<p dir="ltr">With the recent virtualization of our everyday lives and the development of intelligent AI technology, realistic virtual agents are becoming a useful tool for research, education, and entertainment. With virtual agents customized content can be created and individualized for specific users. However, virtual agents are only effective tools if they can form a connection with the individual. To form a connection the virtual agent must be believable.</p><p dir="ltr">The literature review evaluates topics of virtual agent believability, appeal, and naturalness and how they relate to asymmetry in facial expression animation. The literature suggests that asymmetries can affect the perception of virtual agents. Additionally, it suggests that emulating human behavior is beneficial to increasing perception of believability, appeal, and naturalness.</p><p dir="ltr">In this study we evaluated the effects of facial expression asymmetry on the believability, appeal, and naturalness of virtual agents. To do this we ran an online perception study with students at Purdue University. We found, in brief, that facial expression asymmetries do have significant effect on the believability, appeal, and naturalness of a virtual agent compared to animations that do not include facial expression asymmetries.</p>

<p>This paper is a qualitative study that utilizes game players to learn more about the impact of game narrative, and to use this information to understand more of its role in the production of<br> games. Initial research into the topic revealed that many competing interests drive game production, but that if narrative was “down-prioritized” in production, a game was more likely to suffer compounding issues that could result in a poor end-product and launch. This nets monetary consequences for a studio, but also severely impacts the team of developers. As the game industry already faces widespread issues with crunch, long work hours over long periods of time, any additional strain on production exacerbates existing issues. Game production documentation is often held privately as the trade secrets of a given studio, so the most feasible way to address these questions is to seek a successful game with amble published documentation and compare those resources to the experiences players themselves have with the title. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was the game chosen.<br> A sample of 18 students from Purdue University completed an initial interest survey and provided demographic information. Of those who played games regularly, 4 participants were randomly selected to move forward with an audio and video recorded gameplay session that utilized a think-aloud protocol to capture moment-to-moment experience, and then an audio recorded interview about their experiences. These methods were employed to generate transcripts of their thoughts and experiences where the researcher conducted a thematic analysis of the content. Fifteen codes were synthesized from these transcripts and found that through the context of narrative, participants expressed that gameplay, aesthetics, and critical paths in a game facilitated their experiences with narrative. Participants approached the game and spoke about narrative in a variety of ways during the game session, but all came away with similar conclusions when interviewed. This suggests that game elements that convey narrative are highly effective and opens questions into how changes to those elements can sway interpretation and if that can be controlled for. Further, studying the patterns between these elements and determining what creates the most meaning for players could open new avenues for efficient game design. </p>

<p dir="ltr">Use of serious games and gamified applications for language learning have increased substantially over the past decade. They are an effective way to supplement language learning. These applications utilize a range of language learning methods such as grammar-translation, audio-lingual and task-based learning in combination. Task-based language learning particularly suits the typical gameplay elements of narratives and quests. Thus, this study aims to develop a serious game for learning Bengali, world’s 7th most spoken language. The literature in this area indicates that hubshaped quest landscape design is found to be most effective for game-based learning environments. So, the study implements a branching, hubshaped narrative for learning Bengali language.</p><p dir="ltr">This application also implemented a hidden object mechanism for vocabulary acquisition instead of traditional grammar-translation methods used in other language learning software. The prototype was assessed from user feedback in a qualitative manner across four broad heuristic categories comprising of learning, tutorials, engagement and cultural elements. In the process, the study sought to understand whether cultural context-based interventions in the narrative improve learner motivation.</p><p dir="ltr">The results show a positive impact of cultural elements on the learners’ motivation to progress. Further, the hidden object mechanism was received as a satisfactory method to learn foreign vocabulary. This form of interactive, narrative based educational application has the potential to supplement traditional lessons for foreign language acquisition.</p>

<p dir="ltr">In the ever-changing landscape of game development, the choice of game engine plays a critical role in deciding the efficiency and performance of a game. This research paper presents a comparative analysis of the performance benchmarks of large general purpose game engines, specifically Unreal Engine 5, Unity, and Godot, versus small genre-specific engines in the context of a simple 2D projectile dodging game. The study focuses on two-dimensional games, which are particularly popular with small studios and indie developers. All three general purpose engines evaluated claim to support building both 2D and 3D applications, however since 2D game logic tends to be smaller scoped and more compact such games are impacted greater by any overhead and bloat the engine introduces, which this research paper intends to evaluate. A series of controlled experiments are conducted to assess each engine's performance in processor utilization, power consumption, memory usage and storage space requirements.</p>

<p>When users begin to experience virtual reality (VR) for the first time, they can be met with some degree of motion sickness and nausea, especially if continuous joystick locomotion is used. The symptoms that are induced during these VR experiences fall under the umbrella term cybersickness, and due to these uncomfortable experiences, these users can get a bad first impression and abandon the innovative technology, not able to fully appreciate the convenience and fascinating adventures VR has to offer. As such, this project compares the effects of two cybersickness mitigation methods (Dynamic Field of View (FOV) and Virtual Reference Frame), both against each other and combined, on user-reported cybersickness symptoms to determine the best combination to implement in commercial applications to help create more user-friendly VR experiences. The hypothesis is that combining the FOV reduction and the resting frame methods can mitigate VR cybersickness more effectively without hindering the user’s experience and the virtual nose method is more potent at mitigating cybersickness compared to dynamic FOV. To test these hypotheses, an experimental game was developed for the Meta Quest 2 with five levels: a tutorial level and four maze levels (one for each scenario). The participants were asked to complete the tutorial level until they got used to the virtual reality controls, and then they were instructed to complete the maze level twice with one of the following conditions for each run: no method, dynamic field of view only, virtual nose only, and dynamic field of view and virtual nose combined. After completing each maze trial, the participants were asked to complete a simulator sickness questionnaire to get their thoughts on how much sickness they felt during the test. Upon concluding the testing phase with 36 participants and compiling the data, the results showed that while the subjects preferred the dynamic FOV method even though they were able to complete the trials significantly faster with the virtual nose method, it is inconclusive regarding which method is truly more effective. Furthermore, the results showed that it is also inconclusive if the scenario with both methods enabled is significantly better or worse than either method used separately.</p>