Game Design Commons^™

The Magic Circle: An Essential Experience Through Virtual Theatre, Brandon Roye

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the similarities of video game design elements within the world of theatrical scenic design. Using my 2019 scenic design of Marc Camoletti’s bedroom farce Boeing Boeing as the backdrop, I discuss the core concepts of game design. I then describe the scenic process of the production and the journey from concept all the way through to a virtual reality recreation of the design. The study of game design in theatre has the potential to open a wide new world of opportunities in the scenic design industry. This paper examines how the theatre can benefit from game design …

Creating Worlds Of Endless Variety: An Evaluation Of Procedural Content Generation In Gaming, David Cole

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Today, video games are more ingrained in American society than they have ever been before. This entertainment medium has become more profitable than all television streaming services combined as well as the entire film industry in Hollywood. Playing video games, which was once considered a pastime, has become a career for many, with websites such as YouTube and Twitch hosting thousands of “let’s play” channels and various esports tournaments boasting six- or even seven-figure prize pools.

With the evident popularity and financial success of video games, radical changes to the game development process can carry a massive impact on society, …

Introducing The Game Design Matrix: A Step-By-Step Process For Creating Serious Games, Aaron J. Pendleton

Theses and Dissertations

The Game Design Matrix makes effective game design accessible to novice game designers. Serious Games are a powerful tool for educators seeking to boost the level of student engagement and application in academic environments, but the can be difficult to incorporate into existing courses due to availability and the cost of quality game design. The Game Design Matrix was used by two educators, novice game designers, to create a serious game. The games were assessed in an academic setting and observed to be effective in engagement, interaction, and achieving higher levels of learning.

Lost & Found: New Harvest, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Presentations and other scholarship

Lost & Found is a strategy card-to-mobile game series that teaches medieval religious legal systems with attention to period accuracy and cultural and historical context.

Set in Fustat (Old Cairo) in the 12th century, a great crossroads of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. The Lost & Found games project seeks to expand the discourse around religious legal systems, to enrich public conversations in a variety of communities, and to promote greater understanding of the religious traditions that build the fabric of the United States. Comparative religious literacy can build bridges between and within communities and prepare learners to be responsible citizens …

Virtual Dissection Of White Matter Tracts In A Human Brain Using Applied Game Design And Virtual Reality Imaging, Basil Lim, Anurag Nasa, Nicola Carswell, Elena Roman, Malia Kissner, Darren W. Roddy, Veronika O'Keane, James Carswell

Other

Visualisation of neural tracts in the human brain has previously been accomplished using two dimensional (2D) representational formats. In most cases, pre-operative visualisation is through the medium of 2D MRI image slices, representing coordinates in the brain through a combination of axial, sagittal, and coronal orthographic viewpoints. Software such as ExploreDTI can visualise off-axis viewpoints, however this method is limited to 2.5D image representations. The use of such 2D representations can require significant training in order to contextualise real-world 3D positions and accurately locate and identify neural tract pathways in the brain. Utilising anonymised tract data and advanced neuroimaging technologies …

World Throne, Wyatt Lam

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

World Throne is a four-player strategy board game that has been in development since 2016. Players take control of four distinct factions and battle on a grid-based board. Each player uses unique playing cards to augment piece combat. The object of the game is to conquer other factions by defeating them in battle, defend your castle from opposing players, and claim the power of the World Throne. Prominent game development research guided the creation of World Throne. In addition, Latin, Greek, and Norse mythology informed development of the factions, characters, creatures, cards, and places. The culminating products of this project …

Software Design Considerations For Mathematics In Mobile Games, Katherine Smith, Yuzhong Shen, Anthony Dean

VMASC Publications

A software system has been designed and developed to allow for the display, symbolic manipulation, and player entry of mathematics expressions in mobile games. Display, manipulation, and entry of mathematical expressions are traditionally difficult tasks. Increased limitations on screen space and user input when developing for mobile devices only exacerbate these difficulties. The developed software system balances considerations for ease of use and user interaction with the desire for players to be able to enter answers in a way that is more flexible and interactive than multiple choice, which is the dominant method of interactions in serious games. The software …

The Lost & Found Game Series: Teaching Medieval Religious Law In Context, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Presentations and other scholarship

Lost & Found is a strategy card-to-mobile game series that teaches medieval religious legal systems with attention to period accuracy and cultural and historical context. The Lost & Found project seeks to expand the discourse around religious legal systems, to enrich public conversations in a variety of communities, and to promote greater understanding of the religious traditions that build the fabric of the United States. Comparative religious literacy can build bridges between and within communities and prepare learners to be responsible citizens in our pluralist democracy. The first game in the series is a strategy game called Lost & Found …

Your Iphone Cannot Escape History, And Neither Can You: Self-Reflexive Design For A Mobile History Learning Game, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This chapter focuses on the design approach used in the self-reflexive finale of the mobile augmented reality history game Jewish Time Jump: New York. In the finale, the iOS device itself and the player using it are implicated in the historical moment and theme of the game. The author-designer-researcher drew from self-reflexive traditions in theater, cinema, and nonmobile games to craft the reveal of the connection between the mobile device and the history that the learners were studying. Through centering on this particular design element, the author demonstrates how self-reflexivity can be deployed in a mobile learning experience to …

