Current Game Research Articles

Valuation and Hedging of Sports Futures Wagers

This study investigates, in a conceptual way, the intrinsic valuation of sports futures wagers and, given the absence of a viable secondary market, strategies for locking in pre-expiration value by hedging with the existing set of futures wagers, proposition wagers, and game wagers. An interesting finding is that effective hedging with game wagers generally involves games of teams other than the futures team, in addition to the futures-team’s games. The paper also shows how to use current game odds and futures odds to find the implicit projected odds on future games, conditional on the match-ups to be determined by the outcomes of current games.

Triton: Practical pre-computed sound propagation for games and virtual reality

Triton is a pre-computed wave-based acoustics system recently shipped in the game “Gears of War 4.” Games and VR present exciting new opportunities for virtual acoustics by providing the player with scene-dependent reverberation cues and conveying information about visually occluded areas. Several technical challenges must be met. Scenes containing millions of polygons are common, with mixed indoor-outdoor spaces like broken buildings, courtyards, caves, and rocks. A viable technique must handle this complex visual geometry without users' intervention. The emphasis is on ensuring the resulting auralization is perceptually convincing, varying smoothly on source and listener motion in such scenes. Highly occluded cases with salient paths undergoing multiple edge-diffraction and scattering are common. Computational requirements are quite stringent. A fraction of a single CPU core must be used for acoustic calculations for many tens of moving sources. We discuss how these challenges shape Triton’s design. Pre-computation is used to minimize runtime cost. Wave simulation provides complete automation for complex scene geometry. The produced fields contain billions of responses that take terabytes of memory. A key contribution is compact encoding of this data in less than hundred megabytes: objective room acoustic parameters are approached from a novel perspective to aid in spatial compression. The resulting parametric framework is fast and practical for current games and VR applications. Video demonstrations will be shown.

Preserving the Motion Features in Nonavoiding Collision Crowds

In current games, entire cities can be rendered in real time into massive virtual worlds. In addition to the enormous details of geometry, rendering, effects (e.g., particles), sound effects, and so on, nonplayable characters must also be animated and rendered, and they must interact with the environment and among themselves. Indeed, the computation time of all such data is expensive. Consequently, game designers should define priorities so that more resources can be allocated to generate better graphics, setting aside behavioral aspects. In huge environments, some of the actions/behaviors that should be processed can be nonvisible to the players (occluded) or even visible but far away. Normally, in such cases, the common decision is to turn off such processing. However, hidden enemy behaviors that are not processed can result in nonrealistic feedback to the player. In this article, we aim to provide a method to preserve the motion of nonvisible characters while maintaining a compromise with the needed computational time of background behaviors. We apply this idea specifically in crowd collision behavior, proposing nonavoiding collision crowds. Such crowds do not have collision avoidance behaviors but preserve their motion as typical crowds. We propose a mathematical technique to describe how people are affected by others, so collision avoidance methods are not necessarily computed (they can be turned off, which leads to a reduction in the required computational time). Results show that our method replicates the behavior well (velocities, densities, and time) when compared to a free-of-collision method.

PELESTARIAN SENI BUDAYA DAN PERMAINAN TRADISIONAL MELALUI TEMA KEARIFAN LOKAL DALAM KURIKULUM PENDIDIKAN ANAK USIA DINI

Indonesia is a country rich traditional art and culture danpermainan. Cultural arts and traditional games are so diverse but many are endangered because there is nothing to preserve it. The longer, the Indonesian nation many know the game only through the written documentation. This is exacerbated by the current digital game technology that began to mushroom, and the change of social system in a more individualistic society. Thus it takes effort to keep preserve traditional games through the Early Childhood Education (ECD). ECD is an institution that supports the social system of friends to play traditional games. Curriculum development by adding themes Local Wisdom can be performed on all early childhood institutions in Indonesia so that our country is not experiencing a crisis of extinction of traditional games.

The Effect of Additional Virtual Reality Training on Balance in Children with Cerebral Palsy after Lower Limb Surgery: A Feasibility Study.

