Game Design Commons^™

Enslaved Interactivity, Yomi

SWITCH

This article argues that no longer are players passive while playing video games, but play active roles in forming the narratives within video games. Using "Every Day the Same Dream" as a case study, the author writes that video games should empower players to act and shape narratives, fostering awareness that extends beyond the game.

Stop Putting The Hero’S Journey In A Skinner Box, Kelsey Higham

SWITCH

This article describes how goals and reward structures shape player motivation in games, distinguishing between challenge-driven players who enjoy skill development and content-driven players who want narrative and aesthetic experiences. The author argues that while goal-based design is useful for teaching skills and guiding play, it can also limit enjoyment and accessibility.

The Justice League Unlimited, Zenmondo Wormser

SWITCH

This article explains the mission and operations of the Justice League Unlimited (JLU), a volunteer group in Second Life dedicated to peacekeeping, education, and charity. Acting as a neighborhood watch, JLU members patrol high-risk areas, identify and report violations of the platform’s Terms of Service and Community Standards, and sometimes resolve issues through direct communication.

Redefining Classical Music Literacy: A Study Of Classical Orchestras, Museum Anthropology, And Game Design Theory, Kimberly M. Zahler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current state of declining audiences for the performing arts in the United States is cause for concern for those musicians and ensembles interested in the continuation of the art forms. The previous model of using audience numbers as the sole or primary measure of an orchestra's success is no longer sufficient in an era of participatory design and interactive experiences. Through observation and analysis of the culture of classical music, this study focuses on the emerging visions of participatory culture and the ways in which museum anthropology and game design theory can be used to redefine classical music literacy …

Maerken: A Multiplayer Role Playing Game, Chanh Ho

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project is to develop a base implementation of Maerken using the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a game framework that supports development of 3D games. We describe the game development process that was used to develop Maerken using UDK. The process includes game design, game implementation, and game distribution.

Effective Knowledge Development In Game-Based Learning Environments: Considering Research In Cognitive Processes And Simulation Design, Amy B. Adcock, Ginger S. Watson, Gary R. Morrison, Lee A. Belfore

STEMPS Faculty Publications

Serious games are, at their core, exploratory learning environments designed around the pedagogy and constraints associated with specific knowledge domains. This focus on instructional content is what separates games designed for entertainment from games designed to educate. As instructional designers and educators, the authors want serious game play to provide learners with a deep understanding of the domain, allowing them to use their knowledge in practice to think through multifaceted problems quickly and efficiently. Attention to the design of serious game affordances is essential to facilitating the development of domain knowledge during game play. As such, the authors contend that …

The Impact Of Cooperative Video Games On Team Cohesion, Greg Anderson

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In today’s economy, productivity and efficiency require collaboration between employees. In order to improve collaboration the factors affecting teamwork must be examined to identify where changes can be made in order to increase performance. One factor contributing to teamwork is team cohesion and represents a process whereby members are joined by a common bond in the pursuit of a common objective. A popular social bonding activity sweeping the world is playing cooperative video games. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of playing cooperative video games on team cohesion. Subjects (N=56) were randomly placed into 15 teams …

Teaching Design And Communication Through Project-Based Service Learning: Past, Present And Future, Ulrike Gencarelle, Laura Gabiger

Computer Graphics Department Faculty Publications and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

A Location Aware P2p Voice Communication Protocol For Networked Virtual Environments, Gabor Papp

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Multiparty voice communication, where multiple people can communicate in a group, is an important component of networked virtual environments (NVEs), especially in many types of online games. While most research has been conducted on one-to-one communication, we focus on group communication. In this dissertation, we present the first measurement study on the characteristics of multiparty voice communications and develop a model of the talking and silence periods observed during multiparty communication. Over a total of 5 months, we measured over 11,000 sessions on an active multi-party voice communication server to quantify the characteristics of communication generated by game players, including …

Game Assessment For Miltary Application, Patricia Mcneese

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The primary purpose of conducting this research was to establish game assessment guidelines and characteristics for integrating elected characteristics of games into ongoing instructional approaches. The cost of repurposing commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) games could offer a considerably lower cost alternative than the cost of creating a new instructional game developed for a specific instructional goal. The McNeese Game Assessment Tool (MGAT), created for the assessment of games in this usability study, is currently in a beta stage and was found to have potential for future game assessment. The overall assessment indicated that the tool was effective in analyzing game products for …

Sae Magazin : Das Magazin Von Sae Institute Und Sae Alumni Association 2008|1, Sae Institute

SAE Magazine (2007-2011)

No abstract provided.

Video Game Development With 3d Studio Max And The Xna Framework, Cole Mahoukau Koffi

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project on game design and development is to experiment with actual technology tools used in computer games and get experience in three deminsional game development using 3D Studio Max and Microsoft XNA.

