Game Story Research Articles

Toward a Unified Theory of Digital Games

Since digital games and their scientific study are quite new, many questions concerning the fundamental nature of these phenomena remain. Two often-cited attempts to clarify the fundamental components of games include the Mechanics–Dynamics–Aesthetics Framework and the Elemental Tetrad. This theory development paper attempts to reconcile these two frameworks into a single, clear and cohesive account of the kinds of elements that constitute games. The proposed theory not only includes all of the elements from its source frameworks but also introduces two refinements: (1) it differentiates game mechanics from narrative mechanics; (2) it distinguishes three types of narratives—stories told by the developers through the game, stories that emerge from gameplay and players’ interpretations of game stories. The proposed theory should be useful for teaching game design fundamentals, as a coding scheme for qualitative data analysis and to analyse game design challenges. Subject to further clarification and extension, the proposed model may provide a basis for a general theory of digital games.

Perancangan Casual Edugame Mitigasi Bencana Gempa Bumi bagi Remaja Di Bandung

In general, Indonesian society is still don't understand the high level risk of earthquake hazard threat in their own region. Ignorance of this information can be very fatal for the society. City with developing infrastructure and high population density has higher risk of earthquake disasters. These two are the factors of vulnerability that make Bandung as a high risk city of earthquake disasters. The society needs to know about earthquake mitigation in order to minimize the risk of earthquake disasters. One way of informing and introducing earthquake mitigation is through mobile devices such as tablet. As we know, tablet provides entertainment such as casual games. Casual game about earthquake mitigation in tablet devices can be an educational tool packed in the form of entertainment. Society and teenagers in particular can obtain such information and knowledge in order to reduce the risk of accidents during the earthquake. Designing casual edugame of earthquake mitigation includes two phases, (a) identification and data analysis on earthquake mitigation and its stages and (b) designing the visual of the game. The identification and data analysis obtained through books, journals, theses, and previous news (print and electronic). Reviewing and studying similar games contribute in game's design process. The game has two stages where players will gain information about earthquake mitigation. Three main informations are: (a) conducting earthquake-proof facility, (b) preparing survival kit and (c) practicing "drop, cover and hold" responses. The game's story, characters and setting is the representation of everyday life in earthquake potential city. This game aims for teens awareness of their vulnerability and to prepare them for earthquake disaster risk. That way, this game will be able to introduce positive attitude towards their vulnerable environments.

Strict Descriptions of Some Typical 2×2 Games and Negative Games

In this paper, we shall give the strict description of some typical 2×2 games such as stag hunt, game of chicken, battle of the sexes, prisoner’s dilemma (briefly PD) and Rasumsen’s boxed pigs and we shall invent three new game stories, game of musicians, game of ruffians and negative Rasumsen boxed pigs. Every game is not necessarily symmetrical. We shall divide battle of the sexes into two forms and introduce the concept of weak PD. A game is said to be negative game of another one if the sum of their payoff functions is equal zero. The following main results will be obtained. (1) A negative game of chicken is a stage hunt. (2) A negative non-weak PD is a non-weak PD, where defection and cooperation of the original non-weak PD are corresponding to cooperation and defection of the negative non-weak PD respectively. The negative game of a weak PD is not a PD. (3) The negative first battle of the sexes is the game of musicians and the negative second one is the game of ruffians. (4) The negative Rasmusen boxed pigs is a weak PD and so is asymmetrical. (5) The guilt game as a negative Rasmusen boxed pigs is not a non-weak PD; it is a weak PD if and only if the small pig is conscienceless.

Measuring the Games Influence on Improving English Proficiency

English is now used as an international language, so that every person in order to communicate at the international level are required this language. To improving english proficiency, people used native speaker, course, story book, film game and etc. Games or better known as PC gaming is another alternative in improving the English proficiency. Beside this is fun, player required to read and listen the story game to finish the game. So that player can improve English proficiency while the player play game. In this paper, author present what game are fun and not boring also can improving English proficiency. The measuring improving English proficiency is observed from reading,writing, listening and grammarKeyword: English, Game, improving ,Proficiency

The design and development of a computer game on insulin injection.

