[ORGANIZATION OF THE QUALITY CONTROL OF PLACEMENT AND ACCOMMODATION OF PARTICIPANTS ATTENDANTS AND GUESTS OF THE XXII OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES AND XI PARALYMPIC WINTER GAMES OF 2014 IN THE RESORT CITY OF SOCHI].

Science.gov (United States)

Gorskiĭ, A A; Gus'kov, A S; Pochtareva, E S; Klindukhov, V P; Nikolaevich, P N; Grechanaia, T V; Vechemyaia, E A; Biriukov, V A; Bozhko, I I; Kulichenko, A N; Taran, T V; Zaĭtsev, A A; Tushina, O V

2015-01-01

There is presented the analysis of activities of the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights protection and Human Welfare to ensure adequate conditions of accommodation of the participants, attendants and guests of the XXII Olympic Winter Games and XI Paralympic Winter Games of 2014 in the Resort city of Sochi according to regulated requirements. There were detected ways of the strengthening the supervision for the quality of the accommodation during mass sports activities for the assurance of the rights for consumers.

Creating Physics Aware Games using PyGame and PyODE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

2010-09-01

Full Text Available This paper is a tutorial on how to use a popular physics engine and tie it up to a simple 2D game. It is structured as a tutorial for creating a simple game that uses the engine and a graphics library. The graphics library being used will be PyGame (which are Python bindings for the popular SDL library originally developed by Loki Entertainment Software and the physics engine being used will be PyODE (which are Python bindings for the Open Dynamics Engine. A few toy programs will be written and discussed to introduce the components and the bulk of the paper will be the development of a simple game. The game which will be developed is a clone of “The incredible machine” (which is a famous game  published by Sierra Entertainment in 1992.

Motivation and satisfaction among polyclinic volunteers at the 2002 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games

Science.gov (United States)

Reeser, J; Berg, R; Rhea, D; Willick, S

2005-01-01

Background: The Olympic and Paralympic Games rely heavily on volunteers to provide many essential services, including medical care of athletes. Objective: This preliminary investigation sought to characterise the motivational influences and factors responsible for the satisfaction of Olympic and Paralympic healthcare volunteers. Methods: The 2002 Winter Games polyclinic healthcare volunteers were asked to complete a questionnaire designed to elicit information about their motives for volunteering and the factors that contributed to their satisfaction with their volunteer experience. Results: There was no significant difference in the motivation or satisfaction summary scores based on event worked. There was a strong positive correlation between motivation and satisfaction. Physician respondents had a lower mean motivation score than did non-physician volunteers. Conclusions: There were no significant motivational differences between Olympic and Paralympic volunteers, but there were several differences noted between physician and non-physician volunteers. The 2002 polyclinic volunteers appear to have been motivated by a complex process best described as "enlightened self interest," and all were generally well satisfied with their experience. These results may assist organisers of future Games in selecting appropriately motivated volunteer personnel and creating rewarding work environments for them. PMID:15793078

Paralympic medical services for the 2010 paralympic winter games.

Science.gov (United States)

Taunton, Jack; Wilkinson, Michael; Celebrini, Rick; Stewart, Robert; Stasyniuk, Treny; Van de Vliet, Peter; Willick, Stuart; Ferrer, Josep Martinez

2012-01-01

To present the planning and medical encounters for the 2010 Paralympic Winter Games. Prospective medical encounter study. 2010 Paralympic Winter Games. Athletes, coaches, officials, workforce, volunteers, and media. Sport type: alpine, Nordic, and sledge hockey and curling. Participant type: athlete, workforce, and spectators. Terrain and speed. Medical encounters entered in database at competitive (alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, sledge hockey, and curling) and noncompetitive (Whistler and Vancouver Polyclinics, presentation centers, opening and closing ceremonies, media center, Paralympic Family Hotel) venues. Forty-two nations participated with 1350 Paralympic athletes, coaches, and officials. There were 2590 accredited medical encounters (657 athletes, 25.4%; 682 International Federation/National Paralympic Committee officials, 26.3%; 57 IPC, 2.2%; 8 media, 0.3%; 1075 workforce, 41.5%; 111 others, 4.3%) and 127 spectator encounters for a total of 2717 encounters. During the preopening period medical services saw 201 accredited personnel. The busiest venues during the Paralympic Games were the Whistler (1633 encounters) and Vancouver (748 encounters) Polyclinics. Alpine, sledge hockey, and curling were the busiest competitive venues. The majority of medical encounters were musculoskeletal (44.6%, n = 1156). Medical services recorded 1657 therapy treatments, 977 pharmaceutical prescriptions dispensed, 204 dental treatments, 353 imaging examinations (more than 50% from alpine skiing), and 390 laboratory tests. There were 24 ambulance transfers with 7 inpatient hospitalizations for a total of 24 inpatient days and 4 outpatient visits. The mandate to have minimal impact on the health services of Vancouver and the Olympic Corridor while offering excellent medical services to the Games was accomplished. This data will be valuable to future organizing committees.

[FEATURES OF THE ORGANIZATION OF SANITARY-EPIDEMIOLOGICAL SURVEILLANCE DURING THE PERIOD OF PREPARATION AND HOSTING OF THE XXII OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES AND XI PARALYMPIC WINTER GAMES IN THE RESORT CITY OF SOCHI IN 2014].

Science.gov (United States)

Onishchenko, G G; Popova, A Iu; Kuzkin, B P; Guskova, A S; Ivanov, G E; Pakskina, N D; Klindukhov, V P; Nikolaevich, P N; Grechanaia, T V; Balaeva, M I; Biriukov, V A; Bozhko, I I; Tesheva, S Ch; Daragan, Iu G; Parkhomenko, V V; Rafeenko, G K; Kulichenko, A N; Manin, E A; Maletskaia, O V; Vasilenko, N F; Efremenko, D V; Orobeĭ, V G; Eldinova, V E; Pilikova, O M; Malaĭ, V I; Iunicheva, Iu V

2015-01-01

In the paper there are presented the basic principles of the organization of activities for the assurance ofthe sanitary- epidemiological welfare in the period ofpreparation and hosting of the XXII Olympic Winter Games and XI Paralympic Winter Games of 2014 in the Resort City of Sochi. There are considered features of the organization ofepidemiological surveillance in the pre-Olympic period, the period of the games and the state of the morbidity rate in the region after the Olympics. There are presented data on certain directions of the work of organs and institutions of the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare on the disease control of the event.

Quality of life, coach behaviour and competitive anxiety in Winter Youth Olympic Games participants.

Science.gov (United States)

Ledochowski, Larissa; Unterrainer, Christine; Ruedl, Gerhard; Schnitzer, Martin; Kopp, Martin

2012-12-01

To ensure the highest technical performance, speed, safety, excellent control and to improve competitive performance, a successful regulation of competitive anxiety is necessary. Therefore, it seems crucial to identify factors influencing competitive anxiety of adolescent athletes. Research suggests that people reporting high quality of life are more capable to cope with stressful and challenging situations than others. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of quality of life, the involvement of parents in sports career and coach's leadership behaviour on competitive anxiety in Winter Youth Olympic Games participants. During the first Winter Youth Olympic Games 2012 in Innsbruck/Austria, 662 (316 women) participants completed questionnaires and single items to assess quality of life, coach's leadership behaviour, parental involvement in sports career and competitive anxiety. Multiple regression analysis revealed positive influences of high quality of life and useful coach instruction on competitive anxiety. The relationship between quality of life, coach behaviour and competitive anxiety in young elite athletes competing at the first Winter Youth Olympic Games should be considered in long-term programmes for reducing competitive stress.

Russia and the olympic movement : a study of Russian national identity as described in the newspaper Sovetskij Sport during the winter olympic games of 1988, 1992, 1994, and in the future winter olympic games of 2014

OpenAIRE

Nikitin, Anna

2010-01-01

The topic of the thesis deals with Russia and the Olympic Movement, studying Russian national identity as it is described in the newspaper Sovetskij Sport during three past Winter Olympic Games (1988, 1992, 1994) and the upcoming Winter Olympic Games that take place in Sochi 2014 in the framework of international politics. The research task is to analyze, what kinds of discourses do the writings of Russian Olympic Committee’s leading sports journal Sovetskij Sport use in times of the above me...

Creating a board game for encouraging emotional intelligence

OpenAIRE

Galič, Kaja

2016-01-01

The main focus of this thesis is on creating a board game for encouraging emotional intelligence of children in early childhood. Game is based on the Four-Branch Model which was proposed by Mayer and Salovey (1997). Board game covers emotional skills, which include the abilities to perceive emotions in oneself and other, to use emotions, to understand emotions and to manage emotions. Game was tested in Kindergarten Ledina Ljubljana and Kindergarten Mavrica Brežice. 57 children, aged five and ...

Hellsgate Big Game Winter Range Wildlife Mitigation Project : Annual Report 2008.

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Whitney, Richard P.; Berger, Matthew T.; Rushing, Samuel; Peone, Cory

2009-01-01

The Hellsgate Big Game Winter Range Wildlife Mitigation Project (Hellsgate Project) was proposed by the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation (CTCR) as partial mitigation for hydropower's share of the wildlife losses resulting from Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee Dams. At present, the Hellsgate Project protects and manages 57,418 acres (approximately 90 miles2) for the biological requirements of managed wildlife species; most are located on or near the Columbia River (Lake Rufus Woods and Lake Roosevelt) and surrounded by Tribal land. To date we have acquired about 34,597 habitat units (HUs) towards a total 35,819 HUs lost from original inundation due to hydropower development. In addition to the remaining 1,237 HUs left unmitigated, 600 HUs from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife that were traded to the Colville Tribes and 10 secure nesting islands are also yet to be mitigated. This annual report for 2008 describes the management activities of the Hellsgate Big Game Winter Range Wildlife Mitigation Project (Hellsgate Project) during the past year.

Asthma in United States olympic athletes who participated in the 1998 olympic winter games.

Science.gov (United States)

Weiler, J M; Ryan, E J

2000-08-01

About one of every 5 athletes who participated in the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta had a past history of asthma, had symptoms that suggested asthma, or took asthma medications. No previous study has determined the prevalence of asthma in all US athletes who participated in an Olympic Winter Games. We sought to determine how many US athletes who participated in the 1998 Olympic Winter Games had a past history of asthma, had symptoms that suggested asthma, or indicated taking a medication used to treat asthma. We evaluated responses to questions that asked about allergic and respiratory diseases in the United States Olympic Committee Medical History Questionnaire that was completed by all 196 athletes who represented the United States at the 1998 Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan. Forty-three (21.9%) of the 196 athletes had a previous diagnosis of asthma, and 36 (18. 4%) recorded use of an asthma medication at some time in the past. Forty-four (22.4%) reported use of an asthma medication, a diagnosis of asthma, or both (our basis for the diagnosis of asthma). Thirty-four (17.4%) of the athletes were currently taking an asthma medication at the time that they completed the questionnaire or indicated that they took these medications on a permanent or semipermanent basis and were considered to have active asthma. Athletes who participated in Nordic combined, cross-country, and short track events had the highest prevalence of having been told that they had asthma or had taken an asthma medication in the past (60.7%) in contrast with only one (2.8%) of the 36 athletes who participated in bobsled, biathlon, luge, and ski jumping. Eighteen (24%) of 75 athletes who participated in alpine, long track, figure skating, snow boarding, and curling had a previous diagnosis of asthma or recorded use of an asthma medication. We conclude that asthma appeared to have been more common in athletes who participated in the 1998 Winter Games than in athletes who participated in

Game design as marketing: How game mechanics create demand for virtual goods

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lehdonvirta, V.

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Selling virtual goods for real money is an increasingly popular revenue model for massively-multiplayer online games (MMOs, social networking sites (SNSs and other online hangouts. In this paper, we argue that the marketing of virtual goods currently falls short of what it could be. Game developers have long created compelling game designs, but having to market virtual goods to players is a relatively new situation to them. Professional marketers, on the other hand, tend to overlook the internal design of games and hangouts and focus on marketing the services as a whole. To begin bridging the gap, we propose that the design patterns and game mechanics commonly used in games and online hangouts should be viewed as a set of marketing techniques designed to sell virtual goods. Based on a review of a number of MMOs, we describe some of the most common patterns and game mechanics and show how their effects can be explained in terms of analogous techniques from marketing science. The results provide a new perspective to game design with interesting implications to developers. Moreover, they also suggest a radically new perspective to marketers of ordinary goods and services: viewing marketing as a form of game design.

Creating Evaluation Profiles for Games Designed to be Fun: An Interpretive Framework for Serious Game Mechanics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ulrich, Frank; Helms, Niels Henrik

2017-01-01

Background. Games can be great pedagogical tools for educators and students. COTS games (commercialoff-the-shelf) are designed for the pure purpose of leisure but can also contain educational value. Aim. In this paper, we address the potential of COTS games as serious games. We develop...... an interpretive evaluation framework that can identify the educational value in COTS games. Application. The presented framework can create evaluative profiles of the learning, social, game, and immersive mechanics of COTS games as educational tools. Moreover, the framework can position COTS games between four...... enables critical reflection on the game mechanics; thereby capturing the complexity of the game mechanics that makes COTS game both educational and fun to play....

Create 2D mobile games with Corona SDK for iOS and Android

CERN Document Server

Mekersa, David

2015-01-01

Corona SDK is one of the most powerful tools used to create games and apps for mobile devices.The market requires speed; new developers need to operate quickly and efficiently. Create 2D Mobile Games with Corona SDK gives you the tools needed to master Corona - even within the framework of professional constraints. A must-read guide, this book gives you fast, accurate tips to learn the programming language necessary to create games. Read it sequentially or as an FAQ and you will have the tools you need to create any base game before moving on to advanced topics. The tutorial-based format:Conta

Very-short range forecasting system for 2018 Pyeonchang Winter Olympic and Paralympic games

Science.gov (United States)

Nam, Ji-Eun; Park, Kyungjeen; Kim, Minyou; Kim, Changhwan; Joo, Sangwon

2016-04-01

The 23rd Olympic Winter and the 13th Paralympic Winter Games will be held in Pyeongchang, Republic of Korea respectively from 9 to 25 February 2018 and from 9 to 18 February 2018. The Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) and the National Institute for Meteorological Science (NIMS) have the responsibility to provide weather information for the management of the Games and the safety of the public. NIMS will carry out a Forecast Demonstration Project (FDP) and a Research and Development Project (RDP) which will be called ICE-POP 2018. These projects will focus on intensive observation campaigns to understand severe winter weathers over the Pyeongchang region, and the research results from the RDP will be used to improve the accuracy of nowcasting and very short-range forecast systems during the Games. To support these projects, NIMS developed Very-short range Data Assimilation and Prediction System (VDAPS), which is run in real time with 1 hour cycling interval and up to 12 hour forecasts. The domain is covering Korean Peninsular and surrounding seas with 1.5km horizontal resolution. AWS, windprofiler, buoy, sonde, aircraft, scatwinds, and radar radial winds are assimilated by 3DVAR on 3km resolution inner domain. The rain rate is converted into latent heat and initialized via nudging. The visibility data are also assimilated with the addition of aerosol control variable. The experiments results show the improvement in rainfall over south sea of Korean peninsula. In order to reduce excessive rainfalls during first 2 hours due to the reduced cycling interval, the data assimilation algorithm is optimized.

HTML5 games creating fun with HTML5, CSS3, and WebGL

CERN Document Server

Seidelin, Jacob

2011-01-01

Discover new opportunities for building 2D and 3D games with HTML5 The newest iteration of HTML, HTML5 can be used with JavaScript, CSS3, and WebGL to create beautiful, unique, engaging games that can be played on the web or mobile devices like the iPad or Android phones. Gone are the days where games were only possible with plugin technologies such as Flash and this cutting-edge book shows you how to utilize the latest open web technologies to create a game from scratch using Canvas, HTML5 Audio, WebGL, and WebSockets. You'll discover how to build a framework on which you will create your HTML5 game. Then each successive chapter covers a new aspect of the game, including user input, sound, multiplayer functionality, 2D and 3D graphics, and more. Aims directly at a new way to develop games for the web through the use of HTML5 Demonstrates how to make iOS and Android web apps Explains how to capture player input; create 3D graphics; and incorporate textures, lighting, and sound Guides you through the proce...

The 2016 Arctic Winter Games: “Now we do what we do best”

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ren, Carina Bregnholm; Thomsen, Robert Chr.

2016-01-01

A few days before the opening ceremony of the 2016 Arctic Winter Games (AWG) in Nuuk, Greenland, weather reports looked bleak. A spring blizzard was on its way and expected to peak the day prior to the opening ceremony. That very Saturday, 1250 participants were set to fly to Greenland’s capital...... city – the highest number of civilians arriving in one day by aircraft in the island’s history. Now, however, bad weather was jeopardizing this milestone in Greenlandic aviation history and, along with that, the successful execution of the upcoming games....

Creating Evaluation Profiles for Games Designed to be Fun: An Interpretive Framework for Serious Game Mechanics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ulrich, Frank; Helms, Niels Henrik

2017-01-01

an interpretive evaluation framework that can identify the educational value in COTS games. Application. The presented framework can create evaluative profiles of the learning, social, game, and immersive mechanics of COTS games as educational tools. Moreover, the framework can position COTS games between four...... intertwined dimensions, namely pedagogical, design, knowledge, and sociotechnical considerations. Demonstration. To validate the practical application of the interpretive framework, we apply it to a real-world example. Our demonstration reveals the usefulness of the framework. Conclusions. The framework...

Creating a gold medal Olympic and Paralympics health care team: a satisfaction survey of the mobile medical unit/polyclinic team training for the Vancouver 2010 winter games.

Science.gov (United States)

Brown, D Ross; Heidary, Behrouz; Bell, Nathaniel; Appleton, Leanne; Simons, Richard K; Evans, David C; Hameed, S Morad; Taunton, Jack; Khwaja, Kosar; O'Connor, Michael; Garraway, Naisan; Hennecke, Peter; Kuipers, Donna; Taulu, Tracey; Quinn, Lori

2013-11-13

The mobile medical unit/polyclinic (MMU/PC) was an essential part of the medical services to support ill or injured Olympic or Paralympics family during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympics winter games. The objective of this study was to survey the satisfaction of the clinical staff that completed the training programs prior to deployment to the MMU. Medical personnel who participated in at least one of the four training programs, including (1) week-end sessions; (2) web-based modules; (3) just-in-time training; and (4) daily simulation exercises were invited to participate in a web-based survey and comment on their level of satisfaction with training program. A total of 64 (out of 94 who were invited) physicians, nurses and respiratory therapists completed the survey. All participants reported favorably that the MMU/PC training positively impacted their knowledge, skills and team functions while deployed at the MMU/PC during the 2010 Olympic Games. However, components of the training program were valued differently depending on clinical job title, years of experience, and prior experience in large scale events. Respondents with little or no experience working in large scale events (45%) rated daily simulations as the most valuable component of the training program for strengthening competencies and knowledge in clinical skills for working in large scale events. The multi-phase MMU/PC training was found to be beneficial for preparing the medical team for the 2010 Winter Games. In particular this survey demonstrates the effectiveness of simulation training programs on teamwork competencies in ad hoc groups.

Game-Based Assessments: A Promising Way to Create Idiographic Perspectives

Science.gov (United States)

Walker, A. Adrienne; Engelhard, George, Jr.

2014-01-01

"Game-Based Assessments: A Promising Way to Create Idiographic Perspectives" (Adrienne Walker and George Englehard) comments on: "How Task Features Impact Evidence from Assessments Embedded in Simulations and Games" by Russell G. Almond, Yoon Jeon Kim, Gertrudes Velasquez, and Valerie J. Shute. Here, Walker and Englehard write…

Geoethnopolitical Aspect of the Caucasus Development in terms of Sochi Preparation for Winter Olympic Games

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Svetlana V. Petrova

2012-03-01

Full Text Available The article is concerned with geopolitical problems within the Caucasus Region in terms of modern regional processes, indicates major features of the region and their impact on Sochi preparation for Winter Olympic Games.

Legal Regulation of Trade Activity during Sochi Preparation of XXII Winter Olympic and XI Paralympic Games

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elena V. Ivneva

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The article deals with the topical issues of legal regulation of social trade relations in the Russian Federation during Sochi preparation and hosting of XXII Winter Olympic and XI Paralympic Games.

Play, Create, Share? Console Gaming, Player Production and Agency

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Olli Sotamaa

2010-07-01

Full Text Available Digital games have been frequently used to illustrate the new organisational frameworks that are based on persuading users to carry out tasks and assignments not traditionally associated with them. However coined, ‘user-innovation’ (von Hippel, 2005, ‘crowdsourcing’ (Howe, 2008 or ‘pro-am revolution’ (Leadbeater and Miller, 2004, contemporary examples of this phenomena always include digital games. A closer look at the recent open innovation manifestos reveals that the oft-cited examples come almost entirely from PC games while console games remain mostly non-existent in these texts. It is clear that PC and console games differ both in use and in the cultures they create (Taylor, 2007. Equally, the technological and economic backgrounds of the market sectors have their differences (Kerr, 2006.The concept of LittleBigPlanet, a console game inherently dependent on player production, challenges the neat binary of some much cited arguments about tethered appliances. The first set of research questions rises from this observation. What are the technical and economic constraints and affordances the console as a platform uses to position the productive activities of players? How do these differ from the forms of player production typical of PC gaming (see Sotamaa, 2007a; and Sotamaa, 2007b?

High incidence of injury at the Sochi 2014 Winter Paralympic Games: a prospective cohort study of 6564 athlete days.

Science.gov (United States)

Derman, W; Schwellnus, M P; Jordaan, E; Runciman, P; Van de Vliet, P; Blauwet, C; Webborn, N; Willick, S; Stomphorst, J

2016-09-01

To describe the epidemiology of injuries at the Sochi 2014 Winter Paralympic Games. A total of 547 athletes from 45 countries were monitored daily for 12 days during the Sochi 2014 Winter Paralympic Games (6564 athlete days). Daily injury data were obtained from teams with their own medical support (32 teams, 510 athletes) and teams without their own medical support (13 teams, 37 athletes) through electronic data capturing systems. There were 174 total injuries reported, with an injury incidence rate (IR) of 26.5 per 1000 athlete days (95% CI 22.7% to 30.8%). There was a significantly higher IR recorded in alpine skiing/snowboarding (IR of 41.1 (95% CI 33.7% to 49.6%) p=0.0001) compared to cross-country skiing/biathlon, ice sledge hockey or wheelchair curling. Injuries in the shoulder region were the highest single-joint IR (IR of 6.4 (95% CI 4.6% to 8.6%)), although total upper and lower body IR were similar (IR 8.5 vs 8.4 (95% CI 6.4% to 11.1%)). Furthermore, the IR of acute injuries was significantly higher than other types of injury onset (IR of 17.8 (95% CI 14.7% to 21.4%)). In a Winter Paralympic Games setting, athletes report higher injury incidence than do Olympic athletes or athletes in a Summer Paralympic Games setting. The highest incidence of injury was reported in the alpine skiing/snowboarding sporting category. There was a similar incidence of injury in the upper and lower limbs. The joint with the greatest rate of injury reported was the shoulder joint. Our data can inform injury prevention programmes and policy considerations regarding athlete safety in future Winter Paralympic Games. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/

An Evaluation of Mesoscale Model Based Model Output Statistics (MOS) During the 2002 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Hart, Kenneth

2003-01-01

The skill of a mesoscale model based Model Output Statistics (MOS) system that provided hourly forecasts for 18 sites over northern Utah during the 2002 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games is evaluated...

Sports injuries and illnesses in the Lillehammer 2016 Youth Olympic Winter Games.

Science.gov (United States)

Steffen, Kathrin; Moseid, Christine Holm; Engebretsen, Lars; Søberg, Pia K; Amundsen, Olav; Holm, Kristian; Moger, Thomas; Soligard, Torbjørn

2017-01-01

Injury and illness surveillance during high-level youth sports events is an important first step in health prevention and caretaking of the young elite athletes. To analyse injuries and illnesses that occurred during the 10 days 2nd Youth Olympic Winter Games (YOG), held in Lillehammer 2016. We recorded the daily occurrence (or non-occurrence) of injuries and illnesses through the reporting of (1) all National Olympic Committee (NOC) medical teams and (2) the polyclinic and medical venues by the Lillehammer Organising Committee (LYOCOG) medical staff. In total, 1083 athletes (48 double-starters), 46% (n=502) of them females, from 70 NOCs were registered in the study. NOCs and LYOCOG reported 108 injuries and 81 illnesses, equalling to 9.5 injuries and 7.2 illnesses per 100 athletes. The percentage of injured athletes was highest in the snowboard and ski slopestyle and cross disciplines, alpine skiing and skeleton, and lowest in the Nordic skiing disciplines. Approximately, two-thirds of the injuries (n=71, 65.7%) prevented the athlete from training or competition, while 10 injuries (9.3%) were registered with an estimated absence from sport for >7 days. The rate of illness was highest in curling and the Nordic skiing disciplines with most of them being respiratory tract infections (81.5%). Overall, 9% of the athletes incurred at least one injury during the games, and 7% an illness, which is similar to the first YOG in Innsbruck 2012 and slightly lower compared with previous Winter Olympic Games. The incidence of injuries and illnesses varied substantially between sports. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

Simulated Sustainable Societies: Students' Reflections on Creating Future Cities in Computer Games

Science.gov (United States)

Nilsson, Elisabet M.; Jakobsson, Anders

2011-02-01

The empirical study, in this article, involved 42 students (ages 14-15), who used the urban simulation computer game SimCity 4 to create models of sustainable future cities. The aim was to explore in what ways the simulated "real" worlds provided by this game could be a potential facilitator for science learning contexts. The topic investigated is in what way interactions in this gaming environment, and reflections about these interactions, can form a context where the students deal with real world problems, and where they can contextualise and apply their scientific knowledge. Focus group interviews and video recordings were used to gather data on students' reflections on their cities, and on sustainable development. The findings indicate that SimCity 4 actually contributes to creating meaningful educational situations in science classrooms, and that computer games can constitute an important artefact that may facilitate contextualisation and make students' use of science concepts and theories more explicit.

Enterprise games: creating and implementing a model to simulate logistics operations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alander Ornellas Ornellas

2008-07-01

Full Text Available This work proposes an enterprise game model to simulate the main logistics operations in a supply chain. The need of a simple tool, but well structured and able to create a dynamic learning environment without making it too complex motivated this study and development. The work begins with a comparative analysis between the main reference models about enterprise logistics, included in the bibliography related to best practices in logistics decision-making. Then, concepts of simulation and games are described, its interrelations, characteristics and importance as learning method. The definition of the best practices is, then, used to guide the construction of the main characteristics for the proposed model. The results obtained show the efficacy of the model as a tool capable of creating a dynamic environment for learning purposes to complement traditional teaching techniques. Key-words: Enterprise Games, Supply Chain, Logistics, Simulation, Learning.

Simulated Sustainable Societies: Students' Reflections on Creating Future Cities in Computer Games

Science.gov (United States)

Nilsson, Elisabet M.; Jakobsson, Anders

2011-01-01

The empirical study, in this article, involved 42 students (ages 14-15), who used the urban simulation computer game SimCity 4 to create models of sustainable future cities. The aim was to explore in what ways the simulated "real" worlds provided by this game could be a potential facilitator for science learning contexts. The topic investigated is…

SEEK!: creating and crowdfunding a game-based open educational resource to improve information literacy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrew Walsh

2014-03-01

Full Text Available Crowdfunding was used for the development and production of an information literacy game, SEEK!, in 2012. The game aims to build skills around creating a search strategy and is deliberately generic and adaptable. This article outlines the reasons for using such a game for the teaching of information skills, the process of gaining funding via the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo and some future developments that build on the initial game creation and use.

Creating Video Games in a Middle School Language Arts Classroom: A Narrative Account

Science.gov (United States)

Oldaker, Adam

2010-01-01

This article describes the author's experience co-facilitating a project for which seventh-grade students designed and created original video games based on Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time". The author provides an overview of recent literature on video game implementation in the classroom and explains how the project was designed and…

Sports injuries and illnesses during the Winter Olympic Games 2010.

Science.gov (United States)

Engebretsen, Lars; Steffen, Kathrin; Alonso, Juan Manuel; Aubry, Mark; Dvorak, Jiri; Junge, Astrid; Meeuwisse, Willem; Mountjoy, Margo; Renström, Per; Wilkinson, Mike

2010-09-01

Identification of high-risk sports, including their most common and severe injuries and illnesses, will facilitate the identification of sports and athletes at risk at an early stage. To analyse the frequencies and characteristics of injuries and illnesses during the XXI Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver 2010. All National Olympic Committees' (NOC) head physicians were asked to report daily the occurrence (or non-occurrence) of newly sustained injuries and illnesses on a standardised reporting form. In addition, the medical centres at the Vancouver and Whistler Olympic clinics reported daily on all athletes treated for injuries and illnesses. Physicians covering 2567 athletes (1045 females, 1522 males) from 82 NOCs participated in the study. The reported 287 injuries and 185 illnesses resulted in an incidence of 111.8 injuries and 72.1 illnesses per 1000 registered athletes. In relation to the number of registered athletes, the risk of sustaining an injury was highest for bobsleigh, ice hockey, short track, alpine freestyle and snowboard cross (15-35% of registered athletes were affected in each sport). The injury risk was lowest for the Nordic skiing events (biathlon, cross country skiing, ski jumping, Nordic combined), luge, curling, speed skating and freestyle moguls (less than 5% of registered athletes). Head/cervical spine and knee were the most common injury locations. Injuries were evenly distributed between training (54.0%) and competition (46.0%; p=0.18), and 22.6% of the injuries resulted in an absence from training or competition. In skeleton, figure and speed skating, curling, snowboard cross and biathlon, every 10th athlete suffered from at least one illness. In 113 illnesses (62.8%), the respiratory system was affected. At least 11% of the athletes incurred an injury during the games, and 7% of the athletes an illness. The incidence of injuries and illnesses varied substantially between sports. Analyses of injury mechanisms in high-risk Olympic winter

Psychosocial impact of participation in the National Veterans Wheelchair Games and Winter Sports Clinic.

Science.gov (United States)

Sporner, Michelle L; Fitzgerald, Shirley G; Dicianno, Brad E; Collins, Diane; Teodorski, Emily; Pasquina, Paul F; Cooper, Rory A

2009-01-01

The purpose of this study was to determine the characteristics of individuals who participate in the National Veterans Wheelchair Games (NVWG) and the Winter Sports Clinic (WSC) for veterans with disabilities. In addition, it was of interest to determine how these events had impacted their lives. Participants were recruited at the 20th Winter Sports Clinic, held in Snowmass Colorado and the 26th National Veterans Wheelchair Games held in Anchorage, Alaska. Data of interest included demographic, sport participation information, community integration, self-esteem, and quality of life. A secondary data analysis was completed to determine how comparable individuals who attended the NVWG/WSC were to individuals who did not participate in these events. The 132 participants were a mean age of 47.4 + 13.4 and lived with a disability for an average of 13.4 + 12.1. Participants felt that the NVWG/WSC increased their knowledge of sports equipment (92%), learning sports (89%), mobility skills (84%), and acceptance of disability (84%). The majority of participants stated that the NVWG/WSC improved their life. Of those who participated at the NVWG/WSC, they tended to be more mobile, but have increased physical and cognitive limitations as measured by the CHART when compared to the non-attendees. Recommending veterans participate in events such as the NVWG and WSC can provide psychosocial benefits to veterans with disabilities.

Torino 2006. XX Olympic and IX Paralympic Winter Games: the ENT experience.

Science.gov (United States)

Succo, G; Crosetti, E; Mattiazzo, A; Riontino, E; Massazza, G

2008-06-01

A total of 27 competition days, more than 3000 athletes, over 10,000 components of the Olympic family, 3,500 workers, 2,500 volunteers, an overall business of more than 2 billion Euros. These, in a nutshell, are just a few of the data concerning the XX Olympic and the IX Paralympic Winter Games, Torino, Italy, 2006. Such a huge event, obviously required a meticulously organized medical service to cope with the healthcare of the athletes, official workers and the Olympic family, distributed over a geographic area of approximately 80 km in diameter. An ENT service was organized within the medical service, which was divided between 3 Polyclinics, in which 12 ENT Specialists were on duty. The present report gives an account of the final data concerning the service involved, together with a description of the approach used in the actual organization, with a view to providing useful information for colleagues who will be called upon, for a similar service, in future Olympic Winter Games. The ENT healthcare offered was confirmed to be proportional to the requirements, both from a qualitative and quantitative point of view. All the ENT specialists involved, reported having gained an immense store of human experience from having lived the Olympic atmosphere as a volunteer exerting one's own profession. The facilities available in the Polyclinics, which were at a considerable distance from the Hospital, were found to be more than adequate with respect to the pathological conditions and service requested, particularly in 17% of the cases which would otherwise have been sent to a Hospital Outpatient Unit at least 80 km away.

Experimenting on how to create a sustainable gamified learning design that supports adult students when learning through designing learning games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Weitze, Charlotte Lærke

2014-01-01

digital learning games (small games) in cross‐disciplinary subject matters. The experiment has focused on creating a game‐based learning design that enables the students to implement the learning goals into their games, and on making the game design process motivating and engaging. Another focus......This paper presents and discusses the first iteration of a design‐based research experiment focusing on how to create an overall gamified learning design (big Game) facilitating the learning process for adult students by letting them be their own learning designers through designing their own...... of the study has been to create a sustainable learning design that supports the learning game design process and gives teachers the ability to evaluate whether the students have been successful in learning their subject matter through this learning game design process. The findings are that this initial...

Rethinking Game Based Learning: applying pedagogical standards to educational games

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Schmitz, Birgit; Kelle, Sebastian

2010-01-01

Schmitz, B., & Kelle, S. (2010, 1-6 February). Rethinking Game Based Learning: applying pedagogical standards to educational games. Presentation at JTEL Winter School 2010 on Advanced Learning Technologies, Innsbruck, Austria.

The student`s training to creating computer games for preschool-age children

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Мардарова И.К.

2016-09-01

Full Text Available The article deals with the special aspects of future kindergartner training to creating computer games for children of preschool age. The scratch-projects technology and recommendation for use at kindergarten pedagogical process are described in it.

ZBrush creature design creating dynamic concept imagery for film and games

CERN Document Server

Spencer, Scott

2012-01-01

Zero in on the most cutting-edge trend in creature design for film and games: ZBrush! ZBrush allows you to develop a creature for film and games in realistic, 3D format. With this book, you will learn how to create a unique creature from start to finish and search for and repair any foreseeable problems. Clear instructions guide you through using Photoshop in combination with ZBrush to finely render a creature so you can see how it will appear on screen. Experienced ZBrush author and designer Scott Spencer shows you how to start with your concept in ZBrush as a preliminary digital model and th

Medical services at the first Winter Youth Olympic Games 2012 in Innsbruck/Austria.

Science.gov (United States)

Blank, Cornelia; Schamasch, Patrick; Engebretsen, Lars; Haslinger, Simon; Ruedl, Gerhard; Fink, Christian; Schobersberger, Wolfgang

2012-12-01

The Youth Olympic Games (YOG) are a new format designed by the International Olympic Committee. So far no reference data are available regarding the organisation or implementation of the medical services that were needed for the Winter Youth Olympic Games that took place for the first time in Innsbruck 9-24 January 2012. (1) To provide insight into what is needed to prepare for such a complex high level sporting event from a medical perspective, (2) to provide data on medical services for future organising committees and (3) to provide information on different National Olympic Committee (NOC) delegation structures and the consequences of registering a National Olympic Committee Team Physician. A medical information system in the form of a patient data-management system was developed with all involved parties to standardise data collection. All medical encounters occurring at any IYOGOC medical service centre (including physiotherapy and psychology facilities) were tracked and collected in daily reports. Data evaluation was prepared based on different interest groups (Athletes, National Olympic Committees, Workforce, International Olympic Committee and Media) and analysed. 327 medical encounters (42.8% athletes; out of these, 57.9% were accounted to athletes with own NOC team physician) were seen during the YOG 2012. The total number of hospital transports was 27.3%, of which 8.9% were hospitalised with an average length of 1.9 nights. Physiotherapy usage was low with only 19 medical encounters resulting in a referral to physiotherapy accounting for 67 treatments during the entire YOG. Psychological care service was not used at all. The main reason for illnesses was disorders of the respiratory system (28.8%), injuries mostly affected upper extremities (49.6%) and were mostly diagnosed with lacerations and contusions (26.2%). Injury (70.7%) and illness (29.3%) incidences in athletes were slightly lower than previous studies showed. 40.0% of NOC delegations

Sports injuries and illnesses in the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games.

Science.gov (United States)

Soligard, Torbjørn; Steffen, Kathrin; Palmer-Green, Debbie; Aubry, Mark; Grant, Marie-Elaine; Meeuwisse, Willem; Mountjoy, Margo; Budgett, Richard; Engebretsen, Lars

2015-04-01

Systematic surveillance of injuries and illnesses is the foundation for developing preventive measures in sport. To analyse the injuries and illnesses that occurred during the XXII Olympic Winter Games, held in Sochi in 2014. We recorded the daily occurrence (or non-occurrence) of injuries and illnesses (1) through the reporting of all National Olympic Committee (NOC) medical teams and (2) in the polyclinic and medical venues by the Sochi 2014 medical staff. NOC and Sochi 2014 medical staff reported 391 injuries and 249 illnesses among 2780 athletes from 88 NOCs, equalling incidences of 14 injuries and 8.9 illnesses per 100 athletes over an 18-day period of time. Altogether, 12% and 8% of the athletes incurred at least one injury or illness, respectively. The percentage of athletes injured was highest in aerial skiing, snowboard slopestyle, snowboard cross, slopestyle skiing, halfpipe skiing, moguls skiing, alpine skiing, and snowboard halfpipe. Thirty-nine per cent of the injuries were expected to prevent the athlete from participating in competition or training. Women suffered 50% more illnesses than men. The rate of illness was highest in skeleton, short track, curling, cross-country skiing, figure skating, bobsleigh and aerial skiing. A total of 159 illnesses (64%) affected the respiratory system, and the most common cause of illness was infection (n=145, 58%). Overall, 12% of the athletes incurred at least one injury during the games, and 8% an illness, which is similar to prior Olympic Games. The incidence of injuries and illnesses varied substantially between sports. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

Slippery Slope? Assessing the Economic Impact of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah

OpenAIRE

Robert Baade; Robert Baumann; Victor Matheson

2008-01-01

This paper provides an empirical examination of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah. Our analysis of taxable sales in the counties in which Olympic events took place finds that some sectors such as hotels and restaurants prospered while other retailers such as general merchandisers and department stores suffered. Overall the gains in the hospitality industry are lower than the losses experienced by other sectors in the economy. Given the experience of Utah, potential Olympic...

