Video Game Development Research Articles

Organising challenges in the era of financialisation: The case of videogame workers

A long-term study of videogame developers reveals that they face challenging working conditions and wish for unionisation, although they remain mostly non-unionised. In the broad corpus of literature on propensity to unionise, scholars often offer different explanations of feeble propensity among precarious workers in low-skilled jobs, on the one hand, and those in knowledge work, on the other. We contend that this neglects a larger shared context of increasing financialisation of organisations that has a deterrent effect on intentions to unionise. The effect of financialisation on workers' representation of interests is less studied than the process of financialisation itself and its effect on worsening working conditions. Yet financial stakeholders are now important labour relations actors even while not formally present in the system. We draw on literature on propensity to unionise and new actors in labour relations to include the effect of financialisation and challenge the dichotomous explanation of propensity to unionise that opposes low-skilled jobs to knowledge work.

Fluidity in project management teams across projects

Project management teams are often fluid, changing in composition over projects. Fluidity enables innovative project success, as it allows organizing social capital dynamically across projects. In this study, we argue for an optimum between fluidity and stability. We operationalize project management fluidity as the degree of intactness of the whole team from one project to the next. In a sample of 5370 projects of video game development over ten years using information obtained by web crawling on the internet, we find an inverted-U-shaped relation between intactness and project success, assessed as sales, expert reviews, and consumer reviews. We show that optimal intactness shifts according to project context; higher success occurs at lower levels of intactness when projects require more innovation. Finally, we replicate our findings using intactness of relations between project managers and their operational teams. We discuss the implications for project management, and potential future research.

Penggunaan Naratif Dalam Video Game Sebagai Media Edukasi Isu Dunia: Studi Kasus Detroit Become Human

Video game dengan narasi kuat semakin popular pada kalangan game developer. Terdapat sejumlah game yang dikembangkan dengan isu dunia dalam naratifnya. Penelitian ini dilakukan untuk membuktikan apakah video game berpotensi sebagai media edukasi terhadap permasalahan dunia. Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan mengekspos video game melalui game play dari video game Detroit Become Human kepada 27 responden yang belum familier dengan video game tersebut selama 22 hari dan mengumpulkan laporan mereka mengenai pengalaman mereka melalui kuesioner online. Penelitian diuji dengan melakukan perbandingan terhadap pandangan responden mengenai permasalahan dunia tersebut sebelum dan sesudah responden terkepos oleh video serta melakukan kodifikasi yang dengan maksud untuk mengkuantifikasi respon yang diterima. Hasil penelitian membuktikan bahwa konsensus setuju bahwa video game berpotensi untuk menjadi media edukasi terhadap permasalahan dunia. Selain daripada itu juga ditemukan bahwa video game mampu mengedukasi pemain dalam jangka panjang namun tidak signifikan dalam edukasi jangka pendek

Video game consumer profiles

The video game development path is full of drastic changes. The growth and strengthening of technology and the growth of innovation in the technology sector have inevitably led to the growth of this industry, which is nowadays achieving unexpected, enviable results. The basic human need for entertainment and socializing contributes to the popularity of video games. Today, video games are played by people of all ages and genders, and the most common reasons for playing video games are fun, socializing, learning, and reducing stress, but video games also provide interactive entertainment, unlike books, movies or theatre performances. The popularity of video games is witnessed by numerous communities on social networks through which professional gamers share their experiences, tips and video game reviews, and there are statistics that support this popularity and growth. The features offered by the video game industry do not need to be particularly emphasized because the results, statistics and enthusiastic players speak for themselves. This paper deals with the demographics and behaviour of consumers playing video games. The aim is to identify the main features of the user, video game players, and to identify and determine user habits and trends affecting the users. The consumer is a social and cultural being. At the same time, he is an individual for himself, a member of a family, a member of a group or a certain class or class in society, a representative of a particular nation, race, religion, nationality of a particular country, etc. The consumer is a person who has the money (assets) and a will to buy the goods or a service. In this paper, the above consumer definitions will be brought in correlation with the video game market, with an industry that encompasses various forms of modern entertainment. It is shown that technology and new modes of entertainment are present among all, and that we need to adjust the time we live in. Playing some kind of video games has become a normal activity of any normal, modern individual.

