Video Game Technology Research Articles

Videogames for independent living: A novel approach to telehealth

In this article we address the health-related barriers to independence of older adults and review the evidence for the use of telehealth technologies to facilitate and promote continued independence. In particular we outline a program of research at Neuroscience Research Australia which aims to (1) design, develop and implement of broadband-enabled videogame technology framework to facilitate independent living in older adults and (2) assess the effectiveness of home-based videogame technologies to impact upon age-related health issues that significantly reduce independence in older adults. We show as an example work we are doing to address the issue of postural instability and falls in older adults.; ;

Teaching Video Production in Virtual Reality

Teaching video production using video game technology and a method of live manipulation of digital puppets and props ofers new possibilities for narrative, without shifting focus away from storyline and dramatic content, due to technical hurdles. This production technique known as Machinima has been steadily gaining in popularity and prominence due to the relative ease and speed in which small production teams can learn to use video game software in this new way and quickly create professional quality animated movies.

Turning training into play: Embodied gaming, seniors, physical training and motivation

Embodied gaming has been adopted and gained credibility in the field of physical rehabilitation. In this paper, we report on findings from a six-month-long study of three groups of senior citizens, and their use of Nintendo Wii Fit in a supervised physical training context. We argue that the study participants generally found physical training both fun and socially engaging, and experienced improved fitness. We also argue that embodied gaming motivates seniors to do more than they think themselves capable of, and allows seniors with different mental and physical capabilities to play together. However, there are also certain barriers, when seniors interact with the system. Speed and complexity of what is displayed on the screen are examples of barriers that affect the seniors’ satisfactory use of the technology. Based on these findings, we discuss how physical rehabilitation may be facilitated by computer gaming technology.

Empirical Evidence of Priming, Transfer, Reinforcement, and Learning in the Real and Virtual Trillium Trails

Over the past 20 years, there has been a debate on the effectiveness of virtual reality used for learning with young children, producing many ideas but little empirical proof. This empirical study compared learning activity in situ of a real environment (Real) and a desktop virtual reality (Virtual) environment, built with video game technology, for discovery-based learning. The experiences were in the form of two field trips featuring statistically identical wildflower reserves. While the results support that the Real is superior for learning activity, they also show that the Virtual is useful for priming and reinforcing in-curriculum material, or for situations when the real environment is inaccessible. Offering the Virtual first primes for learning activity in the Real; if used second, it reinforces the Real experience, as supporting evidence shows significant transfer effects. Thus, the Virtual may serve educational goals, if used appropriately, and can come close to the Real. As informal learning environments, such as field trips and video games, are accepted as motivational, an attitudinal survey was conducted postexperiences to capture motivational factors at play, to aid in comparison and contrast, and to provide context to the empirical results on learning activity in situ; however, more work is needed.

A Look Back at Machinima’s Potential

The author examines the quintessence of machinima, suggesting that the main difference between machinima and any other CGI technique lies in the playable real-time image that informs it. The implication is that machinima’s artistic, cultural, and even commercial future is rooted in this specific flexibility of the image as it opens up a new opportunity for the development of a procedural media format in visual culture and in the history of the moving image. However, the author warns that machinima might actually lose the unique chance it inherited from the underlying video game technologies to become a new media platform if creators disregard its peculiar, intrinsic computer-driven nature.

Landscape planning is not a game: Should it be?

Computer game technology is advancing rapidly and is beginning to find application in landscape planning. This paper looks especially at the opportunities afforded by the advances in virtual reality games and their use as collaborative virtual environments and then at location based games and their potential to be a source of information for players, researchers and decision-makers. A new breed of game oriented researchers within landscape focused multi-disciplinary teams may be about to emerge.