Cognitive behavioral game design: a unified model for designing serious games.

Science.gov (United States)

Starks, Katryna

2014-01-01

Video games have a unique ability to engage, challenge, and motivate, which has led teachers, psychology specialists, political activists and health educators to find ways of using them to help people learn, grow and change. Serious games, as they are called, are defined as games that have a primary purpose other than entertainment. However, it is challenging to create games that both educate and entertain. While game designers have embraced some psychological concepts such as flow and mastery, understanding how these concepts work together within established psychological theory would assist them in creating effective serious games. Similarly, game design professionals have understood the propensity of video games to teach while lamenting that educators do not understand how to incorporate educational principles into game play in a way that preserves the entertainment. Bandura (2006) social cognitive theory (SCT) has been used successfully to create video games that create positive behavior outcomes, and teachers have successfully used Gardner's (1983) theory of multiple intelligences (MIs) to create engaging, immersive learning experiences. Cognitive behavioral game design is a new framework that incorporates SCT and MI with game design principles to create a game design blueprint for serious games.

The incidence and patterns of illness at the Sochi 2014 Winter Paralympic Games: a prospective cohort study of 6564 athlete days.

Science.gov (United States)

Derman, W; Schwellnus, M P; Jordaan, E; Runciman, P; Van de Vliet, P; Blauwet, C; Webborn, N; Willick, S; Stomphorst, J

2016-09-01

To describe the epidemiology of illness at the Sochi 2014 Winter Paralympic Games. A total of 547 athletes from 45 countries were monitored daily for 12 days over the Sochi 2014 Winter Paralympic Games (6564 athlete days). Illness data were obtained daily from teams without their own medical support (13 teams, 37 athletes) and teams with their own medical support (32 teams, 510 athletes) through electronic data capturing systems. The total number of illnesses reported was 123, with an illness incidence rate (IR) of 18.7 per 1000 athlete days (95% CI 15.1% to 23.2%). The highest IR was reported for wheelchair curling (IR of 20.0 (95% CI 10.1% to 39.6%)). Illnesses in the respiratory system (IR of 5.6 (95% CI 3.8% to 8.0%)), eye and adnexa (IR of 2.7 (95% CI 1.7% to 4.4%)) and digestive system (IR of 2.4 (95% CI 1.4% to 4.2%)) were the most common. Older athletes (35-63 years) had a significantly higher IR than younger athletes (14-25 years, p=0.049). The results of this study indicate that Paralympic athletes report higher illness incidence rates compared to Olympic athletes at similar competitions. The highest rates of illness were reported for the respiratory and digestive systems, eye and adnexa, respectively. Thus, the results of this study form a basis for the identification of physiological systems at higher risk of illness, which can in turn inform illness prevention and management programmes with eventual policy change to promote athlete safety in future editions of the Winter Paralympic Games. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/

Cognitive behavioral game design: a unified model for designing serious games

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Katryna eStarks

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Video games have a unique ability to engage, challenge, and motivate, which has led teachers, psychology specialists, political activists and health educators to find ways of using them to help people learn, grow and change. Serious games, as they are called, are defined as games that have a primary purpose other than entertainment. However, it is challenging to create games that both educate and entertain. While game designers have embraced some psychological concepts such as flow and mastery, understanding how these concepts work together within established psychological theory would assist them in creating effective serious games. Similarly, game design professionals have understood the propensity of video games to teach while lamenting that educators do not understand how to incorporate educational principles into game play in a way that preserves the entertainment. Albert Bandura’s (1998 social cognitive theory (SCT has been used successfully to create video games that create positive behavior outcomes, and teachers have successfully used Howard Gardner’s (1983 theory of multiple intelligences (MI to create engaging, immersive learning experiences. Cognitive behavioral game design is a new framework that incorporates Social Cognitive Theory (SCT and Multiple Intelligences (MI with game design principles to create a game design blueprint for serious games.

Resident Perceptions of the 2006 Torino Olympic Games, 2002-2007.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

ALESSANDRO CHITO GUALA,

2009-01-01

Full Text Available Previous Olympic Games research has been primarily on economic impacts, tourists, and destination image with most being one-off assessments of the Summer Games. Other than Ritchie's landmark study of the Calgary Winter Olympic Games, relatively few research studies on the Winter Olympic Games have been published, and fewer still concerning resident attitudes throughout the full lifecycle of the event, from bidding, preparation, operation, and legacy stages. Residents are in a unique position to evaluate an event's legacy as taxpayers, daily consumers of infrastructure, and as possible leisure consumers of Olympic sport venues. The purpose of this study was to examine Torino residents' perceptions of their city as host of the 2006 Torino Winter Olympic Games from 2002-2007. Results from telephone interviews with Torino residents (n = 900 interviews per year; N = 5,400 are presented to reflect the attitudes of the population toward the 2006 Winter Olympic Games over time. Residents experienced a "rollercoaster" of emotions during the event lifecycle ranging from euphoria once the Games were awarded, to concern over escalating production costs, irritation with inconveniences due to construction, and ultimately pride immediately following the Games. Implications of study findings for event and destination managers are discussed.

An Educational Tool for Creating Distributed Physical Games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lund, Henrik Hautop; Pagliarini, Luigi

2011-01-01

programming for physical games development. This is done by providing an educational tool that allows a change of representation of the problems related to game designing from a virtual to a physical representation. Indeed, MITS seems to be a valuable system for bringing into education a vast number of issues...... (such as parallel programming, distribution, communication protocols, master dependency, connectivity, topology, island modeling software behavioral models, adaptive interactivity, feedback, user and multi-user game interaction, etc.). This can both improve the education-related issues in computer......The development of physical interactive games demands extensive knowledge in engineering, computer science and gaming. In this paper we describe how the Modular Interactive Tiles System (MITS) can be a valuable tool for introducing students to interactive parallel and distributed processing...

Creating the Future of Games and Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Squire, Kurt

2015-01-01

Games for learning are poised to enter mainstream education. Several factors driving this movement are the following: (1) Digital distribution through cloud computing services and ubiquitous connectivity which will make digital learning tools--such as games--affordable and easily accessible; (2) The proliferation of digital devices; (3) Digital…

Golden Games

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

LI XIAO

2010-01-01

@@ China is not expected to sweep the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games the way it dominated the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.However,it has made Chinese Olympic history after winning three gold medals when the Games passed the halfway point of scheduled competition on February 20.On that day,18-year-old Zhou Yang overcame three South Korean rivals to win the women's short-track speed skating 1,500-meter final.

An Experimental High-Resolution Forecast System During the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games

Science.gov (United States)

Mailhot, J.; Milbrandt, J. A.; Giguère, A.; McTaggart-Cowan, R.; Erfani, A.; Denis, B.; Glazer, A.; Vallée, M.

2014-01-01

Environment Canada ran an experimental numerical weather prediction (NWP) system during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, consisting of nested high-resolution (down to 1-km horizontal grid-spacing) configurations of the GEM-LAM model, with improved geophysical fields, cloud microphysics and radiative transfer schemes, and several new diagnostic products such as density of falling snow, visibility, and peak wind gust strength. The performance of this experimental NWP system has been evaluated in these winter conditions over complex terrain using the enhanced mesoscale observing network in place during the Olympics. As compared to the forecasts from the operational regional 15-km GEM model, objective verification generally indicated significant added value of the higher-resolution models for near-surface meteorological variables (wind speed, air temperature, and dewpoint temperature) with the 1-km model providing the best forecast accuracy. Appreciable errors were noted in all models for the forecasts of wind direction and humidity near the surface. Subjective assessment of several cases also indicated that the experimental Olympic system was skillful at forecasting meteorological phenomena at high-resolution, both spatially and temporally, and provided enhanced guidance to the Olympic forecasters in terms of better timing of precipitation phase change, squall line passage, wind flow channeling, and visibility reduction due to fog and snow.

ACTIVITIES OF SAINT-PETERSBURG RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF RADIATION HYGIENE AFTER PROFESSOR P.V. RAMZAEV FOR PROVISION OF RADIATION SAFETY OF XXII WINTER OLYMPIC AND XI WINTER PARALYMPICS GAMES OF 2014 IN SOCHI CITY

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

I. K. Romanovich

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The article contains an analysis of the experience of Rospotrebnadzor radiological units’ activities for  radiation  safety  provision  of  the  participators  and  guests  of  XXII  Winter  Olympic  Games  in  Sochi  and  also of Sochi city inhabitants as during the period of preparations for the Games so during the period of the Olympic and Paralympics Games. Peculiarities of organization of activities of Rospotrebnadzor specialists are considered for  the  preparation  period  and  main  period,  the  occurred  problems  of  technical  and  methodical  provision  of radiation control which was carried out for the purpose of counteraction to possible actions of radiation terrorism are considered as well. The role is noted of the specialists of Radiation Hygiene Institute in the methodical and organizational provision of the whole complex of carried-out activities.

Serious Games: improving the Learning Effect with Hybrid Games

OpenAIRE

Barhaug, Martin

2017-01-01

Previous work at NTNU has sparked an interest in hybrid board games. These kinds of games combine elements in digital and board games together. This has resulted in a platform called AnyBoard, which is a platform that makes it easier for developers to create and develop hybrid board games. The platform was created at NTNU and has been worked on by students and employees at the IDI institute. This thesis aims to investigate this platform, and look at the potential it has to influence learn...

How Student Game Designers Design Learning into Games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Weitze, Charlotte Lærke

2017-01-01

This investigation examined how to support students in creating learning designs for specific learning goals in analogue and digital games as a means of learning. The study also explored the learning trajectories that emerged in the digital games created by the student learning-game designers....... The DBR study was developed through three iterations over two years, involving teachers and students in co-design processes. Together with the teachers, an overall learning design supported the learning process for students by inviting them to be their own learning designers as they designed digital...... learning games for specific learning goals in cross-disciplinary subject matters. The findings were that the students succeeded in developing and implementing specific learning goals in their games. The students also developed learning trajectories through the games by designing various learning...

Combining Digital Archives Content with Serious Game Approach to Create a Gamified Learning Experience

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

D.-T. Shih

2015-08-01

Full Text Available This paper presents an interdisciplinary to develop content-aware application that combines game with learning on specific categories of digital archives. The employment of content-oriented game enhances the gamification and efficacy of learning in culture education on architectures and history of Hsinchu County, Taiwan. The gamified form of the application is used as a backbone to support and provide a strong stimulation to engage users in learning art and culture, therefore this research is implementing under the goal of “The Digital ARt/ARchitecture Project”. The purpose of the abovementioned project is to develop interactive serious game approaches and applications for Hsinchu County historical archives and architectures. Therefore, we present two applications, “3D AR for Hukou Old ” and “Hsinchu County History Museum AR Tour” which are in form of augmented reality (AR. By using AR imaging techniques to blend real object and virtual content, the users can immerse in virtual exhibitions of Hukou Old Street and Hsinchu County History Museum, and to learn in ubiquitous computing environment. This paper proposes a content system that includes tools and materials used to create representations of digitized cultural archives including historical artifacts, documents, customs, religion, and architectures. The Digital ARt / ARchitecture Project is based on the concept of serious game and consists of three aspects: content creation, target management, and AR presentation. The project focuses on developing a proper approach to serve as an interactive game, and to offer a learning opportunity for appreciating historic architectures by playing AR cards. Furthermore, the card game aims to provide multi-faceted understanding and learning experience to help user learning through 3D objects, hyperlinked web data, and the manipulation of learning mode, and then effectively developing their learning levels on cultural and historical archives in

Combining Digital Archives Content with Serious Game Approach to Create a Gamified Learning Experience

Science.gov (United States)

Shih, D.-T.; Lin, C. L.; Tseng, C.-Y.

2015-08-01

This paper presents an interdisciplinary to develop content-aware application that combines game with learning on specific categories of digital archives. The employment of content-oriented game enhances the gamification and efficacy of learning in culture education on architectures and history of Hsinchu County, Taiwan. The gamified form of the application is used as a backbone to support and provide a strong stimulation to engage users in learning art and culture, therefore this research is implementing under the goal of "The Digital ARt/ARchitecture Project". The purpose of the abovementioned project is to develop interactive serious game approaches and applications for Hsinchu County historical archives and architectures. Therefore, we present two applications, "3D AR for Hukou Old " and "Hsinchu County History Museum AR Tour" which are in form of augmented reality (AR). By using AR imaging techniques to blend real object and virtual content, the users can immerse in virtual exhibitions of Hukou Old Street and Hsinchu County History Museum, and to learn in ubiquitous computing environment. This paper proposes a content system that includes tools and materials used to create representations of digitized cultural archives including historical artifacts, documents, customs, religion, and architectures. The Digital ARt / ARchitecture Project is based on the concept of serious game and consists of three aspects: content creation, target management, and AR presentation. The project focuses on developing a proper approach to serve as an interactive game, and to offer a learning opportunity for appreciating historic architectures by playing AR cards. Furthermore, the card game aims to provide multi-faceted understanding and learning experience to help user learning through 3D objects, hyperlinked web data, and the manipulation of learning mode, and then effectively developing their learning levels on cultural and historical archives in Hsinchu County.

Serious Games Network

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Carlos Vaz de Carvalho

2013-11-01

Full Text Available “Serious games” can be defined as (digital games used for purposes other than mere entertainment. Serious Games can be applied to a broad spectrum of areas, e.g. educational, healthcare, training in hazardous environments or situations. Game-based Learning, one aspect of Serious Games, are also more and more explored for all levels of education in different subjects, such as Ancient History. The SEGAN (SErious GAmes Network will create a Community of Practice on the Serious Games subject. The main objective is to create a stable (but expanding consortium to exchange ideas and experiences related to Serious Games. The SEGAN Network invites the people of the community of Archaeology, Cultural Heritage and Ancient History interested in Serious Games to join the net and to participate in their activities.

Planning of traumatological hospital resources for a major winter sporting event as illustrated by the 2005 Winter Universiad.

Science.gov (United States)

Oberladstaetter, J; Kamelger, F S; Rosenberger, R; Dallapozza, Ch; Struve, P; Luger, T; Fink, Ch; Attal, R

2009-03-01

The 22nd Student World Winter Games took place in January 2005 in Innsbruck and Seefeld, Austria. Exactly 1,500 athletes of 50 nationalities competed in 69 events in ten winter sports. A total number of 750 functionaries, 800 volunteers and 85,000 spectators participated in the second largest winter sports event behind the Olympic winter games. The aim of this study was to evaluate the needed resources to ensure traumatological care for an event of that size. At the medical "call-center" all consultations, as well as patient data, diagnosis, and medical treatment were recorded using a preset protocol. Further, all patients treated in the University Hospital Innsbruck were registered with an emphasis on trauma patients. Forty-eight of 65 patients transported to the hospital as a result of the Universiade were trauma patients, 37 of whom were athletes. The gender distribution was 34:14 (m:f). Ice hockey players had the highest rate of injury (25% of all injured athletes), followed by alpine skiers (20.8% of injured athletes). The highest ISS was nine. Forty-three patients got ambulatory treatment, five were admitted to the hospital and surgical treatment was conducted in three cases. Mean patient number was 4.8 per day. No additional personnel, structural, or technical hospital resources were needed to accommodate a large winter sports event like the Universiad. Thus, a level-B trauma center with an emergency room and independent traumatological department with around the clock surgical capability seems to be sufficient to provide traumatological care for an event of this size if the possibility of patient transport to a larger facility exists in the case of catastrophic events.

Winter Secrets: An Instant Lesson Plan.

Science.gov (United States)

Collyer, Cam

1997-01-01

Outdoor lesson plan aims to stimulate student interest in animals' adaptations to winter and the various signs and clues to animal behavior. Includes questions for class discussion, tips for guiding the hike, and instructions for two games that illustrate the predator-prey relationship. Notes curriculum connections to the East York (Ontario) Board…

Bank of China Becomes Banking Partner of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

无

2004-01-01

@@ Beijing Olympic Committee announced recently that Bank of China become a partner of 2008 Olympic Games. Bank of China will provide abundant fund, banking financial products and related services for Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, and Paralympic Games, Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee and China Olympic Committee and China Sports team to participate in 2006 Winter Olympic Games and 2008 Olympic Games.

Music Activities for Lemonade in Winter

Science.gov (United States)

Cardany, Audrey Berger

2014-01-01

"Lemonade in Winter: A Book About Two Kids Counting Money" is a children's book about math; however, when sharing it in the music classroom, street cries and clapping games emerge. Jenkins' and Karas' book provides a springboard to lessons addressing several music elements, including form, tempo, and rhythm, as well as…

Game mechanics engine

OpenAIRE

Magnusson, Lars V

2011-01-01

Game logic and game rules exists in all computer games, but they are created di erently for all game engines. This game engine dependency exists because of how the internal object model is implemented in the engine, as a place where game logic data is intermingled with the data needed by the low- level subsystems. This thesis propose a game object model design, based on existing theory, that removes this dependency and establish a general game logic framework. The thesis the...

Using virtual reality technology and hand tracking technology to create software for training surgical skills in 3D game

Science.gov (United States)

Zakirova, A. A.; Ganiev, B. A.; Mullin, R. I.

2015-11-01

The lack of visible and approachable ways of training surgical skills is one of the main problems in medical education. Existing simulation training devices are not designed to teach students, and are not available due to the high cost of the equipment. Using modern technologies such as virtual reality and hands movements fixation technology we want to create innovative method of learning the technics of conducting operations in 3D game format, which can make education process interesting and effective. Creating of 3D format virtual simulator will allow to solve several conceptual problems at once: opportunity of practical skills improvement unlimited by the time without the risk for patient, high realism of environment in operational and anatomic body structures, using of game mechanics for information perception relief and memorization of methods acceleration, accessibility of this program.

Bank of China Becomes Banking Partner of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

无

2004-01-01

　　Beijing Olympic Committee announced recently that Bank of China become a partner of 2008 Olympic Games. Bank of China will provide abundant fund, banking financial products and related services for Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, and Paralympic Games, Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee and China Olympic Committee and China Sports team to participate in 2006 Winter Olympic Games and 2008 Olympic Games.……

Identifying the Barriers to Using Games and Simulations in Education: Creating a Valid and Reliable Survey Instrument

Science.gov (United States)

Justice, Lenora Jean

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study was to create a valid and reliable instrument to measure teacher perceived barriers to the adoption of games and simulations in instruction. Previous research, interviews with educators, a focus group, an expert review, and a think aloud protocol were used to design a survey instrument. After finalization, the survey was…

3D for iPhone Apps with Blender and SIO2 Your Guide to Creating 3D Games and More with Open-Source Software

CERN Document Server

Mullen, Tony

2010-01-01

Create exciting, interactive 3D apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. What a combination-using free, open-source Blender software and the SI02 game engine to create very cool 3D characters and games for the very hot devices of the moment, the iPhone and iPod Touch. Whether you're coming to this as an iPhone developer or as a Blender artist, this book is for you. Learn how to create 3D content using Blender's WYSIWYG approach, find helpful information on Xcode and other iPhone SDK topics, master physical collisions, and acquire the skills you need to bridge both worlds with fun, compelling conten

Comparing effects of Winter Universiade (2011) and European ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Comparing effects of Winter Universiade (2011) and European Youth Olympic Festival (2011) ... The participating group was composed of 878 local spectators who watched the games. ... Sample group views on both positive and negative effects of these two events have high averages. ... AJOL African Journals Online.

Build a game with UDK

CERN Document Server

Sholler, Geoff

2013-01-01

A step-by-step tutorial to create an astounding game using the tools provided by UDK.This book is intended for people who aim to make an amazing virtual game with UDK. The goal of this book to give users a chance to expand their knowledge and create exciting games using the tools available.

Developing games with Magic Playground: a gesture-based game engine

OpenAIRE

Dehanov, Juana; Dias, José Miguel Salles; Bastos, Rafael; Cabral, Carolina

2005-01-01

ACE 134 This paper presents Magic Playground, a game engine that enables the development of entertainment applications with realtime gesture-based Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). We describe the main architectural elements of our system and provide a guideline on how to program the engine in order to create games. Finally, we present usability evaluation results of a game, which emulates the known Tetris game1.

Experimental High-Resolution Land Surface Prediction System for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games

Science.gov (United States)

Belair, S.; Bernier, N.; Tong, L.; Mailhot, J.

2008-05-01

The 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games will take place in Vancouver, Canada, from 12 to 28 February 2010 and from 12 to 21 March 2010, respectively. In order to provide the best possible guidance achievable with current state-of-the-art science and technology, Environment Canada is currently setting up an experimental numerical prediction system for these special events. This system consists of a 1-km limited-area atmospheric model that will be integrated for 16h, twice a day, with improved microphysics compared with the system currently operational at the Canadian Meteorological Centre. In addition, several new and original tools will be used to adapt and refine predictions near and at the surface. Very high-resolution two-dimensional surface systems, with 100-m and 20-m grid size, will cover the Vancouver Olympic area. Using adaptation methods to improve the forcing from the lower-resolution atmospheric models, these 2D surface models better represent surface processes, and thus lead to better predictions of snow conditions and near-surface air temperature. Based on a similar strategy, a single-point model will be implemented to better predict surface characteristics at each station of an observing network especially installed for the 2010 events. The main advantage of this single-point system is that surface observations are used as forcing for the land surface models, and can even be assimilated (although this is not expected in the first version of this new tool) to improve initial conditions of surface variables such as snow depth and surface temperatures. Another adaptation tool, based on 2D stationnary solutions of a simple dynamical system, will be used to produce near-surface winds on the 100-m grid, coherent with the high- resolution orography. The configuration of the experimental numerical prediction system will be presented at the conference, together with preliminary results for winter 2007-2008.

Games for Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Gee, James Paul

2013-01-01

Today there is a great deal of interest in and a lot of hype about using video games in schools. Video games are a new silver bullet. Games can create good learning because they teach in powerful ways. The theory behind game-based learning is not really new, but a traditional and well-tested approach to deep and effective learning, often…

Constructible Authentic Representations: Designing Video Games That Enable Players to Utilize Knowledge Developed In-Game to Reason about Science

Science.gov (United States)

Holbert, Nathan R.; Wilensky, Uri

2014-01-01

While video games have become a source of excitement for educational designers, creating informal game experiences that players can draw on when thinking and reasoning in non-game contexts has proved challenging. In this paper we present a design principle for creating educational video games that enables players to draw on knowledge resources…

Creating Effective Educational Computer Games for Undergraduate Classroom Learning: A Conceptual Model

Science.gov (United States)

Rapeepisarn, Kowit; Wong, Kok Wai; Fung, Chun Che; Khine, Myint Swe

2008-01-01

When designing Educational Computer Games, designers usually consider target age, interactivity, interface and other related issues. They rarely explore the genres which should employ into one type of educational game. Recently, some digital game-based researchers made attempt to combine game genre with learning theory. Different researchers use…

Building HTML5 games with ImpactJS an introduction on HTML5 game development

CERN Document Server

Freeman, Jesse

2012-01-01

Create a real 2D game from start to finish with ImpactJS, the JavaScript game framework that works with the HTML5's Canvas element. Making video games is hard work that requires technical skills, a lot of planning, and-most critically-a commitment to completing the project. With this hands-on guide, you'll learn how to use Impact with other technologies step-by-step. You'll pick up important tips about game design, and discover how to publish Impact games to the Web, desktop, and mobile-including a method to package your game as a native iOS app. Packed with screen shots and sample code, this book is ideal for game developers of all levels. Set up your development environment and discover Impact's advantagesBuild a complete game with core logic, collision detection, and player and monster behaviorLearn why a game design document is critical before you start buildingDisplay and animate game artwork with sprite sheetsAdd sound effects, background music, and textCreate screens to display stats and in-game statu...

A game magically circling

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ejsing-Duun, Stine

2011-01-01

This chapter analyses the relationship between players, the game world, and the ordinary world in alternative reality games (ARGs) and location-based games (LBGs). These games use technology to create a game world in the everyday scene. The topic of this chapter is the concept of the 'magic circle......', which defines the relationship between play and the ordinary world, and how this concept relates to a new kind of game....

Creating a computer game suitable for practice of nomenclature of inorganic compounds

OpenAIRE

NEČEDA, Luboš

2017-01-01

This thesis is focused on usage of computer game (adventure game) in teaching of chemismy (posted on internet since 2017). Game is situated to the town of České Budějovice and contains set of tests from Inorganic chemisty. This game can be used to motivate students to study chemistry on primary schools.

[Using modern information technology in the practice of the sanitary-epidemiological surveiliance during the XXII Olympic Winter Games and XI Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi].

Science.gov (United States)

Popova, A Yu; Kuzkin, B P; Demina, Yu V; Dubyansky, V M; Kulichenko, A N; Maletskaya, O V; Shayakhmetov, O Kh; Semenko, O V; Nazarenko, Yu V; Agapitov, D S; Mezentsev, V M; Kharchenko, T V; Efremenko, D V; Oroby, V G; Klindukhov, V P; Grechanaya, T V; Nikolaevich, P N; Tesheva, S Ch; Rafeenko, G K

2015-01-01

To improve the sanitary and epidemiological surveillance at the Olympic Games has developed a system of GIS for monitoring objects and situations in the region of Sochi. The system is based on software package ArcGIS, version 10.2 server, with Web-java.lang. Object, Web-server Apach, and software developed in language java. During th execution of the tasks are solved: the stratification of the region of the Olympic Games for the private and aggregate epidemiological risk OCI various eti- ologies, ranking epidemiologically important facilities for the sanitary and hygienic conditions, monitoring of infectious diseases (in real time according to the preliminary diagnosis). GIS monitoring has shown its effectiveness: Information received from various sources, but focused on one portal. Information was available in real time all the specialists involved in ensuring epidemiological well-being and use at work during the Olympic Games in Sochi.

Work for Play: Careers in Video Game Development

Science.gov (United States)

Liming, Drew; Vilorio, Dennis

2011-01-01

Video games are not only for play; they also provide work. Making video games is a serious--and big--business. Creating these games is complex and requires the collaboration of many developers, who perform a variety of tasks, from production to programming. They work for both small and large game studios to create games that can be played on many…

EscapED: A Framework for Creating Educational Escape Rooms and Interactive Games to For Higher/Further Education.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Samantha Jane Clarke

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Game-based learning (GBL is often found to be technologically driven and more often than not, serious games for instance, are conceptualised and designed solely for digital platforms and state of the art technologies. To encourage a greater discussion on the potential benefits and challenges of a more holistic approach to developing GBL that promote human centered interactions and play for learning, the authors present the escapED programme. The escapED programme was conceived following the recent entertainment trend of escape rooms and is used for developing non-digital GBL approaches within education. escapED aids the design and creation of educational Escape Rooms and Interactive Gaming Experiences for staff and students in further/higher education settings. The paper first presents a pilot study that was used to assess the feasibility and acceptance of University teaching staff of embedding interactive GBL into a higher education environment. The authors then present the escapED theoretical framework that was used to create the prototype game for the pilot study as a tool to aid future design and development of on-site interactive experiences. The paper also presents an external developer report of using the escapED framework to develop a prototype game for teaching research methods to Southampton University students. Finally, the authors present a discussion on the use of the escapED framework so far and plans for future work and evaluation in order to provide engaging alternatives for learning and soft skills development amongst higher education staff andstudents.

Cognitive Analysis of Educational Games: The Number Game

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Van der Maas, Han; Nyamsuren, Enkhbold

2018-01-01

We analyze the cognitive strategies underlying performance in the Number task, a Math game that requires both arithmetic fluency and mathematical creativity. In this game all elements in a set of numbers (for instance, 2, 5, 9) have to be used precisely once to create a target number (for

Ludic Educational Game Creation Tool

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Vidakis, Nikolaos; Syntychakis, Efthimios; Kalafatis, Konstantinos

2015-01-01

This paper presents initial findings and ongoing work of the game creation tool, a core component of the IOLAOS(IOLAOS in ancient Greece was a divine hero famed for helping with some of Heracles’s labors.) platform, a general open authorable framework for educational and training games. The game...... creation tool features a web editor, where the game narrative can be manipulated, according to specific needs. Moreover, this tool is applied for creating an educational game according to a reference scenario namely teaching schoolers road safety. A ludic approach is used both in game creation and play....... Helping children staying safe and preventing serious injury on the roads is crucial. In this context, this work presents an augmented version of the IOLAOS architecture including an enhanced game creation tool and a new multimodality module. In addition presents a case study for creating educational games...

Cognitive Analysis of Educational Games : The Number Game

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van der Maas, H.L.J.; Nyamsuren, E.

We analyze the cognitive strategies underlying performance in the Number task, a Math game that requires both arithmetic fluency and mathematical creativity. In this game all elements in a set of numbers (for instance, 2, 5, 9) have to be used precisely once to create a target number (for instance,

Game physics

CERN Document Server

Eberly, David H

2010-01-01

""Game Physics, 2nd Edition"" provides clear descriptions of the mathematics and algorithms needed to create a powerful physics engine - while providing a solid reference for all of the math you will encounter anywhere in game development: quaternions, linear algebra, and calculus. Implementing physical simulations for real-time games is a complex task that requires a solid understanding of a wide range of concepts from the fields of mathematics and physics. Previously, the relevant information could only be gleaned through obscure research papers. Thanks to ""Game Physics"", all this informa

Adaptive Blending of Model and Observations for Automated Short-Range Forecasting: Examples from the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games

Science.gov (United States)

Bailey, Monika E.; Isaac, George A.; Gultepe, Ismail; Heckman, Ivan; Reid, Janti

2014-01-01

An automated short-range forecasting system, adaptive blending of observations and model (ABOM), was tested in real time during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in British Columbia. Data at 1-min time resolution were available from a newly established, dense network of surface observation stations. Climatological data were not available at these new stations. This, combined with output from new high-resolution numerical models, provided a unique and exciting setting to test nowcasting systems in mountainous terrain during winter weather conditions. The ABOM method blends extrapolations in time of recent local observations with numerical weather predictions (NWP) model predictions to generate short-range point forecasts of surface variables out to 6 h. The relative weights of the model forecast and the observation extrapolation are based on performance over recent history. The average performance of ABOM nowcasts during February and March 2010 was evaluated using standard scores and thresholds important for Olympic events. Significant improvements over the model forecasts alone were obtained for continuous variables such as temperature, relative humidity and wind speed. The small improvements to forecasts of variables such as visibility and ceiling, subject to discontinuous changes, are attributed to the persistence component of ABOM.

Consumer Driven Computer Game Design

OpenAIRE

Trappey, Charles

2005-01-01

The Critical Incident Techniques (CIT) is widely used to study customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction in the service industry. CIT provides questionnaire respondents with an open format to describe in their own words incidents that create lasting impressions. The purpose of this research is to develop a methodology for computer game design with the goal and intent of creating games that increase the consumer’s satisfaction through play. Too often game designers, either with or without inte...

A Cost-Benefit Analysis of an Olympic Games

OpenAIRE

Darren McHugh

2006-01-01

This paper attempts to estimate the net benefit to Canada of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Two particular classes of problems in Olympic CBA are studied in detail. The first is the unique nature of project dependency in an Olympic Games, and this is surmounted by the classification of Olympic-related costs and benefits as "Event-related" or "Infrastructure-related", with rules for handing each in the context of a CBA for an Olympic Games. The second is the estimation of net benefit...

GameSalad essentials

CERN Document Server

DeQuadros, Miguel

2015-01-01

If you want to create your own game, but don't know where to start, this is the book for you. Whether you've used GameSalad before, or have prior game development experience or not you are sure to learn! Imaging software experience, such as Photoshop, is good to have, but art and assets are provided in the book's resources.

It's All Part of the Game: Video Game Interaction Design and Business Performance.

Science.gov (United States)

Shirinian, Ara

2001-01-01

Discusses the importance of positive video game experiences and designs that can create them, including immediacy of feedback, allowing graceful recovery from mistakes, high-quality feedback, and input device mappings. Examines interface complexity. Concludes game designers must treat the interaction between human and video game as a formal…

Sports injury and illness epidemiology: Great Britain Olympic Team (TeamGB) surveillance during the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games.

Science.gov (United States)

Palmer-Green, Debbie; Elliott, Niall

2015-01-01

Sports injury and illness surveillance is the first step in injury and illness prevention, and is important for the protection of both athlete health and performance in major competitions. To identify the prevalence, severity nature and causes of athlete injuries and illnesses in the Great Britain Olympic Team (TeamGB) during the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games. The observational prospective cohort study followed the Great Britain Injury/Illness Performance Project surveillance methodology and obtained information on injuries and illnesses that occurred during the Games between 30 January and 23 February 2014 in TeamGB athletes (n=56). Among the 56 TeamGB athletes, there were 27 injuries and 11 illnesses during the Olympic Games period. This equated to 39% sustaining at least one injury and 18% at least one illness, with an incidence of 48.2 injuries and 19.6 illnesses per 100 athletes, respectively. Of all injuries and illnesses, 9% and 7%, respectively, resulted in time loss. The risk of sustaining an injury was highest for freestyle skiing, skeleton and snowboarding; and lowest for curling, biathlon and Alpine skiing (with no reported injuries); with the lower limb being the most commonly injured location. Respiratory system illnesses were most frequently reported overall, and older female athletes were the ones most affected by illness. The risk of injury was double the risk of illness for TeamGB athletes. Overall, the rate of time-loss issues was low. Methodological considerations are important when interpreting data, and prevention strategies should focus on those issues causing the greatest risk, in terms of prevalence and severity, to athlete health and performance. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

Flash Learning Games Wow Students and Instructors: Moving Toward An Academic Gaming Portal

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dan H Lim

2003-02-01

Full Text Available This paper describes and discusses the rationale, background, design, and implementation of Flash learning games. The paper explains why Macromedia Flash has been selected as the authoring tool in the development of highly interactive learning games for online learning. The background evolutionary process of developing the learning games points out why it has been a daunting task to create compelling learning games that impact learning. Designing learning game objects that allow other educators to customize game content is the core of this paper. The author envisions this academic gaming project will evolve into an academic gaming portal, developed in conjunction with other major institutional partners.

Learning C++ by creating games with UE4

CERN Document Server

Sherif, William

2015-01-01

If you are really passionate about games and have always wanted to write your own, this book is perfect for you. It will help you get started with programming in C++ and explore the immense functionalities of UE4.

Semantic acquisition games harnessing manpower for creating semantics

CERN Document Server

Šimko, Jakub

2014-01-01

A comprehensive and extensive review of state-of-the-art in semantics acquisition game (SAG) design A set of design patterns for SAG designers A set of case studies (real SAG projects) demonstrating the use of SAG design patterns

Educational Games for Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Noemí, Peña-Miguel; Máximo, Sedano Hoyuelos

2014-01-01

The introduction of new technologies in society has created a need for interactive contents that can make the most of the potential that technological advances offer. Serious games as educational games are such content: they can be defined as video games or interactive applications whose main purpose is to provide not only entertainment but also…

Practical game design with Unity and Playmaker

CERN Document Server

Mohov, Sergey

2013-01-01

A practical guide packed with examples that helps you to build a full-fledged game with the help of Unity and Playmaker. A few exercises and useful external resources are also provided to improve both the game and your skills.This book is for animation artists and 3D artists, designers, and engineers who want to create interactive content with little or no programming. This book is also for game programmers who want to create a game from scratch in Unity and Playmaker. You are expected to have basic knowledge of game programming and Unity 3D.

[Lecture Games] Python programming game

OpenAIRE

Johnsen, Andreas Lyngstad; Ushakov, Georgy

2011-01-01

Pythia is a programming game that allows the player to change pieces of theirenvironment through use of the programming language Python. The idea is that thegame could be used as a part of teaching simple programming to first year universitystudents. The game should be fun enough for the students to keep playing, teachenough for it to earn a place as a teaching tool, and it should be usable by allstudents. It should also be possible for a teacher to create their own content for theg...

Games as an Artistic Medium: Investigating Complexity Thinking in Game-Based Art Pedagogy

Science.gov (United States)

Patton, Ryan M.

2013-01-01

This action research study examines the making of video games, using an integrated development environment software program called GameMaker, as art education curriculum for students between the ages of 8-13. Through a method I designed, students created video games using the concepts of move, avoid, release, and contact (MARC) to explore their…

Perancangan PC Game First Person Shooter Menggunakan Unreal Development Kit

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rizka Lukmana Afif

2014-06-01

Full Text Available The development of hardware increasing rapidly has made game developers take advantage of a variety of new resources that can improve their games. Epic games is a mature game developer who managed to make thousands game and delivered to the hands of gamers . A game engine called Unreal Engine is a big secret behind the success of Epic Games . The game engine is free if you just want to learn or just want to create a personal project and the game is not to be in comercial purposes . It is unfortunate that many students don’t even know of the existence of unreal engine , most of them make use of simpler game engine like game maker , rpg maker , fps creator , and so on. Though unreal engine is superior in any aspect other than the game engine , be it graphics , tools , mechanisms of development , flexible in export-import assets , etc . Based on this information , the author had the idea to make a first person shooter game using the unreal engine as the engine game. Before doing the develpment process, the next step is studying the literature of unreal engine and other supporting software such as 3d studio max to create 3D assets , adobe flash to create the menus , adobe photoshop to create a 2D texture and speedtree assets to create the foliage elements . The next thing is to go into the design phase of scenarios , maps, missions , characters and items that will be placed in the game. The next stage is the development and testing phase to test the game that has finished .The results of the design of this game is the realization of a first person shooter game application using unreal engine with features that can support the player 's interest in playing the game . It’s also introducing unreal engine to students who are interested in designing games.

