Embasado no processo artístico, este estudo reflete e descreve a preparação dos arranjos e de um recital de músicas de videogames como repertório de concerto. Os referenciais teóricos são discussões a respeito da música nos videogames, tecnologias de áudio referentes, discussões sobre pesquisa artística, textos sobre performance e sobre o concerto como evento. Os documentos desenvolvidos pelo autor durante o processo são partituras de arranjos autorais, cartazes e logomarcas que desenhei. Hoje em dia, as músicas de videogames não mais estão restritas aos jogos, constituem um repertorio que vem sendo interpretado por orquestras e solistas em diversos lugares do mundo. De um ruído que pretendia ilustrar o som da batida de uma bolinha no jogo Pong (1972) aos materiais sinfônicos presentes nos jogos de hoje, podemos perceber uma história de evoluções tecnológicas, demandas de mercado, práticas interpretativas e a possibilidade de uma nova janela a ser aberta no campo de estudos da música. Neste trabalho, apresento o relato sobre as diferentes etapas para a preparação de um concerto com músicas de videogame, envolvendo a escolha do repertório, preparação dos arranjos, realização dos cartazes para divulgação e as decisões interpretativas. / Based on the artistic process, this research reflects and describes the preparation of arrangements and a recital of music from videogames as a concert repertoire. The theoretical references are discussions about music in videogames, related audio technologies, discussions about artistic research, texts about performance and about the concert as an event. The documents developed by the author during the process are scores of arrangements, posters and logos that I drew. Nowadays, video game music is no longer restricted to games, it is a repertoire that has been played by orchestras and soloists in different parts of the world. From a noise that was intended to illustrate the sound of the beating ball in the Pong (1972) game to the symphonic materials present in the games of today, we can perceive a history of technological evolutions, market demands, interpretive practices and the possibility of a new window to be open in the field of music studies. In this work, I present the report on the different stages for the preparation of a concert with video game music, involving the choice of repertoire, preparation of the arrangements, realization of posters for dissemination and interpretative decisions.

Mankind has developed a lot in the field of Information Technology (IT), Computer Science and Media entertainment. Video games are also the most popular form of media entertainment and gaming environment. It has been popular long before the new generation video games idea was ever thought by the video game designers. Through our research we tried to investigate the positive and negative effects of video games on youth and children. This form of entertainment is more designed attracted among the people, due to the high sophisticated music and environment, which catches every eye. We not only analyzed the previous attempts in this area, but also tried to add some contribution to it. The excessive use of video games makes it more damaging effects on a young mind. Parents and teachers should keep a check on youngsters, and also the companies who design such violent games should keep in account that, what they show through these video games must have some logical or educational value. Many children and youngsters we found through our survey like to play video games because they do not have any other entertaining options. Violent video games are the most appreciated one among children and young people because of the detailed high quality graphics, more realistic images, use of artificial intelligence, complex game strategies, intelligent game inference engines and human-machine interaction. Parents should keep check on their children and select such video games for them which teach their children some useful things and beneficial for them in studies and near future. The teachers in school should also talk more about the advantages of educative games or physical games to develop the young minds more professional and realistic, rather than creating fantasy and fake imaginations. Our survey and research showed us that due to the high attraction of the video games, positive and negative effects are going side by side. Many youth and children do not take the video games seriously and just play them as any another game, while some video game players have disturbed their studies and health by playing the video games for many hours. Many children and young generation denied calling it as an addiction or bad habit. If violence and killing a life is entertainment then human beings will consider it, as a fun and modern society cannot be defined as civilized. This is what we found from our research and survey. / Program: Magisterutbildning i informatik

