Game Production Research Articles

Gaming Sexism: Gender and Identity in the Era of Casual Video Games

Gaming Sexism: Gender and Identity in the Era of Casual Video Games

Motivations and Obstacles of Chinese Generation Z for Mobile Game Design

Objective: Through a survey of Chinese Generation Z female game users, we study users" motivations and obstacles in games and summarize the generational characteristics of the Chinese Generation Z females in games. Through expert interviews, we summarize suggestions conducive to improving the satisfaction level of game application users.Background: Although a large number of scholars have dedicated their effort to Generation Z group in game user research, most of them have not studied mobile games for a specific age and gender group. Particularly, under China"s "one child policy", understanding Chinese Generation Z females" motivation and obstacles to participate in games can effectively improve the user satisfaction of game products. Method: We derived a user travel map from a one-year internet ethnography study of Chinese Generation Z females. The user contact points were sorted out based on this map and were used for in-depth interview design. After conducting in-depth interviews with 40 Chinese Generation Z female game users, expert interviews were conducted to validate the results and to give game design and marketing suggestions for the Chinese game market.Results: Motivations of Chinese Generation Z to participate in games are to pass time, satisfy social needs, relieve stress, and chase fashion. The reasons for users" continuous participation in games are intimate interaction, self-worth realization, and competition pursuit. The obstacles to users" participation in games are payment, single game mode, lack of social functions, and insufficient time.Conclusion: As the new generation of game users, Chinese Generation Z females has great commercial value in the future. Understanding their needs in games is a significantly important way to target product development. Games of high product quality and fits for the psychological motivation of female players would greatly caters to the needs of users, together with well-planned promotion and marketing, is the key to its success. At the same time, the quality of the game is an effective means to maintain users. Keeping freshness and better prolonging the life cycle of the game is an issue that all game products need to focus on.Application: User research is an important part in the process of game product development, and paying attention to the needs of female users of Generation Z can better improve product user satisfaction level.

Evaluations of Software Developed as Research Tools to Analyze Trends of Educational Videogames Characters

Children's use of educational videogames is a growing at-home trend and has become a relevant classroom supporting tool in the teaching-learning process. The increased attachment to video games has hastened the creation of "learning through play" applications. The development of these applications requires the creative production of content using characters (avatars) playing distinct roles to engage people with the game. Evaluation tools need to be designed to understand and improve this engagement. This study aims to explain the design and development structure of research tools such as online personalized questionnaires and dashboard platforms used to populate data in a cloud for evaluating games' usability and avatars' preferences. The paper revises the applicability of three research tools tested to analyze five different graphic lines games series and the archetype of their designed avatars. The MIDI-AM educational videogames series for mobile applications is the case study examined. The need to evaluate the avatar preferences before or after playing the games to find correlations with the usability trends is present. Comparative results between the three designed research tools will help solve issues about different viewpoints between designers and producers concerning graphic lines used in educational games production and the correlation with game use preferences. The research is relevant for graphic designers, producers, and creative experts to develop well-informed styles and avatars for children's digital games. Also, the practicality of using the proposed research tools to analyze videogame and characters' preferences is confirmed.

Development of Modification of Big Ball Game with Play Approach in Order to Develop Basic Movement Skills in Elementary School Students

This study aims to modify the basic motion-based big ball game with a play approach in order to develop basic movement skills and be developed as a guide for sports teachers and learning with game concepts. The resulting product is a CD and a good ball game manual with a playing approach. The research was developed by adapting the Gall, Gall, & Borg educational research and development model. The development procedure used includes several stages: 1) analyzing the content of the developed product, 2) developing the initial game product, 3) expert validation, 4) field testing, 5) product revision of the data analysis techniques used in this study in two ways, namely quantitative and qualitative.

Artist guided generation of video game production quality face textures

We develop a high resolution face texture generation system which uses artist provided appearance controls as the conditions for a generative network. Artists are able to control various elements in the generated textures, such as the skin, eye, lip, and hair color. This is made possible by reparameterizing our dataset to the same UV mapping, allowing us to utilize image-to-image translation networks. Although our dataset is limited in size, only 126 samples in total, our system is still able to generate realistic face textures which strongly adhere to the input appearance attribute conditions because of our training augmentation methods. Once our system has generated the face texture, it is ready to be used in a modern game production environment. Thanks to our novel SuperResolution and material property recovery methods, our generated face textures are 4K resolution and have the associated material property maps required for raytraced rendering.