Finding Lost & Found: Designer’S Notes From The Process Of Creating A Jewish Game For Learning, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This article provides context for and examines aspects of the design process of a game for learning. Lost & Found (2017a, 2017b) is a tabletop-to-mobile game series designed to teach medieval religious legal systems, beginning with Moses Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (1180), a cornerstone work of Jewish legal rabbinic literature. Through design narratives, the article demonstrates the complex design decisions faced by the team as they balance the needs of player engagement with learning goals. In the process the designers confront challenges in developing winstates and in working with complex resource management. The article provides insight into the pathways the team …

Amazons, Penguins, And Amazon Penguins, Todd W. Neller

Computer Science Faculty Publications

This talk discussed a family of games based on Amazons (1988), a distant relative of Go (area control) and Chess (queen-like movement), innovated with the introduction of move obstacles. Hey! That’s My Fish! (2003) restricted the addition of obstacles and added varying points for position visits. Introducing original related game designs (e.g. Amazon Penguins (2009) and Paper Pen-guins (2009)), we demonstrated how game mechanics are like genes that mutate, crossover, and invite evolution of new games.

Dreamkeeper: 3d Game Using Unreal Engine 4, Marii Elizabeth Boyken, Martin Clayton Coleman, Casey Kendrick Albert-Hall

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

The goal of this senior project was to combine our diverse skills to make a 3D game. The plot involves a young girl who has been given the powers to enter dreams and defeat nightmares. The 3D assets that we built and animated were made in Autodesk Maya. We used Unreal Engine 4 to piece together our assets and create the logic for the game. This document explains the technologies that we used, design choices we made, feedback from our player-testing, and work that we want to complete for the project in the future. Our final game demo features two …

Design-Based Research Mobile Gaming For Learning Jewish History, Tikkun Olam, And Civics, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

How can Design-Based Research (DBR) be used in the study of video games, religious literacy, and learning? DBR uses a variety of pragmatically selected mixed methods approaches to design learning interventions. Researchers, working with educators and learners, design and co-design learning artifacts and environments. They analyze those artifacts and environments as they are used by educators and learners, and then iterate based on mixed methods data analysis. DBR is suited for any "rich contextualized setting in which people have agency." (Hoadley 2013) such as formal or informal learning environments.

The case covered in this chapter is a mobile Augmented Reality …

The Impact And Creation Of Level Music For Video Games, Randolph Kestner

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores the creation of music for a video game level utilizing industry tools for music compositions as well as level design. Music as an element of game design and its resulting impact is also examined.

Game Design And The Writing Process: Designing The Board Game Lineage: 1434, Bradley Isaac Sims

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis details the design and production of Lineage: 1434, a board game based on building a family dynasty similar to the Medici family of 15th century Italy. From the initial idea of creating a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game to reimaging the game as a board game, this project draws on multiple influences like Carcassonne (Wrede, 2000), Settlers of Catan (Teuber, 1995), Agricola (Rosenberg, 2008), and Edgebee Game's Swords & Potions (2011) and Critter Forge (2010). Game design decisions were driven in part by the flaws in existing games, including the problems of resource scarcity in pay-to-play MMO games, …

Secondary World: The Limits Of Ludonarrative, David Dannelly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Secondary World: The Limits of Ludonarrative is a series of short narrative animations that are a theoretical treatise on the limitations of western storytelling in video games. The series covers specific topics relating to film theory, game design and art theory: specifically those associated with Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard, Jay Bolter, Richard Grusin and Andy Clark. The use of imagery, editing and presentation is intended to physically represent an extension of myself and my thinking process and which are united through the common thread of my personal feelings, thoughts and experiences in the digital age.

Digital Interactive Games For Assessment: A Study Of The Effectiveness Of A Digital Game As A Measure Of Students' Understanding Of Boolean Logic, Mohammad Ali Haji

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Digital games have been used mostly for entertainment but recently researchers have started to use digital games in other areas such as education and training. Researchers have shown that digital games can provide a compelling, creative, and collaborative environment for learning. However, the popularity of computers and the Internet brings this question to mind: Are the assessment methods falling behind and remaining traditional? Will the traditional methods of learning and knowledge assessment be sufficient for this new generation who are starving for new technology? This study investigates the effectiveness of using a digital interactive game as an assessments method - …

Systems At Play: The Construction Of International Systems In Social Impact Games, Jorge Albor

Master's Theses

This thesis explores how game makers conceive of and navigate the intersection between digital systems and real world systems by asking, how can social impact game designers shape procedural rhetoric to effectively address complex real world systems with digital systems? By examining three game case studies, I reach four significant findings regarding player agency, subversive play, design approaches to scale, and game difficulty in regards to systems fluency.