Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are a group of developmental neuropsychiatric disorders that can be highly variable in their intensity and in the types of symptoms displayed among different people. Over the years, various intervention techniques using computer-based or computer-assisted therapy have been explored to help individuals with autism in their everyday lives. This paper proposes a set of special guidelines for developing computer-based interactive applications and games to assist learning in children on the autism spectrum. The guidelines proposed here form a framework of interactive and adaptive techniques to be employed in designing computer games and applications that can be used to enhance various aspects of learning and development in children on the autism spectrum. These guidelines are based on the learning activities and other peer-to-peer interactions employed by teachers in inclusive classrooms which help optimize learning in a classroom environment. Other sources of game design considerations include prior research on the limitations encountered by children with ASD in motion, sensory perception, communication and cognition. Prior and ongoing research relating to their abilities in these particular areas are also utilized in this study as important factors in designing the interactive applications and games. Lastly, studies regarding the use of technologies and augmented communication devices are used to help outline the necessary mediums of delivery for the games and applications. The guidelines created in this study are introduced to parents and researchers of children on the autism spectrum through a survey in which these participants are asked to evaluate the techniques and technologies presented in this paper. This research delves into one of the new areas of exploration that have a huge potential in intervention techniques for children with ASD. It is expected that the outlines developed here will offer helpful insight into design and development for future efforts and advancements in gaming technologies for children with ASD.

A review of the history of video game design reveals an emphasis on themes of competition, survival, and combat. Game designers are now increasingly exploring other themes, including ethics, morality, and religious or spiritual subjects. This thesis analyzes the design of a 2D single-player computer game based on Christian principles, investigating morality, ethics, and meaning in video games. The game builds on previous games, examining the ethical relevance of certain video games as cultural artifacts and as personal inspiration, expounding on how games can be both inspirational and educational. Though violent games can provide moral challenges and "ethically significant experiences," in this project, non-violent solutions are more conducive for a game based on Christian tenets. This thesis project reinterprets the idea of the "shmup" or scrolling shooter game by changing the game mechanics and win condition to express a non-violent process. The player takes on the role of an angel who has been sent to rescue birds from demons, presenting general subjects for wide audience appeal regardless of religious beliefs. The thesis outlines the process used in the design, the philosophical approach, and the technical and artistic methods used to create the game. The game is evaluated subjectively with respect to the goals set forth in the design, based on informal player feedback. This thesis contributes to the exploration of games in a spiritual, artistic, moral, and emotional context and the process outlined herein provides a practical example to other independent game developers in the design of a game based on spiritual themes.

<p>Game balance can be considerd complex - there are many factors that play a role in the perception of balance. This thesis examines complexity, game theory and intution in an effort to disconver more about the perception of balance. The findings are that tactical and strategical choices that are presented for a player need to be interesting, not to complex and not to obvious. The importance lies in the estimation of the result that the player does when making a choice.</p> / <p>Spelbalansering är komplext – det finns många faktorer som påverkar det som uppfattas som balans. I mitt verk undersöks speciellt komplexitet, spelteori och intuition i jakten på att gräva fram mer ut ämnet. Denna reflexiva rapport tar upp metod och arbetsprocessen runt verket och mitt arbete på ability-systemet på Lockpick Entertainment. Om de taktiska och strategiska val som presenteras för en spelare anses som intressanta beror både på spelaren och svårigheten i valet. Är valet komplext är det svårare att avgöra korrekt, och taktiska och strategiska avvägningar måste göras. Detta är grunden i spelbalansering, att spelaren har flera vettiga, men inte uppenbara, val att välja bland.</p>

