The Acagamic

While I managed to get some momentum with this blog in December, my time has been sparse at the start of the year (especially January). Much has happened. I have successfully defended one of the first Ph.D. degrees in Digital Game Development (read about it and download my thesis from here) in Sweden. Leading up to this and following right after it are a bunch of talks concerned with the central theme of affective measurement of players, two of which I will be giving in Canada this week and the next. Besides the obvious question of employment and career direction, I am also evaluating my general research and identify promising paths for future directions. So, watch this space and everything unfolds in the next months.

Slideshare is down. Merry Christmas!

Alexei Kapterev is a visual communication specialist and presentation design consultant, who has assembled a great presentation on the current state of the art of happiness research. As part of this presentation he revisits central ideas of positive psychology, such as Flow, which have been discussed prominently in game research, especially game experience research as well. The talk also ties in nicely with yesterday’s presentation on the Future of Work. Since correlations between happiness and other areas of everyday life are discussed. The visual aesthetic of the slides speaks for itself. Again, keeping this brief. Enjoy the presentation.

Jeff Brenman’s talk about the future of work is a very inspiring and great presentation (he works at a presentation consulting firm) that might come off as a little bit off topic here, but substantially most of the changing circumstances of our working lives mentioned in his talk are due to the people growing up with games. I am currently reading the book “Got Game” (by Beck and Wade) which is exactly analyzing this aspect of the changed generation and culture that our gaming habit has created. Nevertheless, it is almost Christmas, so I will keep it brief. Enjoy the excellent presentation. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, we have more of a slide collection. But the main featured presentation is the one from Graham McAllister, who is a researcher in video game usability at the University of Sussex in the UK and also runs the company Vertical Slice that specializes in User Experience (UX; human perspective, not quality assurance) testing for games. Most of what I have been researching in the past 4 years is already starting to be employed in practice by them (quite fascinating, really).

First, he explains the different meanings of UX jargon, such as usability (can I do it?), user experience (do I like it?), user interface (how does it look?), interaction design (how is the interface used?). Then he mentions that UX is a key factor driving review scores of games (not the technical functionality alone), which then drive the sales. He backs up his claims with sales data. However, some games with good reviews may still fail financially. On the other hand, games with bad reviews are not very likely to sell well. He then discusses two case studies (Assassin’s creed and Bioshock) in terms of successful design intent or gameplay flaws. The rise of episodic gaming demands a higher level of quality even for vertical slices of games. He goes on to analyze UX flaws of games defaced by gaming magazine reviews. Read the rest of this entry »

Eelke Folmer is a prominent game researcher, concerned with game accessibility at the University of Nevada, Reno. At the Games For Health Conference 2009, he gave a talk about his areas of research and an introduction to game accessibility in general. His argument is that games as a major force of culture should not exclude disabled individuals from playing and enjoying the benefits of them. He outlines a game interaction model, where we see different forms of sensory output of games: visual, tactile, and auditory, and similarly different standard devices, such as game controllers, allowing the player to physically enter information into the game system. Feedback and interaction work in synthesis in games, however often not accounting for all possible modes of interaction or feedback that might challenge so-called able gamers.

As gamers grow older the problem of interacting with games may grow (and they might become part of the accessibility statistics), but a large number of disabled people are currently excluded from playing games. This should not be a problem as games in general are about researching alternative forms of interaction and thus different interaction forms should be available in games, some of them may even be included as gameplay modes (adding bonus value to the product). Before we talk about this some more, first have a look at this presentation. Read the rest of this entry »

As a natural follow-up to yesterday’s slide deck, we have Mary and Douglas Kiang‘s presentation on digital games for the body, mind and soul today. Their talk outlines 21st Century skills expected from this generation, such as creativity, innovation, problem-solving, communication, and collaboration. If that does not sound like the core activities you do in your favorite game yet – the slides are going to persuade you. Read the rest of this entry »

It is crystal ball time again. This time we are talking about the future of education. The claim: Game designers = Teachers. The presenter: Tim Hart. An instructional or learning technologist at the University of Maine in the USA. His presentation (with the title probably somewhat inspired by Steven Johnson’s book “Everything Good is Bad for You”) is about the potential of digital games for learning and education. It is partly a rant, partly visionary. I find it well-crafted and comprehensive. He begins by outlining a number of good resources on his topic and starts talking about the generation V (the currently 5-year-olds) and their expectation of the future education system. Kids that will live and breathe Microsoft Project Natal, browser games, the Zii (or Cii, Bii, Oii, Yii as it is speculated), mingle with friends in the next Facebook and PlayStation Home, and expect all movies to have the level of sophistication that Avatar is currently showing. On slide 30, he has a cartoon questioning whether we should be teaching our kids the old-fashioned way it is often still done. Read the rest of this entry »