Program

The Game Designer as Change Agent

From Experiment Gameplay to the Wonderful World of Goo

Games and Physical Health

Eat M Up! Studying the Link between Game Experience and Eating Behaviour
By: Karolien Poels, Yvonne de Kort and Wijnand IJsselsteijn

Playing games is often associated with unhealthy eating habits like meal skipping and consuming high calorie snacks. Online players are repeatedly huddled behind their PC with soft drinks and snacks to help them through long sessions of game play. Social gaming often takes place with friends hanging on the couch while consuming beer, and eating chips. Related to this, researchers have proposed the "couch-potato" hypothesis that connects electronic media use with obesity and overweight. According to this hypothesis, both TV viewing and playing digital games replace active leisure time and facilitate a sedentary lifestyle leading to an increase in obesity and overweight. To date, most empirical evidence in this area is based on large scale surveys linking a media use variable (e.g. daily hours of gaming) to an eating (e.g. amount of snacks a day) or weight (e.g. BMI) related variable.

In the present study we examined the relation between playing digital games and eating behaviour in a lab setting. We specifically focused on the interplay between game experience or emotions evoked during game play and eating behaviour. The objectives were twofold. First, we wanted to investigate how having the possibility to eat contributes to the game experience. Second, we wanted to test how specific game experiences (e.g. pleasure, immersion, boredom) and specific game events (e.g. winning vs. losing) are related to eating behaviour.

Designing Meaningful Play: A case study involving Queen of Wheat and Elvis Pretzley
By: Kristin Hughes

Fitwits is a series of games and tools designed for clinicians, teachers, and parents that teach children ages 9-12 about food portions, nutrition and exercise using a positive behavioral approach. Fitwits innovative curriculum includes several interdependent settings for children and their families; it is divided into three specific phases: 1) Fitwits School Health Program, 2) Fitwits MD, and 3) Fitwits Community Game. The Fitwits model uses a community-based participatory approach whereby participants are involved in the design process, and on-going assessment, of all phases of the project.

The focus of this presentation is the front-end, qualitative design-research methods used to develop Fitwits School Health Program that is underway at several Pittsburgh Public Schools and Fitwits MD.

I like to see myself on screen: Effects of seeing oneself on screen and body image dissatisfaction on exercise experiences in playing an exercise video game
By: Hayeon Song, Wei Peng and Kwan Lee

With the recent communication technology development, it is now common to see the image of self not only in the mirror but also in many communication technological applications. For example, the image of self is available in the still picture, live camera, instant messenger, video conference, etc. Video games also start to use the image of self. In some recent applications of video games, self image has been used to represent self in virtual reality.

Despite the popular use of the image of self with new communication technology applications, research concerning the self images through new media is still not sufficient. This paper attempts to test the effect of seeing the image of self in an exercise video game. The context of exercise was chose for the research, because previous literatures in exercise psychology have found significant effects of seeing oneself on the mirror on exercise motivation and exercise experiences.

Emergent Gameplay

The Significance of Jeep Tag: On Player-Imposed Rules in Video Games
By: Felan Parker

Video games, unlike traditional, non-digital games, are based on a combination of fixed rules which cannot be broken from the player position, and implied rules which are not enforced by the computer program. It is relatively common, however, for players to impose additional or alternative rules on video games, in order to refine or expand gameplay and to create new gaming experiences. This paper considers the implications of this phenomenon, dubbed "expansive gameplay," in context of video game studies and design. How does the existence of expansive gameplay help us to situate video games in relation to traditional games? To what extent is this phenomenon indicative of the ways in which players engage with video games? By theorizing expansive gameplay as a demonstrative example of the active, experimental and exploratory nature of gameplay more generally, this paper endeavours to open further discussion about the relationships between players and the rule-based systems which constitute video games.

Visualizing Game Mechanics and Emergent Gameplay
By: Joris Dormans

This paper aims to explore a method of visual notation based on UML (Unified Modelling Language) to help the game designer understand the dynamics of his or her game. This method is intended to extend and refine the iterative process of designing games. Board games are used as a case study because emergence in board games is often easier to study than in computer games. In order to understand emergence in games, some concepts from the science of complexity are discussed and applied to games. From this discussion a number of structures that contribute to emergence are used to inform the design of the UML for game design.

User Experiences of Game Idea Generation Games
By: Annakaisa Kultima, Johannes Niemel, Janne Paavilainen and Hannamari Saarenp

In this paper, we introduce three idea generation games designed for the use of game designers and discuss about the feedback they received while used in the authentic production settings. Three games designed especially for generating game ideas were developed in the GameSpace project that studies methods for design and evaluation of casual mobile multiplayer games. According to our experiences, games can be considered as successful devices for idea generation. Game-based idea generation techniques provide an easily facilitated, focused but playful setting for coming up with new ideas. We would like to share the feedback of our games in order to inspire others to create similar tools for generating innovative ideas in the field of games or other industries alike.

User-Created Content And Program-Modification In Video Games And Virtual Worlds

Turning Gamers to Soldiers: War Games in the Modern Military

Designing Games for Health

Impacts of Narrative, Nurturing, and Game-Play on Health-Related Outcomes in an Action-Adventure Health Game (Top Paper Award)
By: Debra Lieberman

Narrative in digital interactive games, with engaging characters and dramatic stories, may serve many functions, such as increasing players' immersion and involvement in the game, boosting their attention and arousal, and enhancing learning and persuasion. How might the presence of a dramatic story line influence the appeal and health-related outcomes of an action-adventure health game? Likewise, how are players impacted when they nurture characters in the game who have health problems? And also, if narrative and nurturing are minimized in the game so that players focus on pure game-play instead, what are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach in achieving health-related outcomes? This paper reports findings from a study of the cancer education game, Re-Mission, which was modified into five versions with varying levels of narrative and nurturing. A randomized study of 488 young adults compared the impacts of the five game versions on health outcomes including players' cancer-related knowledge, attitudes, emotions, self-concepts, self-efficacy, information seeking, and intentions to prevent and treat cancer. The study found distinct strengths of narrative, nurturing, and pure game-play, and these findings provide useful evidence to guide the design of future health games.

The Social Construction Model of Interactive Gaming for Disabled Users: Benefits and Developmental Evaluation
By: John Richardson

Though some pragmatic thought has been put into making computer and video games as accessible to the disabled as such media as film and music, there has been a paucity of research and discourse on the social construction model as it applies to interactive games. With this model, such media impacts the self-identity, social spheres, and coping mechanisms of users with mobility, orientation, and/or neurological challenges. I explain how, on a high-level and conceptual basis, this model emerges out of the generative experiences and inherent feedback components of the interactive game medium, and attempt to frame both the importance of and challenges in implementing greater accessibility from a development perspective. The intent is not to merely state how the industry is overlooking an important demographic, but also to explain how interactive games can play a supportive role in the enrichment of the lives of those within it.

Press Play to Grow! Designing Video Games as Trojan Horses for Catalyzing Human Development
By: Moses Silbiger

This paper explores new and alternative video game designs to promote overall and healthy human development based on specific methodological frameworks related to the emergent fields of Integral Psychology and "Post-Piagetian" Developmental Psychology. In order to better investigate these aspects, a brief introduction of developmental concepts including Integral Psychology, Integral Life Practice (cross-disciplinary developmental training), and Integral Play Theory (which links human development & play) is also presented.

