Carolina Islas Sedano

An activity theory-based model for serious games analysis and-conceptual design

There are currently a number of models, frameworks and methodologies for serious games analysis and design that provide useful interpretations of the possibilities and limitations offered by serious games. However, these tools focus mostly on high-level aspects and requirements and do not help understand how such high-level requirements can be concretely satisfied. In this paper, we present a conceptual model, called Activity Theory-based Model of Serious Games (ATMSG), that aims to fill this gap. ATMSG supports a systematic and detailed representation of educational serious games, depicting the ways that game elements are connected to each other throughout the game, and how these elements contribute to the achievement of the desired pedagogical goals. Three evaluation studies indicate that ATMSG helped participants, particularly those with gaming experience, identify and understand the roles of each component in the game and recognize the games educational objectives. We present a model for serious games analysis and conceptual design, called ATMSG.Activity theory is used as the underlying theoretical framework.ATMSG supports a systematic and detailed representation of educational serious games.ATMSG depicts how the combination of serious games elements supports pedagogical goals.A taxonomy of serious games elements is presented to assist the analysis of SGs.

Critical Factors for Technology Integration in Game-Based Pervasive Learning Spaces

Pervasive learning is a branch of mobile learning with an emphasis on context-awareness. Pervasive learning spaces (PLSs) create bridges from the real world to the virtual world, allowing the context-sensitive utilization of real-world objects and information in the learning process. Thus far, no model of technology integration for PLSs exists. We present a three-year process during which several game-based PLSs were developed. Based on the development experiences and a series of literature analyses, we present a technology integration model for game-based PLSs. The model meets the requirements of context, pedagogy, and game-design with technology. From these requirements, we derive three critical factors for technology integration in PLSs: 1) context-awareness, 2) available resources, and 3) unobtrusiveness of the technology. The model is discussed and evaluated through applying the model to the development process of LieksaMyst, a game-based PLS for a museum. User perceptions and usability of our games are also evaluated. The model can be utilized by PLS designers and developers for determining which requirements must be considered when integrating technology into a PLS. While the foundations of a technology integration model are now laid, work remains to be done in identifying development and evaluation methods based on the model.

On Designing a Pervasive Mobile Learning Platform.

This article presents the features, design and architecture of the Myst pervasive game platform that has been applied in creating pervasive mobile learning games in various contexts such as science festivals and museums in Finland. Based on our experiences with the development, we draw a set of design principles for creating successfully a pervasive game platform that can be easily ported to various contexts. These principles advocate openness, flexibility, interaction models, connections to the outside world, and participatory design of the game content. In the evaluation part we present preliminary results of tests conducted in Finland at the SciFest 2008 festival in Joensuu and at the Museum of Technology in Helsinki. The results suggest that games built with the Myst platform are particularly suitable for children and young adults, and these games motivate players to interact with the environment and help to learn by discovering new things. The Myst platform has clearly potential for similar success in other environments due to easy portability and extensibility. Keywords: pervasive learning space; mobile learning; pervasive game; design principles; participatory design DOI: 10.1080/09687761003657606

Where is the answer?: the importance of curiosity in pervasive mobile games

Today games are increasingly recognized not only for their entertainment value, but also for their positive impact on social interaction, educational potential, technical interests, publicity and economical power. A new game genre of pervasive games extends a virtual game world into the real world environment, allowing players to move seamlessly from one to the other. Our research is focused on identifying the elements that are important in a pervasive playful application that can trigger the interest of different individuals towards the reflection and understanding of the knowledge surrounding them. Our findings suggest that stimulating the curiosity of players is one of these key elements, and that it should be considered in the design of serious mobile games with pervasive characteristics, while looking to enrich the informal learning. In addition, mobile phones are well accepted as play tools. These results are based on the feedback given by 45 players of our game entitled SciMyst, which is a mobile adventure game with pervasive and multiplayer characteristics. In SciMyst the player has to solve different types of enigmas, which are based on the information from the real world. The player is required to become familiar with the surroundings in order to succeed, and at the same time s/he is learning from the environment in a playful manner. The game was in action and the data collection took place during SciFest 2007, a science festival in Joensuu, Finland, in March 2007.

