Tag Archives: game

Book, book chapter, , , , , , , ,

I’m looking forward to this book, I’m interviewed for a section in it and the rest of the content is interesting!

Champion, E., & Estrina, T. (2025: in press). On his roles as Professor and Research Fellow- Erik Champion. In V. Hui, R. Scavnicky, & T. Estrina (Eds.), Architecture and Videogames Intersecting Worlds. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Architecture-and-Videogames-Intersecting-Worlds/Hui-Scavnicky-Estrina/p/book/9781032528854

“The definitive resource on consolidating these interconnected fields, this book will mobilize the current generation of designers to explore and advance this synthesis.””This book explores and affirms the emergent symbiosis between video games and architecture, including insights from a diverse range of disciplines.

With contributions from authorities in both architecture and videogame industries, it examines how videogames as a medium have enlightened the public about the built environments of the past, offered heightened awareness of our current urban context, and presented inspiration and direction for the future directions of architecture. A relatively nascent medium, videogames have rapidly transitioned from cultural novelty to architectural prophet over the past 50 years. That videogames serve as an interactive proxy for the real world is merely a gateway into just how pervasive and potent the medium is in architectural praxis. If architecture is a synthesis of cultural value and videogames are a dominant cultural medium of today, how will they influence the architecture of tomorrow? Heavily illustrated with over 200 images, the book is split into seven sections: Cultural Artifacts, Historic Reproduction, Production Technologies, Design Pedagogy, Proxies and Representation, Bridging Worlds, and Projected Futures.

The definitive resource on consolidating these interconnected fields, this book will mobilize the current generation of designers to explore and advance this synthesis.”

New Journal article out in print

Academic, Journal, , ,
  • Champion, E. (2018). Computer Games, Heritage and Preservation. Preservation Education & Research, published by the National Council for Preservation Education, USA. URL: http://www.ncpe.us/about-ncpe/ Not yet online.

Abstract

The video game industry is a profitable one. Juniper Research predicted that worldwide it would pass 100 billion dollars in revenue in 2017 (Graham 2017). Virtual heritage (sometimes defined as the application of virtual reality to cultural heritage), has been an academic field of research for at least twenty years (Addison 2001). In recent years, there has been increasing synergies between video games and virtual reality, thanks to increasingly powerful computers and the development of consumer-priced head mounted displays (HMDs), see-through augmented reality HMDs (such as the Microsoft HoloLens or Meta’s Meta 2), and smart-phone based augmented reality systems. In archaeology there has been recent investigations of “archaeogaming”, defined as “the archaeology in and of video games” (J. Aycock & Reinhard 2017), while virtual heritage designers are moving away from the principle goal of photo-realism, towards the potential of interpretation and conceptual learning (Roussou 2005).

Book Chapter Abstract

archaeology, Digital Humanities, virtual heritage, , , , ,

Book Chapter For Book On Computational Archaeology, redTDPC, INAM, Mexico

Title: A Schematic Division of Game-Learning Strategies Relevant to Digital Archaeology and Digital Cultural Heritage

Abstract

How can we transmit the values and interpretations of cultural heritage (using virtual reality) which is low-cost, contextually appropriate, educationally effective, and collaborative? While much excellent research has been undertaken on social presence in virtual environments (Swinth, 2002), research on the design and evaluation of cultural presence, the perception another culture is portrayed and experienced in a virtual environment, lags behind. Where cultural presence has been explored, it has not been directed towards the experiencing of culturally significant heritage (Riva et al., 2002), and organizations such as UNESCO have not prescribed how to determine if the user experience achieved the goals of the designers and shareholders. One possible solution for digital archaeology is to deploy commercial games that allow themselves to be modded (as in modified). This chapter will provide a simple classification of the ways in which game-based examples may help communicate digital archaeology and related content, and argue that there are at least four major areas of research that need to be investigated further.

game mechanics during the Iron Age in Yorkshire

Academic, archaeology, virtual heritage, , , , , , ,

‘Hugely important’ iron age remains found at Yorkshire site

The above is not really a picture of the beautiful artefacts, rather, my colleague Karen Miller’s snap of her class’s Lego schematic of Deakin Uni’s digital literacy framework, but you get the drift..

Hugely Important Iron Age Remains!