Background:Insulin therapy is of high importance in glycemic control and prevention of complications in type 1 diabetes in children. However, this treatment is unpleasant and stressful for many children, and it is difficult for them to accept. The purpose of the study was to design and develop an educational computer game for diabetic children to familiarize them with insulin injections.Methods:After a review of the literature and the collection of basic information, we discussed the purpose of this research with some diabetic children, their parents, and nurses. The findings that we acquired from the discussion were considered in designing and developing the game. Then, following the principles associated with the development of computer games, we developed seven different games that related to insulin injections, and the games were evaluated in a pilot study.Results:The games developed through the design and programming environment of Adobe Flash Player and stored on a computer disk (CD). The seven games were a pairs game, a puzzle game, a question and answer game, an insulin kit game, a drawing room game, a story game, and an insulin injection-room game). The idea was that diabetic children could become acquainted with insulin injections and the injection toolkit by playing a variety of entertaining and fun games. They also learned about some of the issues associated with insulin and experienced insulin injection in a simulated environment.Conclusions:It seems that the use of new technologies, such as computer games, can influence diabetic children’s acquaintance with the correct method of insulin injection, psychological readiness to initiate insulin therapy, reduction in stress, anxiety, and fear of insulin injection.

Stories in Games for Health: More Pros or Cons?

There has been a debate about whether entertainment videogames should incorporate story or narrative. A concern has been whether story cut scenes break game immersion, and thereby minimize the fun of gameplay. Alternatively, games for health (G4H) have an agenda that goes beyond just having fun. The possible role of story in G4H has not been thoroughly addressed. We have assembled a group of experts who have worked with stories in G4H, and asked some pointed questions.

Adapting a Videogame to the Needs of Pediatric Cancer Patients and Survivors.

This study assessed whether two serious videogames, "Escape from Diab" (Diab) and "Nanoswarm: Invasion from Inner Space" (Nano) (both from Archimage, Inc., Houston, TX) shown to effect change in healthy children's diet and possibly physical activity are acceptable for obesity prevention among pediatric cancer patients and survivors at high risk of obesity. Pediatric (9-12-year-old) cancer patients and survivors (n=28) were randomly assigned to one of three groups: Group A, watched film adaptations of both game stories and played the first two episodes of each game; Group B, played all of Diab; or Group C, played all of Nano. Qualitative interviews about what the children liked and didn't like and what should be changed were conducted midway and at the end of each group's participation. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Pediatric cancer patients and survivors enjoyed playing both games. Two themes emerged to guide future modifications of the game: Three patients reported difficulty with the energy balance and meal selection portion of Nano, and four patients stated endings showing a character dying made them sad. Two serious videogames designed to promote healthier diet and increased physical activity among healthy children were also found to be acceptable by pediatric cancer patients and survivors. Easier options needed to be programmed into energy balance games in Nano. To avoid possible emotional reactions, such as sadness, Nano's ending will be revised so that a character does not die from his affliction. Minor changes will be made in other gameplay mechanics and storylines to meet target audience needs and preferences.

A mente e a máquina: desempenho, design de jogos e humanidades

This article argues in favor of teaching video game design as a humanistic discipline. In The Art of Videogames (2009), Grant Tavinor defines video games as a form of fiction and art. Based on some of the ideas that Tavinor highlights, Chris Crawford’s standpoint on game designers’ preparation in Chris Crawford on Game Design (2003), and Huizinga’s description of the functions of play in Homo Ludens (1964), I will reason for the approach of housing the undergraduate game studies and design in the faculty of humanities as one discipline. The rationale of why the art and technology of games should meet in humanities emerges from the present state of games’ content in the mainstream games; that is, what they show and what they tell. This is of course a case for intellectual, enlightened, inspired, and thought-provoking game stories, and how this could be achieved in the humanities.

Chapter 6 - Music as sport history: The special case of Pietro Metastasio’s L’Olimpiade and the story of the Olympic Games

Chapter 6 - Music as sport history: The special case of Pietro Metastasio’s L’Olimpiade and the story of the Olympic Games

Een theoretische verkenning naar de narratieve logica achter hedendaagse computerspellen

A theoretical investigation into the narrative logic of contemporary computer games A theoretical investigation into the narrative logic of contemporary computer games This paper explores the logics behind two primary ways in which computer games deal with stories. As evident in how these games are designed, one of these logics focuses on players as implied authors who guide heroes through challenging trials and tribulations. The other logic focuses on players as embodied participants who become the hero and experience adventures of their own. This paper argues that in order to understand the differences between these two distinctive logics, it is necessary to critically review the representational concept of narrative as developed once in structuralist narratology and to develop an additional presentational conceptualization, applicable to both marginal narrative practices of the past as well as mainstream practices of the present. Drawing on theories from game-, film- and theatre studies, the paper defines these two logics, presents their characteristics and shows how they steer the future design of game stories into two different directions.