Analyzing and Understanding Games

Beyond Choices: A Typology of Ethical Computer Game Designs (Top Paper Award)
By: Miguel Sicart

This paper presents a typology for classifying computer games designed to create ethical gameplay. Ethical gameplay is the outcome of playing a (computer) game in which the players' moral values are of relevance for the game experience. This paper explores the different types of designs that create these types of experiences, and how they are characterized. This paper provides an analytical framework for classifying games according to the experience they create and how they create it. This paper is informed by both game design theory and postphenomenological philosophy, and it is intended to provide a theoretical framework for the study of the design of ethical computer game experiences.

A Framework for the Analysis and Design of Meaningful Games
By: Russell Williams

A number of taxonomies have been presented for the the analysis and design of games. The primary focus in these structures has been on the creation of computer-based games. These structures also lack the detail necessary to fully analyze games, regardless of the medium in which they are created. This paper works from the structure of Mechanic, Dynamic and Aesthetic created by Marc Leblanc and used in a number of places for the teaching of computer-based game design. The framework presented here goes beyond LeBlanc's three parts of game design to introduce nine: Players, Mechanic, Dynamic, Hedonic, Schematic, Aesthetic, Didactic, Poetic and Implementation. Derived from research and the process of game design this framework of nine interrelated factors may prove valuable in the quest to understand games and their effects and inform the process of designing and developing meaningful games.

The Rhetoric of Serious Game Genres: Issues for Analysis and Design
By: Lee Sherlock

A number of frameworks based on the idea of serious game genres or categories have been developed to understand the range of purposes and actions that serious games engage with. While such frameworks attempt to describe the relationship between particular games and their "real-world" purposes, I argue that these genre definitions obscure both the co-construction and negotiation of meaning through the process of play and the "procedural rhetoric" (Bogost, 2007) involved in digital gameplay.

In response to this problem, I interrogate the status of serious game genres, evaluate the criteria used in constructing those genres, and consider the various "possibility spaces" (Sawyer & Smith, 2008) that players, designers, educators, and other groups might employ to articulate how serious games are experienced across a variety of purposes, disciplines, and contexts. The primary work informing this analysis is drawn from rhetorical genre studies, including work on genre ecologies (Spinuzzi & Zachry, 2000; Spinuzzi, 2003) and genre and play theory (Christensen, Cootey, & Moeller, 2007).

As part of this genre analysis, new connections between rhetorical genre studies and serious game design and play issues emerge. One implication is that we can develop new analytical models for understanding how gameplay extends outside the game itself to include other digital texts, forms of learning, and modes of social action. This presentation will also consider the game design implications that can be drawn out of genre-based critique, such as the possible application of "genre ecology diagrams" and "organic engineering" as heuristic tools (Spinuzzi & Zachry, 2000, p. 176). In drawing out these implications, the underlying argument is that the construction of serious game genres needs to be examined not only as a set of critical or analytical terms, but as a particular orientation or mode of thinking that is linked to particular design affordances and constraints.

Talent, Incentives, and Infrastructure: Growing the Game Industry in Michigan

Player-Centered Design for Instructional Games

Games to Change Brains

The Challenge of Challenge: Avoiding and Embracing Difficulty in a Memory Game
By: Carrie Heeter, Brian Winn, Jillian Winn and Andrea Bozoki

The central prescriptions for using brain games to improve brain health are progressive challenge and brain domain diversification. Exercising a range of cognitive domains is thought to help build a diverse "cognitive reserve." Games that are too easy for a player yield little benefit. Brain games as leisure activities need to be pleasant enough to play to attract and retain players. Designing the appropriate level of challenge is further complicated by vast differences in cognitive abilities between players of different ages and among individual players even if they are the same age.

Theories about mindset and motivation suggest that some individuals welcome hard challenges and others avoid challenge. Challenge avoidance has not been studied in the context of game play. We hypothesized that players who have a predilection toward avoiding challenge are likely to make choices that minimize the challenge in a brain game, reducing or eliminating the expected benefits.

Analysis of the game play data of players showed that about one fifth of players fit the profile of extreme challenge-seekers and another fifth fit the profile of extreme challenge-avoiders. The results reveal a natural tendency on the part of a subset of participants to choose modest challenges and to focus on one or a few brain domains that are easiest for them. The results also reveal a natural tendency on the part of a subset of participants to challenge themselves by selecting the hard difficulty setting and by pushing themselves to play quickly. They are most likely to receive the cognitive benefits that motivated them to play in the first place.

Video Games Change Your Brain
By: Jing Feng and Ian Spence

After more than three decades of development, video games are now increasingly used for purposes other than entertainment. These games play a role in fields as diverse as education, cognitive training, physical exercise, and rehabilitation. Developing a good game for meaningful purposes requires a comprehensive understanding of the critical characteristics that trigger the training benefits. In this paper, we present a comparative psychological analysis of the cognitive requirements of several different genres of computer game. We also review the experimental research that has focused on the cognitive and neuropsychological changes that game playing may induce in the brain. We discuss various fields of application for video games with serious purposes and suggest guidelines for designing such games based on psychological theory and experimental research in cognition and perception.

A Hard Day's Night: The Recovery Potential of Video and Computer Games
By: Leonard Reinecke

In an online survey with 1699 participants, the use of video and computer games for recovery purposes was investigated. The data indicate that computer games are systematically used after exposure to stressful situations and strain and that recovery experience is a significant facet of the gaming experience. Using structural equation modelling, the relations among work-related fatigue, daily hassles, social support, coping style, recovery experience and the use of computer games for recovery purposes were tested. Persons who associated stronger recovery experiences with game play used video and computer games more often after stressful and exhausting situations. Additionally, participants' level of work-related fatigue and exposure to daily hassles were both positively associated with the use of computer games for recovery. Furthermore, participants with emotion focussed coping style showed a higher tendency to use games for recovery than participants with problem focussed coping style. The relationship between work-related fatigue and game use for recovery purposes was moderated by social support: The stress buffering function of video and computer games was more important for participants receiving less social support. These participants showed a stronger relation between work-related fatigue and the use of games for recovery than participants receiving more social support.

Alternative platforms for learning games

Diminutive Subjects, Design Strategy, and Driving Sales: Preschoolers and the Nintendo DS
By: J. Alison Bryant, Anna Akerman and Jordana Drell

The gaming industry is constantly evolving - new platforms, new mechanics, and new consumers. From a game creation standpoint, innovation is usually thought of as coming from a strictly creative/artistic place - the brain child of one or two tech-inspired folks who think of research (if they think of it at all) as an afterthought. We see this consistently in the video game market, where research on games is typically done in two places: 1) sometime close to the end of the product cycle in order to get feedback from consumers so that marketing can develop a strategy; and 2) at the very end of the product cycle to "fix bugs" in the game. While both of those types of research are important, neither tends to aid in the innovation process or to aid in designing games for new consumer markets.

In the spring of 2007, our game producers had a hunch that the Nintendo DS -- with its new features, such as the microphone; small size and portability; and its relatively low price point -- was ripe for creating games for preschoolers. There were a few games on the market at the time which had characters that appealed to the younger set; but our game producers did not think that the game mechanics were appropriate for preschoolers or beginning gamers. What exactly preschoolers could do with the system, however, was a bit of a mystery.

This will chronicles the research and design process that our preschool games group has developed over the past two years, discussing the roles of both exploratory and formative research in creating new titles for this youngest set. Moreover, in addition to a set of best practices from a process perspective, we also discuss our key findings and design tips when it comes to preschoolers and their cognitive abilities, motor skills, and design preferences. By understanding the unique needs of preschoolers, we can continue to improve the games that we create for them, and to better integrate educational and other "serious" content into games for them.