Using Game Development to Engage Students in Science and Technology

Science.gov (United States)

Wiacek, John

2011-01-01

Game design workshops, camps and activities engage K-12 students In STEM disciplines that use game engine and development tools. Game development will have students create games and simulations that Will inspire them to love technology while learning math, physics, and,logic. By using tools such as Gamemaker, Alice, Unity, Gamesalad and others, students will get a sense of confidence and accomplishment creating games and simulations.

Artificial Intelligence for the Bang! Game

OpenAIRE

Daniláková, Monika

2017-01-01

This work explores artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms for the game Bang!, a Wild West-themed card game created by Italian game designer Emiliano Sciarra. The aim of this work was to design three different AIs for this game and to compare them theoretically and experimentally. First, we analyzed game Bang! with regards to game theory, and researched some of the AI algorithms used in similar games. We then designed three different AIs algorithms and compared their advantages and disadvanta...

Game development with Swift

CERN Document Server

Haney, Stephen

2015-01-01

If you wish to create and publish fun iOS games using Swift, then this book is for you. You should be familiar with basic programming concepts. However, no prior game development or Apple ecosystem experience is required.

Legal and Organizational Issues in Collaborative User-Created Content

OpenAIRE

Sarvas, Risto

2005-01-01

Introduction In this paper we look into issues that arise when people collaboratively create digital content and want to publicly distribute it. We identify and analyze the issues based on four case studies on amateur content production. In our analysis we discuss the issues both from the amateurs’ point of view, and also, from the game brand owners’ perspective. User-created content (UCC) in games has become popular as demonstrated by game-related skins, mods and extensions, screenshots, gam...

Zimbabwean fourth social workers conference and winter school ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Such steps include running the Annual Social Workers Conference & Winter School. This annual observance creates a platform to showcase the goals and accomplishments of diverse social work professionals in the country, give a report on progress and convening a social work winter school for exchanging professional ...

Social Network Gaming Trends

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michael Gathwright

2010-01-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this project was to determine how long the social network game Scratch-Offs, created by game development company Spice Rack Media, will remain financially viable. The game Scratch-Offs is a freeware game (users pay nothing for the actual software and is funded through micro transactions (users must pay small amounts of money to play actual games. This implies a relationship between total games played and revenue earned. Using data provided by Spice Rack, we were able to develop an exponential equation that accurately depicts usage trends over time. This equation was used to determine the date Scratch-Offs will no longer be profitable.

An iOS implementation of the Shannon switching game

OpenAIRE

Macík, Miroslav

2013-01-01

Shannon switching game is a logical graph game for two players. The game was created by American mathematician Claude Shannon. iOS is an operating system designed for iPhone cellular phone, iPod music player and iPad tablet. The thesis describes existing implementations of the game and also specific implementation for iOS operating system created as a part of this work. This implementation allows you to play against virtual opponent and also supports multiplayer game consisting of two players...

Breaking with fun, educational and realistic learning games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Duus Henriksen, Thomas

2009-01-01

are commonly conceived as means for staging learning processes, and that thinking learning games so has an inhibiting effect in regard to creating learning processes. The paper draws upon a qualitative study of participants' experiences with ‘the EIS Simulation', which is a computer-based learning game......This paper addresses the game conceptions and values that learning games inherit from regular gaming, as well as how they affect the use and development of learning games. Its key points concern the issues of thinking learning games as fun, educative and realistic, which is how learning games...... for teaching change management and change implementation. The EIS is played in groups, who share the game on a computer, and played by making change decisions in order to implement an IT system in an organisation. In this study, alternative participatory incentives, means for creating learning processes...

Autogenerator-based modelling framework for development of strategic games simulations: rational pigs game extended.

Science.gov (United States)

Fabac, Robert; Radošević, Danijel; Magdalenić, Ivan

2014-01-01

When considering strategic games from the conceptual perspective that focuses on the questions of participants' decision-making rationality, the very issues of modelling and simulation are rarely discussed. The well-known Rational Pigs matrix game has been relatively intensively analyzed in terms of reassessment of the logic of two players involved in asymmetric situations as gluttons that differ significantly by their attributes. This paper presents a successful attempt of using autogenerator for creating the framework of the game, including the predefined scenarios and corresponding payoffs. Autogenerator offers flexibility concerning the specification of game parameters, which consist of variations in the number of simultaneous players and their features and game objects and their attributes as well as some general game characteristics. In the proposed approach the model of autogenerator was upgraded so as to enable program specification updates. For the purpose of treatment of more complex strategic scenarios, we created the Rational Pigs Game Extended (RPGE), in which the introduction of a third glutton entails significant structural changes. In addition, due to the existence of particular attributes of the new player, "the tramp," one equilibrium point from the original game is destabilized which has an influence on the decision-making of rational players.

Radiocaesium levels in game in the Czech Republic

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Škrkal, Jan; Rulík, Petr; Fantínová, Karin; Mihalík, Ján; Timková, Jana

2015-01-01

The paper summarizes results of monitoring of 137 Cs activities in game species roaming in the woods over the territory of the Czech Republic for the time interval of 1986–2012. Geometric means and other statistical characteristics were estimated from the data sets on the assumption of log-normal distribution of the data from the time interval 2004–2012 where the character of data distribution had displayed no significant change. Geometric means (in Bq/kg) in meat were: wild boar 5.1, red deer 1.9, roe deer 0.77 and feathered game 0.14. The mean value in the less frequent game amounted to 0.36 Bq/kg. The geometrical standard deviation (GSD) widely varied from 1.6 to 21 for the studied species. Based on mass activity dependence on time, we assessed the effective and environmental half-lives of activity decline. For red deer and roe deer, the effective 137 Cs half-life was 2.9 and 3.2 years, and environmental half-life 3.2 and 3.6 years respectively. The effective half-life of 137 Cs in wild boar of 38 years was determined with large uncertainty and it shows constant influx of 137 Cs activity to the digestive tract of wild boars. A statistically significant season-based 137 Cs level was found in red deer and wild boar. Higher winter and spring activities of 137 Cs in wild boar are linked with decreasing access to naturally occurring food with lower 137 Cs content (chestnuts, acorns, and beech nuts), making boar grub around for ground-deposited food (often for mushrooms with higher activity). Higher winter activities of 137 Cs in red deer meat, most probably, are due to lower access to green diet in winter. The average annual committed effective dose for Czech population based on estimates of game species meat consumption between 2004 and 2012 was insignificant, only 0.03 μSv. - Highlights: • Geometric means of the 137 Cs activity (in Bq/kg) in meat were: wild boar 5.1, red deer 1.9, roe deer 0.77 and feathered game 0.14. • The environmental half-life of 137

Are Serious Video Games Something More than a Game? A Review on the Effectiveness of Serious Games to Facilitate Intergenerational Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Ypsilanti, Antonia; Vivas, Ana B.; Räisänen, Teppo; Viitala, Matti; Ijäs, Tuula; Ropes, Donald

2014-01-01

Aging diversity in organizations creates potential challenges, particularly for knowledge management, skills update and skills obsolescence. Intergenerational learning (IGL) involves knowledge building, innovation and knowledge transfer between generations within an organization (Ropes 2011). Serious games refer to the use of computer games in…

Works of Game

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sharp, John

and games has clouded for both artists and gamemakers. Contemporary art has drawn on the tool set of videogames, but has not considered them a cultural form with its own conceptual, formal, and experiential affordances. For their part, game developers and players focus on the innate properties of games...... and offers case studies for each. “Game Art,” which includes such artists as Julian Oliver, Cory Arcangel, and JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) treats videogames as a form of popular culture from which can be borrowed subject matter, tools, and processes. “Artgames,” created by gamemakers including...

Generating Computational Models for Serious Gaming

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Westera, Wim

2018-01-01

Many serious games include computational models that simulate dynamic systems. These models promote enhanced interaction and responsiveness. Under the social web paradigm more and more usable game authoring tools become available that enable prosumers to create their own games, but the inclusion of

Playing with Process: Video Game Choice as a Model of Behavior

Science.gov (United States)

Waelchli, Paul

2010-01-01

Popular culture experience in video games creates avenues to practice information literacy skills and model research in a real-world setting. Video games create a unique popular culture experience where players can invest dozens of hours on one game, create characters to identify with, organize skill sets and plot points, collaborate with people…

Mobile Gaming and Student Interactions in a Science Center: The Future of Gaming in Science Education

Science.gov (United States)

Atwood-Blaine, Dana; Huffman, Douglas

2017-01-01

This article explores the impact of an augmented reality iPad-based mobile game, called The Great STEM Caper, on students' interaction at a science center. An open-source, location-based game platform called ARIS (i.e. Augmented Reality and Interactive Storytelling) was used to create an iPad-based mobile game. The game used QR scan codes and a…

Game programming gems

CERN Document Server

DeLoura, Mark

2000-01-01

For the countless tasks involved in creating a game engine there are an equal number of possible solutions. But instead of spending hours and hours trying to develop your own answers, now you can find out how the pros do it! Game Programming Gems is a hands-on, comprehensive resource packed with a variety of game programming algorithms written by experts from the game industry and edited by Mark DeLoura, former software engineering lead for Nintendo of America, Inc. and now the newly appointed editor-in-chief of Game Developer magazine. From animation and artificial intelligence to Z-buffering, lighting calculations, weather effects, curved surfaces, mutliple layer Internet gaming, to music and sound effects, all of the major techniques needed to develop a competitive game engine are covered. Game Programming Gems is written in a style accessible to individuals with a range of expertise levels. All of the source code for each algorithm is included and can be used by advanced programmers immediately. For aspir...

Satellite Maps Deliver More Realistic Gaming

Science.gov (United States)

2013-01-01

When Redwood City, California-based Electronic Arts (EA) decided to make SSX, its latest snowboarding video game, it faced challenges in creating realistic-looking mountains. The solution was NASA's ASTER Global Digital Elevation Map, made available by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which EA used to create 28 real-life mountains from 9 different ranges for its award-winning game.

Severe red spruce winter injury in 2003 creates unusual ecological event in the northeastern United States

Science.gov (United States)

Brynne E. Lazarus; Paul G. Schaberg; Donald H. DeHayes; Gary J. Hawley

2004-01-01

Abundant winter injury to the current-year (2002) foliage of red spruce (Picea rubens Sarg.) became apparent in the northeastern United States in late winter of 2003. To assess the severity and extent of this damage, we measured foliar winter injury at 28 locations in Vermont and surrounding states and bud mortality at a subset of these sites. Ninety percent of all...

Google SketchUp for Game Design Beginner's Guide

CERN Document Server

de Jongh, Robin

2011-01-01

The book takes a clear, step-by-step approach to building a complete game level using SketchUp with many props and textures. This book is designed for anyone who wants to create entire 3D worlds in freely available game engines such as Unity 3D, CryEngine, Ogre, Panda3D, Unreal Engine, and Blender Game Engine. It also targets all those who wish to create new levels and assets to sell in game asset stores or use in visualization or animation.

A Platform Independent Game Technology Model for Model Driven Serious Games Development

Science.gov (United States)

Tang, Stephen; Hanneghan, Martin; Carter, Christopher

2013-01-01

Game-based learning (GBL) combines pedagogy and interactive entertainment to create a virtual learning environment in an effort to motivate and regain the interest of a new generation of "digital native" learners. However, this approach is impeded by the limited availability of suitable "serious" games and high-level design…

Interactive game programming with Python (CodeSkulptor)

OpenAIRE

Ajayi, Richard Olugbenga

2014-01-01

Over the years, several types of gaming platforms have been created to encourage a more organised and friendly atmosphere for game lovers in various works of life, culture, and environment. This thesis focuses on the concept of interactive programming using Python. It encourages the use of Python to create simple interactive games applications based on basic human concept and ideas. CodeSkulptor is a browser-based IDE programming environment and uses the Python programming language. O...

A cookbook method for Persuasive Game Design

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Panote Siriaraya

2018-03-01

Full Text Available Despite the growing interest in persuasive game design, there have been few methods which cover the complete process of game design that designers could draw upon in their practice. In this paper, the Persuasive Game Design method(PGD is presented as a non-directive approach for designing persuasive games including a practical hand-out. To better fit with the practical constraints encountered in game design, this method adopts a “cookbook” approach. A set of essential PGD components and tools are provided from which game designers can choose from, given their specific context and resources. Designers first consider the game design steps(“dishes” to use in creating their game and in each step, select which components(“ingredients” to take into account and tools(“utensils” to use. The proposed method, based on our experience as persuasive game researchers and design practitioners, is further refined using feedback from professional game designers. The paper concludes with a case study illustrating how to put the meal into practice. Overall, the method provides a useful contribution to the existing research domain by combining knowledge from game theory, game design and design methodology to create a structured yet flexible approach which covers the complete persuasive game design process for researchers, students and practitioners. 

Dimensions in Educational Game-Design

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Henriksen, Thomas Duus

2006-01-01

Recent developments within learning games have shown that games hold a great potential for meeting current educational needs. These developments have also pointed out a number of challenges to address if games are to play a role in the educational setting. One key issue is the design of learning...... games, another is to implement them into the educational setting. Each of these issues provide a set of challenges, which is to be negotiated in order to create successful game-based learning. In order to meet these issues, eight key dimensions in educational game-design are presented, as well...

Movement games in sports training of children

OpenAIRE

Komoň, Tomáš

2015-01-01

Title: Movement Games in Sports Training of Children Objectives: Create a systemized inventory of movement games. Movement games categorized according to which football skills can developed. Verify popularity of the each movement game in simple questionnaire. Methods: The literature search and data analysis. Also, quantitative research in the form of a simple questionnaire. Results: Systematized inventory of 39 movement games with methodological descriptions. Each movement game has feedback i...

Games in Science Education

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Magnussen, Rikke

2014-01-01

, 2007). Some of these newer formats are developed in partnerships between research and education institutions and game developers and are based on learning theory as well as game design methods. Games well suited for creating narrative framework or simulations where students gain first-hand experience......This paper presents a categorisation of science game formats in relation to the educational possibilities or limitations they offer in science education. This includes discussion of new types of science game formats and gamification of science. Teaching with the use of games and simulations...... in science education dates back to the 1970s and early 80s were the potentials of games and simulations was discussed extensively as the new teaching tool ( Ellington et al. , 1981). In the early 90s the first ITC -based games for exploration of science and technical subjects was developed (Egenfeldt...

Student Learning-Game Designs

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Weitze, Charlotte Lærke

2016-01-01

This article presents new knowledge about how students can implement learning and game elements into analogue and digital learning games as a means of learning and teaching curriculum‐based subject matter. The purpose of the analysis is to identify what learning‐game design elements were used...... in four learning games created by students, to investigate how these elements were em83 ployed, to determine what learning trajectories emerged in the two digital game tools and to offer reflections and suggestions regarding the learning processes students experienced when building the various learning...... trajectories for specific learning goals into the digital games. The article examines how specific features in the two digital game tools, Scratch and RGBMaker, afford creation of learning trajectories in various ways, enabling deep learning and gameplay processes for the players of the games. According...

Social Interactions and Games

Science.gov (United States)

Uz, Cigdem; Cagiltay, Kursat

2015-01-01

Digital games have become popular due to great technological improvements in recent years. They have been increasingly transformed from co-located experiences into multi-played, socially oriented platforms (Herodotou, 2009). Multi-User Online Games provide the opportunity to create a social environment for friendships and strengthen the…

Fabrication of Games and Learning

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schoenau-Fog, Henrik; Reng, Lars; Kofoed, Lise

2015-01-01

The concept of Game based learning has proven to have many possibilities for supporting better learning outcomes, when using educational or commercial games in the classroom. However, there is also a great potential in using game development as a motivator in several other kinds of learning...... scenarios. Using game development as an approach for including game based learning in various educations has become more accessible due to more user friendly game development tools and systems. This study will thus focus on an exploration on how game development motivates students and what they learn when...... creating games. We exemplify the potential of using game fabrication as a learning environment with the investigation of a game production, which involved over 25 students across semesters. In order to investigate students’ experiences during this purposive game production, we set up an experiment where...

Gamification and Game-Based Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Karagiorgas, Dimitrios N.; Niemann, Shari

2017-01-01

In the last 10 years, gaming has evolved to the point that it is now being used as a learning medium to educate students in many different disciplines. The educational community has begun to explore the effectiveness of gaming as a learning tool and as a result two different ways of utilizing games for education have been created: Gamification and…

Modeling and Generating Strategy Games Mechanics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mahlmann, Tobias

of the game is, how players may manipulate the game world, etc. We present the Strategy Games Description Language (SGDL), a tree-based approach to model the game mechanics of strategy games. SGDL allows game designers to rapid prototype their game ideas with the help of our customisable game engine. We...... their games to individual players’ preferences by creating game content adaptively to how the player plays (and likes) a game. W we extend the notion of “procedural game content generation” by “game mechanics”. Game mechanics herein refer to the way that objects in a game may interact, what the goal...... present several example games to demonstrate the capabilities of the language and how to model common strategy game elements. Furthermore, we present methods to procedurally generate and evaluate game mechanics modelled in SGDL in terms of enjoyability. We argue that an evolutionary process can be used...

Achieving Digital Literacy through Game Development: An Authentic Learning Experience

Science.gov (United States)

Frydenberg, Mark

2015-01-01

Purpose: This paper aims to argue that the process of making an original game develops digital literacy skills and provides an authentic learning experience as students create, publish and deploy interactive games. Teaching students to create computer games has become common in both K-12 and tertiary education to introducing programming concepts,…

A Model-driven Framework for Educational Game Design

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bill Roungas

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Educational games are a class of serious games whose main purpose is to teach some subject to their players. Despite the many existing design frameworks, these games are too often created in an ad-hoc manner, and typically without the use of a game design document (GDD. We argue that a reason for this phenomenon is that current ways to structure, create and update GDDs do not increase the value of the artifact in the design and development process. As a solution, we propose a model-driven, web-based knowledge management environment that supports game designers in the creation of a GDD that accounts for and relates educational and entertainment game elements. The foundation of our approach is our devised conceptual model for educational games, which also defines the structure of the design environment. We present promising results from an evaluation of our environment with eight experts in serious games.

A model for understanding and learning of the game process of computer games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Larsen, Lasse Juel; Majgaard, Gunver

This abstract focuses on the computer game design process in the education of engineers at the university level. We present a model for understanding the different layers in the game design process, and an articulation of their intricate interconnectedness. Our motivation is propelled by our daily...... teaching practice of game design. We have observed a need for a design model that quickly can create an easily understandable overview over something as complex as the design processes of computer games. This posed a problem: how do we present a broad overview of the game design process and at the same...... time make sure that the students learn to act and reflect like game designers? We fell our game design model managed to just that end. Our model entails a guideline for the computer game design process in its entirety, and at same time distributes clear and easy understandable insight to a particular...

Using Alice 2.0 to Design Games for People with Stroke.

Science.gov (United States)

Proffitt, Rachel; Kelleher, Caitlin; Baum, M Carolyn; Engsberg, Jack

2012-08-01

Computer and videogames are gaining in popularity as rehabilitation tools. Unfortunately, most systems still require extensive programming/engineering knowledge to create, something that therapists, as novice programmers, do not possess. There is software designed to allow novice programmers to create storyboard and games through simple drag-and-drop formats; however, the applications for therapeutic game development have not been studied. The purpose of this study was to have an occupational therapy (OT) student with no prior computer programming experience learn how to create computer games for persons with stroke using Alice 2.0, a drag-and-drop editor, designed by Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA). The OT student learned how to use Alice 2.0 through a textbook, tutorials, and assistance from computer science students. She kept a journal of her process, detailing her successes and challenges. The OT student created three games for people with stroke using Alice 2.0. She found that although there were many supports in Alice for creating stories, it lacked critical pieces necessary for game design. Her recommendations for a future programming environment for therapists were that it (1) be efficient, (2) include basic game design pieces so therapists do not have to create them, (3) provide technical support, and (4) be simple. With the incorporation of these recommendations, a future programming environment for therapists will be an effective tool for therapeutic game development.

Games and Creativity Learning

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Henriksen, Thomas Duus

2006-01-01

Learning games are facing a new challenge if it is to meet the educational demand for creativity training. In the article, it is argued that reflection is the key to teach creativity, and that we have to reconsider our current approach to creating educational role-playing games in order to meet...... this demand. The article presents a number of challenges to accomplishing this, as well as a number of tools for designing and using creativity facilitating games....

From Cards To Digital Games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Valente, Andrea; Marchetti, Emanuela

2017-01-01

This study is based on an iterative, participatory design investigation that we are conducting in order to create digital games that could be flexibly re-designed by players, without requiring programming knowledge. In particular we focus on digital game development, both design and implementation......, for primary school pupils and their teachers. We propose a scenario where digital game development is mediated by tinkering with paper prototypes similar to board games. We address the problems of making sense and expressing rules of a digital game without programming. Analysis of our latest participatory...... workshop offers evidence that a board game can work as a tangible model of the computation happening in a digital game. Children understand the practice of designing games mainly as manipulation of features and behaviors of the visual elements of a game. We attempt at looking beyond visual programming...

The Racing-Game Effect: Why Do Video Racing Games Increase Risk-Taking Inclinations?

OpenAIRE

Fischer, Peter; Greitemeyer, Tobias; Morton, Thomas; Kastenmüller, Andreas; Postmes, Tom; Frey, Dieter; Kubitzki, Jörg; Odenwälder, Jörg

2009-01-01

The present studies investigated why video racing games increase players’ risk-taking inclinations. Four studies reveal that playing video racing games increases risk taking in a subsequent simulated road traffic situation, as well as risk-promoting cognitions and emotions, blood pressure,sensation seeking, and attitudes toward reckless driving. Study 1 ruled out the role of experimental demand in creating such effects. Studies 2 and 3 showed that the effect of playing video racing games on r...

Writing Game Center Apps in iOS Bringing Your Players Into the Game

CERN Document Server

Nahavandipoor, Vandad

2011-01-01

Now that Apple has introduced the GameKit framework to its iOS SDK, you can integrate Game Center features directly into your iPhone and iPad apps. This concise cookbook shows you how it's done, with 18 targeted recipes for adding leaderboards, user authentication, achievements, multiplayer games, and many other features. How do you display players' scores and achievements? How do you create Game Center accounts and add friends? Each recipe in this book includes a simple code solution you can put to work immediately, along with a detailed discussion that offers insight into why and how the r

Can Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming Environments Support Team Training?

Science.gov (United States)

O'Connor, Debra L.; Menaker, Ellen S.

2008-01-01

Instructional games are created when training is deliberately added to a gaming environment or when gaming aspects are deliberately incorporated into training. One type of game that is currently attracting the attention of the education and training field is the massively multiplayer online game (MMOG). Because evidence about learning outcomes…

HTML5 game programming with enchant.js

CERN Document Server

Shimizu, Ryo; Fushimi, Ryohei; Tanaka, Ryo; Kratzer, Kevin; McInnis, Brandon; Inc, enchantjs

2013-01-01

Official book from the developers of enchant.js. Enchant.js is open source, so there is no barrier for entry. Provides aspiring game developers with a tool to program fully-fledged games quickly and easily. Teaches the basics of HTML5 and JavaScript, invaluable tools for budding programmers. Shares invaluable tips from professional game developers for creating compelling game design and content.

New musical organology : the audio-games

OpenAIRE

Zénouda , Hervé

2012-01-01

International audience; This article aims to shed light on a new and emerging creative field: " Audio Games, " a crossroad between video games and computer music. Today, a plethora of tiny applications, which propose entertaining audiovisual experiences with a preponderant sound dimension, are available for game consoles, computers, and mobile phones. These experiences represent a new universe where the gameplay of video games is applied to musical composition, hence creating new links betwee...

Traditional games in primary school curriculum

OpenAIRE

Popeska, Biljana; Jovanova-Mitkovska, Snezana

2017-01-01

Traditional games are cultural and national heritage. They, cultural and traditional activities transmitted from one generation to another, sharing different movement and cognitive games used in order to educate, to socialize, to share the experience and to influence toward development of young generation. The people create traditional games, and they represent the habits, culture and tradition of countries, region or even a town or village. There are lot of different traditional games. They ...

Verbal Communication of Story Facilitators in Multi-player Role-Playing Games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Tychsen, Anders; Brolund, Thea; Hitchens, Michael

2008-01-01

Multi-player role-playing games form one of the key examples of interactive, emergent and collaborative storytelling systems available. These games and the collaborative stories that they create, are commonly facilitated by a specialized participant, the game master. In the current study, the ver......Multi-player role-playing games form one of the key examples of interactive, emergent and collaborative storytelling systems available. These games and the collaborative stories that they create, are commonly facilitated by a specialized participant, the game master. In the current study......, the verbal communication of game masters in a series of role-playing game sessions is categorized and analyzed depending on form and content, using protocol analysis, establishing a model for the verbal communication of game masters....

Game of the Cursed Prince based on Android

OpenAIRE

Armansyah, Risky; Pratiwi, Dian

2018-01-01

Nowadays Games become an entertainment alternative for various circles, industry and game development business is also a profitable industry. In Indonesia the amount of game consumption is very high, especially the console game type RPG (Role Playing Game). The task of this research is developing game software using Unity 3D to create an Android-based RPG game app. The story is packed with RPG genres so the player can feel the main role of the storys imagination. The game to be built is a gam...

The racing-game effect: why do video racing games increase risk-taking inclinations?

Science.gov (United States)

Fischer, Peter; Greitemeyer, Tobias; Morton, Thomas; Kastenmüller, Andreas; Postmes, Tom; Frey, Dieter; Kubitzki, Jörg; Odenwälder, Jörg

2009-10-01

The present studies investigated why video racing games increase players' risk-taking inclinations. Four studies reveal that playing video racing games increases risk taking in a subsequent simulated road traffic situation, as well as risk-promoting cognitions and emotions, blood pressure, sensation seeking, and attitudes toward reckless driving. Study 1 ruled out the role of experimental demand in creating such effects. Studies 2 and 3 showed that the effect of playing video racing games on risk taking was partially mediated by changes in self-perceptions as a reckless driver. These effects were evident only when the individual played racing games that reward traffic violations rather than racing games that do not reward traffic violations (Study 3) and when the individual was an active player of such games rather than a passive observer (Study 4). In sum, the results underline the potential negative impact of racing games on traffic safety.

Anger, fear and games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mortensen, Torill

2016-01-01

The event known as #GamerGate (GG) emphasized the need to take the study of game culture seriously and pursue it across several platforms. It demonstrated how seemingly ephemeral media created echo chambers of anger, and how the outbursts of hypermasculine aggression exemplified by hooligans also...... can connect to games and play. Starting from how GG gained popular attention, this article outlines and discusses the nature of GG, the relation to the victims, the sense of victimization among the participants, and how it may have been provoked by the long-standing, general disregard of games...... the image of game culture as mainly a culture of isolated consumption...

Serious simulation game development for energy transition education using integrated framework game design

Science.gov (United States)

Destyanto, A. R.; Putri, O. A.; Hidayatno, A.

2017-11-01

Due to the advantages that serious simulation game offered, many areas of studies, including energy, have used serious simulation games as their instruments. However, serious simulation games in the field of energy transition still have few attentions. In this study, serious simulation game is developed and tested as the activity of public education about energy transition which is a conversion from oil to natural gas program. The aim of the game development is to create understanding and awareness about the importance of energy transition for society in accelerating the process of energy transition in Indonesia since 1987 the energy transition program has not achieved the conversion target yet due to the lack of education about energy transition for society. Developed as a digital serious simulation game following the framework of integrated game design, the Transergy game has been tested to 15 users and then analysed. The result of verification and validation of the game shows that Transergy gives significance to the users for understanding and triggering the needs of oil to natural gas conversion.

Radiocaesium levels in game in the Czech Republic.

Science.gov (United States)

Škrkal, Jan; Rulík, Petr; Fantínová, Karin; Mihalík, Ján; Timková, Jana

2015-01-01

The paper summarizes results of monitoring of (137)Cs activities in game species roaming in the woods over the territory of the Czech Republic for the time interval of 1986-2012. Geometric means and other statistical characteristics were estimated from the data sets on the assumption of log-normal distribution of the data from the time interval 2004-2012 where the character of data distribution had displayed no significant change. Geometric means (in Bq/kg) in meat were: wild boar 5.1, red deer 1.9, roe deer 0.77 and feathered game 0.14. The mean value in the less frequent game amounted to 0.36 Bq/kg. The geometrical standard deviation (GSD) widely varied from 1.6 to 21 for the studied species. Based on mass activity dependence on time, we assessed the effective and environmental half-lives of activity decline. For red deer and roe deer, the effective (137)Cs half-life was 2.9 and 3.2 years, and environmental half-life 3.2 and 3.6 years respectively. The effective half-life of (137)Cs in wild boar of 38 years was determined with large uncertainty and it shows constant influx of (137)Cs activity to the digestive tract of wild boars. A statistically significant season-based (137)Cs level was found in red deer and wild boar. Higher winter and spring activities of (137)Cs in wild boar are linked with decreasing access to naturally occurring food with lower (137)Cs content (chestnuts, acorns, and beech nuts), making boar grub around for ground-deposited food (often for mushrooms with higher activity). Higher winter activities of (137)Cs in red deer meat, most probably, are due to lower access to green diet in winter. The average annual committed effective dose for Czech population based on estimates of game species meat consumption between 2004 and 2012 was insignificant, only 0.03 μSv. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Mobile & social game design monetization methods and mechanics

CERN Document Server

Fields, Tim

2014-01-01

IntroductionThe Changing TideWhat This Book Is NotWhat Is a Social Game? Are Mobile Games Social? Meet Your CompetitionBBS Games and MUDsMMOsJust Being Multiplayer Doesn't Make You SocialGreat Mobile Games ARE SocialInterview with Words with Friends Creators, The BettnersHistory of Game MonetizationWhat Do We Mean By MonetizationA Brief History of Game MonetizationInterview with Richard Garriott, ""The Three Grand Eras of Gaming""Why Create a Social or Mobile Game?Social and Mobile Games Put a Lot of Power in the Hands of the DevelopersSocial Games Make the Developer ResponsibleSocial Games Gi

The playful and reflective game designer

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Majgaard, Gunver

2014-01-01

Abstract: A group of first-semester engineering students participated in a game design course. The aim of the course was to learn how to design computer games and programming skills by creating their own games, thereby applying their game-playing experiences to gain knowledge about game design....... The aim was for students to develop a more critically reflective perspective on video games and game design. In applying their game experiences, they developed their own digital prototypes and participated in reflective discussions on the concept of games: what makes them interesting and how...... they are constructed. The students used the GameMaker programming tool, which can be used without any prior programming knowledge. The tool allows for the easy development of 2D game prototypes.The didactic approach was based on play as a lever for the design process, and on constructionistic and reflective learning...

Perancangan dan Pembuatan Game Online “Penyelamatan Tawanan Perang” Berbasis Html 5 untuk Penerapan Aplikasi Game Facebook Menggunakan Engine Construct 2

OpenAIRE

Asrori, Lutfi; Luthfi, Emha Taufiq

2012-01-01

Gaming technology is one of the highlights of the developer in the virtual world. Recently emerging flash based game called Angry Bird, this game successfully anesthetize the game lovers ranging from children to adults. Then in 2012 also developed the software to create a game with HTML5 base.But unfortunately most outstanding online games and famous people today are made overseas and leading manufacturer classmates agate, artificial personal who want to explore the latest science is still ve...

Game playbooks: tools to guide multidisciplinary teams in developing videogame-based behavior change interventions.

Science.gov (United States)

Duncan, Lindsay R; Hieftje, Kimberly D; Culyba, Sabrina; Fiellin, Lynn E

2014-03-01

As mobile technologies and videogaming platforms are becoming increasingly prevalent in the realm of health and healthcare, so are the opportunities to use these resources to conduct behavioral interventions. The creation and empirical testing of game style interventions, however, is challenged by the requisite collaboration of multidisciplinary teams, including researchers and game developers who have different cultures, terminologies, and standards of evidence. Thus, traditional intervention development tools such as logic models and intervention manuals may need to be augmented by creating what we have termed "Game Playbooks" which are intervention guidebooks that are created by, understood by, and acceptable to all members of the multidisciplinary game development team. The purpose of this paper is to describe the importance and content of a Game Playbook created to aide in the development of a videogame intervention designed specifically for health behavior change in young teens as well as the process for creating such a tool. We draw on the experience of our research and game design team to describe the critical components of the Game Playbook and the necessity of creating such a tool.

Game theory an introduction

CERN Document Server

Barron, E N

2013-01-01

An exciting new edition of the popular introduction to game theory and its applications The thoroughly expanded Second Edition presents a unique, hands-on approach to game theory. While most books on the subject are too abstract or too basic for mathematicians, Game Theory: An Introduction, Second Edition offers a blend of theory and applications, allowing readers to use theory and software to create and analyze real-world decision-making models. With a rigorous, yet accessible, treatment of mathematics, the book focuses on results that can be used to

Know Your Game : An explorative study of dynamic capabilities’ potential impact on the Swedish video game industry

OpenAIRE

Didner, Maria; Zhao, Annie

2017-01-01

Video games have grown from only being a hobby activity to a worldwide industry, where the Swedish video game industry has become an increasingly important driver to this growth. However, there has been little research on the video game industry, where most empirical studies have so far focused on the involvement of users in product development and on mutually exclusive technology. To create a better understanding of this rapidly growing industry and move closer to determine what makes a game...

Winter-to-winter variations in indoor radon

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Mose, D.G.; Mushrush, G.W.; Kline, S.W.

1989-01-01

Indoor radon concentrations in northern Virginia and central Maryland show a strong dependence on weather. Winter tends to be associated with higher than average indoor radon, and summer with lower than average. However, compared to the winter of 1986-1987, the winter of 1987-1988 was warmer and drier. Consequently, winter-to-winter indoor radon decreased by about 25%. This winter-to-winter decrease is unexpectedly large, and simulates winter-to-summer variations that have been reported

Social Interactions in Online Gaming

Science.gov (United States)

Griffiths, Mark; Hussain, Zaheer; Grüsser, Sabine M.; Thalemann, Ralf; Cole, Helena; Davies, Mark N. O.; Chappell, Darren

2011-01-01

This paper briefly overviews five studies examining massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). The first study surveyed 540 gamers and showed that the social aspects of the game were the most important factor for many gamers. The second study explored the social interactions of 912 MMORPG players and showed they created strong…

Effects of micro transactions on video games industry

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tomić Nenad

2017-01-01

Full Text Available During the twentieth century, the entertainment industry recorded a steady revenue growth. The progress of information and communication technology (ICT influenced the creation of a new segment in the industry at the beginning of the 80s, known as the video game industry. During the first two decades, the dominant model of earning for video games publishers was sale of a full game, which means that users were obliged to pay in order to play the game (pay-to-play concept. In the past ten years, publishers have developed a new approach, which instead of selling entire game content at once tends to decompose the sale into several smaller transactions. The prices of these supplements are often calculated in the virtual currency that is considered to be the currency of video game, and not in one of convertible currencies, which creates additional confusion. The subject of the paper is to explain the essence of microtransactions as type of electronic payments created in the video games industry and to observe their role in the process of industry transformation.

How Massive Multiplayer Online Games Incorporate Principles of Economics

Science.gov (United States)

Barnett, Joshua H.; Archambault, Leanna

2010-01-01

Games have always been a part of the human experience. Even the earliest of civilizations created games for enjoyment and entertainment. However, the educational value of those games is a relatively recent consideration. Over the previous fifty years, scholars have questioned the potential positive lessons learned from games such as Monopoly[R],…

Bridging the gap between Schumpeterian competition and evolutionary game theory

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, Esben Sloth

This paper suggests that the analysis of Schumpeterian competition within the Nelson-Winter model should be complemented with evolutionary game theory. This model and its limitations for density-dependent Schumpeterian strategies are presented in terms of the equations of evolutionary dynamics. F...

Improving topology optimization intuition through games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nobel-Jørgensen, Morten; Malmgren-Hansen, David; Bærentzen, J. Andreas

2016-01-01

This paper describes the educational game, TopOpt Game, which invites the player to solve various optimization challenges. The main purpose of gamifying topology optimization is to create a supplemental educational tool which can be used to introduce concepts of topology optimization to newcomers...

"Once more a kingly quest": Fan games and the classic adventure genre

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anastasia Marie Salter

2009-03-01

Full Text Available The classic adventure games—part of the earliest traditions of interactive narrative—have not disappeared, although they no longer occupy space on the shelves at the local computer store. Even as changing hardware and operating systems render these games of the 1980s and 1990s literally unplayable without emulating the computer systems of the past, fans are keeping these stories alive. Authorship of these games has changed hands: it is now under the control of the fans, the former and current players. Through the online sharing of fan-created game design tool sets and of the fan-created games themselves, these new coauthors create a haven to revisit these decades-old games using fresh eyes and fresh systems. The products of these folk art–reminiscent efforts also offer a venue to reconsider video game fandom in light of genres. They also allow us to understand these "personal games," productions of one or more people that are not intended for commercial sale, as carrying the heritage of the classic era forward into the next generation of gaming.

Learning game AI programming with Lua

CERN Document Server

Young, David

2014-01-01

If you are a game developer or a general programmer who wishes to focus on programming systems and techniques to build your game AI without creating low-level interfaces in a game engine, then this book is for you. Knowledge of C++ will come in handy to debug the entirety of the AI sandbox and expand on the features present within the book, but it is not required.

Stay Safe and Healthy This Winter!

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Podcasts

2010-11-23

In this podcast for kids, the Kidtastics offer some simple ways to stay safe and healthy during the winter holiday season.  Created: 11/23/2010 by CDC Office of Women’s Health.   Date Released: 11/23/2010.

Gaming the System: Developing an Educational Game for Securing Principles of Arterial Blood Gases.