Automated Interactive Video Playback for Studies of Animal Communication

Video playback is a widely-used technique for the controlled manipulation and presentation of visual signals in animal communication. In particular, parameter-based computer animation offers the opportunity to independently manipulate any number of behavioral, morphological, or spectral characteristics in the context of realistic, moving images of animals on screen. A major limitation of conventional playback, however, is that the visual stimulus lacks the ability to interact with the live animal. Borrowing from video-game technology, we have created an automated, interactive system for video playback that controls animations in response to real-time signals from a video tracking system. We demonstrated this method by conducting mate-choice trials on female swordtail fish, Xiphophorus birchmanni. Females were given a simultaneous choice between a courting male conspecific and a courting male heterospecific (X. malinche) on opposite sides of an aquarium. The virtual male stimulus was programmed to track the horizontal position of the female, as courting males do in the wild. Mate-choice trials on wild-caught X. birchmanni females were used to validate the prototype's ability to effectively generate a realistic visual stimulus.

Automated Interactive Video Playback for Studies of Animal Communication

Video playback is a widely-used technique for the controlled manipulation and presentation of visual signals in animal communication. In particular, parameter-based computer animation offers the opportunity to independently manipulate any number of behavioral, morphological, or spectral characteristics in the context of realistic, moving images of animals on screen. A major limitation of conventional playback, however, is that the visual stimulus lacks the ability to interact with the live animal. Borrowing from video-game technology, we have created an automated, interactive system for video playback that controls animations in response to real-time signals from a video tracking system. We demonstrated this method by conducting mate-choice trials on female swordtail fish, Xiphophorus birchmanni. Females were given a simultaneous choice between a courting male conspecific and a courting male heterospecific (X. malinche) on opposite sides of an aquarium. The virtual male stimulus was programmed to track the horizontal position of the female, as courting males do in the wild. Mate-choice trials on wild-caught X. birchmanni females were used to validate the prototype's ability to effectively generate a realistic visual stimulus.

Accelerating urban fast response Lagrangian dispersion simulations using inexpensive graphics processor parallelism

Owing to the potential consequences associated with accidental or deliberate releases of chemical or biological agents in urban areas, fast response urban dispersion models must rapidly provide solutions that can be easily analyzed by researchers and emergency responders. In this paper, we describe a novel application of an existing Lagrangian dispersion modeling system to achieve real-time simulation and visualization of an urban plume that a user can interact with in a virtual environment (VE) through the utilization of commodity graphics hardware, utilizing the highly parallel computational capabilities available on graphics processing units (GPU). GPUs have quickly developed from video game technology to open up new avenues for enhancing simulation performance and visualization of engineering and science applications. For computer graphics applications, GPUs provide highly parallel and inexpensive data paths for processing geometry and pixels, but for simulation these parallel paths are exploited for solving general problems. In this paper, a newly developed dispersion model (GPU Plume) is tested against an analytical solution, a CPU implementation of the Lagrangian dispersion model and wind tunnel data for dispersion around a single building. GPU Plume is shown to provide results that are similar in accuracy to the CPU model, but with computation times that are up to two orders magnitude smaller. In addition, challenges associated with the implementation of Lagrangian dispersion models onto the GPU architecture are discussed in this paper.

Playing with evidence: Using video games in the courtroom

Courtroom environments, which have been one of the last bastions of the oral tradition, are slowly morphing into cinematic display environments [1]. The persuasive oral rhetoric of lawyers is increasingly being replaced by compelling visual media displays presenting a range of digital evidence in a convincing and credible manner [2,3]. There are a number of fundamental implications inherent in the shift from oral to visual mediation and a number of facets of this modern evidence presentation technology need to be investigated and analysed. Recently, a number of courtrooms around the world have seen the presentation of forensic evidence within reconstructed virtual environments powered by real-time game engines. At first glance, these graphical reconstructions may be seen as potentially useful in many courtroom situations, and they are often treated like any other form of digital evidence regarding their admissibility [4]. However, perhaps this specific form of digital media warrants special care and attention due to its inherently persuasive nature, and the undue reliance that the viewer may place on the evidence presented through a visualisation medium [5,6]. This paper describes a range of examples of where evidence has been presented in courtrooms using video games technology (particularly forensic animation and virtual crime scene reconstructions) (The author acted as an expert witness in all of the cases discussed, responsible for the preparation of the virtual reconstructions used as case studies in this paper. Most of the work was undertaken through the author’s own company in the UK, Aims Solutions Ltd., < www.aims-solutions.co.uk>). The paper then describes experiments undertaken to assess the impact of the technology on jurors and describes some of the issues raised by the results. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential benefits and problems of implementing this technology in courtroom settings.

