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Copyright of Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseño y Comunicación is the property of Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseno y Comunicacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The concept is to create a game based on augmented reality and use object tracking as the primary function for recognizing objects using a camera. The key goal is to design an atmosphere that not only satisfies a person's desire to play video games but also lowers their stress levels in a manner that is both cost-effective and makes less use of flashy devices and cutting-edge technology. The environment produced in this way will use a camera that can identify objects and carry out a series of activities that have been preset according to their function, [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to evaluate the children's games in the stories in the 100 best-selling children's picture books on online book sales sites during the pandemic period, in terms of the game theories of Piaget, Parten and Smilansky. While the universe of the study consists of picture children's books on all online book sales sites, the sample is the 100 best-selling children's picture books on these sites. The data in the examined books were evaluated with the "Book Review Form", which was created by evaluating the studies in the literature. This form is divided into two as general information and game theories. In the general information part of the form, there is information about the book such as the name of the book, its author, illustrator, publisher, while the game theories part of the game includes the game theories of Piaget, Parten and Smilansky and the subtitles of these theories. The study was analyzed using content analysis, one of the qualitative research methods. The MAXQDA program was used for content analysis. As a result of the study, it was determined that 56 of the 100 best-selling children's books on online book sales sites included children's games. The information obtained was discussed in the context of preschool children's literature and game theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Video games can be dynamic sovereign spaces for Indigenous representation and expression when the self-determination of Indigenous people is supported. Where games are concerned, self-determination involves the autonomy and right of Indigenous people to make key decisions regarding the process of how a game is developed as well as what that game entails. A game is sovereign when self-determination is a respected practice throughout all phases of development from conceptualization to distribution. In what ways can games be sovereign and what challenges may be faced? Utilizing comparative case studies of the self-determined games Lost Memories, Terra Nova, and When Rivers Were Trails, this research identifies possible approaches and challenges for sovereign games looking at development as well as the resulting designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Games are trouble. As faculty members in a Game Development program we are aware of the troubles. As inside–outsiders, given our status as queer women in the male-dominated Games field, both with interdisciplinary art-tech-humanities backgrounds as opposed to STEM, we are the ones commonly tasked with 'fixing' these troubles. This tasking comes to us in the form of both assumptions and requests about our providing particular types of education to others, both faculty and students, as fixes to Game-troubles: teaching the gender module; sitting on an LGBTQ+ committee; advising a particular student who is also outside the more comfortable purview of Games; and so forth. While our labor is often assumed, it is not fully valued, evidenced by the ways in which it is chronically under-resourced. And, given this lack of sustainability, our labor is not effective in the ways we intend. Often, our fixes only serve to a fix ourselves, further cementing us as outsiders. Our fixes are diluted until they become performative gestures, absolving others of the need to act, but changing little else. Acting 'in a fix' is something we no longer wish to do. Instead we untangle and re-tangle in a new way, drawing on the work of Feminist New Materialists (Ahmed, 2008; Alaimo, 2016; Alaimo and Hekman, 2008; Barad, 2011; Bennett, 2010; Braidotti, 2013; Coole and Frost, 2010; Dolphijn and Tuin, 2012; Grosz, 1994; Kirby, 1997) to develop imaginative new models for a more just and joyful future Games pedagogy. We share not only our research on this topic, but also invite you into our own intimate experiences of play-making, foregrounding this as knowledge-making too. We offer these crossings between text and context, history and future Ahmed, 2008, memory and fiction as a speculative fabulation for future Games pedagogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increase in market needs, game development teams are facing a high demand of creating new games every year. Although several methodologies and tools were introduced to support the game development life cycle, there is still a lack of evidence that these techniques improve game requirements understandability among development teams. The use of models in requirements engineering is considered a promising approach to support requirements elicitation, negotiation, validation, and management. In the context of game development, game designers argue that models are hard to learn and would restrict their creativity. In this paper, we introduce a novel use case-based game modeling approach that extends the standard UML use case diagram. The proposed technique allows for better representation of game-related requirements and promotes a common understanding of game requirements among game development teams. Our approach is implemented in a tool, called game use case modeling, and its applicability is demonstrated using four well-known games, Super Mario Bros, Tetris, Just Dance, and The Walking Dead. Moreover, in order to assess the perceived understandability, learnability, and usefulness of the proposed approach, we have conducted a survey involving 29 participants from the game development community. Results indicate a very satisfactory agreement regarding the added value of the proposed approach and a willingness of adoption by the game development community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercial game makers at all scales of production have increasingly come to incorporate livestreaming into every stage of the game development cycle. Mainstream hits like Fortnite and League of Legends owe their ongoing success in no small part to their massive uptake by streamers, and triple-A releases from major publishers can reliably expect significant attention on streaming platforms. But what about smaller, lower budget games? For independent game developers, the costs and benefits of streaming are less