Virtual reality is a technology that has seen unprecedented growth since the turn of the century with increasing applications within business, entertainment, and educational applications. As virtual reality technologies continue to develops and markets expand, the world may see an increased demand for virtual classrooms: virtual environments (VEs) that students may access through immersive virtual reality technologies to receive guided instruction, conduct simulations, or perform tasks typical in a classroom setting. While many studies document how virtual reality is beneficial to educational processes, there is little discussion on how virtual environments should be architecturally designed. Thus one may hypothesize that physical design strategies translated to virtual environments may have similar results. This thesis investigates virtual environments for education by creating several virtual classrooms embedded within a selective digital twin of the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus. The design of the virtual classrooms was influenced by current architectural trends in classroom design while capturing unique abilities present within a virtual context. A physical teaching module was also designed to create a platform for educators within the university to deliver instruction within the virtual campus.

Immunology Virtual Reality (VR) project is an immersive educational virtual reality experience that intends to provide an informal learning experience of specific immunology concepts to college freshmen in the Department of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech (VT). The project is an interdisciplinary endeavor between my collaboration between people from different domain areas at VT: Creative Technologies, Education, Biological Sciences, and Computer Sciences. This thesis elaborates on the whole design process of how I created a working prototype of the project demo and shares insights from my design experience. / Master of Fine Arts / Immunology Virtual Reality is an immersive educational virtual reality experience in which a user takes on the role of an immune cell and migrates to fight off pathogen invasions at an infection site in the human body. It explores levels of interactivity and storytelling in educational VR and their impact on learning.

This thesis project examines social interactions in PvPvE Online Multiplayer Survival Shooters and proposes mechanics that promote connection among players, hooking rascal players who invent new ways to play the game, into the game spirit rather than engaging in toxic play. To do that, I followed a Research-through-design methodology, engaged with games, game designers, and gamers, and designed storyboards presenting examples of mechanics that promote players' connection. The results are Annotated Portfolios that frame the knowledge contribution as guides for designing mechanics for connection. The first annotation is “Helping or Asking for help” as a way to establish the purpose of communication, the second is “Temporarily teaming up” as a way to introduce a transitional state of sharing information such as knowledge and location, and the third one is “Risk and Reward” as the main aesthetic and motivation of target players.

This project is a scholarly manifesto on unplaying games by (both figuratively and literally) burning them. Building from the work of trans feminist game and media scholars and designers, this dissertation asks: how can we play in the unplayable, that we might live in the unlivable? To contend with these questions, this dissertation explores "ludoarsony"—the practice of un-playing games—as a critical design philosophy and theorical approach to play. It analyzes self-immolating and self-destructing games that burn away paper, plastic, characters, and stories and gray market games that have been ‘burned' with legal dubiousness in order to show how trans play can be found in ending the (game)world. This project builds its case for ludoarsaony across three case studies, each attending a different play practice. In the first chapter, it explores self-immolating games as examples of un-ending play. By playing with fire, we can become doombringers that (un)make worlds and games alike. In the second chapter, it contends with emulation as un-recognizing play that troubles computational ontologies. By emulating games, we can explore de/compilation of software and cultural systems. Finally, it demonstrates how un-balancing play—and flipping tables—upheaves unspoken exclusionary rhetoric and ludic traditions. Ultimately, this dissertation seeks to claim the "unplayable" as a space of trans imaginary—at once speculative and material—that emerges from the ashes of ruptured ludic and computational systems. It serves as an introductory investigation into the playful possibilities of what lies beyond the horizon of the so-called unplayable.

This study investigates how the layout and structure of battle arenas in a melee-driven multiplayer split-screen game influence player engagement. By iterating on two arenas, making informed design decisions based on data from weekly playtests. Data collection involved observations, interviews, and an automated C# data-collecting tool. Metrics focused on social interaction, success, participation, and area interaction, linked to enjoyment, immersion, and level of interaction. We conducted six playtests with eleven arena iterations. Key findings include a player preference for arenas where they experienced higher success rates, either through hit accuracy or wins; excessive spatial restrictions leading to player frustration and decreased enjoyment due to mobility difficulties; and a general preference for asymmetrical arenas, which were favored for their varied gameplay and strategic opportunities, despite slightly lower active combat participation. The final arena design was asymmetrical, featuring four distinct zones, each providing unique gameplay experiences and strategic opportunities. This study highlights how arena design can enhance player engagement by balancing spatial dynamics and strategic elements.

This research project employs principles of feminist theory to critically analyze video games, focusing specifically on the dichotomy between "games for boys" and "games for girls." By comparing these digital environments with the gendered play styles observed on playgrounds, this study investigates how entrenched stereotypes from the childhoods of European game designers are reflected in contemporary game design. The research extends previous studies by examining how gender roles are manifested in games.