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:17:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Renata Correia Lima Ferreira Gomes.pdf: 13310244 bytes, checksum: 461b70952a77f132a4d560c29c6c5e16 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-11-03 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / From the conceptual of character-oriented games and of simulation games the present research draws the idea of narrative games as an immersive simulation , to be experienced by the interactor through his or her traversing the virtual space of the game as an implicated character and through his or her interaction with the autonomous characters of the game. We carry through the hypothesis that the key for the implentation of a dramatic strutucture in the game albeit fundamentally different from that of film or theater is in the design of autonomous characters. These we take to be object inhabiting the space-time of the game, carrying a high degree of autonomy, complexity and intentionality, who, through the possibility of empathy, constitute in themselves a pathway towards a dramatic entity with or against whom the interactor has to act. To demonstrate that, we describe narrative as a evolutionary strategy towards a causal mindframe, which evolves side-be-side with the media that materialize it, from oral narratives to 3D interactive digital pieces. A second step toward demonstrating our hypothesis is to describe autonomous characters through Artificial Intelligence applied to narrative: the believable characters . We take as a reference the work of the research groups Oz and Synthetic Characters, and of Brazilian game designer Marcos Cuzziol. Finally, a third step is to approach the nature of the fiction character, through the work of Aristotle and Fernando Segolin, and the concept of empathy, under the approach of Evan Thompson. Empathy here is understood as pre-condition for the comprehension of the Other and of ourselves as affective, emotional and intentional entities. To illustrate this final view, we analyze a few aspects of the Creatures from the games Black & White I e II, in an attempt to point out how some qualities proposed are instantiated / A partir do universo dos games de personagem e games de simulação , a pesquisa em curso pretende descrever a narrativa nos games como uma simulação imersiva , a ser experimentada pelo interator através de seu percurso pelo espaço virtual do game no papel de um personagem e de sua interação com personagens autônomos, operados pelo software. Levamos adiante a hipótese de que a peça-chave para a implementação de uma estrutura dramática no game ainda que fundamentalmente diferente daquela conhecida no cinema e teatro - jaz no design dos personagens autônomos. Estes entendemos como objetos do espaço-tempo virtual, dotados de alto grau de autonomia, complexidade e intencionalidade, que, através da possibilidade de empatia, constituiriam em si o caminho para a emergência de uma vontade dramática com/contra a qual o interator teria que lidar. Para isto, descrevemos a narrativa como uma estratégia evolutiva de pensamento comunicacional e causal, que se desenvolve de acordo com os meios nos quais se materializa, da oralidade primária ao audiovisual digital interativo 3D. Um segundo passo trata de descrever os personagens autônomos, em sua faceta de Inteligência Artificial voltada para games e narrativas interativas: os agentes verossímeis . Para isso, tomamos como referência o trabalho dos grupo de pesquisa Oz e Sythetic Characters, assim como do game designer brasileiro Marcos Cuzziol. Um terceiro passo consiste em abordar a natureza da personagem de ficção a partir de Aristóteles, Fernando Segolin e do conceito de empatia, sobretudo na visão de Evan Thompson, esta entendida como pré-condição para a compreensão do outro e de nós mesmos como entidades afetivas, emocionais e intencionais. Para finalizar, procedemos a uma análise de alguns aspectos das Criaturas dos jogos Black & White I e II, na tentativa de descrever como se instanciam algumas qualidades das propostas anteriores