Knowledge and Experience in Video Game Play: Understanding Individual Differences and Mental Model Transfer Across Game Genres

Research suggests that a variety of factors can alter video game play-from usability to aesthetics to expertise. An important developing area for human factors research is understanding how individual differences may influence interactions with video games, but the field lacks adequate methods for evaluating and classifying differences. This paper provides a notional framework for characterizing one critical individual difference in video game play, that of knowledge differences arising from player experience. This framework attends to common video game genres and mechanics and is illustrated using two distinct video games: Minecraft and Ark. The purpose is to highlight the sorts of knowledge making up player mental models and show how to identify the form of transferable individual differences that can be measured and improve research on video game development and use.

“All bets are off”: Flexible engagement with music-listening technologies by autistic adults

This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews to explore daily experiences with music among a convenience sample of 12 autistic adults interning at a video game development lab. Our analysis indicates that music technologies enabled autistic individuals to explore new music and to engage reflexively with personal taste and self-curation. We also show that participants used music to accompany a range of cognitive and emotional tasks. These findings are consistent with broader sociological literature on music-listening habits of typically developing adults and indicate that autistic adults use music to meet their personal needs. Our cohort also described expressly creative and proactive engagement with music, suggesting that habits with music may differ among unique sub-populations of autistic individuals.

Describing, organizing, and maintaining video game development artifacts

AbstractGame development artifacts resulting from the creation process of video games, such as design documents, style guides, test builds, and marketing materials, provide rich contextual information about how and why the game was created. Better organizing and preserving these materials will not only enrich our understanding of the history of these media but also educate and inspire the next generation of video game creators. This research aims to improve our theoretical understanding of how to organize and represent game development artifacts by examining the various types of artifacts created and their attendant issues and challenges. We adopted a multimethod approach employing an examination of existing collections and 29 interviews with creators, information professionals, and game researchers. From these data, we analyze the current practices, expressed values, and perceived challenges of these stakeholders, produce a taxonomy of game development artifacts, and provide best practices recommendations for describing them.

Development and Validation of a Virtual Reality Haptic Femoral Nailing Simulator

To create a virtual reality (VR) femoral nailing simulator combining haptics and image intensifier functionality and then carry out validation studies to assess its educational value. The simulator consisted of a 3D virtual environment, a haptic device and 3D printed drill handle and a VR headset. The environment was created using a video game development engine, interfaced with plugins to allow haptic feedback and image intensifier functionality. Two tasks were created within the simulator as part of an antegrade femoral intramedullary (IM) nail procedure: proximal guidewire entry and distal locking.For the validation study, participants performed the above tasks on the simulator. Metrics were collected including time taken, number of X-rays and tool distance travelled and used to assess construct validity. A questionnaire was then completed to assess authenticity and content validity. Simulator development in centre for simulation and engagement science laboratory. Validation study in a teaching hospital environment. Orthopedic specialist trainees and consultants. Surgeon experience (number of IM nails performed/postgraduate year) correlated with significantly improved task performance. More experienced surgeons took less time, used fewer X-rays and had greater economy of movement than less experienced surgeons. Authenticity and content validity were well rated, with criticisms primarily due to hardware limitations. To our knowledge this is the first orthopedic simulator to combine immersive VR with haptics and full image intensifier functionality. By combining multiple aspects of surgical practice within a single device, we aimed to improve participant immersion and educational value. Our work so far has focused on technical skills, demonstrating good authenticity, content and construct validity, however our findings show promise in other applications such as nontechnical skill development and assessment.

Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks to Detect Rendered Glitches in Video Games

In this paper, we present a method using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNNs) to detect common glitches in video games. The problem setting consists of an image (800x800 RGB) as input to be classified into one of five defined classes, normal image, or one of four different kinds of glitches (stretched, low resolution, missing and placeholder textures). Using a supervised approach, we train a ShuffleNetV2 using generated data. This work focuses on detecting texture graphical anomalies achieving arguably good performance with an accuracy of 86.8%, detecting 88% of the glitches with a false positive rate of 8.7%, and with the models being able to generalize and detect glitches even in unseen objects. We apply a confidence measure as well to tackle the issue with false positives as well as an effective way of aggregating images to achieve better detection in production. The main use of this work is the partial automatization of graphical testing in the final stages of video game development.

