Game-based simulators, sometimes referred to as "lightweight" simulators, have benefits such as flexible technology and economic feasibility. In this article, we extend the notion of a game-based simulator by introducing multiple screen view and physical interaction. These features are expected to enhance immersion and fidelity. By utilizing these concepts we have constructed a training simulator for breathing apparatus entry. Game hardware and software have been used to produce the application. More important, the application itself is deliberately designed to be a game. Indeed, one important design goal is to create an entertaining and motivating experience combined with learning goals in order to create a serious game. The system has been evaluated in cooperation with the Swedish Rescue Services Agency to see which architectural features contribute to perceived fidelity. The modes of visualization and interaction as well as level design contribute to the usefulness of the system.
Facial analysis is a promising approach to detect emotions of players unobtrusively, however approaches are commonly evaluated in contexts not related to games, or facial cues are derived from models not designed for analysis of emotions during interactions with games. We present a method for automated analysis of facial cues from videos as a potential tool for detecting stress and boredom of players behaving naturally while playing games. Computer vision is used to automatically and unobtrusively extract 7 facial features aimed to detect the activity of a set of facial muscles. Features are mainly based on the Euclidean distance of facial landmarks and do not rely on pre-dened facial expressions, training of a model or the use of facial standards. An empirical evaluation was conducted on video recordings of an experiment involving games as emotion elicitation sources. Results show statistically signicant dierences in the values of facial features during boring and stressful periods of gameplay for 5 of the 7 features. We believe our approach is more user-tailored, convenient and better suited for contexts involving games.
Computer games are increasingly used for purposes beyond mere entertainment, and current hi-tech simulators can provide quite, naturalistic contexts for purposes such as traffic education. One of the critical concerns in this area is the validity or transferability of acquired skills from a simulator to the real world context. In this paper, we present our work in which we compared driving in the real world with that in the simulator at two levels, that is, by using performance measures alone, and by combining psychophysiological measures with performance measures. For our study, we gathered data using questionnaires as well as by logging vehicle dynamics, environmental conditions, video data, and users' psychophysiological measurements. For the analysis, we used several novel approaches such as scatter plots to visualize driving tasks of different contexts and to obtain vigilance estimators from electroencephalographic (EEG) data in order to obtain important results about the differences between the driving in the two contexts. Our belief is that both experimental procedures and findings of our experiment are very important to the field of serious games concerning how to evaluate the fitness of driving simulators and measure driving performance. © 2013 Hiran B. Ekanayake et al.
With the continuous development of the game industry, research in the game field is also deepening. Many interdisciplinary areas of knowledge and theory have been used to promote the development of the game industry. Business intelligence technologies have been applied to game development for game design and game optimization. However, few systematic research efforts have focused on the field of game publishing, particularly with regard to independent (indie) game publishing. In this paper, we analyse data collected from a set of interviews with small indie game developers. The results indicate that most of the indie game developers have already used business intelligence for game self-publishing, although three main challenges have been identified: first, how to conduct marketing promotion and improve the return on investment (ROI); second, how to collect game publishing data; and third, how to analyse the data in order to guide game self-publishing. Our interviews also reveal that the business model applied to a game significantly impacts the role of game analytics. The study expands and advances the research on how game analytics can be used for game publishing, particularly for indie game self-publishing.
This paper addresses localization from a game development perspective by studying the state of tool support for a localization work in general purpose game engines. Using a systematic mapping study, the most commonly used game engines and their official tool libraries are studied. The results indicate that even though localization tools exists for the game engines included in the study, the visibility, availability, and functionality differ. Localization tools that are user facing, i.e., used to create localization, are scarce while many are tool facing, i.e., used to import localization kits made outside the production pipeline.