Effective game music is typically adaptive, interactive, or both. Changes in game music are usually influenced by the current state of the game or the actions of the player. To provide another dimension of interactivity, it would be useful to know the affective state of the human player. Biosignals are continuous signals generated by a person that can be measured over time, and have been shown to reflect affective state. This project demonstrates that control signals can be gathered from the player and mapped to musical parameters. Using a heart rate sensor and galvanic skin response sensor built from open source designs, we have used biosignals to control music playback while playing four games from different genres. A system for controlling game music with biosignals is computationally cheap, and can provide data that is useful to other game systems. The prototype developed for this project is basic, but with further research and development, we believe such a system will greatly improve the immersive experience of video games by involving the player on a new level. / text

Game sketching is used to identify enjoyable designs for digital games without the expense of fully implementing them. This thesis presents Raptor, a novel tool for sketching games. Raptor shows how tabletop interaction can effectively support the ideation phase of interaction design by permitting small collocated groups to participate in the design and testing process together. Raptor relies heavily on efficient gesture-based interaction, mixed-reality interaction involving physical props and digital artifacts, Wizard-of-Oz demonstration gameplay sketching, and fluid change of roles between designer and tester. An evaluation of Raptor using seven groups of three people showed that a sketching tool based on a tabletop computer indeed supports ideation and collaboration among collocated groups better than a more traditional PC-based tool. / Thesis (Ph.D, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2009-08-12 14:06:34.363

Literature and teaching books about how to make art for games have been accessible but thearea lacked covering of genre-specific game art. Game genres require different solutions forthe art in order to aid playability of the final product. My game project, called DOMAINS was made with an outside team. The project together withmy first art guide about the cinematic platformer genre provided materials for the writing ofthe next game art guide. The old art guide was used as a template for the new guide, whichfocused on the strategy game genre. This report contains the description of the process of making my second art guide, and thewhole The Strategy Game Art Guide itself. It reviews both the successful and less successful implements in the game and will walk thereader through how the prior decisions were made and the consequences. It targets beginnersin the game development world.

Videogame cities are 'real-and-imagined' spaces whose ubiquity as a setting for games illustrates the persistent fascination with the opportunities for play in urban space. In order to describe these videogame cities, we need a framework that considers them as they relate not only to one another, but to other material and immaterial cities as well. Cities, according to landscape architect Douglas Allen, have a constitutional order that describes their structure and a representational order that fills this space with activity. While these concepts are useful for thinking about the way space organizes and afford certain activities, I pose that the addition of an experiential order better addresses the 'specificity' that makes each real-and-imagined city unique. The experience of these videogame cities primarily emerges from the movement of the player as they are embodied as something acting in the space. The videogame city in motion brings to life the 'spaces of flows' - sequences of exchange and interaction ﾖ that sociologist Manuel Castells argues characterize the city in the information/computer age. Thus, not only do videogame cities draw on existing architecture, narratives, and mediations, they exhibit the traits of networked cities in their coordinated processes. By looking at the history of the development of the open-world city, its architectural organization, visual representations, algorithmic infrastructures, and how players traverse space, it is possible to paint a picture of what kinds of places these videogame cities are and how they allow us to reflect on urban form.

Toxic Behaviour, the phenomena where a person behaves in a way meant to intimidate or belittle another person, is an influential issue spreading across the virtual spaces that is online gaming communities. In this thesis we explore the possible correlations between Toxic Behaviour and game mechanics in online multi-player games by analyzing League of Legends (Riot Games, 2009), one of the most prominent online games currently dominating the market (Statista, 2014). We have analysed the game using a contemporary design framework used in the game industry accompanied by an ethnographical field study of the regular player base of League of Legends we have determined the most common reasons behind why these players tend to engage in Toxic Behaviour and if those reasons are connected to the game’s mechanics. Finally, we conceptualize plausible solutions based on our findings that hypothetically could decrease the amount of toxic player’s continuing engagement in Toxic Behaviour.