게임 퀘스트 스토리텔링 구조분석 -프롭의 민담기능대입을 중심으로-

퀘스트는 게임 스토리의 최소단위로써, 퀘스트 스토리텔링을 연구하기 위해서는 퀘스트 구조 분석이 필요하다. 본 연구는 퀘스트의 구조를 파악하기 위해, 구조주의 서사이론에서 프롭의 민담기능을 도입하였다. 프롭이 등장인물의 불변요소로 제시한 31가지 민담기능을 MMORPG 퀘스트에 대입하여 분석하였다. 그 결과 퀘스트의 필수기능(13개), 부가기능(5개)를 도출하였고, 이 기능들이 어떤 순서로 전개되는지 살펴보았다. MMORPG 퀘스트는 필수기능의 순서에 따라, 그리고 부가기능을 선택사항으로 하면서 진행되고 구조가 반복되는 패턴을 보여주었다. 이들의 기능을 적절한 요소에 활용한다면 퀘스트 스토리텔링을 강화하고 다양한 이야기를 이끌어 나갈 수 있는 방안을 마련할 수 있을 것이다. As a smallest unit of the game story, quest needs to be analyzed in terms of structure in order to study quest storytelling. This thesis introduces structuralist theory of narrative function of folk-tale by Propp to determine the structure of the quest. Propp proposed immutable elements of the characters as 31 kinds of Folk-tale functions. I analyzed assigning quests in MMORPG. As a result, 13 essential functions of the Quest, and 5 add-ons were drawn and the order among functions was figured out. Most quests in MMORPG followed the order of the essential functions and optional add-ons and showed a repeating pattern. The essential and optional functions and its order can be utilized to arrange appropriate element for quest storytelling and to strengthen and lead the various ways of the quest storytelling.

A Demonstration of ScriptEase II

This demonstration describes ScriptEase II, a tool that allows game story authors to generate scripts that control objects in video games by manipulating high level story patterns and game objects. ScriptEase II can generate scripting code for any game engine for which a translator is written. Currently there are translators for Neverwinter Nights and real Pinball games.

Approaching a Player Model of Game Story Comprehension Through Affordance in Interactive Narrative

A growing body of work in games research, both generative and analytic, seeks to characterize the relationship between a player’s understanding of an interactive narrative and her options for action within it. This paper provides several definitions that collectively serve as a basis for a model of the user’s comprehension of an unfolding story in a game. Central to this approach, we define the notion of narrative affordance. In essence, a game provides a narrative affordance for some course of action when a player can imagine that course of action as part of a story that completes their current story experience. To define narrative affordance, we draw links from cognitive models of narrative comprehension and a range of research on affordance, which we couple with planning approaches to story and discourse generation. In our approach, we view the creation of an interactive narrative that provides a high degree of agency as a discourse generation problem. We posit that an interactive narrative system must reason about the content and organization of its communication with a player in order to prompt a player’s understanding about the game’s story and her role in it. This paper ends by pointing toward a research direction intended to provide insight into a range of aspects of interactive narrative, including role, genre, choice and agency.

The Exquisite Corpse Adventure: An Episodic Story Game (review)

Reviewed by: The Exquisite Corpse Adventure: An Episodic Story Game Karen Coats The National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance. The Exquisite Corpse Adventure: An Episodic Story Game. Candlewick, 2011. [288p]. illus. ISBN 978-0-7636-5149-7 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 4–7. Twenty children’s fiction luminaries, beginning with Jon Scieszka and ending with Katherine Paterson, contribute their considerable talents to this exquisite corpse storytelling game, with the writing changing hands chapter by chapter. The story begins with twins Nancy and Joe traveling on a train rushing toward a bridge that has been wired with dynamite. The children, who have been reared in a circus, think themselves to be orphans until they receive a birthday card from their parents instructing them to follow the clues and piece together something called the exquisite corpse, which they presume to be a robot of some kind. As the story is picked up by different authors, an array of stereotypically hyperbolic but inept villains and unlikely helpers appear to either assist or thwart their quest, which involves harrowing escapes, daring feats that make use of their circus training, and time travel. Such round-robin storytelling seems threatened from the outset by the risk of one-upsmanship, and the limits of the game are evident here as the piling on of odd, grotesque characters and the whiplash effect of new devices and plot twists result in a forced feeling of zaniness. However, the undeniable skill of the authors keeps the narrative mostly coherent from beginning to end, and the only really noticeable stylistic shift comes from Lemony Snicket’s arch, world-weary tone that is distinctly and jarringly different from headlong eagerness of the other authorial voices. Likewise, most of the illustrators providing compact black-and-white images faithfully illuminate their chapter authors’ prose, but a few veer off into surreal fantasies of their own. The literalized metaphor of using the exquisite-corpse method to piece together a story about a robot that needs to be pieced together was surely a conceit the authors enjoyed, perhaps even more than their audience will, but this may have appeal for readers who like stories jam-packed with bizarre creatures behaving in unaccountable ways to achieve a strange goal. [End Page 97] Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Up Front With Valerie and Joe: Fair Game and Other Stories of Reprisal

