Development Of Digital Games Research Articles

Agile Design: A Combined Model Based on Design Thinking and Agile Methodologies for Digital Games Projects

Traditional approaches to project management seek to discipline the execution and to organize different activities to be performed in order to reach the project goals. However, that focus may not be suitable for the beginning of projects that require creativity, as in the case of digital games. This article aims to develop a project management model that covers the whole process of digital games development, by combining two approaches, Design Thinking and Agile Methodology. The proposed model was constructed based on the theoretical framework of both methodologies, and has three parts: the Design Thinking phase, the Connection phase and the SCRUM phase. In order to evaluate the pertinence of the model, a qualitative exploratory study was conducted through semi-structured interviews with game developers of the Brazilian market. It was observed that many aspects of Design Thinking are used in the game development, that agile development is fully diffused in this process, and that association of both methodologies, besides being possible, can contribute to the efficiency of this process. The main contribution of this work is the presentation of an integrated model of project management that fully attends the process of the digital games development.

The Development Of Visual Aspects In Video Games Over The Years

This report investigates the importance of creating a realistic environment in order to create an immersive world in digital games. The discussion will start from the history of Digital game development until now, discussing on the limitations of gaming consoles from time to time, and how game designers nowadays keep pushing the boundaries of the visual aspects of their game. Then focusing the discussion on the technical and art aspect of digital game design. By doing the analysis in this report, we can conclude that there are several reason that affects the visual quality of video games, such as the technology of the game console, the limitation of game engine, and also the skill of the game artist itself.
 Key words : Video Games, Digital Games, Game Console, Environment, Game Engine.

A Digital Game Maturity Model (DGMM)

Game development is an interdisciplinary concept that embraces artistic, software engineering, management, and business disciplines. This research facilitates a better understanding of important dimensions of digital game development methodology. Game development is considered as one of the most complex tasks in software engineering. The increased popularity of digital games, the challenges faced by game development organizations in developing quality games, and high competition in the digital game industry demand a game development maturity assessment. Consequently, this study presents a Digital Game Maturity Model to evaluate the current development methodology in an organization. The framework of this model consists of assessment questionnaires, a performance scale, and a rating method. The main goal of the questionnaires is to collect information about current processes and practices. In general, this research contributes towards formulating a comprehensive and unified strategy for game development maturity evaluation. Two case studies were conducted and their assessment results reported. These demonstrate the level of maturity of current development practices in two organizations.

Factors driving and influencing the development of serious games

There are a large variety of serious games aimed at infusing knowledge into both teams and organizations. Some games aims at supporting the team in a given project or development process, whereas others aim at widening the knowledge, skills and competences in an organization on a more general level. In the serious game literature most focus and attention is given to the design and development of digital games. However in Denmark, at least, there has been a growing industry of analogue serious games and serious game facilitation, which give evidence to the fact that not all development in the area of serious games happens in terms of the digital versions. This paper investigate these new analog serious games and learning tools in the Danish market with focus on the drivers and influencing factors during their development and the effort of making a business out of the serious games. Empirically, the paper is based on close interaction and semi-structured interviews with some of the key serious game developers in Denmark (plus one in the US), some of them with a portfolio of up to ten serious games. Besides from uncovering some of the basic motivations to design and develop serious games, the paper will show, how the game developers’ interaction with the end-users and their different business strategies, influences the way the game is developed.

USABILITY EVALUATION OF DIGITAL MALAYSIAN TRADITIONAL GAMES

Focusing on measuring the engagement towards digital Malaysian traditional games, this paper presents usability evaluation on three digital versions of Malaysian traditional games; Dam Haji, Congkak and Gasing-X. Usability is a significant contributing factor towards engagement of digital games. Usability helps in verifying the requirements, successes and functionality of the games which are missing. The usability evaluation adopted the heuristic instruments developed by Jakob Nielson in 1990. The instrument consists of 17 heuristic component protocols based on interface design. Evaluation involved 50 respondents who are IT and domain experts. Result analysis is discussed and presented for each game. Results suggested features and aspects to be improved in the development of Digital Malaysian Traditional Games towards better engagement of the games.