This essay focuses on two cases studies that include two game designers’ views of meaning-making construction in games and an analysis of their corresponding games. This isplaced in relation to the late modern Sweden context. The study examines how the designersconceive purposeful play by employing a multi-disciplinary approach consistingof Pruyser’s three-world model, Bell’s ritualization framework, and, Howard’s quest theory.Such a study is relevant due to the new ways meaning-making is actively producedwithin games and contributes to the understanding of meaning-making in late modernSweden. The two designers work at DICE and Starbreeze Studios and were interviewedusing a semi-structured methodology. The data is analyzed with a qualitative narrativetechnique applying an inductive theoretical lens to analyze the data thematically. Bothrespondents illustrate patterns of meaning-making in their construction of games wherefunctionality is central and vital to produce purposeful play. The construction of illusionisticgame worlds encloses on feelings of authenticity to the world’s structure. Realistic,autistic, and, object symbolism operate to mold the world structure and are connected tothe designers’ genre. The designer from DICE promotes realistic worlds and the designerfrom Starbreeze Studios autistic representations. Ritualized practice within the worldfocuses on combat differentiation techniques to legitimize violent practice. The designers’realistic world construction makes combat plausible within its border and autistic worldsare empowered by back-stories. Opposition is seen as essential in both cases. The correspondinggame shows similar tendencies except that many of the quest themes are intactalthough the designers themselves consider the games to use less of the mythologicalformulae. Characters, themes, and, allegorical imagery was used to amplify the sense ofdialectic oppositions and logical opposition where the enemy is always darker. However,the hero and heroes are considerably grimmer compared to the stereotypical hero. Meaningis maintained through non-allegorical quests where the player and hero are motivatedby functionality linked to opposition or emotional elements. An anti-heroic concept isemployed to construct a practical and credible hero-character that has ambivalent attributesand convincing behavior. An alteration to dark-light symbolism can also be seen inone of the cases. In relation to other studies, this essay has broaden the spectrum of thepsychology of religion in terms of fields for meaning strategies; confirming ritualizedstrategies in video games; displayed altered ways of using mythological symbols in theSwedish context; presented cultural differences in hero structures that might be based onthe Swedish context.

In 2K Games’ Bioshock (2007) the player, as the protagonist Jack, is thrown into a dystopian, futuristic alternate history of America. Rapture is an underwater city saturated in music: popular songs from the mid twentieth century; classical-style soundtrack pieces composed by Garry Schyman; characters humming, singing, whistling or playing instruments; musical vending machines; and even the sounds of whales and other creatures all participate in forming a textured soundscape. The songs from the 1930s - 50s used throughout Bioshock recall a real-world cultural environment—a popular music culture that is both comfortably recognizable yet strangely unfamiliar. They occur within the game world and are heard by the player and game characters, and thus the songs are diegetic or “screen music.” In Bioshock, such music is an explicit component of narrative production, game environment creation, and player immersion. Significantly, diegetic music participates in the construction of narrative through a constant interplay or negotiation with the video game’s other elements—visual, textual, ludic—and ultimately functions as a distinct discourse able to mediate for Jack/the player between contesting factors, via established conventional codes of musical, cultural, film, and now video game signification. Bioshock’s use of music initiates a pre-game discourse during installation and prior to every game session in the disc-loading scenes, and this musical discourse is continued throughout the narrative. The story’s opening and descent into Rapture further establishes and “naturalizes” the presence of diegetic music as part of the story being told, and as a vital component of the audio-visual environment enhances player immersion. At the same time, these opening instances and subsequent occurrences of diegetic music at significant points in the story demonstrate that music’s culturally encoded emotive potential produces ironic and poignant effects, while its lyrical intertextuality generates narratological and ludic commentary in various song/scene pairings.

Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is considered to be among the most complex real-time strategy games that exist today. I am testing whether or not players can gain meaningful strategic value through statistical analysis. In particular, I have focused my analysis on how players can redefine their path from their initial-state to their goal-state in one versus one games, how players can optimize their chance of winning through faction selection, and how players ought to evaluate balance in team games. Through regression analysis, I have concluded that there is potential for statistics to inform player behavior when it comes to each of these strategies.

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / This dissertation has as its object the concept of creativity, as applied on entertainment products, more specifically on video games. Since this is a concept that has been used as an analysis category for researches within the CiberCog Research Lab, we want to problematize and redefine its parameters for future investigations. Thus our goal is to revise the concept of creativity, seeking to uncover how this category shall be used to study cognitive abilities that are required (and/or stimulated) for the fruition of entertainment products, most specially video games. The selected games for this study were divided into two groups (according to their genre): (1) action/adventure games, and (2) platform games. In the first group, we have Assassins Creed III (Ubisoft 2012); in the second, we have Rayman Origins (Ubisoft 2011). For the implementation of the research, there is a Cartographic-inspired method which stimulated the writing of collected data