Learning via Gaming: An Immersive Environment for Teaching Kids Handwriting
By: Bruce Maxim and Nicholas Martineau

Immersive learning via animation, virtual experiments, and simulations is an attractive concept. As the complexity of educational content increases, its delivery methods and pedagogy must improve as well. While the efficacy of immersive environments for education and training is well established, their use with elementary and middle schools students is negligible. Hardware costs and long development times are two major factors impeding development of such environments for younger students. Computing technology, specifically tools for human machine interface development, has come a long way in the past few years. The authors are making use of this emerging technology to develop an immersive gaming environment for teaching handwriting to elementary school children using a tablet PC delivery system.

$12 TV-Computers as an Ultra-Affordable Platform for Computer-Aided Education
By: James Lomas

The Playpower Foundation (Playpower.org) is using a $12 computer as a platform for 8-bit learning games in order to improve educational access for millions of children around the world. Motivated by the availability of this radically affordable platform, our goal is to design and discover high-quality 8-bit learning games and make computer-aided learning affordable for people everywhere.

This paper outlines the general relevance of Computer-Aided Learning (CAL) to developing countries, sketches the historical background of our proposed platform, and proposes principles and methods to guide the future development of effective 8-bit content. We conclude by framing this project and its relevance in the context of a variety of contemporary cultural trends and research topics.

The Emerging Flash Game Industry and the Opportunities for Meaningful Play

The Unknown Possibilities of Existence

Conference Reception, Game Exhibition, and Poster Session

• the latest research findings presented in the conference poster session
• an exhibition of industry and academia created games
• a great time to mix and mingle with your fellow conference attendees

Poster Presentations

Adopting a User-centered Design Process in order to Ensure Meaningful Play: the Sidewalk Saver Game Project
By: Jeroen Wauters, Frederik Windey and Veronika Anna Abeele vanden

It is well known that designing and developing games is no straightforward matter. It involves a creative design process, as well as software engineering processes. Many postmortems report on the tension between creative processes and large-scale programming concerns. When aiming at 'meaningful play', one more layer of difficulty is added. How can one ensure that besides entertaining, a game also affects the audience in the intended way? In this paper we report on the making of Sidewalk Saver, a game with the aim of sensitizing young adults about the accessibility of public spaces for people with disabilities. During the making of this game, we tried to reconcile a creative game design process, a software engineering process and a user-centered design approach. In this paper we report on the intricacies of reconciling these different approaches and the added value of including the stakeholder in the design process.

Creating Meaningful Education in a MMOG
By: Peter Smith, Clint Bowers and Jan Cannon-Bowers

Currently a startling 50% of entering freshman physics majors leave the discipline regardless of their GPA. That is, equal numbers of 4.0 students leave as 2.0 students, and the reason for this departure is commonly sited as an inability to envision themselves in the roll of a physicist. In an effort to combat this statistic the RETRO Lab setout to make an engaging Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) for physics education and make the content meaningful to the players, while providing a chance to practice being a physicist in a real world situation.

One of the biggest challenges was how to quickly and cheaply integrate educational content into the proposed MMO game. Designs based on deep integration of educational content and concepts proved to be difficult to design and create, and often "broke" the game design creating gameplay that didn't make sense or have much entertainment value. The main challenges were to not let the game content compromise the educational content nor the educational content compromise the game content.

This challenge led to the development of the hybrid game concept where the educational content is separated from the MMO game content. This separation is accomplished by placing it in an external Web 2.0 environment. With this approach, the educational content is kept rooted in traditional pedagogical methods, while allowing easy integration into the game with some creative story telling. Development of the game (MMO) and educational (Web 2.0) content then becomes a set of almost parallel tasks which accelerates development plus greatly simplifies the task of integration.

Designing a model for affective digital games to support the social-emotional development of teenagers diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder
By: Mitu Khandaker

Affective computing technologies refer to computationally 'recognising' emotions in a user, often through the use of multimodal affective sensors, including facial expressions, postural shifts, and physiological signals such as heart rate, skin conductivity, and EEG signals. More recently such work has been applied to social-emotional computing applications to support high-functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorders. This poster furthers this work by proposing a systemic model for games which use real-time multimodal affective recognition technologies as an input mechanism; this builds upon existing work on the benefit of games for therapeutic use although allows additional scope for emotion regulation. The resulting system is a cybernetic feedback loop; a model for games which has also been advocated by Salen and Zimmerman.

Designing War: Call of Duty 3 as a Straightjacket for Meaningful Historical Inquiry
By: Stephanie Fisher

This research investigates how history is packaged within a popular ommercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) first-person shooter (FPS) video game, Call of Duty 3. In light of the pedagogical potentials found within well-designed games, popular commercial war games that guarantee a faithful representation or experience are in a position to persuade players to adopt certain ways to view history. As a designed experience, these games contribute to the formation of historical frameworks that may influence how the player perceives the event, conducts historical inquiry, or even understands present international relations.

Using analytic frameworks developed by Frasca and Bogost, I analyze narrative and procedural rhetoric found in the representational elements and game mechanics of Call of Duty 3. Frasca offers three levels for analyzing where designers can convey meanings and ideology: narrative representation and events, game mechanics, and mandatory goal rules. Bogost's theory of 'procedural rhetoric' further explores Frasca's second and third levels, where meaning is created through user interaction with the game's algorithms.

Development of the Kids Game Experience Questionnaire: A self report instrument to assess digital game experiences in children
By: Karolien Poels, Wijnand IJsselsteijn and Yvonne de Kort

In this study we present the Kids Game Experience Questionnaire; a self report instrument to assess in-game experiences in children (i.e. 8-12 years). We aim for a self report measure that is sensitive, applicable over game genres and devices, and can be applied and filled out by children in a convenient, independent and time efficient way. The structure of the KidsGEQ is largely based on the Game Experience Questionnaire as developed earlier for an adult audience. The major challenge when developing a questionnaire for children is formulating items and anchor points that can be readily and easily interpreted. For the KidsGEQ, formulation of the items was based on an expert meeting with game developers experienced in designing for children and social scientists studying game experience in general, as well as on in depth interviewing and testing possible items with children who often play digital games. This resulted in a list of 49 items covering nine digital game experience dimensions. Besides the basic rationale and structure of the KidsGEQ, we present reliability of the items after use in a field experiment (n=31) with an outdoor digital game developed for young children.

Effects of Contingent and Non-Contingent Sound on Video Game Performance
By: John Baxa, Siu-Lan Tan and Matthew Spackman

As the video game industry has advanced, sound has come to play an increasingly integral role in games. The player can now take an active role with sound, using it as an aural guide to learn more about the virtual environment. The present study aims to investigate exactly what effects different levels of interaction with sound have on players' performance and experience of gaming in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Whether sound was contingent or not with players' actions and onscreen events was also of interest. We also wanted to examine the new playing experience offered by the new Nintendo Wii Console, and how its unique interface would impact game play. We predicted that players would perform better and experience higher levels of immersion in conditions in which sound is closer to normal playing conditions.

