Licia Calvi

How psychophysiology can aid the design process of casual games: a tale of stress, facial muscles, and paper beasts

Psychophysiological measurements have so far been used to express player experience quantitatively in game genres such as shooter games and race games. However, these methods have not yet been applied to casual video games. From a development point of view, games developed in the casual sector of the games industry are characterized by very short production cycles which make them ill-suited for complex and lengthy psychophysiological testing regimes.n This paper discusses some methodological innovations that lead to the application of psychophysiological measurements to enhance the design of a commercially released casual game for the Apple iPad, called Gua-Le-Ni; or, The Horrendous Parade. The game was tested in different stages of its development to dry-run a cycle of design improvements derived from psychophysiological data. The tests looked at the correlation between stress levels and the contraction of facial muscles with in-game performance in order to establish whether Gua-Le-Ni offered the cognitive challenge, the learning curve, and the enjoyment the designers had in mind for this product. In this paper, we discuss the changes that were made to the game and the data-analysis that led to these changes.

Playing under threat. Examining stereotype threat in female game players

The present study assesses the impact of stereotype threat on how women experience digital gaming in an evaluative context. By means of a controlled lab experiment, this study tested the effects of reinforcing stereotypical information suggesting that women are less competent players versus the effects of countering this stereotype. In doing so, game leaderboard scores were manipulated distinguishing between Stereotype Neutral (high scores without gender cues), Stereotype Boost (female-dominated high scores) and Stereotype Threat (male-dominated high scores) conditions. Results indicated that gamer identity, trait competitiveness, and playing habits modulate the experience of social identity threat. Performance and affective responses elicited by the Stereotype Threat Condition were more negatively affected in case of strongly identified gamers, highly competitive women, and/or avid players when compared with the other conditions. However, virtually no differences were observed when comparing the Stereotype Neutral and Stereotype Boost conditions. Overall, the present study demonstrates the existence of the stereotype threat mechanism and how this undermines the game experience of female players within digital game culture. Investigating stereotype threat in the context of women playing games.Womens gamer identity and play habits as important moderators for threat effects.Worse performance in threat condition compared to neutral and boost conditions.Increased negative affect in threat condition compared to neutral and boost conditions.Female role modeling does not guarantee improved performance or affective responses.

The Oculus Rift Film Experience: A Case Study on Understanding Films in a Head Mounted Display

The purpose of this research was to determine the level of narrative comprehension in films when watched in a virtual reality headset (Oculus Rift). A 360-degree live-action film was created and was shown to participants after which the level of comprehension of various literary aspects as well as the feeling of distraction and enjoyment were measured using questionnaires and interviews. Revealing how increased freedom to view a movie in virtual reality has an effect on storyline understanding, provided a framework to start a discussion on whether and how to utilize virtual reality as a means for storytelling through films.

Involving the Crowd in Future Museum Experience Design

A general trend of museums and cultural heritage institutions besides digitizing their collections is to involve the public more and at various levels. Technology plays an increasingly important role in this involvement. Developments we have observed in museum experience design, include trends towards 1) dialogical engagement of the public; 2) addressing crowds as audiences; 3) the use of Internet of Things (IoT) and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) technology in museums; and 4) designing for museum systems and institutional ecologies instead of for individual museums only. In this one-day workshop we especially focus on exploring the implications of museums reaching out to crowds beyond their local communities, and of museums increasingly becoming part of connected museum systems and large institutional ecosystems. By means of a tangible game we will brainstorm about future opportunities and challenges, cluster and evaluate them, and suggest future work.

Subliminal advertising in shooter games: recognition effects of textual and pictorial brand logos

An array of studies has shown that games can be suitable for marketing communication - but that not all game genres can be expected to be equally successful in generating advertising effects. Since the game task in shooter games requests players to strictly focus on objects that can pose a threat, that game genre seems especially problematic for in-game advertising. Subliminal communication can theoretically be expected to overcome (part) of that problem. Therefore, our experimental study (N = 143) focuses on marketing communication effects of subliminally presented brand logos. We aim to find out (i) whether subliminal marketing communication causes recognition effects and (ii) whether pictorial logos differ from textual logos in the size of the effect they generate. This way we can shine a light on the message processing mechanisms that are foundational to subliminal message effects. The results of our study show that subliminally presented brand logos do have a communicative potential: the recognition effects are significant. Besides, our study indicates that pictorial logos have a greater propensity to subliminally communicate than textual logos.