Embasado no processo artístico, este estudo reflete e descreve a preparação dos arranjos e de um recital de músicas de videogames como repertório de concerto. Os referenciais teóricos são discussões a respeito da música nos videogames, tecnologias de áudio referentes, discussões sobre pesquisa artística, textos sobre performance e sobre o concerto como evento. Os documentos desenvolvidos pelo autor durante o processo são partituras de arranjos autorais, cartazes e logomarcas que desenhei. Hoje em dia, as músicas de videogames não mais estão restritas aos jogos, constituem um repertorio que vem sendo interpretado por orquestras e solistas em diversos lugares do mundo. De um ruído que pretendia ilustrar o som da batida de uma bolinha no jogo Pong (1972) aos materiais sinfônicos presentes nos jogos de hoje, podemos perceber uma história de evoluções tecnológicas, demandas de mercado, práticas interpretativas e a possibilidade de uma nova janela a ser aberta no campo de estudos da música. Neste trabalho, apresento o relato sobre as diferentes etapas para a preparação de um concerto com músicas de videogame, envolvendo a escolha do repertório, preparação dos arranjos, realização dos cartazes para divulgação e as decisões interpretativas. / Based on the artistic process, this research reflects and describes the preparation of arrangements and a recital of music from videogames as a concert repertoire. The theoretical references are discussions about music in videogames, related audio technologies, discussions about artistic research, texts about performance and about the concert as an event. The documents developed by the author during the process are scores of arrangements, posters and logos that I drew. Nowadays, video game music is no longer restricted to games, it is a repertoire that has been played by orchestras and soloists in different parts of the world. From a noise that was intended to illustrate the sound of the beating ball in the Pong (1972) game to the symphonic materials present in the games of today, we can perceive a history of technological evolutions, market demands, interpretive practices and the possibility of a new window to be open in the field of music studies. In this work, I present the report on the different stages for the preparation of a concert with video game music, involving the choice of repertoire, preparation of the arrangements, realization of posters for dissemination and interpretative decisions.

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / This dissertation has as its object the concept of creativity, as applied on entertainment products, more specifically on video games. Since this is a concept that has been used as an analysis category for researches within the CiberCog Research Lab, we want to problematize and redefine its parameters for future investigations. Thus our goal is to revise the concept of creativity, seeking to uncover how this category shall be used to study cognitive abilities that are required (and/or stimulated) for the fruition of entertainment products, most specially video games. The selected games for this study were divided into two groups (according to their genre): (1) action/adventure games, and (2) platform games. In the first group, we have Assassins Creed III (Ubisoft 2012); in the second, we have Rayman Origins (Ubisoft 2011). For the implementation of the research, there is a Cartographic-inspired method which stimulated the writing of collected data