Enhancing the Museum Experience through Game Concepts and Technology
By: Christopher Ault

This poster describes an ongoing research and design project at the College of New Jersey. The project is a collaboration between me, the students of the College's Interactive Multimedia Program and the KidsBridge Tolerance Museum -- an on-campus museum dedicated to raising awareness of tolerance, diversity and similar social issues among local school children. Through my pilot undergraduate course in Interactive Exhibit Design, students and I explored new techniques and technologies to transform the aging museum into an immersive, interactive and personalized experience for children who have grown up with video games and the internet. Drawing from current research in user experience design, game design and museum design, as well as our own museum experiences and analyses, we emerged from the course with two primary proposals that capitalize on design trends and utilize new technology while furthering the museum's existing message.

Game Assessment for Higher Education Curricula: A Beginning
By: Elizabeth A. Evans and Laura Christopherson

This poster will describe preliminary efforts made at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) to design a method to evaluate games that can be used to educate college students. In spring 2008, a high school senior completed a short internship with the UNC Games4Learning initiative. He played 8 games available at no or low cost and wrote reviews of the games which begin to provide us with a better understanding of how students might react to these games. Simultaneously, the authors of this poster began a search to identify more systematic approaches to evaluate serious games to supplement the reviews. Surprisingly, the bulk of what they found was specific to simulations and mostly appeared in management literature. As a result, they began to create an assessment form to be completed when evaluating games to be integrated in a course or curriculum. The authors believe players' reviews combined with a systematic assessment to match faculty needs will lead to curricular game choices that are better able to meet learning objectives and to be an engaging experience for students. This is just the beginning of what the authors believe is needed to fully assess serious games. Future needs include well-designed studies to determine learning outcomes and longitudinal studies that look at long-term retention of content and continued demonstration of skills. Although there are many approaches the authors believe are important to assess these games, these two preliminary pieces--student reviews and a systematic evaluation--are a start.

Inside Outside: The interaction between immersive tendencies and sense of presence in changing risk-taking behavior via serious games
By: Carlos Godoy, John Christensen, Lynn Miller, Jennifer Talevich, Paul Robert Appleby, Charisse Corsbie-Massay and Stephen Read

Serious Games have great potential to optimize reduction in individual risky decision-making and behavior (Miller et al., in press). It's critical to know, however, what works when for whom. One key to their success may be that individuals may treat the virtual experience "as if" it is real life (Godoy, 2007). Individuals' experience of feeling immersed in the ongoing interaction may facilitate this. Such a propensity may be due to both measurable chronic individual differences (e.g., via the Immersive Tendencies Questionnaire (ITQ); Witmer & Singer, 1994) as well as induced changes due to the specific visual and narrative characteristics of the interactive media itself (e.g., as measured by the Presence Questionnaire Revised (PQR); Witmer & Singer, 1994). We predicted that chronic immersive tendencies and/or an induced "sense of presence", individually or in combination, would predict reduction in risky sexual decision-making in the 3-months following exposure to an HIV prevention serious game intervention. This poster presents the findings from this research. The findings suggest that, although presence may be a less important consideration for those low in immersive tendencies, those who have a natural propensity to become highly immersed are best served by serious games that maximize feelings of presence.

investiGaming: Gateway to research about gender, gaming, and computing
By: Carrie Heeter, Brian Winn, and Mary Stanish

investiGaming.com is an online gateway to research on gender, gaming, and computing for academics and game designers including 340 citations, 275 abstracts and "implications for game design" about selected research, funded by the National Science Foundation and developed by the serious game design group at Michigan State University.

Broadening the market of games to include more female players would be financially rewarding to the game industry and useful to society. Games matter because game play is believed to result in familiarity and comfort with as well as interest in computer technology and programming. Designing games to appeal to female and male players may seem elusive, but gender and gaming has been the focus of hundreds of research studies. Reaching game industry professionals with academic research findings about gender and games requires innovative ways to bridge vast divides between these disparate cultures. Tag clouds and "implications for game design" help make the research accessible to industry.

Player Productivity: Experiential Knowledge in a game modification forum
By: Chad O'Neil

This poster focuses on player discussion in a game modification forum. The modification, ORA2 is a player-developed extension to World of Warcraft. In the analysis of verbal data from the forum I explore the relationship between discussion of in game experience and modification development. In the poster I outline this relationship and possible connections to and extension of T. L. Taylor's critique of game developer conceptions of players. My initial findings seem to indicate that conceptions of players (as unskilled / unknowledgeable and/or rational and selfish actors) are also present in this particular forum even though it is player created and organized.

Re:Activism
By: Charles Yust and Leanne Wagner

Re:Activism is a big-urban-game designed and launched for the Come Out and Play festival in New York City. The game revisits locations of historic protests and teaches game participants about the events and related social causes. In order to progress through the game, the participants raise awareness of protest events by creating present day interventions and public interactions. Teams of game-players race from location to location to complete challenges and use activist tactics to increase their score. The teams also use mobile phones to send and receive text messages as they progress through the game and completed challenges.

The poster will use information graphics to illustrate the three levels of learning that occurred during the iterative design process, development, and play of Re:Activism. This learning occurred for the game developers in researching protest history, for the players as they engaged in protest actions during game-play, and for the public through interaction with the game players. The poster will also include documentation from actual game-play.

Teaching Cultural Awareness with Serious Games
By: Monica Evans and Marge Zielke

One of the greatest challenges facing the citizens of the 21st century is an understanding of, and acclimation to, foreign cultures. In business, radically different customers and corporations must negotiate, transact, and sustain relationships from halfway around the globe. In medicine, nurses are faced with patients that won't admit to ailments in the presence of certain family members. In the military, soldiers put their lives on the line daily without understanding the civilian populations they are trying to protect. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said, "too many mistakes have been made over the years because our government and military did not understand - or even seek to understand - the countries or cultures we were dealing with."

Cultural understanding often comes best from total immersion within that culture - so what better way to teach cultural awareness than with immersive games? Using the structure of serious games and the technology behind the most successful commercial games, training simulations can be built that not only model the cognitive complexity and nuance of culture, but interactively assist trainees with decision-making strategies and habits that can save both dollars and lives in the field. Gaming structures also present the opportunity for experimentation and risk-taking in safe environments, and for students to fully experience the difficult or tragic ramifications of a single minor action.

At the University of Texas at Dallas, we have developed the 3-D ADAT Model (Asymmetric Domain Analysis and Training) for teaching soldiers the specifics of cultural awareness in rural and urban segments of Afghanistan, a model that can easily be adapted to other cultures and other fields. It is our belief that cultural awareness can be effectively and efficiently taught in immersive, virtual environments, and that this sort of teaching will only become more useful and prevalent as cultures and societies continue to interact on the global scale.

This Ain't Your Teachers' Old School
By: Lori Shyba

The term "Old School" has entered our lexicon as meaning an environment populated with a class of people committed to traditional values and practices. In this poster, Lori Shyba reflects on videogame design project case studies that were implemented into in Science, Math, and the Humanities curriculum at Willow Park Arts-Based Learning school in Calgary, Canada as a celebration of the remarkable teaching staff that might as well coin the term "New School."

Undercover UXO - A serious game to teach children to avoid landmines
By: Corey Bohil and Michael Jeffery

This poster presents the design challenges in creating Undercover UXO, a game designed to teach children in war-torn countries the warning signs of landmines and other unexploded ordnance. The game was created in a game design course (in MSU's Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, & Media) for the Golden West Humanitarian Foundation (GWHF) - an organization dedicated to education and eradication of landmines and unexploded ordnance worldwide.