clear. Based on interviews with small commercial indie developers in Toronto and Montréal, this article critically examines different discourses around streaming and commercial indie games, focusing on developer perceptions of the benefits and risks of streaming and its impacts on indie game-making practices, including production, promotion, and community-building. Contrary to persistent popular myths about streaming as the key to 'discoverability', commercial indie game development remains a precarious form of cultural work, and indie games collectively attract only a tiny fraction of the overall audience on streaming platforms. There is a high level of uncertainty about the factors that led to a given game's success, leaving many indie developers ambivalent about leveraging influencer attention and even as they commit significant time and energy trying to doing so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Video game development platforms represent a specialized work environment that contains a multitude of properties and tools that help game creators in designing and making applications in this field. The market for game development platforms is currently booming, offering a diverse range of options. Anyone with motivation and ideas can start creating and developing a game using popular platforms such as Unreal Engine, Unity, Game Maker or RPG Maker VX Ace. Today, every platform for game development is supported by a vast basic documentation but also by a huge public community that provides game creators with all the tools they need to create high-performance games. If an experienced or even less experienced developer finds himself in a situation where he cannot solve a problem on his own, he has the opportunity to find the answer to the problem encountered, on the community forums corresponding to the technology used in creating the game, or he will find someone who has faced a similar situation and can give him answers/advice for the specific situation. Depending on the purpose of the final product, the game creator has the opportunity to choose the platform he will use in creating it. Unity is the most popular video game development platform due to its cross-platform capability. Unity can be used both in making 2D or 3D games, but also in the film, automotive, architecture, engineering, and construction industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes user work during open game development and presents an alternative model for participatory design. During open development, developers publicly distribute incomplete games, discuss their design goals, and facilitate user feedback. This article examines user work on an open development forum using conventional content and discourse uptake analyses. It finds that users customize their participation, engage with multiple objects of design, and affect design through collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of design and development of games that integrate virtual aspects in a real environment has grown in recent years. An example of such games is pervasive games (PGs), which seek to enrich the game world through mixing these two realities in order to better involve the player in the story. The application of PGs has resulted in increasing player motivation and engagement. Currently, new technologies have made it possible to advance the design and development of games. PGs have not been the exception, and through the mix of elements of traditional games with real elements and scenarios it has been possible to improve motivation and user experience. However, previous studies have identified the need to have a process that guides the design and creation of PGs. Therefore, this paper presents GeoPGD, a methodology that integrates the design of geolocated narrative as the core of the game experience. This methodology guides designers and developers through the different stages of building a PG, offering tools for defining the narrative components, places and interactions between the user and the PG. In addition, a validation with experts and a PG experience is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: One of the most serious concerns of parents, caregivers, teachers and therapists is children's independent living, particularly of those with special educational needs (SEN). Purpose-built programs for the acquisition of independent living skills are considered a priority in special education settings. The main problem is the inefficacy of detached interventions to meet the needs of as many students as possible. OBJECTIVE: Our response is to create transmedia applications for inclusive learning environments. To this end, we have taken a participatory design approach to develop a project for Daily Living Skills Training by combining special education pedagogies, filmic methods, game design and innovative technologies. In this paper, we present the design and development of Waking up In the Morning (WUIM), and its improvement through user-based and expert-based evaluations by students, therapists and developers. The main research purpose is to confirm if: (1) the final products of the WUIM project could be educational resources for students with SEN and (2) the common gaming experience could promote collaborative learning, regardless of students' cognitive profile. METHODS: During the alpha phase, we developed and improved WUIM. In July 2020, we implemented and evaluated WUIM in special education settings (beta-phase). More specifically, a quantitative and qualitative formative evaluation was conducted with children who have developmental disabilities (N = 11), their therapists (N = 7) and developers (N = 2). Methods of data collection included questionnaires filled in by therapists and developers, participant observation by researchers and interviews with children. RESULTS: The results of the formative evaluation were generally positive regarding four-factor groups that shape the learning experience: Content, Technical characteristics, User state of mind, Characteristics that allow learning. After the design team reviewed the potential users and experts' comments that were mainly related to the user interface, the application was improved. CONCLUSIONS: The two hypotheses have been largely confirmed. Overall, we propose a simplified development process that showcases the importance of arts-based methods and aesthetics which deliver representational fidelity. The study reveals the necessity of developing transmedia learning materials to meet each individual's needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background.: Relatively little is known about the role of educators in serious game design and development and their experiences with serious game implementation. We investigate educators' perceived challenges deriving from their involvement as subject matter experts during the serious game development trajectory. Methods.: A secondary analysis of data collected through an exploratory