Player Input Research Articles

Advancing Methodological Approaches in Affect-Adaptive Video Game Design: Empirical Validation of Emotion-Driven Gameplay Modification

Affect-adaptive video games are increasingly concerned with changing game material based on the emotional states of player to best elicit the optimal experience. However, conceptual uncertainties and unreliable methodologies make this process currently difficult and results inconclusive. Here we present a methodological approach to explicitly test mapping assumptions between in-game variables, player input, and subjective experience to build affect-adaptive video games. In Experiment 1, 161 participants played through a newly developed 2D action arcade game. Their data was used to identify associations between game input, presented material, and affective valence. Results made it possible to identify two potential pathways for emotion adaptation which were implemented and evaluated in Experiment 2 (N = 158) against a non-adaptive version of the same game. The player-based emotional adaptation showed a significant increase in self-reported valence compared to the control condition, providing evidence for the utility of the process.

John Williams to Non-Williams

John Williams may have dominion over the Star Wars film scores with eighteen hours of music across nine films, but the mantle of responsibility for the Star Wars musical canon en masse has been undertaken by scores of many different composers, especially video game composers. Scholars of John Williams’s music such as Frank Lehman have analyzed Williams’s nine film scores, but there has been little research into the more than 100 Star Wars video game scores, which raises the question: how has Star Wars music developed without the guidance of its progenitor John Williams? Frank Lehman’s “Complete Catalogue of the Themes of Star Wars: A Guide to John Williams’s Musical Universe”1 cataloged the themes, motifs, source music, and thematic relationships of the nine films and proved musicologically insightful as well as incredibly useful when one seeks an understanding of the intricacies of Williams’s Star Wars film scores. Lehman’s research provides an ideal foundation for the ludomusicological inquisition of the hundred plus Star Wars game scores. The interactive nature of gaming mandates that the scores take player input into consideration leading to many unique methods of musical deployment that have changed from game to game. This research preludes the creation of a Star Wars sound and music anthology, similar to the Norton Anthology of Western Music, where ludomusicality found within scores from video games in the Star Wars universe are analyzed, cataloged, and explored. Each game/series would get its own unique catalog within the greater anthology consisting of a collection of analyses of the motifs, themes, and anything else of particular ludomusical interest. This poster presents a preliminary analysis of the deployment of motifs in the video games Star Wars Chess (1993) and Star Wars: X-Wing (1993), the first steps taken toward cataloging these video game scores. This proposed catalog will include analyses of ludomusicality within the Star Wars video game scores, showing how the player and computer interact to customize the listening experience of original and borrowed themes from the Star Wars movies. Combining Lehman’s method of cataloging with methods of ludomusicological analysis2 will be useful for understanding the plethora of themes, motifs, source music, thematic relationships, lyrics, diegetic music, and ludomusical methods found within the scores of each game. To present an example of this combination of analyses, Lehman’s motifs (denoted by quotation marks) are presented in combination with original analyses and transcription by the author, demonstrating the overlap between the musical material of the Star Wars movies and video games. This series of catalogs would be an excellent resource for all future Star Wars ludomusicological research as well as further expanding the literature in the field.

Robust Player Plan Recognition in Digital Games with Multi-Task Multi-Label Learning

Plan recognition is a key component of player modeling. Player plan recognition focuses on modeling how and when players select goals and formulate action sequences to achieve their goals during gameplay. By occasionally asking players to describe their plans, it is possible to devise robust plan recognition models that jointly reason about player goals and action sequences in coordination with player input. In this work, we present a player plan recognition framework that leverages data from player interactions with a planning support tool embedded in an educational game for middle school science education, CRYSTAL ISLAND. Players are prompted to use the planning tool to describe their goals and planned actions in CRYSTAL ISLAND. We use this data to devise data-driven player plan recognition models using multi-label multi-task learning. Specifically, we compare single-task and multi-task learning approaches for both goal prediction and action sequence prediction. Results indicate that multi-task learning yields significant benefits for action sequence prediction. Additionally, we find that incorporating automated detectors of plan completion in plan recognition models improves predictive performance in both tasks.