Science.gov (United States)

Boyd, Cory Ann; Warren, Jonah; Glendon, Mary Ann

2016-01-01

This article describes the development process for creating a digital educational mini game prototype designed to provide practice opportunities for learning fundamental principles of arterial blood gases. Mini games generally take less than an hour to play and focus on specific subject matter. An interdisciplinary team of faculty from two universities mentored student game developers to design a digital educational mini game prototype. Sixteen accelerated bachelor of science in nursing students collaborated with game development students and playtested the game prototype during the last semester of their senior year in nursing school. Playtesting is a form of feedback that supports an iterative design process that is critical to game development. A 10-question survey was coupled with group discussions addressing five broad themes of an archetypical digital educational mini game to yield feedback on game design, play, and content. Four rounds of playtesting and incorporating feedback supported the iterative process. Accelerated bachelor of science in nursing student playtester feedback suggests that the digital educational mini game prototype has potential for offering an engaging, playful game experience that will support securing the fundamental principles of arterial blood gases. Next steps are to test the digital educational mini game for teaching and learning effectiveness. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Martian Boneyards: Scientific Inquiry in an MMO Game

Science.gov (United States)

Asbell-Clarke, Jodi; Edwards, Teon; Rowe, Elizabeth; Larsen, Jamie; Sylvan, Elisabeth; Hewitt, Jim

2012-01-01

This paper reports on research of a game designed for scientific inquiry in a new and publicly available massively-multiplayer online environment (MMO). Educators and game designers worked together to create a highly immersive environment, a compelling storyline, and research-grounded tools for scientific inquiry within the game. The designers…

Automatic Mapping of NES Games with Mappy

OpenAIRE

Osborn, Joseph C.; Summerville, Adam; Mateas, Michael

2017-01-01

Game maps are useful for human players, general-game-playing agents, and data-driven procedural content generation. These maps are generally made by hand-assembling manually-created screenshots of game levels. Besides being tedious and error-prone, this approach requires additional effort for each new game and level to be mapped. The results can still be hard for humans or computational systems to make use of, privileging visual appearance over semantic information. We describe a software sys...

Ethical Considerations in Designing Adaptive Persuasive Games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pedersen, Christoffer Holmgård; Khaled, Rilla; Yannakakis, Georgios N.

In this poster, we describe an ongoing project concerning the development of an Adaptive Treatment Game (ATG) for treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The ATG uses biofeedback and computer game technology to enable multiple treatment techniques and goals. We examine how a multidisciplinary ap...... approach shaped the prototype and we discuss the ethical implications of creating a self-adaptive, semiautonomous treatment game....

Creating wheelchair-controlled video games: challenges and opportunities when involving young people with mobility impairments and game design experts

OpenAIRE

Gerling, Kathrin; Linehan, Conor; Kirman, Ben; Kalyn, Michael; Evans, Adam; Hicks, Kieran

2016-01-01

Although participatory design (PD) is currently the most acceptable and respectful process we have for designing technology, recent discussions suggest that there may be two barriers to the successful application of PD to the design of digital games: First, the involvement of audiences with special needs can introduce new practical and ethical challenges to the design process. Second, the use of non-experts in game design roles has been criticised in that participants lack skills necessary to...

Nostalgia Videogames as Playable Game Criticism

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Robin J.S. Sloan

2016-11-01

Full Text Available The aim of this paper is to consider the emergence of nostalgia videogames in the context of playable game criticism. Mirroring the development of the nostalgia film in cinema, an increasing number of developers are creating videogames that are evocative of past gaming forms, designs, and styles. The primary focus of this paper is to explore the extent to which these nostalgia videogames could be considered games-on-games: games that offer a critical view on game design and development, framed by the nostalgia and cultural memory of both gamers and game developers. Theories of pastiche and parody as applied to literature, film, and art are used to form a basis for the examination of recent nostalgia videogames, all of which demonstrate a degree of reflection on the videogame medium.

Helping activate children through the use of video games

OpenAIRE

Lomax, Jørn Vollan

2015-01-01

The video games industry is now one of the biggest entertainment industries in the world. Forb es magazine estimates that the video game industry will sell games for 70 billion dollars by the end of 2015, and the biggest growth is in the mobile market. While most of the video game industry is creating games strictly for entertainment purp oses, there is a growing demand for games that can b e used for other applications. This pap er will lo ok into making games that help chi...

Digital Gaming and Pediatric Obesity: At the Intersection of Science and Social Policy

OpenAIRE

Staiano, Amanda E.; Calvert, Sandra L.

2012-01-01

Children and adolescents in developed countries are heavily immersed in digital media, creating an inexpensive, far-reaching marketing opportunity for the food industry and the gaming industry. However, exposure to nonnutritious food and beverage advertisements combined with the use of stationary media create a conflict between entertainment and public health. Using the popular digital gaming platforms advergames (online games that market branded products) and exergames (video games that invo...

Helping Hands: Designing Video Games with Interpersonal Touch Interaction

OpenAIRE

Watts , Cody; Sharlin , Ehud; Woytiuk , Peter

2010-01-01

International audience; Increasingly, the movements of players' physical bodies are being used as a method of controlling and playing video games. This trend is evidenced by the recent development of interpersonal touch-based games; multiplayer games which players control by physically touching their partners. Although a small number of interpersonal touch-based games have recently been designed, the best practices for creating video games based on this unconventional interaction technique re...

IT Tools for Teachers and Scientists, Created by Undergraduate Researchers

Science.gov (United States)

Millar, A. Z.; Perry, S.

2007-12-01

Interns in the Southern California Earthquake Center/Undergraduate Studies in Earthquake Information Technology (SCEC/UseIT) program conduct computer science research for the benefit of earthquake scientists and have created products in growing use within the SCEC education and research communities. SCEC/UseIT comprises some twenty undergraduates who combine their varied talents and academic backgrounds to achieve a Grand Challenge that is formulated around needs of SCEC scientists and educators and that reflects the value SCEC places on the integration of computer science and the geosciences. In meeting the challenge, students learn to work on multidisciplinary teams and to tackle complex problems with no guaranteed solutions. Meantime, their efforts bring fresh perspectives and insight to the professionals with whom they collaborate, and consistently produces innovative, useful tools for research and education. The 2007 Grand Challenge was to design and prototype serious games to communicate important earthquake science concepts. Interns broke themselves into four game teams, the Educational Game, the Training Game, the Mitigation Game and the Decision-Making Game, and created four diverse games with topics from elementary plate tectonics to earthquake risk mitigation, with intended players ranging from elementary students to city planners. The games were designed to be versatile, to accommodate variation in the knowledge base of the player; and extensible, to accommodate future additions. The games are played on a web browser or from within SCEC-VDO (Virtual Display of Objects). SCEC-VDO, also engineered by UseIT interns, is a 4D, interactive, visualization software that enables integration and exploration of datasets and models such as faults, earthquake hypocenters and ruptures, digital elevation models, satellite imagery, global isochrons, and earthquake prediction schemes. SCEC-VDO enables the user to create animated movies during a session, and is now part

Case Study of an Epistemic Mathematics Computer Game

Science.gov (United States)

Buteau, Chantal; Muller, Eric

2018-01-01

E-Brock Bugs is a serious educational game (SEG) about probability which was created based on Devlin's design principles for games whose players adopt identities of mathematically able persons. This kind of games in which "players think and act like real world professionals" has been called epistemic. This article presents an empirical…

Automating Commercial Video Game Development using Computational Intelligence

OpenAIRE

Tse G. Tan; Jason Teo; Patricia Anthony

2011-01-01

Problem statement: The retail sales of computer and video games have grown enormously during the last few years, not just in United States (US), but also all over the world. This is the reason a lot of game developers and academic researchers have focused on game related technologies, such as graphics, audio, physics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the goal of creating newer and more fun games. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in game AI for pro...

Serious Video Games for Health How Behavioral Science Guided the Development of a Serious Video Game.

Science.gov (United States)

Thompson, Debbe; Baranowski, Tom; Buday, Richard; Baranowski, Janice; Thompson, Victoria; Jago, Russell; Griffith, Melissa Juliano

2010-08-01

Serious video games for health are designed to entertain players while attempting to modify some aspect of their health behavior. Behavior is a complex process influenced by multiple factors, often making it difficult to change. Behavioral science provides insight into factors that influence specific actions that can be used to guide key game design decisions. This article reports how behavioral science guided the design of a serious video game to prevent Type 2 diabetes and obesity among youth, two health problems increasing in prevalence. It demonstrates how video game designers and behavioral scientists can combine their unique talents to create a highly focused serious video game that entertains while promoting behavior change.

SimDialog: A visual game dialog editor

OpenAIRE

Owen, C.; Biocca, F.; Bohil, C.; Conley, J.

2008-01-01

SimDialog is a visual editor for dialog in computer games. This paper presents the design of SimDialog, illustrating how script writers and non-programmers can easily create dialog for video games with complex branching structures and dynamic response characteristics. The system creates dialog as a directed graph. This allows for play using the dialog with a state-based cause and effect system that controls selection of non-player character responses and can provide a basic scoring mechanism ...

An Experiment on How Adult Students Can Learn by Designing Engaging Learning Games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Weitze, Charlotte Lærke

2014-01-01

worth investigating as a motivational learning strategy. As meaning can be constructed through the manipulation of materials, which facilitates reflection and new ways of thinking, the use of learning games in education is taken one step further into the building of learning games in collaborative...... enables the students to be the designers of their own learning, by allowing them to create their own digital learning games, while implementing learning goals from cross-disciplinary subject matters (Figure 1). Another focus has been to create a learning design that scaffolds the students’ own learning-game......This article presents and discusses the first iteration of a design-based research experiment focusing on how to create a motivating gamified learning design, one that facilitates a deep learning process for adult students making their own learning games. Using games for learning has attracted...

Enhancing Artificial Intelligence on a Real Mobile Game

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fabio Aiolli

2009-01-01

enabling AI improvements for imperfect information games even on mobile phones. We created a mobile phone-based version of a game called Ghosts and present results which clearly show the ability of our algorithm to quickly improve its own predictive performance as far as the number of games against the same human opponent increases.

Dynamics of spatial traveler's dilemma games

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tanimoto, Jun

2014-01-01

By examining payoff structures, we elucidate the traveler's dilemma (TD) game. It can be said that the TD game as the 2-player and multi-strategy game is a variant of the donor and recipient game, which itself is a subclass of the 2-player and 2-strategy (2 × 2) prisoner's dilemma, in the sense that the Nash equilibrium and fair Pareto optimum appear on mutual defection and mutual cooperation, respectively. Exploring spatial TD games, we observed that the network reciprocity of TD games can be universally scaled with a single dilemma parameter as can be performed in usual 2 × 2 games. Furthermore, we observed a local peak event reflecting a resurging cooperation fraction with increasing dilemma strength after degradation to a low level. We successfully demonstrate that this is caused by the specific dynamics of TD games created by their specific payoff structure. (paper)

Mental preparation for the 2014 Winter Paralympic Games.

Science.gov (United States)

Martin, Jeffrey

2012-01-01

The purpose of this review is to describe how Paralympians can prepare for the 2014 Paralympic Games through mental skill use. A search of adapted physical activity, sport psychology, and disability-specific journals was conducted along with electronic databases (eg, ArticleFirst) using the terms sport psychology, Olympics, Paralympics, psychological and mental preparation and skills, imagery, visualization, self-talk, anxiety, confidence, and performance enhancement. Reference lists from relevant articles were then used to continue the search. No constraining dates were used. A review of the results from both qualitative and quantitative research on Paralympians, Olympians, and elite-level athletes suggests that mental preparation and mental skill development can help Paralympians enhance their performances. Sport psychologists can help Paralympians develop mental skills to manage the unique stressors of the Paralympics to increase the odds of having superior performances.

R. Garry Shirts: Simulation Gaming Exemplar

Science.gov (United States)

Dukes, Richard L.; Fowler, Sandra M.; DeKoven, Bernie

2011-01-01

This article is written as a tribute to R. Garry Shirts who through his exemplary authorship and publication of gamed simulations was designated "Defender of the Playful". Garry Shirts was the master of creating the "Aha! Moment" in learning through "deep play". Among the many gamed simulations he designed, the…

Winter Steelhead Distribution, Pacific Northwest (updated March, 2006)

Data.gov (United States)

Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission — This dataset is a record of fish distribution and activity for WINTER STEELHEAD contained in the StreamNet database. This feature class was created based on linear...

Video Game Accessibility: A Legal Approach

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

George Powers

2015-02-01

Full Text Available Video game accessibility may not seem of significance to some, and it may sound trivial to anyone who does not play video games. This assumption is false. With the digitalization of our culture, video games are an ever increasing part of our life. They contribute to peer to peer interactions, education, music and the arts. A video game can be created by hundreds of musicians and artists, and they can have production budgets that exceed modern blockbuster films. Inaccessible video games are analogous to movie theaters without closed captioning or accessible facilities. The movement to have accessible video games is small, unorganized and misdirected. Just like the other battles to make society accessible were accomplished through legislation and law, the battle for video game accessibility must be focused toward the law and not the market.

The Art of Video Games

Science.gov (United States)

Johnson, Mark M.

2012-01-01

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has created and will tour an exhibition on a most unusual but extremely popular art form--"The Art of Video Games." As one of the largest and first of its type, this exhibition will document and explore a 40-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the…

Toward using games to teach fundamental computer science concepts

Science.gov (United States)

Edgington, Jeffrey Michael

Video and computer games have become an important area of study in the field of education. Games have been designed to teach mathematics, physics, raise social awareness, teach history and geography, and train soldiers in the military. Recent work has created computer games for teaching computer programming and understanding basic algorithms. We present an investigation where computer games are used to teach two fundamental computer science concepts: boolean expressions and recursion. The games are intended to teach the concepts and not how to implement them in a programming language. For this investigation, two computer games were created. One is designed to teach basic boolean expressions and operators and the other to teach fundamental concepts of recursion. We describe the design and implementation of both games. We evaluate the effectiveness of these games using before and after surveys. The surveys were designed to ascertain basic understanding, attitudes and beliefs regarding the concepts. The boolean game was evaluated with local high school students and students in a college level introductory computer science course. The recursion game was evaluated with students in a college level introductory computer science course. We present the analysis of the collected survey information for both games. This analysis shows a significant positive change in student attitude towards recursion and modest gains in student learning outcomes for both topics.

Playing new music with old games: The chiptune subculture

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Israel Márquez

2014-03-01

Full Text Available Although video games have been studied from a wide range of perspectives, from film to literature, little attention has been given to the role of music and sound in games. Not only to the role of music and sound within games, but also to the many different forms in which video games are influencing the development of popular music. One of these forms is the so-called “chiptune music”. Chiptune (also known as chip music or 8-bit music is electronic music that uses the microchip-based audio hardware of early home computers and gaming consoles and repurposes it for artistic expression. Chiptune artists reinvent the technology found in old computers such as Commodore 64, Amiga and ZX Spectrum as well as in outdated video game consoles such as Nintendo Game Boy or Mega Drive/Genesis in order to create new music. This paper is an attempt to document the chiptune phenomena and the subculture scene that has been created around it during the last years: a subculture that is resuscitating and redefining old and “dead” gaming devices to play new music at the periphery of mainstream culture.

Creative Technology -- the CTSG: game design in 7 steps

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Eliëns, A.P.W.; Vermeersch, L; Mao, W

2010-01-01

This paper reports about a series of workshops in game design, originally meant as promotion for the Creative Technology curriculum of the University of Twente, but evolving into an element in the curriculum itself, with as the goal to create the CTSG, the Creative Technology Superpower Game(s). In

Back to the future of gaming

CERN Document Server

D Duke, Richard

2014-01-01

The book is based on Richard Duke's classic ""Gaming: The Future's Language"" and explores the past, present and especially the future of gaming in relation to the main ideas of Duke's book, first published in 1974. This new book serves both as a retrospective and as a thoughtful speculation about the future of gaming. The editors attempted to preserve some history, wisdom and the 'state of the art' of field while creating a source of inspiration for the present and future development of the gaming discipline.   Der Sammelband ist Retrospektive und reflektierte Mutmaßung über die Zukunft der P

Towards gaze-controlled platform games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Muñoz, Jorge; Yannakakis, Georgios N.; Mulvey, Fiona

2011-01-01

This paper introduces the concept of using gaze as a sole modality for fully controlling player characters of fast-paced action computer games. A user experiment is devised to collect gaze and gameplay data from subjects playing a version of the popular Super Mario Bros platform game. The initial...... analysis shows that there is a rather limited grid around Mario where the efficient player focuses her attention the most while playing the game. The useful grid as we name it, projects the amount of meaningful visual information a designer should use towards creating successful player character...... controllers with the use of artificial intelligence for a platform game like Super Mario. Information about the eyes' position on the screen and the state of the game are utilized as inputs of an artificial neural network, which is trained to approximate which keyboard action is to be performed at each game...

[Epidemiological risk of introduction of dangerous and exotic infectious diseases on the territory of the XXII Olympic Winter Games and XI Paralympic Winter Games 2014 in Sochi].

Science.gov (United States)

Kuz'kin, B P; Ezhlova, E B; Kulichenko, A N; Maletskaia, O V; Demina, Iu V; Taran, T V; Pakskina, N D; Kharchenko, T V; Grizhebovskiĭ, G M; Savel'ev, V N; Orobeĭ, V G; Klindukhov, V P; Grechanaia, T V; Tesheva, S Ch; Brukhanova, G D

2015-01-01

To assess the epidemiological risk of introduction of serious infectious diseases in the pre-Olympic period defined list of dangerous and exotic infections and held assessment of potential danger threatening. Initial external information to assess the potential risk of skidding were reports, forecasts, posted on the official websites. The risk of skidding and epidemiological complications conditionally designated as high, moderate and minimal risk importation of measles virus-Rate was considered as high. In confirmation of the forecast for the period of the Olympic Games in Sochi have been registered about 100 cases of measles. Moderate risk of importation was determined for poliomyelitis due to wild poliovirus, Lassa fever, cholera, plague, and the minimal--for Dengue fever, yellow fever, the Middle East and respiratory syndrome, diseases caused by viruses Marburg and Ebola. Based on of analysis of previous Olympic Games and subsequent co-events related to the activity of the infectious diseases in the world, mate-cluded that even a slight risk of importation of infectious diseases requires maximum alertness and readiness to conduct adequate epidemiological issues incorporated.

Brains on video games.

Science.gov (United States)

Bavelier, Daphne; Green, C Shawn; Han, Doug Hyun; Renshaw, Perry F; Merzenich, Michael M; Gentile, Douglas A

2011-11-18

The popular press is replete with stories about the effects of video and computer games on the brain. Sensationalist headlines claiming that video games 'damage the brain' or 'boost brain power' do not do justice to the complexities and limitations of the studies involved, and create a confusing overall picture about the effects of gaming on the brain. Here, six experts in the field shed light on our current understanding of the positive and negative ways in which playing video games can affect cognition and behaviour, and explain how this knowledge can be harnessed for educational and rehabilitation purposes. As research in this area is still in its early days, the contributors of this Viewpoint also discuss several issues and challenges that should be addressed to move the field forward.

Android arcade game app a real world project : case study approach

CERN Document Server

DiMarzio, Jerome

2012-01-01

Apress, the leading Android books publisher, continues to provide you with very hands-on, practical books for teaching and showing app developers how to build and design apps, including game apps, that can be built and deployed in the various Android app stores out there. Android Arcade Game App:  A Real World Project - Case Study Approach is no different in that it walks you through creating an arcade style Prison Break game app-top to bottom-for an Android smartphone or tablet.  This book teaches you the unique characteristics and challenges of creating an Arcade style game And it provides y

Adventures in Learning: Creating Role Playing Video Games to Teach and Learn Economics

OpenAIRE

Catherine L. Lawson; Larry L. Lawson

2010-01-01

This article examines pedagogical lessons derived from the learning theory embodied in commercially successfully video games and their link to reported increases in 'fluid intelligence' of student populations. The scholarly literature in this area is reviewed in order to elicit practical principles by which to guide the development of instructional video game modules for the teaching of economics. The authors' experiences in developing and pilot testing such a module, and in subsequently guid...

Play to Learn, Learn to Play: Language Learning through Gaming Culture

Science.gov (United States)

Ryu, Dongwan

2013-01-01

Many researchers have investigated learning through playing games. However, after playing games, players often go online to establish and participate in the online community where they enrich their game experiences, discuss game-related issues, and create fan-fictions, screenshots, or scenarios. Although these emerging activities are an essential…

Swipe this! the guide to great touchscreen game design

CERN Document Server

Rogers, Scott

2012-01-01

Learn to design games for tablets from a renowned game designer! Eager to start designing games for tablets but not sure where to start? Look no further! Gaming guru Scott Rogers has his finger on the pulse of tablet game design and is willing to impart his wisdom and secrets for designing exciting and successful games. As the creator of such venerable games as God of War, the SpongeBob Squarepants series, and Pac-Man World, to name a few, Rogers writes from personal experience and in this unique book, he hands you the tools to create your own tablet games for the iPad, Android tablets, Ninten

Paralympic sports medicine--current evidence in winter sport: considerations in the development of equipment standards for paralympic athletes.

Science.gov (United States)

Burkett, Brendan

2012-01-01

To highlight and discuss the considerations for the future development of equipment standards for Winter Paralympic sports. Literature searches were performed (in English) during May 2011 using the key words "technology, winter sport, Olympic, and Paralympic" in the computerized databases PubMed, PsycINFO, Science Direct, and Google Scholar. In addition, personal scientific observations were made at several Winter Paralympic Games. The retrieved articles were screened and assessed for relevance to the biological, biomechanical, and sport medicine aspects of equipment. There are 3 key areas in which technology has influenced sports performance in Paralympic winter sports, namely, specialized prostheses, crutch skis or outriggers (in lieu of poles), and sport-specific wheelchairs (such as the sit-ski). From a sport medicine perspective, a crucial factor not considered in the standard laboratory test of mechanical efficiency is the influence of the human-equipment connection, such as the stump-to-prosthesis interface or the required human-to-wheelchair control. This connectivity is critical to the effective operation of the assistive device. When assessing the efficiency of this equipment, the not-so-obvious, holistic, compensatory factors need to be considered. Assistive equipment is fundamental for a person with a disability to participate and compete in winter sport activities. Although there have been improvements in the mechanical function of some assistive devices, the key issue is matching the residual function of the person with the assistive equipment. Equitable access to this technology will also ensure that the fundamental spirit of fair play that underpins the Paralympic Games is maintained.

Toward Using Games to Teach Fundamental Computer Science Concepts

Science.gov (United States)

Edgington, Jeffrey Michael

2010-01-01

Video and computer games have become an important area of study in the field of education. Games have been designed to teach mathematics, physics, raise social awareness, teach history and geography, and train soldiers in the military. Recent work has created computer games for teaching computer programming and understanding basic algorithms. …

PLEX as input and evaluation tool in persuasive game design : Pilot study

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Van Dooren, M.M.M.; Spijkerman, R.; Goossens, R.H.M.; Hendriks, V.M.; Visch, V.T.

2014-01-01

One of the main objectives in game design is to create game experiences that enhance the motivation to start and continue to play the game. To gain insight into which game experiences can be evolved by the game, designers have been using PLEX cards in the user input phase or in the product

Game engines and immersive displays

Science.gov (United States)

Chang, Benjamin; Destefano, Marc

2014-02-01

While virtual reality and digital games share many core technologies, the programming environments, toolkits, and workflows for developing games and VR environments are often distinct. VR toolkits designed for applications in visualization and simulation often have a different feature set or design philosophy than game engines, while popular game engines often lack support for VR hardware. Extending a game engine to support systems such as the CAVE gives developers a unified development environment and the ability to easily port projects, but involves challenges beyond just adding stereo 3D visuals. In this paper we outline the issues involved in adapting a game engine for use with an immersive display system including stereoscopy, tracking, and clustering, and present example implementation details using Unity3D. We discuss application development and workflow approaches including camera management, rendering synchronization, GUI design, and issues specific to Unity3D, and present examples of projects created for a multi-wall, clustered, stereoscopic display.

Gaming Against Violence: A Grassroots Approach to Teen Dating Violence.

Science.gov (United States)

Crecente, Drew

2014-08-01

Teen dating violence is a pervasive problem that affects millions of adolescents worldwide. Although there have been various approaches to addressing this problem, using videogames had not been employed before 2008, when Jennifer Ann's Group, an Atlanta, GA-based nonprofit organization, created an annual competition. The Life.Love. Game Design Challenge rewards game developers for creating videogames about teen dating violence without using any violence in the games themselves. The resulting videogames have increased awareness about teen dating violence and provided educational information to assist adolescents, parents, and teachers in identifying abusive relationships.

The Influence of an Educational Course on Language Expression and Treatment of Gaming Addiction for Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) Players

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Pyoung Won; Kim, Seo Young; Shim, Miseon; Im, Chang-Hwan; Shon, Young-Min

2013-01-01

Addiction to Massive Multiple Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) among juveniles has become a serious problem in Korea and has led to legislation prohibiting juveniles from playing games after midnight. One key factor in gaming addiction is the so-called narrative, or story, gamers create for themselves while playing. This study investigated how…

DoD Physical Security Technical Support at the 1980 Winter Olympics Village.

Science.gov (United States)

1980-09-02

support were provided to the 1980 Winter Olympic Games were: (1) Physical Security, (2) Communications- Electronics , and (3) Medical via the New York Army...vibration-based Fence Pro- tection System (FPS), manufactured by General Telephone and Electronics (GT& E ) and installed for the Federal Bureau of Prisons...CM (Mr. Woomert) DRSXY-GB (Mr. R. E . Cam) Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD 21005 Commander US Army Communications and Electronics Material Readiness

Gaming conservation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Fletcher, Robert

2017-01-01

This article explores the role of digital (video and computer) games in the rise of what Büscher (2014) calls "nature 2.0": new web-related media that allow users to move beyond passive voyeurism to actively "co-create" or "prosume" the images and processes promoted by organizations committed to

Experimental evidence for suspence as determinant of video game enjoyment

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Klimmt, C.; Rizzo, A.; Vorderer, P.A.; Koch, J.; Fischer, T.

2009-01-01

Based on theoretical assumptions from film psychology and their application to video games, the hypothesis is tested that suspense is a major factor in video game enjoyment. A first-person shooter game was experimentally manipulated to create either a low level or a high level of suspense.

Serious game design principles: The impact of game design on learning outcomes

Science.gov (United States)

Martin, Michael W.

This dissertation examines the research question "How do video game design principles affect learning outcomes in serious games?" This research first develops a theoretical foundation concerning the meaning of the terms "game" and "serious game". This conceptual clarification is broken down into analytic propositions, which state that games have participants, rules, goals and challenges, and synthetic propositions, which state that the games should be intrinsically compelling, provide meaningful choices, and be self encapsulated. Based on these synthetic propositions, three hypotheses were developed. The hypotheses are that games with an enhanced aesthetic presentation, more meaningful choices, or provide player competition will elicit higher learning outcomes than identical games without these factors. These hypotheses were tested via a quantitative experiment involving 172 undergraduate students in the Old Dominion University Chemistry Department. The students were asked to play a chemistry-oriented serious game entitled Element Solitaire©, which was created by the research author. The students were randomly given different treatments of the Element Solitaire© game to play, and the difference between their learning outcomes were compared. The experimental results demonstrated that the aesthetic presentation of a game can have a significant impact upon the learning outcome. The experiment was not able to discern significant effects from the choice or competition conditions, but further examination of the experimental data did reveal some insight into these aspects of serious game design. Choices need to provide the player with options that have a sufficient value that they will be considered and the application of competition within games needs to be judiciously implemented to promote a positive affect for all players. The results of the theoretical foundations and empirical evidence were then combined with additional theoretical research to develop a set of

Advanced game design with HTML5 and JavaScript

CERN Document Server

van der Spuy, Rex

2015-01-01

How do you make a video game? Advanced Game Design with HTML5 and JavaScript is a down to earth education in how to make video games from scratch, using the powerful HTML5 and JavaScript technologies. This book is a point-by-point round up of all the essential techniques that every game designer needs to know. You'll discover how to create and render game graphics, add interactivity, sound, and animation. You'll learn how to build your own custom game engine with reusable components so that you can quickly develop games with maximum impact and minimum code. You'll also learn the secrets o

SIDH: A Game-Based Architecture for a Training Simulator

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

P. Backlund

2009-01-01

Full Text Available Game-based simulators, sometimes referred to as “lightweight” simulators, have benefits such as flexible technology and economic feasibility. In this article, we extend the notion of a game-based simulator by introducing multiple screen view and physical interaction. These features are expected to enhance immersion and fidelity. By utilizing these concepts we have constructed a training simulator for breathing apparatus entry. Game hardware and software have been used to produce the application. More important, the application itself is deliberately designed to be a game. Indeed, one important design goal is to create an entertaining and motivating experience combined with learning goals in order to create a serious game. The system has been evaluated in cooperation with the Swedish Rescue Services Agency to see which architectural features contribute to perceived fidelity. The modes of visualization and interaction as well as level design contribute to the usefulness of the system.

The Labor Market Effects of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics

OpenAIRE

Robert Baumann; Bryan Engelhardt; Victor Matheson

2010-01-01

The local, state, and federal governments, along with the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee, spent roughly $1.9 billion in direct costs related to planning and hosting the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. In this paper, we investigate whether these expenditures increased employment. At the state level, we find strong evidence it increased employment in leisure related industries in the short run and potentially in the long run. However, the results indicate it had no long term impact on employmen...

Olympic games in Sochi, comparison and forecast

OpenAIRE

Kudrina, Anastasia

2015-01-01

Title: Olympic Games in Sochi, comparison and prediction Goals: Based on a research of the Olympic Games in Sochi to create a forecast of future economic effects on the territorium Method: The prediction is based on the analogic situation in other countries that held the Olympic Games in the past. Induction method of representing the thought process, during which the individual facts formulate more general assertions and theories; deduction method, which are derived from the general conclusio...

Designing and evaluating the tabletop game experience for senior citizens

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Al Mahmud, A.; Mubin, O.; Shahid, C.S.; Martens, J.B.O.S.

2008-01-01

In this paper, we report on the design and evaluation of a tabletop game especially created for senior citizens. The game is intended to provide leisure and fun and is played with four players on an augmented tabletop. It evolved from existing games and rules that are popular and familiar amongst

Business Plan: Video Game Rental Store

OpenAIRE

Kemppi, Tuomas

2013-01-01

The purpose of this report is to create a business plan for a video game rental store. It includes research on similar companies in other countries, and it determines if the concept would work in Finland. In addition to this, the report also includes research on what steps need to be taken in order to start and run a video game rental business in Finland. The report also goes over the current trends in the video game industry, and takes a look at where the industry is heading. Based...

Designing a Virtual Reality Game for the CAVE

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Livatino, Salvatore

2006-01-01

Virtual Reality has for many years been a technology which has stagnated in application and software development for games. What was possible and created ten years ago for games in VR environments is still being developed. The applications available for VR environments have increased...

Game statistics for the island of Olkiluoto in 2013-2014

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Niemi, M.; Nieminen, M.

2015-05-01

The game statistics for the island of Olkiluoto were updated in the summer 2014 and compared with earlier statistics. In addition, the estimated biomass of hunted animals was calculated. The reported game bag and population size estimates are based on the annual action report of local hunting club (Olkiluodon Metsaestysseura ry) and interviews of hunting club's secretary. No moose or deer inventories were made in the winter 2013-2014. The moose population has been a slightly increasing when comparing the previous year; there were 4-6 individuals on the island after hunting season. The number of moose varies because they tend to move between the island and mainland. Winter 2013-2014 was relatively easy for white-tailed deer and roe deer but the predation caused by lynxes inhibits the increase of populations. However, the current amount of lynxes on the island is unknown because the lack of snow in the winter 2013-2014. In the summer of 2014, there were several lynx observations. The number of hunted raccoon dogs was almost four times as large as in the previous year; altogether 26 individuals were killed. There were no noticeable changes in the number of other hunted small or medium-sized predators. American minks were not killed at all. The total number of hunted hares decreased from eleven to seven. Once again, mallard was the most common hunted bird species followed by hooded crow. Other bird species hunted were wood pigeon, herring gull, hazel grouse, wigeon, teal and common pochard. The total biomass hunted was approximately 1 225 kilos (1 170 for mammals and 55 for birds) which was 305 kilos more than in the previous year. The biomass destined to human consumption (i.e. game meat) was approximately 415 kilos (400 kilos for mammals, 15 for birds). (orig.)

Game statistics for the island of Olkiluoto in 2013-2014

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Niemi, M.; Nieminen, M. [Faunatica Oy, Espoo (Finland)

2015-05-15

The game statistics for the island of Olkiluoto were updated in the summer 2014 and compared with earlier statistics. In addition, the estimated biomass of hunted animals was calculated. The reported game bag and population size estimates are based on the annual action report of local hunting club (Olkiluodon Metsaestysseura ry) and interviews of hunting club's secretary. No moose or deer inventories were made in the winter 2013-2014. The moose population has been a slightly increasing when comparing the previous year; there were 4-6 individuals on the island after hunting season. The number of moose varies because they tend to move between the island and mainland. Winter 2013-2014 was relatively easy for white-tailed deer and roe deer but the predation caused by lynxes inhibits the increase of populations. However, the current amount of lynxes on the island is unknown because the lack of snow in the winter 2013-2014. In the summer of 2014, there were several lynx observations. The number of hunted raccoon dogs was almost four times as large as in the previous year; altogether 26 individuals were killed. There were no noticeable changes in the number of other hunted small or medium-sized predators. American minks were not killed at all. The total number of hunted hares decreased from eleven to seven. Once again, mallard was the most common hunted bird species followed by hooded crow. Other bird species hunted were wood pigeon, herring gull, hazel grouse, wigeon, teal and common pochard. The total biomass hunted was approximately 1 225 kilos (1 170 for mammals and 55 for birds) which was 305 kilos more than in the previous year. The biomass destined to human consumption (i.e. game meat) was approximately 415 kilos (400 kilos for mammals, 15 for birds). (orig.)

Artificial and Computational Intelligence for Games on Mobile Platforms

OpenAIRE

Congdon, Clare Bates; Hingston, Philip; Kendall, Graham

2013-01-01

In this chapter, we consider the possibilities of creating new and innovative games that are targeted for mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, and that showcase AI (Artificial Intelligence) and CI (Computational Intelligence) approaches. Such games might take advantage of the sensors and facilities that are not available on other platforms, or might simply rely on the "app culture" to facilitate getting the games into users' hands. While these games might be profitable in themsel...

Examining Student-Designed Games through Suits' Theory of Games

Science.gov (United States)

Casey, Ashley; Hastie, Peter; Jump, Steve

2016-01-01

This paper documents how a unit of student-designed games can create a more meaningful version of physical education (PE) for disengaged students, a version that enhances the educational legitimacy of the subject matter by affording it worth in and of itself rather than being justified for other, extrinsic or instrumental reasons. Furthermore, it…

Development and validation of a game addiction scale

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lemmens, J.S.; Valkenburg, P.M.; Peter, J.

2008-01-01

The aim of this study was to develop and validate a scale to measure computer and videogame addiction. Inspired by earlier theories and research on game and internet addiction, we created 21 items to measure seven criteria for game addiction (i.e., salience, tolerance, mood modification, relapse,

No Selling the Genie Lamp: A Game Literacy Practice in "The Sims"

Science.gov (United States)

Hayes, Elisabeth R.; Gee, James Paul

2010-01-01

Drawing on the New Literacy Studies, the authors argue that game literacy takes multiple forms and is embedded in different practices associated with particular games and gaming communities. They examine one specific game literacy practice that involves players of "The Sims" creating challenges for other players, and they identify how playing and…

Creating mobile apps with Appcelerator Titanium

CERN Document Server

Brousseau, Christian

2013-01-01

Creating Mobile Apps with Appcelerator Titanium provides a hands-on approach and working examples on creating apps and games as well as embedding them onto a social networking website. Developers can then move on from there to develop their own applications based on the ones they have developed throughout the course of this book.""Creating Mobile Apps with Appcelerator Titanium"" is for developers who have experience with modern languages and development environments. Also, if you are familiar with the concepts of Object-oriented Programming (OOP), reusable components, AJAX closures, and so on

The Role of Auditory Features Within Slot-Themed Social Casino Games and Online Slot Machine Games.

Science.gov (United States)

Bramley, Stephanie; Gainsbury, Sally M

2015-12-01

Over the last few years playing social casino games has become a popular entertainment activity. Social casino games are offered via social media platforms and mobile apps and resemble gambling activities. However, social casino games are not classified as gambling as they can be played for free, outcomes may not be determined by chance, and players receive no monetary payouts. Social casino games appear to be somewhat similar to online gambling activities in terms of their visual and auditory features, but to date little research has investigated the cross over between these games. This study examines the auditory features of slot-themed social casino games and online slot machine games using a case study design. An example of each game type was played on three separate occasions during which, the auditory features (i.e., music, speech, sound effects, and the absence of sound) within the games were logged. The online slot-themed game was played in demo mode. This is the first study to provide a qualitative account of the role of auditory features within a slot-themed social casino game and an online slot machine game. Our results found many similarities between how sound is utilised within the two games. Therefore the sounds within these games may serve functions including: setting the scene for gaming, creating an image, demarcating space, interacting with visual features, prompting players to act, communicating achievements to players, providing reinforcement, heightening player emotions and the gaming experience. As a result this may reduce the ability of players to make a clear distinction between these two activities, which may facilitate migration between games.

Gameplay semantics for the adaptive generation of game worlds

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lopes, R.

2014-01-01

When most commercial games are shipped, their gameplay has typically been prescripted. All game components are created during development, mostly as predetermined rigid artifacts with which a player will interact. This can lead to predictable and impersonal gameplay, while alienating unconventional

The Investigation on Using Unity3D Game Engine in Urban Design Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aswin Indraprastha

2009-05-01

Full Text Available Developing a virtual 3D environment by using game engine is a strategy to incorporate various multimedia data into one platform. The characteristic of game engine that is preinstalled with interactive and navigation tools allows users to explore and engage with the game objects. However, most CAD and GIS applications are not equipped with 3D tools and navigation systems intended to the user experience. In particular, 3D game engines provide standard 3D navigation tools as well as any programmable view to create engaging navigation thorough the virtual environment. By using a game engine, it is possible to create other interaction such as object manipulation, non playing character (NPC interaction with player and/or environment. We conducted analysis on previous game engines and experiment on urban design project with Unity3D game engine for visualization and interactivity. At the end, we present the advantages and limitations using game technology as visual representation tool for architecture and urban design studies.