Everquest, Reality, And Postmodern Theories Of Community, Brian Jacob-Paul Bailie

Theses Digitization Project

EverQuest is a multiplayer online role playing game that serves as a practical incarnation of life as a cyborg in a posthuman community. Using cultural materialsim, this thesis demonstrates how the words of EverQuest interactants - from message boards, interviews, and player in-game communications - construct the world of EverQuest and the roles of the interactants as its citizens. More specifically, this thesis will argue that the EverQuest world serves to reify the ideas of consumer capitalism that informs the "real" world, even as EverQuest itself promises an escape from that world.

In The Game : An Exploration Of The Concept Of Immersion In Video-Games And Its Usage In Game Design, Cesar Manuel Saez Ojeda

Theses : Honours

This thesis outlines a research project whose aim was to develop a design taxonomy for the creation of immersion in video-games. These guidelines can then be used in-sync with different stages in video-game design and development to ensure an immersive experience. Integral to this is the 'suspension of disbelief' the end user experiences when fully immersed in a video-game (Holland, 2002; Mediacollage.com, 2006). A review of the literature has identified the major contributing theory to the concept of immersion as flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991). Flow embodies cognitive elements of involvement such as concentration on a task, completing a challenge, having control …

Recreational Technology And Its Impact On The Learning Development Of Children Ages 4-8: A Meta-Analysis For The 21st Century Cl, Joey Templeton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research focuses on technology (specifically video games and interactive software games) and their effects on the cognitive development of children ages 4-8. The research will be conducted as a meta-analysis combining research and theory in order to determine if the educational approach to this age group needs to change/adapt to learners who have been affected by this technology. I will focus upon both the physical and mental aspects of their development and present a comprehensive review of current educational theory and practice. By examining current curriculum goals and cross-referencing them to research conducted in fields other than education (i.e. …

Virtual Power Politics, James Grimmelmann

Faculty Scholarship

Software-based rules are not automatically normative in virtual worlds. The feature-bug ambiguity always means that the social meaning of the "rules" is subject to negotiation and to political dispute. I illustrate this claim with an analysis of exploits.

Making Happiness In West Egg And Simburbia: An Inquiry Into Consumption In The Great Gatsby And The Sims, Shawn Thomson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First two paragraphs]

At the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway reflects of his journey to the East: “this has been a story of the West” (184). Nick never explains exactly how this is the case, particularly odd since all the action takes place between Manhattan and Long Island. Nick’s hesitant explanation for this puzzling conclusion lies in the western origin of the central characters of the novel and their inability to adapt “to Eastern Life” (184). But the characters seem a part of, if not overshadowed by, the riotous world of West Egg. Only …

You Need Love And Friendship For This Mission!: The Final Fantasy Series As Social Education For Japanese Youth, Ben Hourigan

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

From the mid to late 1990s, popular and academic discourse on video games, particularly in the United States, has focused on their supposed capacity to engender violent and otherwise anti-social behavior in youth. Much like ludologists' recent claims that video games are not a narrative medium, at least one reason for this is that commentators have too narrow an understanding of the diverse range of games that exist. In addition to this, game demonizers have demonstrated an inadequate understanding of the ways games are related to real life. In order to combat these misunderstandings, this chapter analyzes the role of …

Little Gods And Little Heroes: Hyperreal Ethics In God Games And Online Gaming, G. Christopher Williams

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Media critics, notably Jean Baudrillard, have suggested that the environment of simulations are to be defined as something more real than the real, or, in his terms, hyperreal. If hyperrealities are indeed the way that we can define the environment of multimedia technologies like video games, what sorts of ethical considerations should exist in a place that gamers conceive as more real than the real? This essay considers what ethical considerations are worth contemplating as gamers begin to take on the roles of gods and heroes in multiplayer video games. The little gods and heroes whose identities gamers have begun …

The Horror Is Alive: Immersion, Spectatorship, And The Cinematics Of Fear In The Survival Horror Genre, Jay Mcroy

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

The video game genre known as survival horror resembles contemporary horror cinema in that both increasingly popular forms of entertainment allow audiences to experience fear resulting from the development of suspense coupled with the dread and shock of encountering monstrosity. One need only note the remarkable success of next generation video game franchises like Resident Evil (1996) and Silent Hill (1999) to realize that, more than ever before, game players in their late teens and beyond long to immerse themselves within interactive nightmares that offer the kind of thrills and chills once available exclusively through horror literature and films. However, …

The Postmodern Hoard: Rates Of Exchange In Role-Playing Games, Carlos Hernandez

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

What makes Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) unique among games is the way it merges storytelling with game mechanics. Before the invention of D&D, both acting/narrative-based games and strategy-based war games that made use of fantasy-genre elements existed, but the way D&D integrates both elements invented a whole new category of game, one in which the immersive draw of a plot proves just as important as good tactics or luck of the dice. This chapter explores the relationship between the qualitative and quantitative aspects of D&D. Specifically, it argues that the rules of the game provide quantitative corollaries to aspects of …

Application Of Binaural Recording In The Video Game Industry, Max Leong

Theses : Honours

The video game industry is one of entertainment technologies' largest growing industries. There are thousands of games in the market covering a variety of different genres. There is also a high level technical sophistication in current games along with the game console that runs it. Games are realistic with astonishingly life like graphics. The backing audio and music tracks are performed by leading orchestras and written by renowned composers. Great technological strides have been made in the areas of graphic and audio design. The end user expects the very best and the video game industry is constantly improving software and …

