Högskolan i Skövde

Tabletop Role Playing Games (TRPG) are games that require players to become the characters they play through engaging in role-play. The challenge of training AI lies in the requirement of it not only understanding the explicitly stated game rules, but also the implicit ones that come with role-playing. Previous studies endeavouring said challenge allude to aspects of role-play, but do not emphasise its role in their methods, indicating that the definition of role-play and how it is to be employed remains unclear. This short paper aims to investigate a proposed definition of role-play based on previous research and employ its use on Large Language Model LLM, eliciting an understanding thereof through a novel prompting method dubbed Controlled Chain of Thought (CCoT). CCoT allows for the LLM to highlight absence of information in inputs given to it by generating questions, which become the template for its chain of thoughts when answered. This paper presents an initial pilot testing of CCoT as well as opens up the discussion of how a definition of role-play can be beneficial for future studies.

This study investigates the prospect of integrating sustainability issues into game development education by reporting experiences from two Nordic Alliance for Sustainability in Gaming (NASG) events. The paper highlights the importance of offering a social, creative environment in which the process of jamming is emphasized over results. We unpack the potential of game jams to be used for teaching subjects other than game development itself, particularly in relation to complex, anxiety provoking topics such as sustainability. Based on data consisting of participant reflections on their own moods and gained insights throughout the course of the jam, the research reveals a clear change in attitudes among the participants as they move on in their creative process. The study concludes that game jams, as activities defined by high levels of creativity and social engagement, is a powerful educational tool for approaching heavy topics while still letting participants cope with, and even empower them to address such complex issues.

This article examines level design processes and challenges at professional game stu- dios. Thematic analysis of data, recorded through field studies and semi-structured interviews, identify four key themes: level design as an interdisciplinary effort; who is the level designer; the role of narrative in level design; and challenges of managing creativity in the level design process. Results indicate that while the role called level designer is often assigned to specific disciplines, the process of level design is usually highly interdisciplinary. Furthermore, this interdisciplinary collaboration requires management to maintain both creativity and efficient pipelines, by distributing owner- ship and facilitating communication and planning. The level design process seems par- ticularly vulnerable to suboptimal interdisciplinary communication and planning, due to significant reliance on narrative design, game design, art, sound design, and tool development. While this article addresses level design specifically, most observations are comparable to previous findings on game development in general.

Games as a service is similar to software as a service, which provides players with game content on a continuous monetization model. Game revenue forecast is vital to game developers to make the right business decisions, such as determining the marketing budget, controlling the development cost, and setting up benchmarks for evaluating game publishing performance. How to make the revenue forecast and integrate it with the game publishing process is hard for small and medium-sized independent (indie) game developers. This includes all steps of the process, from forecasting to decision-making based on the results. This paper provides a data-driven method that uses the mobile game revenue forecast based on different time-series prediction models to drive the game publishing. We demonstrate how to use the data-driven method to guide an indie game studio to forecast revenue and then set the revenue forecast as the internal benchmark to drive game publishing. In practice, we involve a real game project from an indie game studio and provide guidance for one of their casual game projects. Then, based on the revenue forecast, we discuss how to set the revenue forecast as an internal benchmark and drive the actions for mobile game publishing. Finally, we make a conclusion on how our data-driven method can be used to drive mobile game publishing and also discuss future research work.

Objective: The aim of this study was to explore expecting parents’ perceptions of the Childbirth Journey as an intervention that includes medical information for parental support, constructed as a serious game.

Methods: In this qualitative study, semi-structured interviews were held with expecting parents in Sweden who were able to talk about specific parts of the Childbirth Journey they appreciated or found difficult to understand. A phenomenographic methodology was employed for data analysis.

Results: Participants perceived the Childbirth Journey to be easily accessible and customized with reliable information. The design and features of the intervention were perceived by the expecting parents to enhance the intervention’s usability, appeal, and trustworthiness. When parental couples used the Childbirth Journey together, it gave them an opportunity to discuss and better understand each other’s situation. The participants proposed several changes to the existing version of the game, mostly related to extending practical information and illustrated scenarios but also to the further development of the game’s design and animations. The participants found the Knowledge portal to be the most appealing part of the Childbirth Journey.