Development of Android Based Game „Weiβt du das?“ for German Vocabulary Learning

This research and development aim to develop games based on android “Weiβt du das?” for vocabulary learning on the Wohnung theme. The research and development model used in this research and development is the ADDIE, which consists of five stages. The stages are: (1) Analysis; (2) Design; (3) Development; (4) Implementation; (5) Evaluation. The data of this study were obtained from open questionnaire sheets of product trials by media and material experts. The result showed that game product could be used for learning vocabulary on the Wohnung theme.

The Development of Monopoly Characters in Science Learning Materials with Environmental Inspections of Human Images to Improve Science Learning Results in Grade V SD

This study aims to develop the character monopoly game in science learning with environmental insight into digestive organ material into a suitable learning medium for use in the science learning process so that the monopoly on the environmentally sound character in digestive organ material can be used to improve science learning outcomes for fifth-grade elementary school students. This research uses research and development methods or more commonly known as research and development. The data collection techniques used by researchers in developing the Monopoly Character game media in science content in grade V elementary schools are using questionnaires, observations, interviews, and tests. The results of this study are the environmentally sound character Monopoly game media that can improve science learning outcomes in grade V elementary schools. The average percentage result of the assessment of material experts, media experts, and linguists on the environmentally sound character monopoly game reaches 90%. The one-to-one questionnaire evaluation results obtained were 98%. The results of the evaluation of the small group questionnaire were 97%. The game of environmentally sound character monopoly in science learning human digestive organ material is also carried out pretest before using game products and posttest at the time after learning to use the product. The result of the average score of the pretest during the one-to-one evaluation was 66, while the post-test during the one-to-one evaluation was 79. The result of the average score of the pretest at the time of the small group evaluation was 62, while the small group at the time of the one-to-one evaluation was 82. However, the field test, which must involve a large number of respondents, was not carried out by researchers due to the imposition of restrictions on community activities (PPKM). The imposition of restrictions on community activities is carried out because of the covid-19 virus. PPKM aims to reduce the spread of the covid-19 virus. Therefore, researchers limit this research to be implemented in one-to-one and small groups only.

فاعلية برنامج وسائط متعددة تفاعلية لتنمية مهارات الطالبة معلمة الروضة في تصميم وإنتاج الألعاب الفزيائية للطفل

يهدف البحث إلى الکشف عن فاعلية استخدام برنامج وسائط متعددة تفاعلية لتنمية مهارات لطالبة معلمة الروضة في تصميم وإنتاج الألعاب الفيزيائية للطفل، واستخدمت الباحثة المنهج التجريبى، وتکونت العينة من عدد (30) طالبة معلمة تخصص رياض أطفال من معلمة الروضة مجموعة تجريبية واحدة، وقد أعدت وطبقت الباحثة( قائمة المفاهيم الفيزيائية – قائمة المهارات اللازمة لتصميم وإنتاج الألعاب الفيزيائية للطفل - برنامج مقترح باستخدام وسائط متعددة تفاعلية لتنمية مهارات وتصميم وإنتاج الألعاب الفيزيائية لطالبة معلمة الروضة – بطاقة ملاحظة لتصميم وإنتاج الألعاب الفيزيائية لطالبة معلمة الروضة ) وتم تحليل البيانات باستخدام اختبار t. Test، فتبين تحسن أداء الطالبات، عينة البحث على بطاقة ملاحظة لتصميم وإنتاج الألعاب الفيزيائية لطالبة معلمة الروضة، وذلک في التطبيق البعدى. The research aims to reveal the effectiveness of using an interactive multimedia program to develop the skills of a kindergarten teacher in designing and producing physical games for the child, and the researcher used the experimental method, and the sample consisted of (30) female students, a kindergarten teacher from a kindergarten teacher, one experimental group. The researcher has prepared and applied (a list of physical concepts - a list of skills needed to design and produce physical games for the child - a proposed program using interactive multimedia to develop skills, design and produce physical games for a kindergarten teacher - a note card for the design and production of physical games for a kindergarten teacher) and the data was analyzed to show the improvement in performance