The Ghost in the Machine: ludologia, narratologia e reinvenção da personagem na ficção interativa

A Ficção Interativa é uma forma de experiência digital que confere ao jogador/interator poder de agenciamento (agency) por meio das suas decisões, com consequências diretas sobre a configuração narrativa da obra. Esta forma de medialidade veio trazer novos desafios e subverter noções tradicionais de representação narrativa (moldadas sobretudo a partir do campo da ficção impressa), na medida em que a estrutura não-linear abre caminho a percursos diferentes de ação, dependendo do desempenho e das escolhas do interator. Neste contexto, compreende-se que a natureza confi gurável da personagem, quer como entidade ficcional com determinadas propriedades diegéticas, quer como peça fundamental da mecânica do jogo, constitua objeto de crescente atenção por parte da comunidade académica e dos agentes envolvidos no desenvolvimento de videojogos e de Ficção Interativa. O processo de construção da personagem, independentemente do seu estatuto específico (PC: personagem jogável; NPC: personagem não-jogável), assume aqui uma especificidade própria e levanta problemas que habitualmente não surgem com outros produtos literários e culturais, mesmo do contexto contemporâneo. Mais do que prolongar o aceso debate em torno do grau de adequação deste meio para narrar histórias que levou à formação de duas abordagens teóricas distintas – a ludológica e a narratológica –, importa desenvolver um método holístico capaz de congregar diversos ângulos de análise, reconhecendo que os videojogos tendem a desenvolver modelos narrativos complexos, mas que não podem subsistir sem uma estrutura consistente e um sistema de regras. De modo particular, os projetos recentes de Ficção Interativa com recurso a dispositivos de Inteligência Artificial que permitem selecionar, com base em procedimentos computacionais, eventos de modo coerente segundo o tipo de intervenção do interator e tirar o máximo partido da tensão narrativa levantam novas questões no que respeita à ontologia da personagem, ao seu potencial de manifestação de efeitos estéticos e à sua capacidade de gerar envolvimento emocional.

Quantifying and contextualizing the impact of bioRxiv preprints through automated social media audience segmentation.

Engagement with scientific manuscripts is frequently facilitated by Twitter and other social media platforms. As such, the demographics of a paper's social media audience provide a wealth of information about how scholarly research is transmitted, consumed, and interpreted by online communities. By paying attention to public perceptions of their publications, scientists can learn whether their research is stimulating positive scholarly and public thought. They can also become aware of potentially negative patterns of interest from groups that misinterpret their work in harmful ways, either willfully or unintentionally, and devise strategies for altering their messaging to mitigate these impacts. In this study, we collected 331,696 Twitter posts referencing 1,800 highly tweeted bioRxiv preprints and leveraged topic modeling to infer the characteristics of various communities engaging with each preprint on Twitter. We agnostically learned the characteristics of these audience sectors from keywords each user’s followers provide in their Twitter biographies. We estimate that 96% of the preprints analyzed are dominated by academic audiences on Twitter, suggesting that social media attention does not always correspond to greater public exposure. We further demonstrate how our audience segmentation method can quantify the level of interest from nonspecialist audience sectors such as mental health advocates, dog lovers, video game developers, vegans, bitcoin investors, conspiracy theorists, journalists, religious groups, and political constituencies. Surprisingly, we also found that 10% of the preprints analyzed have sizable (>5%) audience sectors that are associated with right-wing white nationalist communities. Although none of these preprints appear to intentionally espouse any right-wing extremist messages, cases exist in which extremist appropriation comprises more than 50% of the tweets referencing a given preprint. These results present unique opportunities for improving and contextualizing the public discourse surrounding scientific research.

Landmarks: A solution for spatial navigation and memory experiments in virtual reality

Research into the behavioral and neural correlates of spatial cognition and navigation has benefited greatly from recent advances in virtual reality (VR) technology. Devices such as head-mounted displays (HMDs) and omnidirectional treadmills provide research participants with access to a more complete range of body-based cues, which facilitate the naturalistic study of learning and memory in three-dimensional (3D) spaces. One limitation to using these technologies for research applications is that they almost ubiquitously require integration with video game development platforms, also known as game engines. While powerful, game engines do not provide an intrinsic framework for experimental design and require at least a working proficiency with the software and any associated programming languages or integrated development environments (IDEs). Here, we present a new asset package, called Landmarks, for designing and building 3D navigation experiments in the Unity game engine. Landmarks combines the ease of building drag-and-drop experiments using no code, with the flexibility of allowing users to modify existing aspects, create new content, and even contribute their work to the open-source repository via GitHub, if they so choose. Landmarks is actively maintained and is supplemented by a wiki with resources for users including links, tutorials, videos, and more. We compare several alternatives to Landmarks for building navigation experiments and 3D experiments more generally, provide an overview of the package and its structure in the context of the Unity game engine, and discuss benefits relating to the ongoing and future development of Landmarks.