survey about serious game design and development approaches was carried out. The sample included 41 educators from post-secondary education institutions across North America. An in-depth analysis of qualitative data revealed educators' roles in game development, the challenges they faced, and the strategies they deployed in serious game design, development, and implementation. Results.: Educators, as serious game designers, perceived challenges to be administrative, design-related, attitudinal, and communicative. Strategies deployed to overcome challenges during the concept development, pre-production, and production stages of game design include the creation of games that balance learning and fun, and enhanced team collaboration through cultural mediation. During the post-production stage, although challenges are acknowledged and some strategies, such as improving the usability of a game, are deployed, a clear pattern in challenges and mitigating strategies could not be observed. Conclusion.: Serious game design and development can be improved by nurturing diversity of ideas and adopting creative design and development methodologies. Serious game implementation can be improved by devising effective administrative and attitudinal strategies, and incorporating diversity of ideas into target curricula. Additionally, clear directives about usability should be devised, and academic objectivity towards serious games needs to be be created. Strategies to achieve these goals should focus on developing trust between target users, the technical development team, and educators as serious game implementers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children with diagnosis of down syndrome has different kinds of personalities, mental states, and talents similar to other children. The key point is that every child needs proper support at the right time. There are options like special education programs, physical and other therapies, and play groups. However, there are not any electronic games to support the education and improvement of these children. The goal of this study is to develop a mobile game for children with down syndrome, in order to help them learn everyday knowledge by using a mobile device such as a smart phone or a tablet. In most cases pedagogues use puzzle or paper-based card games to teach these children the necessary knowledge they need to maintain their lives. This study aims to optimize the learning process of children with down syndrome by providing educators electronic games they can use to teach them in a mobile application which will enrich the teaching process in addition to update their teaching methods to Industry 4.0 standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing children’s games that concern sensitive subjects such as online sexual grooming obviously poses a number of challenges. Such challenges include, for instance, the sensitivity of the topic itself, the ethics surrounding the subject matter, and the need to bypass inappropriate language while also creating a game that children will want to play. This paper describes a computer game development project in which a game for 8–10-year-old children was created with the purpose to raise young peoples’ risk awareness in online interactions such as multi-user gaming and social networking. The game’s mechanics are based on our extensive studies of naturalistic online dialogues derived from closed-forum dialogues between children and later-convicted perpetrators. The perpetrators’ tactics and strategies were transferred into game events but in a non-sexual and non-violent format. The game, Hidden in the Zoo, combines a classic board game, a computer game, and augmented reality technology. The traditional game board can be viewed on a tablet that transfers the basic picture on the board into an exciting 3D world. The game’s setting is a zoo. To play, each player hides a treasure and is then given a set of clues to the location of the player’s own hiding place. The players need to be mindful of the clues to the hiding place so that other players cannot find their treasure. Beyond this basic game premise, the game also contains messages, similar to online chats or text messages, through which players can choose whether or not to reveal a clue, bearing in mind that revealing a clue may or may not be a good idea in the long run. The game is now a fully playable prototype, and initial results show that the game serves as a tool for generating discussions about possible actions and consequences within the game but also in real life. Hence, the game provides a means to empower young children through raised risk awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Model-driven game development (MDGD) introduces model-driven methodology to the computer game domain, shifting the focus of game development from coding to modeling to make game development faster and easier. The research on MDGD is concerned with both the general model-driven software development methodology and the particular characteristics of game development. People in the MDGD community have proposed several approaches in the past decades, addressing both the technology and the development process in the context of MDGD. This article presents the state-of-art of MDGD research based on a literature review of 26 approaches in the field. The review is structured around five perspectives: target game domains, domain frameworks, modelling languages, tooling, and evaluation methods. The article also includes reflections and a discussion of the challenges within MDGD [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illustrates a gap between popular narratives of game development in design texts and the reality of day-to-day development, drawing from an ethnographic account of intern developers to highlight the potential contributions of studio studies to Game Studies. It describes three takeaways. The first is that the difficulty developers have in articulating their work to others has implications for how we learn, teach, and talk about development, including how we share knowledge across domains. The second is that, at least for newer developers, negotiation with technology rather than mastery characterizes daily work, and the third is that problems frequently arise in articulating and aligning the normally black-boxed work of individual developers. Resolution of these issues commonly depends on "soft" social skills; yet external pressures on developers mean they tidy up and professionalize accounts of their daily practice, thus both social conflict and soft skills have a tendency to disappear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A smart robot game, which is one of the new type expanding the market through coding education classes recently, has a characteristic to manipulate digital games with a smart-phone while using a robot instead of existing games. Under the same rules, the virtual world’s game is connected to real world’s robot through a smart-phone, and the game is played while exchanging data. This study analyzes smart robot game by dividing them into media features, digital game features, and playful features. In addition, we developed the game based on the board game genre that has the general rules while using the derived development features. As a result, by presenting the case of development of smart robot board game, we would like to propose the points to be considered in the development of smart robot game. