2010 Proceeding- Conference Chair:
- Ian Horswill,
- Program Chair:
- Yusuf Pisan
The Foundations of Digital Games is a unique conference that brings together researchers and practitioners from computer science, education, design, cultural studies, and other disciplines. Games research draws ideas and methods from these disciplines, and the interaction of researchers broadens our horizons as we examine games as technical and social artifacts.
Papers submitted to the conference describe novel techniques and the latest research on games. We identified seven theme areas and invited authors to submit their papers to one of the specialized tracks. The tracks identified for FDG 2010 were artificial intelligence, computer science and games education, game design, game studies, graphics and interfaces, infrastructure (databases, networks, security), and learning in games. Papers that did not fit into any of the identified tracks could also be submitted to the general track to be reviewed by researchers from different disciplines.
Each of the tracks had their own program committee members and their own track chair. Paper reviews were handled in a multi-stage process. First, the track chairs read through all the papers submitted to their own track. Papers that were not suitable for the track they were submitted to were moved to a different track with the agreement of both track chairs and authors were notified of the move. Second, the track chairs assigned reviewers to each paper. Third, for papers where there was a disagreement among reviewers, reviewers were asked to re-examine the paper and additional reviewers were asked to provide feedback. Fourth, the reviews themselves were reviewed by the track chairs. Fifth, all the papers were discussed in an all track chairs meeting where track chairs presented their recommendations. Finally, any borderline papers were once again analysed by the program chair before a final decision was made.
While no review process is perfect, we have implemented a thorough and fair review system to ensure papers from different disciplines are appropriately reviewed. Each paper had at least three reviews, and two thirds of the papers had four or more reviews. We received the largest number of submission in the game design track followed by an almost equal number of submissions in the game studies track and learning in games track.
There were a total of 94 papers submitted. Of those submissions, 32 were accepted for presentation at the conference (32/94 = 34%). A further 12 short papers were submitted as preliminary work, and of those 3 were accepted for presentation at the conference (3/12 = 25%). All the accepted papers and short papers appear in the conference proceedings.
As part of FDG, we also organized the FDG Doctoral Consortium, intended primarily for beginning PhD students who intend to pursue a career in academia. There were 17 extended abstracts submitted to the doctoral consortium, and of those 8 were selected for presentation at the conference (8/17 = 47%). PhD students who were accepted to the doctoral consortium received a full scholarship to cover their travel costs and conference costs.
Beyond the paper presentations, FDG 2010 incorporates invited talks both from academia and industry, in-depth tutorials providing hands-on experience, and panels examining different aspects of games. We also have three workshops that are co-located with FDG: Intelligent Narrative Technologies III, Procedural Content Generation in Games, and Teaching Aesthetics in Game Design.
Gameplay analysis through state projection
Analysis of gameplay data is crucial for evaluating design decisions and refining a game experience. However, identifying player strategies and finding areas of confusion is difficult because a designer may not know what queries to ask or what patterns ...
Game-themed instructional modules: a video case study
Integration of video games into introductory programming (CS1/2) courses motivates and engages students while contributing to their learning outcomes [17, 1, 2]. However, it is challenging for general faculty members teaching CS1/2 courses, few of whom ...
Integrating players, reputation and ranking to manage cheating in MMOGs
In this paper, we propose an approach that uses in-game reputation as a solution to the problem of cheating in massively multiplayer online games. What constitutes cheating is however quite context-specific and subjective, and there is no universal ...
BeadLoom Game: using game elements to increase motivation and learning
The Virtual Bead Loom (VBL) was designed to teach mathematical concepts such as Cartesian coordinates, symmetry, and iteration to middle and high school math students through the design of Native American-inspired bead loom art. In our outreach programs ...
Lessons from a course on serious games research and prototyping
Serious games are an exciting new research area that combines expertise across a wide range of computing skills, from programming and software engineering to algorithms, problem solving, and networking with design skills. Teaching computing students to ...
