the positive impact of the Piagetian game on pupils’ psychological skills. Overall, the findings demonstrate that integrating these innovative games based on Piaget’s theory positively influences both technical and psychological skills in primary school pupils learning arithmetic.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55997,"journal":{"name":"Entertainment Computing","volume":"53 ","pages":"Article 100927"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143387974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Minecraft tunnels for covert communications","authors":"Nathan Tusing,&nbsp;Jonathan Oakley,&nbsp;Chunpeng Shao,&nbsp;Lu Yu,&nbsp;Richard Brooks","doi":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100924","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100924","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Although bots carry negative connotations in wider internet usage, video game bots can be helpful to users by automating rote tasks. In this work, we augment Minecraft bots to provide privacy by tunneling traffic to anonymity services. We then analyze our bot design using performance metrics and detection techniques, including the chi-square test on action distributions and Shannon’s Entropy on byte streams. These bots create game sessions and embed Internet traffic into Minecraft actions. Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) were trained on human gameplay. These HMMs were then embedded into the client and proxy to generate realistic action sequences. Using a Minecraft server to run the game enforces protocol rules and mitigates problems associated with mimicry-based circumvention. The prototype interfaces with several existing censorship circumvention tools, the HMMs generate Minecraft action sequences matching live gameplay sequences, and the prototype achieves a 350 kBit/s transfer rate. Other contributions include an action sequence dataset for Minecraft and examples of bot detection techniques.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55997,"journal":{"name":"Entertainment Computing","volume":"53 ","pages":"Article 100924"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143350484","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Video games for good: Active perspective-taking fosters empathy and reduces implicit bias toward gendered violence victims","authors":"Sweeney Jing Li,&nbsp;Zeph M.C. van Berlo","doi":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100928","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100928","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Many victims of gendered violence suffer from systematic stigmatization. A novel approach to reduce the negative bias toward victims of gendered violence is the use of video games. In this study, we explore how playing video games can contribute to fostering empathy and reducing bias toward victims of gendered violence. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a lab experiment (<em>N</em> = 166). The result showed that taking the perspective of a gendered violence victim in a video game increases players’ embodiment of the game character and in turn increases player’s empathy toward gendered violence victims. No moderation was found for gender and also no relationship between empathy and implicit bias was found. All in all, the study demonstrates the potential of video games to be an empathy intervention tool for increasing empathy toward gendered violence victims.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55997,"journal":{"name":"Entertainment Computing","volume":"53 ","pages":"Article 100928"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143149058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The extensive use of social media by Arab university students (gratifications, impact, and risks)","authors":"Hunida Gindil Abu Backer ,&nbsp;Ibaa Awad","doi":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100926","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100926","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigated the effects of extensive social media use on Arab university students, focusing on gratification, impact, and risk. An online survey was conducted with 536 students from three universities in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. The results showed that 68% of the students used social media for more than 60 h per week. While 81% of the students acknowledged the lack of credibility and 77% recognized social media’s tendency to ignore important issues, they continued to use it extensively for entertainment (95%), global cultural exposure (94%), and sharing thoughts (94%). Researchers found a moderate negative correlation (−0.47, p = 0.007) between the number of daily hours spent on social media and the level of satisfaction attained. According to this study, excessive use reduces attention to local and global issues, while exposing users to misinformation risks. Despite awareness of these negative consequences, students remain heavily engaged because of perceived benefits such as freedom of expression and networking opportunities. This study recommends implementing awareness and educational campaigns in Arab universities to promote an understanding of the risks associated with excessive reliance on social media. Additionally, it suggests that relevant ministries in developing countries should initiate projects to channel youth energy into productive fields, supporting activities that help students achieve their goals, while contributing positively to societal development.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55997,"journal":{"name":"Entertainment Computing","volume":"53 ","pages":"Article 100926"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143149059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Specification of users’ cognitive functions and emotions to promote their training through Serious games","authors":"Claudia Gómez Llanez ,&nbsp;Paola Vallejo ,&nbsp;Jose Aguilar","doi":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100921","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.entcom.2025.100921","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Serious Games are gaining recognition as a powerful tool to promote education, specifically in organizational training processes, to achieve effective learning. In these learning processes, individuals must acquire specific cognitive and affective capacities depending on the organization’s objectives, which should be acquired through serious games. However, creating games that effectively train cognitive and affective skills requires a methodological approach to seamlessly integrate specific educational content, game mechanics, story, aesthetics, technology, and assessment tools, among other things. This paper presents a cognitive-affective model for conceptualizing the design of serious games. The model comprises cognitive and affective dimensions, each with its graphical notation, components, and behaviour. The cognitive dimension is based on neuroscience and game mechanics research, while the affective dimension is drawn from affective computing. This paper shows how the cognitive-affective model can guide the development of games that facilitate continuous training and generate cognitive/emotional experiences in specific situations. A case study highlights the model’s effectiveness in a gas explosion simulation explicitly designed for the mining sector. The model enables designers to create games that train users in risky situations, improving their behaviour in simulated dangerous situations in a safe environment. The model’s effectiveness was validated in two ways: 1) with a virtual SG and 2) through competition questions, which showed promising results.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55997,"journal":{"name":"Entertainment Computing","volume":"53 ","pages":"Article 100921"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143149057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}