Student Game Design Competition

Entries

Because the Night

Gerard T Mulvany

Arts and Education/School of Communication and Creative Arts/Deakin Motion Lab, Deakin University, Australia

Immersive theatre is a highly interactive format that raises the audience’s agency over their experience, and, depending on their actions, provides each member with their own understanding of the overarching narrative that developed based on the spatial path they undertook. This theatre format challenges traditional theatre digitisation techniques as current archiving and reproduction methods cannot authentically replicate the affordances (or ‘actions possible’) that audiences have in the original performance. Theatres need to explore new methods of digitisation and archiving, to preserve past experiences and cater to an audience who will access content digitally. This report documents the design decisions and their impact for the interactive prototype digitisation and archival of the 2021 immersive-theatre production “Because the Night” for a digital audience. This interactive digital archive utilises game design and game engine technology to map and transfer the affordances of audiences from the original immersive theatre play to a digital platform, leveraging the game engine’s innate affordances, including freedom of movement, spatialised audio, and user intractability. To deliver these research outcomes, the project captured 360-degree video of the performance, music, images of props, and 360-degree photographs of the set, all embedded into a game engine system to authentically preserve the immersive, interactive, and ambient experience of the original production. The resulting system was able to successfully map several of the performances original affordances, including environmental exploration, spatially emergent narratives, object inspection and exploration, and interactive environmental challenges. This document reports on three matters: the design process and decisions to authentically capture the affordances of the theatre production in a digital gameplay experience; the current status of this research project; and the proposed approach to testing the prototype with users.

Seung-ee and Kkaebi: A VR-Mobile Cross Platform Game based on Co-Presence for a Balanced Immersive Experience

Jinwook Kim, Pooseung Koh, Seokjun Kang, Hyunyoung Jang, Jeongmi Lee, Juhan Nam, Young Yim Doh

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea

A growing number of VR games are published in the market as head-mounted devices (HMD) become more widespread. However, most VR games are targeted for a single-player audience, and cross-platform VR experiences where multiple players are engaged have yet to be fully explored. In this paper, we propose a VR-mobile cross-platform game based on traditional Korean mythology, Seung-ee & Kkaebi. Our goal was to create an immersive and enjoyable experience for players for both mobile and VR players where they are physically co-located, increasing both co-presence and social interaction. Our game design focused on asymmetric competition and maximized the interactions between both platforms. The VR player plays the role of Jangseung (Seek), a Korean traditional totem pole, whereas the mobile user plays the role of Dokkaebi (Hide), a Korean mythological creature. Each platform has its unique skill set to interrupt each other to win the game, thus creating a highly immersive and co-present experience for both players.

“Survive the Party”: An Educational Game about Relationships and Consent

Tyree Skye Cowell, Xinyu Yang, Jingyi Song, Rachel Pehrsson

Carnegie Mellon University, USA

It is now an unfortunate, yet well-known, fact that approximately 1 in 5 women (~18%) report lifetime exposure to sexual assault [7]. These statistics, among others, highlight the ever-present need for comprehensive sex education, particularly with regards to consent and relationship norms. Unfortunately, without cohesive or consistent implementation processes for sex education, a highly diverse “patchwork” of sex education laws and practices exist in the United States [3]. In response to these issues, our team decided to make a scenario-based video game to teach incoming college freshmen about common situations that may happen at a college party, and the best ways to handle those situations. ‘Survive the Party’ is a scenario-based experiential learning game where learners play as a ghost that is haunting a college party. The ghost floats around the party and ‘overhears’ various conversations between individuals of different backgrounds, genders, and sexual identities. At certain points in each scenario, the ghost can step in and make decisions about how the scenario should play out. In this paper, we will describe our background research, our targeted learning goals, the game itself, possible applications for our game in educational settings, and finally, opportunities for future work.