So says the Guardian (Nazia Parvenu, North of England correspondent,Thursday 17 March 2016 11.01 AEDT).

In the comments, however, quite a few don’t see the point, at all!

“The comments show a distinct misunderstanding of what archaeologists do & why, & basic archaeological chronology: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/17/hugely-important-iron-age-remains-found-yorkshire-site.. As archaeologists, it’s eye opening: these comments reflect a lack of basic but authoritative info we should have on Wikipedia, at least” tweeted @lornarichardson (Umeå).

Yes! We need to educate on process not only product (if a virtual heritage model is a product). Reading the comments to an article on a find in Yorkshire might lead archaeologists to despair. However a more optimistic (the glass of hemlock is half full) approach might lead us to conclude from the comments:

People are genuinely interested in process (how old are the beads and how did they get there and what happens to the bodies?

The answer might appear prosaic:

“Hello, anyone interested in learning more about the archaeological process in relation to this site can head to the East Riding of Yorkshire Planning Portal and search for application ref 13/02772/STPLF Documents logged there include the Desk Based Assessment by MAP Archaeology from August 2013 that predicted the presence of the barrows on site using aerial photos in the Humber Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) and a letter from the SMR clarifying details of the proposed excavation of the site, such as amount of the site to be sampled and the necessity for full publication.”

But it very distinctly shows the process of exploration, quest,  and of discovery as part of doing archaeology.

So how does this relate to mechanics?

Mechanics are used oh so confusingly (see a discussion on the MDA framework, and the comments, or this older 2006 article by Lost Garden with their definition below).

Game mechanics are rule based systems / simulations that facilitate and encourage a user to explore and learn the properties of their possibility space through the use of feedback mechanisms.

Thank you Lost Garden! But now we have another problem:

GM=Rules+PlaySpace/PossibilitySpace+Affordances+Feedback! Not much left over really (perhaps aesthetics, but aesthetics means more than appearance or taste).

And I could spend hours thinking about a more accurate definition of GM (Game Mechanics) but the issue here is really what sort of game mechanics would be of use to archaeologists and historians and heritage people who want to design, teach and experience such things?

Some definitions are more teleological
http://gamestudies.org/0802/articles/sicart:
“..I define core mechanics as the game mechanics (repeatedly) used by agents to achieve a systemically rewarded end-game state…
Primary mechanics can be understood as core mechanics that can be directly applied to solving challenges that lead to the desired end state.
Secondary mechanics, on the other hand, are core mechanics that ease the player’s interaction with the game towards reaching the end state.”

And yet Professor Sicart concludes the article with what to me seems to be a third and distinctly different definition:
“This article has defined game mechanics as methods invoked by agents for interacting with the game world.”

Notice the above don’t directly or primarily aim to influence the player’s mind or behaviour. Is there no space here for a little procedural rhetoric?

I’d like to keep it simple, but without attempting to destroy (completely) the useful vagueness of mechanics here are some working definitions as different flavours/aims of game mechanics:

  1. Game progression mechanics (mechanics to progress the player through the game)
  2. Performance mechanics / Rewards and skills mastery mechanics (mechanics to encourage the player to improve and extend their range of skills and judgement)
  3. Narrative mechanics (tools to progress /unfold or bring together one or more apparent story threads in relation to game play). Are dramatic mechanics a subset?
  4. Behavioural and Role assimilation mechanics (mechanics which become habit through repeated game play, and accustom players to see things in certain ways)
  5. Insight and reversal mechanics (mechanics that disrupt the in-game or real-world expectations and presumptions of the player acquired previously or during the game in order to reveal to them a viewpoint they may take for granted, or to supplant the view created by game play but a view the designer wants them to suddenly by alienated from).

I understand this seems counter-intuitive to the above definitions, especially the MDA framework (Hunicke et al, 2004, summarised on the Wikipedia, visualised as gameficational lenses by Jenny Carroll, described via 8 kinds of fun by Marc LeBlanc). However mechanics helps me when I think of the public approach/response to archaeology, the public don’t see product OR process in the same way the archaeologists do.

If digital simulations are to help archaeological communication (to simplify crudely: Why archaeology? What is archaeology? How to appreciate/do good archaeology?) then we need to think of mechanics beyond a mere advancement of game play per se.