Impaired balance is disabling for children with cerebral palsy (CPc), especially for CPc who recently underwent lower limb surgery. Positive results of using virtual reality (VR) in balance rehabilitation have been published in several outpatient populations. We investigated the feasibility of applying additional VR training focused on sitting balance in CP inpatients of a rehabilitation center after lower limb surgery. Additionally, we investigated the rate of enjoyment of VR training compared with conventional physiotherapy. Eleven spastic CPc (4/7 males/females) following rehabilitation after lower limb orthopedic surgery were included (5-18 years). The control group received conventional physiotherapy. The intervention group received additional VR training. Balance was measured using the Trunk Control Measurement Scale every 3 weeks of the rehabilitation period. Enjoyment was analyzed using a 10-point Visual Analog Scale. Providing additional VR training was feasible in terms of recruitment, treatment adherence, and assessment adherence. Both groups improved sitting balance after therapy. The current games were not perceived as more enjoyable than conventional physiotherapy. Including additional VR training to conventional physiotherapy is feasible and might be promising to train sitting balance in CPc after lower limb surgery. Future research should take equal patient allocation and training duration between groups into consideration.

Swimming with limb absence: A systematic review.

Swimming with limb absence is undertaken as a source of leisure or rehabilitation and forms part of the current Paralympic Games competition programme. Whilst it is often proposed that research into sport with limb absence can be limited, this study identified the volume, type and historical interest of research regarding swimming with limb absence. A modified PRISMA search protocol was adopted for this review, and five bibliographic databases were used to identify relevant articles. The review identified 24 papers which met the pre-defined inclusion criteria. The identified peer-reviewed publications dated from 1983 to 2015. The trend of publication indicated an initial focus on the design of prosthetics technology with emphasis then shifting specifically to an interest in swimming biomechanics from 2006. The overall trend of publication in this field is a positive one. In this review, four clear themes emerged. These included the general background of swimming with limb absence, the development of lower limb prosthetics technology, swimming with limb absence whilst performing the front crawl stroke and the technique used by those with unilateral elbow disarticulation. From these, four further themes have been identified for pursuit in the immediate future. This review will assist those who are interested in prescribing swimming with limb absence as a form of exercise or to those who wish to pursue it competitively.

Investigating the Efficiency of Group Therapy on Improving Conversational Skills in People with Aphasia

Investigating the Efficiency of Group Therapy on Improving Conversational Skills in People with Aphasia

Study regarding team statistics at the last three men’s basketball World Championship

Abstract Achieving superior performance parameters in major competitions has highlighted a number of issues that characterize the current basketball game practiced by the best teams in the world. Depending on the height, role, importance and the effectiveness of players on their positions, specific models are to be observed in the case of senior teams [1]. In this paper we present a comparative study regarding the parameters’ models in the men's basketball games during the World Championships in Japan - 2006, in Turkey - 2010 and in Spain - 2014. Along with data interpretation, we tried to effectively bring our scientific contribution in shaping a model significant for the international basketball games, useful for the specialists in the field. Centralization of the statistical data used in our study was useful in calculating the averages for each game parameter and the increasing value for each tournament, managing to achieve a precise statistical comparison. The values encountered in this comparative research showed growth or regression trends for the game parameters. In conclusion, trends of progress or regress, referring to the statistical model parameters involved in the game, pragmatically showed, that in the game of basketball – training is the key to success.

Penilaian Atribut Usabilitas oleh Gamer First Person Shooter (FPS) Indonesia

<p>Computer games, especially First Person Shooter (FPS) have become one of the fastest growing and most economically sucessful software in Indonesia. Given the potential economic benefits of the FPS games, it is important to design its user interface as usable as possible to win the market. In accordance, it is crucial to find out what user interface factors should be considered in designing an FPS game. These factors can be used as a designing guide for game developers in Indonesia. The purpose of this paper is to discover the main user interface factors that should be considered in designing an FPS game especially from usability point of view and to suggest improvement of the user interface in current FPS game.</p><span>Fourty (40) usabilty attributes from literature review are qualitatively grouped into 5 factors. Those factors are: Basic FPS Feature (BFF), Basic Game Feature (BGF), Display & Sounds (D&S), Help & Hints (H&H), and Enjoyment (E). Usability testing on the factors is conducted in three different groups of players: Novice, Experienced, and Expert. Mann-Withney Test are conducted to understand performance difference for each group. The result shows that BGF and H&H are not significantly difference for all groups. While for BFF, the novice group tend to have different preference rather than other groups since there is not enough time duration given on novice users accessing the FPS feature. For D&S, expert tend to have different preference rather than other groups. Some future research potentials are also proposed in this paper.</span>

