Interactive Biotechnology: Design Rules for Integrating Biological Matter into Digital Games

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Gerber Lukas C. Kim Honesty Riedel-Kruse Ingmar H.
2016 DiGRA/FDG '16 - Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG

In recent years, playful interactions with biological materials, including live organisms, have been increasingly explored and implemented. Such biotic games are motivated and enabled by biotechnological advances and their increasing presence in everyday life constitute a form of human-biology interactions (HBI). Here we systematically discuss the design space for “digital-biology hybrid” games, summarize current best-practice design rules based on recent works, and point to technologies that will enable others to design and utilize similar games to advance this field. In particular, we show how augmentation with overlaid digital objects provides a rich design space, we emphasize the advantages when working with microorganisms and light based stimuli, and we suggest using biotic processing units (BPUs) as the fundamental hardware architecture. In analogy to the history of digital games, we make some predictions on the future evolution of biotic games as the underlying core technologies become readily accessible to practitioners and consumers. We envision that broadening the development of playful interactive biotechnology will benefit game culture, education, citizen science, and arts.

 

“A Totally Different World”: Playing and Learning in Multi-User Virtual Environments

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Kao Linda Galas Cathleen Kafai Yasmin
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

This study examines children’s perceptions of their experiences in two science-oriented multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs), River City and Whyville. Sixth-grade students were asked how they would rate and compare different features of these environments. The children rated River City as providing greater educational benefits but preferred communicating with real people in Whyville as opposed to River City’s computer-based agents. They felt more integrated into the community in Whyville, where they enjoyed equal participation with other members, than as guests to the virtual town of River City. Finally, children rated their enjoyment at customizing their unique Whyville avatars higher than when selecting a pre-constructed avatar in River City; however, they rated both MUVEs highly when asked about seeing their avatars onscreen.

 

“A Totally Different World”: Playing and Learning in Multi-User Virtual Environments

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Kao Linda Galas Cathleen Kafai Yasmin
2002 Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings

This study examines children’s perceptions of their experiences in two science-oriented multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs), River City and Whyville. Sixth-grade students were asked how they would rate and compare different features of these environments. The children rated River City as providing greater educational benefits but preferred communicating with real people in Whyville as opposed to River City’s computer-based agents. They felt more integrated into the community in Whyville, where they enjoyed equal participation with other members, than as guests to the virtual town of River City. Finally, children rated their enjoyment at customizing their unique Whyville avatars higher than when selecting a pre-constructed avatar in River City; however, they rated both MUVEs highly when asked about seeing their avatars onscreen.