Challenges in Experimental Serious Game Design

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Nitsche Michael Chang Jack Shen-Kuen Resch Gabriel Doucette Alison Yeboah Georgina Welsh Timothy Mazalek Ali
2020 DiGRA ’20 – Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere

 

A Character in Your Hand: Puppetry to Inform Game Controls

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Nitsche Michael McBride Pierce
2018 DiGRA '18 - Proceedings of the 2018 DiGRA International Conference: The Game is the Message

As VR platforms such as HTC Vive and Oculus Touch enter the gaming market with high fidelity motion controllers, they call for a re-thinking of our game control design schemes. We present a bottom-up design exploration of traditional puppetry controls in VR and the design spaces such an experimental mapping opens up for VR gaming. We argue along 3 steps for a critical return to puppetry as a reference to design and analysis game character controls. Based on existing background research that largely emphasized puppetry as metaphor, we briefly touch on the use of puppetry in current games, before presenting our own design approach and implementation of existing puppet schemes in VR. Three initial controller mappings for virtual rod puppets, marionettes, and hand puppets serve to highlight opportunities and challenges in this approach. The overall goal is to re-establish a puppet-based perspective to character controls for VR and to highlight the emerging design space for games.

 

Games, Montage, and the First Person Point of View

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Nitsche Michael
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

Interactive montage combines the elements of play and visual representation. The analysis of four examples of interactive montage in reference to a first person point of view highlights the importance of control and spatial reference between player-character and virtual environment. Both emerge as conditions for meaningful interactive montage. The resulting visualization style adjusts to the new conditions and refers to but often breaks cinematic rules. A critical view at the value of classic film theory for this style concludes the paper.

 

Mapping Time in Video Games

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Nitsche Michael
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

Video games can position players in a specific time and space. This paper will argue that the experiences of both are closely interdependent. As a consequence, we need to re-evaluate our models of time in video games. The discussion will exemplify the suggested interdependencies of temporal and spatial experience. The result is a playercentered perspective towards time in game spaces.

 

The Quest in a Generated World

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Ashmore Calvin Nitsche Michael
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

As procedural content becomes a more appealing option for game development, procedurally determined context is necessary to structure and make sense of this content. We find that a useful means to structure content in 3D games is the quest. The task of generating necessary context then becomes one of quest generation. This paper describes how we implemented a basic quest generator based on key and lock puzzles into a procedural game world. It uses notion of quest as spatial progression and discusses the design of the game world and how our quest generator connects to it. Its findings are twofold: on the technical level we managed to implement a highly flexible content and context generator into an existing game engine; one the content level we can trace signs for higher player interest in quest-enhanced procedural game worlds in comparison to unstructured spaces.

 

Stepping Back: Players as Active Participators

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Nitsche Michael Thomas Maureen
2003 DiGRA '03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up

Instead of confining the player to a single role, the active participator model positions the player in a more flexible position towards the fictional gameworld: involved and immersed in its various events without being limited to one role. The research project Common Tales explores this model in a serial game structure that stages the flexible relationship between the two game heroes. Players can change controls from one character to the other, guiding them through their adventures, and shaping their relationship with each other. Enabled through interactive functionality and expressed though cinematic mediation and spatial organisation, the character-driven gameworld engages the player as the central addressee and originator at the same time.