Event-based automated refereeing for robot soccer

The RoboCup Small Size League (SSL) is a robot soccer game with robots that play on a customized field with overhead cameras. The majority of the research effort to date has been on the performance of the autonomous teams in aspects of motion planning and team strategy. However, another critical component of a robot game is the referee. In current SSL games, refereeing is done by humans, who use a “referee box” that passes their calls to the robots. In this work, we contribute an automated referee (autoref) for SSL games, towards enabling games to proceed with little or no human supervision. The goal is to move closer to the eventual full automation of complete games with real robots. The technical challenges include the clear definition of the rules of the game in terms of features to be extracted from the visual perception, temporal sequencing, and corresponding calls and game management. We provide a description of a game of SSL as it is relevant to an autoref, by categorizing the rules of the game and presenting the structure of a game as a hybrid automaton. We then describe the complete autoref using a modular event-based architecture, following up on the automaton as a guideline, to keep track of the state of a game and issue referee commands accordingly. We present the results of using our autoref to referee games on real robots, as well as a comparison of the events detected by the autoref to the calls made by a human referee during the real SSL games at RoboCup 2014.

Playing real-time strategy games by imitating human players’ micromanagement skills based on spatial analysis

Unlike the situation with board games, artificial intelligence (AI) for real-time strategy (RTS) games usually suffers from numerous possible future outcomes because the state of the game is continuously changing in real time. Furthermore, AI is also required to be able to handle the increased complexity within a small amount of time. This constraint makes it difficult to build AI for RTS games with current state-of-the art intelligence techniques. A human player, on the other hand, is proficient in dealing with this level of complexity, making him a better game player than AI bots. Human players are especially good at controlling many units at the same time. It is hard to explain the micro-level control skills needed with only a few rules programmed into the bots. The design of micromanagement skills is one of the most difficult parts in the StarCraft AI design because it must be able to handle different combinations of units, army size, and unit placement. The unit control skills can have a big effect on the final outcome of a full game in professional player matches. For StarCraft AI competitions, they employed a relatively simple scripted AI to implement the unit control strategy. However, it is difficult to generate cooperative behavior using the simple AI strategies. Although there has been a few research done on micromanagement skills, it is still a challenging problem to design human-like high-level control skills. In this paper, we proposed the use of imitation learning based on human replays and influence map representation. In this approach, we extracted huge numbers of cases from the replays of experts and used them to determine the actions of units in the current game case. This was done without using any hand-coded rules. Because this approach is data-driven, it was essential to minimize the case search times. To support fast and accurate matching, we chose to use influence maps and data hashing. They allowed the imitation system to respond within a small amount time (one frame, 0.042s). With a very large number of cases (up to 500,000 cases), we showed that it is possible to respond competitively in real-time, with a high winning percentage in micromanagement scenarios.

Interrogating Feature Learning Models to Discover Insights Into the Development of Human Expertise in a Real-Time, Dynamic Decision-Making Task.

Tetris provides a difficult, dynamic task environment within which some people are novices and others, after years of work and practice, become extreme experts. Here we study two core skills; namely, (a) choosing the goal or objective function that will maximize performance and (b)a feature-based analysis of the current game board to determine where to place the currently falling zoid (i.e., Tetris piece) so as to maximize the goal. In Study 1, we build cross-entropy reinforcement learning (CERL) models (Szita & Lorincz, 2006) to determine whether different goals result in different feature weights. Two of these optimization strategies quickly rise to performance plateaus, whereas two others continue toward higher but more jagged (i.e., variable) heights. In Study 2, we compare the zoid placement decisions made by our best CERL models with those made by 67 human players. Across 370,131 human game episodes, two CERL models picked the same zoid placements as our lowest scoring human for 43% of the placements and as our three best scoring experts for 65% of the placements. Our findings suggest that people focus on maximizing points, not number of lines cleared or number of levels reached. They also show that goal choice influences the choice of zoid placements for CERLs and suggest that the same is true of humans. Tetris has a repetitive task structure that makes Tetris more tractable and more like a traditional experimental psychology paradigm than many more complex games or tasks. Hence, although complex, Tetris is not overwhelmingly complex and presents a right-sized challenge to cognitive theories, especially those of integrated cognitive systems.