The movie Fair Game (Butterworth et al., 2010) is a fact-based political thriller that calls attention to a process of turning respectable members of established institutions, who are performing their roles properly, into excluded deviants. The result of this transformation may be the creation of a new group initiating its own subculture. The story of Robin Hood offers an example of the way such a new subculture can become traditional lore in a modern society.

Context-Aware Petri Net for Dynamic Procedural Content Generation in Role-Playing Game

In most cases, the story or plot of popular role-playing games is constructed by professional designers as a main content. However, manual design of game content has a limitation in the quantitative aspect; it requires a large amount of time and effort. As game consumers want more diverse and rich contents, it is not easy to satisfy these needs with manual design, so procedural content generation is actively exploited to automatically generate game contents. In this paper, we propose a quest generation method using Petri net modules. A quest depending on the player's involvement or type determined by Bayesian network is generated by Petri net. Never Winter Night is used as a game platform to show the feasibility of the proposed method. In future works, we will collect players' playing history and evaluate the performance of Bayesian network inference for a player's type. Also, we will apply the proposed method to an open-source platform for a complete automatic quest generation system.

Illogical Thinking and Thought Disorder in Maltreated Children

To examine illogical thinking in children from low-income families with and without histories of child maltreatment. Maltreated (n = 91) and nonmaltreated (n = 43) school-age children individually participated in a story game designed to elicit speech samples. Children were instructed to listen to two recorded stories and prompted to retell the story; they then were asked to create their own story from possible topics. Child behavior ratings on the Child Behavior Checklist were completed by research assistants following 35 hours of observation. Maltreated children exhibited more illogical thinking than did nonmaltreated children, and the level of illogical thinking in maltreated children was in the clinically pathological range. The occurrence of multiple subtypes of maltreatment and the chronicity of the maltreatment also were associated with illogical thinking. Dissociation did not differ between groups, although it was related to illogical thinking. The ability to formulate ideas and communicate them logically is compromised in children who have been maltreated. These results extend prior research on selective attentional processes and negativity biases in maltreated children.

Removing the Checks and Balances That Hamper Democracy: Play and the Counter-hegemonic Contradictions of Grand Theft Auto IV

Grand Theft Auto IV provides an unparalleled opportunity to consider the outcomes when textual play and game play not only intersect, but operate in concert. Indeed, the two are inextricably linked to each other and to the social commentary which contributes to the game's story, humor, and thematic unity. This article considers the modes of textual play in Grand Theft Auto IV, as well as the locations and situations when players encounter them while playing the game. It also explores the subversive of potential of textual play as it relies on and departs from game play, and attempts to reconcile whether or not the success of such motives hinges on the very act of playing a game, or if the specific game (and its franchise) overdetermine the result.

Guest Editorial: Special Section on Game-Based Learning

DUTAINMENT and serious games introduced an ew important marketing direction for practical technologies such as multimedia communication, computer-humaninteraction, and ubiquitous computing. This exciting outcome also pointed out the educational potential using computer games. Several commercially succeeded games, although not intentionally designed, have interesting learning, socializing, and interacting strategies embedded in them. These fundamental and intrinsic learning aspects of successful games must be investigated. How to explore pedagogical principles for serious games, to design and implement systems for Game-Based Learning (GBL), and to assess student learning achievement are essential. GBL, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Game_based_learning), is a branch of Serious Games. GBL uses game technologies, while presenting learning materials in a game story, to attract and encourage students

Effects of pre-game stories on feelings of presence and evaluation of computer games

Two experiments examined the effects of exposure to a pre-game story prior to playing a computer game. In Experiment 1, participants played a computer game after watching a 5 min pre-game story video about the main character of the game. Prior exposure to the pre-game story positively influenced participants’ feelings of presence and their game evaluation. The effect of pre-game story exposure on game evaluation was mediated by participants’ feelings of presence. When a comparison between participants who watched the pre-game story and those who watched a non-story video was conducted, no mediating role of feelings of presence was found. In Experiment 2, participants read a movie script before playing the game. Its results partially replicated those of Experiment 1 with no significant mediating role of feelings of presence. The implications of the current study were discussed with respect to (1) studies on stories in computer games, (2) presence research, and (3) the design of computer games.