Образ фэндома в романе Б. Завгороднего и С. Зайцева «Рось квадратная, изначальная»

The study aims to get an insight into the role of allusion as a means of creating the image of fandom in the novel “Ros Square, Original” by B. Zavgorodny and S. Zaitsev. Scientific novelty lies in determining the role of allusions and cultural-historical context in the process of creating the image of fandom in B. Zavgorodny’s and S. Zaitsev’s science-fiction novel “Ros Square, Original”, the text of which has not become a subject of special literary research yet. As a result, it is proved that the allusions used in B. Zavgorodny’s and S. Zaitsev’s work are a product of the postmodernist game and serve as a way of expressing content and subtext information aimed primarily at an active member of the all-Russian and Volgograd fandom.

Development of an Android-Based Sign Language Education Game Using a Scrum-Game Approach

Sign language is used as a communication tool for deaf children. It is also used by non-disabled as a way of communicating with them. However, not all non-disabled understand sign language since knowledge of sign language is required. Based on interviews among non-disabled and deaf people, including relatives and teachers, they experience miscommunication due to the lack of communication skills using sign language and rely only on lip movements. Sign language is applied to a subject in the State Special School of Banjar City, consisting of BISINDO and SIBI with conventional learning. This research to produce game products for learning sign language can help deaf children learn sign language in schools, especially non-disabled who want to learn sign language. The method used for developing games sign language education uses the SCRUM-Game approach, UML models, BlackBox testing, and usability testing. The sprint iteration consists of two sprints that produce educational sign language games: Alphabet SIBI and BISINDO. Educational game testing uses BlackBox testing with the conclusion that all functionality valid. Usability testing of student deaf responders and non-disabled respondents for efficiency, memorability, and errors is categorized as good. Aspect satisfaction and learnability get an excellent score. Overall, the resulting educational games get a good score. Therefore it is proper to be used .

The cruel optimism of “good crunch”: How game industry discourses perpetuate unsustainable labor practices

The video game industry’s labor practices have become an increasingly common topic of discussion throughout game studies and the gaming community, especially when it comes to “crunch” or periods of intense, extended overtime. Despite this attention, crunch persists, and the industry’s tendency to distinguish externally mandated or excessive crunch from self-directed or scheduled crunch continues to be problematic. This article considers the distinction between “good” and “bad” crunch as a form of cruel optimism, in which the idea of a tolerable crunch actually prevents the game industry from imagining how to produce games without any crunch. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of industry trade press—specifically Game Developer magazine and Game Developers Conference presentations—this research demonstrates how viewing any form of crunch as acceptable quells potential innovations in video game production and locks developers into an unsustainable cycle. We encourage developers instead to rethink labor practices more expansively.

Constelações: Jogo de cartas táteis para o ensino de alunos com deficiência visual

O presente trabalho visa demonstrar o passo a passo da construção de um jogo didático tátil para alunos com deficiência visual (DV) que estejam incluídos em salas regulares de quinto ano do Ensino Fundamental. As cartas táteis foram produzidas para colaborar com a aprendizagem e possibilidade de abstração do conteúdo das “Constelações do Zodíaco” de Astronomia. Para a confecção do jogo adaptado, foram utilizadas imagens como referências visuais e recursos de baixo custo. Para a otimização do processo, contamos com o auxílio de um acadêmico com DV, com prévio manuseio de diferentes materiais sugeridos para a produção do jogo didático, indicando assim, as melhores percepções quanto às dimensões e sensações táteis a serem utilizados para a identificação das constelações e posição das transcrições em Braille. A partir do processo descrito de construção deste recurso, afirmamos que os materiais táteis elaborados, atingiram os propósitos ao serem aplicados ao aluno com DV participante, estimulando o seu processo de aprendizagem da temática voltada ao ensino de Astronomia, pois definições sobre as constelações podem ser consideradas complexas para alunos com DV, sendo praticamente impossível desenvolver a noção dessas características sem o auxílio de diferentes ferramentas. Esta pesquisa aplicada constata que na área do ensino em Ciências ainda há necessidade de produção de jogos táteis adaptados e recursos didáticos aos alunos com DV para melhor consciência dos fenômenos que nos cercam.