Many modern single-player role-playing games offer the player a power fantasy where the experience is designed to make the players feel powerful right from the start, with enemies and challenges that scale to the player characters level and abilities. This study explores what happens with play when power fantasy is replaced with decentralization and especially how this decentralization affects the player’s experience of failure and death. To explore this, three experienced The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim-players played the game with the modification Requiem - The Roleplaying Overhaul. After the participants had played at home for at least 8 hours they each participated in individual semi-structured interviews about their experiences. The interviews were transcribed and a grounded theory coding was performed. Finally the results were analyzed to find common themes. The study found that there was initial frustration due to expecting a power fantasy experience but once players adapted, the increased difficulty of decentralization was enjoyable as long as the player’s agency was not taken away and the world and its difficulty was logical. While the scope of the study is too small to draw generalizable conclusions it nevertheless shows that decentralized, difficult games work well for certain players. Future research is required on how to mitigate the effects of the initial obstacle. / Många moderna single-player-rollspel erbjuder spelaren en maktfantasi där denne ska känna sig kraftfull direkt från spelets start genom att spelets fiender och utmaningar är baserade på spelarkaraktärens nivå och förmågor. Den här studien utforskar vad som händer när denna maktfantasi ersätts med en värld som inte anpassar sig efter spelaren, en så kallad decentraliserad värld. Specifikt undersöks hur decentraliseringen påverkar spelarens upplevelse av misslyckande och spelardöd. För att utforska detta spelade tre spelare The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim med modifikationen Requiem - The Roleplaying Overhaul i åtta timmar. Efter att deltagarna spelat utfördes individuella semistrukturerade intervjuer och intervjuerna transkriberades. Därefter genomfördes en grounded-theory kodning och analys för att finna gemensamma teman. Resultatet visar att det till en början uppstod frustration hos spelarna på grund av att de väntade sig en maktfantasi. Men när spelarna anpassade sin spelstil kom det fram att svårighetsgraden i en decentraliserad värld ökade underhållningsvärdet så länge spelaren kände att denne kunde påverka sin situation och att svårighetsgraden är grundad i spelvärldens logik. Emedan omfånget av studien är för liten för att dra några generella slutsatser visar den att decentraliserade spel med hög svårighetsgrad är underhållande för vissa spelare. Vidare forskning behövs på hur spelare lättare ska komma över den initiala tröskeln.

My foray into location based gaming started because as a web designer, I felt that I wanted to expand my practice from one that consisted of straightforward interface design, to one that encompassed a wider variety of skills by improving on my knowledge and expertise in the burgeoning field of interaction design. This allowed me at the same time, to incorporate other aspects of design that include the usercentred design of tools for collaboration, content creation and community creation. I take a particular interest in the opportunities afforded by the convergence of web and game based technologies, especially when mobile interaction is afforded by such convergences. This exegesis describes the theoretical underpinnings that have informed the creation of a series of graphical interfaces that serve to bridge the gap between system capabilities as envisaged by the developers and a user's experience facilitated by an interface. The actual research into creation of the interface was preceded by an exploration of the field of location based gaming from which the initial area of interest was derived. Due to the fact that location based gaming is still an emerging field, it required the creation of a custom taxonomy for the works to be systematically separated into their various elements for analysis. The taxonomy to be created involved the combination of three smaller individual taxonomies in a way that has not been attempted previously and in a way that would give a balanced account of what makes up a location based game. The area of interested identified was how location based games might be made more readily available for a wider audience. Cipher Cities, which was a system in development at the time, was one that was already designed for such an application, but now required an interface that would appropriately represent what it aimed to achieve. I joined the team as their interface designer and it became clear that due to the location centric nature of the game, the only feasible way to go about democratising the participation in such games was to make it easy for people to build their own. The issue that arose was how an interface could encourage the creation of as well as participation in location based games. This required reference from current Web 2.0 applications that use members as creators of content as well as research into the theories behind community building, content creation and distribution in support of such an interface. These theories were put into practice and implemented before being evaluated and verified through a series of user testing sessions that served to refine the system in terms of user interface design and system functions. The result of the research is the first interface ever created that works to support a system for the creation of location based games by the public. More importantly, it is a robust, interface that is attractive as well as usable.