Art of Gaming - Loneliness. Your Brain on Video Games Video. Virtual robots that teach themselves kung fu could revolutionize video games. In the not-so-distant future, characters might practice kung-fu kicks in a digital dojo before bringing their moves into the latest video game.
AI researchers at UC Berkeley and the University of British Columbia have created virtual characters capable of imitating the way a person performs martial arts, parkour, and acrobatics, practicing moves relentlessly until they get them just right. The work could transform the way video games and movies are made.
Instead of planning a character’s actions in excruciating detail, animators might feed real footage into a program and have their characters master them through practice. Such a character could be dropped into a scene and left to perform the actions. “An artist can give just a few examples, and then the system can then generalize to all different situations,” says Jason Peng, a first-year PhD student at UC Berkeley, who carried out the research. The researchers captured the actions of expert martial artists and acrobats.
Can a video game company tame toxic behaviour? It took less than a minute of playing League of Legends for a homophobic slur to pop up on my screen.
Actually, I hadn't even started playing. It was my first attempt to join what many agree to be the world's leading online game, and I was slow to pick a character. The messages started to pour in. “Pick one, kidd,” one nudged. Then, “Choose FA GO TT.” Noah Baker visits a video game bar to find out about toxic behaviour online — and how to stop it It was an unusual spelling, and the spaces may have been added to ease the word past the game's default vulgarity filter, but the message was clear. Online gamers have a reputation for hostility. Racist, sexist and homophobic language is rampant; aggressors often threaten violence or urge a player to commit suicide; and from time to time, the vitriol spills beyond the confines of the game.
League of Legends has 67 million players and grossed an estimated US$1.25 billion in revenue last year. Big business Marv Watson. Interview: Tanya Krzywinska, professor of games. I’m not sure that games have ‘academic’ potential, more a case of the academic having the potential for informing the development of game media.
There are games that I believe ask more questions and test the boundaries of the medium in different ways, however; games such as Silent Hill, Bioshock, The Stanley Parable, Primal and, in some ways, The Secret World. As you can see I do tend to have a personal preference towards a certain genre! What do you think it is about games that makes them stand apart as an expressive narrative medium? Games’ ability to enfold you into a fictional space is crucially different to other media. Principally, it’s the fact that games offer the ability to create real choices for players that have ramifications for storyline. Academia as a Feminist Developer. Academia as a Feminist Developer What’s it like to be a forward facing feminist in the sciences in academia?
Here’s a brief story about my experiences of the last six years at NYU, Hogeschool Kunst de Utrecht and Goldsmiths, University of London. For five years I worked at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. During that time, the department and school changed quite a bit. Games in Education - Research. A Study of User Interface Modifications in World of Warcraft. By Sean Targett, Victoria Verlysdonk, Howard J.
Hamilton, Daryl Hepting Abstract The World of Warcraft (WoW) (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) provides users with extensive control over its user interface (UI), which has inspired the emergence of a large community devoted to developing UI modifications (UI modding). Through investigation of the members of the community of those who design and use UI modifications for WoW, we gather information that may aid in the creation of communities dedicated to modifying the interfaces of other software packages. Death Loop as a Feature. By Olli Tapio Leino Abstract Assuming its premise in the experience of being stuck in a death loop in Fallout: New Vegas (2010), this essay theorises the possibilities of interpretation in single-player computer game play.
This amounts to a critical examination of the paradigmatic approach of interpreting computer games as games accessible for analysis and critique through 'research-play'. Comparing the role of rules in the activity facilitated by ‘playable artifacts’ like single-player computer games or pinball machines to rules in traditional, or more accurately “transmedial” (Juul 2003) games, the essay questions the feasibility of considering computer games ‘games’ and suggests that a defining characteristic of ‘playable artifacts’ is to be found from the relationship between materiality and process. Death Loop as a Feature. The Heuristic Circle of Real-Time Strategy Process: A StarCraft: Brood War Case Study. By Simon Dor Abstract This article aims to describe competitive playing experience in StarCraft: Brood War.
Strategy is defined as a process using game plans (strategies) and game states. By using cognitive psychology works, as well as their applications to chess and in film studies, the goal of this article is to summarize cognitive and perceptive processes in the heuristic circle of real-time strategy process. This model is based on three levels of strategic plans (operational, mobilized and projected plans) as well as on three levels of game states in the player’s mind (immediate, inferred and anticipated game states). Play as Research: The Iterative Design Process. Play as Research: The Iterative Design Process Final Draft: Needs and Pleasures Design is a way to ask questions.
Design research, when it occurs through the practice of design itself, is a way to ask larger questions beyond the limited scope of a particular design problem. When design research is integrated into the design process, new and unexpected questions emerge directly from the act of design. This chapter outlines one such research design methodology -- the iterative design process -- using three recent game projects with which I have been involved (SiSSYFiGHT 2000, , and LEGO Junkbot).
Creating a Culture of Design Research. Creating a Culture of Design Research Final Draft: July 8, 2003 As this book abundantly demonstrates, design research can come in many forms, from quantitative market research to personal interviews to experimental design explorations.
How scientists can manipulate us with games to gather data. Smartphones have turned us into an army of accidental data collectors, checking in at locations, taking photos, recording audio, even gauging network speeds wherever we go.
This rich data can be used for research, but because people are creatures of habit, there are sometimes gaping blind spots.