ABSTRACT The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) and computational intelligence (CI) technologies has significantly transformed the gaming industry, affecting both gamers’ perceptions and video game development processes. This article provides a comprehensive review of the applications of these technologies within the video game industry, examining their diverse uses, benefits, and associated challenges. By incorporating AI and computational intelligence (CI) in gaming, developers can make immersive and lifelike virtual environments. They use AI algorithms to create realistic images and mimic complex physics. These tools also improve the behavior of non-player characters (NPCs). By using machine learning and neural networks, NPCs can show adaptable and intelligent behaviors. This makes the game more demanding and fun for players. AI-powered procedural content generation methods can automatically make huge game levels, maps, and quests. This approach cuts down on production time and makes games more varied and enjoyable to play again. These technologies are not only helpful in content creation but also for creating user experience models, altering the level of complexity of the game dynamically, and implementing robust anti-cheating systems. The prevalent usage of these technologies, however, raises concerns about debugging, ethical issues such as privacy and biases within algorithms, and the computational power required by advanced AI models. The current research explores these issues, concluding with a discussion about future trends and the immense capabilities of AI and CI technologies to shape the future of interactive gaming.

ABSTRACT Despite growing academic interest in Cultural and Creative Industries, empirical evidence on how firms manage their financial resources remains limited. This gap is particularly evident in the video game development sector, where research has largely focused on platforms, consumers, or innovation outcomes, overlooking firms’ balance-sheet structures. This study examines the relationship between financial structure and organizational outcomes—release activity, production timing, and firm continuity—among European video game studios using a longitudinal dataset combining Orbis and IGDB data (2009–2020). The results show that stronger internal capitalization is associated with greater release activity, faster production timing, and lower inactivity. Liquidity plays a differentiated role: structures oriented toward operational deployment are linked to higher activity, whereas liquidity held as short-term buffers is associated with slower and less frequent releases and a higher risk of inactivity. This study contributes by linking internal financial configurations to firm dynamics in the video game industry.

The article discusses the concept of «watching experience» in relation to video games. Questions are raised about the relationship between «watching experience» and the artistic taste of game authors. «Watching experience» is a relevant concept at present, it is widely used by art historians, cultural scientists, artists, designers. Video game developers must have this quality in order to create a high-quality video game.

Machine learning has been widely applied in various fields, including image and speech recognition, natural language processing, and data synthesis. Generative Adversarial Networks are a type of deep learning model designed to generate data that closely resembles real-world data. GANs are widely used in areas like image synthesis, video game development, healthcare, and data augmentation due to their ability to create realistic and varied data. However, GANs also raise privacy concerns, as they may inadvertently expose sensitive information from their training data, sparking discussions around ethical use and privacy-preserving methods in AI. To deal membership inference attacks in conditional GANs, which generate both synthetic data and corresponding labels, we introduce three new models that achieve acceptable accuracy while preserving privacy. These models employ an adaptive perturbation and clipping technique, further improved through the use of normalization and dropout. We employ the Renyi differential privacy accountant to monitor privacy loss and create synthetic samples along with its matching labels. Our evaluations demonstrate that these models can produce highly realistic and accurate synthetic data, even under strict privacy protection. On average, attack accuracy is reduced by 0.01 compared to similar methods.

ABSTRACT This study employs Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the juridical field to examine how China’s Copyright Law is being adapted to regulate AI-generated content in video game development. It investigates how lawyers, as a key institutional actor, mediate the tension between technological innovations and established copyright doctrines. The analysis shows how intellectual property lawyers extend copyright governance to AI-generated works, balancing the protection of creativity with the state’s strategic priorities for AI development and the need to maintain a vibrant, accessible market. The research identifies a critical need for clearer legal standards on two fronts: the threshold of human creative contribution required for copyrightability, and the provenance of training data used by generative AI systems. These standards are foundational for assessing copyright registration, the scope of protection, and corporate compliance. By framing copyright governance as a form of cultural policy, the study contributes to broader debates on the intersection of copyright law and AI creativity, highlighting a flexible, open-ended, forward-looking approach to legal practices in which technological innovation and copyright protection reinforce each other in China’s video game industry. These insights offer practical guidance for game studios seeking to implement proactive industry self-regulation that harmonises innovation with evolving copyright norms.