This also ties in with another issue: the English language problem in defining and distinguishing model and simulation. I am now leaning towards thinking simulation is the more confusing term, it can be a model as in a crafted or digital object, a communicated process model that explains a predictive theory, or a hypothetical model turned into a systematic generator of potential scenarios not predicted by the system designer (a weather simulation can explain what weather has or will take place OR it can create a prediction of weather based on a conceptual, verifiable model of weather that isn’t normally a physical model of weather).

Mechanics don’t just help a model to take shape, for the wheels to spin around and pull a toy train. Mechanics helps progress a fictional world of complicit belief.

Depending on what you want to do with them, game mechanics are sometimes seen as digital tropes, or as what connects parts of a game together. They are techniques or they are components. And although they are apparently crucial to game design, the inability to distinguish them clearly from other parts of a game makes me wonder – so seldom do we hear of bad game mechanics.

Will return to this and expand on it a little more. Hopefully it makes sense, but your mileage may vary.

DiGRA 2015 in Germany 14-17 May 2015

3D and game editors, Conference, heritage, , , , ,

Looking forward to returning even if briefly to Europe, I will be presenting the below paper (which I just sent off, hopefully complete) for the proceedings of the 8th international conference of the Digital Games Research Association taking place May 14th-17th at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Title: Role-playing and Rituals For Heritage-Oriented Games Abstract: Roles and rituals are essential for creating, situating and maintaining cultural practices. Computer Role-Playing games (CRPGs) and virtual online worlds that appear to simulate different cultures are well known and highly popular. So it might appear that the roles and rituals of traditional cultures are easily ported to computer games. However, I contend that the meaning behind worlds, rituals and roles are not fully explored in these digital games and virtual worlds and that more work needs to be done to create more moving rituals, role enrichment and worldfulness. I will provide examples from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda, 2006, 2011) to reveal some of the difficulties in creating digitally simulated social and cultural worlds, but I will also suggest some design ideas that could improve them in terms of cultural presence and social presence.

Publishing in digital heritage and related areas

3D and game editors, game, Journal, virtual heritage, , , ,

Due to my current role I have to help grade journals, so as a bit of a test, I had a look at the h index and SJR value of journals roughly in my area (areas?) of research.I used SJR and Google Scholar metrics. They calculate h value differently (the latter has an h5 for 5 years rating) but it was interesting to compare. Individual conferences can score highly but are hard to compare to journals as they appear to be often rated individually rather than as a series. SIGGRAPH is one of the exceptions (Google, SCIMAGOJR) but compare to CHI (google, SCIMAGOJR?)

http://www.scimagojr.com/help.php

SJR (SCImago Journal Rank) indicator: It expresses the average number of weighted citations received in the selected year by the documents published in the selected journal in the three previous years, –i.e. weighted citations received in year X to documents published in the journal in years X-1, X-2 and X-3. See detailed description of SJR .

H Index: The h index expresses the journal’s number of articles (h) that have received at least h citations. It quantifies both journal scientific productivity and scientific impact and it is also applicable to scientists, countries, etc. (see H-index wikipedia definition).

TARGETED JOURNALSH-indexSJRGoogle tag h5
New Media and Society462.1445
Journal of Computer mediated communication641.9636
Cultural Geographies281.4618
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory271.0613
Critical Inquiry291.0217
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies760.9933
Media, Culture & Society320.9624
games and culture230.7521
Journal of Cultural Heritage290.6819
International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction350.6225
Critical Studies in Media Communication250.6213
MIT Presence590.5518
Simulation & Gaming320.4525
International Journal of Heritage studies160.4214
International Journal of Heritage in the Digital Era160.426
International Journal of Architectural Computing40.4210
Virtual Reality240.4015
Space and Culture160.3813
Entertainment Computing (journal, conference)70.3510
Journal of Computing and Cultural Heritage80.32?
Digital Creativity80.2910
Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds320.2715
game studies130.19?
Internet Archaeology20.10?
CHI conference Computer Human Interaction78

Peopled Virtual Heritage (Worlds)

virtual heritage, , , , , , , , ,

The youtube link is to Colleen Morgan’s presentation at York University 20 January 2015. The John Robb article (Towards a critical Otziography: inventing prehistoric bodies) she referred to is an excellent read (and just after I could well have used this in my upcoming book! Dramatic Sigh). But what has really got me thinking are the questions at the end on representing or creating people in virtual environments especially for archaeology and the critique by someone at 49:50 minutes in (an architect? I had trouble hearing him).