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Game development is commonly seen as a collaborative effort, with teams cooperating on the same project. Nowadays, a variety of cloud-based services have shown the benefits of performing tasks in real-time collaboration with others. In this article, we present a system for collaborative game level editing. We model this problem as a special instance of merging labeled directed acyclic graphs. We propose an algorithm that guarantees that the shared game level is always coherent between edits, both hierarchically and semantically. We establish real-time collaboration by initiating merges automatically and by augmenting the game editor interface to allow users to monitor all others edits in real time. We validate our algorithm by merging complex edits and large game levels. We further validate the collaborative workflow by running a user study with expert game developers, showing that our system works well and collaborative workflows are beneficial to game development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

\kappa -labs is a research project exploring the possibilities of the logic programming paradigm in bot behavior programming for first-person shooter (FPS) games. The focus of previous work was to make Prolog a usable tool for bot programming and a baseline for further extensions. This paper presents one such extension, which makes it possible to script tactics of the entire team of bots. The algorithm was tested by bot-to-bot computer tests and by running surveys among human players who volunteered to take part in the research. The results of the both tests are presented in this paper. The extension itself demonstrates the flexibility of the framework. Although the proposed method for defining team behaviors relies solely on the knowledge of the bot’s designer, alternative approaches, which use rules that are obtained by computational techniques, can also be developed. Such approaches are also being investigated as part of the \kappa-labs project. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Brazilian Journal of Biology is the property of Instituto Internacional de Ecologia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The potential of games in empowering underrepresented groups is a central theme in the field of media studies. However, to ensure that everyone can benefit from them, it is necessary to ensure that they are inclusive and accessible. In the present work, we have implemented a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach to target this problem, right at the stage of training new game designers and game developers. Thus, through a game-design-based or experimental game design pedagogical approach, we intended to promote inclusive and accessibility-driven game design and development skills in students, while decreasing their negative attitudes towards people with Intellectual Disability (pwID). A protocol with a Non-Governmental Organization in the field was established and, during two semesters, students were challenged to develop 10 accessible games and physical interfaces for pwID and motor disabilities, through participatory processes. Pre and post assessment was conducted, through a mixed-method approach. After participating in this process, students reported satisfaction and increased knowledge of cognitive and motor accessibility, and inclusive game design in general. Moreover, the attitudinal assessment showed significantly lower levels of prejudiced beliefs towards pwID (p < 0.05). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a literature review published by Nascimento et. al. (2017), the research team noticed the lack of studies focused on game controllers' accessibility during use by children with Down syndrome. In view of that, this research describes a mobile game development and its usability analyses, which were created to evaluate the accessibility of touchscreen gestural interfaces. The methodology was organized into three steps: bibliographic research and the definition of the project guidelines, the game development, and its evaluation. The guidelines used were based on a study made by Nascimento et. al. (2019) of the impairments that children can have, their game preferences found on Prena's article (2014), games accessibility guidelines for people with intellectual deficiency from the Includification Book (2012), a manual of touchscreen gestural interfaces from Android and iOS and a game development framework from Schuytema (2008). Then, for the usability analyses, the team decided to first submit the game to a group of experts in order to make some improvements before submitting it to the audience. In this way, two evaluations were done, a heuristic test with usability specialists and a cognitive walkthrough with health professionals. The list of heuristics used on the tests was created by a mash up of the Breyer evaluation (2008) and the recommendations of the Able Games Association (2012) and the cognitive one followed the Preece, Sharp and Rogers (2007) recommendations. The results found reveal some challenges in the field and adjustments, mainly in the narrative, game goals and interface feedback, that should be addressed as soon as possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A game engine to create games as multi-agent systems. • The engine definition leans on a formal specification of a multi-agent system. • The behaviour specification system is based on first-order logic. • Game mechanics can be defined by just five conditions and four actions. • A set of use cases are presented along with their game mechanics. Video games are applications that present design patterns that resemble multi-agent systems. Game objects or actors are like autonomous agents that interact with each other to describe complex systems. The purpose of this work is to develop a game engine to build games as multi-agent systems. The actors or game engine agents have a set of properties and behaviour rules with the end to interact with the environment of the game. The behaviour definition is established through a formal semantic based on predicate logic. The proposed engine tries to fulfil the basic requirements of the multi-agent systems, by adjusting the characteristics of the system, without affecting its potential. Finally, a set of games are introduced to validate the operation and possibilities of the engine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]