Average Game Research Articles

The role of gamification in digital mental health.

The role of gamification in digital mental health.

Educational computer games as a tool for qualitative transformation of personality at the level of psychological, pedagogical and social needs

The article shows that thanks to computer games, the world has irrevocably “split” into two parts-re-al, existing in reality and virtual, existing in the form of an electronic model of objects and processes. The aim of the work is to analyze the possibilities of using computer games in the educational process, con-tributing to the development of personal qualities of adolescents. An analytical review of the scientific literature has shown that in order to achieve mastery in any field of activity, it is necessary to take part in that activity in the amount of at least 10,000 hours (time required for students in school from 5th to 12th grade). The average gamer at the age of 21 spends the same amount of time in multiplayer online games. It is noted that computer games, despite their socio-cultural institutionalization, still do not have scien-tific and psychological development. The survey method used in the current study showed the interest of adolescents (73,2 %) and teachers (40 %) in the use of computer games in the classroom. Mathemati-cal planning of pedagogical experiment allowed to find empirical dependence describing influence of investigated factors on final result, in our case on feature of development of personal (on self-assessment of teenagers towards educational game achievements) and communicative qualities (communicative and organizational abilities) of students. The analysis of the generalized equation showed that the program of synthesizing virtual learning with traditional teaching methods has a positive effect on the development of personal and communicative qualities of adolescents, since the level of changed personal qualities in the process of forming research and on the basis of the method of mathematical optimization of the pedagogical process amounted to 9.4 %. Key words: computer games, educational games, self-esteem, personality, educational process, learning process

Enabling Adaptive Cloud Gaming in an Open-Source Cloud Gaming Platform

We study the problem of optimally adapting ongoing cloud gaming sessions to maximize the gamer experience in dynamic environments. The considered problem is quite challenging because: 1) gamer experience is subjective and hard to quantify; 2) the existing open-source cloud gaming platform does not support dynamic reconfigurations of video codecs; and 3) the resource allocation among concurrent gamers leaves a huge room to optimize. We rigorously address these three challenges by: 1) conducting a crowdsourced user study over the live Internet for an empirical gaming experience model; 2) enhancing the cloud gaming platform to support frame rate and bitrate adaptation on-the-fly; and 3) proposing optimal yet efficient algorithms to maximize the overall gaming experience or ensure the fairness among gamers. We conduct extensive trace-driven simulations to demonstrate the merits of our algorithms and implementation. Our simulation results show that the proposed efficient algorithms: 1) outperform the baseline algorithms by up to 46% and 30%; 2) run fast and scale to large (≤8000 gamers) problems; and 3) achieve the user-specified optimization criteria, such as maximizing average gamer experience or maximizing the minimum gamer experience. The resulting cloud gaming platform can be leveraged by many researchers, developers, and gamers.

Addiction and Engagement: An Explorative Study Toward Classification Criteria for Internet Gaming Disorder.

The DSM-5 introduced Internet gaming disorder (IGD) as a condition needing more research. Proposed criteria include tolerance, preoccupation, deceiving, or continued excess despite psychosocial problems. However, studies suggest differences between addicted and engaged players. Therefore, this study investigated differences between engagement and addiction in a German-speaking sample of expert World of Warcraft players. Using an online-based questionnaire, 682 participants were surveyed (Mage=23.26 years; 84.9% male) from German-speaking areas. An adapted version of the "Asheron's call" questionnaire (which covers six addiction criteria, including salience, euphoria, and tolerance), the WHOQOL-BREF, the Gaming Motivation Scale, the BDI, the SPIN, and a brief version of the personality questionnaire BFI-10 were used. The average gamer in the sample played on level 87.93 and had been playing for 5.42 years. Addicted players had higher scores on the BDI and SPIN and significantly lower scores in all dimensions of quality of life. Addicted gamers played for 39.25 hours per week (engaged players: 11.93 hours per week) with significantly higher scores in items tapping achievement and immersion. There were differences regarding the BFI-10 in terms of "agreeableness," "conscientiousness," and "neuroticism." The results suggest that factors such as achievement and immersion set engaged and addicted users apart. Addiction seems to be significantly more connected to other psychopathologies such as depression and social anxiety. The results suggest that euphoria, tolerance, and cognitive salience should be handled with caution when it comes to a classification of IGD similar to (behavioral) addiction.

God Rays in Modern Gaming

The importance of lighting in games is unquestionably tremendous. Not to mention we need to see what we’re doing, but to generate a great degree of realism, the lighting too needs to be as realistic. The correct depiction of interaction of light with different surfaces is required. The complexities that arise from trying to render global illumination is multiplied tenfold when the environment itself is interactive, as opposed to it just being there in the background. This is further complicated when the issue of rendering caustics is considered, as this can only be satisfactorily achieved if the light rays (or photons) are traced right back to their sources. The aim of our contribution is to provide a review of the currently used techniques for the real-time rendering of God rays, complete with their advantages and disadvantages to depict exactly how far we have come in this field. And despite all the modern technology available at our fingertips, we shall see that there is a lot of work yet to be done to ensure cheap and accurate representations of stunning visual effects like God rays for the enjoyment of the average gamer. General Terms Rendering Algorithms

Design of an Ergonomic Gaming Console

The average gamer faces a number of musculo-skeletal injuries due to bad design of keyboards, consoles, mice, workspace layout and a number of other factors. This study aims at minimizing injuries and maximizing human comfort by using Ergonomic principles in the design of the console, which also happens to be the main interactive device between the gamer and the computer. Hence the objective of this study would be to design a keyboard to optimize the comforts of using a gaming console for computer games played on the keyboard, through the sciences of anthropometry and ergonomics.

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