Exhibited Games

Brain Powered Games
By: Brian Winn, Carrie Heeter, Jillian Winn, John Fisher, Lei Bao, Charles Roman, Deon Foster, Marie Lazar, Roy Dong

Brain Powered Games combines Michigan State University's expertise in game design and audience research with cognitive psychology to create a cognitive exercise platform designed specifically for individuals aged 45 to 65. A key premise is that engaging, interesting games will naturally result in more frequent play than boring physical therapy exercises. Brain Powered Games includes a suite of four games, each targeting different cognitive domains, including Sokoban (an executive processing, or strategic planning game), Keep It In Mind (a working memory game), PhotoFlaw (a visuospatial processing game), and Headline Clues (a verbal and semantic processing or word game).

Crossroads Village
By: Brian Winn, Ziba Scott, Eric Pearson, Adam Rump, Gaston Rampersad, Peter Diaz, Marie Lazar, Mary Stanish, Joe Fitzgerald, John Quick, Chris Portrey, Nate Cooley, Vered Seidmann, Kacie Schaeffer, and Jennifer DeFore

Crossroads Village is a persuasive real time strategy game designed and developed in the Serious Game Design program at Michigan State University. Crossroads Village allows the player to take on the role of a relief organization in dealing with world hunger and other third world crises. In the game, the player manages the relief effort in a village after a disaster, acquiring resources, rebuilding infrastructure, and helping villagers learn new skills. The game is designed to inspire a sense of empathy, while educating the player of the issues and making them aware that they can make a difference. Ultimately the game hopes to promote altruism and action in the form of real-world monetary donations.

Headline Clues
By: Carrie Heeter, Brian Winn, Jillian Winn, John Fisher, Lei Bao

Headline Clues is a new kind of word game. Word games like Bookworm and Scrabble challenge the player to generate or to recognize individual words. Crossword puzzles are more complex, involving words AND their meaning. Headline Clues is designed to exercise more advanced verbal and semantic thinking. The game challenges players to solve missing words in a headline.

Hush
By: Jamie Antonisse, Devon Johnson, Chris Baily, Brittany Pirello, Joey Orton

Hush is an experimental game in which you play a young mother trying to calm her crying infant with a lullaby. The controls are straightforward: press keys in a gentle rhythm as letters emerge on the screen. The world beyond your window, however, is not so simple. You live in a Rwandan Tutsi community, and Hutu soldiers have come to raid your village. Continue singing, stay steady, and shield your child from the terrible events that surround you, and you both might survive the night.

Games typically immerse their players in fantasies of "empowerment"... in Hush, you will experience a horrific moment of "disempowerment" based on a historical event, the Rwandan genocide. As you play, you have very limited control over the world around you. You aren't viewing the situation from a distance and attempting to "solve the problem". You are immersed in the moment, experiencing the brutality of a Hutu raid.

Your only influence is over your child, and you must stay calm and focused in the face of terrifying violence if you want to protect him.

Lunar Quest
By: RETRO Lab (at the University of Central Florida)

Lunar Quest is an NSF-funded project that seeks to examine the effectiveness of a massively multiplayer game for teaching introductory physics. It is our hypothesis such an educational tool will yield greater understanding of physics, which will improve their testing and classroom performance in the area of physics. It is our contention that in order to study how and why game play can be a serious tool for education, we must build a game bridging the gaps of entertainment and pedagogy. In Lunar Quest players take on the role of a new recruit who must undergo certification in physics and then put those skills to use to repair and maintain a Lunar Colony. Gameplay combines a conventional MMOG questing system with embedded Flash Mini-Games to deliver the physics content.

Outside the Wire
By: Sharon Sloane of WILL Interactive Inc and Gayle Olszyk of The United States Army Combined Arms Support Command (CASCOM)

Created using lessons learned by soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Outside the Wire provides Army officers the opportunity to experience difficult military situations in a realistic yet virtual environment before facing them in potentially life or death situations. Using the latest in computer-based simulation technology users “play it out before they live it out”, making difficult decisions and then experiencing the consequences of those choices. Outside the Wire covers the training of Forward Support Company Junior Officers during pre-deployment, deployment, combat, and sustainment support operations with learning objectives that include leadership, handling insubordination, improvisation, accountability, socializing, troop morale, managing family issues, setting standards, balancing priorities and cultural awareness.

Pebble It
By: Charles Cusack, Andrew Foster, Jeff Largent, Kevin Browder, and Evan Peck

Pebble It is an online casual game which is an example of a revolutionary new type of game which we call human computing games--that is, games which use the insights of players to help solve meaningful problems.

Polyglot Cubed
By: Lindsay Grace

Polyglot is an educational practice tool and game prototype for learning languages. It is designed to entertain while enforcing language comprehension. The highly modular system was designed at the University of Illinois, Chicago's Electronic Visualization Laboratory to aid in the retention of foreign language listening vocabulary. Polyglot can be used to improve comprehension of a variety of languages with minimal training.

Resilient Planet
By: Filament Games, National Geographic’s The JASON Project

Resilient Planet is a 3D video game funded by the Kauffman Foundation and developed by Filament Games in support of The JASON Project's Operation: Resilient Planet ecology curriculum. In the game, students go on underwater expeditions to solve ecological problems identical to those being examined by real life researchers. They answer questions like, "is there a tiger shark infestation in the Hawaiian islands?" and "how can endangered whales be protected from shipping vessels off the coast of Boston?"

S.C.R.U.B.
By: Ben Medler, Joe Fitzgerald, Carrie Heeter, Brian Magerko

S.C.R.U.B. (Super Covert Removal of Unwanted Bacteria), is a serious game about understanding what happens, at a microscopic level, when someone washes their hands. This is the first game in a series of mini-games that will tackle the concepts of hygiene and understanding microbe transmission and evolution. These mini-games are part of a larger project to develop adaptive games for pedagogical purposes. Adaption within these games is achieved by combining a user’s game playing preferences with the learning style with which they learn best. The project is also looking for common design elements and strategies in order to apply these adaption practices to other serious games.

Sidewalk Saver
By: Jeroen Wauters and Frederik Windey

A while ago, the accessibility board of the city of Louvain started a campaign to sensitize its inhabitants about disabilities -- and more specifically, the accessibility issues that are experienced on a day to day basis by people with disabilities. The aim was to teach people what simple steps they could take themselves to make life easier on people with disabilities, most notably visual impairments or paraplegia. Examples include keeping the sidewalk clear of carelessly placed garbage bags, not parking bicycles on guiding tiles for people with visual impairments, and so on. It quickly became apparent that people were not of ill will in this matter, but that they simply did not realize their actions were causing difficulties for people with impairments.

Therefore, a decision was made to explain these issues to the general public (and more specifically to the students constituting a large section of Louvain’s population) by means of a video game. The aim of this game would thus be to explain to people what issues there are, what countermeasures exist, and how they can be considerate themselves.

Enter Sidewalk Saver, a puzzle game with strategy elements. The basic premise of the game is to guide a group of disables people, called pawns, from a starting point in the city of Leuven to some end destination. There are two types of pawns, blind pawns and wheelchair pawns, each with limitations and skills comparable to those of real disabled people.

Two Men and a Truck Game
By: Anthony DiFilippo, Jason Giroux, Sean Kavanagh, Stephanie Redmon, Charles Roman, Bryan Sandford, Jeff Selle, Jason Wengert

Many young children are not comfortable with moving from one house to another. The game aims help with the situations created by this transitional period by allowing kids to prepare to move houses in a fun and friendly game environment. These scenarios include packing up items in a bedroom, packing boxes into a moving truck, driving the truck to the new house, and even customizing an avatar and buying new toys.