실외형 증강현실 게임의 등급분류기준에 관한 연구

최근 증강현실 게임인 Pokemon GO에 대한 사람들의 관심이 높아지기 시작하였다. 그러나 게임 특성으로 인해 다양한 직 간접적인 문제들이 부각되면서 우려 또한 증가하고 있다. 국내는 아직 정식으로 출시되지는 않았으나 국내의 게임 등급 분류기준은 이러한 실외형 증강현실 게임에 적용하기에는 한계점이 있다. 이에 본 논문에서는 Pokemon GO와 관련하여 실제 발생한 문제 상황을 살펴보고 국내외의 게임물등급분류체계를 분석하여 국내 게임 이용자들의 안전한 게임이용을 위한 방안을 논의하고자 한다. 실외형 증강현실 게임의 문제점에 대한 사례들을 분석한 결과 이용자의 안전한 이용을 위해서는 기존의 게임등급분류체계에 '물리적 위험성'이라는 새로운 기준이 추가될 필요가 있는 것으로 나타났다. 정부의 게임 규제가 완화되어가고 있는 시점에서 가까운 미래에 증강현실 기술을 이용한 다양한 게임이 등장할 것으로 예측된다. 따라서 사전 안전장치로써 게임물등급분류체계에 대한 개선방향을 마련하는 것이 중요하며, 이는 안전한 게임 이용을 통해 게임 이용 및 산업 성장에도 긍정적 영향을 미칠 것으로 기대한다. Interest in Augmented Reality (AR) game <TEX>$Pok{\acute{e}}mon$</TEX> GO is getting heightened. However, based on its characteristic, various direct and indirect problems are highlighted, thus increasing concerns. Although the game is not formally released domestically, there are limits in national game classification to apply on such outdoor Augmented Reality game. This paper will examine the problematic cases regarding Pokemon GO and analyze internal and external game classification system to discuss safe gaming measures for domestic users. In result of examining cases, need for adding 'physical danger' in current game classification system for user's safety was shown. As the government's game regulation is being eased, appearance of a variety of games using Augmented Reality technology in near future is predicable. Therefore it is important to prepare improvement of game classification system as a pre-safety measure, and it is expected to bring positive effect on game usage and industrial growth through safe game usage.

Finding resume and restart errors in Android applications

Smartphone apps create and handle a large variety of ``instance'' data that has to persist across runs, such as the current navigation route, workout results, antivirus settings, or game state. Due to the nature of the smartphone platform, an app can be paused, sent into background, or killed at any time. If the instance data is not saved and restored between runs, in addition to data loss, partially-saved or corrupted data can crash the app upon resume or restart. While smartphone platforms offer API support for data-saving and data-retrieving operations, the use of this API is ad-hoc: left to the programmer, rather than enforced by the compiler. We have observed that several categories of bugs---including data loss, failure to resume/restart or resuming/restarting in the wrong state---are due to incorrect handling of instance data and are easily triggered by just pressing the `Home' or `Back' buttons. To help address this problem, we have constructed a tool chain for Android (the KREfinder static analysis and the KREreproducer input generator) that helps find and reproduce such incorrect handling. We have evaluated our approach by running the static analysis on 324 apps, of which 49 were further analyzed manually. Results indicate that our approach is (i) effective, as it has discovered 49 bugs, including in popular Android apps, and (ii) efficient, completing on average in 61 seconds per app. More generally, our approach helps determine whether an app saves too much or too little state.

“Games with learning”: adpositions and the lusory attitude

Purpose Games and learning research has diverged into “games for learning” and “games as learning” research. This paper aims to provide a third framing, “games with learning”, that can help address the lived experiences learners have with these media outside of formal, instructional contexts. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a critical analysis of the current games and learning field, considering what has been missed by recent research in the field and how we might benefit from further consideration of what Bernard Suits calls the “lusory attitude” or voluntary choice to accept inefficiencies in achieving goals. The paper analyzes dominant rhetoric of educational game research, with the intent of revealing the implicit assumptions about play and choice that much recent “games for learning” and “games as learning” work may have ignored. Findings The paper reveals that the further consideration of learning through extant play with games (characterized here as “games with learning”) can be a means of shifting the direction of educational games research toward investigations of how games are played “in the wilds” of out-of-school contexts. The paper advocates for a shifting of focus from compulsory contexts to the study of voluntary game play. Social implications The paper argues for the complex value of games and gameplay in non-institutional settings, and advocates for further research to understand games in non-institutional spaces. Originality/value The key argument is that games and learning to date has focused inordinately on how games can further educational design, rather than how the use of games can reveal important new contexts for learning.