Programming: A Study on Upper Primary Students’ Attitude towards Education Digital Games

Abstract — There is an emerging trend of using games for learning purposes and previous research has looked at how the concept is applied in different fields. However, little studies have been done to examine how programming affects primary school students especially in the Malaysian context. To better understand how learners respond to the use of digital games in learning programming, this exploratory case study is performed by examining the attitude of upper primary schools students towards its usage. The students were asked to perform several learning activities using games during which observations were made and questionnaires were distributed for data collection. The outcome of the study will be useful in the future development of games that are suitable to the students’ age and level. By identifying the learners’ preference, it can help to guide the development of digital games especially in the field of programming. Index Terms — Digital games, education, primary students, programming.

GAMED: digital educational game development methodology

Development of a game in the form of software for game-based learning poses significant technical challenges for educators, researchers, game designers, and software engineers. The game development consists of a set of complex processes requiring multi-faceted knowledge in multiple disciplines such as digital graphic design, education, gaming, instructional design, modeling and simulation, psychology, software engineering, visual arts, and the learning subject area. Planning and managing such a complex multidisciplinary development project require a unifying methodology and should not be performed in an ad hoc manner. This paper presents such a methodology named GAMED (diGital educAtional gaMe dEvelopment methoDology). GAMED consists of a body of methods, rules, and postulates and is embedded within a digital educational game life cycle. The life cycle describes a framework for organization of the phases, processes, work products, quality assurance activities, and project management activities required to develop, use, maintain, and evolve a digital educational game from birth to retirement. GAMED provides a modular structured approach for overcoming the development complexity and guides the developers throughout the entire life cycle.

It's all about games: enterprise and entrepreneurialism in digital games

This article aims to contrast benign notions of ‘free’ and ‘creative’ work in the context of labour market conditions and employment relationships. Empirical research reveals the exploitative and precarious nature of work in the experiences of self‐employed digital game developers and charts the responses of developers to unstable and insecure working conditions. Building on work by Pongratz and Voß, Haunschild and Eikhof, and Bergvall‐Kåreborn and Howcroft, this study finds that a typical response to increasing instability in the labour market is to adopt more enterprising and entrepreneurial behaviour in order to find work. This article illustrates the consequences for developers by highlighting examples of self‐exploitation, which is fuelled by a passion for work and is where entrepreneurial practices lead to long working hours, unpaid work and a blurring of work–life boundaries.

Exploring Technological Innovation towards Inclusive Education: Building Digital Games – An Interdisciplinary Challenge

Policy on inclusion in education lacks methodological frameworks and technological resources to assist students with disabilities during their teaching-learning process. This paper proposes a strategy to join interdisciplinary areas, such as education, game design and computer science, to enable affordable educational digital games development with natural and universal interface design. We also present the intended results we expected to achieve by using this interdisciplinary approach such as an educational game development based on natural user interface using Microsoft Kinect as an interaction device.

Effects of the Digital Game-Development Approach on Elementary School Students' Learning Motivation, Problem Solving, and Learning Achievement

In this study, the game-based development approach is proposed for improving the learning motivation, problem solving skills, and learning achievement of students. An experiment was conducted on a learning activity of an elementary school science course to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. A total of 59 sixth graders from two classes of the elementary school participated in the experiment. One class of 30 students was selected as the experimental group, and the other class of 29 students was the control group. From the experimental results, it was found that the proposed game development-based learning approach could effectively promote the students' problem-solving skills. However, the students' learning achievement and motivations were quite different from our expectations. A discussion of the experimental group interview data is provided and suggestions made.