A Digital Micro-Game Approach to Improve the Learning of Hand-Weaving Art and History

This research focuses on the young people and an issue of national handicraft preservation in the form of southern style hand weaving. A game is used in the study on arts and cultures as a learning medium optimized for the young people who play an important role in preserving the traditional handicraft being at the verge of extinction. The “Exploring Na Muen Sri” was developed based on digital micro-game and Person-Artefact-Task model as well as the game production with the purpose of creating the learning media and a simulation containing new knowledge about hand-weaving art and history that is suitable for the young people. The case study was on the weaving history of Na Muen Sri Community located in the southern Thailand. An experiment was conducted with undergraduate students to explore the effectiveness of the proposed approach in the field of cultural study. The results show that the game can effectively enhance players’ cognitive growth along with cultural awareness. It can be concluded that the simulated learning environment created in the digital game enables to bring about comprehension supporting the lifelong learning of hand weaving art and history while simultaneously preserving the local wisdom of hand weaving of fabrics.

The Influence of Digital Media Art on Game Design

Since entering the era of 5G digital information, due to the iterative updates of hardware and software, gamers have increasingly higher requirements for the realism of game design, the sense of context, and the aesthetics of game character modeling, which to some extent pushes the level of game production Iteratively upgrade according to the pace of market development. In the application of digital media software, the production staff’s art skills, three-dimensional design software, rendering plug-ins, two-dimensional drawing software, motion capture technology, digital lighting software, etc. are all key technical factors that directly determine the level of game production and artistic height.

A novel UML-based methodology for modeling adventure-based educational games

In the last years, serious games have been successfully exploited in different areas. However, in spite of the powerful tool that this kind of video games has proved to be in the classroom, a few methodological efforts have been conducted in order to involve pedagogues or educators in the design loop of these games or, one step further, include students in the co-design process to promote learning through design as a context. With this objective, this paper presents a set of metamodels that could facilitate the conceptual design of this type of games. To this end, a complete graphical notation based on the UML standard (with adaptations) is defined for representing the components of this type of games; having in mind to improve the collaboration between the team of educators/students and the technical team during the design process. Finally, the design diagrams defined during the production of a specific serious game, titled Uranus, are illustrated, in order to show the feasibility of the proposal. In addition, a validation experience was conducted with educators and computer engineering students in order to test the value of the proposed graphic notation to design educational games.

Hack, Slash & Backstab: A Post-Mortem of University Game Development at Scale

This article describes the educational, operational, and practical implementation of an upper-division undergraduate studio-style course centered on the subject of game production. Specifically, the article addresses the course organization and processes, the institutional context for the course (i.e., its situated role in the larger curriculum), the overall structure of the course both from a pedagogical and operational point of view, and concludes with substantial reflection and analysis by the authors on what worked effectively and where improvements could be made. The article also provides substantial depth regarding the student experience, the structure of creating muti-disciplinary software development teams within the course, orienting the course around the successful production of a professional-grade XBOX One video game product, and various methods, structures and tools for course organization, communication, software development practice, documentation, etc. This in turn is framed in the larger context of the course as it was offered not only through an academic department, but in parallel with a campus-based games studio and research center. Numerous detailed elements are provided in such fashion as to provide other educators and mentors a relevant, structured, and detailed post-mortem of a large scale, multi-disciplinary effort that engaged students in complex multimedia software production in a professional context. In addition, several elements atypical from more traditional software project courses as they intersect game development including entertainment design, playtesting, marketing, press, public demonstration and performance, audience reception and analytics, commercial platform, etc., and discussed and analyzed.