My thoughts:

  • The “peopling” in architectural presentations is not meant to reveal the building in all its architectural glory, but to sell the building independently of how it will actually be used. There is an old architectural joke that new hospital buildings would be perfect if they didn’t have people using them.
  • Architects and archaeologists so often seem to have different approaches or understanding (I noticed this when at UCL in 2003 or so when both understood vomitorium differently).
  • The notion of a virtual environment as a process rather than a presentation seems lost.
  • Archaeological VR/VEs can show the process and systematic differences between our world and another world (of past perception). Imagine putting on a virtual medieval suit of armour. It is really really heavy, and uncomfortable and inflexible. To you. To a knight say 7 centuries ago it may well be such a badge of honour and a functionally superior life saving device that it seems to weigh less. Plus they will have spent years lifting it as a squire and wearing it, they were probably balls of bone and muscular. So should the simulated weight be the weight you would experience or the weight that a trained knight would experience? I would argue, both.
  • When emailing with Bond University PhD student and game designer Jakub Majewski (exploring roleplaying worlds such as Skyrim), we differed on the extent of immersivity we preferred. For heritage purposes I did not value it over task ability, and I would shift to third person view so I could see and navigate more easily. While Jakub wanted to stay in first person view at all times for full roleplaying-immersivity. So I/we may not be designing games per se. We may not fully want to. That said, I can see the value of avatar-using virtual worlds, and I did briefly list some reasons in my book chapter on narrative. But it is a chapter or book on its own (or perhaps an edited book of cross-commenting essays). So much to ponder further!

NB there was also a reference to my use of NPCs in Adobe Atmosphere, as virtual (talking) furniture! Well I could have them move but in my already streamlined 3D models of the Mayan city Palenque Mexico,, running inside Internet Explorer was taking the 2001-2003 technology to breaking point! You could bump the NPC though..

When we ported the three environments to one environment using UT2004 in 2005, we did not have problem and there were NPCs scampering all over the place. I should try and see if I can get this old environment working in UT2004 then porting to UDK..

CFP: Entertainment Computing, Elsevier: Special Issue on Entertainment in Serious Games and Entertaining Serious Purposes

Conference, game, , , ,

Entertainment Computing, Elsevier: Special Issue on Entertainment in Serious Games and Entertaining Serious Purposes

Following the successful one-day workshop on “Entertainment in Serious Games and Entertaining Serious Purposes” (30/09/14) held at the International Conference on Entertainment Computing (ICEC 2014), in Sydney, Australia, we invite submissions to be considered for publication in a Special Issue of the journal of Entertainment Computing, Elsevier. Please refer to outline, instructions for submission, timelines and submission deadlines, and topics of interest, below.

Outline

The serious games community rightly argues that there’s more to serious games than entertainment, and restricting the focus to entertainment “seriously undersells its potential” (Jenkins 2006). Indeed, while a consensus definition of serious games still eludes us, serious games are often described as games designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment.

However, entertainment obviously has an important role to play, for example in contributing to the motivational and engaging qualities of serious games and making learning or serious elements more palatable. Why would anyone want to voluntarily play a serious game again and again for extended periods of time if it’s not entertaining? Furthermore, discussion around what is, and what is not, primary or secondary importance is not always helpful and can be problematic – because arguing that serious purpose is primary rejects many games and interactions whose entertaining element is the purpose – where purpose and entertainment are inextricably and synergistically linked. So arguments or distinctions along the lines of what’s more important, the serious purpose or entertainment, become blurred.

In addition, gameplay and interactions exhibiting this synergistic nature typically identify good design. Where entertainment and serious purpose meet, where purpose doesn’t overshadow entertainment (and vice versa) and ideally where players want to play voluntarily for hours on end, again and again, and in their own time.

Similar arguments are used with learning and development where learning with games is fun (e.g. Gee 2007). Other more obvious examples can be found in exergames and dance games where the mechanic of working out is entertaining and entertainment is a workout; or with interactive art and installations that provide a message or an experience that is entertaining. Similarly, other examples might include well-designed role-playing, interactive storytelling and performance where taking part in historical events, encounters with different social and cultural structures, or facing moral and ethical dilemmas and situations can be entertaining.