Open source for video games

Open-source software is a relevant topic in video game development. Taking a look at the most frequently employed game engines for developing Android games [1] we can see that seven out of ten ranked engines are OSS. Over the last decade, more and more game studios and individual developers switched to open-source software. Oliver Franzke from Double Fine Productions described the phenomenon from his point of view at GDC Europe 2013 [2]. For him developing game engines from scratch is too costly, and re-using self-made game engines often involves too much repurposing as they were developed with one specific game in mind. Existing third-party game engines might not support all features needed, and requesting new features or APIs from the developers is a tedious effort. In contrast to that, an open-source game engine is typically stable, extendable, and - in the best case - has a lively community accepting patches and helping out problems. Best of all, if a bug in the game engine is found or a feature is needed, one can fix it and compile it instead of filing a bug report or feature request and hoping for the next release of the engine being in time for the release of the own project. Epic Games was one of the first AAA game engine developers to publish the source code of their Unreal Engine [3] in 2015 to let game developers investigate critical parts and send in patches and file bug reports. However, they did not change their model to OSS. Amazon (with the Lumberyard engine), Unity, and Crytek (with the CryEngine) follow similar models, where the source code is available for developers, but no open-source license is used. Other prominent source code releases included the famous id Tech engines, which powered games like Doom and Quake, and the Serious Sam Engine from Croteam [4, 5]. In both cases, they were made available GPL license for historical and educational purposes and developers never released the most recent version of their engines. These engines are not used only to develop games, but also to implement simulators that can be used to create datasets used in research, like CARLA [19] (a simulator for autonomous driving research) or UnrealCV [20], that are both based on Unreal Engine.

CloudyGame: Enabling cloud gaming on the edge with dynamic asset streaming and shared game instances

Cloud gaming has emerged as a new computer game delivery paradigm that promises gaming anywhere, anytime, on any device, by running the computer game on a cloud server and streaming the rendered frames to users. To fulfill its promises, a cloud gaming provider must face three main challenges: reducing the interaction latency, reducing the cloud infrastructure cost, and reducing the network bandwidth demand. One way to reduce interaction latency is to run the game on the edge instead of the cloud. This introduces two additional challenges due to the limited resources available on the edge servers. First, there is a high initialization cost to install a game on the edge server if the game that a player wishes to play is not already installed. Second, an edge server typically has limited computing resources compared to the servers in the cloud. In this work, we address these two issues by proposing CloudyGame, a new software architecture for developing computer games, in which (i) resources are more efficiently shared and managed between different playing instances, and (ii) game assets are streamed on-demand to reduce the initialization cost. CloudyGame is implemented with a popular game engine, and thus any game built on the engine supports CloudyGame out of the box. Our evaluation shows that a game running on CloudyGame architecture needs 70–80% less RAM, VRAM, and CPU than a game using conventional architecture when running with four players. Furthermore, the game asset streaming system reduces the game’s initial loading time by 70%. Hence, our cloud gaming architecture is highly scalable and economically deployable to the edge. Further, due to a reduction in resource usage, the CloudyGame architecture would benefit games running in the cloud as well.

Using Video Game Development to Motivate Program Design and Algebra Among Inner-City High School Students

Introducing inner-city high school students to program design presents unique challenges. The typical assumptions of an introductory programming course, like students understand what variables and functions are, may not be safe. Therefore, asking students to define functions as part of the program design process may be an overwhelming task. Many students do not understand that a function is an abstraction over similar expressions and that parameters represent the differences among these expressions. This articles presents a novel approach to teaching program design to high school students while simultaneously reinforcing high school algebra. The approach is based on a design recipe to help students develop the abstractions that lead to functions. Using a bottom-up approach, students are taught how to abstract over similar expressions. They are then taught how to use high school algebra concepts, like compound functions and function composition, to also design functions. In addition, the article also presents empirical data collected from students to measure their reaction to the course. For the students in the course, the empirical data suggests that high school algebra concepts are successfully reinforced and that students feel they become better problem solvers, find programming intellectually stimulating, and walk away with an interest in programming.

