A Playful Tinder-Like Interface for Search and Rescue


Lochrie Mark Egglestone Paul Heaton Andrew Baudouin Onno Gradinar Adrian
2016 DiGRA/FDG '16 - Abstract Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG

Over the last few years, we have witnessed the rise in gamified interfaces from the use of gamification (e.g. points and leaderboards) to more general playful interactions. With more people connected to the Internet and ownership of mobile devices at its highest point, services need to constant evolving for this agile market. Playful and gameful interfaces form the foundations for many services, from dating apps to communication platforms. The project presented in this paper explores the use of co-designing a micro-volunteering playful interaction in an image recognition task to sort and classify photos in search and rescue scenarios.

 

The Sightlence Game: Designing a Haptic Computer Game Interface


Nordvall Mathias
2014 DiGRA '13 - Proceedings of the 2013 DiGRA International Conference: DeFragging Game Studies

The haptic modality is currently underutilized and poorly understood as a design material in game design. There are few computer games to draw on for inspiration during design explorations. This design case study explores how to use the haptic modality as a design material for computer game interfaces that requires neither graphics nor audio. The idea behind the case study is that a better understanding of haptic computer game interfaces can increase interface innovation and accessibility by giving game designers a third modality to work with together with graphics and audio. The design problem was approached through design explorations, development of an interface translation method, iterative game development of a haptic translation of Pong, and playtests with 34 people comprised of game design students and professors, adults with and without deafblindness, and children with deafblindness and congenital cognitive disabilities. The results show that computer games can be designed with haptic interfaces that only require standard gamepad¬s rather than expensive or custom-made hardware. This also holds for computer games with time-critical features and complex interfaces with concurrent haptic signals.

 

(Re)Mark(s) of the Ninja: Replaying the Remnants


Côté Pierre-Marc
2014 DiGRA '13 - Proceedings of the 2013 DiGRA International Conference: DeFragging Game Studies

The author makes an appraisal of the videogame Mark of the Ninja (Klei 2012) through the analysis of its construction of temporality. Appropriating the framework of litterature scholar Éric Méchoulan, time is described as the anachronistic folding of the past upon the present. The theme of time and memory in the game is paralleled with Méchoulan’s media-archeological approach to western metaphysics, insisting on the material processes and ethics of thought, mediation and transmission. As the game applies such treatment of the mythical past of the fictional world, it is also aesthetically molding the experience of gameplay through marks as objects for an archeology of gamespace. It leads to critical approaches to cultural legitimacy and violence that nonetheless leaves the pleasures of narrative and play intact. Finally, the author uses David Bohm’s concept of suspension, showing how the articulation of contemplation and gameplay performances makes time for critical play.

 

Game Fiction: Playing the Interface in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Asheron’s Call


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

Videogame play requires the negotiation of multiple synchronic points-of-view enabled through the use of cameras, avatars, interfaces, and vignettes (the cut-scenes, dialogue, and other attributes normally attributed to the “story”). Concurrent mastery of these points-of-view contributes to the game field of play and enables a greater possibility to complete the game’s goals. Using Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Asheron’s Call as examples, this paper examines the interface as one of the various mechanisms that establish and control the player’s point-of-view in videogames. By understanding the use of point-of-view as one of many components that establish game fiction, we can theorize the imaginary inventions that shape games, even those that do not resemble more traditional narrative forms.

 

Notes Toward a Sense of Embodied Gameplay


Bayliss Peter
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

Despite the increasing maturity of the field of videogame studies, central concepts such as gameplay remain underdeveloped, implicit in many theories yet without clear investigation of the underlying assumptions informing approaches to understanding it. Understanding gameplay as a particular form of interactivity, the approach taken here focuses on the notion of embodiment, drawing on Dourish's work concerning embodied interaction. The implication of this approach is a focus on the concept of interface, which is developed here beyond the meanings adapted from design and production contexts towards a more generalised yet more powerful understanding that sees it as a particular site or space of interaction between two parties - the player and the game. An exploratory theoretical model of embodied gameplay is developed through a synthesis of Dourish's application of various phenomenological theories to interactivity, Gibson's ecological approach to perception, and Järvinen et al's approach to the concept of flow.

 

Stepping Back: Players as Active Participators


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.

 

The Pervasive Interface: Tracing the Magic Circle


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

This paper is an addition to the discourse surrounding interface theory and pervasive games. A buzzword by nature, the term ´interface´ needs to be investigated and redefined in order to remain academically valid; at the same time the pervasive game, being part of recent developments in game culture, needs to be given a place in the discourse of digital games. By approaching the interface through formal game theory, I will investigate the place and status of the interface in the pervasive game, as well as the border between everyday reality and the virtual game world, in search of defining the interaction between fantasy and reality in pervasive gaming. Next to the conventional interface of hard- and software, I argue that in pervasive gaming there exists the two-levelled “liminal” interface, which initially transfers the player into a playful state of mind (paratelic interface) before implementing more rigid structures that belong to the game itself (paraludic interface).