Using embodied conversational agents in video games to investigate emotional facial expressions

The perception of emotional facial expressions has been diligently studied in psychology for the last 40 years. The stimuli mainly used in these studies were photos or short film clips. Today, video games and their development frameworks allow researchers to design, model, and animate embodied conversational agents (ECAs). This research paper introduces an experimental setting to observe and measure the perception of facial expression performed by embodied conversational agents. The experimental setup is based on the research efforts of the psychologist Harald G. Wallbott and uses the CryENGINE to visualize the ECAs in various contextual settings. A new paradigm, coined “Interaction-Paradigm”, is integrated in the experimental setting, which is derived from the video-games domain. It utilizes the benefits of video games as a research tool: the setup grants participants an interactive experience of a given emotional situation, which allows the investigation of the perception process in a more realistic setting. In contrast to the traditional approaches in emotion theory research, the usage of video games ensures that situational aspects are not presented by simply showing subjects a piece of paper containing descriptions of a situation. Based on an extensive state of the art on using video games and games development frameworks in research, this article shows how to set up experiments using video game technology. The aim of the study is to establish a comparative experimental framework to analyze subjects’ judgment on emotional stimuli in different context dimensions. The findings show that the importance of information channels changes, when people decide for the emotional quality of a situation. While in still images the majority of people bases the decision on the facial expression, rather than based on the text description, in interactive scenarios only 11.8% of the participants relied on the facial expressions, with the majority using the contextual description. We present the results of the experiment in detail and summarize how video games and games development frameworks can support research in the area of ECAs and emotion perception.

Breathe: A Game to Motivate the Adherence of Breathing Exercises

Background and Purpose. Breathing often becomes impaired or difficult after surgeries or in the presence of disease or injury. Breathing exercises are imperative to ensure the health of lungs. Despite this, patient adherence with breathing exercise regimes is not commonly assessed. There is a need for breathing exercise programs that will stimulate motivation, the lack of which is often associated with exercise. Typically, breathing exercises must be performed at regular intervals throughout the day while recovering from surgery or undertaking cycles of prophylactic breathing exercises. Furthermore, there is a need for a device that will provide quantitative measures of patient progress and adherence. An incentive spirometer apparatus measures the volume of air inspired and expired, and provides visual feedback while performing breathing exercises. The development of a game-based incentive spirometry system aims to overcome the typical exercise inertia to motivate patients to perform breathing exercises and to provide individualized challenge levels and quantitative measurement of progress and adherence. Method/Model Description and Evaluation. This research involves an interdisciplinary team of physical therapists, game designers, engineers, and computer scientists. The iterative game-design process was used to develop 6 prototype games. The games underwent a series of user tests. Two game prototypes underwent further refinement and user testing with a sample of physical therapists and people with disabilities. Game usability was assessed and feedback was provided on the incentive spirometry device, game play, system goals, and potential improvements. Outcomes. Initial assessment of the prototype system indicated that both physical therapists and potential users enjoyed the incentive spirometry game and encouraged further development. The potential end users indicated their excitement about the concept of using games for breathing exercises and look forward to the completed game. Discussion and Conclusions. Following further refinement and development, the game-based breathing system will be assessed for effectiveness in improving patient adherence and reducing pulmonary complications, compared to standard treatment techniques. The integration of medical devices with video game technologies offers great potential to improve assessment and treatment tools and patient adherence with physical therapy.