A Survey and Taxonomy of Latency Compensation Techniques for Network Computer Games

Computer games, one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the world, are increasingly online multiplayer, connecting geographically dispersed players in the same virtual world over a network. Network latency between players and the server can decrease responsiveness and increase inconsistency across players, degrading player performance and quality of experience. Latency compensation techniques are software-based solutions that seek to ameliorate the negative effects of network latency by manipulating player input and/or game states in response to network delays. We search, find, and survey more than 80 papers on latency compensation, organizing their latency compensation techniques into a novel taxonomy. Our hierarchical taxonomy has 11 base technique types organized into four main groups. Illustrative examples of each technique are provided, as well as demonstrated use of the techniques in commercial games.

Designing Player Intent through “Playful” Interaction

Designing Player Intent through “Playful” Interaction

Unsupervised Text Classification for Natural Language Interactive Narratives

Natural language interactive narratives are a variant of traditional branching storylines where player actions are expressed in natural language rather than by selecting among choices. Previous efforts have handled the richness of natural language input using machine learning technologies for text classification, bootstrapping supervised machine learning approaches with human-in-the-loop data acquisition or by using expected player input as fake training data. This paper explores a third alternative, where unsupervised text classifiers are used to automatically route player input to the most appropriate storyline branch. We describe the Data-driven Interactive Narrative Engine (DINE), a web-based tool for authoring and deploying natural language interactive narratives. To compare the performance of different algorithms for unsupervised text classification, we collected thousands of user inputs from hundreds of crowdsourced participants playing 25 different scenarios, and hand-annotated them to create a gold-standard test set. Through comparative evaluations, we identified an unsupervised algorithm for narrative text classification that approaches the performance of supervised text classification algorithms. We discuss how this technology supports authors in the rapid creation and deployment of interactive narrative experiences, with authorial burdens similar to that of traditional branching storylines.

Fast and Robust Face-to-Parameter Translation for Game Character Auto-Creation

With the rapid development of Role-Playing Games (RPGs), players are now allowed to edit the facial appearance of their in-game characters with their preferences rather than using default templates. This paper proposes a game character auto-creation framework that generates in-game characters according to a player's input face photo. Different from the previous methods that are designed based on neural style transfer or monocular 3D face reconstruction, we re-formulate the character auto-creation process in a different point of view: by predicting a large set of physically meaningful facial parameters under a self-supervised learning paradigm. Instead of updating facial parameters iteratively at the input end of the renderer as suggested by previous methods, which are time-consuming, we introduce a facial parameter translator so that the creation can be done efficiently through a single forward propagation from the face embeddings to parameters, with a considerable 1000x computational speedup. Despite its high efficiency, the interactivity is preserved in our method where users are allowed to optionally fine-tune the facial parameters on our creation according to their needs. Our approach also shows better robustness than previous methods, especially for those photos with head-pose variance. Comparison results and ablation analysis on seven public face verification datasets suggest the effectiveness of our method.

Building Skill in Videogames: A Play of Bodies, Controllers and Game-Guides

In his now-seminal book, Pilgrim in the Microworld (1983), David Sudnow details his process of learning to play the game Breakout on the Atari 2600. Sudnow develops an account of his graduation from a novice (having never played a videogame prior, and middle-aged at time of writing) to being able to fluidly perform the various configurative processes involved in an acclimated Breakout player’s repertoire.

