Lindsay Grace

Player performance and in game advertising retention

In game advertising or IGA is an increasingly common means of promoting brands and products. This study seeks to understand the effectiveness of in game advertising by understanding player retention of brand messages. The researchers created a controlled environment and 3D car racing game, embedding in game advertising and measuring player performance and advertising retention. The study produces a highly detailed view of the relationship of brand retention, player ability, and engagement.

Shapemaker: A game-based introduction to programming

As emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) initiatives increase, students are at a fragile point in their education. It is imperative that students learn core skills like computer programming and procedural logic necessary to living in todays increasingly digital society. Our new game Shapemaker solves these problems in game-based learning that incorporates an engaging augmented reality interface. ShapeMaker utilizes a table-based tactile interface that bridges physical actions with digital results, allowing players to learn basic concepts in programming by playing a card game. Shapemaker aims to transform the process of introducing new students to the world of programming and create a new, wider demographic of computer programmers. This article is a preliminary study of Shapemaker, documenting its concept, current design, and directions for development.

Creating critical gameplay design

This paper discusses the critical gameplay design project and its newest developments. After being exhibited in five national and international venues in 2009--2010, the project has been reconstituted with 3 new games that critique specific aspects of standard gameplay. This short paper reflects on the experience of the exhibition and the design heuristics gathered from them. The paper discusses the three axes of creating Critical Gameplay Games, content, process and scale. It is provided as a resource for researchers making polemic games, including but not limited to persuasive games, advergames, and critical gameplay. It is also useful to people involved in game jams or other intensive, time restricted game-making activities.

Critical gameplay: software studies in computer gameplay

The computer game software with which we interact on a daily basis not only entertains us, it trains us into specific patterns. Critical Gameplay is a design practice which endeavors to expose and redesign the patterns to which standard gameplay subscribes. The ongoing project seeks to identify the dominant values, philosophies and problem solving models reinforced by computer games and provides prototypical alternates to those standards.

Polyglot Cubed: the design of a multi-language learning game

Polyglot Cubed is an educational game to facilitate the learning of multiple languages. It is designed to entertain while enforcing language listening comprehension. The modular language learning game system works interchangeably with a variety of languages. The game relies on a matching mechanic intended to balance comprehension based language recognition with a simple gameplay mechanic. The game is an implementation of theories in motivation, education and entertainment. It takes as its motivation academic critique of existing educational video games and in particular pursues those areas where educational games fall short of the needs of post-secondary learners. This document outlines the design the comprised the educational video game system.

Gamifying archives, a study of docugames as a preservation medium

This paper introduces a novel concept in the use of game technology and education. Instead of employing gaming technology to create entertaining fictions or develop practical training environments, this paper introduces the concept and demonstrates the practical benefits of docugames for preservation. A docugame for preservation is a simulation that incorporates historical or culturally relevant artifacts to offer multiple perspectives on an historical or culturally relevant experience. Current trends in the growth of games, lowering production costs, and an increase in global collaborative production models have supported opportunities to employ games as a medium for preservation. As such, docugames for preservation demonstrate the promise of offering a 21st century educational experience for future learners. This research provides an analysis of existing docugames, overview of gamification principles and heuristics for improving the potential of docugames as a preservation medium.

User testing of a language learning game for Mandarin Chinese

Polyglot Cubed is an educational game to facilitate the learning of multiple languages. The game is an implementation of contemporary theories in motivation, education and entertainment. This document provides the results from a formal user evaluation of the game. This evaluation was designed to determine user defined difficulties in game experience and understand user interest in its solution. Preliminary results indicate favorable interest in the game as a tool for learning Mandarin Chinese and minor challenges in gameplay experience.

A topographical study of persuasive play in digital games

Expanding the bounds of digital educational games, this research describes the characteristics of games designed to modify player perspective, understanding, interests, activities or opinions. These persuasive play games include social impact games, games for change, and others games designed to persuade players. In summary the characteristics of 150 such games are reported through three broad categories of development, design and play experience. This summary of results focuses on digital play and proves effective at providing a topographical view of the state of play designed for extrinsic action and understanding. The focus of this research is the design and development characteristics of such games.

Making and analyzing games: not as art, but as literature

Despite the common tendency to understand computer games as a medium somewhere between film and traditional software, this paper argues for a more appropriate position amongst literature. This writing explores the opportunities in analogizing digital games not as art, but as literature. Within this framing new opportunities reveal themselves for innovative game design and more manageable archiving of games and their relationships. It should prove useful to media theorists, designers, and game librarians seeking a new way to frame the analysis and production of digital games.

Music Box: An Algorithm for Producing Visual Music

This research proposes a method for producing music via visual composition in a computer-game like environment. This is accomplished through the development of artificial intelligence software that applies the visual rules of standard emergent behaviors to the algorithmic arrangement of musical tones. This research presents the proposed system, defining the algorithm and demonstrating its implementation.