Motion Detection Implementation on a Game Using Raspberry Pi

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gunawan Putra Gozali

2017-02-01

Full Text Available Along with the development of advanced gaming technology, we can play the game with so many tools or platforms such as console games, PC games, mobile games and handheld games. The disadvantage of those games is the difficulty to connect additional sensors to the PC computer. Large power requirements will also be a constraint. Besides, the size of the PC could be a weakness that makes it difficult to carry and play anytime. Raspberry is a small computer that can be added with motion detection sensors. By using the raspberry, the researchers managed to create a game "Crows Adventure" that uses motion detection sensor as the controller. Some of the sensors used in the game is UDS Sensor ( Ultrasonic Sensor disctance and touch sensors are applied to smarthphone to control the game. This allows the use of sensors in making more varied games by using raspberry devices.

Teaching Co-Design Games in Five Weeks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brandt, Eva; Kjærgård, Sarasiff; Risak Schou, Gudrun

2011-01-01

. It is important in order to prepare students for a career as designers. The paper reports from an intense five weeks course about developing and using design games as a frame for design-oriented collaborations with people outside the core design team. Co-design is about making room for people with diverse...... interests, roles and responsibilities in rehearsing the future. Using the game metaphor to stage and engage everyone is a valuable format for collaborative inquiry and co-creating future visions – in other words exploring diversity and creating unity about values and goals. The professional designer...

Game-Based Curricula in Biology Classes: Differential Effects among Varying Academic Levels

Science.gov (United States)

Sadler, Troy D.; Romine, William L.; Stuart, Parker E.; Merle-Johnson, Dominike

2013-01-01

Video games have become a popular medium in our society, and recent scholarship suggests that games can support substantial learning. This study stems from a project in which we created a video game enabling students to use biotechnology to solve a societal problem. As students engaged in the game, they necessarily interacted with the underlying…

Online Crowdfunding Campaign for an Independent Video Game

OpenAIRE

Kivikangas, Inessa

2014-01-01

Over the past several years online reward-model crowdfunding platforms have become a popular tool for raising funds among independent game developers. Big success of several brilliant indie titles brought to the online crowdfunding platforms Kickstarter and Indiegogo hundreds of hopeful independent developers. However, apart from creating an excellent game indie developers have to be able to reach out to their audience and capture attention of potential supporters and gaming media. Time and e...

The Use of Gaming in a Dental Hygiene Review Course.

Science.gov (United States)

Peterson, Charlotte A.; Mauriello, Sally M.; Caplan, Daniel J.

2000-01-01

Evaluated the effectiveness of gaming to create an interactive, stimulating learning environment as a review format for the Dental Hygiene National Board examination. Students (n=28) participated in either the gaming or a lecture review format. The gaming group scored higher on the exam on eight of 12 topics as well as on the case-based learning…

Design of Tangible Games for Children Undergoing Occupational and Physical Therapy

OpenAIRE

Delden , Robby ,; Aarts , Pauline; Dijk , Betsy ,

2012-01-01

Part 6: Serious Games (Health and Social); International audience; Games can offer an entertaining alternative to repetitive tasks. In this paper, we propose the use of tangible interactive games for the repetitive training of upper limbs in the therapy of children with Cerebral Palsy (CP). We obtained promising results. The total of four created games succeeded in triggering all the to-be-trained movements properly and in a motivating and entertaining way. A physical quiz game was especially...

Relacije umetnosti i video igara / Relations of Art and Video Games

OpenAIRE

Manojlo Maravić

2012-01-01

When discussing the art of video games, three different contexts need to be considered: the 'high' art (video games and the art); commercial video games (video games as the art) and the fan art. Video games are a legitimate artistic medium subject to modifications and recontextualisations in the process of creating a specific experience of the player/user/audience and political action by referring to particular social problems. They represent a high technological medium that increases, with p...

The Curriculum Planning Process for Undergraduate Game Degree Programs in the United Kingdom and United States

Science.gov (United States)

McGill, Monica M.

2012-01-01

Digital games are marketed, mass-produced, and consumed by an increasing number of people and the game industry is only expected to grow. In response, postsecondary institutions in the UK and the U.S. have started to create game degree programs. Though curriculum theorists provide insight into the process of creating a new program, no formal…

Designing happy games (apps) for people with dementia

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Y. Schikhof; Dr. J.H. Groenewoud; Dr. A.L. Cordia; Dr. J. de Lange

2014-01-01

Within the project 'In Touch'; touch screen application for people with dementia, a concept happy game was designed for the iPad. The purpose of this happy game is to provide a meaningful individual activity for persons with dementia, to give pleasure, and to create a sense of self-achievement.

An induced mutant of Coastcross 1 Bermudagrass with improved winter hardiness

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Burton, G.W.; Constantin, M.J.; Dobson, J.W. Jr.; Hanna, W.W.; Powell, J.B.

1980-01-01

Coastcross 1 bermudagrass, a sterile F 1 hybrid, (Coastal x PI 255445) establishes faster, yields as much dry matter, is 12% more digestible, and gives 30-35% better daily gains and liveweight gains per ha when fed to cattle than does the Coastal clone but fails to develop rhizomes and lacks the winter hardiness of Coastal. To create a winter hardy mutant, 500,000 green stems were exposed to 7000 rad of 60 -Co rays at Oak Ridge, TN June 21, 1971 and were immediately planted at Blairsville, GA where relatively severe winters occur frequently. One of 4 plants surviving the 1971-72 winter was like Coastcross 1 in yield, in vitro dry matter digestibility and appearance in a 3-yr test during mild winters at Tifton, GA. Following the moderate winter of 1976-77, Coastcross 1-M3 yielded more than Coastcross 1 but only about half as much as Coastal. The severe winter of 1977-78 destroyed about 98% of the plants of Coastcross 1 and Coastcross 1-M3 but reduced the stand of Coastal very little. The small gain in winter hardiness by Coastcross 1-M3 suggests that several genes control the winter hardiness of well-established Coastal bermudagrass. (author)

Preparation and accreditation of anti-doping laboratories for the Olympic Games.

Science.gov (United States)

Botrè, Francesco; Wu, Moutian; Boghosian, Thierry

2012-07-01

This article outlines the process of preparation of an anti-doping laboratory in view of the activities to be performed on the occasion of the Olympic Games, focusing in particular on the accreditation requirements of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and ISO/IEC 17025, as well as on the additional obligations required by the International Olympic Committee, which is the testing authority responsible for the anti-doping activities at the Olympics. Due to the elevated workload expected on the occasion of the Olympic Games, the designated anti-doping laboratory needs to increase its analytical capacity (samples processed/time) and capability by increasing the laboratory's resources in terms of space, instrumentation and personnel. Two representative cases, one related to the Winter Olympic Games (Torino 2006) and one related to the Summer Olympic Games (Beijing 2008), are presented in detail, in order to discuss the main aspects of compliance with both the WADA and ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation requirements.

Game statistics for the Island of Olkiluoto in 2011-2012

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Niemi, M.; Nieminen, M. [Faunatica Oy, Espoo (Finland); Jussila, I. [Turku Univ. (Finland)

2012-11-15

The game statistics for the island of Olkiluoto were updated in the summer 2012 and compared with earlier statistics. Population size estimates are based on interviews of the local hunters. No moose or deer inventories were made in the winter 2011-2012. The moose population has been decreasing slightly during the past ten years. The increasing lynx population has decreasing effect on small ungulate (white-tailed deer and roe deer) populations. The number of hunted mountain hares and European brown hares decreased when comparing the previous year. In addition, the number of hunted raccoon dogs was about 50 per cent lower than in the year 2010. Altogether 27 waterfowls were hunted in 2011. The population of mountain hare is abundant, despite that there were lynx living on the eastern part of island during the winter 2011. Based on track observations, there are pine martens living on the area as well. In addition, there were some observations of wolves visiting on the area. The winter 2011-2012 was milder than the previous one, and it seemed that young swans wintering on the area survived better that in the previous winter. (orig.)

Game statistics for the Island of Olkiluoto in 2011-2012

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Niemi, M.; Nieminen, M.; Jussila, I.

2012-11-01

The game statistics for the island of Olkiluoto were updated in the summer 2012 and compared with earlier statistics. Population size estimates are based on interviews of the local hunters. No moose or deer inventories were made in the winter 2011-2012. The moose population has been decreasing slightly during the past ten years. The increasing lynx population has decreasing effect on small ungulate (white-tailed deer and roe deer) populations. The number of hunted mountain hares and European brown hares decreased when comparing the previous year. In addition, the number of hunted raccoon dogs was about 50 per cent lower than in the year 2010. Altogether 27 waterfowls were hunted in 2011. The population of mountain hare is abundant, despite that there were lynx living on the eastern part of island during the winter 2011. Based on track observations, there are pine martens living on the area as well. In addition, there were some observations of wolves visiting on the area. The winter 2011-2012 was milder than the previous one, and it seemed that young swans wintering on the area survived better that in the previous winter. (orig.)

Towards Validating Game Scenarios for Teaching Conflict Resolution

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Cheong, Yun-Gyung; Grappiolo, Corrado; Pedersen, Christoffer Holmgård

2013-01-01

Teaching conflict resolution skills via serious games has received increasing attention in recent years. This paper describes game scenarios that were developed to evoke variant levels of conflict intensity to children. To validate the scenarios, we implemented a prototype and created videos from...... play-throughs of the prototype. We then carried out a user study and ran statistical analyses to test if children would perceive the game scenarios as intended by scenario designers in terms of conflict....

Future{at}Labs.Prosperity Game{trademark}

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Beck, D.F.; Boyack, K.W.; Berman, M. [Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States). Innovative Alliances Dept.

1996-10-01

Prosperity Games{trademark} are an outgrowth and adaptation of move/countermove and seminar War Games, Prosperity Games{trademark} are simulations that explore complex issues in a variety of areas including economics, politics, sociology, environment, education, and research. These issues can be examined from a variety of perspectives ranging from global, macroeconomic and geopolitical viewpoint down to the details of customer/supplier/market interactions specific industries. All Prosperity Games{trademark} are unique in that both the game format and the player contributions vary from game to game. This report documents the Future{at}Labs.Prosperity Game{trademark} conducted under the sponsorship of the Industry Advisory Boards of the national labs, the national labs, Lockheed Martin Corporation, and the University of California. Players were drawn from all stakeholders involved including government, industry, labs, and academia. The primary objectives of this game were to: (1) explore ways to optimize the role of the multidisciplinary labs in serving national missions and needs; (2) explore ways to increase collaboration and partnerships among government, laboratories, universities, and industry; and (3) create a network of partnership champions to promote findings and policy options. The deliberations and recommendations of these players provided valuable insights as to the views of this diverse group of decision makers concerning the future of the labs.

Teaching with Games: Online Resources and Examples for Entry Level Courses

Science.gov (United States)

Teed, R.; Manduca, C.

2004-12-01

Using games to teach introductory geoscience can motivate students to enthusiastically learn material that they might otherwise condemn as "boring". A good educational game is one that immerses the players in the material and engages them for as long as it takes to master that material. There are some good geoscience games already available, but instructors can also create their own, suitable to their students and the content that they are teaching. Game-Based Learning is a module on the Starting Point website for faculty teaching entry level geosciences. It assists faculty in using games in their teaching by providing a description of the features of game-based learning, why you would use it, how to use games to teach geoscience, examples, and references. Other issues discussed include the development of video games for teaching, having your students create educational games, what makes a good game, handling competition in the classroom, and grading. The examples include descriptions of and rules for a GPS treasure hunt, a geology quiz show, and an earthquake game, as well as links to several online geological video games, and advice on how to design a paleontology board game. Starting Point is intended to help both experienced faculty and new instructors meet the challenge of teaching introductory geoscience classes, including environmental science and oceanography as well as more traditional geology classes. For many students, these classes are both the first and the last college-level science class that they will ever take. They need to learn enough about the Earth in that one class to sustain them for many decades as voters, consumers, and sometimes even as teachers. Starting Point is produced by a group of authors working with the Science Education Resource Center. It contains dozens of detailed examples categorized by geoscience topic with advice about using them and assessing learning. Each example is linked to one of many modules, such as Game

Travel in adverse winter weather conditions by blind pedestrians.

Science.gov (United States)

2015-08-31

Winter weather creates many orientation and mobility (O&M) challenges for people who are visually impaired. Getting the cane tip stuck is one of the noticeable challenges when traveling in snow, particularly when the walking surface is covered in dee...

Digital Gaming and Pediatric Obesity: At the Intersection of Science and Social Policy

Science.gov (United States)

Staiano, Amanda E.; Calvert, Sandra L.

2012-01-01

Children and adolescents in developed countries are heavily immersed in digital media, creating an inexpensive, far-reaching marketing opportunity for the food industry and the gaming industry. However, exposure to nonnutritious food and beverage advertisements combined with the use of stationary media create a conflict between entertainment and public health. Using the popular digital gaming platforms advergames (online games that market branded products) and exergames (video games that involves gross motor activity for play) as exemplars, the following article provides an analysis of the negative and positive health impacts of digital gaming as they relate specifically to overweight and obesity outcomes for children and adolescents. Theoretical explanations including the food marketing defense model, persuasion knowledge model, and social cognitive theory are used to explain the influence of gaming on young players’ health. Throughout the article, we discuss the role of public policy to encourage the development and use of health-promoting digital games as an innovative, effective tool to combat the pediatric obesity crisis. PMID:22545068

Digital Gaming and Pediatric Obesity: At the Intersection of Science and Social Policy.

Science.gov (United States)

Staiano, Amanda E; Calvert, Sandra L

2012-03-01

Children and adolescents in developed countries are heavily immersed in digital media, creating an inexpensive, far-reaching marketing opportunity for the food industry and the gaming industry. However, exposure to nonnutritious food and beverage advertisements combined with the use of stationary media create a conflict between entertainment and public health. Using the popular digital gaming platforms advergames (online games that market branded products) and exergames (video games that involves gross motor activity for play) as exemplars, the following article provides an analysis of the negative and positive health impacts of digital gaming as they relate specifically to overweight and obesity outcomes for children and adolescents. Theoretical explanations including the food marketing defense model, persuasion knowledge model, and social cognitive theory are used to explain the influence of gaming on young players' health. Throughout the article, we discuss the role of public policy to encourage the development and use of health-promoting digital games as an innovative, effective tool to combat the pediatric obesity crisis.

Improving physics instruction by analyzing video games

Science.gov (United States)

Beatty, Ian D.

2013-01-01

Video games can be very powerful teaching systems, and game designers have become adept at optimizing player engagement while scaffolding development of complex skills and situated knowledge. One implication is that we might create games to teach physics. Another, which I explore here, is that we might learn to improve classroom physics instruction by studying effective games. James Gee, in his book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2007), articulates 36 principles that make good video games highly effective as learning environments. In this theoretical work, I identify 16 themes running through Gee's principles, and explore how these themes and Gee's principles could be applied to the design of an on-campus physics course. I argue that the process pushes us to confront aspects of learning that physics instructors and even physics education researchers generally neglect, and suggest some novel ideas for course design.

The Role of a Relative Age Effect in the 7th International Children’s Winter Games 2016 and the Influence of Biological Maturity Status on Selection

Science.gov (United States)

Müller, Lisa; Hildebrandt, Carolin; Raschner, Christian

2017-01-01

The aim of this study was to analyse the role of a relative age effect (RAE) and to investigate the influence of biological maturity status on the RAE at the 7th International Children`s Winter Games. The birth dates of all 572 participants (365 males, 207 females) were analysed, and the biological maturity status of 384 athletes (243 males, 141 females) was assessed by the age at peak height velocity (APHV) method. A RAE was present in the total sample (χ2 = 67.81; p < 0.001), and among both male (χ2 = 49.02; p < 0.001) and female athletes (χ2 = 37.00; p < 0.001) as well as for strength- (χ2 = 56.46; p < 0.001), endurance- (χ2 = 20.48; p = 0.039) and technique-related types of sports (χ2 = 20.48; p = 0.041). No significant differences in biological maturity status were present between the male athletes of single relative age quarters. Among the female athletes a significant difference was present (F = 5.94, p < 0.001); relatively younger female athletes had significantly lower values in the APHV, which indicated that they were maturing earlier. However, when dividing the athletes into normal, early and late maturing athletes, it could be seen that among the relatively younger athletes, hardly any late maturing athletes were present. These findings revealed that relatively younger athletes seemed to only have a chance for selection if they were early maturing, whereas relatively older athletes had an increased likelihood for selection independent of their biological maturity status. In the future, the relative age and the biological maturity status should be considered in the talent development system for various types of winter sport, to contribute to more fairness and to not discriminate against relatively younger and less mature athletes. Key points The relative age strongly influenced the participation rate at the 7th ICG in 2016. A highly significant RAE was present among male and female participants and among athletes of all three groups of sport

Atlanta Centennial Olympic Games and Paralympic Games event study, 1996. Final report, July 1996--August 1996

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Amodei, R.; Bard, E.; Brong, B.; Cahoon, F.; Jasper, K.

1998-11-01

The Atlanta metropolitan region was the location of one of the most ambitious Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) deployments in the United States. This deployment included several individual projects--a Central Transportation Management Center (TMC), six Traffic Control Centers (TCCs), one Transit Information Center (TIC), The Travel Information Showcase (TIS), and the extension of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) Rail network and the new high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes on I-85 and I-75. The 1996 Atlanta Centennial Olympic Games and Paralympic Games created a focus for these projects. All of these systems were to be brought on-line in time for the Olympic Games. This report presents the findings of the 1996 Olympic and Paralympic Games Events Study--a compilation of findings of system performance, the benefits realized, and the lessons learned during their operations over the event period. The study assessed the performance of the various Travel Demand Management (TDM) plans employed for Olympic Games traffic management.

Interactive floating windows: a new technique for stereoscopic video games

Science.gov (United States)

Zerebecki, Chris; Stanfield, Brodie; Tawadrous, Mina; Buckstein, Daniel; Hogue, Andrew; Kapralos, Bill

2012-03-01

The film industry has a long history of creating compelling experiences in stereoscopic 3D. Recently, the video game as an artistic medium has matured into an effective way to tell engaging and immersive stories. Given the current push to bring stereoscopic 3D technology into the consumer market there is considerable interest to develop stereoscopic 3D video games. Game developers have largely ignored the need to design their games specifically for stereoscopic 3D and have thus relied on automatic conversion and driver technology. Game developers need to evaluate solutions used in other media, such as film, to correct perceptual problems such as window violations, and modify or create new solutions to work within an interactive framework. In this paper we extend the dynamic floating window technique into the interactive domain enabling the player to position a virtual window in space. Interactively changing the position, size, and the 3D rotation of the virtual window, objects can be made to 'break the mask' dramatically enhancing the stereoscopic effect. By demonstrating that solutions from the film industry can be extended into the interactive space, it is our hope that this initiates further discussion in the game development community to strengthen their story-telling mechanisms in stereoscopic 3D games.

Learning Objective-C by developing iPhone games

CERN Document Server

Walters, Joseph

2014-01-01

Written as a practical and engaging tutorial, this book guides you through the development of your own exciting, fully featured, games.If you are a beginner and an enthusiast who dreams about creating games and is in need of some additional inspiration and knowledge, then this book is for you. No programming experience is expected.

Online Video Games and Young People

OpenAIRE

Ruzic-Baf, Maja; Strnak, Hrvoje; Debeljuh, Andrea

2015-01-01

The availability of new information and communication technologies to an increasingly younger population, the constant availability of the Internet and the opportunity to search information, to create new types and models of communication, types of acceptance and ways of accepting and coping with the infinite amount of  information, the velocity and choice of well-designed marketing products, especially video games, in particular in the last decade, caused a real "gaming boom" among almost al...

Online Video Games and Young People

OpenAIRE

Ruzic-Baf, Maja; Strnak, Hrvoje; Debeljuh, Andrea

2015-01-01

The availability of new information and communication technologies to an increasingly younger population, the constant availability of the Internet and the opportunity to search information, to create new types and models of communication, types of acceptance and ways of accepting and coping with the infinite amount of  information, the velocity and choice of well-designed marketing products, especially video games, in particular in the last decade, caused a real "gaming boom" among...

Socio-educational assessment of electronic games

OpenAIRE

Gulbinas, Rokas; Rapkauskaitė, Gintarė

2015-01-01

This article presents social pedagogic opportunities of electronic games played by middle to high school students. Survey of 5th to 12th class students reveals electronical game properties and their correlations with student emotional state, social activity, ability to create and maintain social relations, delinquent traits and academic diffculties. Results and observations of this study are important for social pedagogues and the rest of educational process organizators, for parents trying t...

Destroy The Castle: A 3D Magic Carpet-like Game

OpenAIRE

Ondrčková, Simona

2017-01-01

Title: Destroy the Castle: A 3D Magic Carpet-like Game Author: Simona Ondrčková Department: Department of Distributed and Dependable Systems Supervisor: Mgr. Pavel Ježek, Ph.D., Department of Distributed and Dependable Systems Abstract: The goal of the thesis is to create a computer game based on a game called Magic Carpet. The game has two main interesting aspects from the programming point of view: artificial intelligence and an editor. The artificial intelligence uses different approaches ...

An evaluation of mental health stigma perpetuated by horror video gaming.

OpenAIRE

Dickens, E. G.

2017-01-01

Video games often feature mental patients in their storylines. This review is intended to test the hypothesis that these depictions potentially contribute to stigma surrounding mental health communities, and may negatively reflect on those with mental health difficulties. The criteria for evaluating the chosen games were created by combining elements from four separate academic papers. The games were analyzed via screenshots from online videos detailing a playthrough of chosen games, and text...

A game based virtual campus tour

Science.gov (United States)

Razia Sulthana, A.; Arokiaraj Jovith, A.; Saveetha, D.; Jaithunbi, A. K.

2018-04-01

The aim of the application is to create a virtual reality game, whose purpose is to showcase the facilities of SRM University, while doing so in an entertaining manner. The virtual prototype of the institution is deployed in a game engine which eases the students to look over the infrastructure, thereby reducing the resources utilization. Time and money are the resources in concern today. The virtual campus application assists the end user even from a remote location. The virtual world simulates the exact location and hence the effect is created. Thus, it virtually transports the user to the university, with the help of a VR Headset. This is a dynamic application wherein the user can move in any direction. The VR headset provides an interface to get gyro input and this is used to start and stop the movement. Virtual Campus is size efficient and occupies minimal space. It is scalable against mobile gadgets. This gaming application helps the end user to explore the campus, while having fun too. It is a user friendly application that supports users worldwide.

Lessons learned from creating a mobile version of an educational board game to increase situational awareness

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Klemke, Roland; Kurapati, Shalini; Lukosch, Heide; Specht, Marcus

2015-01-01

This paper reports on an iterative design process for a serious game, which aims to raise situational awareness among different stakeholders in a logistics value chain by introducing multi-user role-playing games. It does so in several phases: After introducing the field of logistics as a problem

Games of Multitude

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nick Dyer-Witheford

2010-07-01

Full Text Available Our hypothesis is that videogames are a paradigmatic media of Empire as described by Hardt and Negri–planetary, militarized hyper-capitalism–and of some of the forces presently challenging it. Why are virtual games the media of Empire, integral to and expressive of it like no other? They originated in the US military-industrial complex, the nuclear-armed core of capital’s global domination, to which power they remain umbilically connected. They were created by the hard-to-control hacker knowledge of a new type of intellectual worker, immaterial labour, vital to a fresh phase of capitalist expansion. In that phase, game machines have served as ubiquitous everyday incubators for the most advanced forces of production and communication, tutoring entire generations in digital technologies and networked communication. The game industry has pioneered methods of accumulation based on intellectual property rights, cognitive exploitation, cultural hybridization, transcontinentally subcontracted dirty work, and world-marketed commodities. Game making blurs the lines between work and play, production and consumption, voluntary activity and precarious exploitation, in a way that typifies the boundless exercise of biopower. At the same time, games themselves are an expensive consumer commodity which the global poor can only access illicitly, demonstrating the massive inequalities of this regime. Virtual games simulate identities as citizen-soldiers, free-agent workers, cyborg-adventurers, and corporate-criminals: virtual play trains flexible personalities for flexible jobs, shapes subjects for militarized markets, and makes becoming a neoliberal subject fun. And—taking us to the focus of this article—games exemplify Empire because they are also exemplary of the multitude, in that game culture includes subversive and alternative experiments searching for a way out. Just as the eighteenth-century novel was a textual apparatus generating the bourgeois

Searching for Sentient Design Tools for Game Development

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Liapis, Antonios

their generative algorithms) and to their human users (who must take all design decisions), respectively. This thesis argues that computers can be creative partners to human designers rather than mere slaves; game design tools can be aware of designer intentions, preferences and routines, and can accommodate them...... or even subvert them. This thesis presents Sentient Sketchbook, a tool for designing game level abstractions of different game genres, which assists the level designer as it automatically tests maps for playability constraints, evaluates and displays the map's gameplay properties and creates alternatives......Over the last twenty years, computer games have grown from a niche market targeting young adults to an important player in the global economy, engaging millions of people from different cultural backgrounds. As both the number and the size of computer games continue to rise, game companies handle...

Digital gaming for HIV prevention with young adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Enah, Comfort; Moneyham, Linda; Vance, David E; Childs, Gwendolyn

2013-01-01

The search for intervention strategies appropriate for young adolescents has recently led to the use of digital games. Digital gaming interventions are promising because they may be developmentally appropriate for adolescent populations. The gaming approach also capitalizes on an inherent interest to adolescents and circumvents traditional barriers to access to prevention interventions faced in some geographical areas. Notwithstanding, research on gaming in HIV prevention is quite limited. In this review article, we examine the need for contextually relevant HIV prevention interventions among young adolescents. From this, we provide a theoretical framework for exploring contextually relevant HIV risk factors and a foundation for gathering and using input from the target population to adapt an existing game or to create a developmentally appropriate and contextually relevant HIV prevention game. Copyright © 2013 Association of Nurses in AIDS Care. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

[A study on comparison of learning effects between a board game and a lecture about infection control].

Science.gov (United States)

Kawamura, Hitomi; Kishimoto, Keiko; Matsuda, Toshiyuki; Fukushima, Noriko

2014-01-01

  In order to provide an opportunity for community pharmacists to actively learn about infection control, this study created learning materials through a board game format and verified characteristics of learning by determining and comparing evaluation according to viewpoint and motivational effects between a lecture and the game. To create the board game, we collected cases of infection from 30 community pharmacists. The game was created using collected and created case studies, and we held a workshop on infection control. Participants were assigned to a lecture (n=32) or game group (n=27) and completed a questionnaire before and after the workshop. The questionnaire included the evaluation according to viewpoint based on the ministry's curriculum guidelines and the motivational effect of Keller's ARCS motivation model. In the evaluation according to viewpoint, the lecture group scores were significantly higher on "knowledge and understanding" than the game group scores. In the comparison of the motivational effects, the game group was significantly higher in three out of the four items of the ARCS motivation model, "Attention", "Relevance", and "Satisfaction". These results indicate that learning through the game aroused the curiosity of the learners, increased the learning outcome, and maintained certain levels of motivation. In addition, the evaluation according to viewpoint showed that the lecture group understood the key concepts and knowledge regarding infection control, whereas there was a possibility that the game group required additional motivational factors for learning and maintaining motivation level.

Play It Again, Sam! Adapting Common Games into Multimedia Models Used for Student Reviews.

Science.gov (United States)

Metcalf, Karen K.; Barlow, Amy; Hudson, Lisa; Jones, Elizabeth; Lyons, Dennis; Piersall, James; Munfus, Laureen

1998-01-01

Provides guidelines on how to adapt common games such as checkers, tic tac toe, obstacle courses, and memory joggers into interactive games in multimedia courseware. Emphasizes creating generic games that can be recycled and used for multiple topics to save development time and keep costs low. Discusses topic themes, game structure, and…

iOS game development : Mobile game development with Swift programming language and SceneKit framework

OpenAIRE

Koskenseppä, Juuso

2016-01-01

The purpose of the thesis was to create an iOS game that could be deemed complete enough, so it could be published in Apple’s App Store. This meant fulfilling different guide-lines specified by Apple. The project was carried out by using Apple’s new Swift programming language and SceneKit framework, with an intention to see how they work for iOS game development. The immaturity of Swift programming language led to several code rewrites, every time a newer Swift version was released. T...

Computer Games Created by Middle School Girls: Can They Be Used to Measure Understanding of Computer Science Concepts?

Science.gov (United States)

Denner, Jill; Werner, Linda; Ortiz, Eloy

2012-01-01

Computer game programming has been touted as a promising strategy for engaging children in the kinds of thinking that will prepare them to be producers, not just users of technology. But little is known about what they learn when programming a game. In this article, we present a strategy for coding student games, and summarize the results of an…

Pegembangan Game dengan Menggunakan Teknologi Voice Recognition Berbasis Android

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Franky Hadinata Marpaung

2014-06-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this research is to create a new kind of game by using technology that rarely used in current games. It is developed as an entertainment media and also a social media in which the users can play the games together via multiplayer mode. This research uses Scrum development method since it supports small scaled developer and it supports software increment along the development. Using this game application, the users can play and watch interesting animations by controlling it with their voice, listen the character imitating the users’ voice, play various mini games both in single player or multiplayer mode via Bluetooth connection. The conclusion is that game application of My Name is Dug use voice recognition and inter-devices connection as its main features. It also has various mini games that support both single player and multiplayer.

Gaming Horror’s horror: Representation, Regulation and Affect in Horror Videogames

OpenAIRE

Krzywinska, Tanya

2015-01-01

This position article outlines a personal perspective on the way that Horror games create affect in a complex play between representation and performance and that, in some cases, operate against the usual Vitruvian coordinates of games that are used in order to work with the types of affect associated with pleasure, agency and assuredness. The author argues that against the usual informative pleasures of self-affirmation and a clockwork universe, Horror games configured against normative game...

The magic lens box: Simplifying the development of mixed reality games

OpenAIRE

Wetzel, R.; Lindt, I.; Waern, A.; Johnson, S.

2008-01-01

Mixed Reality games are becoming more and more popular these days and offer unique experiences to the players. However, development of such games typically still requires expert knowledge and access to Mixed Reality toolkits or frameworks. In this paper, we present the so-called Magic Lens Box that follows a different approach. Based on standard hardware The Magic Lens Box enables game designers with little technological background to create their own Mixed Reality games in a simple yet power...

It’s All Fun and Games until Someone Learns Something: Assessing the Learning Outcomes of Two Educational Games

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Steven Wise

2009-12-01

Full Text Available Objective – To determine whether educational games can be designed that are both fun and effective in improving information seeking skills. Methods – Two skills that are known to be particularly difficult for students taking a required information literacy test were identified. These skills are the ability to identify citations and the ability to search databases with keywords. Educational games were designed to address these two skills. The first game, Citation Tic Tac Toe, placed commonly used bibliographic citations into a tick tac toe style grid. Students were required to play the Tic Tac Toe game and subsequently given citation identification exercises. The second game arranged key concepts related to search phrases in a Magnetic Keyword interface. Students were observed searching databases before and after playing the Magnetic Keyword game and their pre‐ and post‐play searches were analyzed.Results – Students who played the Tic Tac Toe game improved more from pretest to posttest than students who only took an online tutorial. In addition, students who played the Magnetic Keyword game demonstrated quicker database searching for their topics and expressed increased satisfaction with their results. Conclusions – Games can be created which have measurable educational outcomes and are fun. It is important, however, to establish the educational objective prior to beginning game design.

Games as Actors - Interaction, Play, Design, and Actor Network Theory

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jessen, Jari Due; Jessen, Carsten

2014-01-01

When interacting with computer games, users are forced to follow the rules of the game in return for the excitement, joy, fun, or other pursued experiences. In this paper, we investigate how games a chieve these experiences in the perspective of Actor Network Theory (ANT). Based on a qualitative......, and by doing so they create in humans what in modern play theory is known as a “state of play”...

Stay Warm in Winter (A Minute of Health with CDC)

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Podcasts

2015-02-26

Hypothermia occurs when the core body temperature is less than 95 degrees. This podcast discusses strategies to prevent hypothermia due to frigid winters temperatures.  Created: 2/26/2015 by MMWR.   Date Released: 2/26/2015.

Prevalence of video games among Thai children: impact evaluation.

Science.gov (United States)

Jirasatmathakul, P; Poovorawan, Y

2000-12-01

The present study was performed in order to determine prevalence and favored types of video games among altogether 679 primary and secondary school children in Thailand. To that end, the authors distributed questionnaires comprising detailed questions as to demographic data, playing frequency, available location and preferred type of video games among the parents of the children and adolescents to be investigated. Consistent with the literature, our results showed an early onset of video game playing (7.6 years), a higher prevalence among boys compared with girls, and a predilection for games invoking some aggressive behavior. In conclusion, although health hazards created by video game playing have remained beyond proof we still recommend parents and teachers to play a more active part as to the choice of games and the time spent playing.

Computer game marketing from the view of youtuber

OpenAIRE

Gause, Matěj

2015-01-01

The goal of the dissertation Marketing of PC game from the view of Youtuber is to characterize the latest practices in influencing masses of players of War Thunder PC game through video service Youtube and social network Facebook. This is a real project during which author created a large community of fans around the game counting more than 10 000 people on Youtube and almost 4 500 people on Facebook. Author applied the latest trends and the most innovative practices in connection with a trad...

The friends that game together: A folkloric expansion of textual poaching to genre farming for socialization in tabletop role-playing games

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michael Robert Underwood

2009-03-01

Full Text Available Tabletop role-playing games (RPGs are a folkloric form for creating and reaffirming community bonds and performing identity. Gaming is used to communicate and perform cultural capital and identity through fictional narratives, functioning as a form of community building and/or personal expression. With quotations from ethnographic research over the course of 2 years, including interviews with several groups of gamers and participant observation, I examine the ways that players create and affirm social bonds. I return to Michel De Certeau's idea of textual poaching, as adapted by Henry Jenkins, to contrast with it a new concept of genre farming. As both platform for and object of genre farming, RPGs allow players to display cultural competence, create and reaffirm social ties, and seek entertainment in a collaborative fashion.

Talent identification and deliberate programming in skeleton: ice novice to Winter Olympian in 14 months.

Science.gov (United States)

Bullock, Nicola; Gulbin, Jason P; Martin, David T; Ross, Angus; Holland, Terry; Marino, Frank

2009-02-15

The aims of this study were to talent transfer, rapidly develop, and qualify an Australian female athlete in the skeleton event at the 2006 Torino Winter Olympic Games and quantify the volume of skeleton-specific training and competition that would enable this to be achieved. Initially, 26 athletes were recruited through a talent identification programme based on their 30-m sprint time. After attending a selection camp, 10 athletes were invited to undertake an intensified skeleton training programme. Four of these athletes were then selected to compete for Australia on the World Cup circuit. All completed runs and simulated push starts were documented over a 14-month period. The athlete who eventually represented Australia at the Torino Winter Olympic Games did so following approximately 300 start simulations and about 220 training/competition runs over a period of 14 months. Using a deliberate programming model, these findings provide a guide to the minimum exposure required for a novice skeleton athlete to reach Olympic representative standard following intensified sport-specific training. The findings of this study are discussed in the context of the deliberate practice theory and offer the term "deliberate programming" as an alternative way of incorporating all aspects of expert development.

Analyzing Crowdsourced Mobile Content: Do Games Make a Difference?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pe-Than, Ei Pa Pa

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Populating information-rich online environments through crowdsourcing is increasingly becoming popular. One approach to motivate participation is via games. That is, a crowdsourcing game offers entertainment while generating useful outputs as byproducts of gameplay. A gap in current research is that actual usage patterns of crowdsourcing games have not been investigated thoroughly. We thus compare content creation patterns in a game for crowdsourcing mobile content against a non-game version. Our analysis of 3,323 contributions in both apps reveal 10 categories including those that conform to the traditional notion of mobile content created to describe locations of interest, and those that are social in nature. We contend that both types of content are potentially useful as they meet different needs. Further, the distribution of categories varied across the apps suggests that games shape behavior differently from non-game-based approaches to crowdsourcing.

The Electronic Game Gambit.

Science.gov (United States)

Bing, Jon

1982-01-01

The rapid evolution of today's video games now fills arcades, snack bars, and homes with an array of highly interactive, graphically vivid technical devices. This electronic environment is creating a worldwide communication network. Developments in this area will be beneficial provided that appropriate media policies can be framed. (Author/JN)

Russia and Its International Image: From Sochi Olympic Games to Annexing Crimea

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kobierecki Michał

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The aim of the article is to analyze the change of the Russian Federation’s international image in the light of two significant events: the Olympic Winter Games in 2014 in Sochi and the annexation of Crimea. According to the first hypothesis, one of the main aims for hosting the Olympic Games was to improve the international prestige of Russia. Shortly after the Olympics Russia increased its activity in Eastern Ukraine, which resulted in the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Therefore the article is also aimed to investigate whether by annexing Crimea Russia squandered the possible positive effects of hosting the Olympics in terms of its international image.

Game of Life Music

Science.gov (United States)

Miranda, Eduardo R.; Kirke, Alexis

At the time when the first author was post-graduate student, in the evenings he used to entertain himself with the equipment in the electronic music studio at the University of York until dawn. It must have been around three o'clock in the morning of a rather cold winter night in the late 1980s, when he connected his Atari 1040ST computer to a synthesizer to test the first prototype of a system, which he was developing for his thesis. The system, named CAMUS (short for Cellular Automata Music), implemented a method that he invented to render music from the behaviour of the Game of Life (GoL) cellular automata (CA).