Undercover UXO
By: Mike Jeffery, Clay Boylan, Taufik Hidayat, Ryan Tackett, David Barnett, Steven Hamilton, Ben Chabala, Nick Lazaroff, Nick Topper

Undercover UXO is an educational game designed to teach children in wartorn countries to spot and avoid potential indicators of landmines and other unexploded ordnance (UXO). It is played on the One Laptop Per Child program's XO laptop. The game is purely graphical, with no text to read. All information is conveyed with photographic images and audio files that can be easily swapped by the project sponsor to accomodate different locales, languages, and lack of reading skills.

All Play is Meaningful

Designing K-6 educational games from Playstation to PSP

• Game devices are low cost technology that can be used by schools to expand access to technology. Schools still struggle with the student to computer ratio.
  
• Game devices can be used by schools to broaden the type of technology students are exposed to for educational purposes kids today use cell phones, game devices, computers, iPods, etc.
  
• Game devices can go home, connecting school and home and increasing family involvement.
  

• the constraints of the hardware
  
• the ever-changing target of the gaming systems,
  
• convincing schools that it is wise to invest in PlayStations, PSPs, DS or other such platforms to supplement the instructional tools they already have in the classroom.
  

Games for Learning

Understanding of science concepts through gameplay in a prototype game
By: Kermin Joel Martinez-Hernandez, Dustin S. Hillman, Gabriela C. Weaver and Carlos Rafael Morales

Even though the educational research community has promoted the use of video games for learning purposes and discussed their educational potential, others have criticized the lack of empirical research to support such claims. Therefore, a need exists for empirical, sound research in this area.

A prototype of a chemistry-based computer game using a mixed genre of a single player first-person game embedded with action-adventure and puzzle components was developed to determine if students' level of understanding of chemistry concepts changes after gameplay. A sample of 23 students from Purdue University participated in the study; they completed open-ended content surveys and a semi-structured interview to assess their understanding of chemistry concepts before and after the gameplay intervention. Elements of game design and gameplay were also evaluated during the semi-structured interview to consider them in future development and revision phases.

Preliminary analysis of our interview data suggests that students were able to understand most of the chemistry challenges presented in the game and the game served as a review for previously learned concepts as well as a way to apply such previous knowledge. To guarantee a better understanding of the chemistry concepts, additions such as debriefing and feedback about the content presented in the game seem to be needed. The use of visuals in the game to represent chemical processes, game genre, and game idea appear to be the game design elements that students like the most about the current prototype. This presentation will provide more detailed results and suggest ways of effectively presenting chemistry concepts in a game scenario.

The Ludenic MBA? Games and Simulations in Management Education: Lessons learned from a comparative, school-wide computerized online multi-game perspective
By: Sheizaf Rafaeli

The Ludenic MBA? Games and Simulations in Management Education: Lessons learned from a comparative, school-wide computerized online multi-game perspective

The purpose of this paper (just an abstract!) is to provide some comparative perspectives from the implementation of online games in management education. How well, if at all, do games mix with managerial and business education? While the setting of Business Schools is certainly among the most competitive, the constituents are probably among the most critical and demanding, and the atmosphere is probably one of the least laid back or forgiving. Is there room for meaningful play in the training of business decision makers?

This paper will attempt to outline lessons learned through quantitative reports and qualitative observations. Data to be reported here are based on the development process and the implementation experience of multiple class-sized iterations of over half a dozen games with the participation of over 1500 player-students in games and simulations used in business and managerial education.

Video Game Representations as Cues for Collaboration and Learning (Top Paper Award)
By: Matthew Sharritt and Daniel Suthers

Literature suggests that games can support learning in schools in several ways: by enabling creative problem solving, allowing dynamic resource allocation, and by providing a motivating, immersive activity. However, research is needed to examine how exactly games are utilized for learning. A descriptive, inductive study was carried out to identify how high school students in a school setting actually make use of the video game interface and its representations. Results demonstrate that specific cues grab attention, helping to focus efforts on new or underutilized game tasks. Also, consistent and well organized visualizations encourage learning and collaboration among students. In general, the design of game representations and behaviors can help guide student learning.

Social Play

Online play, online connection: A Longitudinal Social Network Analysis of BZFlag
By: John Paolillo and Daniel Kutz

In this paper we investigate individual and collective activity patterns in BZFlag, an open-source, online, multi- player, 3D tank-battle game, with tens of thousands of active users worldwide. We present analysis of nearly two full years' worth of this data, sampled at five minute intervals. The results of this analysis reveal a highly-skewed distribution of activity among players, where the vast majority of players have relatively limited activity on the serv- ers. A distinct minority of players log a large number of playing hours, and exhibits a highly-structured pattern of interaction. In the aggregate picture, there is highly robust periodic activity on BZFlag at several levels. On the local scale, daily patterns predominate, with significant half-day, 2-hour and shorter periodic patterns. On the global scale, equally robust long-term periodic fluctuation is observable. Yearly patterns, clearly pertaining to the ebb and flow of the North American school year, are strongly evident. The results of this study underscore the im- portance of the time dimension in understanding patterns of social activity in online games, and in understanding social relationships more generally.

Using Recommendation Systems to Adapt Gameplay (Top Paper Award)
By: Ben Medler

Recommendation systems are key components in many web applications (Amazon, Netflix, eHarmony). Each system gathers user input and searches for patterns that exist in order to determine user preferences and tastes. These preferences are then used to recommend other content that a user may enjoy. Games on the other hand are often designed with a one-size-fits-all approach not taking player preferences into account. This paper examines how current web application recommendation systems compare to current games that adapt their gameplay to specific users. The results from this comparison show that games have not to date used certain types of recommendation approaches. Design suggestions for how game developers may exploit the utility of these recommendation features are discussed and examined.

Suitable for all ages: Game design for the 60+ demographic

Making an Impact: Serious Issues in Non-Serious Games

Game Design and Development

SimDialog: A Visual Game Dialog Editor
By: Charles Owen, Frank Biocca, Corey Bohil and Jason Conley

SimDialog is a visual editor for dialog in computer games. This paper presents the design of SimDialog, illustrating how script writers and non-programmers can easily create dialog for video games with complex branching structures and dynamic response characteristics. The system creates dialog as a directed graph. This allows for play using the dialog with a statebased cause and effect system that controls selection of non-player character responses and can provide a basic scoring mechanism for games.

Iterations of an Open-Source 3D Game Engine: Multiplayer Environments for Learners
By: Brett Shelton, Marco Alvarez, Michael Capell, Chad Coats, Jon Scoresby and Tim Stowell

As virtual 3D environments become more common in education, it is important to pay attention to and learn from the experiences that take place during the development of these environments. A team made up of graduate, undergraduate, and recently graduated students, took a conglomeration of open- source libraries and glued them together to create 3D simulation called HEAT (Hazard Emergency and Accident Training). The development team has gone through many iterations during the development of HEAT, while learning what it takes to build a fully functional simulation and 3D engine. We discuss the experiences and some of the processes the development team has gone through to create HEAT, the 3D engine, and the separation of the two for a more general use for other simulations. We discuss some of the benefits and challenges recognized during this experience.

Games as Texts: Semiotic Relationships Between Gameplay and Cutscenes
By: Dave Jones

Research into the textualities and presentations of games lacks a theoretical exploration of the semiotic structure(s) within games and the roles of such structures in mediating a gaming experience into a potentially meaningful one. In focusing on potential narrativity, theoretical discussions have thus far only skimmed other discussions of representation and the relationship between gameplay, cinematics, and experience.