The paper analyzes evolution and state-of-art of adventure videogames. The goal of the study is to reveal the trends in creating text quests based on innovative approaches. These are the tasks to solve: to analyze interactive fiction videogames, to make a review of the technologies employed in videogames development, to highlight social and cultural effects. The scientific value is the evaluation of the potential of adventure games in present-day conditions. The practical applicability is proved by real examples demonstrating the AI-tools used for creating elements of text quests. For example, neural networks are employed both to generate the plot of the quests and audio and visual content. That shortens development time and reduces the cost of production process. The comparative analysis performed for the game “Far Cry” allows revealing the ways for further improvements in the development process. The authors also consider the situation concerning blocking foreign online-platforms in Russia due to the disallowed content and map out the ways for domestic videogame market. The outcome of the study emphasizes the importance of government support for establishing national game-platform to reinforce state values and provide the protection of national culture.

The use of open educational resources (OERs) is on the rise in higher education. Open pedagogy, as a learner-centered approach, provides students with opportunities to create, design, or adapt openly licensed materials or resources. With the potential of open pedagogy to enhance student learning, this study investigated the effect of an open pedagogy project on minority students' motivation and perceived learning in the computer game programming course. An experimental design was implemented to compare minority students' learning in programming through the open pedagogy approach versus the traditional approach. Participants were fifty-eight minority students enrolled in game courses from an institution in the southeastern United States. Thirty students received the instruction with open pedagogy, while twenty-eight students were in the traditional instruction. Quantitative approaches were performed to analyze the collected data. The results indicated that minority students in the open pedagogy group perceived significantly higher levels of motivation on the aspect of pressure/tension than those receiving the traditional approach. Minority students participating in the open pedagogy project had significantly higher levels of computational thinking and perceived learning performance in computer programming, compared to the students with the traditional instruction. Major findings and limitations of this study (i.e., short intervention period, small sample size, etc.) were reported and discussed.

Videogames (VGs) are highly attractive for children and young people. Although videogames were once viewed mainly as sources of distraction and leisure, they are now widely recognised as powerful tools for competence development across diverse domains. Designing and implementing a videogame is even more appealing for children and novice students than merely playing it, but developing programming competencies using a text-based language often constitutes a significant barrier to entry. This article presents the implementation and evaluation of a videogame development experience with university students using the Unity engine and its Visual Scripting block-based tool. Students worked in teams and successfully completed videogame projects, demonstrating substantial gains in programming and game construction skills. The adopted methodology facilitated learning, collaboration, and engagement. Building on a quasi-experimental design that compared a prior unit based on C# and MonoGame with a subsequent unit based on Unity Visual Scripting, the study analyses differences in performance, development effort, and motivational indicators. The results show statistically significant improvements in grades, reduced development time for core mechanics, and higher self-reported confidence when Visual Scripting is employed. The evidence supports the view of Visual Scripting as an effective educational strategy to introduce programming concepts without the syntactic and semantic barriers of traditional text-based languages. The findings further suggest that Unity Visual Scripting can act as a didactic bridge towards advanced programming, and that its adoption in secondary and primary education is promising both for reinforcing traditional subjects (history, language, mathematics) and for fostering foundational programming and videogame development skills in an inclusive manner.

ABSTRACT How do video game developers balance the pursuit of creative freedom with the demands of market responsiveness? Based on 62 in‐depth qualitative interviews with Swedish game developers, this article advances a theory of individual ambidexterity in the creative digital industries. We identify two core dimensions: creative autonomy, characterized by experimental playfulness, personal vision and independence, and resistance to market conformity, and market alignment, marked by responsive iteration, stakeholder engagement, and commercial mobilization. Rather than operating as simple trade‐offs, these dimensions constitute generative tensions that developers actively navigate and leverage. The study contributes to research on ambidexterity and paradox theory in innovation management by showing that contradictory demands in creative work are managed not only through structural and temporal separation but also through emergent, situated practices that allow creative intent and market logic to dynamically interpenetrate. By conceptualizing ambidexterity as a contextually enacted individual capability shaped by cognitive reframing, the study offers a practice‐based perspective on innovation in R&D‐intensive, culturally embedded sectors. These insights have important implications for how organizations structure autonomy, engage users, and sustain creative innovation under commercial constraints.