The challenge of designing scientific discovery games
- Seth Cooper,
- Adrien Treuille,
- Janos Barbero,
- Andrew Leaver-Fay,
- Kathleen Tuite,
- Firas Khatib,
- Alex Cho Snyder,
- Michael Beenen,
- David Salesin,
- David Baker,
- Zoran Popović
Incorporating the individual and collective problem solving skills of non-experts into the scientific discovery process could potentially accelerate the advancement of science. This paper discusses the design process used for Foldit, a multiplayer ...
A qualitative study of Ragnarök Online private servers: in-game sociological issues
In the last decade, online games have garnered much attention as more and more players gather on game servers. In parallel, communities of illegal private server players and administrators have spread and might host hundreds of thousands of players. To ...
Race and gender in play practices: young African American males
In this paper we present a study with young African American men, to gain a better understanding of the impacts of cultural and gender identity on play practices and to explore the relationship between cultural play practices and interest in computing. ...
Investigating studio-based learning in a course on game design
Jobs in the computing field demand communication and teamwork skills in addition to programming skills. Focus at the undergraduate level needs to be shifted towards developing these collaborative skills to enable a more smooth transition into employment ...
OutRun: perversive games and designing the de-simulation of eight-bit driving
This paper outlines the development process of a mixed reality video game prototype that combines a classic arcade driving game with a real world vehicle. In this project the user, or player, maneuvers the car-shaped arcade cabinet through actual ...
Design patterns in FPS levels
Level designers create gameplay through geometry, AI scripting, and item placement. There is little formal understanding of this process, but rather a large body of design lore and rules of thumb. As a result, there is no accepted common language for ...
In search of lost time: on game goals and failure costs
Some time ago, when most video games gave players a limited number of lives, or retries, the difficulty of a game could be measured by how often the player failed in a game. In this paper, I will argue that since video games moved toward giving players ...
Grapevine: a gossip generation system
Generating believable and contextual dialogue among non-player-characters (NPC) remains one of the major challenges in interactive entertainment. Dialogue scenes in virtual environments are crucial to narrative progression and user believability, yet ...
Mining game statistics from web services: a World of Warcraft armory case study
Collecting large sets of quantitative video game play data can take many months or years. This delays the progress of interpreting data and drawing interesting conclusions. Mining game data from publicly accessible web services allows us to quickly ...
What went wrong: a taxonomy of video game bugs
Video games are complex, emergent systems that are difficult to design and test. This difficulty invariably leads to failures being present in the game, negatively impacting the play experience of some. We present a taxonomy of possible failures, ...
Catalyst: seeing through the eyes of a cat
In this paper we document a simulation of the cat visual system intended to convey four of the major differences between the human and cat visual systems. Learning about an animal's visual system is an important step in understanding how that type of ...
Real-time team-mate AI in games: a definition, survey, & critique
Many contemporary games are team-based and there is a growing interest in, and need for, advances in team-mate AI for games. However, although there have been surveys of agent AI in games, to date there has been no survey of work on team-mate AI. ...
A framework for evidence based visual style development for serious games
In this paper, we describe a framework for connecting computer graphics techniques and visual style in video game design with targeted learning outcomes for students. The relationship is organized on a table depicting Bloom's taxonomy of the cognitive ...
Analysis of level design 'push & pull' within 21 games
This paper investigates the differences between 3D level designs in 21 popular games. We have developed a framework to analyze 3D level designs based on patterns extracted from level designers and game play sessions. We then use these patterns to ...
VI-Tennis: a vibrotactile/audio exergame for players who are visually impaired
Lack of physical activity is a serious health concern for individuals who are visually impaired as they have fewer opportunities and incentives to engage in physical activities that provide the amounts and kinds of stimulation sufficient to maintain ...
Exploring strategies and guidelines for developing full body video game interfaces
We present a Wizard-of-Oz study exploring full body video game interaction. Using the commercial video game Mirror's Edge, players are presented with several different tasks such as running, jumping, and climbing. Following our protocol, participants ...