In this respect, entertainment and associated experiences can mean different things to different people and can involve elements or mixes of gameplay and interaction that is fun and exciting, through stimulating and thought provoking, to difficult, scary, or darker experiences that are pleasurable (Marsh and Costello 2012).

As more and more interactive entertainments (games, diversions and brain teasers) appear on social media and networking sites, it’s not difficult to foresee these offerings increasingly extending to serious purposes (learning, training and well-being); and in doing so perhaps signal an increased confidence in overcoming the failure surrounding the introduction of Edutainment in the 1990’s.

In this Special Issue of the journal Entertainment Computing we wish to highlight the importance of entertainment (in its various forms) in serious games irrespective of supporting technologies/platforms. The objective of this Special Issue is to bring together research, reviews, case studies, as well as details and experiences in the development of serious games and interactive media associated with entertainment in serious games and the synergy of serious purpose and entertainment in interactions and gameplay – where entertainment is the serious purpose and also where the synergy of purpose and entertainment identifies good design.

Topics of Interest

In particular, we seek submissions that focus on, or address (but not restricted to) the following topics:

  • Theory & Discussion: synergies between entertainment and serious purpose(s). What is, and what is not entertainment? And what can entertaining serious purpose encapsulate?
  • Mechanics, Mechanisms & Devices: creating/supporting synergies between entertainment and serious purpose.
  • Design & Development: design for synergy; and where entertainment meets purpose – identifies good design.
  • Analysis & Assessment: methods and approaches to evaluate synergy e.g. telemetry in-game analysis.
  • Ethics: can entertainment trivialize a serious, sensitive or difficult topic?
  • Acting and performing in games, simulations, virtual heritage, and documentary games – be part of historical events, experience different social and cultural structures; or encounter moral dilemmas & situations.
  • Novel experimental games, environments and interactions e.g. persuasive, pervasive, mixed and augmented realities; interactive storytelling.
  • Exergames, Interactive Art & Diversions: where the workout or the interchanges provide entertaining serious purposes.

Instructions for Submission

Your manuscript should be 10 or more pages in pdf format. Include all authors’ names, affiliations and contact details. The submission website for the journal of Entertainment Computing is located at: http://ees.elsevier.com/entcom/default.asp

Please ensure your manuscript is correctly identified for inclusion in this special issue by selecting SI: Serious Entertainment when you reach the “Article Type” step in the submission process. New authors to Entertainment Computing are required to pre-register before submission. All submissions will be reviewed by experts in areas associated with serious games and the topics of interest and include ICEC 2014 workshop organizers of Entertainment in Serious Games and Entertaining Serious Purposes, and members of the IFIP TC14.8 Working Group on Serious Games.

Important Dates

Submission Deadline 31 January 2015

Acceptance / Rejection 31 May 2015

Revision Submission 31 August 2015

Publication October / November 2015

Guest Editors

Tim Marsh, Griffith Film School, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.

Erik Champion, Curtin University, Australia.

Helmut Hlavacs, University of Vienna, Austria.

Contact organizers at: seriousexperience [at] gmail.com

References

Henry Jenkins. 2006. Getting Serious About Games. http://henryjenkins.org/2006/07/getting_serious_about_games.html

John Paul Gee. 2007. Good Video Games Plus Good Learning, Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York.

Tim Marsh & Brigid Costello. 2012. Experience in serious games: between positive and serious experience, Serious Games Development & Applications, SGDA2012, Bremen, Germany.

http://www.seriousgames.sg/Papers/SeriousExperience_MarshCostello_SGDA2012.pdf

CfP: Game History Annual Symposium in Montreal

Conference, game, ,

Game History Annual Symposium

First Edition: Cultural History of Video Games

Montreal, Canada: June 27th-28th 2014

Submission deadline: January 24th 2014

Link to PDF document: http://www.sahj.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Game-History-Annual-Symposium-CFP.pdf

#——————————————————————————————–

 

CfP text:

 

In spite of preservation and accessibility issues, the history of video games has become a topic of interest for a growing community of scholars and museum curators around the world. In Digital Play (2003), Stephen Kline, Greig de Peuter and Nick Dyer-Witheford invited us to understand video games as a complex network of interactions between industrial structures, technological innovations and sociocultural exchanges. In doing so, they also provided us with a useful tool to map out which areas have been explored more thoroughly, and which have been left out.