Conclusions: The Childbirth Journey intervention was concluded to be a valuable digital complement to in-person profes- sional support, especially given the current COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in place in Sweden, which do not allow antenatal visits by partners. However, in its current form, the Childbirth Journey has some deficiencies and would therefore benefit from further development and exploration.

Digitaliseringen av mode växer fram i allt större takt och under en tid där fysisk interaktion är begränsat. Under de senaste åren har flertalet samarbeten ägt rum mellan mode- och spelföretag, där digitala tvillingar av fysiska kläder skapas och implementeras i spel. Denna förstudie är finansierad av Västra Götalandsregionen och ämnar att undersöka kopplingar mellan mode och spel, dess skillnader och likheter när det kommer till konsumtion och betydelse av digitala respektive fysiska kläder, samt även undersöka samarbetsvägarna mellan dessa två områden och hur samarbeten skulle kunna se ut. Under förstudien har aktörer inom mode- och spelindustri intervjuats och en workshop har hållits för att få en djupare förståelse kring gemensamma intressepunkter och utmaningar. Resultatet har visat att det finns starka paralleller kring kläders representation för både skaparen och användaren i båda världar och att utmaningarna för samarbete dels ligger i tekniska begränsningar, företagskultur och bristande kunskap om det andra området hos respektive område. Resultatet visar också ett växande intresse och behov av hybriddesigner eller hybrida team som agerar som broar mellan dessa två områden.

INTRODUCTION: Serious games is an effort to combine the engagement and motivation from games with some sort of utility beyond mere entertainment.

OBJECTIVES: The objective of this paper is to revisit and analyse six projects to explore the design space for serious games and derive design guidelines for serious games.

METHODS: We analysed our project portfolio to identify a set of projects which satisfied well-established guidelines for design science research. By analysing these projects as well as their outcomes we generated a set of design principles for serious games.

RESULTS: The results from this study is a conceptualisation of the design space for serious games and seven design principles.

CONCLUSION: By explicating the game design component in serious games and relating it to the utility dimension we add to the understanding of the serious games from a game perspective, which is relevant to any development effort intending to use the persuasive and motivational power of games.

As a business model, the essence of games is to provide a service to satisfy the player experience. From a business perspective, development in the game industry has led to the application of Business Intelligence (BI) becoming more and more extensive. However, related research lacks systematic examination and precise classification. This paper provides a comprehensive literature review of BI used in the game industry, focusing primarily on game analytics. This research mainly studies and discusses five aspects. First, we explore game analytics aspects in the available literature based on the traditional game value chain. Second, we find out the main purposes of using analytics in the game industry. Third, we present the problems or challenges in the game area, which can be addressed by using game analytics. Fourth, we also list different algorithms that have been used in game analytics for prediction. Finally, we summarize the research areas that have already been covered in literature but need further development. Based on the categories established after the mapping and the review findings, we also discuss the limitations of game analytics and propose potential research points for future research.

Marketing is vital for game businesses. However, it is hard to reach the target audiences and choose the right marketing strategies for different user acquisition channels in mobile game publishing. This paper shows how business intelligence can guide independent (indie) mobile game developers to do marketing promotion based on a data-driven method. We apply and extend the ARM funnel model from social game publishing to mobile game publishing and provide a data-driven method to evaluate the marketing promotion performance. First, in order to address indie game marketing challenges, we propose a data-driven method by defining key metrics and applying two different analysis methods for assessing mobile game marketing promotion. Second, we apply our data-driven method to an indie mobile game project and guide the indie game studio to determine the potential marketing promotion issues. Third, we also provide suggestions on improving marketing performance based on analysis results, especially by differentiating between channels. Finally, we summarize how our method can be generalized and used to guide indie mobile game marketing promotion, find high-quality channels for user acquisition, improve the marketing promotion effect, and discuss future research work.