Crossroads. Life Changing Stories from the Second World War: A (Transmedia) Storytelling Approach to World War II Heritage

Crossroads is the name of the concept that narratively connects several WWII-related cultural institutions in Brabant. We were initially looking for ways to connect 4 otherwise very diverse World War II-related institutions (in fact, 3 museums and a commemoration centre) and we found it in this overarching paradigm. Crossroads does not require museums to share their collection items. It offers them instead a tool to build and offer visitors a cohesive experience related to WWII heritage.xa0 This experience is characterized by the specific focus into their WWII stories using storytelling that they can adopt. This paper will highlight the creative process that brought to the development of this concept and will discuss examples of the resulting transmedia narratives.

Improving level design through game user research : a comparison of methodologies

In this article we compare the benefits for game design and development relative to the use of three Game User Research (GUR) methodologies (user interviews, game metrics, and psychophysiology) to assist in shaping levels for a 2-D platformer game. We illustrate how these methodologies help level designers make more informed decisions in an otherwise qualitative design process. GUR data sources were combined in pairs to evaluate their usefulness in small-scale commercial game development scenarios, as commonly used in the casual game industry. Based on the improvements suggested by each data source, three levels of a Super Mario clone were modified and the success of these changes was measured. Based on the results we conclude that user interviews provide the clearest indications for improvement among the considered methodologies while metrics and biometrics add different types of information that cannot be obtained otherwise. These findings can be applied to the development of 2-D games; we discuss how other types of games may differ from this. Finally, we investigate differences in the use of GUR methodologies in a follow-up study for a commercial game with children as players.

Becoming Vincent : A Multifaceted Story in a Multifaceted Ecosystem

This chapter presents the process that led to the development of a virtual experience for the church in Etten-Leur, which is part of the heritage related to Vincent van Gogh and which hosts a permanent exhibition related to the artist’s life in the area. As such, it is one of the elements in the Becoming Vincent project. This chapter highlights the complexity of the heritage ecosystem underlying the project, consisting of various stakeholders with diverse, sometimes diverging or even incompatible, interests and goals. In this chapter, we discuss how we coped with this diversity and we draw some of the lessons we learnt from this process for future use. The most important lesson is the need to involve all stakeholders from the start of the process and to treat them equally, despite visible differences in their relative interest in the outcome of the project, in order to give them the feeling to have ownership on the expected outcome, and therefore to enhance the chances that they will still support the project after its completion. At the same time, it is important to keep the network structure simple and clear in order to avoid unnecessary or redundant passages in the knowledge transmission within this web of relations. While not specific for museums but prone to be applied to any complex networked situation, this approach has helped us cope with a complex cultural ecosystem.

Designing trajectories of experiences: in museums, around museums or including museums

Recently, museums have increasingly become parts of ecosystems of people and organizations in their functioning. As a consequence, museum experience designers are stimulated to think in a holistic way, about experiences of people that engage with networks including the museum, as well as about the role of individual museums within such ecosystems (Vermeeren et al in Museum experience design – crowds, ecosystems and novel technologies, 2018a). This raises the questions of: What are ways in which a museum experience relates to experiencing its embedding context? And, what does this imply for the process of designing the museum experiences? In two design case studies, four ideas for museum experiences have been developed based on different ways in which museums relate to their embedded network. The ideas illustrate how the focus of the design may be different depending on the role the museum plays in the overall experience, and how the design process is complicated by having to deal with a larger group of stakeholders when designing. Finally, all ideas came forth from taking a broader view of the potential museum target group than seeing them solely as visitors to the museum. This was seen as crucial for inspiring solutions to museum experiences beyond more traditional museum visiting experiences.

Enabling Augmented Sense-Making (and Pure Experience) with Wearable Technology

The paper explores how a post-cognitive approach to human perception can help the design of wearable technologies that augment sense-making. This approach relies on the notion of pure experience to understand how we can make sense of the world without interpreting it, for example through our body, as claimed by phenomenology. In order to understand how to design wearable technologies for pure experience, we first held interviews with experts from different domains, all investigating how to express and recognise pure experience. Subsequently, we had a focus group with professional dancers: given their heightened sense of bodily cognition in their experience, we wanted to verify the extent to which the experts’ practice could be claimed back into the dancers’ experience. In this paper, we will present our preliminary findings.