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Gamers Telling Stories: Understanding Narrative Practices in an Online Community

Jason Rutter - Sat, 20/02/2010 - 11:33
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New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:

In this article, I introduce a theoretical framework, based on the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, for grasping how and why members of online communities construct narratives in their communications with one another. This is exemplified through a study of how players from one particular game, World of Warcraft , make sense of their gaming experience, and how they build and uphold a community identity by telling stories online. I argue that in studying and conceptualizing these types of texts through the proposed theoretical framework, we can gain insights into the process of the formation of meaning and the building of identity and community in an online setting.

Matchmaker: Interpersonal Touch in Gaming

Jason Rutter - Tue, 09/02/2010 - 13:58
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New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:

Acts of interpersonal touch - a touch shared between two people are used by couples to communicate in a simple and emotionally intimate way. In this paper, we argue that the intimacy afforded by acts of interpersonal touch can be used in computer entertainment to support enjoyable and engaging activities for couples. To support this notion, we have developed Matchmaker; a two-player, cooperative tabletop video game based on themes of love and romance. Matchmaker's gameplay is directly controlled by a set of collaborative tabletop interaction techniques, as well as by acts of interpersonal touch between its players. In this paper we present a detailed description of Matchmaker's design and the results of an exploratory user suggesting that Matchmaker is enjoyable to play and that its use of interpersonal touch contributes to players' enjoyment.

The banality of simulated evil: designing ethical gameplay

Jason Rutter - Sun, 24/01/2010 - 08:26
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New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:

This paper offers an analytical description of the ethics of game design and its influence in the ethical challenges computer games present. The paper proposes a set of game design suggestions based on the Information Ethics concept of Levels of Abstraction which can be applied to formalise ethical challenges into gameplay mechanics; thus allowing game designers to incorporate ethics as part of the experience of their games. The goal of this paper is twofold: to address some of the reasons why computer games present ethical challenges, and to exploit the informational nature of games to suggest how to develop games with ethics at the core of their gameplay.

Workload assessment of computer gaming using a single-stimulus event-related potential paradigm

Jason Rutter - Mon, 10/03/2008 - 23:49
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New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:

Behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures were used to assess cognitive workload from expert computer gamers playing a "first-person shooter" video game. Game difficulty level was manipulated in separate conditions by adjusting the number of enemies (view, easy, medium, and hard). Infrequently presented single-stimulus tones were either ignored or counted across difficulty conditions. Game performance and tone-counting accuracy declined as game difficulty increased. ERP component amplitudes diminished for both the tone ignore and counting conditions as game difficulty increased. The findings suggest that cognitive workload induced by video gaming can be reliably assessed through behavioral and neuroelectric means, and that the single-stimulus paradigm can be a useful tool for evaluating workload in an immersive stimulus environment with less distraction than conventional tools. \copyright2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Making Right(s) Decision: Artificial life and Rights Reconsidered

Jason Rutter - Fri, 09/03/2007 - 21:24
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New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:

With the proliferation of robotics in industry, education and entertainment, artificial intelligent robots challenge the way we think about relationships between humans and machines. This study examines critical issues in artificial life and rights, which are an emergent but, as yet, little understood area of educational inquiry through one of the most popular video game, The Sims. Since The Sims deals with simulated people and relationships, this game introduces important issues about ethics and morals [12, 13]. Drawing from examples through The Sims discussion forums, I will discuss our very notion of rights and what this means for artificial life in order to raise moral questions about social simulation and gaming.

A framework for artifact assessment and theory testing

Jason Rutter - Fri, 09/03/2007 - 21:24
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New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:

Those who are involved in research in gaming and simulation find themselves in a dual position. One reason for this duality relates to the fact that researchers in gaming and simulation represent two distinct branches of science: the design and analytical sciences. The basic idea of the design sciences is to build and assess artifacts. The scientific method of the analytical sciences aims at developing and testing theories. Both pay attention to different notions of causality, and apply different criteria of success. This article presents a framework both for artifact assessment and theory testing, which helps to better understand the distinct scientific and professional issues involved, and to offer directions for cross-fertilization.

Behaviourally rich actions for user-controlled characters

Jason Rutter - Fri, 09/03/2007 - 21:04
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New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:

The increasing use of animated characters and avatars in computer games and 3D online worlds requires increasingly complex behaviour with increasingly simple and easy to use control systems. This paper presents a system for user-controlled actions that aims at simplicity and ease of use while being enhanced by modern animation techniques to produce rich and complex behaviour. We use inverse kinematics based motion adaptation to make pre-existing pieces of motion apply to new targets. The expressiveness of the character is enhanced by adding autonomous behaviour, in this case eye gaze behaviour. This behaviour is generated autonomously but is still influenced by the actions that the user is requesting the character to perform. The actions themselves are simple for a designer with no programming experience to design and for an end user to customise. They are also very simple to invoke.

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