Focus Cat: Designing Idle Games to Promote Intermittent Practice and On-Going Adherence of Breathing Exercise for ADHD

Book Sadprasid, Aaron Tabor, Erik J Scheme, Scott Bateman

University of New Brunswick, Canada

Adherence and frequency of play are well-established challenges for serious games that target breathing exercises, because exercises are most effective when practiced in short and frequent sessions. Researchers have recognized that elements of idle games ideally align with many therapeutic use cases because idle games have a frequently repeating gameplay cycle that draws people in for short play sessions. However, there is little research about how idle games can be used to motivate consistent, frequent practice of therapies like breathing exercises that are often recommended for chronic conditions like ADHD. This paper describes the design and implementation of a therapeutic idle game, Focus Cat. This game is designed to help people with ADHD incorporate breathing exercises into their symptom management routine. Our work demonstrates how the unique qualities of idle game design—including short, frequent gameplay sessions, simple mechanics that make mundane tasks engaging and mechanics that pull and push players into and out of active gameplay—can be used for ADHD breathing exercises to improve adherence and frequency of practice.

Focus: A detective game about cognitive distortions

Samuel Potvin, Jérémie Auclair, Julien Berthier, Cyril Beze, Alexandre Bovin, Étienne Bourdages, Benjamin Erb, Anne-Julie Gagné, Juan Guillen, Sen Lai, Dave Plante, Pu Yaxuan, Joshua Wilson, Olivier Dion, Marc-Antonie Level, Philippe Therrien, Ferdinand Chupin, Tómas Rodriguez Munoz, Jérôme Yven, Felix-Antoine Lauzon, Pierre Tousignant, Yannick Francillette, François-Xavier Dupas

Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Canada

Université de Montréal, Canada

Cognitive distortions are biased perceptions, irrational thoughts that will affect individuals to a lesser or greater extent. In its worst form, it can lead to depression. Increasing awareness can help prevent this outcome. In this paper, we present Focus, a serious game, aimed at teenagers. Focus helps the player identify cognitive distortions. The environment illustrates the various effects of the distortion to provide a visual interpretation to the player. Exploring the world of his inner thoughts, the player is investigating and documenting strange artifacts present in his world and the reasons behind them. The investigation is providing a playground to discover the effects of cognitive distortion on the player’s world perception. Focus is built around one cognitive distortion: “All or Nothing”, but the concept can be applied to other distortions.

Dive In! Computer World Action: A Platform Game for Secondary School Students to Learn Boolean Operations in Computer Science

Honglin Li, Chen Li

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

 

The power of video games in education is becoming more prominent because children and young adolescents nowadays spend more time than ever in the digital world. Previous studies have investigated the effectiveness of using games for learning concepts in computer science and even computer programming at the secondary level. However, games for learning concepts related to mathematics in computer science have not been thoroughly investigated. In this paper, we introduce Dive In! Computer World Action, a platform game that allows players to learn Boolean operations in the context of computer science through fast-paced gameplay. The importance and usage of Boolean operations are also conveyed via in-game storytelling. The results of the playtesting suggested that Dive In! Computer World Action was effective in learning Boolean operations and related concepts. The participants generally welcomed the game-based approach. The nature of platform games also allows us further expand the gameplay for learning other mathematical operations and concepts in the context of computer science in the future.

“E-WAFE” – a Full Body Embodied Social Exergame

Alexandra Kalaitzidou, Nathalie Senechal, Paschalis Dimitriou

TU Dresden, Germany

This paper presents and describes the technical implementation of a full body embodied social exergame called “Exercise – Water Air Fire Earth” or “E-WAFE” in short, developed by an interdisciplinary team of three students in the scope of a practical course module. The design decisions were aimed at creating immersive, longtime engaging gamification of exercise with social interaction, utilising new technologies and motivating people to exercise for physiological health as well as connecting people by indulging in social play. The networked, full body tracked (Virtual Reality headset, two controllers and three trackers) gameplay, involving exercises such as squatting and shadowboxing, implemented with a machine learning based approach, creates an immersive experience for currently two players.