Hypercontextualized Learning Games: Fantasy, Motivation, and Engagement in Reality

A Hypercontextualized Game (HCG) is a locally designed game that supports its players in gathering context-specific information and in-depth understanding and knowledge regarding the context of a site. LIEKSAMYST, an exciting mobile application, with which visitors can play various games based on stories, was originally developed for the open-air section of the Pielinen Museum and is an example of such a hypercontextualized game. Each individual game (which together make up LIEKSAMYST) was developed in, for and with the co-operation of the Pielinen Museum. In its design, LIEKSAMYST purposefully attempts to connect users to the local history and thus promote affective engagement. With the co-operation of both a local school (Lieksan Keskuskoulu) and the museum authorities, we set out to discover how LIEKSAMYST guides the informal learning experience of Grade 7 pupils. We gathered information from 101 pupils on-site (through questionnaires) and used this data, as well as the pupils’ academic grades, to elucidate our study by investigating the relationship between engagement and motivation. The data were analyzed using a quantitative method guided by a qualitative interpretational approach and we found a significant correlation between (a) fantasy and (b) affective and cognitive engagement. The study highlighted the importance of evoking and harnessing both affective and cognitive engagement, through the fundamental element of fantasy, in the game narrative.

Serious storytelling --- a first definition and review

In human culture, storytelling is a long-established tradition. The reasons people tell stories are manifold: to entertain, to transfer knowledge between generations, to maintain cultural heritage, or to warn others of dangers. With the emergence of the digitisation of media, many new possibilities to tell stories in serious and non-entertainment contexts emerged. A very simple example is the idea of serious gaming, as in, digital games without the primary purpose of entertainment. In this paper, we introduce the term serious storytelling as a new potential media genre – defining serious storytelling as storytelling with a purpose beyond entertainment. We also put forward a review of existing potential application areas, and develop a framework for serious storytelling. We foresee several application areas for this fundamental concept, including wellbeing and health, medicine, psychology, education, ethical problem solving, e-leadership and management, qualitative journalism, serious digital games, simulations and virtual training, user experience studies, and online communication.

Viable and portable architecture for pervasive learning spaces

A Pervasive Learning Space (PLS) uses context-awareness to link a virtual world with real world objects. We define viability as the extent to which a given PLS can be adapted to different purposes, and portability to be the extent to which a given PLS can be transferred to a new physical context. Heroes of Koskenniska is a game-based PLS combining mobile technology and a wireless sensor network in a forest context to raise the environmental awareness in a Biosphere Reserve in Finland. The game was built upon a screen-based architecture, and our analysis shows that it has higher portability and viability than a selection of related PLSs. The screen-based architecture is highly viable and portable because it is based on the model-view-controller division. Our preliminary observations indicate that the game helps to increase visitor count of the area and to promote interaction between visitors and nature.

Uncovering the Richness of an Authentic Living Museum through Pervasive Learning Environment

The Pielinen Museum has a rich collection of untagged authentic houses, structures, and objects to exhibit. Problems emerge when visitors attempt to establish meaningful connections between the myriad of unmarked exhibits. Additionally, negative attitude towards museums especially among younger generation is a known problem. The LieksaMystpervasive learning environment helps the visitor to discover temporal and thematic connections among exhibits. LieksaMysts story-based role-playing game is aimed to attract and motivate particularly children and young adults.

Collaborative and cooperative games: Facts and assumptions

Collaboration and cooperation are fundamental activities and processes for humans. There has been a recent rise in the interest in collaborative and cooperative processes in several fields of study and an increasing popularity of commercial collaborative games. In this paper, we aim to identify how are collaboration and cooperation processes studied and promoted in the field of game research, with emphasis in digital games. To that end, we systematically analyzed two sets of data: academic publications on collaborative games and reviews of commercial collaborative games. From this examination, we acknowledge the important relationship between games and the cultural context, and we identify three main areas of study for this type of games (learning environments, interaction, and in-gameplay experience), which serve as a landscape for the investigation on collaborative and cooperative games.

EmotionExpert: Facebook game for crowdsourcing annotations for emotion detection

The current paper explores the use of the social network platform Facebook, as a source of emotion annotated textual data as well as a source of annotators. The traditional approach of hiring experts to provide manually labeled (annotated) data for NLP research is time-consuming, tedious and expensive. Hence, crowdsourcing has emerged as a useful method for obtaining annotated data for natural language processing (NLP) research. We have developed a purposeful innovative Facebook game called EmotionExpert in order to collect human annotated textual data for emotion detection from text. The game provides a means to reach a large number of players, while making the annotation of emotional content of texts an enjoyable and social activity. The findings reported in this paper indicate that EmotionExpert is a useful resource for reaching a large number of people to produce reliable annotations.