The Virtual Killing of Muslims: Digital War Games, Islamophobia, and the Global War on Terror

This article argues that digital war games communicate misleading stereotypes about Muslims that prop up patriarchal militarism and Islamophobia in the context of the US-led Global War on Terror. The article's first section establishes the relevance of the study of digital war games to feminist games studies, feminist international relations, and post-colonial feminism. The second section contextualizes the contemporary production and consumption of digital war games with regard to the “military-digital-games complex” and real and simulated military violence against Muslims, focusing especially on the US military deployment of digital war games to train soldiers to kill in real wars across Muslim majority countries. The third section probes “mythical Muslim” stereotypes in ten popular digital war games released between 2001 and 2012:Conflict: Desert Storm(2002),Conflict: Desert Storm 2(2003),SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs(2002),Full Spectrum Warrior(2004),Close Combat: First to Fight(2005),Battlefield 3(2011),Army of Two(2008),Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare(2007),Medal of Honor(2010), andMedal of Honor: Warfighter(2012). These games immerse players in patriarchal fantasies of “militarized masculinity” and place a “mythical Muslim” before their weaponized gaze to be virtually killed in the name of US and global security. The conclusion discusses the stakes of the stereotyping and othering of Muslims by digital war games, and highlights some challenges to Islamophobia in the digital games industry.

Using culturomics and social media data to characterize wildlife consumption.

Wildlife provides food, medicine, clothing, and other necessities for humans, but overexploitation can disrupt the sustainability of wildlife resources and severely threaten global biodiversity. Understanding the characteristics of consumer behavior is helpful for wildlife managers and policy makers, but the traditional survey methods are laborious and time-consuming. In contrast, culturomics may more efficiently identify the features of wildlife consumption. As a case study of the culturomics approach, we examined tiger bone wine consumption in China based on social media and Baidu search engine data. Tiger bone wine is one of the most purchased tiger products; its consumption is closely related to tiger poaching, which greatly threatens wild tiger survival. We searched a popular social media website for the term "tiger bone wine" and focused on posts that were originally created from 1 January 2012 to 31 December 2018. We filtered and classified posts related to the purchase, sale, or consumption of tiger bone wine and extracted information on providers, consumption motivations, year of production, and place of origin of the tiger bone wines based on the texts and photos of these posts. We found 756 posts related to tiger bone wine consumption, 113 of which mentioned providers of tiger bone wine, including friends (53%), elder relatives (37%), peer relatives (7%), and others (3%). Out of the 756 posts, 266 indicated the motivations of tiger bone wine consumption. Tiger bone wines were consumed as a tonic (34%), medicine (23%), game product (30%), and a symbol of wealth (28%). Some posts indicated ≥2 consumption motivations. These findings were consistent with the search queries from Baidu index. Such information could help develop targeted strategies for tiger conservation. The culturomics approach illustrated by our study is a rapid and cost-efficient way to characterize wildlife consumption.

Studying Game Development Cultures

By analyzing and contextualizing different aspects of the Finnish game development scene, this article provides concrete examples of why we need cultural studies of game development and how game development cultures can be studied. The article follows a three-layer approach, first exploring some of the historical and political developments that have shaped forms of local game production. Second, a focus is placed on working cultures within the industry and attitudes toward crunch time, work–life balance, and workplace regulation. Third, everyday strategies of organizing creative work are analyzed to better understand game studio cultures. The lessons from this empirical study directly contribute to the larger scholarly discussions around game production and creative labor.

A Data-Driven Approach for Video Game Playability Analysis Based on Players’ Reviews

Playability is a key concept in game studies defining the overall quality of video games. Although its definition and frameworks are widely studied, methods to analyze and evaluate the playability of video games are still limited. Using heuristics for playability evaluation has long been the mainstream with its usefulness in detecting playability issues during game development well acknowledged. However, such a method falls short in evaluating the overall playability of video games as published software products and understanding the genuine needs of players. Thus, this paper proposes an approach to analyze the playability of video games by mining a large number of players’ opinions from their reviews. Guided by the game-as-system definition of playability, the approach is a data mining pipeline where sentiment analysis, binary classification, multi-label text classification, and topic modeling are sequentially performed. We also conducted a case study on a particular video game product with its 99,993 player reviews on the Steam platform. The results show that such a review-data-driven method can effectively evaluate the perceived quality of video games and enumerate their merits and defects in terms of playability.