GAME SCORING SUPPORTING OBJECTS MENGGUNAKAN AGEN CERDAS BERBASIS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Game are activity most structure, one that ordinary is done in fun and also education tool and help to develop practical skill, as training, education, simulation or psychological. On its developing current game have until 3D. In one game, include in First Person Shutter necessary scoring one that intent to motivate that player is more terpacu to solve game until all through, on scoring Super Mario's game Boss, Compass does count scoring haven't utilized Artifical Intelligent so so chanted, while player meet with supporting objects example ammor ability really guns directly dead, so is so easy win. Therefore at needs a count scoring interesting so more motivated in finishing problem Scoring accounting point for First Person Shutter's game .This modelling as interesting daring in one game, since model scoring one that effective gets to motivate that player is more terpacu in plays and keep player for back plays. Besides model scoring can assign value that bound up with game zoom.On Research hits scoring this game will make scoring bases some criterion which is health Point, Attack point, Defence point, And Magic what do at have supporting objects ,then in this research do compare two method are methodic statistic and Fuzzy. Result of this research 83,4 % on testing's examination and on eventually gets to be concluded that fuzzy's method in trouble finish time more long time but will player more challenging to railroad.

Valuation, Hedging, and Sports Futures Wagers

This study investigates, in a conceptual way, the intrinsic valuation of sports futures wagers and, given the absence of a viable secondary market, strategies for locking in pre-expiration value by hedging with the existing set of futures wagers, proposition wagers, and game wagers. An interesting finding is that effective hedging with game wagers generally involves games of teams other than the futures team, in addition to the futures-team’s games. The paper also shows how to use current game odds and futures odds to find the implicit projected odds on future games, conditional on the match-ups to be determined by the outcomes of current games.

Assessment strategies and fighting patterns in animal contests: a role for serotonin?

Accurate assessment of the probability of success in an aggressive confrontation with a conspecific is critical to the survival and fitness of the individuals. Various game theory models have examined these assessment strategies under the assumption that contests should favor the animal with the greater resource-holding potential (RHP), body size typically being the proxy. Mutual assessment asserts that an individual can assess their own RHP relative to their opponent, allowing the inferior animal the chance to flee before incurring unnecessary costs. The model of self-determined persistence, however, assumes that an individual will fight to a set personal threshold, independent of their opponent’s RHP. Both models have been repeatedly tested using size as a proxy for RHP, with neither receiving unambiguous support. Here we present both morphological and neurophysiological data from size-matched and mismatched stalk-eyed fly fights. We discovered differing fighting strategies between winners and losers. Winners readily escalated encounters to higher intensity and physical contact and engaged in less low-intensity, posturing behaviors compared with losers. Although these fighting strategies were largely independent of size, they were associated with elevated levels of 5-HT. Understanding the neurophysiological factors responsible for mediating the motivational state of opponents could help resolve the inconsistencies seen in current game theory models. Therefore, we contend that current studies using only size as a proxy for RHP may be inadequate in determining the intricacies of fighting ability and that future studies investigating assessment strategies and contest outcome should include neurophysiological data.

A Systematic Review of Serious Games in Training Health Care Professionals.

Serious games are computer-based games designed for training purposes. They are poised to expand their role in medical education. This systematic review, conducted in accordance with PRISMA guidelines, aimed to synthesize current serious gaming trends in health care training, especially those pertaining to developmental methodologies and game evaluation. PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane databases were queried for relevant documents published through December 2014. Of the 3737 publications identified, 48 of them, covering 42 serious games, were included. From 2007 to 2014, they demonstrate a growth from 2 games and 2 genres to 42 games and 8 genres. Overall, study design was heterogeneous and methodological quality by MERQSI score averaged 10.5/18, which is modest. Seventy-nine percent of serious games were evaluated for training outcomes. As the number of serious games for health care training continues to grow, having schemas that organize how educators approach their development and evaluation is essential for their success.

Being (Grand) Players: Review of Digital Games and their Potential to Enhance Intergenerational Interactions

ABSTRACTRecently, there has been growing interest in the way in which digital games can affect intergenerational interactions. Although the existing body of knowledge on intergenerational digital games is quite extensive, a systematic understanding of how digital games can enhance intergenerational interactions is still lacking. This paper reports on the state-of-the-art of current digital games and their utility in enhancing intergenerational interaction. Thirty-six papers published between 2006 and 2014 in English-language publications met inclusion criteria. The review presents sets of recommendations for designing game-mediated environments to enhance intergenerational interaction.