Florian Mehm

Serious games for health: personalized exergames

In this paper, we describe a set of personalized exergames which combine methods and concepts of serious games, adaptation and personalization, authoring and sensor technologies. Compared to existing systems, the set of games does not only keep track of the users vital state, but also directly integrates vital parameters into the gameplay and supports the training and motivation for sustainable physical activity in a playful manner.

StoryTec: A Digital Storytelling Platform for the Authoring and Experiencing of Interactive and Non-linear Stories

Recently, within the information society and the up-coming, prospering creative industries, a lot of research has been investigated into Storytelling systems and authoring tools for the creation and representation of Storytelling based scenarios in a broad range of application domains, e.g. marketing and advertisement, training and simulation, E-Learning, edutainment, serious games. Prominent examples are the EU funded projects U-CREATE, nm2 and INSCAPE, whose global aim was to allow even non-specialists the easy and efficient creation of interactive stories for various application domains. Based on the achieved RTD results of these projects, this paper introduces StoryTec as Digital Storytelling platform for the authoring and experiencing of interactive, non-linear stories. Apart from a brief description of the StoryTec platform as a whole and the difference to the INSCAPE approach, this paper focuses on two specific modules: The Story Editor and ICML as standardized descriptive format for any interactive stories.

Collaborative authoring of serious games for health

The efficient production of Serious Games typically requires the collaboration of technical and game development experts, i.e. game developers and domain experts such as pedagogues or sports experts. For the use case of exergames with educational aspects, we demonstrate how an authoring tool for Serious Games can be specialized for collaborative authoring by defining roles of users and providing different views on the created game to each user group carrying out different tasks in the production of the game.

An authoring tool for adaptive digital educational games

Digital educational games, especially those equipped with adaptive features for reacting to individual characteristics of players, require heterogeneous teams. This increases costs incurred by coordination and communication overhead. Simultaneously, typical educational games have smaller budgets than normal entertainment games. In order to address this challenge, we present an overview of game development processes and map these processes into a concept for an authoring tool that unifies the different workflows and facilitates close collaboration in development teams. Using the tool, authors can create the structure of a game and fill it with content without relying on game programmers. For adding adaptivity to the game, the authoring tool features specific user support measures that assist the authors in the relatively novel field of creating non-linear, adaptive educational experiences. Evaluations with users recruited from actual user groups involved in game development shows the applicability of this process.

Authoring of serious adventure games in storytec

Adventure games, being characterized by a strong focus on narrative, interaction with virtual characters and solving puzzles, are a genre that can be used for Serious Games, especially those in the domain of educational games. However, the creation of a serious adventure game, similar to other game genres when being used for serious purposes, leads to a set of new problems. As new team members (such as domain experts and pedagogues) are added to teams, the common vision of the game can get lost, communication overhead is added and collaboration is harder to achieve. We propose that an authoring tool that integrates the tasks of the various groups found in serious adventure game development into one tool can help in mitigating these problems. We demonstrate this with the authoring Tool StoryTec that was used in re-authoring an existing commercial educational adventure game in StoryTec. Additionally, the integration of an open-source engine for third person adventure games in the authoring tool is shown. n nIn order to achieve this fully integrated authoring tool, we analyze the current game development processes of adventure games and the state of the art of adventure game authoring tools or editors. These processes are mirrored in the workflows that are captured in StoryTec, structuring the interaction and communication especially between game programmers and designers as well as domain experts. Based on a model for game content, the authoring tool StoryTec is described. The results of one usability and one focus group study show the applicability of the presented approach.

An Authoring Tool for Educational Adventure Games: Concept, Game Models and Authoring Processes.

The genre of educational adventure games is a common and successful choice in game-based learning. The games combine captivating narratives that motivate players to continue playing with game mechanics that are conductive to learning: the gameplay is slow-paced, allowing players to learn at their own pace, and focused on puzzles that can be infused with educational content. While educational adventure games are well suited for learning in most settings, their creation is often challenging for non-technical experts. Furthermore, existing game editors do not account specifically for adaptive adventure games, which can maximize the learning effectiveness of the games by catering to the players’ needs. To address these two challenges, we present a game model for this genre and use this model to build an authoring tool that lowers the threshold for adventure game creation and supports adaptive educational games. The implementation of this concept was evaluated in several studies. DOI: 10.4018/ijgbl.2013010105 64 International Journal of Game-Based Learning, 3(1), 63-79, January-March 2013 Copyright

Future trends in game authoring tools

Authoring Tools for digital games are used to create games from scratch, integrate content and game mechanics easily and can assist in a multitude of ways in the production chain of a game. For example, they can allow non-programmers to work on the game logic by means of domain-specific or visual programming languages, increase the collaboration between team members by integrating computer-supported collaborative work techniques, assist in catching errors in the game by model checking and offer publishing to multiple platforms by saving games in an intermediate format which can be run on various systems. This already interesting and viable approach can be extended in a number of ways which we exemplify in this position paper to indicate possible future directions for game authoring tools.

Erstellung, Steuerung und Evaluation von Serious Games

ZusammenfassungSerious Games sind hochkomplex. Sie verbinden Game-Technologien und spielerische Konzepte mit weiteren Technologien und relevanten Konzepten für die verschiedenen Einsatzgebiete von Serious Games. Im Beitrag werden wissenschaftlich-technische Methoden, Konzepte und Software-Lösungen zur Erstellung, Steuerung und Evaluation von Serious Games vorgestellt, die in der Gruppe Serious Games am Fachgebiet Multimedia Kommunikation der TU Darmstadt entwickelt wurden. Praxisbeispiele umfassen die Bereiche Bildung und Training sowie Sport und Gesundheit.

Authoring Processes and Tools

The creation of a serious game comprises a multitude of tasks ranging from idea finding to playtesting. A crucial step is the implementation of the game design as a computer system. The quality—and to a lesser extent, cost and future adaptability—of a serious game depends heavily on the processes chosen to coordinate and to support all authors involved. This chapter aims at presenting a foundation for specifying authoring processes and selecting authoring tools for an individual serious game project. It starts with looking at the challenges authors face when trying to accomplish their tasks, and discussing approaches that support the authors. On a more general level, basic concepts are introduced with user-centered design and agile development techniques that are often reflected in successful authoring processes for serious games. Finally, software tools for supporting authors are addressed. Here, two examples are examined in more detail: a general-purpose tool for authoring digital games, and an authoring tool that specializes in creating a certain subset of serious games.

Content and Content Production

Once a game design has been created and production begins, a game development team’s two main activities are programming and content production. While a relatively small, experienced programming team can provide the necessary support for a state-of-the-art game, an art department and other departments have to produce the game content. In this chapter, we examine the production of content, including an analysis of what kinds of content exist in serious games, technical implications of the different kinds, and content production management. We also provide an introduction into procedural content generation, i.e., techniques to produce content algorithmically. Finally, we provide considerations for integrating serious content, and how the integration should be reflected in the organization of the overall game production.