We seek to expand our understanding of the communities that forged and continue to forge game culture. The conference will propose two tracks: design histories, and play histories. These communities can be inspected through the material traces such as games, promotional artefacts, manuals and other props, as well as through direct observation or interviews. Thus, scholars from a variety of disciplines, such as media history, communication studies, cultural studies and sociology should feel welcome to submit. In gathering specialists from many fields, we hope to create a dynamic research environment to study the multiple communities that define gaming culture throughout history.

Invited speakers

▫ Tristan Donovan (Replay, 2010)

▫ Mia Consalvo (Canada Research Chair in Game Studies & Design)

▫ John Szczepaniak (The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers, 2014)

▫ Philippe Ulrich (Captain Blood; Dune; founder of Cryo)

 

Cultural events

▫ Game exhibition (curator: Skot Deeming)

▫ Concert by L’orchestre de jeux vidéo (Pollack hall, Mcgill University)

 

Tourism

▫ Special hotel rates for conference participants

▫ Centrally located near the subway and Quartier des spectacles

▫ 35th Montreal International Jazz Festival

 

Abstract submission

▫ 800 words plus bibliography

▫ Please indicate which track you want to be part of: design histories / play histories

▫ Submissions will be anonymized and reviewed by the conference chairs for the 2014 edition (Maude Bonenfant, Jonathan Lessard, Martin Picard, Carl Therrien)

▫ Submission deadline: January 24th 2014

▫ Please send to GameHistoryMTL@gmail.com

reminder: I need book chapter proposals for GAME MODS (ETC Press)

design, game, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Call For Book Chapters: Game Mod Design Theory and Criticism

This will be both a practical and reflective book on game-mods, designing, playing and evaluating the quality, success and effectiveness of game engines for modding, individual game mod levels, related tools and techniques, and the social and cultural issues related to the design and use of game mods.

The type of book chapter content I am looking for:
· An overview of what is possible and what is commendable or admirable with exemplars.
· Critiques of game mods and game mod/engine technologies (and reviews of mods as creative and critical and reflective extensions of games and game audiences).
· The ethical and social implications using commercial game engines and the content supplied · A comparison of game mod technologies.
· Case studies (Unreal, Source, Panda 3d, Blender 3D, Neverwinter Nights, Marathon, XNA, Oblivion, Cobalt, Crystal Space, WoW, Halo, Far Cry and Crysis etc, Sims, Jedi Academy, Ogre 3D) etc.
· Feature art and aesthetics.
· Machinima features hindered and helped by mods.
· Review of terrible experiences trying to build game mods. · A feature list to help people choose the right game engine for their mod.
· Some sample chapters on how to get started, tips, quick step tutorials as simple 3D, animation, lighting, behaviors, interface customization.
· The social and cultural implications of using and designing game mods (issues with violent content, cultural empathy, copyright, educational issues and so on).

The publisher will be ETC Press, an academic, open source, multimedia, publishing imprint affiliated with the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and in partnership with Lulu.com The book will be published under a Creative Commons license. For more details about ETC Press refer http://www.etc.cmu.edu.

Time Line

· March 18 2011 Please send me a title and 300 word abstract, the earlier the better! Please email your submission to gamemodbook AT gmail DOT com

· March 25 2011 you should have heard back from me.

· June 10 2011 draft chapters to me.

· And after many drafts and checks and proofs later…by the end of 2011 (optimistically speaking), publication!

Editor:
Associate Professor Erik Champion
Auckland School of Design, Albany Village Campus
College of Creative Arts
Massey University
Auckland New Zealand
email: nzerik AT gmail DOT com OR e dot champion AT massey DOT ac DOT nz for general questions.
Send submissions to gamemodbook AT gmail DOT com

multiplayer editors

game, , , , , ,

With the apparent demise of Oblivion Online I feel the need to record a list of interesting multiplayer editors.First in the list is a free multiplayer editor of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas:

Multi Theft Auto (MTA) is an open-source software project that adds full on-line gaming support to Rockstar North’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas PC game, in which this functionality is not originally found. It is the first open-source modification that adds a highly customizable network play element to a commercial closed-source single-player PC game.