Real-time porosity using computer gaming technology

‘Porosity’ describes the publicly accessible spaces within privately owned parts of the city. Any mixed use building is necessarily Porous; for example, clients must be able to visit their dentist's surgery on the 14th floor, their lawyer on the 5th floor, or a restaurant on the roof. A building's porosity is a measure of the quantity and quality of pathways to a given destination. The authors have developed and tested two prototypes that translate the movement of a person in the real world into the virtual environment of a computer game; note that the pedestrians' participation is entirely passive (i.e., they are not knowingly playing a computer game; they are simply going about their business). The movements of a Non-Player Avatar, standing in for the pedestrian, are then represented with a range of textures, geometries and behavior. The authors call these representations of movement and time ‘Porosity Lenses.’ In one lens the movement of the avatar constructs a facsimile of a space as sensors passively capture a person's movement through the real one. The paper compares the lenses developed with recent representations of movement over time to highlight strengths and weaknesses of the approach. Finally, the paper describes preliminary testing of the system within a scientific research facility.

Augmenting pediatric constraint-induced movement therapy and bimanual training with video gaming technology

Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common cause of physical disability in childhood. Hemiplegia is among the most common forms of CP and the resulting impaired hand function is one of the most disabling symptoms, affecting self-care activities such as feeding, dressing, and grooming. To date, evidence-based treatments are limited. Recent approaches, however, have capitalized on findings that show children with hemiplegia h ave residual motor capabilities and neuroplastic changes in nervous system function that emerge and improve with practice. Here the etiology and neural basis of hemiplegic CP is first briefly reviewed, followed by a description of the residual motor capabilities in the involved upper extremity and the potentia l role of intensive practice. Two promising approaches that target residual motor function, constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) and bimanual training, are then described. Recent evidence suggests that such task-oriented training approaches to re habilitation are enhanced when the tasks are meaningful to the performer. Increasingly, this means use of current technology, specifi cally video gaming, to maintain salience and motivation and target specific motor impairments. Thus a method for using commerc ially available video gaming, including the Nintendo Wii to augment such intensive treatment approaches is described. It is s uggested that with such intensive treatment programs, gaming can be an important compliment to, but not a replacement for, salient task-oriented activities in the real world and that video ga ming and virtual reality training will be an important part o f future rehabilitation efforts.

The effects of exergaming on physical activity among inactive children in a physical education classroom.

Childhood obesity, which is due in part to lack of physical activity, is a serious concern that requires the attention of the behavioral community. Although excessive video game play has been noted in the literature as a contributor to childhood obesity, newer video gaming technology, called exergaming, has been designed to capitalize on the reinforcing effects of video games to increase physical activity in children. This study evaluated the effects of exergaming on physical activity among 4 inactive children in a physical education (PE) classroom. Results showed that exergaming produced substantially more minutes of physical activity and more minutes of opportunity to engage in physical activity than did the standard PE program. In addition, exergaming was socially acceptable to both the students and the PE teacher. Exergaming appears to hold promise as a method for increasing physical activity among inactive children and might be a possible intervention for childhood obesity.

Using Video Games to Support Pre-Service Elementary Teachers Learning of Basic Physics Principles

The purpose of this work is to share our findings in using video gaming technology to facilitate the understanding of basic electromagnetism with pre-service elementary teachers. To this end we explored the impact of using a game called Supercharged! on pre-service teachers’ understanding of electromagnetic concepts compared to students who conducted a more traditional inquiry oriented investigation of the same concepts. This study was a part of a larger design experiment examining the pedagogical potential of Supercharged! the control group learned through a series of guided inquiry methods while the experimental group played Supercharged! during the laboratory sections of the science course. There was significant difference F(2,134) = 4.8, p < 0.05, η2 = 0.59 between the control and experimental groups on the gains from pre-to-post assessment with an effect size of d = 0.72. However, while students in the experimental group performed better than their control group peers, they rated their knowledge of the topic lower than the control group (M post-control = 3.0, M post-experiment = 2.7), leading to further examination of their laboratory journals. Results of this study show that video games can lead to positive learning outcomes, as demonstrated by the increase in test scores from pre- to post-assessment. Additionally, this study also suggests that a complementary approach, in which video games and hands-on activities are integrated, with each activity informing the other, could be a very powerful technique for supporting student scientific understanding. Further, our findings suggest that video game designers should embed meta-cognitive activities such as reflective opportunities into educational video games to provide scaffolds for students and to reinforce that they are engaged in an educational learning experience.

