Digital Library Keyword Archives

serious games

- 49 articles or papers

 

The Aiming Game: Using a Game with Biofeedback for Training in Emotion Regulation

Cederholm Henrik Hilborn Olle Lindley Craig Sennersten Charlotte Eriksson Jeanette
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This paper discusses the development of the Aiming Game, a serious game intended to be used as a tool for training emotion regulation. The game is part of an intervention package designed to support hypnosis training online of financial investors in becoming aware of their emotional states as well as providing them with a toolbox which can be used for training to counteract cognitive biases which may interfere with their trading activities. The paper discusses how such a game can be implemented as well as how it can be effectively evaluated. The evaluation is mostly focused on the effectiveness of the induction of emotional arousal by the game, which is supported by standardized game design methods and patterns.

 

How to Say Things with Actions I: a Theory of Discourse for Video Games for Change

Rao Valentina
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This paper proposes the interpretation of video games as discourse (in the explanation of discourse commonly used in linguistics and studies of natural language, not as understood in semiotics or cultural studies) to explore further the dynamics through which video games can propose structured meaning and articulate an argument. Such topic is especially relevant for video games with an agenda, whose goal is not just to produce an engaging game experience, but also to convey a message and have some control over the desired outcome (persuasion, information, expression, aesthetic experience). The notion of discourse can help classify serious games according to their specific aim, and can help understand how meaning production in procedural rhetoric takes place.

 

Serious Beats: Transdisciplinary research methodologies for designing and evaluating a socially integrative serious music-based online game

Kayali Fares Schwarz Vera Götzenbrucker Gerit Pfeffer Jürgen Franz Barbara Purgathofer Peter
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

Recent studies show that the second generation of migrants is not adequately integrated into mainstream society but tends to segregate into secluded segments. ‘Internet Use and Friendship Structures of young migrants in Vienna: a Question of Diversity within Social Networks and Online Social Games’1 is a transdisciplinary2 research project with the objective to create a serious music-based online social game, which firstly is intended to be a positive impact game with the purpose of furthering integration and encouraging the manifestation of meaningful multiethnic relations. Secondly, the game shall make social interaction observable for evaluation. This paper gives an overview of which methodological approaches can be combined in the phases of the game’s design process and shows how the mutual embedding of game design researchers and social scientists works in this context.

 

Epistemic games & applied drama: Converging conventions for serious play

Cameron David Carroll John Wotzko Rebecca
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This paper describes a way to bridge the remaining conceptual gap between the conventions of digital games and those of non-theatrical drama forms, particularly when both fields are applied to non-entertainment settings. The approaches and literature surrounding both David Williamson Shaffer’s work in epistemic games and Dorothy Heathcote’s work in applied drama are compared. The teaching strategies in both approaches use a range of dramatic techniques that engage students in learning tasks which involve solving problems, and producing working content as if the students were professionals in a particular field of expertise. The similarities between the two pedagogies allow designers of serious digital games to borrow from frameworks in applied drama to further develop authentic learning experiences. A case study examines the application of these two pedagogies in the design of a Web-based game engine for the delivery of training scenarios.

 

Playful Crowdsourcing for Energy- Efficient Automotive Navigation

Niesenhaus Joerg Muenter Daniel Hussein Tim Ziegler Juergen
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

In this paper, we describe the work-in-progress state of a playful simulation using crowdsourcing to gather data of efficient routes for automotive navigation in the context of electro mobility. Users will contribute well-known routes of their local area by playing the simulation. The routes will be evaluated with regard to height structure, traffic volume, and traffic signal frequency in the context of the daytime, season, and further time-dependent events. Based on this data, the simulation will be able to calculate the most energy-efficient route.

 

Business Games, Rationality and Control Logistics

Nohr Rolf F
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This paper presentsthe research project “Business Games as Cultural Techniques. Transforming Knowledge and Steering Actions at the Interface between Economy, Computer Sciences and Mediality”.1 The main idea of the project is to reflect a development that is central in the history of the computer as well as games between 1950 and 1970, when both these cultural techniques were at the centre of great and revolutionary changes to the social order. The main result of this rearrangement is today’s understanding of the logic to market economy and steering rationality – but also the idea of serious games or the specific connection of computer and game.

 

Computer history and the movement of business simulations

Wiemer Serjoscha
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

In this paper, I explore some aspects of the rise of early business games in the post-war period after the Second World War. For a game to become truth-apt in a scientific sense and able to guide actions in a pragmatic sense it needs coupling to the computer and its technical-mechanical calculatory competence as well as certain types of rationality assigned to it culturally. Regarding this interconnection of games and rationality with the medium computer, three different ways of using computers can be described: First, the idea of the computer functions operationally in administration. With the aid of the computer, many of the corporate management’s tasks are to be realized in a more rational and less mistake prone way. Secondly, the computer appears simulatorily in this context, by calculating and presenting complex management operations. Following the idea of the cybernetic control circuit, the computer as dream constellation promises understanding and manipulability of complex systemic interdependencies. Third, the constellation of the computer acts as a stochastic and probabilistic tool, as a decision making aid in possible situations and for the consequences of future decisions. In early business simulations, the company, modeled as a game, is examined and evaluated with the aid of the computer. Thus, the business game serves as a meta-reflection of processes, decisions like resorting to services such as small business health and safety advice from Avensure, strategies and planning within the company (1). The interconnections of rationality and the mediality of computing machines are complex and run parallelly on several levels, as historically the computer not only changes the functionality of a business operationally as an element of rationalization in order to increase efficiency for example in administrative procedures (scientific management), but at the same time is also used on the level of long-term planning, analysis, decision making as well as in schooling and training (decision making).

 

Collaboration and Team Composition in Applied Game Creation Processes

van Roessel Lies van Mastrigt-Ide Jeroen
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

In this explorative study, the collaboration and team composition within applied game creation processes is investigated. Applied games are games that are deployed for purposes like training, education, persuasion, physical exercise etc., i.e. all games that bring about effects that are useful outside the context of the game itself. Ten Dutch applied game designers were interviewed and asked about the creation process of one recently finished applied game project. There are three tendencies that surfaced from these interviews: 1) a domain expert or Subject Matter Expert (SME) in the field one is making a game for is to be involved when creating an applied game, 2) this SME is typically the client - or working for the client - which can lead to unbalanced games and 3) although one could expect otherwise, there is usually no expert on transfer involved in the applied game creation process. In the final section, topics for further research are suggested.

 

How Multiplayer Games Create New Media Politics

Konzack Lars Lindof Thessa
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

In this article we will propose a framework for massive multiplayer games, giving the players a raise of consciousness in understanding politics and society. We will set a mass media politics up against a new media politics as it emerges from the use of massive multiplayer games. We will start with a definition of mass media and new media, at the same time explaining the differences between the two. Afterwards we will give a definition of serious games. We finish the article with examples of games, which can give raise to counsciousness about political and societal problems and possibilities.