The effect of animation controller and avatar on player perceptions

AbstractReal‐time animation controllers are fundamental for animating characters in response to player input in digital games. However, the design of such controllers requires making trade‐offs between the naturalness of the character's motions and the promptness of the character's response. In this paper, we investigate the effects of such trade‐offs on the players' enjoyment, control, satisfaction, and opinion of the character in a simple platform game. In our first experiment, we compare three controllers having the same responsiveness, but varying levels of naturalness. In the second experiment, we compare three controllers having increasing realism at the expense of responsiveness. In our third experiment, we keep motion naturalness and responsiveness constant but vary the avatar. Not surprisingly, our least responsive controller negatively affects players' performance and perceived ability to control the character. However, we also find that players are most satisfied with their own performance using our least natural controller, that differences in animation can significantly alter players' enjoyment with responsiveness being equal, that players do not report increased motion quality with our most natural controller, although viewers outside of the game context do, and that the avatar model affected the perception of the character but not players' enjoyment or perceived realism.

Grafting acoustic instruments and signal processing: Creative control and augmented expressivity

In this study, work is presented on a hybrid acoustic/electric violin. The instrument has embedded processing that provides real-time simulation of acoustic body models using DSP techniques able to gradually transform a given body model into another, including extrapolations beyond the models to explore interesting new timbres. Models can include everything from various violin bodies to guitars, sitars with their sympathetic strings, and even physically impossible acoustic bodies. The development also presents several practical approaches to sensor augmentation and gestural playing techniques that can be applied to bowed-string and other acoustic instruments, in order to provide immediate creative control over the possibilities offered by DSP. The study has focused on augmenting the expressivity of the violin toward finding novel timbral possibilities, rather than a goal of simulating prior acoustic violins with high fidelity. The opportunity to control a virtually malleable body while playing, i.e., a model that changes reverberant resonances in response to player input, results in interesting audio effects. Other common audio effects can also be employed and simultaneously controlled via the musician’s movements. For example, gestural tilting of the instrument is tracked via an embedded Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), which can be assigned to alter parameters such as the wet/dry mix of an octave-doubler or other effect, further augmenting the expressivity of the player.

Mastering the puppets: Criteria for pulling the strings in an Alternate Reality Game

Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are a kind of narrative game that use the real world as a platform to allow players and characters to interact via multimedia forms, enabling participants to alter a game’s progression. Boundaries between what is real and what is fictional are disguised, as characters, controlled by game designers react to player input. Working collaboratively as digital detectives, players collate a fragmented narrative by deciphering codes and clues. Research found that the deliberate blurring of many defining game features creates a complex product. Moreover, the number of ARG implosions (failures) is high. An empirical study, involving content analysis, examined players’ views on Unforum, the primary ARG discussion board. This analysis extracted evaluation criteria for judging ARGs, a selection of which are outlined in this article. These criteria should help game creators, or puppetmasters (PMs) create and manage a quality ARG, thus producing greater numbers of successful games.

Semantics Discovery via Human Computation Games

The effective acquisition of (semantic) metadata is crucial for many present day applications. Games with a purpose address this issue by transforming computational problems into computer games. The authors present a novel approach to metadata acquisition via Little Search Game (LSG) – a competitive web search game, whose purpose is the creation of a term relationship network. From a player perspective, the goal is to reduce the number of search results returned for a given search term by adding negative search terms to a query. The authors describe specific aspects of the game’s design, including player motivation and anti-cheating issues. The authors have performed a series of experiments with Little Search Game, acquired real-world player input, gathered qualitative feedback from the players, constructed and evaluated term relationship network from the game logs and examined the types of created relationships.