There is of course still Warcraft III (Mac and PC) and Oblivion (single player) if you wish to try the multiplayer hacks..

April 29 there may be a multiplayer editor for Dante’s Inferno..

Of course if you have a Playstation III there is always little big planet but I don’t know how unlimiting it is. Unlike of course Crysis that is perhaps too umlimiting.

Most of the above include in-game assets, but if that is not required, unity 3D, shiva or perhaps Esperient Creator are options.

why virtual heritage?

game, virtual heritage, , , , ,

Reality-based games a step closer

The WOW! Factor

By Virginia Winder –Taranaki Daily News

Last updated 11:11 29/07/2009

The Forbidden City is virtually empty. Chinese tour guides, wearing red traditional costumes, wait for visitors.

Chinese tour  guides, wearing red  traditional  costumes, wait for visitors. An  Imperial woman glides past the  guides and through the  Meridian Gates to explore the  city alone. Every now and then  she passes an official attendant  or another tourist, whose  meaningless name floats above  his or her head like a sign. For a  few seconds, someone with a  number for a name and dressed  as an Imperial guard circles the  woman, then slides away.

Our woman joins a quick tour about dragon architecture and finds herself in an outer area where archers are practising. She quits the tour, checks the map and winds her way through to the Hall of Mental Cultivation and gets lost in time and the detail of the buildings. All this is accompanied by the sweet swirling sounds of Chinese music. For this is not a real tour, but an IBM-created journey that can be downloaded for free anywhere in the world.

Erik Champion, Massey University associate professor of new media, recommends having a look at the virtual Forbidden City, because it shows how much work is involved with his area of interest and expertise: virtual heritage design.

Champion, based at Massey’s Auckland School of Design at Albany, says the virtual world is not just the domain of games. He believes software developed for gaming holds huge potential.

In his research and teaching, Champion has used digital tools to create websites and interactive games on Mayan civilisation, Marco Polo’s travels and Egyptian gods. He prefers people to roam freely. “People get bored with tours – they’re probably too passive for people. I’d like to design a personally discoverable world where you can choose the interactions, the way in which you approach the site and the way you are viewed by others.”

This would be game-like, but with more intellectual outcomes. He also talks of “augmented reality” and “biofeedback”. The first relates to physically visiting a site wearing special glasses that would enable drop- down graphics to appear in your field of vision and these would change and be refreshed as you turned your head. They are being developed and used at Canterbury University’s HIT Lab, where researchers are working on interaction between computers and humans. Champion envisages using augmented reality to see the past.

“If you were standing on a sacred site, what used to be there would appear on your glasses, or maybe it would be projected on to fog between you and the real site.

“Imagine seeing the Pink and White Terraces or the spirit trails of ancestors leaving Cape Reinga – all these things we don’t normally see.”

Champion wants to help New Zealanders tell their own stories.

“I would like to create the tools and technologies so local people could design it [the world or vision] themselves.”

He’s even keen to teach people 3D, animation and programming skills so they can go forth and create using advanced tools like curved mirrors, screen warping and biofeedback receptors. If a person is playing a game or visiting a heritage site with biofeedback, physiological reactions like pulse, skin temperature and sweat can be measured by a computer, perhaps even unknowingly through a joystick or mouse.

Champion cites a New Age meditation journey, which induces people to become calmer. This is the opposite of a zombie game recently tested by a PhD student. In that game, the more stressed the player became, the more the living dead attacked the avatar (the character or identity you become when playing a game or entering a virtual situation – like the tourist became a Chinese Imperial woman).

Biofeedback holds exciting possibilities for learning about other civilisations and even religions, Champion says.

He likes the idea of using it to affect people’s states of mind in a virtual environment. However, he would prefer people got feedback that helped them stay calm. “The more calm you are, the more the world becomes obvious to you. And the more reflective you are, the more interesting things will happen.”

Champion says it would be possible to create a virtual Buddhist temple with biofeedback.

“Only when you really calm down and really slow down will you discover things.”

He imagines the avatar would levitate or have great wisdom revealed.

“It’s a bit like interactive cinema.”