Role Playing Games As Interactive Fiction, John Miller

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This chapter compares the experience of gaming and the experience of reading, and explores what that comparison might tell us about each. More specifically, it applies methods of literary analysis to the study of two narrative activities situated near the border of reading and gaming: Electronic hyperfictions and role-playing games. Miller first reviews literary theories of reader response and interactivity and notes how these have informed recent critical discussions of literary hyperfiction. He then critiques these discussions and the claims made for hyperfiction's liberating or empowering effect on readers: Contrary to the claims of some critics, such narratives generally fail …

Imagined Cities, Real Futures: Simcity And The Co-Production Of Urban Dystopias, Samuel Gerald Collins

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

While the author of this chapter agrees with anthropologists who reject an urban studies predicated on postmodern surfaces and insist that we analyze cities in regional, national and global contexts of political economy, he nevertheless suggests that the urban imaginary has never been so important: Movies, television and music have proven all too useful in the continued vilification of an urban underclass. In 2001, in order to explore the role media might play in the structuring and delimitating of the ways we think about cities, Collins assigned SimCity, a computer simulation game combining models of urban development with cellular automata, …

Shooters To The Left Of Us, Shooters To The Right: First Person Arcade Shooter Video Games, The Violence Debate, And The Legacy Of Militarism, Karen J. Hall

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Adult concerns about video games erupted in the 1990s when parents and politicians came forward with claims that Doom, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct and games like them were partially responsible for the rash of school shootings in predominantly white, middle class communities. The author of this chapter argues that arcade games serve the national interest by entertaining consumer-citizens and creating a consumer-based demand for military technology. However, when adolescent shooters disrupt the status quo, it is the games rather than militarist social and economic structures that are criticized by the news media, politicians, and parents. The author of …

Digital Extensions And Performed Players: A Theoretical Model For The Video/Computer Game, Ben Fisler

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Despite over twenty years of studies, scholars have yet to identify a productive theoretical model for the video game that does not depend on a fragmentary understanding of its form. Following Pierre Bourdieu's contention that the purpose of criticism is to understand cultural products as distinct scientific objects, and Marshall McLuhan's theory that the message and formative power of media are the media themselves, this study attempts to generate a foundational critical understanding of the video game. Building on the most lucrative intrinsic (such as David Myer's 1991 Computer Game Semiotics) and extrinsic (such as Jeffrey Goldstein's 1998 Immortal …

Allegorical Reductions And Social Reconstructions: An Introduction To Games, Gamers, And Gaming Cultures, Matthew Wolf-Meyer, Davin Heckman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Games have become a central metaphor in representations of society, and most people are familiar enough with Lewis Carroll's Alice to know that when she passes through the looking glass she finds herself embroiled in a game a Chess which is also much more (Carroll 1992 [1897]). This strange game of Chess is simultaneously a simulation and an enactment of social life in Wonderland, and Carroll plots out Alice 's narrative path as a series of tactical Chess moves, which can be understood as both an attempt to win the game and to navigate through Wonderland and her …

When A Killer Body Isn’T Enough: Cross-Gender Identification In Action-Adventure Video Games, Marc Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

While sports games try to recreate the atmosphere of a stadium or of television broadcasts of games, role-playing and action-adventure games attempt to duplicate cinematography through animation. For Tomb Raider, the virtual reality created by the cinematic animation of the game produces an environment for male-to-female cross-gender identification, a topic that has received little critical attention. The sense of identification intended in this chapter comes from psychoanalysts Jean Laplanche and Jean-Baptiste Pontalis, who describe identification as a psychological process in which a subject assimilates an aspect, a property, a characteristic of another and transforms himself [or herself] totally or partially …

Body Matters In Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, C. Jason Smith

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

The virtual body is already here. Though not as “seamless” as the virtual body envisioned in cyberpunk literature and made popular in films like The Lawnmower Man (1992), hundreds of thousands of people in over 114 countries (“Visitor Center”) daily log into massively multiplayer online role-playing games like Everquest, Ultima Online, Anarchy Online, and Earth and Beyond. These massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs or MMOs for short) [1] combine the extensive rule systems of traditional role-playing games (or RPGs) such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons with computer graphic technology and online chat. In these computer …

Fractured Identities: Siblings And Doubles In Video Games, Laurie N. Taylor

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In her essay on “Fractured Identities: Siblings and Doubles in Video Games” Laurie Taylor explores how certain norms of video game design – originally derived from technological constraints of code space and processing speed – continue as the narrative parameters of many if not most contemporary video games. Synthesizing approaches from literary studies and narratology, Taylor offers an innovative angle on the fractured identities of doubles and siblings as the narrative correspondence to now largely obsolete technological constraints. Game-play, related to but nevertheless distinct from the literary type of narrative, as Taylor insists, is a key factor in determining what …