According to the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey (ACS), women make up 48% of the total workforce of the United States, compared to 24% of the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) based workforce. The United States Department of Commerce (2011b) reports that STEM occupations are projected to grow by 17% from 2008 to 2018, nearly twice as much as non-STEM occupations (9.8%). Even as more women pursue higher education degrees and are steadily increasing their numbers in the workforce, the number of women in STEM occupations has stayed at 24%. Furthermore, based on all the women who graduate with a STEM degree, 26% go on to work in a STEM occupation, compared to 40% of men. (2011a).
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Popularity: 2% [?]

Bellow is a quick presentation which demonstrates the various features of Chat Mapper for creating non-linear dialog in games through the use of a simple branching user interface and basic LUA scripting. I will be experimenting with Chat Mapper and integrating it with Unity3d Game Engine using iSpeech and iDirect in the very near future, so stay tuned!

Popularity: 3% [?]

I am currently taking on the dual task of researching “game feel” for a Game Modding class at NYU’s Game Center, and teaching myself Unity3d. As part of my course work, we have been asked to read “Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation”.

In this book, the author talks about 3 specific areas that effect the “feel” of a game. He describes feel as being, “Real-time control of virtual objects in a simulated space, with interactions emphasized by polish”.

Real-Time Control
This is comprised of a interactivity between at least tow participants. Each participant actively communicates with each other though a combination of input and output feedback. Bellow, Swink describes this process as it pertains to computer games and their participants.

The user has some intent, which is expressed to the computer in the form of the user’s input. The computer reconciles this input with its own internal model and outputs the results. The user then perceives the changes, thinks about how they compare to the original intent, and formulates a new action, which is expressed to the computer through another input.

Simulated Spaces
These are are comprised of physical interaction that take place in a virtual space. Through the use of level design, collision detection, and physics, the game designer is able to give meaning to the games movement. The surrounding visuals offer a frame of reference for the player to get the impression of speed. “Using the avatar as a channel for expression and perception, we experience game worlds at the tactile, physical level of the world around us.”

Polish
Polish is comprised of all this tiny details that “artificially enhance” a players interaction without changing any of the games core functionality. Examples of these could be dust particles on ground, sound effects, camera shakes. These effects, add the games overall appeal and allow for the game to seem more “real”.
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Popularity: 3% [?]

Introduction

Virtual Worlds

A virtual world is described as “a computer- generated display that allows or compels the user (or users) to have a sense of being present in an environment other than the one they are actually in, and to interact with that environment” (Schroeder, 1996, pg. 25). This allows for the ‘user’ to experience a immersive sense of ‘being there’ (Taylor, 2002) and having ability to interact with each other as well as with computer-controlled non-player characters (NPCs) by assuming different personae, better known as their ‘avatar’.

Avatars

An avatar is a self-imposed representation of a participant interacting within a virtual environment, and is far more then an object manipulated by a participant. It is a method in which users could embody themselves into these virtual environments (Taylor, 2002). As T.L Taylor (2002) points out, avatars are

“… the material out of which relationships and interactions are embodied: much as in offline life with its corporeal bodies, digital bodies are used in a variety of ways – to greet, to play, to signal group affiliation, to convey opinions or feelings, and to create closeness.”

This graphical representation combined with actions, communicational and social affordances brought about through a virtual world, help in developing a sense of being ‘there’ from the player (Taylor, 2002). This immersion results in avatar behaviors that mimic the social constructs of ‘real life’. An example of this is shown by how participants feel a sense of ‘personal space’ from within a virtual environment. Similar to ‘real life’, physical proximity between avatars can be used to signal friendship and aggression towards another player (Taylor, 2002).

In this paper, we will discuss how we could influence emotional engagement in children by understanding their needs, developmental abilities and experiential goals, while increasing their sense of presence in the system. These influences could then be used as a guideline for both aesthetic and mechanical design choices that may have an impact on a child’s virtual world experience.

Growth of Children Participating in Virtual Worlds

Computers have become much more accessible for children around the world, with 71% of households in developing countries owning a computer and 65.6% having internet access (International Telecommunications Union, 2010). With the increase of working households, many parents use media as “a chance to get their chores done, quiet their kids down, or just have some ‘me’ time, knowing that their kids are ‘safe’ — not playing outside, and less likely to be making trouble around the house” (Rideout & Hamel, 2006, p. 32). As a result, the popularity of virtual world registered accounts has dramatically increased for this demographic. KZero reports (2011) that the 6-10 year old demographic has grown from 77 million, to 272 million in only 2 years.

Before being able to successfully design a virtual world for this audience it is important to understand the developmental and social differences amongst the group, when compared to adults. Bellow is a brief overview of relevant literature depicting aspects of developmental and social milestones that could influence the methods in which children interacts with virtual worlds.
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Popularity: 12% [?]