Serious gaming technology in major incident triage training: A pragmatic controlled trial

Objective By exploiting video games technology, serious games strive to deliver affordable, accessible and usable interactive virtual worlds, supporting applications in training, education, marketing and design. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of such a serious game in the teaching of major incident triage by comparing it with traditional training methods. Design Pragmatic controlled trial. Method During Major Incident Medical Management and Support Courses, 91 learners were randomly distributed into one of two training groups: 44 participants practiced triage sieve protocol using a card-sort exercise, whilst the remaining 47 participants used a serious game. Following the training sessions, each participant undertook an evaluation exercise, whereby they were required to triage eight casualties in a simulated live exercise. Performance was assessed in terms of tagging accuracy (assigning the correct triage tag to the casualty), step accuracy (following correct procedure) and time taken to triage all casualties. Additionally, the usability of both the card-sort exercise and video game were measured using a questionnaire. Results Tagging accuracy by participants who underwent the serious game training was significantly higher than those who undertook the card-sort exercise [Chi2 = 13.126, p = 0.02]. Step accuracy was also higher in the serious game group but only for the numbers of participants that followed correct procedure when triaging all eight casualties [Chi2 = 5.45, p = 0.0196]. There was no significant difference in time to triage all casualties (card-sort = 435 ± 74 s vs video game = 456 ± 62 s, p = 0.155). Conclusion Serious game technologies offer the potential to enhance learning and improve subsequent performance when compared to traditional educational methods.

Pedagogical Dramas and Transformational Play: Narratively Rich Games for Learning

Although every era is met with the introduction of powerful technologies for entertainment and learning, videogames represent a new contribution binding the two and bearing the potential to create sustained engagement in a curricular drama where the player's knowledgeable actions shape an unfolding fiction within a designed world. Although traditionally, stories involve an author, a performer, and an audience, much of the power of videogames as media for advancing narrative springs from their affordance for the player to occupy more than one role—and sometimes all three—simultaneously. In the narratively rich videogames that we design, players have the opportunity to perform actions, experience consequences, and reflect on the underlying social values that these situations were designed to engage, affording a type of narrative transactivity. Elsewhere we have discussed designing these media as contexts for engaging academic content; here we illuminate the power of videogames to engage children in ideological struggles as they are experienced in game-based adaptations of classic literature. Toward this end, we present our theoretical argument for the power of games as a contemporary story medium, grounding this discussion in the context of two game design projects and their implementations. Implications are discussed in terms of the potential of immersive, interactive media—videogame technology, in short—for achieving wide-ranging educational ends.

The design-by-adaptation approach to universal access: learning from videogame technology

This paper proposes an alternative approach to the design of universally accessible interfaces to that provided by formal design frameworks applied ab initio to the development of new software. This approach, design-by-adaptation, involves the transfer of interface technology and/or design principles from one application domain to another, in situations where the recipient domain is similar to the host domain in terms of modelled systems, tasks and users. Using the example of interaction in 3D virtual environments, the paper explores how principles underlying the design of videogame interfaces may be applied to a broad family of visualization and analysis software which handles geographical data (virtual geographic environments, or VGEs). One of the motivations behind the current study is that VGE technology lags some way behind videogame technology in the modelling of 3D environments, and has a less-developed track record in providing the variety of interaction methods needed to undertake varied tasks in 3D virtual worlds by users with varied levels of experience. The current analysis extracted a set of interaction principles from videogames which were used to devise a set of 3D task interfaces that have been implemented in a prototype VGE for formal evaluation.

Teaching Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Via Games

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California recently created two new degree programs, namely a Bachelor's Program in Computer Science (Games) and a Master's Program in Computer Science (Game Development). In this paper, we discuss two projects that use games as motivator. First, the Computer Games in the Classroom Project develops stand-alone projects on standard artificial intelligence topics that use video-game technology to motivate the students but do not require the students to use game engines. Second, the Pinball Project develops the necessary hardware and software to enable students to learn concepts from robotics by developing games on actual pinball machines.&#x0D;