Tap, Move, Shake Turning Your Game Ideas into iPhone & iPad Apps

CERN Document Server

Moore, Todd

2011-01-01

Got a great game idea? This complete do-it-yourself guide shows you how to make your game idea a reality for the iPhone and iPad. By developing a real game hands-on through the course of this book, you'll get a thorough introduction to Xcode and Objective-C, while learning how to implement game logic, sophisticated graphics, game physics, sounds, and computer AI. Author Todd Moore taught himself how to create an iPhone game in a week, with no previous knowledge of Apple's development tools. Now he develops smartphone games and apps full time. With this book, any coder can turn game ideas int

An evaluation of mental health stigma perpetuated by horror video gaming.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dickens, E. G.

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Video games often feature mental patients in their storylines. This review is intended to test the hypothesis that these depictions potentially contribute to stigma surrounding mental health communities, and may negatively reflect on those with mental health difficulties. The criteria for evaluating the chosen games were created by combining elements from four separate academic papers. The games were analyzed via screenshots from online videos detailing a playthrough of chosen games, and text from the games themselves. The research within this paper suggests stigma can exist outside of conventional media platforms and highlights the availability of stigma-related horror video games inside the gaming market. This study also emphasizes how the depictions of those with mental health difficulties inside of video games have the capacity to harm mental health communities.

Computer Game Design Classes: The Students' and Professionals' Perspectives

Science.gov (United States)

Swacha, Jakub; Skrzyszewski, Adam; Syslo, Wojciech A.

2010-01-01

There are multiple reasons that justify teaching computer game design. Its multi-aspectual nature creates opportunity to develop, at the same time, creativity, technical skills and ability to work in team. Thinking of game design classes, one needs direction on what to focus on so that the students could benefit the most. In this paper, we present…

Game theoretic approaches to operating room management.

Science.gov (United States)

Marco, Alan P

2002-05-01

All interactions between people can be considered games with rules and outcomes. However, modern business practices demand that the players in the game go beyond traditional game theory and look at new ways to improve the outcome of the game. Choosing the right strategy is important to a player's success. A new business strategy, "co-opetition," can be used to increase the value of the game ("create a bigger pie") through cooperative behavior, whereas competition is used to divided the "pie." By looking at how the players adopt simultaneous roles such as complementor and competitor the stakeholders in the operating room (managers, surgeons, anesthesiologists, and nursing staff) can apply the principles of co-opetition to improve the overall success of their facility. Such stakeholders can utilize knowledge of how populations act in games to enhance cooperative play. Adopting such a perspective may lead to increases in the satisfaction and morale of those involved with the operating rooms. Increased morale should increase productivity and staff retention and reduce recruiting needs.

Online citizen science games: Opportunities for the biological sciences.

Science.gov (United States)

Curtis, Vickie

2014-12-01

Recent developments in digital technologies and the rise of the Internet have created new opportunities for citizen science. One of these has been the development of online citizen science games where complex research problems have been re-imagined as online multiplayer computer games. Some of the most successful examples of these can be found within the biological sciences, for example, Foldit, Phylo and EteRNA. These games offer scientists the opportunity to crowdsource research problems, and to engage with those outside the research community. Games also enable those without a background in science to make a valid contribution to research, and may also offer opportunities for informal science learning.

Computer Programming Games and Gender Oriented Cultural Forms

Science.gov (United States)

AlSulaiman, Sarah Abdulmalik

I present the design and evaluation of two games designed to help elementary and middle school students learn computer programming concepts. The first game was designed to be "gender neutral", aligning with might be described as a consensus opinion on best practices for computational learning environments. The second game, based on the cultural form of dress up dolls was deliberately designed to appeal to females. I recruited 70 participants in an international two-phase study to investigate the relationship between games, gender, attitudes towards computer programming, and learning. My findings suggest that while the two games were equally effective in terms of learning outcomes, I saw differences in motivation between players of the two games. Specifically, participants who reported a preference for female- oriented games were more motivated to learn about computer programming when they played a game that they perceived as designed for females. In addition, I describe how the two games seemed to encourage different types of social activity between players in a classroom setting. Based on these results, I reflect on the strategy of exclusively designing games and activities as "gender neutral", and suggest that employing cultural forms, including gendered ones, may help create a more productive experience for learners.

Blue Creek Winter Range: Wildlife Mitigation Project. Final environmental assessment

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1994-11-01

Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) proposes to fund that portion of the Washington Wildlife Agreement pertaining to the Blue Creek Winter Range Wildlife Mitigation Project (Project) in a cooperative effort with the Spokane Tribe, Upper Columbia United Tribes, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). If fully implemented, the proposed action would allow the sponsors to protect and enhance 2,631 habitat units of big game winter range and riparian shrub habitat on 2,185 hectares (5,400 acres) of Spokane Tribal trust lands, and to conduct long term wildlife management activities within the Spokane Indian Reservation project area. This Final Environmental Assessment (EA) examines the potential environmental effects of securing land and conducting wildlife habitat enhancement and long term management activities within the boundaries of the Spokane Indian Reservation. Four proposed activities (habitat protection, habitat enhancement, operation and maintenance, and monitoring and evaluation) are analyzed. The proposed action is intended to meet the need for mitigation of wildlife and wildlife habitat adversely affected by the construction of Grand Coulee Dam and its reservoir

From MMORPG to a Classroom Multiplayer Presential Role Playing Game

Science.gov (United States)

Susaeta, Heinz; Jimenez, Felipe; Nussbaum, Miguel; Gajardo, Ignacio; Andreu, Juan Jose; Villalta, Marco

2010-01-01

The popularity of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) has grown enormously, with communities of players reaching into the millions. Their fantasy narratives present multiple challenges created by the virtual environment and/or other players. The games' potential for education stems from the fact that players are immersed in a…

An Interactive Tool for Creating Multi-Agent Systems and Interactive Agent-based Games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lund, Henrik Hautop; Pagliarini, Luigi

2011-01-01

Utilizing principles from parallel and distributed processing combined with inspiration from modular robotics, we developed the modular interactive tiles. As an educational tool, the modular interactive tiles facilitate the learning of multi-agent systems and interactive agent-based games...

Merging digital and urban play spaces: Learning by playing and creating location-based games in secondary education

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Huizenga, J.; Admiraal, W.; ten Dam, G.; Gouscos, D.; Meimaris, M.

2011-01-01

With handhelds, it is possible to mix virtual with real-world data (i.e. locations and contexts) connecting virtual worlds to real life. Handheld games can be used to engage students with learning in their (school) environment. In a project called 'Games Atelier' innovative pedagogy was developed

Conventional Training Versus Game-Based Training

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Mautone, Tricia; Spiker, Alan; karp, Ron

2006-01-01

.... This report describes how we began developing and evaluating such a tool. We created a taxonomy of serious game elements and integrated it with a taxonomy of cognitive functions derived from a task analysis of a flight...

Mobile Game Development for Multiple Devices in Education

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Baltasar Fernández-Manjón

2009-10-01

Full Text Available Mobile learning and educational gaming are two trends that are rapidly having an increasing impact in Technology-Enhanced Learning. However, both approaches present significant technological challenges. Mobile technologies are very diverse and the market pressure pushes the continuous development of new technologies and features. On the other hand, game-based learning needs to deal with enormous development costs and the problem of allowing instructors and experts to actively participate in the game development process. Moreover, there are numerous situations where bringing both approaches together could be very useful, but this combination magnifies the technological barriers previously described. In this work we present , an authoring environment for educational adventure games that supports the production of both desktop and mobile games. This framework provides a graphical environment that allows instructors to create their own educational games with a low cost. Then, the games can be exported to multiple formats, including support for diverse types of mobile platforms. This is achieved through a modular semi-automated exportation process, which is based on mobile device profiles.

Sustainable legacies for the 2012 Olympic Games.

Science.gov (United States)

Shipway, Richard

2007-05-01

The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games have the unique potential to deliver sustainable sporting, social, cultural, economic and environmental legacies, not just for London as the host city, but for the whole of Britain. This article focuses primarily on the first three of these potential Olympics legacies. The first area explored is the social legacy as it impacts on host communities; second, the potential educational and cultural legacy of the 2012 Games are examined; and finally, there follows an overview of the health benefits that could result from a sustained increase in mass participation in sport, physical activity and exercise. This appraisal is undertaken through a review of existing Olympic literature and examples are drawn from previous summer and winter Games. This preliminary exploration is followed by the identification of some key challenges to be overcome if the opportunities available to a wide and diverse range of stakeholders are to be fully optimized. The article suggests that the 2012 Games can act as a catalyst for sports development throughout Britain, while also assisting with government cross-cutting agendas such as tackling crime, antisocial behaviour, developing healthy and active communities, improving educational attainment, and combating barriers to participation. In doing so, this article argues that priority should be placed at supporting grassroots sport through greater access to sport in the community, and not solely elite level sports development. The article concludes by suggesting that the 2012 Games provide opportunities to deliver real and tangible changes and most importantly, to afford a higher priority to sport, along with the obvious associated health benefits for Britain as a whole. The underlying challenge as we move towards 2012 is to achieve a positive step change in the attitudes towards sport and physical activity in British society. Achieving this would possibly be the greatest legacy of the 2012 Olympic and

Gardening with Huntington's disease clients--creating a programme of winter activities.

Science.gov (United States)

Spring, Josephine Anne; Baker, Mark; Dauya, Loreane; Ewemade, Ivie; Marsh, Nicola; Patel, Prina; Scott, Adrienne; Stoy, Nicholas; Turner, Hannah; Viera, Marc; Will, Diana

2011-01-01

A programme of garden-related indoor activities was developed to sustain a gardening group for people with mid to late stage Huntington's disease during the winter. The activities were devised by the horticulturist, working empirically, involving the services occupational therapist, physiotherapist, occupational therapy art technician, computer room, recreation and leisure staff. The programme was strongly supported by the nursing and care staff. Feedback on the effectiveness of the activities was sought from the clients, team members and unit staff. The clients' interest in gardening was sustained by a multidisciplinary programme of indoor growing and using plant products in creative activities, computing and group projects. The clients enjoyed all activities except one that they said lacked contact with plants. The inexpensive programme of activities enabled creativity and self-expression, stimulated social contact and helped with therapeutic goals of the clients. In addition, it engaged the multi-disciplinary team and the unit staff, was practical and enhanced the environment.

Access for all: the rise of the Paralympic Games.

Science.gov (United States)

Gold, John R; Gold, Margaret M

2007-05-01

The Paralympic, or Parallel, Games for athletes with disabilities have played a major role over the past half century in changing attitudes towards disability and accelerating the agenda for inclusion. This article charts their development from small beginnings as a competition for disabled ex-servicemen and women in England founded shortly after the Second World War to the present day ambulatory international festival of Summer and Winter Games organized in conjunction with the Olympic Games. The Paralympic Games trace their origins to the work of Dr (later Sir) Ludwig Guttmann at the National Spinal Injuries Unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire who used sport as an integral part of the treatment of paraplegic patients. A sports competition was held at the hospital to coincide with the Opening Ceremony of the London Games in July 1948. This became an annual event attracting the first international participation in 1952, after which it became the International Stoke Mandeville Games. From 1960 onwards attempts were made to hold every fourth Games in the Olympic host city. Despite initial success in staging the 1960 Games in Rome and the 1964 Games in Tokyo, subsequent host cities refused to host the competitions and alternative locations were found where a package of official support, finance and suitable venues could be assembled. In 1976, the scope of the Games was widened to accept other disabilities. From 1988 onwards, a process of convergence took place that saw the Paralympics brought into the central arena of the Olympics, both literally and figuratively. In the process they have embraced new sports, have encompassed a wider range of disabilities, and helped give credence to the belief that access to sport is available to all. The Paralympics also underline the change from sport as therapeutic competition to that of elite events that carry intrinsic prestige, with growing rivalry over medal tables. For the future, however, questions remain as

Web Services for the Management of Persistent Online Game Factions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Deliege, Francois; Zimanyi, Esteban

2006-01-01

complicated to manage it becomes. The goal of this work is to create an infrastructure to allow faction management tools to automatically update their data with the information maintained on the game server. The web services technology is chosen for the various advantages it offers. While this technology...... is already widely accepted in the business world, its use in a game context is totally new. It seems that web services have gained their place in the game world and will continue to be developed. Hopefully, this experiment will convince other game designers to adapt their platforms in a similar manner....

A conceptual framework for the design and analysis of first-person shooter audio and its potential use for game engines

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Grimshaw, Mark Nicholas; Schott, Gareth

2007-01-01

We introduce and describe a new conceptual framework for the design and analysis of audio for immersive first-person shooter games, and discuss its potential implications for the development of the audio component of game engines. The framework was created in order to illustrate and acknowledge...... the direct role of in-game audio in shaping player-player interactions and in creating a sense of immersion in the game world. Furthermore, it is argued that the relationship between player and sound is best conceptualized theoretically as an acoustic ecology. Current game engines are capable of game world...... spatiality through acoustic shading, but the ideas presented here provide a framework to explore other immersive possibilities for game audio through realtime synthesis....

Increasing student engagement and retention using immersive interfaces virtual worlds, gaming and simulation

CERN Document Server

Wankel, Charles

2012-01-01

Increasing Student Engagement and Retention Using Immersive Interfaces: Virtual Worlds, Gaming, and Simulation uses case studies, surveys, and literature reviews to critically examine how gaming, simulation, and virtualization are being used to improve teamwork and leadership skills in students, create engaging communities of practice, and as experiential learning tools to create inter-cultural, multi-perspective, and global experiences. Chapters include how to increase learner engagement using serious games, using game features for classroom engagement, using client-based peer assessment in multi-role, whole-enterprise simulations, using virtual worlds to develop teacher candidate skills, enhancing leadership skills through virtual simulation, using online video simulation for educational leadership, using augmented reality in education, using open source software in education, using educational robotics laboratories to enhance active learning, and utilizing the virtual learning environment to encourage facu...

Social Psychological Aspects of Addiction to Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marinova T.Y.

2015-09-01

Full Text Available The paper addresses the issue of how massively multiplayer online role¬playing games (MMORPG affect the behavior of players. Basing on a series of research, the paper analyzes how massively multiplayer online role¬playing games are created and highlights their specifics that possibly contribute to the development of psychological addiction to such games. The authors describe the outcomes of their own research on motivation in persons with gaming addiction aged 18 and up, with over 1 year of gaming experience. These out-comes suggest that current traditional criteria developed for assessing gaming addiction cannot be applied to this particular form of addictive behavior.

Improving the Emergency Manager’s Hurricane Evacuation Decision Making Through Serious Gaming

Science.gov (United States)

2016-06-17

Infrastructure The NHP training game was created using a game engine written in JavaScript. It uses an HTML5 canvas layered on top of the HVX interface in...assessment scenario question for the wind probability graphic . Training Evaluation of Prototype Game An initial training evaluation was conducted at...improving the engagement quality of the game . Ideas for how to do this were presented at the most recent user group meeting. One idea involved including

Performance test for prototype game for children with adhd

Science.gov (United States)

Bahana, R.; Gaol, F. L.; Wiguna, T.; Hendric, S. W. H. L.; Soewito, B.; Nugroho, E.; Dirgantoro, B. P.; Abdurachman, E.

2018-03-01

The gaming industry has become one of the fastest growing industries in the world. In recent years there have been several studies that have used games, especially computer-based ones to improve the executive function of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) especially in working memory improvements. There are still several obstacles in using computer-based games that have been circulating today in Indonesia. The aim of this research is to develop and create a prototype game that can be used to improve working memory of children with ADHD using Bahasa Indonesia. The prototype game application is a race game with matching colors and memory work tasks; developed using Construct2. Players will play as a driver, delivering certain fruits to specific homes with different colors. The game also included visuospatial tasks such as remembering the objects. For performance test, CPU utilization, average FPS and image memory usage has been tested in several browsers. In conclusion, the performance tests results show that the first type of the prototype game is good enough to be played in desktop or laptop.

Supermodular Games and Potential Games

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Brânzei, R.; Mallozzi, L.; Tijs, S.H.

2001-01-01

Potential games and supermodular games are attractive games, especially because under certain conditions they possess pure Nash equilibria. Subclasses of games with a potential are considered which are also strategically equivalent to supermodular games. The focus is on two-person zero-sum games and

Beyond self-selection in video game play: an experimental examination of the consequences of massively multiplayer online role-playing game play.

Science.gov (United States)

Smyth, Joshua M

2007-10-01

There is burgeoning interest in the study of video games. Existing work is limited by the use of correlational designs and is thus unable to make causal inferences or remove self-selection biases from observed results. The recent development of online, socially integrated video games (massively multiplayer online role-playing games [MMORPGs]) has created a new experience for gamers. This randomized, longitudinal study examined the effects of being assigned to play different video game types on game usage, health, well-being, sleep, socializing, and academics. One hundred 18- to 20-year-old participants (73% male; 68% Caucasian) were randomly assigned to play arcade, console, solo computer, or MMORPG games for 1 month. The MMORPG group differed significantly from other groups after 1 month, reporting more hours spent playing, worse health, worse sleep quality, and greater interference in "real-life" socializing and academic work. In contrast, this group also reported greater enjoyment in playing, greater interest in continuing to play, and greater acquisition of new friendships. MMORPGs represent a different gaming experience with different consequences than other types of video games and appear to pose both unique risks and benefits from their use.

Mathematical games, abstract games

CERN Document Server

Neto, Joao Pedro

2013-01-01

User-friendly, visually appealing collection offers both new and classic strategic board games. Includes abstract games for two and three players and mathematical games such as Nim and games on graphs.

Pro Unity game development with C#

CERN Document Server

Thorn, Alan

2014-01-01

The only professional-level book on Unity development with C# Covers in-depth aspects of C# development using Unity Readers will create a full-featured first person shooter and gain the knowledge to build their own professional-quality games.

Perancangan Game Kartu Interaktif Berbasis Android Menggunakan Augmented Reality

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andry Chowanda

2011-12-01

Full Text Available By utilizing the augmented reality technology which now develops well, a card game system design and the game prototype are created on through this study Android-based Smartphone. This study is expected to increase the children’s interest to play cards in a modern way, to be utilized as a reference material for business actors in the world, and to be an alternative facility for marketing officers to market their products. The scope of this study is limited only to the system design and the prototype making of the game. The combination of waterfall methodology and a game design by Jesse is used in this study. From the results of the study it is concluded that the augmented reality technology is able to make the game more interesting. 

Stay Warm in Winter (A Cup of Health with CDC)

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Podcasts

2015-02-26

When frigid winter temperatures hit the U.S., the risk for unhealthy exposure to cold increases substantially. In this podcast, Dr. Jonathan Meiman discusses the dangers of exposure to extremely cold temperatures.  Created: 2/26/2015 by MMWR.   Date Released: 2/26/2015.

Teaching introductory game development with unreal engine: Challenges, strategies, and experiences

Science.gov (United States)

Head, Nicholas A.

From the days of Pong to 100 million dollar projects such as the Grand Theft Auto franchise, video games have evolved significantly over the years. This evolution has also changed the way game development is viewed as a career. Today, video games are one of the most profitable forms of entertainment, and game development courses are appearing at universities around the world. Even with this growth, a degree from a university has yet to be an important factor in finding a job in game development (Owen, 2013). This thesis examines a method of creating and implementing an introductory gaming course and recommends ways to improve the curriculum. The main focus of the course was to introduce game development to the students. Each week, they were given an exercise that covered a different topic. Students also took part in a team project in which they were tasked with creating a complete game. The goal of the team projects was to expand the student's basic knowledge given to them from the exercises. Data was gathered on the students' subjective experiences with the class. This data and the class's overall performance were compared with past iterations of the course. New to the course was the Unreal Engine. Students used the latest version of the engine, Unreal Engine 4, to complete exercises. Not all students chose to use this engine for the team project. Instructor and students experiences with the engine were also recorded. While there were some problems implementing the engine within our lab environment, we were still able to execute the overall lesson plan. Even with the engine issues, the course had overall good performance. CGT 241, Introduction to 3D Animation, was shown to help the students to complete the course while CGT 215, Computer Graphics Programming I, did not provide enough information on game programming. Exercises were found to be helpful but students wanted a better understanding of how these skills can be applied to game development. Team projects

The ‘taking place’ of learning in computer games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Larsen, Lasse Juel; Løfgreen, Lars Bo

2008-01-01

In the long-standing tradition for discounting digital technologies as a learning resource within the formal educational setting, computer games have often either been marked as distraction or totally ignored. However, as argued in the paradigmatic text by Shaffer, Squire, Halverson and Gee, Video...... Games and The Future of Learning, computer games do not only offer an interesting perspective on how “learners can understand complex concepts without losing the connection between abstract ideas and the real problems”, but can as well cast “a glimpse into how we might create new and more powerful ways...... to learn in schools, communities, and workplaces – new ways to learn for a new Information Age” [1].  In line with this general approach to seeing computer games as a reservoir of learning strategies and potentials, this paper aims to examine how a specific computer game teach us how to play the game. [1...

PROBLEM PENDIDIKAN VIDEO GAMES DALAM PERSPEKTIF TEORI SIMULACRA JEAN BAUDRILLARD

OpenAIRE

Siti Murtiningsih, Joko Siswanto, M. Mukhtasar Syamsudin

2013-01-01

Abstract: Education Problems of Video Games in the Perspective of Jean Baudrillard’s Theory of Simulacra. In the era of digital age, we are witnessing how video games penetrate children’s daily life and it is believed to have some impacts on their cognitive and affective processes. Referring to hermeneutical approach, the present library research seeks to answer the question whether video games create a real identity or simply forge false consciousness in children. In the first step, the data...

Linking Serious Game Narratives with Pedagogical Theories and Pedagogical Design Strategies

Science.gov (United States)

De Troyer, Olga; Van Broeckhoven, Frederik; Vlieghe, Joachim

2017-01-01

Narrative-based serious games present pedagogical content and interventions through an interactive narrative. To ensure effective learning in such kind of serious games, designers are not only faced with the challenge of creating a compelling narrative, but also with the additional challenge of incorporating suitable pedagogical strategies.…

Simulation-based Serious Games for Science Education and teacher assessment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Seungho Baek

2016-09-01

Full Text Available This paper presents serious games developed for the science subject in elementary and middle schools, specifically on the three topics of “Force and Motion,” “State Change of Water,” and “Earth and Moon.” The PC game “Force and Motion” implemented frictional/gravitational/magnetic force simulations, in the mobile game “State Change of Water,” particle-based fluid simulations were implemented, and in the PC- and mobile-based multi-platform game “Earth and Moon,” a solar system simulation was implemented. In order to find out the essential components for the science educational games, the components of each topic were thoroughly analyzed, and then a game-based curriculum was developed for the components classified as having high- or mid-level difficulties in both teaching and learning. Based on the curriculum, the three games were created. The games were evaluated by elementary and middle school teachers, and the evaluation results showed that simulation-based serious games are promising tools for improving learning effects in science-related subjects.

Kepentingan Oman sebagai Tuan Rumah Asian Beach Games II Muscat Tahun 2010

OpenAIRE

Harto, Syafri; ", Ardianyah

2015-01-01

This research describes the interest of Oman to create a Asian Beach Games II in Muscat 2010. Conflict politics, social and security in Middle East has been influence to region generally and to Oman. This conflict influence the bad image of Oman in international world.The research method used was a qualitative with descriptive as a technic of the research. Writer collects data from books, encyclopedia, journal, mass media and websites to analyze interest of Oman to create a Asian Beach Games ...

A game is a game is a game

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jørgensen, Ida Kathrine Hammeleff

2017-01-01

Recently self-referentiality have occurred as a trend among game designers and have also enjoyed sporadic attention in academia. However, in academia, discussions of self-referential games often rest on proceduralist arguments and a too exclusive focus on the game object. This paper draws...... on the typology of meta-pictures developed by art historian J.W.T. Mitchell. Based on this typology, this paper discusses the notion of meta-games and suggest a broad conception of such games that includes not only the game object, but also the player and the discourse in which it is interpreted....

Serious Games to support Reflection in the HealthCare Sector

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lucia Pannese

2014-09-01

Full Text Available This paper describes two serious games designed for care homes and hospitals to support reflection in learning in the frame of the MIRROR project. The games aim to empower and engage employees to reflect on past work performances and personal learning experiences in order to learn in ‘real-time’ and to creatively solve pressing problems. The games, designed for new nurses and carers, were tested with more than 200 users with different methods (quantitative and qualitative. Results collected so far seem to underline how the various gaming characteristics and supports offered by the Virtual Tutor (within the games create favorable conditions so as to allow learners to adopt a reflective attitude towards their own past/present acts and experiences.

Meta matters in interactive storytelling and serious gaming (a play on worlds)

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Linssen, Johannes Maria

2017-01-01

In this dissertation, I investigate the use of storytelling techniques in the domains of interactive storytelling and serious gaming. The field of interactive storytelling attempts to create and analyse systems that allow users to influence the plots of stories. Serious games provide experiences not

A Serious Games Platform for Cognitive Rehabilitation with Preliminary Evaluation.

Science.gov (United States)

Rego, Paula Alexandra; Rocha, Rui; Faria, Brígida Mónica; Reis, Luís Paulo; Moreira, Pedro Miguel

2017-01-01

In recent years Serious Games have evolved substantially, solving problems in diverse areas. In particular, in Cognitive Rehabilitation, Serious Games assume a relevant role. Traditional cognitive therapies are often considered repetitive and discouraging for patients and Serious Games can be used to create more dynamic rehabilitation processes, holding patients' attention throughout the process and motivating them during their road to recovery. This paper reviews Serious Games and user interfaces in rehabilitation area and details a Serious Games platform for Cognitive Rehabilitation that includes a set of features such as: natural and multimodal user interfaces and social features (competition, collaboration, and handicapping) which can contribute to augment the motivation of patients during the rehabilitation process. The web platform was tested with healthy subjects. Results of this preliminary evaluation show the motivation and the interest of the participants by playing the games.

Game Based Learning as a Means to Teach Climate Literacy in a High School Environment

Science.gov (United States)

Fung, M. K.; Tedesco, L.; Katz, M. E.

2013-12-01

As part of RPI's GK-12 graduate fellowship program (which involves graduate STEM fellows in K-12 education) a climate change board game activity was developed and implemented at inner city Troy High School in Troy, New York. The goal was to engage and teach two classes of the Earth Science General Repeat (GR) tenth grade students about climate change through a game-based leaning module. Students placed in the GR course had previously failed Earth Science, and had never passed a general science class in high school. In the past, these students have responded positively to hands-on activities. Therefore, an interactive board game activity was created to teach students about climate, explore how humans impact our environment, and address the future of climate change. The students are presented with a draft version of the game, created by the graduate fellow, and are asked to redesign the game for their peers in the other GR class. The students' version of the game is required to include certain aspects of the original game, for example, the climate change Trivia and Roadblock cards, but the design, addition of rules and overall layout are left to the students. The game-based learning technique allows the students to learn through a storyline, compete against each other, and challenge themselves to perfect their learning and understanding of climate change. The climate change board game activity also incorporates our cascade learning model, in which the graduate fellow designs the activity, works with a high school teacher, and implements the game with high school students. In addition, the activity emphasizes peer-to-peer learning, allowing each classroom to design the game for a different group of students. This allows the students to take leadership and gives them a sense of accomplishment with the completed board game. The nature of a board game also creates a dynamic competitive atmosphere, in which the students want to learn and understand the material to succeed

Bioethics in the Hunger Games

Science.gov (United States)

Cook, Kristin; Keller, Donna; Myers, Alyce

2014-01-01

In this guided inquiry, students investigate advantages and disadvantages of genetic engineering by integrating popular fiction into their study of bioethics. What are the effects of artificially created hybrid creatures on characters in "The Hunger Games" and in our society? What are the effects on and basic rights of the organisms…

Landspotting: Social gaming to collect vast amounts of data for satellite validation

Science.gov (United States)

Fritz, S.; Purgathofer, P.; Kayali, F.; Fellner, M.; Wimmer, M.; Sturn, T.; Triebnig, G.; Krause, S.; Schindler, F.; Kollegger, M.; Perger, C.; Dürauer, M.; Haberl, W.; See, L.; McCallum, I.

2012-04-01

At present there is no single satellite-derived global land cover product that is accurate enough to provide reliable estimates of forest or cropland area to determine, e.g., how much additional land is available to grow biofuels or to tackle problems of food security. The Landspotting Project aims to improve the quality of this land cover information by vastly increasing the amount of in-situ validation data available for calibration and validation of satellite-derived land cover. The Geo-Wiki (Geo-Wiki.org) system currently allows users to compare three satellite derived land cover products and validate them using Google Earth. However, there is presently no incentive for anyone to provide this data so the amount of validation through Geo-Wiki has been limited. However, recent competitions have proven that incentive driven campaigns can rapidly create large amounts of input. The LandSpotting Project is taking a truly innovative approach through the development of the Landspotting game. The game engages users whilst simultaneously collecting a large amount of in-situ land cover information. The development of the game is informed by the current raft of successful social gaming that is available on the internet and as mobile applications, many of which are geo-spatial in nature. Games that are integrated within a social networking site such as Facebook illustrate the power to reach and continually engage a large number of individuals. The number of active Facebook users is estimated to be greater than 400 million, where 100 million are accessing Facebook from mobile devices. The Landspotting Game has similar game mechanics as the famous strategy game "Civilization" (i.e. build, harvest, research, war, diplomacy, etc.). When a player wishes to make a settlement, they must first classify the land cover over the area they wish to settle. As the game is played on the earth surface with Google Maps, we are able to record and store this land cover/land use classification

VIDEO GAMES ARE AN INTERESTING OBJECT TO THE COGNITION STUDIES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cleci Maraschin

2013-12-01

Full Text Available Video games create a virtual space that can be inhabited in various ways by the players. Despite the controversies in which they are constantly included, electronic games bear witness to the modus operandi in our contemporary cognition permeated by technical objects. By focusing the know-how instead of a declarative experience the games open questions in the field of new literacies and problematize the use of technology in teaching practices. From the development of a locative game at the Botanical Garden of Porto Alegre, this article discussed some, methodological, political and theoretical implications arising from the research with video games in the field of cognitive studies. We discuss, finally, three theoretical / methodological implications the practice with video games forces us to think: research the video game through the process of its operation, questioning cognitive policies that organize our everyday and map the complex web of practices that supports the use of technical objects.

RAGE Architecture for Reusable Serious Gaming Technology Components

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wim van der Vegt

2016-01-01

Full Text Available For seizing the potential of serious games, the RAGE project—funded by the Horizon-2020 Programme of the European Commission—will make available an interoperable set of advanced technology components (software assets that support game studios at serious game development. This paper describes the overall software architecture and design conditions that are needed for the easy integration and reuse of such software assets in existing game platforms. Based on the component-based software engineering paradigm the RAGE architecture takes into account the portability of assets to different operating systems, different programming languages, and different game engines. It avoids dependencies on external software frameworks and minimises code that may hinder integration with game engine code. Furthermore it relies on a limited set of standard software patterns and well-established coding practices. The RAGE architecture has been successfully validated by implementing and testing basic software assets in four major programming languages (C#, C++, Java, and TypeScript/JavaScript, resp.. Demonstrator implementation of asset integration with an existing game engine was created and validated. The presented RAGE architecture paves the way for large scale development and application of cross-engine reusable software assets for enhancing the quality and diversity of serious gaming.

Designing a serious game for historical heritage: a case study of Heerlen Roman bathhouse

Science.gov (United States)

Qi, Wen

2014-01-01

The advances of computer games have shown their potentials for developing edutainment content and services. Current cultural heritages often make use of games in order to complement existing presentations and to create a memorable exhibition. It offers opportunities to reorganize and conceptualize historical, cultural and technological information about the exhibits. To demonstrate the benefits of serious games in terms of facilitating the learning activities in a constructive and meaningful way, we designed a video game about the Heerlen bathhouse heritage. This paper explains the design considerations of this Roman bathhouse game, with a particular focus on the link between game play and learning.

Human Evolution, Movement, and Intelligence: Why Playing Games Counts as Smart

Science.gov (United States)

Kretchmar, R. Scott

2018-01-01

The article investigates several ways in which creating, entering, and playing games requires uniquely human levels of intelligence. It examines an element of our evolutionary heritage and the possibility that games (particularly in the form of sport) were among the first elements of culture. It describes sport as a "way of knowing," a…

Convex games versus clan games

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Brânzei, R.; Dimitrov, D.A.; Tijs, S.H.

2008-01-01

In this paper we provide characterizations of convex games and total clan games by using properties of their corresponding marginal games. We show that a "dualize and restrict" procedure transforms total clan games with zero worth for the clan into monotonic convex games. Furthermore, each monotonic

Convex Games versus Clan Games

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Brânzei, R.; Dimitrov, D.A.; Tijs, S.H.

2006-01-01

In this paper we provide characterizations of convex games and total clan games by using properties of their corresponding marginal games.We show that a "dualize and restrict" procedure transforms total clan games with zero worth for the clan into monotonic convex games.Furthermore, each monotonic

Game on! : Evaluation malaria games

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rob Willems

2014-01-01

The goal of GameOn! is to develop a serious video game. The object: to develop a serious game that aims to change behavior through awareness. The setup A multidisciplinary group which unites expertise from didactic and game production backgrounds produces an educational game for an international

Content and ratings of mature-rated video games.

Science.gov (United States)

Thompson, Kimberly M; Tepichin, Karen; Haninger, Kevin

2006-04-01

To quantify the depiction of violence, blood, sexual themes, profanity, substances, and gambling in video games rated M (for "mature") and to measure agreement between the content observed and the rating information provided to consumers on the game box by the Entertainment Software Rating Board. We created a database of M-rated video game titles, selected a random sample, recorded at least 1 hour of game play, quantitatively assessed the content, performed statistical analyses to describe the content, and compared our observations with the Entertainment Software Rating Board content descriptors and results of our prior studies. Harvard University, Boston, Mass. Authors and 1 hired game player. M-rated video games. Percentages of game play depicting violence, blood, sexual themes, gambling, alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs; use of profanity in dialogue, song lyrics, or gestures. Although the Entertainment Software Rating Board content descriptors for violence and blood provide a good indication of such content in the game, we identified 45 observations of content that could warrant a content descriptor in 29 games (81%) that lacked these content descriptors. M-rated video games are significantly more likely to contain blood, profanity, and substances; depict more severe injuries to human and nonhuman characters; and have a higher rate of human deaths than video games rated T (for "teen"). Parents and physicians should recognize that popular M-rated video games contain a wide range of unlabeled content and may expose children and adolescents to messages that may negatively influence their perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors.

Serious games for Geophysics

Science.gov (United States)

Lombardo, Valerio; Rubbia, Giuliana

2015-04-01

; contribute to innovative pedagogies for scientific learning; create a scientific feedback-loop with students and teachers; implement a multi-level video game for scientific outreach.

Violence in E-rated video games.

Science.gov (United States)

Thompson, K M; Haninger, K

2001-08-01

Children's exposure to violence, alcohol, tobacco and other substances, and sexual messages in the media are a source of public health concern; however, content in video games commonly played by children has not been quantified. To quantify and characterize the depiction of violence, alcohol, tobacco and other substances, and sex in video games rated E (for "Everyone"), analogous to the G rating of films, which suggests suitability for all audiences. We created a database of all existing E-rated video games available for rent or sale in the United States by April 1, 2001, to identify the distribution of games by genre and to characterize the distribution of content descriptors associated with these games. We played and assessed the content of a convenience sample of 55 E-rated video games released for major home video game consoles between 1985 and 2000. Game genre; duration of violence; number of fatalities; types of weapons used; whether injuring characters or destroying objects is rewarded or is required to advance in the game; depiction of alcohol, tobacco and other substances; and sexual content. Based on analysis of the 672 current E-rated video games played on home consoles, 77% were in sports, racing, or action genres and 57% did not receive any content descriptors. We found that 35 of the 55 games we played (64%) involved intentional violence for an average of 30.7% of game play (range, 1.5%-91.2%), and we noted significant differences in the amount of violence among game genres. Injuring characters was rewarded or required for advancement in 33 games (60%). The presence of any content descriptor for violence (n = 23 games) was significantly correlated with the presence of intentional violence in the game (at a 5% significance level based on a 2-sided Wilcoxon rank-sum test, t(53) = 2.59). Notably, 14 of 32 games (44%) that did not receive a content descriptor for violence contained acts of violence. Action and shooting games led to the largest numbers of

The Role of a Relative Age Effect in the 7 International Children’s Winter Games 2016 and the Influence of Biological Maturity Status on Selection

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lisa Müller, Carolin Hildebrandt, Christian Raschner

2017-06-01

Full Text Available The aim of this study was to analyse the role of a relative age effect (RAE and to investigate the influence of biological maturity status on the RAE at the 7th International Children`s Winter Games. The birth dates of all 572 participants (365 males, 207 females were analysed, and the biological maturity status of 384 athletes (243 males, 141 females was assessed by the age at peak height velocity (APHV method. A RAE was present in the total sample (χ2 = 67.81; p < 0.001, and among both male (χ2 = 49.02; p < 0.001 and female athletes (χ2 = 37.00; p < 0.001 as well as for strength- (χ2 = 56.46; p < 0.001, endurance- (χ2 = 20.48; p = 0.039 and technique-related types of sports (χ2 = 20.48; p = 0.041. No significant differences in biological maturity status were present between the male athletes of single relative age quarters. Among the female athletes a significant difference was present (F = 5.94, p < 0.001; relatively younger female athletes had significantly lower values in the APHV, which indicated that they were maturing earlier. However, when dividing the athletes into normal, early and late maturing athletes, it could be seen that among the relatively younger athletes, hardly any late maturing athletes were present. These findings revealed that relatively younger athletes seemed to only have a chance for selection if they were early maturing, whereas relatively older athletes had an increased likelihood for selection independent of their biological maturity status. In the future, the relative age and the biological maturity status should be considered in the talent development system for various types of winter sport, to contribute to more fairness and to not discriminate against relatively younger and less mature athletes.

Intellectual Property Is No Game: An Interview with James G. Gatto, JD.