Based on Game Design Workshop, Second Edition: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games

One of the most difficult tasks that most novice game designers are faced with is patience. The excitement of developing a game, and the eagerness to make a great product sometimes backfires when the creative process is overlooked. This also results in more serious issues down the road, when user research uncovers problems in the game’s core mechanics that are difficult to solve once they have gone deep into production. Many of these issues could have been resolved by creating a prototype of the interaction, and use that as a testing environment to experiment with a game’s fundamental mechanics.

Why is a prototype important?

A written explanation of how a game works, such as a design document, works well in may aspects. However, creating a tangible working model of your idea takes away some of the abstraction in the document. A prototype’s role is to help you iron out your ideas, and test what work and what doesn’t.
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Popularity: 14% [?]

based on Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience (Ch. 9 )

Feature Design: Listening to Metacritics

Metacritics is a site that rates games and has been used as an industry standard benchmark by many development studios.This type of data helps to run relational analysis to find elements that either help or hinder success for games. It is important to note that this analysis technique should be pursued with caution and should only be used as a guideline not a standard. Taking these scores and analysis too literal could cause your design to lose some of it’s novelty and uniqueness and not being undifferentiated from the the competition, which is the point of the analysis.

Some examples of positive similarities are

1. Large in scope with 20+ hours of content
2. Lots of player choice activities
3. Highly replayable
4. Advance audio/visuals
5. Responsive

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Popularity: 11% [?]

based on Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience (Ch. 7)

Expert evaluations, unlike heuristic evaluation require an experience evaluator. Typically these evaluations are administered by a group of 2-3 evaluators, who bring their individual points of view into the evaluation to uncover the as many user experience issues as possible. Issues could range from user interface problems, game play issues, or specific area concerning the platform (ex. mobile phones).

Evaluations, like quality assurance, should be tightly integrated into an iterative development process. This process should be started as early as possible via design document or paper prototyping. These techniques could expose some obvious issues regarding the over all game mechanics, and user interface that could be handled before any code is written.
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Popularity: 10% [?]

based on Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience (Ch. 6)

Heuristics is another way of saying “the rule of thumb”. They are guidelines that evaluators could use, in order to rapidly identify common issues in game design. The first attempt at compiling a set of heuristics was done by Jacob Nielsen.

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Popularity: 12% [?]

Microsoft has integrated TRUE as part of their user research to measure “user initiated events” (UIEs) to better understand user behavior. UIEs are not new, and have been used by behaviorist psychologist such as B.F. Skinner to understand animal behavior. In his implementation, called the “Skinner Box” he was able to have many advantages to other measuring tools lacked.

• It did not require an experimenter.
• It improved reliability by reducing experimenter interaction with the animal.
• It could accurately record behavior over a long period of time

Solutions such as Skinner’s where rather simple, however with the combination of larger amounts of data, and more complex systems there has been a growing need to come up with a method of dealing with the massive quantities of data and displaying it in a manner that is interpretable.
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Popularity: 10% [?]

based on my reading of Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience (Ch. 4)

Microsoft has been in the business of applying usability strategies to their production software, for over 25 years. They have since adjusted these methods to fit with their XBox gaming initiatives. Games bring a unique set of challenges, which include:

• Purchase and use of games is discretionary, unlike production software that used out of necessity to fulfill a task.
• Games is a tough market where almost 80% lose money.
• There are many game studios and publishers. This is different to production software where there is usually a few leaders in the field.
• Games are complex and can involve artificial intelligence and other higher level programming.
• Games are popular.
• Games are big business. In 2006, game revenue hit 7.4 billion, not including hardware.
• Wide range of application which include entertainment, education and others.
• Game attempt to create novel, unique experience for users, unlike production software that simply automates existing tasks.
• Games have a development cycles that is very conducive to user testing. It consist of on iterative environment that allows for fine tuning user experience, before it goes out on the market. Production software, sometimes take the “Google”, and let their application loose to wild once there is a usable build.
• Game developers are dedicated to create positive great user experiences.
• Gamers demand novelty. Unlike productivity software users that aren’t as welcoming to major shifts is user interface since it will present learning curves.
• Game experience is based on game mechanics. This is what influences a users pattern of behavior, also known as the game’s dynamics.

Usability Testing vs Play Testing

User testing allows researcher to uncover patterns of user behavior that aren’t part of the game designer’s intent. This could include how long a task took to complete, or the frequency and nature of an error. (section 4.3.1, para. 1) Play testing is a bit different in focus. It is concerned with a player’s opinions and attitudes for a game. It is important to include play testing in the mix of product development, because behavioral data alone can not adequately answer questions like “is the game fun?”
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Popularity: 9% [?]