Gestural Motivation, Learning and Evaluation using Interactive Game Design

Abstract

Emerging game interface design increasingly incorporates human gestural learning. Electronic gestural games, when effectively designed, offer high levels of user engagement. The chapter to follow presents theatrical practice, an art form that manufactures expressive gestures in set paradigms, as a model for gestural game systems design. A rigorous definition of gesture is first developed from yoga practice as an exercise for performance preparation, emphasising the gesture as a still form executed within a narrative context. The theatrical model is then refigured into an interactive gestural film game design, To be or not be, based on a section of text from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet (Danylak & Weakley, 2007). Evaluation of gestural learning is integrated into the system. The focus is on the generation of the physical aspect of the gesture as a movement.