DevilTyper

CAPTCHA is an effective and widely used solution for preventing computer programs (i.e., bots) from performing automated but often malicious actions, such as registering thousands of free email accounts or posting advertisement on Web blogs. To make CAPTCHAs robust to automatic character recognition techniques, the text in the tests are often distorted, blurred, and obscure. At the same time, those robust tests may prevent genuine users from telling the text easily and thus distribute the cost of crime prevention among all the users. Thus, we are facing a dilemma, that is, a CAPTCHA should be robust enough so that it cannot be broken by programs, but also needs to be easy enough so that users need not to repeatedly take tests because of wrong guesses. In this article, we attempt to resolve the dilemma by proposing a human computation game for quantifying the usability of CAPTCHAs. In our game, DevilTyper, players try to defeat as many devils as possible by solving CAPTCHAs, and player behavior in completing a CAPTCHA is recorded at the same time. Therefore, we can evaluate CAPTCHAs' usability by analyzing collected player inputs. Since DevilTyper provides entertainment itself, we conduct a large-scale study for CAPTCHAs' usability without the resource overhead required by traditional survey-based studies. In addition, we propose a consistent and reliable metric for assessing usability. Our evaluation results show that DevilTyper provides a fun and efficient platform for CAPTCHA designers to assess their CAPTCHA usability and thus improve CAPTCHA design.

Free-space human interface for interactive music, full-body musical instrument, and immersive media controller

Method and apparatus entraining interactive media players into a sustained experience of 'Kinesthetic Spatial Sync' defined as a perceived simultaneity and spatial superposition between a non-tactile, full body input control process and immersive multisensory feedback. Asynchronous player input actions and clock-synchronous media feedback events exhibit a seamless synesthesia or multisensory events fused into an integral event perception, this being between musical sound (hearing), visual responses (sight), and body kinesthetic (radial extension, angular position, height, speed, timing and precision). This non-tactile interface process and multisensory feedback “look and feel” is embodied as an optimal ergonomic human interface for interactive music and as a six-degrees-of-freedom full-body-interactive immersive media controller 1. The invention provides for a wide scope of fully reconfigurable transfer functions between kinesthetic input features and media responses ( Creative Zone Behaviors) managed by means of MIDI protocol and/or display interface commands.

I Play Therefore I Am

Sid Meier's Civilization allows players to build empires that span the earth and the ages. Complementing existing scholarship on ideologies, practices, and subject positions inculcated by the game, this article interrogates the very conception of subjectivity Civilization fosters in players. Building upon ludological and cybernetic principles, the author takes a formal approach to analyze the processes of human—computer interaction that emerge in the course of players' engagement with the game. Characteristics of the turn-based genre as well as Civilization's interface mechanics, representations of historical processes, and manual are considered for the ways in which they solicit player input. The author contends that player interaction with Civilization reifies a conception of himself or herself as a sovereign agent constituted of pure internality.

Responsive characters from motion fragments

In game environments, animated character motion must rapidly adapt to changes in player input - for example, if a directional signal from the player's gamepad is not incorporated into the character's trajectory immediately, the character may blithely run off a ledge. Traditional schemes for data-driven character animation lack the split-second reactivity required for this direct control; while they can be made to work, motion artifacts will result. We describe an on-line character animation controller that assembles a motion stream from short motion fragments, choosing each fragment based on current player input and the previous fragment. By adding a simple model of player behavior we are able to improve an existing reinforcement learning method for precalculating good fragment choices. We demonstrate the efficacy of our model by comparing the animation selected by our new controller to that selected by existing methods and to the optimal selection, given knowledge of the entire path. This comparison is performed over real-world data collected from a game prototype. Finally, we provide results indicating that occasional low-quality transitions between motion segments are crucial to high-quality on-line motion generation; this is an important result for others crafting animation systems for directly-controlled characters, as it argues against the common practice of transition thresholding.

Responsive characters from motion fragments

In game environments, animated character motion must rapidly adapt to changes in player input - for example, if a directional signal from the player's gamepad is not incorporated into the character's trajectory immediately, the character may blithely run off a ledge. Traditional schemes for data-driven character animation lack the split-second reactivity required for this direct control; while they can be made to work, motion artifacts will result. We describe an on-line character animation controller that assembles a motion stream from short motion fragments, choosing each fragment based on current player input and the previous fragment. By adding a simple model of player behavior we are able to improve an existing reinforcement learning method for precalculating good fragment choices. We demonstrate the efficacy of our model by comparing the animation selected by our new controller to that selected by existing methods and to the optimal selection, given knowledge of the entire path. This comparison is performed over real-world data collected from a game prototype. Finally, we provide results indicating that occasional low-quality transitions between motion segments are crucial to high-quality on-line motion generation; this is an important result for others crafting animation systems for directly-controlled characters, as it argues against the common practice of transition thresholding.