This article introduces the concept of System Art and lays a foundation for creating a cohesive and functional framework for artistic interactive system analysis. The paper applies Russian Formalist theory for that purpose, explores the existing literature that covers such topics as Art Games and Videogame Formalism, and identifies the gaps in the currently existing works that should be addressed before building such framework: the lack of clearly defined interactive system elements, the lack of artistic device categorization, the lack of understanding of the role meaning plays in an artistic piece, and the lack of understanding different types of Defamiliarization effect – a notion proposed by Russian Formalists (Shklovsky, 2015) and adapted to games by Mitchell (2016). This article builds a foundation for creating an artistic system-oriented analysis theory, that would in turn be able to become a part of a bigger framework for studying digital games as an interdisciplinary form of artistic expression.

This study explores an experimental design methodology to circumvent issues with gathering behavioural data through serious games in citizen science. Public transportation research is used as a case, as it offers a complex problem for the game to solve. Four players were interviewed and observed playing a prototype of a serious game intended on gathering data on public transportation use in Gothenburg. Alongside this, a definition of different types of behaviours in games was developed to examine whether the players were playing rationally with regards to the game context (the magic circle) and the real world. The results show promise for the simplified real world mechanics utilized, to enable engaging serious game experiences. However, many issues and challenges were also observed, revolving around the players tendency to fluctuate between different types of behaviours. The implications of these challenges and the usefulness of the experimental design are discussed at the end.

This thesis explores the possibility of combining a noise-based terrain generator with a multi-agent system-based citygenerator for use in overworld map generation for games.The resulting artifact is a generator capable of creating awide variety of landscapes and populating them with citiesthat take advantage of available space and resources. Thegenerated noise is used as a height map which is colorizedto form the basis of the terrain. City agents traverse the space, looking for an optimal place to settle within their view. Once they find their final position, each city creates a number of building agents based on the nearby resources. The city agents take each other and the terrain into account when deciding where the buildings shall be placed. Then, road agents connectfirst the houses, then the cities together. Lastly, points ofinterests such as dungeons, bandit camps and wizard towers are placed, their final positions determined in a similar fashion to the city agents. The analysis of the results indicate that the generator is capable of producing novel terrain, and cities that adapt somewhat well to their surroundings, but offer little variety in existing features from map to map. In addition, more control is necessary to implement the artifact into adevelopment workflow. Respondents rated the maps produced by the generator lower than a map from an existing game ,converted into a similar format, and on a similar level as another map, also from an existing game.

The growing number of video gamers over the age of fifty has sparked new interests in the transformative power of play and consequently, video games, for a larger demographic of citizens. Researchers have found that digital gaming can have positive effects on the physical, psychological and cognitive well-being of older adults. Of particular interest to this thesis is the potential of games to facilitate social connections between different generations of players. Intergenerational games have focused on improving relations between younger people and older adults by providing enjoyable interactions that can impart cognitive and physical benefits. While previous work has focused on enhancing intergenerational social connections between relatives, non-familial intergenerational encounters have scarcely been explored. Games often feature asymmetrical participation and require long term interest, all factors that can prove challenging to implement for public non-kin intergenerational gameplay. Previous works have shown that the successful use of games is dependent on a number of psychosocial and contextual factors that shape the player experience. One of them is the degree of familiarity between players. Familiarity has been linked to many of the core motivations associated with intergenerational play, exposing doubts of whether the same motivations can be used to inform the design of intergenerational games between strangers of different ages. In addition, for most socio-technical interventions designed for older adults, the characteristics of seniors have predominantly been framed around accessibility and decline. This limited perspective also tends to be true when discussing games designed for seniors. Finally, existing research on games for seniors has mainly focused on seniors who play conventional video games and self-identify as gamers, further marginalizing seniors who do not fit these descriptions. The current design of intergenerational games might not be ready for adoption by the broader society. In response to these gaps, this thesis presents a research through design project aimed to investigate how a general population of older people (who may not be composed of video-gamers) perceive and experience game and play, and map this knowledge to promising playful approaches of intergenerational encounters while at the same time promoting a positive image of older adults as active and sociable members of society. The methodology featured a participatory approach that involved interview studies, co-design workshops, and playtests that helped to articulate the general requirements for an intergenerational game to be played in public spaces. The result of these formative exercises produced Klang Verbindet (“Sound Connects”), an interactive playful system that supports embodied interaction and group exploration of spaces. Designed to be played through body movements, the system employs vision-based algorithms and sound synthesis to provide an age- agnostic space for public play. Interactions with the system were evaluated in two different public contexts, using direct observations, semi-structured group interviews, and post-game questionnaires. Based on these data and the design and implementation of the system, the thesis describes a number of important factors to be considered when designing and evaluating games for non-familial intergenerational interaction. The most important being, to design for short-term and low-entry engagements which are defined as “low-threshold intergenerational encounters”. Within this space, the thesis discusses the distinctive value of - ambiguity, appropriation, and curiosity as drivers of gameplay for rapid mixed-aged encounters in the public context.