White Masculinity, Creative Desires, and Production Ideology in Video Game Development

Game workers have a problem. They code values and ideologies into games, but they are either not aware of it or deny it. Through a constructive and critical engagement with Games of Empire, I propose the concept of “ludic religiosity” to reveal how white masculinity informs game workers’ professional discourses, technological practices, ludic desires, and imaginations. Drawing on three-year-long ethnographic research and in conversation with cultural studies, philosophy of technology, and postcolonial game studies, I revisit desiring machine and ideology, two major concepts from Games of Empire. My goal is to demonstrate the racialized and gendered discourses and practices behind game developers’ desire to produce cognitive capitalism’s “escapist” commodities and rethink ideology within white masculine production cultures. Foregrounding how racialized and gendered practices and imaginations inform the desire behind the global game industry is crucial, especially in the aftermath of Gamergate and the rise of authoritarianism.

Artificial Intelligence and Mobile Programming Courses for a Video Game Development Program in Chile

In this article, we present our curriculum design process for two-third-year undergraduate courses: artificial intelligence for video games and mobile device programming. These are part of a 4.5 year program in video game development and virtual reality engineering. We explore the range of possible content, usually aimed at traditional computer science or software engineering students or practitioners, and extract and adapt it to our particular program. Students developed high quality apps, achieved good standings in AI competitions, and some even published peer-reviewed articles. We believe the approach presented in this article is broadly applicable, but can be especially useful to instructors creating courses for uncommon and innovative programs.

INTERDISCIPLINARITY IN DESIGN AS A CHALLENGE FOR PROFESSIONALISM - AN EXAMPLE OF INTERFACE DESIGN

The need for diverse knowledge and skills in the work of a designer is a problem in vocational education, which mainly focuses on the artistic aspect of design. The aim of this article is to analyze the specifics of User Interface Design, its relation to User Experience Design, to determine the User Interface designer professional skills and how to acquire them. Research methods – theoretical: literature research; empirical – questionnaire. Exploring educational opportunities in Experience Design and User Interface Design demonstrates the need for Video game Interface study programs, particularly in the Latvian context. As the curriculum is traditionally designed for narrowly focused specialization, it would be appropriate to develop study modules for User Interface Design that include acquiring both graphics, game design and programming skills. The results of the video game developer survey demonstrate the role of practice in improving professional experience.

Development and Feasibility Testing of a Video Game to Reduce High-Risk Heterosexual Behavior in Spanish-Speaking Latinx Adolescents: Mixed Methods Study.

BackgroundSimilar to broader health disparities, Latinx adolescents have higher rates of high-risk sexual behavior resulting in pregnancy rates that are 2 times higher and sexually transmitted infection rates that are 5 to 8 times higher than non-Hispanic, white adolescents. Novel approaches are needed to reduce high-risk sexual behavior among Spanish-speaking Latinx adolescents who represent the fastest-growing group of US immigrants.ObjectiveThis study aimed to partner with Spanish-speaking Latinx adolescents in a participatory design process to develop and test a Spanish-language video game intervention to decrease high-risk heterosexual behavior.MethodsThis is an iterative, two-phase, mixed methods study. In phase 1, we conducted focus groups with Spanish-speaking Latinx adolescents to elicit feedback on the content and format of an existing English-language video game. Feedback was then incorporated into an expanded and culturally adapted Spanish-language video game. In phase 2, we pilot tested the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of the new Spanish-language video game intervention by measuring known antecedents to sexual behavior (intentions, self-efficacy, risk perception, and knowledge) assessed at enrollment and 12-week follow-up. We applied a thematic analysis to examine focus group feedback and a bivariate analysis to analyze pre- and postquantitative data.ResultsIn phase 1, 15 Spanish-speaking Latinx adolescents provided feedback for further video game development. A Spanish-language video game was then produced and tested in phase 2. We recruited and enrolled 24 Spanish-speaking Latinx adolescents aged 15 to 17 years. Participants played the video game for an average of 4.2 hours during monitored sessions. Pilot testing demonstrated feasibility and acceptability; 65% (3/20) of participants stated that they would play it again, and 65% (3/20) said they would recommend it to friends. Condom-specific knowledge did significantly increase between baseline and follow-up (P=.007). Other variables of sexual behavior antecedents did not differ significantly between baseline and 12-week follow-up.ConclusionsAn iterative participatory design process in partnership with Spanish-speaking adolescents produced an innovative and acceptable Spanish-language video game intervention aimed at decreasing high-risk sexual behavior in adolescents. Pilot testing demonstrated preliminary feasibility and yielded essential information for further video game development.

IJNM Special Issue—International Journal of Network Management: QoE‐centric analysis and management of communication networks

IJNM Special Issue—International Journal of Network Management: QoE‐centric analysis and management of communication networks