invest(ment)igation

Gostava de ler este artigo “The Pursuit of Fun in Digital Games: From the Sandpit to the Console and Beyond” d eDiego Fellipe Tondorf, e Marcelo da Silva Hounsell

“Fun has long been considered inherent in the act of playing. Some authors argue that it is an element always present in games, and others that it is not, that there are several types of fun and several factors that change the perception of fun, but fun has always been associated with positive effects on players. As a subjective concept, and dependent on context and player experience, understanding fun in games is a challenge for developers. With the development of the industry and the research on digital games, it became necessary to create new artifacts for the design and validation of fun. Understanding fun is also essential for serious games, which have been criticized for not being fun. Thus, better understanding fun and how to achieve it is a big challenge where crucial outcomes could benefit application areas such as education, health, and others. But the roadmap for such an area of research has not been established. This chapter presents fun as a grand challenge in games and digital entertainment and proposes a path for future research.”

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Gostava de ler este artigo “Platform for Interactive Audiovisual Productions and Generative Art Using Processing” de P. D‘Amato e Diana Karina Leon

“Through computers, artists have found a way to enhance their production, discovering new ways for communicating their productions and devising new forms of expression. Being able to make the most of these facilities requires interdisciplinary groups that seek to enhance creativity and at the same time generate new forms of creation. In particular, an artist takes advantage of the different tools available, from sound to draws in order to provide immersive experiences. This paper presents a platform that implements image and audio processing algorithms, to facilitate the artist’s task, in what is called generative art. With the platform it is possible to create animated digital images in real time that adapt to the sound’ properties and that can be used in live audiovisual performances.”

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Gostava de ler este artigo “Introduction on THINKING: Bioengineering of Science and Art” de Nima Rezaei e Amene Saghazadeh

“THINKING: Bioengineering of Science and Art is inclusive of the philosophy of thinking by using different knowledge works. This chapter is, therefore, no longer an attempt to introduce the book. Rather, we notice thoughts of different contexts and many relations among them, giving rise to various sets of integrations. One important result of this introduction is that integrated thinking represents the highest level of development, and scientific thinking may be only one of many integrant elements and a range of integrative relations—the point to which we devote our attention in THINKING: Bioengineering of Science and Art.”

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The War on Terror beyond the barrel of a gun: The procedural rhetorics of the boardgame Labyrinth
Thomas Ambrosio, Jonathan Ross

“Utilizing Bogost’s procedural rhetoric framework in his book Persuasive Games, this article examines Labyrinth, a boardgame that simulates the conflict between the United States and global terrorism. The authors systematically integrate ludology (rules/gameplay) and narratology (narratives/representations) to illustrate how Labyrinth was intentionally designed so that players became active participants in a narrative about how good governance undermines the sources of terrorism and the counterproductive nature of militarized counterterrorism, as well as bear witness to the agency of the Muslim world and the region’s political dynamism on the tabletop. This is a very different account of the War on Terror than has previously been studied in the literature, which has focused overwhelmingly on first-person shooter videogames and, in turn, has provided a very limited range of how this conflict can be represented in ludic form. However, Labyrinth is not alone, and the wargames that many players grew up with have given way to a variety of boardgames which approach complex historical or contemporary situations and environments beyond simply killing one’s enemies. This represents a diverse, but largely untapped, resource already in the public space and ready to be investigated. Media studies can therefore benefit from considering how boardgames similar to Labyrinth present alternative ways in which the ‘real world’ has been, and indeed can be, translated through popular culture objects.”

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Top-down Design of a CS Curriculum for a Computer Games BA
Nuno Fachada e Nélio Códices

“Computer games are complex products incorporating software, design and art. Consequently, their development is a multidisciplinary effort, requiring professionals from several fields, who should nonetheless be knowledgeable across disciplines. Due to the variety of skills required, and in order to train these professionals, computer game development (GD) degrees have been appearing in North America and Europe since the late 1990s. Following this trend, several GD degrees have emerged in Portugal. Given the lack of specialized academic staff, not uncommon in younger scientific areas, some of these degrees “borrowed” computer science (CS) programs and faculty within the same institution, leading in some cases to a disconnect between CS theory and practice and the requirements of GD classes. In this paper, we discuss our experience in adapting the CS curriculum of a three-year computer games BA in accordance with GD requirements. We used a top-down approach, where the game engine used for GD informs the choice of CS topics and programming languages lectured in the CS curriculum. The discussion is centered around the choices taken and the theoretical and empirical rationale behind our decisions. Preliminary empirical results indicate a substantial increase in GD project quality and a clear improvement in the students’ technical skills, as well as in their experimentation and adaptation capabilities.”

+infos(fonte): LINK