This paper seeks to understand this semiotic relationship, particularly between diegetic actions, nondiegetic actions, and cutscenes through an analysis of three primary examples: Grand Theft Auto IV (2008), Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008), and Heavenly Sword (2007). Each game utilizes cinematic presentations with different experiential results, all three respectively articulating very different presentations by connecting cutscenes with gameplay through radically different interactive structures. Within these interactive structures, we can identify semiotic strands that establish continually varying levels of immersion by privileging one form gaming experience over another: gameplay, cinematic narrativity, or a balance of the two.

MMORPGs and Virtual Worlds

The Play's the Thing: The Arden 'Failure' and the Future of the Educational Games Movement
By: Elizabeth Losh

This paper looks at a self-described "failure" in the educational videogames movement and what the principal investigator has characterized as a fundamental conflict between the game's pedagogical objectives and "fun." It argues that the learning vs. fun dichotomy is only one way to think about the basic questions about game design raised by Arden: The World of William Shakespeare and by educational videogames more generally. In recent years, other development teams have also attempted to translate Shakespeare into videogame formats, but have failed to execute a game that has been deemed a success by the public and by educators. This paper explores the ongoing thought experiment about how Shakespeare's works could be used to construct rule sets that represent Shakespeare's aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, or phenomenology. It also considers how the procedural rhetoric of videogame genres relate to issues about adaptation and performance. This paper suggests that Arden was not so much a failure as a missed opportunity to engage with the full range of possibilities implied by taking computer games seriously and treating the medium as deserving the gravitas traditionally given to the dramatic arts.

Green Reading, Green Gaming: The Future of Ecocriticsm, Storytelling, and Environmental Ethics in Virtual Worlds
By: Matthew Kaplan

The aim of this essay is to point to a forward thrust in the acceptance of new technologies--in particular, virtual game worlds such as those found in MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games)--in the discipline of ecocriticism. Moreover, I will illustrate how evolving concepts of the utility of virtual environments can assist ecocritics in branching out both their analyses and dialog with the public. In particular, I will point to how a study of virtual environments as embodying narratives of environmental ethics bridges important gaps in present cultural studies.

This is not an essay written primarily for ecocritics, although a basic familiarity with the past aims of literary ecocriticism may aid the reader in acknowledging the importance of technological scholarship. Nor is the subject matter at hand primarily the domain of game theorists: If nothing else, I hope to show that our evolving game worlds and "second lives" offer vital spaces for expanding the stories told between academic, designer, and player with regard to our natural world. By the end of the day, we must positively change the way people interact with their environments. And to that end, we must change the way we play and think while playing.

Gamestar Mechanic: Reflections on the Design (Research) of a Game about Game Design
By: Ivan Games

This paper presents a design study on the research and development of Gamestar Mechanic, a game-based learning project where children learn 21st century language and literacy practices in the context of learning key principles of game design. Using a design research methodology for the overall project, and a case study methodology for individual testing and theory refinement iterations of the research, this paper presents a detailed account of the first two years of research and design of the game, in hopes of providing researchers, educators and instructional designers with some insights on the development and assessment of 21st century learning environments.

Game Face(book): The Intersection of Games and Social Network Sites

Researching Spore: A New Approach to Player Testing

Games and Culture

Teens, Video Games, and Civics
By: Jessica Vitak, Pew Internet & American Life Project

Video games provide a diverse set of experiences and related activities and are part of the lives of almost all teens in America. To date, most video game research has focused on how games impact academic and social outcomes (particularly aggression). There has also been some exploration of the relationship between games and civic outcomes, but as of yet there has been no large-scale quantitative research. This survey provides the first nationally representative study of teen video game play and of teen video gaming and civic engagement. The survey looks at which teens are playing games, the games and equipment they are using, the social context of their play, and the role of parents and parental monitoring. Though arguments have been made about the civic potential of video gaming, this is the first large-scale study to examine the relationship between specific gaming experiences and teens' civic activities and commitments.

The International Edition and National Exoticism
By: Stephen Mandiberg

This paper analyzes the current group of locally released and consumed Japanese "International Edition" video games. It considers the meaning of internationalism, nationalism, language and translation/localization within the context of these video game special editions in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. By understanding the International Edition as linked to trends of both self-exoticism and self-orientalism within Japanese history the paper seeks to understand alternate meanings to the video games beyond simple commercial ventures, and how language and translation bring about these alternate meanings.

When Will Games Grow Up?: Handling Adult Topics In Video Games

Playing with Public Policy: Games to involve and inform the public

Serious Gaming: Assumptions and Realities

Happy Hour Gathering

The Play of Persuasion: Why "Serious" Isn't the Opposite of Fun

Creating Crossover Learning Products

Player Involvement

Play and Embodied Media
By: Andrew Bucksbarg

This paper explores play and embodied media by looking at play in new media through the lenses of situated or embodied cognition and multi-sensory perception in both mass scale media and the creative work of artists and experimenters. This will be accomplished with a focus on new media created to assist in physical and cognitive health and therapy, the support for disabilities and education across all ages.

Rules of Engagement: Influence of Co-Player Presence on Player Involvement in Digital Games (Top Paper Award)
By: Brian Gajadhar, Yvonne de Kort and Wijnand IJsselsteijn

Our research focuses on measurable differences in player experience between solitary and social play, and explores experiences of playing digital games together. The role of co-player presence in player experience is still largely unknown. Recent studies indicate that social components enrich player enjoyment, yet at the same time several scholars consider social presence a threat to player involvement. The current paper presents an empirical study of social presence as a determinant of player experience. In particular it reports effects on player involvement. Results showed players' involvement was maintained and even increased with mediated or co-located co-players as compared to solitary play. We conclude that co-players do not break the spell of a game, but become part of the magic circle.

Volunteer Computing Games: Merging Online Casual Gaming with Volunteer Computing
By: Charles Cusack, Evan Peck and Maria Riolo

We describe volunteer computing games, a new paradigm for computing which merges volunteer computing and online casual games. In volunteer computing, the main goal is to harness the computational power of many users' computers to solve a large computational problem. Unfortunately, participants in volunteer computing come from a very limited demographic--primarily middle-aged male computer experts. Since casual games have an almost universal appeal and, consequentially, a broad player base, we argue that volunteer computing games will significantly impact volunteer computing efforts by attracting and retaining more users.

We describe one framework for implementing volunteer computing games to solve problems whose solution space can be modeled as a search tree. Using our prototype game as an example, we discuss general design principles that are of particular importance with volunteer computing games. We argue that the full power of volunteer computing games occurs when human computation is added to the mix. An ideal volunteer computing game will attract men and women of all ages and harness the computing power of both the users and their computers. We conclude with a very brief discussion of volunteer computing within Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs).

From the Keyboard to the Game Board - Part 1

A Transmedia Comparison of Digital and Tabletop Board Games
By: Brian Magerko

This paper will present the research goals of the Digital Tabletop research group, which are to: a) identify the key game mechanics in board games that make them engaging or entertaining and then b) identify how those mechanics relate to current or hypothetical digital games. Rather than simply explore how board games can be adopted to digital counterparts, we are interested in how understanding the underlying mechanics can be used to influence design innovation in the digital realm. A secondary interest is in exploring the opposite relationship by studying digital games that have been adapted as board games (e.g. Doom or Starcraft). This paper will go through several case studies of analyzing modern board games, present our findings, and point to a generalized approach to conducting this type of transmedia analysis. We will review: Munchkin, a card-based game that is a humorous take on traditional RPG games; Ra, an auction-based board game that presents incredibly complex odds calculations for players; Starcraft, a board game adaptation of the famous digital game; Settlers of Catan, a famous tile-based board game; and Lost Cities, a card game based on chance and exploration.