Although Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) is widely adopted, a consolidated review that systematically analyzes its foundational principles, historical evolution, industrial applications, and inherent limitations remains valuable for new developers and practitioners. This study aims to analyze and comprehensively understand the fundamentals of OOP, highlighting its relevance and applications in contemporary software development. A documentary research approach was employed using systematic literature analysis to synthesize core concepts, major historical milestones, and practical industry applications, based on academic and technical sources examined through descriptive and comparative analysis. The findings indicate that OOP rests on four key principles: encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism, and abstraction, and that the paradigm evolved historically from its early emergence in Simula in the 1960s to its consolidation in languages such as Java in 1995, followed by its expansion through modern languages including Python and C#. In practice, OOP is critically applied in diverse domains such as video game development, corporate software systems (e.g., ERP and CRM), and Artificial Intelligence, where modular design and code reuse are essential. The study concludes that OOP principles enable the creation of modular, reusable, and scalable systems that are crucial for addressing contemporary software complexity, despite challenges such as a steep learning curve and the need for meticulous design and planning. The implications of this research include theoretical contributions to the understanding of foundational programming paradigms and practical recommendations for adopting a structured, object-centric design philosophy in software development.

Numerous calls have been made to move beyond decolonisation towards the indigenisation of video games in Africa. This paper examines how African mythological creatures, particularly the tokoloshe, can be incorporated into video game development to preserve and promote African cultural narratives. By focusing on three student-developed video games, this study highlights the tokoloshe’s adaptability in enriching gameplay and storytelling across various genres, including adventure, horror, and farming simulations. The findings demonstrate the potential of African mythological creatures to educate global audiences, motivate local developers, and challenge Western-centric storytelling norms in the gaming industry. Moreover, this paper advocates for the indigenisation of video games as a transformative approach to empowering African game studios and reshaping global perceptions of African heritage. The study underscores the tokoloshe’s value in addressing contemporary issues while remaining rooted in its cultural significance, paving the way for a more inclusive and diverse gaming landscape.

Orienteering is a sport that combines physical movement with cognitive skills such as map reading, compass navigation, and route planning. However, due to various environmental and physical constraints, not everyone has access to this sport. With the rise of digital technologies, interactive and educational mobile games offer a new opportunity to bring such experiences to wider audiences. Thanks to immersive design elements such as sound effects, intuitive controls, and three-dimensional virtual environments, today's educational games attract significant attention and provide learners with engaging learning environments. In this study, an educational mobile game that simulates orienteering tasks was developed using the Unity game engine and C# programming language. The game includes interactive missions, a story-driven structure, and dual-language support, and is playable entirely offline. It is believed that this orienteering-themed educational game will attract learners from various age groups and can be used to increase motivation, knowledge, and awareness about orienteering through digital learning environments.

With the development of electronic and computer games, and also the virtual reality in the modern world, the role of games in the learning process is significantly expanding. Educational games have a number of positive effects, such as increasing student motivation, perceptual learning, and longer-term retention of knowledge. In recent years, the concept of escape rooms has gained popularity in pedagogical fields, especially in the context of STEM disciplines. They contain multiple puzzles, and the game structure is adapted to the specific needs of students and is linked to STEM content and specific competencies corresponding to the learning objectives. This overview study aims to analyze the following questions: What STEM mini puzzles are used most often? Which types of mini games and puzzles are most effective in different subjects? What skills do different puzzles develop? What technologies are used in the development of this type of games?

Artificial intelligence has become a fundamental component in modern video game development, especially in the creation of autonomous and adaptive non-player character (NPC) behavior. This research proposes a hybrid artificial intelligence approach to enable fully autonomous gameplay in a classic Pac-Man environment without any form of user input. The proposed system combines evolutionary optimization methods with deterministic search algorithms to balance strategic planning and real-time decision-making. A Genetic Algorithm (GA) is utilized to optimize long-term gameplay strategies, including route selection and risk management, while A* pathfinding and adversarial search techniques are applied to support efficient real-time movement and enemy avoidance. Additionally, Breadth-First Search (BFS) and Depth-First Search (DFS) are implemented to model diverse ghost behaviors, resulting in a more dynamic, challenging, and adversarial game environment. Experimental evaluations indicate that the hybrid AI system demonstrates improved navigation stability, longer survival duration, and more consistent pellet collection when compared to baseline artificial intelligence models that rely on single techniques. The results further show that separating strategic optimization from tactical pathfinding enhances overall gameplay performance and adaptability. This study highlights the effectiveness of hybrid AI architectures in game environments and offers a structured educational framework for understanding and implementing artificial intelligence techniques within video game simulations, particularly for classic arcade-style games.