Adapting personal music for synesthetic game play
Music can significantly effect game play and help players understand underlying patterns in the game, or the effects of their actions on the characters. Conversely, inappropriate music can have a negative effect on players by creating additional ...
Individual differences in gameplay and learning: a narrative-centered learning perspective
Narrative-centered learning environments are an important class of educational games that situate learning within rich story contexts. The work presented in this paper investigates individual differences in gameplay and learning during student ...
Playing with words: from intuition to evaluation of game dialogue interfaces
Dialogue systems are central to role-playing games, adventure games, interactive fictions, and some forms of interactive drama and cinema---but we have little empirical evidence about how, or even whether, the design of dialogue system interfaces shapes ...
ABC-Sprints: adapting Scrum to academic game development courses
We propose a course design that fits a practical game development project into a regular game design lecture course. As this approach requires a consistent structure, our concept proposes an adaption of Scrum that is based on the game development life-...
This is how we play it: what a mega-LAN can teach us about games
Using data gathered through our participant observation and informal interviews at DreamHack Winter 2005 and 2009 we explore a number of themes that not only provide insight into aspects of face-to-face real-time play at LAN parties but also highlight ...
Weatherlings: a new approach to student learning using web-based mobile games
- Josh Sheldon,
- Judy Perry,
- Eric Klopfer,
- Jennifer Ong,
- Vivian Hsueh-Hua Chen,
- Pei Wen Tzuo,
- Louisa Rosenheck
Ubiquitous Games (UbiqGames) are browser-based multi-player games played primarily on mobile devices. UbiqGames are designed to be played outside of formal class time and over several days, alongside more traditional instruction in the topics covered in ...
Tanagra: a mixed-initiative level design tool
Tanagra is a prototype mixed-initiative design tool for 2D platformer level design, in which a human and computer can work together to produce a level. The human designer can place constraints on a continuously running level generator, in the form of ...
Toward effective game-based social skills tutoring for children: an evaluation of a social adventure game
This paper describes a study of a prototype of a novel game-based intelligent tutor that teaches children positive social skills. The results provide considerable support for the potential value of this game as a social skills training tool, despite the ...
Kaboom! is a many-splendored thing: an interpretation and design methodology for message-driven games using graphical logics
This paper describes an explicit model for how to interpret and create simple 2D games that reasonably communicate messages through a game's representational layer in a manner that is consistent with its processes.
A few prominent experimental games (...
Cited By
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Levitz D, Ozcan A, Erickson D, Feng S, Woo M, Kim H, Kim E, Ki S, Shao L and Ozcan A (2016). A game-based crowdsourcing platform for rapidly training middle and high school students to perform biomedical image analysis SPIE BiOS, 10.1117/12.2212310, , (96990T), Online publication date: 11-Mar-2016.
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Levitz D, Ozcan A, Erickson D, Feng S, Woo M, Chandramouli K and Ozcan A (2015). A game-based platform for crowd-sourcing biomedical image diagnosis and standardized remote training and education of diagnosticians SPIE BiOS, 10.1117/12.2077884, , (93140J), Online publication date: 12-Mar-2015.
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Allen B, Knispel B, Cordes J, Deneva J, Hessels J, Anderson D, Aulbert C, Bock O, Brazier A, Chatterjee S, Demorest P, Eggenstein H, Fehrmann H, Gotthelf E, Hammer D, Kaspi V, Kramer M, Lyne A, Machenschalk B, McLaughlin M, Messenger C, Pletsch H, Ransom S, Stairs I, Stappers B, Bhat N, Bogdanov S, Camilo F, Champion D, Crawford F, Desvignes G, Freire P, Heald G, Jenet F, Lazarus P, Lee K, van Leeuwen J, Lynch R, Papa M, Prix R, Rosen R, Scholz P, Siemens X, Stovall K, Venkataraman A and Zhu W (2013). THE EINSTEIN@HOME SEARCH FOR RADIO PULSARS AND PSR J2007+2722 DISCOVERY , The Astrophysical Journal, 10.1088/0004-637X/773/2/91, 773:2, (91)
Index Terms
Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games