My approach is grounded in the academia but moving towards the real deal, the practical implementation, or you might say, the geeky know-a-lot-but-haven”t-really-tried-it-properly-yet approach. That is except for my experimenting in my spare time and at the university not to mention my recent internship in a game company called Titoonic in Copenhagen.
In short the paper categorizes terms of “casual” in relation to games into the following:
Casual Games:
The games that are casual or designed to belong to a subset of games, meant to be played casually. Mostly defined as having “generally appealing content, simple controls, easy-to-learn gameplay, fast rewards, or support short play sessions” [Kuitinen et al.].
Casual Game Player:
A person that plays games labeled or designed to be Casual Games. The stay-at-home wife 35+.
Casual Gamer:
A person who play ANY games casually (notice the difference from above).
Casual Gaming: The general attitude or approach towards gaming. (Hardcore gamers do not play for leisure).
Casual Playing:
Describes the way a casual gamer would play a game. “… in small time bursts or in a low cognitive state” [Kuitinen et al.]. Playing without effort.
In my humble oppinion it is nice to have a clear definition eventhough some people think it is waste of time and goes “no speak – make game”. I wonder where the cultural and technical evolution would be if everyone thought like that when they discovered the wheel.
Anyway… I want to give my support to the guys in Tampere that like to explain the buzz. Kudos!
In the early days of computer games the sound was created using simple synthesis techniques, but as the development of better processors and larger storage media, the development lead towards the use of wave-table synthesis, which has become the most used technique in current computer games. Since the introduction of the wave-table synthesis the development in audio creation and playback in games has stagnated.
One of the latest fields within sound synthesis is physically modelled, which holds great potential, within games and interactive environments, because of its more dynamic nature. An area in which very sparse research has been done is measuring the impact of physically modelled sound in computer game environments. This has lead to the following problem statement to be formulated: To which degree does physically modelled sound enhance physical immersion in first person computer games?
This project has analysed theories proposed by several authors within the fields: immersion, narrative and gameplay in computer games, audio in computer games. These fields and their different theories have formed an ontology for the project, upon which an application has been build. The application consists of a Half Life 2 modification, which makes use of the Nintendo Wii controllers, together with a modal sound synthesis.
There is no such thing as human computer interaction (HCI) as there is a human, in the role of a designer, behind all computer systems. The concept of HCI is therefore a way to describe interesting ways* for humans to interact through computer systems. Hereby I propose that there is no such thing as HCI because computers do not provide information in any form. Computers are tools to mediate information between humans. What is being discussed here is the interaction between a human and a machine concerning the information that is being exchanged. One might argue that the interaction between a human and a machine is possible, however, this is without meaning because an interaction is an exchange of information and only living things can provide information. (more…)
As human beings, we are dependent on our ability to hear sound in three dimensions since it provides us with many clues about how we are to navigate and behave in our surroundings. The fact that we from birth have been equipped with two ears placed on each side of our head makes us able to perceive the azimuth of a given sound, in fact we are able to localise a sound source within 2 degrees of azimuth; the design of the pinna or outer ear and our torso provides us with the ability to perceive the elevation of a given sound.
During the past decade there has been an increase in interest within 3D sound or spatial audio, both within entertainment, industry, and research; within this period several methods and systems has been developed to reproduce spatial audio. One of the methods is called head-related transfer functions (HRTF), which uses several audio cues in order to provide the listener with a broad spatial soundscape.
Having done my bachelor on games, it is time to move on to something more specific, namely how head-related transfer functions can be used in real time – or actually we have found research on efficient algorithms that simulates HRTF but does not directly use HRTF-databases.
Anyway, as 7th semester medialogy master student at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, I take part in creating an audiovisual augmented reality (AR) installation that uses visual tracking and simulates HRTFs. My interest lies in how 3D-audio can become more vivid without using too much system resources and how important it is (i.e. to what extend people notice differences of off-location spatial audio).
From my part, and my associate mr. Anders Fredslund, we will create an external for Max/MSP that handles HRTF and hopefully it can be used to other than testing our theses.
In this project we did a lot of research in the social factors in play and gaming. We established a framework for describing the immersive factors in a game and tested the framework with a computer augmented card game that displayed the players’ stats in a pseudo–holographic display, which enabled face–to–face communication while following the displayed stats.
How can we improve the advantages of a board game with the technologies provided by a computer?
When the tendency of playing games becomes an asocial thing, it is a scream to the developers to change the course.
The ever growing and impressive features of computer games have long suppressed the power of conventional games. The still fast development in technologies allow for still more extraordinary graphic engines. But what is happening to good old tabletop games.
We have delved into this aspect and investigated the relation between immersion and socialization as a method to create a relation between the idea of board games and the power of computers.
The first production was called Hængerøv and was made in Source SDK using Lua, C++ and Visual Studio 2005. The production took place May 2008.
The game was a 3D platformer where you would play a young boy, that accidentally broke his sister’s new cell phone while secretly tampering with it in his tree house one night. The objective is to collect the missing buttons while evading the furious sister who threatens to embarrass you by showing a picture of your bare bottom to the entire school, but that is not all.
The dark garden is a treacherous place to sneak around. Garden gnomes have come to life and they yodel awfully loud when tripped over, and that is what your sister is waiting for, so she can find you and take your picture.
Your parents aren’t of much help as they are having a garden party. Empty wine bottles can also give up your position, and so can the (not-so-scary-almost-pathetic) ghosts that are haunting the garden.
Fortunately you are armed with your Bug Vacuum Gun, that can suck up the ghost. The downside of it is that it attracts your sister’s attention as well.
The only chance of avoiding total embarrassment is to return the fixed mobile to your sister before her boyfriend calls her.
With a background in music and theatre, my technical interests have always had elements of creativity, that being said, I possess an enthusiastic motivation to create technical wonders enriched with aesthetic considerations based on the user’s experience.
At my recently completed study, I have gained knowledge in creativity, natural and human sciences, along with skills in programming and media production. This knowledge enables me to understand designers’, users’, and engineers’ descriptions of the products.
The creative thinking and knowledge through education combined has proven useful in projects and internship when the need to structure innovative ideas.
In group work I have shown initiative and been a communicative motivator. When problems has occurred towards deadlines, I have often been in the role as a mediator and identifier of the problem in its simplest form, often followed by a role as a delegator of the tasks to solve the problem.