Cette thèse explore l'utilisation des modèles bayésiens dans les IA de jeux vidéo multi-joueurs, particulièrement l'IA des jeux de stratégie en temps réel (STR). Les jeux vidéo se situent entre la robotique et la simulation totale, car les autres joueurs ne sont pas simulés, et l'IA n'a pas de contrôle sur la simulation. Les jeux de STR demandent simultanément d'effectuer des actions reactives (contrôle d'unités) et de prendre des décisions stratégiques (technologiques, économiques) et tactiques (spatiales, temporelles). Nous avons utilisé la modélisation bayésienne comme une alternative à la logique (booléenne), étant capable de travailler avec des informations incomplètes, et donc incertaines. En effet, la spécification incomplète des comportement "scriptés", ou la spécification incomplète des états possibles dans la recherche de plans, demandent une solution qui peut gérer cette incertitude. L'apprentissage artificiel aide à réduire la complexité de spécifier de tels modèles. Nous montrons que la programmation bayésienne peut intégrer toutes sortes de sources d'incertitudes (états cachés, intentions, stochasticité) par la réalisation d'un joueur de StarCraft complètement robotique. Les distributions de probabilité sont un moyen de transporter, sans perte, l'information que l'on a et qui peut représenter au choix: des contraintes, une connaissance partielle, une estimation de l'espace des états et l'incomplétude du modèle lui-même. Dans la première partie de cette thèse, nous détaillons les solutions actuelles aux problèmes qui se posent lors de la réalisation d'une IA de jeu multi-joueur, en donnant un aperçu des caractéristiques calculatoires et cognitives complexes des principaux types de jeux. En partant de ce constat, nous résumons les catégories transversales de problèmes, et nous introduisons comment elles peuvent être résolues par la modélisation bayésienne. Nous expliquons alors comment construire un programme bayésien en partant de connaissances et d'observations du domaine à travers un exemple simple de jeu de rôle. Dans la deuxième partie de la thèse, nous détaillons l'application de cette approche à l'IA de STR, ainsi que les modèles auxquels nous sommes parvenus. Pour le comportement réactif (micro-management), nous présentons un controleur multi-agent décentralisé et temps réel inspiré de la fusion sensori-motrice. Ensuite, nous accomplissons les adaptation dynamiques de nos stratégies et tactiques à celles de l'adversaire en le modélisant à l'aide de l'apprentissage artificiel (supervisé et non supervisé) depuis des traces de joueurs de haut niveau. Ces modèles probabilistes de joueurs peuvent être utilisés à la fois pour la prédiction des décisions/actions de l'adversaire, mais aussi à nous-même pour la prise de décision si on substitue les entrées par les notres. Enfin, nous expliquons l'architecture de notre joueur robotique de StarCraft, et nous précisions quelques détails techniques d'implémentation. Au delà des modèles et de leurs implémentations, il y a trois contributions principales: la reconnaissance de plan et la modélisation de l'adversaire par apprentissage artificiel, en tirant partie de la structure du jeu, la prise de décision multi-échelles en présence d'informations incertaines, et l'intégration des modèles bayésiens au contrôle temps réel d'un joueur artificiel. / This thesis explores the use of Bayesian models in multi-player video games AI, particularly real-time strategy (RTS) games AI. Video games are an in-between of real world robotics and total simulations, as other players are not simulated, nor do we have control over the simulation. RTS games require having strategic (technological, economical), tactical (spatial, temporal) and reactive (units control) actions and decisions on the go. We used Bayesian modeling as an alternative to (boolean valued) logic, able to cope with incompleteness of information and (thus) uncertainty. Indeed, incomplete specification of the possible behaviors in scripting, or incomplete specification of the possible states in planning/search raise the need to deal with uncertainty. Machine learning helps reducing the complexity of fully specifying such models. We show that Bayesian programming can integrate all kinds of sources of uncertainty (hidden state, intention, stochasticity), through the realization of a fully robotic StarCraft player. Probability distributions are a mean to convey the full extent of the information we have and can represent by turns: constraints, partial knowledge, state space estimation and incompleteness in the model itself. In the first part of this thesis, we review the current solutions to problems raised by multi-player game AI, by outlining the types of computational and cognitive complexities in the main gameplay types. From here, we sum up the transversal categories of prob- lems, introducing how Bayesian modeling can deal with all of them. We then explain how to build a Bayesian program from domain knowledge and observations through a toy role-playing game example. In the second part of the thesis, we detail our application of this approach to RTS AI, and the models that we built up. For reactive behavior (micro-management), we present a real-time multi-agent decentralized controller inspired from sensory motor fusion. We then show how to perform strategic and tactical adaptation to a dynamic opponent through opponent modeling and machine learning (both supervised and unsupervised) from highly skilled players' traces. These probabilistic player-based models can be applied both to the opponent for prediction, or to ourselves for decision-making, through different inputs. Finally, we explain our StarCraft robotic player architecture and precise some technical implementation details. Beyond models and their implementations, our contributions are threefolds: machine learning based plan recognition/opponent modeling by using the structure of the domain knowledge, multi-scale decision-making under uncertainty, and integration of Bayesian models with a real-time control program.