Another idea he’s been working on involves people having to learn to be like the locals. This is the inverse of the Turing test (see Freaky Facts) and involves a person in a virtual world trying to convince the scripted characters he or she is an artificial intelligence like they are.

“That way the test is on you, the human, not the computer. Why would you want to do that? Because then the human players have to learn to act like the locals and learn the culturally appropriate way of behaving.”

By proving they are not imposters, the human player would learn all about the customs, history and stories of the virtual world. This would be particularly valuable if it were a heritage environment.

“You could create an inter- cultural language game whereby if you say different words correctly, things appear to you as they did to different cultures.”

Champion has just returned from a Fulbright-funded study trip to the United States, where he presented his virtual environment research at many universities, including Harvard, Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Now Champion is seeking more post-graduate students to help develop software and their own ideas. The Forbidden City link is http://www.beyondspaceandtime.org/FCBSTWeb/web/index.html#link=

call for book chapters (ends today) for “Metaplasticity in Virtual Worlds”

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Proposals Submission Deadline: 6/30/2009
Full Chapters Due: 9/30/2009
Metaplasticity in Virtual Worlds:
Aesthetics and Semantics Concepts
A book edited by Dr. Gianluca Mura, Politecnico di Milano University, Italy

Introduction
The concept of virtual worlds is strongly related to the current innovations of new media communication. This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to virtual world studies focused on aesthetics and semantics principles from science, technology, media arts and design. It is important for researchers and practitioners interested in this area to understand the actual criteria for creating virtual worlds’ as well as their further evolution, regarding system architecture, information visualization and human interaction.

Objective of the Book
This book gives in-depth coverage of the state-of-the-art among the best international research experiences of virtual world concept creations from a wide range of media culture fields, at the edge of artistic and scientific inquiry and emerging technologies. It will be written for professionals, researchers, artists and designers who want to improve their understanding of the strategic role of virtual worlds within the development of digital communication.

Target Audience
The target audience of this book will be composed of professionals and researchers, designers, artists, and creative developers, working in various fields (e.g., information and communication sciences, art and design, education, psychology, sociology, neurosciences, computer science, and information technology). Moreover, the book will provide insights and support to innovative and creative studies concerned with the development of virtual worlds within different types of working and research communities.

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
– Virtual world projects, concepts, methodologies in design, arts & humanities, science and technology
– Virtual reality, augmented and mixed reality studies and applications
– Human computer interaction and user interfaces studies and applications
– Human issues in virtual worlds
– Social communities in virtual worlds
– User generated 3D content
– Innovative 3D graphics, Web, Web3D, multimedia studies and applications
– Advanced interfaces and Interactive 3D immersive systems
– Real-time interactive networked media in Mobile mixed reality
– Wearable interfaces and tangible interfaces for 3D media
– Online videogames and edutainment projects
– Virtual worlds in education and training
– Virtual heritage projects
– Animated humanoid (avatars), virtual life, body and mind extensions, metacreations studies
– 3D modelling, animation,s imulation studies and applications
– Information visualization within arts and scientific visualization
– Virtual worlds in industrial systems design
– Artwork, performances, installations media arts concepts and projects
– Imaginary and creative virtual worlds

Submission Procedure
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before June 30, 2009, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by July 31, 2009 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by September 30, 2009. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.

Publisher
This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference) and “IGI Publishing” imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This publication is anticipated to be released in the second half of 2010.

Important Dates
June 30, 2009: Proposal Submission Deadline
July 15, 2009: Notification of Acceptance
September 30, 2009: Full Chapter Submission
November 15, 2009: Review Results Returned
January 15, 2010: Final Chapter Submission

Editorial Advisory Board Members:
Ramos Felix, CINVESTAV GDL, Mexico
Reyes García Everardo, Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Toluca, Mexico
Uribe Mendoza Bernardo, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia
Sourina Olga, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Watanave Hidenori, Tokyo Metropolitan University , Japan
Paul Catanese, Columbia University, Chicago, USA

Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically (Word document) or by mail to:

Dr. Gianluca Mura
Faculty of Industrial Design and Arts
Politecnico di Milano University
Tel.: +39 0240095259 • Fax: +39 99985712• GSM: +39 333 4522814
E-mail: gianluca.mura@polimi.it