Science.gov (United States)

2012-12-01

Copying within the games industry is reportedly widespread. Some people attribute this to the belief that this is just the way it is and has always been based on the notion that the "idea" for a game is not protectable. But as the game market grows, so too do the losses from copying suffered by game innovators. A contributing factor is that many game developers do not develop comprehensive strategies for protecting the valuable intellectual property that they create. In the following interview, Bill Ferguson, PhD, Editor of Games for Health Journal, discusses the hazards and ways to protect health game assets with intellectual property expert Jim Gatto, Leader of the Social Media, Entertainment & Technology Team at the respected law firm of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP.

Reinventing the Arcade: Computer Game Mediated Play Spaces for Physical Interaction

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A. M. Connor

2015-10-01

Full Text Available This paper suggests that recent developments in video game technology have occurred in parallel to play being moved from public into private spaces, which has had impact on the way people interact with games. The paper also argues and that there is potentially value in the creation of public play spaces to create opportunities to utilise both technology and body for the benefit of community culture and experiences through gaming. Co-located social gaming coupled with tangible interfaces offer alternative possibilities for the local video game scene. This paper includes a descriptive account of Rabble Room Arcade, an experimental social event combining custom-built tangible interface devices and multiplayer video games. The event was designed around games that promoted a return to simplicity through the use of unique tangible controllers to allow casual gamers to connect to the game and to each other, whilst also transforming the event into a spectacle.

Problematic usage among highly-engaged players of massively multiplayer online role playing games.

Science.gov (United States)

Peters, Christopher S; Malesky, L Alvin

2008-08-01

One popular facet of Internet gaming is the massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). Some individuals spend so much time playing these games that it creates problems in their lives. This study focused on players of World of Warcraft. Factor analysis revealed one factor related to problematic usage, which was correlated with amount of time played, and personality characteristics of agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and extraversion.

Envisioning the Educational Possibilities of User-Created Virtual Worlds

Science.gov (United States)

Antonacci, David M.; Modaress, Nellie

2008-01-01

Educational games and simulations can engage students in higher-level cognitive thinking, such as interpreting, analyzing, discovering, evaluating, acting, and problem solving. Recent technical advances in multiplayer, user-created virtual worlds have significantly expanded the capabilities of user interaction and development within these…

Game mechanics : advanced game design

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Adams, Ernest; Dormans, Joris

2012-01-01

Game Mechanics is aimed at game design students and industry professionals who want to improve their understanding of how to design, build, and test the mechanics of a game. Game Mechanics will show you how to design, test, and tune the core mechanics of a game—any game, from a huge role-playing

Interactive Game for Teaching Laser Amplification Used at the National Ignition Facility

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lin, E.

2009-01-01

The purpose of this project was to create an interactive game to expose high school students to concepts in laser amplification by demonstrating the National Ignition Facility's main amplifier at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. To succeed, the game had to be able to communicate effectively the basic concepts of laser amplification as accurately as possible and to be capable of exposing as many students as possible. Since concepts need to be communicated in a way that students understand, the Science Content Standards for California Public Schools were used to make assumptions about high school students knowledge of light. Effectively communicating a new concept necessitates the omission on terminology and symbolism. Therefore, creating a powerful experience was ideal for communicating this material. Various methods of reinforcing this experience ranging from color choice to abstractions kept the student focused on the game to maximize concept retention. The program was created in Java to allow the creation of a Java Applet that can be embedded onto a webpage, which is a perfect medium for mass exposure. Because a game requires interaction, the game animations had to be easily manipulated to enable the program to respond to user input. Image sprites, as opposed to image folders, were used in these animations to minimize the number of Hypertext Transfer Protocol connections, and thus, significantly reduce the transfer time of necessary animation files. These image sprites were loaded and cropped into a list of animation frames. Since the caching of large transition animations caused the Java Virtual Machine to run out of memory, large animations were implemented as animated Graphics Interchange Format images since transitions require no interaction, and thus, no frame manipulation was needed. This reduced the animation's memory footprint. The first version of this game was completed during this project. Future work for the project could include the creation

Implementation of Backend Infrastructure for Social Mobile Game

OpenAIRE

Sillanpää, Ville

2015-01-01

The goal of this thesis was to create a scalable backend infrastructure for a social mobile game, Last Planets, deployed in the Microsoft Azure cloud environment. The main part of the study consists of three sections: the first one describes the needs and considerations for communication middleware, the second one goes through the design principles and typical components in a game server architecture, and the third one explains how the aforementioned theory is put in practice in Last Planets....

Design and implementation of a non-linear symphonic soundtrack of a video game

Science.gov (United States)

Sporka, Adam J.; Valta, Jan

2017-10-01

The music in the contemporary video games is often interactive. The music playback is based on transitions between pieces of available music material. These transitions happen in response to evolving gameplay. This paradigm is referred to as the adaptive music. Our challenge was to design, create, and implement the soundtrack of the upcoming video game Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Our soundtrack is a collection of compositions with symphonic orchestration. Per our design decision, our intention was to implement the adaptive music in a way which respected the nature of the orchestral film score. We created our own adaptive music middleware, called Sequence Music Engine, implementing a high-level music logic as well as the low-level playback infrastructure. Our system can handle hours of video game music, helps maintain the relevance of the music throughout the video game, and minimises the repetitiveness of the individual pieces.

Evaluation of the Effect of a Digital Mathematics Game on Academic Achievement

Science.gov (United States)

Wale, Christine M.

2013-01-01

Digital games are widely popular and interest has increased for their use in education. Digital games are thought to be powerful instructional tools because they promote active learning and feedback, provide meaningful contexts to situate knowledge, create engagement and intrinsic motivation, and have the ability individualize instruction.…

Queer Gamer Assemblages and the Affective Elements of Digital Games

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Spencer Taylor Berdiago Ruelos

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Centering a discussion of gaming as an embodied experience, this essay explores the affective and embodied relationship between LGBT/queer gamers and video games. Drawing on qualitative interviews with seven queer gamers, I argue in that we should understand gamers as socio-technological assemblages, in order to illustrate how gamer identity, subjectivity, and sociality are enacted through the relationship between the body of a gamer and the game technologies. I further expand upon this by tending to how queer gamers talk about their embodied experiences and affective connections to various games through worlding and storytelling elements. These stories illustrate how games create affective possibilities for connection and belonging for queer gamers. I conclude by arguing that an attention to gaming as an embodied experience expands our conceptualizations of play and helps us understand the worldmaking practices that queer gamers often employ.

Temperature decrease in the extratropics of South America in response to a tropical forcing during the austral winter

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Mueller, G.V. [Centro de Investigaciones Cientificas y Transferencia de Tecnologia a la Produccion (CICYTTP-CONICET), Diamante, Entre Rios (Argentina)

2010-07-01

This paper focuses on the dynamic mechanisms that create favorable conditions for the occurrence of frosts that affect large areas of Argentina and are denominated generalized frosts (GF). The hemispheric teleconnection patterns linked to extreme cold events affecting central and northeastern Argentina during winter are identified. The objective is to determine whether the conditions found in previous studies for the composite of winters with extreme (maximum and minimum) frequency of GF occurrence respond to typical characteristics of the austral winter or they are inherent to those particular winters. Taking the mean winter as basic state in the 1961-1990 period, a series of numerical experiments are run using a primitive equation model in which waves are excited with a thermal forcing. The positions of the thermal forcing are chosen according to observed convection anomalies in a basic state given by the austral winters with extreme frequency of GF occurrence. The wave trains excited by anomalous convection situated in specific regions may propagate across the Pacific Ocean and reach South America with the appropriate phase, creating the local favorable conditions for the occurrence of GF. However, the anomalous convection is, by itself, not sufficient since the response also depends on the basic state configuration. This is proved by placing the forcing over the region of significant anomalous convection for maximum and minimum frequency of GF occurrence and the response was very different in comparison to the mean winter. It is concluded that the conditions for a greater GF frequency of occurrence are inherent to these particular winters, so that such conditions are not present in the average winter. (orig.)

Teaching Co-Design Games in Five Weeks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brandt, Eva; Kjærgård, Sarasiff; Risak Schou, Gudrun

2011-01-01

This paper is about educating designers as codesigners and reflective practitioners. It is argued that an important goal in design pedagogy is learning the students’ strategies and tools for how to involve various stakeholders in designing, and how to deal with uncertainty and open design agendas....... It is important in order to prepare students for a career as designers. The paper reports from an intense five weeks course about developing and using design games as a frame for design-oriented collaborations with people outside the core design team. Co-design is about making room for people with diverse...... interests, roles and responsibilities in rehearsing the future. Using the game metaphor to stage and engage everyone is a valuable format for collaborative inquiry and co-creating future visions – in other words exploring diversity and creating unity about values and goals. The professional designer...

D.E.E.P. Learning: Promoting Informal STEM Learning through Ocean Research Simulation Games

Science.gov (United States)

Simms, E.; Rohrlick, D.; Layman, C.; Peach, C. L.; Orcutt, J. A.; Keen, C. S.; Matthews, J.; Nsf Ooi-Ci Education; Public Engagement Team

2010-12-01

It is generally recognized that interactive digital games have the potential to promote the development of valuable learning and life skills, including data processing, decision-making, critical thinking, planning, communication and collaboration (Kirriemuir and MacFarlane, 2006). But the research and development of educational games, and the study of the educational value of interactive games in general, have lagged far behind the same efforts for games created for the purpose of entertainment. Our group is attempting to capitalize on the facts that games are now played in 67% of American households (ESA, 2010), and across a broad range of ages, by developing effective and engaging simulation games that promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) literacy in informal science education institutions (ISEIs; e.g., aquariums, museums, science centers). In particular, we are developing games based on the popular Microsoft Xbox360 gaming platform and the free Microsoft XNA game development kit, which engage ISEI visitors in the exploration and understanding of the deep-sea environment. Known as Deep-sea Extreme Environment Pilot (D.E.E.P.), the games place players in the role of piloting a remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) to complete science-based objectives associated with the exploration of ocean observing systems and hydrothermal vent environments. In addition to creating a unique educational product, our efforts are intended to identify 1) the key elements of a successful STEM-based simulation game experience in an informal science education institution, and 2) which aspects of game design (e.g., challenge, curiosity, fantasy, personal recognition) are most effective at maximizing both learning and enjoyment. We will share our progress to date, including formative assessment results from testing the game prototypes at Birch Aquarium at Scripps, and discuss the potential benefits and challenges to interactive gaming as a tool to support STEM

Improving Students’ English Pronunciation Ability Through Go Fish Game and Maze Game

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dwi Astuti Wahyu Nurhayati

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The problem highlighted in this research is the low pronunciation ability of Kindergarten students in Al-Irsyad  Madiun  that is caused by (1 the uninteresting activities in learning English; (2 the students' difficulties in pronunciating English words; (3 the students' low motivation in learning. The theoretical review includes the young learners characteristics, games in language, games for young learners. The procedure of the research consists of identifying the problem, planning the action, implementing the action, observing the action, and reflecting the result of the research. In this research, the researcher acts as the teacher who conducts the action research in the classroom and she is helped by the classsroom teacher. In collecting the data, the researcher uses observational technique supported with tests. In analyzing the data, the researcher uses the field notes, teacher's diaries, students ‘work supported with the cassette recording and photograph,then also compares the result of the students' pre-test and post-test to answer the research questions. There is significant improvement in the result of pre-test and post-test of cycle 1 and 2. In cycle 1, t0 (2.55734 is higher than tt (1.73 and in cycle 2, t0 (6.765738 is also higher than tt (1.73. From these two results, therefore, h0 is rejected and the alternative hypothesis (ha is accepted. They practice their pronunciation through taking turn and asking each other for cards to match those they have in their hands, arranging a word and sticking on alphabet, pronunciating the word, giving the meaning, hen making a sentence such as Go Fish Game and Maze Game. By conducting these games, using interesting media, creating various interesting tasks and activities can increase the students' motivation in learning English and pronunciation ability.Keywords: Improving, pronunciation, ability,  go fish and Maze games

HackAttack: Game-Theoretic Analysis of Realistic Cyber Conflicts

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ferragut, Erik M [ORNL; Brady, Andrew C [Jefferson Middle School, Oak Ridge, TN; Brady, Ethan J [Oak Ridge High School, Oak Ridge, TN; Ferragut, Jacob M [Oak Ridge High School, Oak Ridge, TN; Ferragut, Nathan M [Oak Ridge High School, Oak Ridge, TN; Wildgruber, Max C [ORNL

2016-01-01

Game theory is appropriate for studying cyber conflict because it allows for an intelligent and goal-driven adversary. Applications of game theory have led to a number of results regarding optimal attack and defense strategies. However, the overwhelming majority of applications explore overly simplistic games, often ones in which each participant s actions are visible to every other participant. These simplifications strip away the fundamental properties of real cyber conflicts: probabilistic alerting, hidden actions, unknown opponent capabilities. In this paper, we demonstrate that it is possible to analyze a more realistic game, one in which different resources have different weaknesses, players have different exploits, and moves occur in secrecy, but they can be detected. Certainly, more advanced and complex games are possible, but the game presented here is more realistic than any other game we know of in the scientific literature. While optimal strategies can be found for simpler games using calculus, case-by-case analysis, or, for stochastic games, Q-learning, our more complex game is more naturally analyzed using the same methods used to study other complex games, such as checkers and chess. We define a simple evaluation function and employ multi-step searches to create strategies. We show that such scenarios can be analyzed, and find that in cases of extreme uncertainty, it is often better to ignore one s opponent s possible moves. Furthermore, we show that a simple evaluation function in a complex game can lead to interesting and nuanced strategies.

Winters fuels report

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1995-01-01

The outlook for distillate fuel oil this winter is for increased demand and a return to normal inventory patterns, assuming a resumption of normal, cooler weather than last winter. With industrial production expected to grow slightly from last winter's pace, overall consumption is projected to increase 3 percent from last winter, to 3.4 million barrels per day during the heating season (October 1, 1995-March 31, 1996). Much of the supply win come from stock drawdowns and refinery production. Estimates for the winter are from the Energy Information Administration's (EIA) 4th Quarter 1995 Short-Tenn Energy Outlook (STEO) Mid-World Oil Price Case forecast. Inventories in place on September 30, 1995, of 132 million barrels were 9 percent below the unusually high year-earlier level. Inventories of high-sulfur distillate fuel oil, the principal type used for heating, were 13 percent lower than a year earlier. Supply problems are not anticipated because refinery production and the ready availability of imports should be adequate to meet demand. Residential heating off prices are expected to be somewhat higher than last winter's, as the effects of lower crude oil prices are offset by lower distillate inventories. Heating oil is forecast to average $0.92 per gallon, the highest price since the winter of 1992-93. Diesel fuel (including tax) is predicted to be slightly higher than last year at $1.13 per gallon. This article focuses on the winter assessment for distillate fuel oil, how well last year's STEO winter outlook compared to actual events, and expectations for the coming winter. Additional analyses include regional low-sulfur and high-sulfur distillate supply, demand, and prices, and recent trends in distillate fuel oil inventories

Using a Fine-Grained Multiple-Choice Response Format in Educational Drill-and-Practice Video Games

Science.gov (United States)

Beserra, Vagner; Nussbaum, Miguel; Grass, Antonio

2017-01-01

When using educational video games, particularly drill-and-practice video games, there are several ways of providing an answer to a quiz. The majority of paper-based options can be classified as being either multiple-choice or constructed-response. Therefore, in the process of creating an educational drill-and-practice video game, one fundamental…

Reimagining Game Design: Exploring the Design of Constructible Authentic Representations for Science Reasoning

Science.gov (United States)

Holbert, Nathan Ryan

Video games have recently become a popular space for educational design due to their interactive and engaging nature and the ubiquity of the gaming experience among youth. Though many researchers argue video games can provide opportunities for learning, educational game design has focused on the classroom rather than the informal settings where games are typically played. Educational games have been moderately successful at achieving learning gains on standardized items, but have failed to show improvements on related but distal problems. In this dissertation I develop and assess a new design principle, called constructible authentic representations for creating informal gaming experiences that players will actively draw on when reasoning in formal and real world contexts. These games provide players with opportunities to engage in meaningful construction with components that integrate relevant concepts to create in-game representations that visually and epistemologically align with related tools and representations utilized in the target domain. In the first phase of the dissertation, I observed children playing popular video games to better understand what in-game representations children attend to and how interactions with these representations contribute to intuitive ideas of encountered STEM content. Results from this study fed into the iterative design of two prototype video games, FormulaT Racing and Particles!, intending to give players useful knowledge resources for reasoning about kinematics and the particulate nature of matter respectively. Designed games encourage players to utilize and refine intuitive ideas about target content through the construction of domain relevant representations. To assess the effectiveness of these designs I conducted two studies of children ages 7-14 playing prototype games in informal settings. An analysis of pre- and post-game clinical interviews, domain specific tasks, and video and logging data of gameplay suggests

Player guild dynamics and evolution in massively multiplayer online games.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Chien-Hsun; Sun, Chuen-Tsai; Hsieh, Jilung

2008-06-01

In the latest versions of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), developers have purposefully made guilds part of game environments. Guilds represent a powerful method for giving players a sense of online community, but there is little quantitative data on guild dynamics. To address this topic, we took advantage of a feature found in one of today's most popular MMOGs (World of Warcraft) to collect in-game data: user interfaces that players can modify and refine. In addition to collecting data on in-game player activities, we used this feature to observe and investigate how players join and leave guilds. Data were analyzed for the purpose of identifying factors that propel game-world guild dynamics and evolution. After collecting data for 641,805 avatars on 62 Taiwanese World of Warcraft game servers between February 10 and April 10, 2006, we created five guild type categories (small, large, elite, newbie, and unstable) that have different meanings in terms of in-game group dynamics. By viewing players as the most important resource affecting guild life cycles, it is possible to analyze game worlds as ecosystems consisting of evolving guilds and to study how guild life cycles reflect game world characteristics.

Engaging Systems Understanding through Games (Invited)

Science.gov (United States)

Pfirman, S. L.; Lee, J. J.; Eklund, K.; Turrin, M.; O'Garra, T.; Orlove, B. S.

2013-12-01

The Polar Learning And Responding (PoLAR) Climate Change Education Partnership (CCEP), supported by the National Science Foundation's CCEP Phase II program, uses novel educational approaches to engage adult learners and to inform public understanding about climate change. Both previous studies and our experience show that games and game-like activities lead people to explore systems and motivate problem-solving. This presentation focuses on three games developed by the PoLAR team: a multiplayer card game, a strategy board game, and a serious game, and discusses them within the larger framework of research and evaluation of learning outcomes. In the multiplayer card game EcoChains: Arctic Crisis, players learn how to build marine food chains, then strategize ways to make them resilient to a variety of natural and anthropogenic events. In the strategy board game Arctic SMARTIC (Strategic MAnagement of Resources in TImes of Change), participants take on roles, set developmental priorities, and then negotiate to resolve conflicts and deal with climate change scenarios. In the serious game FUTURE COAST, players explore "what if" scenarios in a collaborative narrative environment. Grounded on the award-winning WORLD WITHOUT OIL, which employed a similar story frame to impart energy concepts and realities, FUTURE COAST uses voicemails from the future to impel players through complexities of disrupted systems and realities of human interactions when facing change. Launching February 2014, FUTURE COAST is played online and in field events; players create media designed to be spreadable through their social networks. As players envision possible futures, they create diverse communities of practice that synthesize across human-environment interactions. Playtests highlight how the game evokes systems thinking, and engages and problem-solves via narrative: * 'While I was initially unsure how I'd contribute to a group I'd never met, the project itself proved so engaging that I

Juegos y Diversiones. (Games Collected and Adapted to Teach Spanish to Children.)

Science.gov (United States)

Marquez, Nancy, Ed.; And Others

Games, both from the folklore heritage of children in Spanish-speaking countries and those created in the classroom, are excellent ways to teach language to children because they accomplish their language goals while entertaining and involving the children, often physically. Most games, because they are rigidly patterned and repetitious, are…

What is the teachers’ role when students learn through design of learning games in a scaffolded gamified learning environment?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Weitze, Charlotte Lærke

The aim of this research project is to create a reusable and flexible gamified learning design where the students are learning subject matters through the design of digital learning games. The students are their own learning designers forming teams that create games. The teams also peer review...... how the use of pre-build learning games in education can be taken a step further into the building of learning games while implementing subject matters from curriculum, not only focussing on the creative game design process. The aim of the form of this learning design is to scaffold the novice....../ play test each others games as a way to qualify the learning taking place around as well as inside the games they are building. The discussion is focusing on how the chosen pedagogical approach is framed within the gamified environment as well as on how the teachers can guide and scaffold the learning...

Realizing User-Relevant Conceptual Model for the Ski Jump Venue of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics

Science.gov (United States)

Teakles, Andrew; Mo, Ruping; Dierking, Carl F.; Emond, Chris; Smith, Trevor; McLennan, Neil; Joe, Paul I.

2014-01-01

As was the case for most other Olympic competitions, providing weather guidance for the ski jump and Nordic combined events involved its own set of unique challenges. The extent of these challenges was brought to light before the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics during a series of outflow wind events in the 2008/2009 winter season. The interactions with the race officials during the difficult race conditions brought on by the outflows provided a new perspective on the service delivery requirements for the upcoming Olympic Games. In particular, the turbulent nature of the winds and its impact on the ski jump practice events that season highlighted the need of race officials for nowcasting advice at very short time scales (from 2 min to 1 h) and forecast products tailored to their decision-making process. These realizations resulted in last minute modifications to the monitoring strategy leading up to the Olympic Games and required forecasters' conceptual models for flow within the Callaghan Valley to be downscaled further to reflect the evolution of turbulence at the ski jump site. The SNOW-V10 (Science of Nowcasting Olympic Weather for Vancouver 2010) team provided support for these efforts by supplying diagnostic case analyses of important events using numerical weather data and by enhancing the real-time monitoring capabilities at the ski jump venue.

The Hemophilia Games: An Experiment in Health Education Planning.

Science.gov (United States)

National Heart and Lung Inst. (DHEW/PHS), Bethesda, MD.

The Hemophilia Health Education Planning Project was designed to (1) create a set of tools useful in hemophilia planning and education, and (2) create a planning model for other diseases with similar factors. The project used the game-simulations technique which was felt to be particularly applicable to hemophilia health problems, since as a…

Winter to winter recurrence of atmospheric circulation anomalies over East Asia and its impact on winter surface air temperature anomalies.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhao, Xia; Yang, Guang

2017-01-01

The persistence of atmospheric circulation anomalies over East Asia shows a winter to winter recurrence (WTWR) phenomenon. Seasonal variations in sea level pressure anomalies and surface wind anomalies display significantly different characteristics between WTWR and non-WTWR years. The WTWR years are characterized by the recurrence of both a strong (weak) anomalous Siberian High and an East Asian winter monsoon over two successive winters without persistence through the intervening summer. However, anomalies during the non-WTWR years have the opposite sign between the current and ensuing winters. The WTWR of circulation anomalies contributes to that of surface air temperature anomalies (SATAs), which is useful information for improving seasonal and interannual climate predictions over East Asia and China. In the positive (negative) WTWR years, SATAs are cooler (warmer) over East Asia in two successive winters, but the signs of the SATAs are opposite in the preceding and subsequent winters during the non-WTWR years.

Management of Low-Flow Priapism Using the Winter Procedure: A Case Report

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chung-Chin Chen

2003-02-01

Full Text Available Priapism is a prolonged penile erection that is unrelated to sexual stimulation. Low-flow priapism has been associated with sickle cell disease and other hemoglobinopathies, neoplastic syndrome, anticoagulant therapy, psychotropic medication, and idiopathic causes. We report the successful treatment of idiopathic low-flow priapism using the Winter procedure. Initial treatment consisted of aspiration and intracavernous irrigation with iced saline and a vasoconstrictive agent, but in vain. We then performed the Winter procedure, in which fistulas between the corpora cavernosa and the glans penis were created. This resulted in the simultaneous detumescence of the penis, without complication. The erectile function of the penis was normal 1 year after the procedure. This case shows that idiopathic low-flow priapism can be successfully treated using the Winter procedure when conservative treatment fails.

Innovative Patient Safety Curriculum Using iPAD Game (PASSED) Improved Patient Safety Concepts in Undergraduate Medical Students.

Science.gov (United States)

Kow, A W C; Ang, B L S; Chong, C S; Tan, W B; Menon, K R

2016-11-01

While healthcare outcomes have improved significantly, the complex management of diseases in the hospitals has also escalated the risks in patient safety. Therefore, in the process of training medical students to be proficient in medical knowledge and skills, the importance of patient safety cannot be neglected. A new innovation using mobile apps gaming system (PAtient Safety in Surgical EDucation-PASSED) to teach medical students on patient safety was created. Students were taught concepts of patient safety followed by a gaming session using iPad games created by us. This study aims to evaluate the outcome of patient safety perception using the PASSED games created. An interactive iPad game focusing on patient safety issues was created by the undergraduate education team in the Department of Surgery, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore. The game employed the unique touched-screen feature with clinical scenarios extracted from the hospital sentinel events. Some of the questions were time sensitive, with extra bonus marks awarded if the student provided the correct answer within 10 s. Students could reattempt the questions if the initial answer was wrong. However, this entailed demerit points. Third-year medical students posted to the Department of Surgery experienced this gaming system in a cohort of 55-60 students. Baseline understanding of the students on patient safety was evaluated using Attitudes to Patient Safety Questionnaire III (APSQ-III) prior to the game. A 20 min talk on concept of patient safety using the WHO Patient Safety Guidelines was conducted. Following this, students downloaded the apps from ITune store and played with the game for 20-30 min. The session ended with the students completing the postintervention questionnaire. A total of 221 3rd year medical students responded to the survey during the PASSED session. Majority of the students felt that the PASSED game had trained them to understand the

Physics for JavaScript games, animation, and simulations with HTML5 Canvas

CERN Document Server

Dobre, Adrian

2014-01-01

Have you ever wanted to include believable physical behaviors in your games and projects to give them that extra edge? Physics for JavaScript Games, Animation, and Simulations teaches you how to incorporate real physics, such as gravity, friction, and buoyancy, into your HTML5 games, animations, and simulations. It also includes more advanced topics, such as particle systems, which are essential for creating effects such as sparks or smoke. The book also addresses the key issue of balancing accuracy and simplicity in your games and simulations, and the final chapters provide you with the infor

Hellsgate Big Game Winter Range Wildlife Mitigation Site Specific Management Plan for the Hellsgate Project.

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Berger, Matthew T.; Judd, Steven L.

1999-01-01

This report contains a detailed site-specific management plan for the Hellsgate Winter Range Wildlife Mitigation Project. The report provides background information about the mitigation process, the review process, mitigation acquisitions, Habitat Evaluation Procedures (HEP) and mitigation crediting, current habitat conditions, desired future habitat conditions, restoration/enhancements efforts and maps.

The Hazardous Drinking Games Measure (HDGM): A multi-site implementation

Science.gov (United States)

Borsari, Brian; Peterson, Colleen; Zamboanga, Byron L.; Correia, Christopher J.; Olthuis, Janine V.; Ham, Lindsay S.; Grossbard, Joel

2014-01-01

Background Drinking game participation has been associated with increased frequency and quantity of alcohol use, as well as alcohol-related problems, in college students. To date, the assessment of drinking games typically entails the use of self-developed measures of frequency of participation and amount of alcohol consumed while playing. Objectives The Hazardous Drinking Games Measure (HDGM) is the first effort to create a comprehensive yet concise method of assessing drinking game participation. The HDGM assesses drinking during games, the specific types of drinking games played, and negative consequences experienced as a result of playing drinking games. Method Data from three samples of college students (n = 1002) who completed the HDGM and other self-report questionnaires of drinking behaviors were used for exploratory analyses. Results Exploratory analyses suggest that the HDGM adequately captures the nuances of drinking game participation in this population and demonstrates initial evidence of good content and criterion-related validity and test-retest reliability. However, the HDGM did not predict risky drinking above and beyond standard measures of drinks per week and alcohol-related problems in any samples. Conclusion The HDGM may be useful for campus-wide assessment of drinking games and as a source of game-specific feedback when integrated into campus prevention and intervention efforts. PMID:25192208

Business Models for Successfully Maintaining Games for Health.

Science.gov (United States)

Baranowski, Moderator Tom; Isaac, Participants Fikry; Ashford, Chris; Goldman, Ron; Lenihan, David J; Poole, Brent; Buday, Richard; van Rijswijk, Jurriaan

2013-04-01

Videogames for health provide innovative, exciting, and possibly highly effective new media for helping players change their behaviors or otherwise benefit their health. Getting the right videogames into the hands of players who can benefit most in a way that pays for the continued innovation and creation of such games is a current challenge. Entertainment videogame companies, which create games primarily to enhance players' enjoyment, have used the general business marketplace (e.g., online stores, walk-in stores, app stores) to deliver their products directly to consumers and earn enough capital to invest in making new products. No one believes, however, that enough kids or adults would use the general business marketplace to purchase games for health in sufficient volume to provide the down payment for the innovation and creation of new games for health. A successful business model is critical to the financial future of games for health. We asked members of our Editorial Board who are in health-related companies (Fikry Isaac, MD, MPH), in several game development companies (Chris Ashford, Ron Goldman, David J. Lenihan, Brent Poole, and Richard Buday, FAIA), and the head of the Games for Health Europe Foundation (Jurriaan van Rijswijk, MSc) to address questions in a roundtable about the current and possible future business models for games for health.

Beyond the magic circle : A network perspective on role-play in online games

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Copier, M.

2007-01-01

Currently, game research is characterized by the (re)construction of contested boundaries such as the “magic circle” of the game experience. These boundaries create dichotomies, for instance, between the real and the imaginary that hide the complexity of actual play, design and research. In this

Violence in teen-rated video games.

Science.gov (United States)

Haninger, Kevin; Ryan, M Seamus; Thompson, Kimberly M

2004-03-11

Children's exposure to violence in the media remains a source of public health concern; however, violence in video games rated T (for "Teen") by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has not been quantified. To quantify and characterize the depiction of violence and blood in T-rated video games. According to the ESRB, T-rated video games may be suitable for persons aged 13 years and older and may contain violence, mild or strong language, and/or suggestive themes. We created a database of all 396 T-rated video game titles released on the major video game consoles in the United States by April 1, 2001 to identify the distribution of games by genre and to characterize the distribution of content descriptors for violence and blood assigned to these games. We randomly sampled 80 game titles (which included 81 games because 1 title included 2 separate games), played each game for at least 1 hour, and quantitatively assessed the content. Given the release of 2 new video game consoles, Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo GameCube, and a significant number of T-rated video games released after we drew our random sample, we played and assessed 9 additional games for these consoles. Finally, we assessed the content of 2 R-rated films, The Matrix and The Matrix: Reloaded, associated with the T-rated video game Enter the Matrix. Game genre; percentage of game play depicting violence; depiction of injury; depiction of blood; number of human and nonhuman fatalities; types of weapons used; whether injuring characters, killing characters, or destroying objects is rewarded or is required to advance in the game; and content that may raise concerns about marketing T-rated video games to children. Based on analysis of the 396 T-rated video game titles, 93 game titles (23%) received content descriptors for both violence and blood, 280 game titles (71%) received only a content descriptor for violence, 9 game titles (2%) received only a content descriptor for blood, and 14 game titles

Spatial data processing for the purpose of video games

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Chądzyńska Dominika

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Advanced terrain models are currently commonly used in many video/computers games. Professional GIS technologies, existing spatial datasets and cartographic methodology are more widely used in their development. This allows for achieving a realistic model of the world. On the other hand, the so-called game engines have very high capability of spatial data visualization. Preparing terrain models for the purpose of video games requires knowledge and experience of GIS specialists and cartographers, although it is also accessible for non-professionals. The authors point out commonness and variety of use of terrain models in video games and the existence of a series of ready, advanced tools and procedures of terrain model creating. Finally the authors describe the experiment of performing the process of data modeling for “Condor Soar Simulator”.

Sustainable winter cities: Future directions for planning, policy and design

Science.gov (United States)

Pressman, Norman E. P.

Attempts to generate a "climate-responsive" northern urban form are part of a relatively recent phenomenon and field of investigation. In conjunction with the international "winter cities" movement, the need has been established for explicit, systematic inquiry directed toward national and local action to improve the comfort and lifestyles of all northern inhabitants. It is important to recognize that winter-induced discomforts exist and that they must be acknowledged in planning theory and practice. For northern cities to function more satisfactorily, the negative impacts of winter must be reduced while its beneficial characteristics are enhanced. While not all summer activities can or should be abandoned during winter, proper micro-climatic control is essential if human life is to be retained outside. The outdoor season should be extended since so much indoor isolation occurs. The main principles to be incorporated in exemplary "winter city" design should be contact with nature, year-round usability, user participation, cultural continuity, and the creation of comfortable micro-climatic conditions throughout much of the city's open spaces. All valuable sources of inspiration must be harnessed in the attempt to mediate between organic regionalism and internationalism, on the one hand, and romanticism and pragmatic realism, on the other. Creating optimum conditions for human well-being, habitation, work and intellectual development in each of the four seasons is vital under harsh environments. Adopting a climate-sensitive approach to planning policy and urban design can render everyday life less stressful, especially during the lengthy winter periods found in many northern latitude and high altitude settings.

Trends in Video Game Play through Childhood, Adolescence, and Emerging Adulthood.

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Ream, Geoffrey L; Elliott, Luther C; Dunlap, Eloise

2013-01-01

This study explored the relationship between video gaming and age during childhood, adolescence, and emerging adulthood. It also examined whether "role incompatibility," the theory that normative levels of substance use decrease through young adulthood as newly acquired adult roles create competing demands, generalizes to video gaming. Emerging adult video gamers (n = 702) recruited from video gaming contexts in New York City completed a computer-assisted personal interview and life-history calendar. All four video gaming indicators-days/week played, school/work day play, nonschool/work day play, and problem play-had significant curvilinear relationships with age. The "shape" of video gaming's relationship with age is, therefore, similar to that of substance use, but video gaming appears to peak earlier in life than substance use, that is, in late adolescence rather than emerging adulthood. Of the four video gaming indicators, role incompatibility only significantly affected school/work day play, the dimension with the clearest potential to interfere with life obligations.

A Simulated Learning Environment of History Games for Enhancing Players' Cultural Awareness

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Shih, Ju-Ling; Jheng, Shun-Cian; Tseng, Jia-Jiun

2015-01-01

This research attempted to create the historical context of Southern Taiwan in the late nineteenth century based on the martial art novel "Xiao-Mao" (Pussy) by designing a role-play digital game "Taiwan Epic Game" about the war time; in which, Taiwanese history, geography, and culture are presented in an innovative way with…

Dewey and Video Games: From Education through Occupations to Education through Simulations

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Waddington, David I.

2015-01-01

Critics like Leonard Waks argue that video games are, at best, a dubious substitute for the rich classroom experiences that John Dewey wished to create and that, at worst, they are profoundly miseducative. Using the example of "Fate of the World," a climate change simulation game, David Waddington addresses these concerns through a…

Educational gaming in the health sciences: systematic review.

Science.gov (United States)

Blakely, Gillian; Skirton, Heather; Cooper, Simon; Allum, Peter; Nelmes, Pam

2009-02-01

This paper is a report of a review to investigate the use of games to support classroom learning in the health sciences. One aim of education in the health sciences is to enable learners to develop professional competence. Students have a range of learning styles and innovative teaching strategies assist in creating a dynamic learning environment. New attitudes towards experiential learning methods have contributed to the expansion of gaming as a strategy. A search for studies published between January 1980 and June 2008 was undertaken, using appropriate search terms. The databases searched were: British Education Index, British Nursing Index, The Cochrane Library, CINAHLPlus, Medline, PubMed, ERIC, PsychInfo and Australian Education Index. All publications and theses identified through the search were assessed for relevance. Sixteen papers reporting empirical studies or reviews that involved comparison of gaming with didactic methods were included. The limited research available indicates that, while both traditional didactic methods and gaming have been successful in increasing student knowledge, neither method is clearly more helpful to students. The use of games generally enhances student enjoyment and may improve long-term retention of information. While the use of games can be viewed as a viable teaching strategy, care should be exercised in the use of specific games that have not been assessed objectively. Further research on the use of gaming is needed to enable educators to gaming techniques appropriately for the benefit of students and, ultimately, patients.

The Uses of Teaching Games in Game Theory Classes and Some Experimental Games.

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Shubik, Martin

2002-01-01

Discusses the use of lightly controlled games, primarily in classes in game theory. Considers the value of such games from the viewpoint of both teaching and experimentation and discusses context; control; pros and cons of games in teaching; experimental games; and games in class, including cooperative game theory. (Author/LRW)

Anti-doping analyses at the Sochi Olympic and Paralympic Games 2014.

Science.gov (United States)

Sobolevsky, Tim; Krotov, Grigory; Dikunets, Marina; Nikitina, Maria; Mochalova, Elena; Rodchenkov, Grigory

2014-01-01

The laboratory anti-doping services during XXII Winter Olympic and XI Paralympic games in Sochi in 2014 were provided by a satellite laboratory facility located within the strictly secured Olympic Park. This laboratory, established and operated by the personnel of Antidoping Center, Moscow, has been authorized by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to conduct doping control analyses. The 4-floor building accommodated the most advanced analytical instrumentation and became a place of attraction for more than 50 Russian specialists and 25 foreign experts, including independent observers. In total, 2134 urine and 479 blood samples were delivered to the laboratory and analyzed during the Olympic Games (OG), and 403 urine and 108 blood samples - during the Paralympic Games (PG). The number of erythropoietin tests requested in urine was 946 and 166 at the OG and PG, respectively. Though included in the test distribution plan, a growth hormone analysis was cancelled by the Organizing Committee just before the Games. Several adverse analytical findings have been reported including pseudoephedrine (1 case), methylhexaneamine (4 cases), trimetazidine (1 case), dehydrochloromethyltestosterone (1 case), clostebol (1 case), and a designer stimulant N-ethyl-1-phenylbutan-2-amine (1 case). Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Declarative Terrain Modeling for Military Training Games

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Ruben M. Smelik

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Military training instructors increasingly often employ computer games to train soldiers in all sorts of skills and tactics. One of the difficulties instructors face when using games as a training tool is the creation of suitable content, including scenarios, entities, and corresponding terrain models. Terrain plays a key role in many military training games, as for example, in our case game Tactical Air Defense. However, current manual terrain editors are both too complex and too time-consuming to be useful for instructors; automatic terrain generation methods show a lot of potential, but still lack user control and intuitive editing capabilities. We present a novel way for instructors to model terrain for their training games: instead of constructing a terrain model using complex modeling tools, instructors can declare the required properties of their terrain using an advanced sketching interface. Our framework integrates terrain generation methods and manages dependencies between terrain features in order to automatically create a complete 3D terrain model that matches the sketch. With our framework, instructors can easily design a large variety of terrain models that meet their training requirements.

