Richard Byrne

Playful Game Jams: Guidelines for Designed Outcomes

Game jams are social events involving the integration of various game making disciplines (e.g. programming, art, design) to make games under constraints, such as a short fixed time. Game jams are emerging in areas such as research, education, and industry as events to facilitate game making for designed outcomes; i.e. outcomes elicited from appropriately designed game jams. Game jams continue to grow and be appropriated to new contexts, however, little is known about how to design game jams to facilitate designed outcomes. We identify participation in game jams as a constructive form of play defined as ludic craft. Consequently, we investigate the properties (e.g. rules) of game jams under the lens of play on the playful vs. gameful continuum. Reflecting on our experiences as facilitators and participants of jams in indie, industry, and academic contexts, we have derived a set of guidelines for game jams to facilitate ludic craft in its playful and gameful forms. We present this set of guidelines for jam facilitators to cultivate experiences that support designed outcomes in contexts such as research, education, and industry.

Designing the Vertigo Experience: Vertigo as a Design Resource for Digital Bodily Play

Vertigo can be described as an attempt to momentarily destroy the stability of perception and inflict a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind. Vertigo has, however, not been generally considered as a design resource and we believe it to be under-explored in the area of digital bodily play. To investigate how vertigo could be considered as a design resource in this context, we conducted a review of relevant literature and held a design workshop with nine students to explore the potential of vertigo as a design resource for digital bodily play. From our exploration we identify five key design themes that designers might consider when designing a Vertigo Experience. Through this work we hope to encourage designers of bodily play experiences to consider vertigo as a design resource in their games.

Utilizing Gravity in Movement-Based Games and Play

This paper seeks to expand the understanding of gravity as a powerful but underexplored design resource for movement-based games and play. We examine how gravity has been utilized and manipulated in digital, physical, and mixed reality games and sports, considering five central and gravity-related facets of user experience: realism, affect, challenge, movement diversity, and sociality. For each facet, we suggest new directions for expanding the field of movement-based games and play, for example through novel combinations of physical and digital elements. Our primary contribution is a structured articulation of a novel point of view for designing games and interactions for the moving body. Additionally, we point out new research directions, and our conceptual framework can be used as a design tool. We demonstrate this in 1) creating and evaluating a novel gravity-based game mechanic, and 2) analyzing an existing movement-based game and suggesting future improvements.

Balance Ninja: Towards the Design of Digital Vertigo Games via Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation

Vertigo -- the momentary disruption of the stability of perception -- is an intriguing game element that underlies many unique play experiences, such as spinning in circles as children to rock climbing as adults, yet vertigo is relatively unexplored when it comes to digital play. In this paper we explore the potential of Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation (GVS) as a game design tool for digital vertigo games. We detail the design and evaluation of a novel two player GVS game, Balance Ninja. From study observations and analysis of Balance Ninja (N=20), we present three design themes and six design strategies that can be used to aid game designers of future digital vertigo games. With this work we aim to highlight that vertigo can be a valuable digital game element that helps to expand the range of games we play.

Reindeer & wolves: exploring sensory deprivation in multiplayer digital bodily play

Games designed around digital bodily play involve bodily movement and expression to create engaging gameplay experiences. Most feedback in these games takes the form of visual stimuli. To explore the gameplay mechanics afforded by depriving players from these visual cues, we designed Reindeer & Wolves, a role-playing game where blindfolded players capture other players relying on their hearing alone. Based on our design and play testing, we devised four strategies for designing games that incorporate sensory deprivation as an element of the core mechanic.

JoggAR: a mixed-modality AR approach for technology-augmented jogging

JoggAR demonstrates a novel combination of wearable visual, audio and sensing technology to realize a game-like persistent augmented reality (AR) environment to enhance jogging and other exertion experiences that involves changing attention intensities in the course of the activities. In particular we developed a method to perform an audio-first exploration of 3D virtual spaces so as to achieve our experiential goal of supporting exertion-focused activities.

Designing Digital Climbing Experiences through Understanding Rock Climbing Motivation

Interactive systems have been used successfully in sports to assist people in achieving their performance goals, however, we believe that some aspects are often overlooked. In this paper we focus on rock climbing and we examine existing work on climbing from varying fields, including sports science, psychology, and climbing literary works, in order to identify recurring motivational themes. In total we identify and describe five key themes from these works: “risk as a measure of progress”, “maintaining challenge”, “social engagement”, “experiencing beauty and nature”, and “documenting and reliving the experience”. We then examine how existing digital climbing experiences address these themes and suggest ways in which these interactive climbing designs could embrace the themes they do not yet address. We believe this work will be important not only when designing digital climbing experiences, but also digital experiences for other extreme sports.

13 Game Lenses for Designing Diverse Interactive Jogging Systems

HCI is increasingly interested in designing technology for being physically active, and in many cases focuses on jogging. We find that many current approaches seem to view jogging only through a lens of athletic performance. However, jogging is multifaceted, yet there is so far no collated list of alternative lenses through which jogging could be viewed at by designers. In this paper, we draw on game design thinking to articulate 13 lenses through which designers can examine jogging. These 13 lenses are derived from related work and our combined experience of having designed and studied three different jogging systems. The lenses enable a structured articulation of key opportunities that interactive technology offers for jogging designers. With our work, we aim to support designers who want to create diverse interactive jogging systems so that more people can profit from the many benefits of jogging.

Inner disturbance: towards understanding the design of vertigo games through a novel balancing game

The design space of vertigo games is underexplored, despite vertigo underlying many unique body based game experiences, such as rock climbing and dancing. In this paper we articulate the design and evaluation of a novel vertigo experience, Inner Disturbance, which uses Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation to affect the players balance. Following study observations and a thematic analysis of Inner Disturbance (N=10), we present four themes and associated design sensitivities that can be used to aid designers of future digital vertigo games. With this work we aim to encourage others to experiment within this exciting new design space for digital games.

Designing Digital Vertigo Games

This document presents a summary of my doctoral research as an application for the DIS 2016 Doctoral Consortium. My work investigates the design of digital vertigo games, exploring what type of games constitute vertigo games and how we, as designers, can develop digital games of vertigo.