Gaming device with sound recording changes associated with player inputs

The present invention involves a gaming device which includes in data storage at least one primary sound file, at least one variant sound file which is a variation of the primary sound file and at least one player input event associated with the variant sound file. When a predetermined event occurs, the gaming device plays the primary sound file, and when the player makes a predetermined input, the gaming device plays the variant sound file and stops playing the primary sound file. The present invention provides gaming devices with enhanced sound and music capabilities, adding to a gaming device player's enjoyment and entertainment.

Interfaces: A Game-Theoretic Framework for Reasoning About Component-Based Systems

Traditional type systems specify interfaces in terms of values and domains. When we apply a function to an argument, or when we compose two functions, we have to check that their types match.Interface models extend type systems with the ability to reason about the dynamic behavior of design components. For instance, interface models are able to capture temporal-ordering constraints on component interaction, such as constraints on the ordering of method calls or protocol messages, timing constraints on a component's input and output signals, and constraints on the usage of shared resources. Like type systems, interfaces specify both the input assumptions a component makes on its environment and the output guarantees it provides.Interfaces are based on two-player games in which the system plays against the environment. The moves of the environment (player Input) represent the inputs that the system can receive from the environment, that is, the input assumption of the system. Symmetrically, the moves of the system (player Output) represent the possible outputs that can be generated by the system. Interfaces are built around the concepts of (1) well-formedness, requiring that the input assumptions of an interface be satisfiable; (2) compatibility, asking whether two components can be used in a way that satisfies the input assumptions of both components; (3) composition of compatible interfaces; and (4) refinement, asking whether one component (being an implementation) correctly implements another one (being the specification).This paper provides a tutorial-style introduction to interfaces and discusses the basic concepts and ideas. In particular, we elaborate on the automaton-based interfaces from [L. de Alfaro and T.A. Henzinger. Interface automata. In Proceedings of the 8th European Software Engineering Conference and the 9th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), pages 109–120. ACM Press, 2001] and the timed interfaces from [L. de Alfaro, T.A. Henzinger, and M.I.A. Stoelinga. Timed interfaces. In Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Embedded Software (EMSOFT 2002), volume 2491 of Lect. Notes in Comp. Sci., pages 108–122. Springer-Verlag, 2002]. Due space limitations, we do not treat the notion of interface refinement, but we refer the reader to [L. de Alfaro and T.A. Henzinger. Interface automata. In Proceedings of the 8th European Software Engineering Conference and the 9th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), pages 109–120. ACM Press, 2001] and [L. de Alfaro. Game models for open systems. In Int. Symposium on Verification celebrating Zohar Manna's 64th Birthday, volume 2772 of Lect. Notes in Comp. Sci. Springer-Verlag, 2003].

Budget or Target: The Choice Between Input and Output Strategies

In many competitive environments, players need to commit either to a specific goal they will reach at any cost or to the resources they are willing to spend in pursuit of that goal. We model this situation as a two-stage game where players may compete either by setting input and letting their output follow from the environment (leading input), or by setting output and letting the input levels required to support the output targets follow (leading output). For either player, we show that leading inputs (outputs) dominates leading outputs (inputs) when his output is increasing (decreasing) in the other player's input. Thus, these conditions uniquely determine whether each player will adopt inputs or outputs as leading in the subgame perfect equilibrium of the two-stage game. The results are extended to Stackleberg-style games, and applications are drawn from the arenas of foreign policy, negotiation, research and development, and corporate strategy.