Evidence for the task-induced involvement construct in incidental vocabulary acquisition through digital gaming

This article reports on an investigation of the suitability of mobile vocabulary games for inducing a state of incidental vocabulary acquisition. Draw Something, a social digital drawing game in which players draw and guess words, was selected as a focus for this investigation. Results from an exploratory factor analysis of the questionnaire data collected from 92 Taiwanese undergraduate and graduate students found three factors corresponding to the motivational and cognitive dimensions of the task-induced involvement construct: Need, Evaluation and Search. ANOVA results investigating participants' perceptions of digital game interactions found participates involved themselves in Search the most, followed by Need and finally Evaluation. Investigation results suggest that other digital games, under the right conditions, may also induce incidental vocabulary acquisition; however, it is suggested that future digital game developers increase game elements that can further induce Evaluation. This study also illustrates how exploratory factor analysis can be used to evaluate other digital games in terms of inducing involvement load to encourage incidental vocabulary acquisition, retention and resistance to decay.

Understanding and Proposing a Design Rationale of Digital Games based on Brain-Computer Interface: Results of the AdmiralMind Battleship Study

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) present great potential to the field of digital games, though the design of this kind of interface is still a challenge for most of the game designers and developers. In this work it is presented a literature review about digital games based on BCI, aiming to analyze the interaction design of these games, to identify the approaches applied, limitations and implications related to BCIs design. After the review, we accomplish a reflection about the design decisions involved in the development of digital games based on BCI. This approach leads to the construction of a design rationale developed to support the process of BCI-based games, with its use established on the design of a battleship game based on BCI. As contributions of this work, we highlight the literature review, design rationale and results of the study accomplished.

Work in the Media

As media have become dominant players in society's affairs and, as an industry, represent a powerful economic and symbolic force, it is disheartening to see that work across the creative industries is becoming increasingly precarious. At the same time, media practitioners address this precarity in a wide variety of ways, often as groups articulating their agency within a structure that exploits the power of their labor. This essay advocates a program of study that explores the social, communal, and collaborative ways in which media professionals are able to do work in the context of an increasingly workerless industry. People spend more time with media today than at any previous point in history. The number of media channels, forms, genres, devices, applications, and formats is multiplying—more media are produced every year, and we spend more of our time concurrently exposed to media. At the same time, the news about work in the media is less than optimistic. Reports about continuing layoffs across all media industries—most notably, film and television entertainment, journalism, digital game development, and advertising—are paramount. This suggests a paradox: as people engage with media in an increasingly immersive, always-on, almost instantaneous, and interconnected way, the very people whose livelihood and sense of professional identity depend on delivering media content and experiences seem to be at a loss on how to come up with survival strategies—in terms of business models, effective regulatory practices (for example regarding copyrights and universal access provisions), and perhaps, most specifically, the organization of entrepreneurial working conditions that would support and sustain the creative process needed to meet the demands of a global market saturated with media. The well-documented precarious nature of employment across the media industries—I respectfully refer to the published work of editorial board members of Media Industries—does not seem to scare off students choosing careers in the creative industries. Schools, departments, and programs in media, communication, journalism, and related disciplines are continually overflowing. To some extent, it is problematic that we tend to advertise our programs with unquestioned statistics demonstrating that a majority of alumni secured in the media, often using a handful of high-profile alumni-turned-media-professionals to suggest that enrolled students are on their way to becoming just as successful. What we neglect to tell incoming students is that the majority of jobs these alumni have are based on temporary contracts (if

Hiding in Plain Sight: Reproducing Masculine Culture at a Video Game Studio

The growing body of research on the production of video games has underscored the disproportionate number of women to men working on the development and creation of digital games. What is not well documented is the role the cultural environment of video game studios plays in maintaining androcentrism. This article explains how discourses of masculinity influence work at a video game studio and how they reproduce a culture unwelcoming to most women. Using ethnographic methods and in-depth interviews, this analysis of a video game studio looks at the interplay of different types of masculinity and the role they play in the reproduction of masculine culture.