Due to the rapid development of digital technology, cyber-security threats like phishing, smishing, vishing, malware attacks, poor password practices, and social engineering attacks have become pervasive, especially among nontechnical individuals. Traditional cyber-security training, encompassing lectures, tutorial sessions, and awareness camps, typically fail to provide the requisite real-world experience required to effectively counter cyber-security threats. This presents a problem, causing ineffectual participation and lack of retention of key cyber-security concepts.This report presents CyberScape, an interactive cyber-security training platform developed using Unity, a popular computer game development platform, conceived to address these problems. CyberScape uses the Serious Gaming approach, simulating real-life cyber-attack scenarios in a virtual environment. Students embark on a complex virtual journey, with each level on the virtual journey focusing on a different cyber-security topic, such as identifying phishing attacks, protecting passwords, defending against USB malware attacks, Smishing, Vishing, and physical cybersecurity. Scenario-based, quiz, and decision-making tasks allow for effective experiential learning and encourage the adoption of appropriate cyber-security practices based on instant feedback.

With the promotion and development of anime, manga, and video games in Japan and beyond, a substantial number of fans have been attracted. These people began to dress up as their favorite characters. Cosplay has found applications in different fields. This essay argues that cosplay has played a positive role in promoting gender expression, enhancing mental health, and fostering cultural consumption that transcends mere escapism. Cosplay provides a safe environment for gender expression, challenging traditional gender norms, embracing diversity of gender expression, and allowing cosplayers to showcase their gender identities. Cosplay helps cosplayers not only overcome mental pressure in real life by enabling them to play superheroes and build their resilience, but also brings them a sense of achievement and cultivates their problem-solving abilities through the creation of costumes. Cosplayers utilize these characters for cultural consumption, promoting the cosplay-related economic industry in Japan. Cosplayers, audiences, and organizers of anime conventions form a sustainable consumption cycle by making or purchasing costumes, spending money on merchandise, and organizing comic conventions. Cosplay has driven economic benefits in the catering, photography, and venue rental industries by incorporating anime themes and catering to the demands of three major consumer groups.

This commentary examines the state of Native representation in videogames from a Native perspective. Also, this commentary offers examples of Native Representation in Videogames from 1971 to 2025. Furthermore, I provide decolonizing and indigenizing examples of Natives in videogames. The paper also contains recommendations for further research and suggests good practices for videogame developers to facilitate design of positive Native representation as a decolonizing practice of indigeneity. This commentary closes with a call for positive representation, as seen in Never Alone (Upper One Games, 2014), the first videogame made by an indigenous-owned videogame studio.

Australia has a small but robust ecosystem of video game development, which has been supported by a patchwork arrangement of public arts funding since the early 2000s. Following Keogh's call for more research on the experiences of games workers situated in their local contexts, this paper investigates the impacts of public funding on Australian games workers and the games they create. The research analyses funding policy, applications and processes, supported by a discourse analysis of annual reports and strategic documents (n:52) from Australian arts funding bodies with a focus on changes in official discourse over time. These findings informed semi-structured interviews with industry workers (n:11) who access public funding for their work, which examined the material effects of public funding policy on games workers. The paper demonstrates that public funding for games in Australia is structured through a language of industry growth and economic imperatives, a framework which generates many tensions for recipients of these funds. I argue that this structure is mismatched to the experiences and ambitions of Australian games workers, who see themselves as artistic practitioners and the games they create as a cultural form. This research highlights this deeply-held value through its attention to the under-examined experiences and perspectives of Australian games workers accessing public arts funding, and thus makes an important contribution to researchers’ and policymakers’ understandings of games production in Australia.

Three-dimensional terrain models are essential in domains such as video game development and film production. Because surface color is often correlated with terrain geometry, capturing this relationship is critical for generating realistic results. However, most existing methods synthesize either a heightmap or a texture without adequately modeling their inherent correlation. We propose a method that jointly generates terrain heightmaps and textures using a latent diffusion model. First, we train the model in an unsupervised manner to randomly generate paired heightmaps and textures. Then, we perform supervised learning on an external adapter to enable user control via hand-drawn sketches. Experiments demonstrate that our approach supports intuitive terrain generation while preserving the correlation between heightmaps and textures. Our method outperforms the two-stage and GAN-based baselines by ensuring structural coherence, in which textures naturally align with geometry, successfully accommodating both realistic landscapes and extreme user-defined shapes.

The objective of the research is to seek the development of accessibility in video games developed in Godot Engine, through the creation of a plugin that allows implementing customizable filters and options instantly, a pure experimental design is used, the software was developed using the SUM methodology. 30 projects from beginning developers were evaluated, collecting data on time, costs and satisfaction through control sheets and surveys, Mann Whitney U tests were also applied due to the data obtained. The results showed a 79% reduction in implementation and development times, a total elimination of extra development costs and a 60% improvement in the identification of elements, functions and environment after using the plugin. This demonstrates that using tools allows for the creation of simple and efficient accessibility options, expanding the options for developers to create more accessibility games.