Designing Unconventional Use of Conventional Displays in Games: Some Assembly Required

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Goddard William Muscat Alexander
2016 DiGRA/FDG '16 - Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG

Game design is experiencing a renewed interest in co-located games and the social play it facilitates. Specifically, public settings such as game exhibitions and parties are the host of games with unique experiences supported in part by custom and unconventional hardware design. These installations of custom hardware can create barriers for distribution and facilitation. However, it is possible to create both similar and novel and installation-like experiences with ephemeral DIY-installations. We investigate two games that create such novel experiences. These games explore ephemeral installation design through the unconventional use of displays, but using only conventional and commercially available hardware. Our investigation reveals six themes, providing an understanding of how to utilize this design space related to the social, spatial, and tangible aspects of these game designs, such as creating movement and aggregated spectatorship. We present unconventional use of videogame hardware in public settings as an underexplored design space.

 

Evaluating Interactive Entertainment using Breakdown: Understanding Embodied Learning in Video Games

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Ryan William Siegel Martin A.
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper describes evaluating interactive entertainment by understanding embodied learning in games, which is a perspective that situates the learning that a player must go through to play a game in a skill-based environment. Our goal was to arrive at a tool for designers to improve learnability from this perspective. To study embodied learning, we use the concept of breakdown, which happens when our experience fails to aid our everyday actions and decision-making. We conducted a study to investigate learning in games from which we constructed a framework of 17 patterns of breakdown and a set of guidelines to aid heuristic evaluation of video games and to help designers support breakdown in interactions, which support players’ learning, so that they do not become breakdowns in illusion, which break players’ immersion.