Digital educational game value hierarchy from a learners’ perspective

Although much research in the past has pointed out that SimCity offers many learning opportunities, few have focused on how these were derived from game attributes and the personal value they offered. In this research, the means-end chain theory and ladder interview were chosen as the approach to explore the structure of SimCity’s game attribute - learning effect - terminal value chain from learners’ perspective. Findings from the study indicate that through attributes such as Construction of simulated city, Become the mayor, Offer incidents of simulated disasters and Table of information overview, learners were able to benefit from the learning effects of Cultivate imagination and creativity, Cultivate problem-solving ability, Strengthen sense of responsibility, Increase planning experience, Cultivate organizational thinking, Strengthen leadership decision-making and Improve control ability in their pursuit of values such as Sense of achievement, Fun and enjoyment of life, Self-fulfillment and Self-respect. The research has taken one step further to explore the differences in value hierarchies for respondents of different majors and levels of education for a discussion in management significance. The findings revealed the key points that learners focus on when playing digital educational games and provide useful guidelines for improvements and teaching strategies for digital educational game developers and educators.

Creative thinking in digital game design and development: A case study

In a case study on middle-school student educational game creation course in south central US state, the students' creative thinking process is investigated in order to understand perceptions of the digital design and programming involved in the game creation learning approach. Interviewing 12 students at with three different levels of game design experience, students in grade 6, 7 and 8, with 1, 2, and 3 years of game design experience respectively, findings suggest that students enjoyed the learning approach as satisfying and engaging, yet technologically challenging. The students experienced positive opportunities for engaging the creative thinking process in synthesizing social issue information for constructing their understanding through the creation of interactive, educational digital games. Findings suggest that the creative thinking process in student-centered game creation learning approach may provide learners a rich and enjoyable learning experience with the authentic technology use as well as provide for deep, insightful learning.

Digital Gaming and Pediatric Obesity: At the Intersection of Science and Social Policy.

Children and adolescents in developed countries are heavily immersed in digital media, creating an inexpensive, far-reaching marketing opportunity for the food industry and the gaming industry. However, exposure to nonnutritious food and beverage advertisements combined with the use of stationary media create a conflict between entertainment and public health. Using the popular digital gaming platforms advergames (online games that market branded products) and exergames (video games that involves gross motor activity for play) as exemplars, the following article provides an analysis of the negative and positive health impacts of digital gaming as they relate specifically to overweight and obesity outcomes for children and adolescents. Theoretical explanations including the food marketing defense model, persuasion knowledge model, and social cognitive theory are used to explain the influence of gaming on young players' health. Throughout the article, we discuss the role of public policy to encourage the development and use of health-promoting digital games as an innovative, effective tool to combat the pediatric obesity crisis.

Avoiding Internet Addiction when Integrating Digital Games into Teaching

The aim in this study was to integrate the flow experience and instructional design by incorporating digital games into the school curriculum using the following 7 principles: 1) analyze learners, 2) set clear teaching objectives and select appropriate gaming materials, 3) design teaching instructions according to teaching objectives and game content, 4) consider teaching as the primary goal and use games as supplementary tools, 5) make good use of the characteristics of computer games, 6) place students at the center of the process and help them enjoy studying, and 7) periodically assess students' learning and constantly improve teaching. Ultimately, digital games in which appropriate instructional design principles are incorporated will facilitate the development of educational digital games and related investments.

Improving Digital Game Development with Software Product Lines

Introducing reuse and software product line (SPL) concepts into digital game-development processes isn't a straightforward task. This work presents a systematic process for bridging SPLs to game development, culminating with domain-specific languages and generators streamlined for game subdomains. The authors present a game SPL for arcade games as a case study to illustrate and evaluate their proposed guidelines. This article is part of a special issue on games.

Content Design Patterns for Game-Based Learning

To address the lack of documented best practices in the development of digital educational games, the authors have previously proposed a reference software architecture. One of its components is the rule system specifying learning and gameplay content. It contains quest, player character, non-player character, environment, and item rules. Documented content design patterns can assist in the authoring of such rules. This paper reports on four studies that have collected quest, character, environment, and item design patterns by analysing a variety of media. A selection of the results is presented, as well as a discussion of how the patterns can be used in designing educational game content.