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This article examines level design processes and challenges at professional game stu- dios. Thematic analysis of data, recorded through field studies and semi-structured interviews, identify four key themes: level design as an interdisciplinary effort; who is the level designer; the role of narrative in level design; and challenges of managing creativity in the level design process. Results indicate that while the role called level designer is often assigned to specific disciplines, the process of level design is usually highly interdisciplinary. Furthermore, this interdisciplinary collaboration requires management to maintain both creativity and efficient pipelines, by distributing owner- ship and facilitating communication and planning. The level design process seems par- ticularly vulnerable to suboptimal interdisciplinary communication and planning, due to significant reliance on narrative design, game design, art, sound design, and tool development. While this article addresses level design specifically, most observations are comparable to previous findings on game development in general., CC BY 4.0Corresponding author(s): Tobias Karlsson, School of Informatics, University of Skövde, PO Box 408, 541 28 Skövde, Sweden. Email: tobias.karlsson@his.seThe author(s) received nofinancial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication ofthis article.

This article examines how the unique characteristics of Marvinter, an inclusive transmedia Advent calendar, affected its production and the individual media workers involved in this. In the native transmedia Marvinter project, a radio series and a mobile game were created and released simultaneously. Using ‘partly shared’ resources, the project was developed by two collaborating, non-profit organisations. Each chapter of the digital game had to match the corresponding radio episode. The whole had to be designed to provide a shared cultural experience that included people with hearing or visual impairments. The authors of the present article were part of the game development team and thus directly experienced the complexity of developing a digital game as part of a transmedia project. This article presents the results of a case study with an insider perspective. It is supplemented by semi-structured interviews with key people in the project. The transmedia nature of Marvinter was justified by the need to include people with complementary disabilities. Although sometimes associated with negative connotations of ‘naked commercialisation’ in transmedia contexts, the marketing strategy was here an important element in promoting inclusivity. However, owing to the concurrent work processes, game production became overly complex., CC BY 4.0, Inkluderande julkalender

INTRODUCTION: The problem addressed in this work is the lack of knowledge of what inclusive game design would mean in practice within existing design processes of game companies. A pilot project was devised to involve both the game industry and disabled people. OBJECTIVES: The goal in this study was to identify activities that constitute the biggest obstacles to realising sustainable design processes for inclusive game design. METHODS: The study is mainly based on two full-day workshops with the game industry and three game studios, three organisations of disabled youth and authorities. RESULTS: Five activities were identified in the analysis of the workshops: 1) Find opportunities for inclusive game design; 2) Raise awareness about inclusive game design; 3) Handle integrity and security; 4) Recruit the right competence; and 5) Adapt workplaces and tools. CONCLUSION: The five main activities should be considered to achieve sustainable inclusive game design processes., This work was funded by the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (Vinnova) and Game Hub Scandinavia 2.0, Projektid: NYPS20201849, EU Interreg Öresuns-Kattegat-Skagerrak., PowerUp, Game Hub Scandinavia 2

Sexism in digital games has received a lot of attention in recent research. Most such studies are addressing the perception of sexist content in games and the attitude in gaming communities. This article analyses the digital game Behind Every Great One, which portraits benevolent sexism, i.e. sexism that may appear positive but that has a damaging effect. What is unique with this game is that it is played from the victim's perspective, a housewife. The article presents an inductive analysis of the game using a triangulation of three different methods: a textual analysis, a player study, and an interview with the developer. The result shows that the game manages to convey benevolent sexism to players and evoke empathy for the victim. This is achieved through a combination of mechanics, narrative, and visual and musical aesthetics. For example, the physical space available for the protagonist is constantly shrinking and crying is used as a powerful mechanics in the game. The player needs to find an empty space for the protagonist to cry and this provides insight into her emotional state. Through the game, the developer reflects upon his own behaviour towards women and the consequences it might have had for them. In particular how his, and other men's, self-absorption forces their female partners into an undesirable social role, in which their needs are constantly neglected. The combination of a meaningful gameplay and the use of game mechanics to convey a message lead us to suggest that the gameplay can be characterized as a persuasive meaningful play. The game has a potential to be used in educational environments as a starting point for discussions regarding gender roles and benevolent sexism., 10.34190/GBL.20.046

INTRODUCTION: The problem addressed in this work is the lack of knowledge of what inclusive game design would mean in practice within existing design processes of game companies. A pilot project was devised to involve both the game industry and disabled people. OBJECTIVES: The goal in this study was to identify activities that constitute the biggest obstacles to realising sustainable design processes for inclusive game design. METHODS: The study is mainly based on two full-day workshops with the game industry and three game studios, three organisations of disabled youth and authorities. RESULTS: Five activities were identified in the analysis of the workshops: 1) Find opportunities for inclusive game design; 2) Raise awareness about inclusive game design; 3) Handle integrity and security; 4) Recruit the right competence; and 5) Adapt workplaces and tools. CONCLUSION: The five main activities should be considered to achieve sustainable inclusive game design processes., The publisher made a mistake and set the "published" date to 2019-07-16, while it was submitted in January 2020.I notified them but it was too late to change then as it was already indexed.