We anticipate that this work will lead towards a contribution to the larger question of building a taxonomy of game mechanics, such as the one currently under development by Zagal and Mateas. Having a common language and set of references across games, digital and analog, is key in being able to constructively discuss, compare, and analyze the mechanics of games. This paper will look towards this future work and describe a methodology of surveying games with a specific mechanic in mind (e.g. cooperative play) to contribute to such a taxonomy.

Contrasting Player Conflicts in Digital Games and Board Games
By: Ben Medler

Reviewing the differences between board games and digital games, this paper will explore how conflict theory and mediation play a role in these two game mediums. The affordances and limitations that face-to-face board games offer, when compared to digital games, will be discussed along with how information presentation and the game's medium each play a role in a game's conflicts. Discussing and exploring these differences may lead to a better understanding of how digital game conflicts can take advantage of realistic face-to-face conflicts.

Pigs in the Poke: The Dynamics of Traditional Village Life, Games of Chance and Strategy
By: Brian Hayden

The social, economic, and political realities of traditional (tribal) village life are completely foreign to people raised in Industrial societies. Yet understanding such lifestyles is critical to understanding third world cultures today, as well as to comprehending the basic themes of anthropology (cultures of the present) and archaeology (cultures of the past). On the basis of my research in tribal villages in Southeast Asia over the last 15 years, I have put together a board game that captures the essential dynamics of traditional village life, with a Southeast Asia flavor. While Monopoly teaches the principles of capitalist investment, competition, and losses, Pigs in the Poke uses the same format to teach about subsistence economics and village social life with its many liabilities and risks. This game has been played by numerous classes of students with great enjoyment and a good deal of laughter at the unexpected situations and considerations that they are confronted with. The various elements of the game combine synergistically to provide deep new insights into traditional cultures and a much deeper understanding of what it is like to live in such cultures. Players become empathetic members of communities that must contend with circumstances not usually encountered in Industrial societies.

Approaches to Language Learning as Meaningful Play

Bringing Tangential Learning to Games

Player Motivation

Girls Playing Games: The Effect of Gender Stereotypes on Video Game Playing Motivation and Performance
By: Elaine Chan

Research on gender and video game playing has long been interested in the question of why females play fewer video games and play video games less frequently than males do. The present dissertation examines the immediate impacts of a negative gender stereotype on females' motivation for and performance in playing a racing video game. Exposure to a negative gender stereotype about video game playing was expected to decrease competence beliefs and motivation to play the game, as well as worsened performance. Results were in the hypothesized directions, although no statistically significant differences were found. Implications for theories of video game playing and achievement motivation are discussed.

Game Design and the Challenge-Avoiding Impression Manager Player Type (Top Paper Award)
By: Carrie Heeter, Brian Magerko, Ben Medler and Joe Fitzgerald

In this manuscript we propose that Challenge-avoiders, also referred to as Impression Managers, are a heretofore ignored but commonly occurring player type. We consider whether and how eight very different modern games accommodate Explorers, Challenge-seekers, and Challenge-avoiders and discuss implications for entertainment and learning game design.

Inspiring Stories through Content
By: Caitlin Kelleher

Through user testing of Storytelling Alice, we found that users' ability to find and develop story ideas was important in maintaining their engagement with programming in the system. In this paper, we describe the design process behind creating a gallery of characters and scenery that helps Storytelling Alice users to find and develop story ideas as well as lessons learned about successful and unsuccessful strategies for scaffolding the process of finding story ideas through content. We analyze thirty-six stories created with Storytelling Alice and examine the relationship between story complexity, users' attitudes towards Storytelling Alice, and their programming behavior.

From the Keyboard to the Game Board - Part 2

Lessons Learned From Building Board Games
By: Francisco Ortega-Grimaldo

Back in 2001, when I created my first board game I approached it naively, using Game and Play Theories by instinct and dragging from my early memories all the knowledge and feelings I gathered as a child related to games and reflected them in my board game. For my dissertation, six years later after the creation of that first game, I explored those same topics with a keen mind, fully aware of the capacity within my art pieces and eager to apply their social potential. In the process, I learned to dissect games and understand its parts and how they related to culture, education and the potential that board games have to influence society. In this essay I described the elements that I faced and applied while creating new board games and some of the outcomes that came from participants who played my games when I was in the process of gathering information for my dissertation. I conclude with my vision of what can games can accomplish if they where introduced as a common practice in schools.

The Ethnography of Collectible Miniature Game Storyworlds
By: Ethan Watrall and Patrick Shaw

In many of today's popular entertainment franchises (especially speculative fiction & fantasy), stories and characters unfold across multiple media channels and products. As Jenkins notes, the strength of transmedia storytelling lies in the fact that multiple texts are integrated into an overall narrative so large that it cannot be contained within a single medium. In its ideal form, a transmedia story speaks to the strengths of each individual media platform.

The inevitable question that must be asked is whether story products (video games, novels, movies, comics, etc.) that exist within a rich and compelling storyworld provide greater enjoyment for the audience than story products that do not. Is the creation of a storyworld (a process that both time consuming to create and to manage) a wise investment for storytellers (game designers, novelists, comic writers, etc.)? It is within the context of this question that the study presented herein was designed to explore the interaction (or lack thereof) that a player/reader/user has with the meta-storyworld in which the storytelling media that they are consuming is embedded.

Over the course of the research, the authors of this paper engaged in an ethnographic study of HeroClix players, a tabletop miniature role playing game. The game itself, which is published by WizKids Games, draws its gameplay mechanic, characters/miniatures, and gameplay scenarios primarily from the Marvel and DC comic book universes. As such, it provides an excellent opportunity to explore the impact (if any) that a rich and compelling storyworld, a hallmark of comic books (especially those highlighted in the HeroClix game itself), has on a player's entertainment experience.

Games in Libraries: Past, Present, and Future
By: Scott Nicholson

The goal of this presentation is to explore the past, present, and possible futures of games in libraries. As gaming has evolved, so has the library's support of gaming activities. Over 80% of U.S. public libraries now allow users to play Web-based games on library computers. Digital games, including music-based games like Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero, have become very popular additions to library gaming programs alongside tabletop games. Gaming programs have the potential to draw in groups of new users to the library by providing services relevant to their needs. In addition, they can help the library to be a safe and non-commercial space where members of a local community who may never cross paths otherwise may meet. Given the popularity of the Internet as a way to meet people from around the globe, opportunities to meet people that live nearby are decreasing. Gaming programs in libraries are bringing together people of different ages and demographic groups in social activities. What long-term impacts could this have, both on the library itself and on the community in which the library is engaged? These issues will be presented, supported by data from several surveys designed to understand the ways in which libraries have integrated gaming as a service.

The Anti-Immersive Theatre of Role-Playing Games
By: Michael Ryan Skolnik

This paper examines anti-immersive theatrical aesthetics (Brechtian epic theatre, Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed) in relation to the game play experience of tabletop role-playing games. In contrast to claims that immersion is the basis for a meaningful experience of interactive narrative in an interactive entertainment medium, this paper argues that a role-playing game aesthetic based on anti-immersive defamiliarization offers role-players a meaningful game play experience with additional critical possibilities and more favorable ideological implications.

The Great White Whale of Meaningful Play