Yamove! A Movement Synchrony Game That Choreographs Social Interaction

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Katherine Isbister

2016-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a design case study of Yamove!, a well-received dance battle game. The primary aim for the project was to design a mobile-based play experience that enhanced in-person social interaction and connection. The game emphasized the pleasures of mutual, improvised amateur movement choreography at the center of the experience, achieved through a core mechanic of synchronized movement. The project team engaged techniques from the independent ("indie" game development community that proved valuable in tempering the constraints to which technologically driven design can sometimes fall prey. Contributions of this work include (a presentation and discussion of a polished digital game that embodies design knowledge about engaging players in mutual physical improvisation that is socially supported by technology, and (b a case study of a design process influenced by indie game development that may help others interested in creating technologies that choreograph pleasurable intentional human movement in social contexts.

Grandma's Games Project: Bridging Tradition and Technology Mediated Education

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Marina Vasileva

2014-02-01

Full Text Available This article presents a project entitled "Grandma’s games", following a research idea to enrich the educational process of K9 students by introducing the traditional children games of our ancestors in the learning environment, revived and adapted for modern students with the aid of information and communication technology. While creating a strong connection between our heritage and the modern educational trends, the project’s intention goes beyond mere fulfilment of educational goals, striving to increase the interest and motivation of primary education students to develop their creativity and originality while learning, with respect of their own personal preferences and cultural heritage. The "Grandma’s games" research project engaged twelve traditional games in the educational activities at primary schools from both rural and non-rural environments in Republic of Macedonia. Descriptive statistics was applied on the data set sampled from the extensive survey conducted among teachers in these schools, to illustrate the benefits from the application of the Grandma’s games in educational process.

Is participatory design associated with the effectiveness of serious digital games for healthy lifestyle promotion? A meta-analysis

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Serious digital games can be effective at changing healthy lifestyles, but large differences in their effectiveness exist. The extent of user involvement in game design may contribute to game effectiveness by creating a better fit with user preferences. Participatory design (PD), which represents ac...

Using Robotics and Game Design to Enhance Children's Self-Efficacy, STEM Attitudes, and Computational Thinking Skills

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Leonard, Jacqueline; Buss, Alan; Gamboa, Ruben; Mitchell, Monica; Fashola, Olatokunbo S.; Hubert, Tarcia; Almughyirah, Sultan

2016-01-01

This paper describes the findings of a pilot study that used robotics and game design to develop middle school students' computational thinking strategies. One hundred and twenty-four students engaged in LEGO® EV3 robotics and created games using Scalable Game Design software. The results of the study revealed students' pre-post self-efficacy…

Engagement, enjoyment, and energy expenditure during active video game play.

Science.gov (United States)

Lyons, Elizabeth J; Tate, Deborah F; Ward, Dianne S; Ribisl, Kurt M; Bowling, J Michael; Kalyanaraman, Sriram

2014-02-01

Playing active video games can produce moderate levels of physical activity, but little is known about how these games motivate players to be active. Several psychological predictors, such as perceptions of competence, control, and engagement, may be associated with enjoyment of a game, which has in turn been hypothesized to predict energy expended during play. However, these relationships have yet to be tested in active video games. Young adults aged 18-35 (N = 97, 50 female) game for 13 minutes while energy expenditure was measured using indirect calorimetry. Self-reported measures of engagement, perceived competence, perceived control, and enjoyment were taken immediately afterward. Mediation was analyzed using path analysis. A path model in which enjoyment mediated the effects of engagement, perceived competence, and perceived control on energy expenditure and BMI directly affected energy expenditure was an adequate fit to the data, χ(2)(1, N = 97) = .199, p = .655; CFI = 1.00; RMSEA video game play. Games that are more enjoyable and engaging may produce greater intensity activity. Developers, practitioners, and researchers should consider characteristics that influence these predictors when creating or recommending active video games. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Rancang Bangun Aplikasi Game Tajen Berbasis Android Menggunakan Artificial Intelligence

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Made Gandhi Arsawiguna

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Tabuh Rah is a culture and a rituals in Bali to present the blood of animals through a cockfight or Tajen. However there are certain people who abuse Tajen for gambling, and that give a misunderstanding of the Tajen function for people. The rapid development of technology has also led to a lack of public attention to their own culture. Overcome these problems, the use of technology through an Android-based gaming is the right solution. Tajen Game is an fighting Android based game by choosing a cock as character to play the game, spurs and installation methods, and a good day to try the cockfight based on the calculation of Saptawara and Pancawara. This  game  was  made  to  introduce the  main  function of  Tajen.  Corona  SDK (Software Development Kit is the software that use to create his game and using the Lua Programming Language. The quality of Tajen Game based on the respondents' assessment is good, with the percentage of the graphic aspect of the game by 58%, entertainment aspects by 70%, and the content aspects by 57%.

Innovative interfaces for Serious Games

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J. Marco

2015-11-01

Full Text Available The tangible interaction approach has, in recent years, become a promising alternative to tactile interaction for very young children. Children playing with Tangible User Interfaces (TUI are motivated by the novel and digital environment and benefit from the same values as conventional physical playing. Young children build their mental image of the world through action and motor responses and, with physical handling, they become conscious of reality. Within TUIs, digitally augmented surfaces (interactive blackboards and tabletops are becoming popular in educative environments. Tabletop devices are horizontal surfaces capable of supporting interaction and image feedback on their surface, and are especially interesting for reinforcing face-to-face social relations and group activities. However, most of current children-oriented applications for tabletops are based on tactile interaction, thus losing the benefits of physical playing. The paper describes our experiences building tangible tabletops, and designing tangible games and toys. In particular, we present NIKVision, a tabletop device intended to give leisure and fun while reinforcing physical manipulation and colocated gaming for 3-6 year old children. Several hybrid (physical/digital games based on the manipulation of passive and active toys have been developed for NIKVision. From our experience several useful lessons can be extracted. Among them, the necessity of bridging the gap between designers and developers making it easier the prototyping of tabletop games stands out. To tackle this difficulty a toolkit for the prototyping of tabletop games called ToyVision has been created. The toolkit supports designers to fully explore the physical feasibilities of the manipulation of physical playing pieces, while minimizing the technical difficulties of implementing tabletop games based on physical manipulation. This way, NIKVision and ToyVision are becoming powerful tools to develop innovative

Why the public health sector couldn’t create Pokémon Go

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Becky Freeman

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Pokémon Go has been subject to much attention – from both the players that download the augmented reality game and the news media. Amid the exaggerated media reports, Pokémon Go may have unintended health benefits. Players have reported walking more, spending more time with family, experiencing improvements in their mental health and feeling more connected to their communities. It is hard to imagine public health researchers developing a similar game that is fun, taps into pop culture, reaches a wide target audience, makes use of physical and virtual environments, creates a sense of both competition and community, and has spin-off health benefits. Companies that endanger public health immediately recognised the value of the Pokémon Go app, and exploited it to advertise and promote consumption of unhealthy foods. Public health stakeholders need to develop mobile-based interventions within a framework that embraces pleasure, rewards, participation and community. Public health agencies need to be just as nimble and responsive as companies that are harmful to health, or forever be creating games that nobody plays.

Why the public health sector couldn't create Pokémon Go.

Science.gov (United States)

Freeman, Becky; Chau, Josephine; Mihrshahi, Seema

2017-07-26

Pokémon Go has been subject to much attention - from both the players that download the augmented reality game and the news media. Amid the exaggerated media reports, Pokémon Go may have unintended health benefits. Players have reported walking more, spending more time with family, experiencing improvements in their mental health and feeling more connected to their communities. It is hard to imagine public health researchers developing a similar game that is fun, taps into pop culture, reaches a wide target audience, makes use of physical and virtual environments, creates a sense of both competition and community, and has spin-off health benefits. Companies that endanger public health immediately recognised the value of the Pokémon Go app, and exploited it to advertise and promote consumption of unhealthy foods. Public health stakeholders need to develop mobile-based interventions within a framework that embraces pleasure, rewards, participation and community. Public health agencies need to be just as nimble and responsive as companies that are harmful to health, or forever be creating games that nobody plays.

The Prize Is Healthy Eyes: Using Games to Educate about Diabetic Retinopathy

Science.gov (United States)

Stastny, Sherri N.; Garden-Robinson, Julie

2013-01-01

This article describes a program for prevention of diabetic retinopathy (DR) that was designed for Extension in collaboration with optometrists. The program was created to increase knowledge and awareness about risk factors for DR and included a game and take-home materials. Participants were asked to play a game similar to Wheel of Fortune. A…

Games on Games. Game Design as Critical Reflexive Practice

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Giovanni Caruso

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Can video game design be compared to more formalized practices of scientific research or speculation within game studies? And, by virtue of an intellectual leap that in itself calls for discussion, can video games be considered as an efficient vehicle for the presentation of certain kinds of knowledge, in the same way in which papers, conference presentations, and books are? What Ratto defines as critical making (2011, the practice of producing artifacts of different sorts in order to supplement and extend critical reflection, may apply to video games as well. Forms of research through design (Zimmerman, Forlizzi and Evenson, 2007, of carpentry (Bogost, 2012, and speculative design (Dunne and Raby, 2013 have been analyzed, discussed, and maybe most importantly, put into practice in different fields of cultural and scientific production. To address this gap and to map the current (and future state of self-reflexive games, we asked both researchers and designers to imagine an application of these concepts to video games. Paraphrasing Zimmerman, Forlizzi and Evenson, what does research through game design might mean? What epistemological insights can we derive from the act of designing, making and playing video games?

Severe European winters in a secular perspective

Science.gov (United States)

Hoy, Andreas; Hänsel, Stephanie

2017-04-01

those available are sufficiently distributed throughout Europe to ensure reliable results. Furthermore, the comparably dense network of long-term observations allows an appropriate quality checking within the network. Additionally, the large collective of homogenised monthly data enables assessing the quality of many daily series. Daily data are used to sum up negative values for the respective winter periods to create times series of "cold summations", which are a good indicator for the severeness of winters in most parts of Europe. Additionally, days below certain thresholds may be counted or summed up. Future work will include daily minimum and maximum temperatures, allowing calculating and applying an extensive set of climate indices, refining the work presented here.

Education Game of Multiplying Based on Horizontal Method of HTML 5 and Android

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Michael Yoseph Ricky

2015-09-01

Full Text Available Over the years, technology is growing rapidly followed by the development of game and its variations. Now, game is easily found on a mobile device. Moreover, game on mobile device can also be used as an excellent medium for learning or often referred as educational game because the nature of educational game is practical, easy to carry anywhere, and tends to be fun. This research was to create a mobile game application for learning with Horizontal method based on HTML 5 and Phonegap and to introduce the method as a method of mathematical multiplication process. This research used the Scrum method for program development. The results obtained showed that the game in this study is considered attractive and received a positive response from the player. Player also found it helpful to know the patterns of mathematics through the multiplication ofnumbers in this game. So through this game the player can perform mathematical multiplication calculations quickly.

The development of indonesian online game addiction questionnaire.

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Tjibeng Jap

Full Text Available Online game is an increasingly popular source of entertainment for all ages, with relatively prevalent negative consequences. Addiction is a problem that has received much attention. This research aims to develop a measure of online game addiction for Indonesian children and adolescents. The Indonesian Online Game Addiction Questionnaire draws from earlier theories and research on the internet and game addiction. Its construction is further enriched by including findings from qualitative interviews and field observation to ensure appropriate expression of the items. The measure consists of 7 items with a 5-point Likert Scale. It is validated by testing 1,477 Indonesian junior and senior high school students from several schools in Manado, Medan, Pontianak, and Yogyakarta. The validation evidence is shown by item-total correlation and criterion validity. The Indonesian Online Game Addiction Questionnaire has good item-total correlation (ranging from 0.29 to 0.55 and acceptable reliability (α = 0.73. It is also moderately correlated with the participant's longest time record to play online games (r = 0.39; p<0.01, average days per week in playing online games (ρ = 0.43; p<0.01, average hours per days in playing online games (ρ = 0.41; p<0.01, and monthly expenditure for online games (ρ = 0.30; p<0.01. Furthermore, we created a clinical cut-off estimate by combining criteria and population norm. The clinical cut-off estimate showed that the score of 14 to 21 may indicate mild online game addiction, and the score of 22 and above may indicate online game addiction. Overall, the result shows that Indonesian Online Game Addiction Questionnaire has sufficient psychometric property for research use, as well as limited clinical application.

Defining Learning Space in a Serious Game in Terms of Operative and Resultant Actions

Science.gov (United States)

Martin, Michael W.; Shen, Yuzhong

2012-01-01

This paper explores the distinction between operative and resultant actions in games, and proposes that the learning space created by a serious game is a function of these actions. Further, it suggests a possible relationship between these actions and the forms of cognitive load imposed upon the game player. Association of specific types of cognitive load with respective forms of actions in game mechanics also presents some heuristics for integrating learning content into serious games. Research indicates that different balances of these types of actions are more suitable for novice or experienced learners. By examining these relationships, we can develop a few basic principles of game design which have an increased potential to promote positive learning outcomes.

Winter is losing its cool

Science.gov (United States)

Feng, S.

2017-12-01

Winter seasons have significant societal impacts across all sectors ranging from direct human health to ecosystems, transportation, and recreation. This study quantifies the severity of winter and its spatial-temporal variations using a newly developed winter severity index and daily temperature, snowfall and snow depth. The winter severity and the number of extreme winter days are decreasing across the global terrestrial areas during 1901-2015 except the southeast United States and isolated regions in the Southern Hemisphere. These changes are dominated by winter warming, while the changes in daily snowfall and snow depth played a secondary role. The simulations of multiple CMIP5 climate models can well capture the spatial and temporal variations of the observed changes in winter severity and extremes during 1951-2005. The models are consistent in projecting a future milder winter under various scenarios. The winter severity is projected to decrease 60-80% in the middle-latitude Northern Hemisphere under the business-as-usual scenario. The winter arrives later, ends earlier and the length of winter season will be notably shorter. The changes in harsh winter in the polar regions are weak, mainly because the warming leads to more snowfall in the high latitudes.

Analyzing In-Game Movements of Soccer Players at Scale

OpenAIRE

Gyarmati, Laszlo; Hefeeda, Mohamed

2016-01-01

It is challenging to get access to datasets related to the physical performance of soccer players. The teams consider such information highly confidential, especially if it covers in-game performance.Hence, most of the analysis and evaluation of the players' performance do not contain much information on the physical aspect of the game, creating a blindspot in performance analysis. We propose a novel method to solve this issue by deriving movement characteristics of soccer players. We use eve...

Gamers on Games and Gaming : Implications for Educational Game Design

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Van Staalduinen, J.P.

2012-01-01

In the past two decades, there has been a steadily increasing interest in the use of games for educational purposes. This has led to an increased design, use and study of educational games; games where the players learn through playing. However, experiments with the educational use of games have not

A New Methodology of Design and Development of Serious Games

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André F. S. Barbosa

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The development of a serious game requires perfect knowledge of the learning domain to obtain the desired results. But it is also true that this may not be enough to develop a successful serious game. First of all, the player has to feel that he is playing a game where the learning is only a consequence of the playing actions. Otherwise, the game is viewed as boring and not as a fun activity and engaging. For example, the player can catch some items in the scenario and then separate them according to its type (i.e., recycle them. Thus, the main action for player is catching the items in the scenario where the recycle action is a second action, which is viewed as a consequence of the first action. Sometimes, the game design relies on a detailed approach based on the ideas of the developers because some educational content are difficult to integrate in the games, while maintaining the fun factor in the first place. In this paper we propose a new methodology of design and development of serious games that facilitates the integration of educational contents in the games. Furthermore, we present a serious game, called “Clean World”, created using this new methodology.

Uncovering Young Children's Transformative Digital Game Play through the Exploration of Three-Year-Old Children's Cases

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Huh, Youn Jung

2017-01-01

In contrast to studies focusing on digital games as learning tools, this study shows how young children use digital games as a means of facilitating spontaneous play in their everyday lives. This article highlights how 4 three-year-old children's play with digital games revealed their ability to create new forms of play by mixing their digital…

Verification of an ENSO-Based Long-Range Prediction of Anomalous Weather Conditions During the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and Paralympics

Science.gov (United States)

Mo, Ruping; Joe, Paul I.; Doyle, Chris; Whitfield, Paul H.

2014-01-01

A brief review of the anomalous weather conditions during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games and the efforts to predict these anomalies based on some preceding El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) signals are presented. It is shown that the Olympic Games were held under extraordinarily warm conditions in February 2010, with monthly mean temperature anomalies of +2.2 °C in Vancouver and +2.8 °C in Whistler, ranking respectively as the highest and the second highest in the past 30 years (1981-2010). The warm conditions continued, but became less anomalous, in March 2010 for the Paralympic Games. While the precipitation amounts in the area remained near normal through this winter, the lack of snow due to warm conditions created numerous media headlines and practical problems for the alpine competitions. A statistical model was developed on the premise that February and March temperatures in the Vancouver area could be predicted using an ENSO signal with considerable lead time. This model successfully predicted the warmer-than-normal, lower-snowfall conditions for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics.

Character selecting advisor for a role-playing game

Science.gov (United States)

Redfield, Carol L.; Berlanga, Felicia

1994-01-01

Role-playing games have been a source of much pleasure and merriment for people of all ages. The process of developing a character for a role-playing game is usually very, very time consuming, delaying what many players consider the most entertaining part of the game. An expert system has been written to assist a player in creating a character by guiding the player through a series of questions. This paper discusses the selection of this topic, the knowledge engineering, the software development, and the resulting program that cuts the time of character development from about 4 hours to 30 minutes. The program was written on a PC and an Apollo in CLIPS 4.3 and currently runs on the Apollo.

FORMATION OF PUPILS’ LEXICAL COMPETENCE BY COMPUTER GAMES IN THE STUDY OF UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE

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Oksana A. Kucheruk

2018-02-01

Full Text Available The article deals with the problem of forming the lexical competence of younger teenage pupils with the use of computer games in the process of learning the Ukrainian language, the ways of its solution and the corresponding methodical recommendations are offered. The importance of creating and using computer games in order to improve the quality level of Ukrainian-language education is substantiated. The essence of the concepts of «lexical competence», «educational computer game» is specified. On the basis of analysis of scientific works, synthesis of educational and methodological ideas, generalization of own experience of pedagogical work the conditions of effective use of educational computer games within the limits of Ukrainian-language education are determined. It has been established that the integration of computer games into the traditional Ukrainian language learning system helps to provide internal motivation for learning, activating pupils ‘cognitive activity, forming general and substantive competencies. It is emphasized that the effectiveness of educational computer games in the language training of students depends on the level of professional education, ICT competence and linguodidactic skill of a teacher-translator. The educational potential of an interactive educational game complex is described, which is to stimulate interest in teaching the Ukrainian language and creates opportunities for the formation of lexical competence on the basis of electronic linguodidactics.

Interactive Game for Teaching Laser Amplification Used at the National Ignition Facility

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Lin, E

2009-08-06

The purpose of this project was to create an interactive game to expose high school students to concepts in laser amplification by demonstrating the National Ignition Facility's main amplifier at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. To succeed, the game had to be able to communicate effectively the basic concepts of laser amplification as accurately as possible and to be capable of exposing as many students as possible. Since concepts need to be communicated in a way that students understand, the Science Content Standards for California Public Schools were used to make assumptions about high school students knowledge of light. Effectively communicating a new concept necessitates the omission on terminology and symbolism. Therefore, creating a powerful experience was ideal for communicating this material. Various methods of reinforcing this experience ranging from color choice to abstractions kept the student focused on the game to maximize concept retention. The program was created in Java to allow the creation of a Java Applet that can be embedded onto a webpage, which is a perfect medium for mass exposure. Because a game requires interaction, the game animations had to be easily manipulated to enable the program to respond to user input. Image sprites, as opposed to image folders, were used in these animations to minimize the number of Hypertext Transfer Protocol connections, and thus, significantly reduce the transfer time of necessary animation files. These image sprites were loaded and cropped into a list of animation frames. Since the caching of large transition animations caused the Java Virtual Machine to run out of memory, large animations were implemented as animated Graphics Interchange Format images since transitions require no interaction, and thus, no frame manipulation was needed. This reduced the animation's memory footprint. The first version of this game was completed during this project. Future work for the project could include the

Where's the bling of the thing?: Ethics, gaming and PBL-I

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Diane P. McCarthy

Full Text Available This paper describes an evaluation of PBL-Interactive (PBL-I as authoring tool for an ethical decision-making game, in the Dip ICT course, ET600 Ethics and professionalism, at Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (CPIT. While the prototype was developed and the usability testing conducted with student volunteers returned positive results, the limitations of the authoring tool to create a multi-linear ethics game outweighed its affordances. In particular, the authoring mode interface lacked ease of use and functionality for advanced features such as video and audio, desirable options to motivate computing students with advanced gaming experience, in online and face-to-face learning environments. Scenario-based problem solving can be used in serious games to explore ethical decision making. However, authoring tools for tertiary educators should be easy to use, including for multi-linear scenarios. Groups should be able to work through the ethical game scenario in multiple ways, with the potential for students to create new content for future participants. Otherwise, deep thinking is displaced by astute guessing of a \\'right answer\\' from a list. Ethical decision-making may be constrained, more simplistic, and deterministic. Cross cultural issues may be used stereotypically, without developing insight or empathy. Opportunities for international students to make a contribution as subject matter experts may not eventuate.

Tobacco imagery in video games: ratings and gamer recall.

Science.gov (United States)

Forsyth, Susan R; Malone, Ruth E

2016-09-01

To assess whether tobacco content found in video games was appropriately labelled for tobacco-related content by the Entertainment and Software Ratings Board (ESRB). Sixty-five gamer participants (self-identified age range 13-50) were interviewed in-person (n=25) or online (n=40) and asked (A) to list favourite games and (B) to name games that they could recall containing tobacco content. The ESRB database was searched for all games mentioned to ascertain whether they had been assigned tobacco-related content descriptors. Games were independently assessed for tobacco content by examining user-created game wiki sites and watching YouTube videos of gameplay. Games with tobacco-related ESRB content descriptors and/or with tobacco imagery verified by researchers were considered to contain tobacco content. Games identified by participants as including tobacco but lacking verifiable tobacco content were treated as not containing tobacco content. Participants recalled playing 140 unique games, of which 118 were listed in the ESRB database. Participants explicitly recalled tobacco content in 31% (37/118) of the games, of which 94% (35/37) included independently verified tobacco content. Only 8% (9/118) of the games had received ESRB tobacco-related content descriptors, but researchers verified that 42% (50/118) contained such content; 42% (49/118) of games were rated 'M' for mature (content deemed appropriate for ages 17+). Of these, 76% (37/49) contained verified tobacco content; however, only 4% (2/49) received ESRB tobacco-related content descriptors. Gamers are exposed to tobacco imagery in many video games. The ESRB is not a reliable source for determining whether video games contain tobacco imagery. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/

Chile: educational game, "Learning about AIDS: the Responsibility of All".

Science.gov (United States)

1993-01-01

For more than 10 years, People's Health Education (EPES) has developed educational materials which call upon target audiences to integrate their practical experiences into a collective learning process based upon games. The methodology and materials aim to meet the needs of the most underprivileged sections of the population. EPES produced "Learning about AIDS: the responsibility of all," a game which can be used as it is or adapted to meet the needs of differing groups. The objectives of the game are to provide basic information on AIDS; to facilitate the expression of ideas, beliefs, and myths about AIDS; to promote forums for discussion in order to exchange opinions and views on sexuality and AIDS; to create awareness on how AIDS affects the community; and to create awareness of the need to prevent the disease. Played in couples to strengthen the level of interpersonal communication on such issues, the game is played because AIDS is a fact of everyday life which is affecting the community, because learning about AIDS will help people to protect themselves and their communities from the disease and groundless associated fears, and because open discussion is needed to help prevent more people from becoming infected with HIV.

Healthy Gaming - Video Game Design to promote Health.

Science.gov (United States)

Brox, E; Fernandez-Luque, L; Tøllefsen, T

2011-01-01

There is an increasing interest in health games including simulation tools, games for specific conditions, persuasive games to promote a healthy life style or exergames where physical exercise is used to control the game. The objective of the article is to review current literature about available health games and the impact related to game design principles as well as some educational theory aspects. Literature from the big databases and known sites with games for health has been searched to find articles about games for health purposes. The focus has been on educational games, persuasive games and exergames as well as articles describing game design principles. The medical objectives can either be a part of the game theme (intrinsic) or be totally dispatched (extrinsic), and particularly persuasive games seem to use extrinsic game design. Peer support is important, but there is only limited research on multiplayer health games. Evaluation of health games can be both medical and technical, and the focus will depend on the game purpose. There is still not enough evidence to conclude which design principles work for what purposes since most of the literature in health serious games does not specify design methodologies, but it seems that extrinsic methods work in persuasion. However, when designing health care games it is important to define both the target group and main objective, and then design a game accordingly using sound game design principles, but also utilizing design elements to enhance learning and persuasion. A collaboration with health professionals from an early design stage is necessary both to ensure that the content is valid and to have the game validated from a clinical viewpoint. Patients need to be involved, especially to improve usability. More research should be done on social aspects in health games, both related to learning and persuasion.

Addictive Online Games: Examining the Relationship Between Game Genres and Internet Gaming Disorder.

Science.gov (United States)

Lemmens, Jeroen S; Hendriks, Stefan J F

2016-04-01

Internet gaming disorder (IGD) is the most recent term used to describe problematic or pathological involvement with computer or video games. This study examined whether this disorder is more likely to involve pathological involvement with online (i.e., Internet) games as opposed to offline games. We also explored the addictive potential of nine video game genres by examining the relationship between IGD and 2,720 games played by a sample of 13- to 40-year olds (N = 2,442). Although time spent playing both online and offline games was related to IGD, online games showed much stronger correlations. This tendency is also reflected within various genres. Disordered gamers spent more than four times as much time playing online role-playing games than nondisordered gamers and more than thrice as much time playing online shooters, whereas no significant differences for offline games from these genres were found. Results are discussed within the frame of social interaction and competition provided by online games.

Possibilities and importance of using computer games and simulations in educational process

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Danilović Mirčeta S.

2003-01-01

Full Text Available The paper discusses if it is possible and appropriate to use simulations (simulation games and traditional games in the process of education. It is stressed that the terms "game" and "simulation" can and should be taken in a broader sense, although they are chiefly investigated herein as video-computer games and simulations. Any activity combining the properties of game (competition, rules, players and the properties of simulation (i.e. operational presentation of reality should be understood as simulation games, where role-play constitutes their essence and basis. In those games the student assumes a new identity, identifies himself with another personality and responds similarly. Game rules are basic and most important conditions for its existence, accomplishment and goal achievement. Games and simulations make possible for a student to acquire experience and practice i.e. to do exercises in nearly similar or identical life situations, to develop cognitive and psycho-motor abilities and skills, to acquire knowledge, to develop, create and change attitudes and value criteria, and to develop perception of other people’s feelings and attitudes. It is obligatory for the teacher to conduct preparations to use and apply simulation games in the process of teaching.

Trends in Video Game Play through Childhood, Adolescence, and Emerging Adulthood

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Geoffrey L. Ream

2013-01-01

Full Text Available This study explored the relationship between video gaming and age during childhood, adolescence, and emerging adulthood. It also examined whether “role incompatibility,” the theory that normative levels of substance use decrease through young adulthood as newly acquired adult roles create competing demands, generalizes to video gaming. Emerging adult video gamers (n=702 recruited from video gaming contexts in New York City completed a computer-assisted personal interview and life-history calendar. All four video gaming indicators—days/week played, school/work day play, nonschool/work day play, and problem play—had significant curvilinear relationships with age. The “shape” of video gaming’s relationship with age is, therefore, similar to that of substance use, but video gaming appears to peak earlier in life than substance use, that is, in late adolescence rather than emerging adulthood. Of the four video gaming indicators, role incompatibility only significantly affected school/work day play, the dimension with the clearest potential to interfere with life obligations.

Analytical derivation: An epistemic game for solving mathematically based physics problems

Science.gov (United States)

Bajracharya, Rabindra R.; Thompson, John R.

2016-06-01

Problem solving, which often involves multiple steps, is an integral part of physics learning and teaching. Using the perspective of the epistemic game, we documented a specific game that is commonly pursued by students while solving mathematically based physics problems: the analytical derivation game. This game involves deriving an equation through symbolic manipulations and routine mathematical operations, usually without any physical interpretation of the processes. This game often creates cognitive obstacles in students, preventing them from using alternative resources or better approaches during problem solving. We conducted hour-long, semi-structured, individual interviews with fourteen introductory physics students. Students were asked to solve four "pseudophysics" problems containing algebraic and graphical representations. The problems required the application of the fundamental theorem of calculus (FTC), which is one of the most frequently used mathematical concepts in physics problem solving. We show that the analytical derivation game is necessary, but not sufficient, to solve mathematically based physics problems, specifically those involving graphical representations.

The standard set game of a cooperative game

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bumb, A.F.; Hoede, C.

2003-01-01

We show that for every cooperative game a corresponding set game can be defined, called the standard set game. Values for set games can be applied to this standard game and determine allocations for the cooperative game. On the other hand, notions for cooperative games, like the Shapley value, the

Fusing Visual and Behavioral Cues for Modeling User Experience in Games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Shaker, Noor; Asteriadis, Stylianos; Yannakakis, Georgios N.

2013-01-01

Estimating affective and cognitive states in condi- tions of rich human-computer interaction, such as in games, is a field of growing academic and commercial interest. Entertain- ment and serious games can benefit from recent advances in the field as, having access to predictors of the current...... state of the player (or learner) can provide useful information for feeding adaptation mechanisms that aim to maximize engagement or learning effects. In this paper, we introduce a large data corpus derived from 58 participants that play the popular Super Mario Bros platform game and attempt to create...... accurate models of player experience for this game genre. Within the view of the current research, features extracted both from player gameplay behavior and game levels, and player visual characteristics have been utilized as potential indicators of reported affect expressed as pairwise preferences between...

The Carbon Trading Game

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fouquet, Roger

2003-12-01

In response to the Kyoto Protocol, an international market for carbon dioxide tradable permits is likely to be created. Two of the key issues involved are explaining the concepts of tradable permits to industrialists, policy-makers and the man on the street, and anticipating how the market will evolve. A simple game of the market for carbon dioxide tradable permits has been developed and used that can help deal with both issues. As a pedagogical tool, this game benefits from simplicity (just a few pieces of paper are needed) and enables students to grasp the concepts and remember them through the intensity and fun of a trading 'pit'. The experiences also provide substantial insights into the evolution of the carbon dioxide permit market, particularly related to the evolution of trade volume, permit prices and country strategies

Systematizing game learning analytics for serious games

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Alonso-Fernandez, Cristina; Calvo Morata, Antonio; Freire, Manuel; Martinez-Ortiz, Ivan; Fernandez-Manjon, Baltasar

2017-01-01

Applying games in education provides multiple benefits clearly visible in entertainment games: their engaging, goal-oriented nature encourages students to improve while they play. Educational games, also known as Serious Games (SGs) are video games designed with a main purpose other than

Were Knowledge Management Abilities of University Students Enhanced after Creating Personal Blog-Based Portfolios?

Science.gov (United States)

Chang, Chi-Cheng; Liang, Chaoyun; Tseng, Kuo-Hung; Tseng, Ju-Shih; Chen, To-Yu

2013-01-01

The effect of creating blog-based portfolios on knowledge management (KM) abilities among university students was examined in the present study. Participants included 43 students majoring in Multimedia and Game Science at a University in Taiwan. Students spent nine weeks creating their personal portfolios by using a blog. The "t"-test…

Using video games to combine learning and assessment in mathematics education

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kristian Juha Mikael Kiili

2015-12-01

Full Text Available One problem with most education systems is that learning and (summative assessment are generally treated as quite separate things in schools. We argue that video games can provide an opportunity to combine these processes in an engaging and effective way. The present study focuses on investigating the effectiveness and the assessment power of two different mathematics video games, Semideus and Wuzzit Trouble. In the current study, we validated the Semideus game as a rational number test instrument. We used it as a pre- and a post-test for a three-hour intervention in which we studied the effectiveness of Wuzzit Trouble, a game built on whole number arithmetic and designed to enhance mathematical thinking and problem solving skills. The results showed that (1 games can be used to assess mathematical knowledge validly, and (2 even short game-based interventions can be very effective. Based on the results, we argue that game-based assessment can create a more complete picture of mathematical knowledge than simply measuring students' accuracy, providing indicators of student misconceptions and conceptual change processes

New winter hardy winter bread wheat cultivar (Triticum aestivum L. Voloshkova

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Л. М. Голик

2007-12-01

Full Text Available Creation of Initial raw for breeding of winter wheat by change of the development type under low temperatures influence was described. Seeds of spring wheat were vernalized in aluminum weighting bottle. By using low temperatures at sawing of M2-6 at the begin ind of optimal terms of sawing of winter wheat, new winter-hardy variety of Voloshkova was bred.

Kinship, Family, and Gender Effects in the Ultimatum Game.

Science.gov (United States)

Macfarlan, Shane J; Quinlan, Robert J

2008-09-01

Kinship and reciprocity are two main predictors of altruism. The ultimatum game has been used to study altruism in many small-scale societies. We used the ultimatum game to examine effects of individuals' family and kin relations on altruistic behavior in a kin-based horticultural community in rural Dominica. Results show sex-specific effects of kin on ultimatum game play. Average coefficient of relatedness to the village was negatively associated with women's ultimatum game proposals and had little effect on men's proposals. Number of brothers in the village was positively associated with men's ultimatum game proposals and negatively associated with women's proposals. Similarly, presence of father in the village was associated with higher proposals by men and lower proposals by women. We interpret the effect of brothers on men's proposals as a consequence of local competition among brothers. We speculate that daughter-biased parental care in this community creates a sense of entitlement among women with brothers, which may explain the inverse relation between number of brothers and women's ultimatum game proposals. The pattern of results may be consistent with how matrifocality affects cultural models of fairness differently along gender and family lines.

Little Botany: A Mobile Game Utilizing Data Integration to Enhance Plant Science Education

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Suphanut Jamonnak

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Mobile devices are rapidly becoming the new medium of educational and social life for young people, and hence mobile educational games have become an important mechanism for learning. To help school-aged children learn about the fascinating world of plants, we present a mobile educational game called Little Botany, where players can create their own virtual gardens in any location on earth. One unique feature of Little Botany is that the game is built upon real-world data by leveraging data integration mechanism. The gardens created in Little Botany are augmented with real-world location data and real-time weather data. More specifically, Little Botany is using real-time weather data for the garden location to simulate how the weather affects plants growth. Little Botany players can learn to select what crops to plant, maintain their own garden, watch crops to grow, tend the crops on a daily basis, and harvest them. With this game, users can also learn plant structure and three chemical reactions.

33 CFR 100.109 - Winter Harbor Lobster Boat Race, Winter Harbor, ME.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 33 Navigation and Navigable Waters 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Winter Harbor Lobster Boat Race, Winter Harbor, ME. 100.109 Section 100.109 Navigation and Navigable Waters COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY REGATTAS AND MARINE PARADES SAFETY OF LIFE ON NAVIGABLE WATERS § 100.109 Winter Harbor...

Experimenting with Educational Games using the Xbox, PC, and iPad

Science.gov (United States)

Rohrlick, D.; Kilb, D. L.; Peach, C. L.; Simms, E.; Yang, A.; Layman, C.; Deutscher, R.

2012-12-01

gaming techniques work and which do not. We have discovered how simple concepts such as audio queues and voice-overs play a powerful role in obtaining and holding a player's attention. We have also found having the learning goals built into the gameplay is often more effective than directly quizzing the player's knowledge. By adding surprises to the gameplay, a game does a better job keeping the player's attention. Also, presenting non-traditional physical interactions with the game through motion controls or touch-screens help spur the player's interest. The duration of the game is another important factor. Depending on how much interactivity there is available to the player, the game's duration can either lead to overwhelming frustration if too short, or repetitive boredom if the game is too long. Overall, we find one of the most important parts of the learning gaming experience is making sure players are having fun while learning. After creating our games on various formats and software suites, we are working toward understanding the efficacy of our gaming approaches in not only holding players interest, but also in achieving specific learning goals related to the science behind the gameplay. We hope to encourage educators to view educational games as a useful addition to the range of approaches they use to engage students in science. Perhaps this can even motivate some educators to create their own games.

Learning and Motivational Processes When Students Design Curriculum-Based Digital Learning Games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Weitze, Charlotte Lærke

2015-01-01

This design-based research (DBR) project has developed an overall gamified learning design (big Game) to facilitate the learning process for adult students by inviting them to be their own learning designers through designing digital learning games (small games) in cross-disciplinary subject...... matters. The DBR project has investigated and experimented with which elements, methods, and processes are important when aiming at creating a cognitive complex (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001) and motivating learning process within a reusable game-based learning design. This project took place in a co......, or programming provide a rich context for learning, since the construction of artefacts, in this case learning games, enables reflection and new ways of thinking. The students learned from reflection and interaction with the tools alone as well as in collaboration with peers. After analysing the students...

Games for and by Teachers and Learners

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Van Rosmalen, Peter; Wilson, Amanda; Hummel, Hans

2013-01-01

With the advent of social media it is widely accepted that teachers and learners are not only consumers but also may have an active role in contributing and co-creating lesson materials and content. Paradoxically one strand of technology enhanced learning, i.e. game-based learning, aligns only