This article presents the result from a study comparing the perception and understanding of a game story between sighted and visually impaired players playing the same game. In particular, whether sighted and visually impaired players could experience and recount the same story construed from the plot elements that are either manifested by audio and graphics in the case of sighted players or pri- marily by audio in the case of visually impaired players. To this end, we have developed a graphical point-and-click adventure game for iOS and Android devices that aims to show how inclusive game design may be used to facilitate a shared gaming experience between sighted and visually impaired players. The game pro- vides players with audio feedback that enables visually impaired players to interact with and experience the game, but in a manner that does not interfere with the overall appearance and functionality of the game. Thus, it has been designed to be fully inclusive to both groups of players and to give the same gaming experience when it comes to story content. The game has been evaluated through formal user tests where subjects have been asked to play the first chapter of the game followed by an interview. The study shows that the perception of the story was almost identical between the two groups. Generally it took visually impaired players a little longer to play the game but they also seem to listen more carefully to the dialogue and hence also build a slightly deeper understanding of the characters. The study also shows that the sighted players did not respond negatively towards the inclusive game design employed in the game., Inkluderande Speldesign

Computer games combine various artistic disciplines, such as visual art, sound, music and storytelling, with low-level data representations and algorithms in order to create an interactive experience for one or more players. This essay discusses the implications of exploring the design space at the intersection of games and art from a game design perspective. In particular, this essay argues that exploring and treating games as art is a step towards inclusive game development.

The aim of the project presented in this paper is that visually impaired and sighted players should be able to play the same game and share a gaming experience. The goal is that the game should be accessible to visually impaired players without any additional tools, such as text-to-speech, that may reduce the immersion. At the same time, sighted players should perceive the game as a regular game. This paper presents an evaluation of the game where the player immersion has been evaluated through a post test immersion questionnaire. The study was conducted with three independent groups: sighted players using graphics (n=10), blindfolded sighted players (n=10) and visually impaired players (n=9). Although progress in the game and the reported sense of control differed between groups, player immersion was very high in all groups. There were differences between the three groups only in one out of five immersion factors. The result shows that it has been possible to provide an immersive experience irrespective of whether the players are playing the game with graphics or using audio only., Inkluderande speldesign

In this paper, we present the result of an experiment, in which we compare the gaming experience between sighted players and visually impaired players playing the same game. Specifically we discuss whether they experience the same story construed from the plot elements that are either manifested by audio and graphics in the case of sighted players or primarily by audio in the case of visually impaired players. To this end, we have developed a graphical point-and-click adventure game for iOS and Android devices. The game has been designed to provide players with audio feedback that enables visually impaired players to interact with and experience the game, but in a manner that does not interfere with the overall appearance and functionality of the game, i.e. a design that is fully inclusive to both groups of players and that is as invisible for sighted players as possible without hindering visually impaired players to share the same gaming experience when it comes to story content. The study shows that the perception of the story were almost identical between the two groups. Generally it took visually impaired players a little longer to play the game but they also seem to listen more carefully to the dialogue and hence also build a slightly deeper understanding of the characters., 978-1-4799-8102-1 (Xplore)978-1-4799-8101-4 (USB)Catalog Number: CFP1538G-ART (Xplore)

The aim of the project presented in this paper is that visually impaired and sighted players should be able to play the same game and share a gaming experience. The goal is that the game should be accessible to visually impaired players without any additional tools, such as text-to-speech, that may reduce the immersion. At the same time, sighted players should perceive the game as a regular game. This paper presents an evaluation of the game where the player immersion has been evaluated through a post test immersion questionnaire. The study was conducted with three independent groups: sighted players using graphics (n=10), blindfolded sighted players (n=10) and visually impaired players (n=9). Although progress in the game and the reported sense of control differed between groups, player immersion was very high in all groups. There were differences between the three groups only in one out of five immersion factors. The result shows that it has been possible to provide an immersive experience irrespective of whether the players are playing the game with graphics or using audio only., Inkluderande speldesign

ISBN för tidskriftsnumret: 978-91-87957-04-8

A lot of video games on the market are inaccessible to players with visual impairments because they rely heavily on use of graphical elements. This paper presents a project aimed at developing a point-and-click adventure game for smart phones and tablets that is equally functional and enjoyable by blind and sighted players. This will be achieved by utilizing audio to give blind players all necessary information and enjoyment without graphics. In addition to creating the game, the aim of the project is to identify design aspects that can be applied to more types of games to include more players. This paper also presents a pilot study that has been conducted on an early version of the game and the preliminary findings are discussed.

We are interested in creating non-player characters (NPCs) in games that are capable of engaging in gossip conversations. Gossip could for instance be used to spread news, manipulate, and create tension between characters in the game, so it can have a functional as well as a social purpose. To accomplish this we need a computational model of gossip and such a model does not yet exist. As a first step in that direction we therefore present a model for initiating gossip that calculates whether it is appropriate for the NPC to start a gossip conversation based on the following factors: The (perceived) relationship between the NPC and the player character (PC); the relationship between each of the participants and the potential target; the news value of the gossip story; and how sensitive the story is.

The purpose of this study is to get a working definition that matches people’s intuitive notion of gossip and is sufficiently precise for computational implementation. We conducted two experiments investigating what type of conversations people intuitively understand and interpret as gossip, and whether they could identify three proposed constituents of gossip conversations: third person focus, pejorative evaluation and substantiating behavior. The results show that (1) conversations are very likely to be considered gossip if all elements are present, no intimate relationships exist between the participants, and the person in focus is unambiguous. (2) Conversations that have at most one gossip element are not considered gossip. (3) Conversations that lack one or two elements or have an ambiguous element lead to inconsistent judgments.