Category Archives: Serious Gaming

Games that are not just for fun e.g. eHealth, traffic management, tourism etc.

New Paper – Touch by Touch: Promoting Cultural Awareness With Multitouch Gaming

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A short workshop paper which has just been presented about some on-going work that uses a combination of games, multitouch interaction and telepresence technologies to bring two museums in Europe closer together. The work forms the basis of a platform known as “Twin Cities” which will be used to let any two locations share exhibitions and content and to bring their visitors/users closer together.

Abstract: This paper presents a work in progress focused on facilitation of cross-cultural awareness between citizens of two European cities. We aim to engage visitors of telecom museums in Athens and Luxembourg to learn more about both cities by means of collaborative games played on multitouch tables. We also explore how live video-to-video streaming influences players’ behaviour and collaboration with remote players.

Download the paper: Touch by Touch: Promoting Cultural Awareness With Multitouch Gaming.

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Paper Available on Designing Augmented Reality Games

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Although from 2008 I have only come across a PDF of it again recently. The paper covers designing a location-aware augmented reality game and includes some concepts that may be useful for others. It won best paper at MobileHCI 2008.

Braun, A, Herbst, I., Broll, W., and McCall R. TimeWarp: interactive time travel with a mobile mixed reality game. In the Proceedings of Mobile HCI 2008. Amsterdam, Netherlands (Best paper award)

Abtract

Mobile location-aware applications have become quite popular
across a range of new areas such as pervasive games and mobile
edutainment applications. However it is only recently, that
approaches have been presented which combine gaming and
education with mobile Augmented Reality systems. However they
typically lack a close crossmedia integration of the surroundings,
and often annotate or extend the environment rather than
modifying and altering it.
In this paper we present a mobile outdoor mixed reality game for
exploring the history of a city in the spatial and the temporal
dimension. We introduce the design and concept of the game and
present a universal mechanism to define and setup multi-modal
user interfaces for the game challenges. Finally we discuss the
results of the user tests

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Workshop on Entertainment Technology in Transportation against Frustration, Aggression and Irrationality

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DEADLINE EXTENDED: May 20th, 2013

Workshop on “Entertainment Technology in Transportation against Frustration, Aggression and Irrationality”

August 27, 2013, Munich, Germany

Held in conjunction with 15th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2013)

http://workshops.icts.sbg.ac.at/mobilehci2013

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Call for Papers

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Position Paper Submission Deadline: Monday, May 20th, 2013 (extended) Notification on Position Papers: Monday, June 10th, 2013 Workshop Date: Tuesday, August 27th, 2013

Using transportation technology (e.g., a car, plane, or traveling in public transportation) can be frustrating due to crowded streets, delays, and other travelers. Games & entertainment technology offer potential to resolve these negative user experiences. Frustration may lead to aggression and negative experiences resulting in irrational behaviors.

The workshop on Entertainment in Transportation will be a forum of multi-disciplinary discussion on how to combine research and design in both the entertainment and the transportation domain. The one-day workshop will include break-out sessions including the creation of entertainment and game concepts for future transportation. Contributions are invited from all areas of mobile HCI, games & entertainment, as well as transportation contexts such as cars, planes, buses, trains, or space ships.

Topics

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Submissions are invited on (but not limited to) the following topics:

- Entertainment applications to reduce frustration, aggression and irrationality

- Game and entertainment application concepts, prototypes, and systems that suit a certain transportation context

- Studies on informing transportation entertainment system design

- Social aspects of gaming in the transportation domain, including passengers as well as personnel

- Interaction modalities for transportation entertainment

- Research addressing the social aspects of transportation entertainment

- Usage of transport context data as game input

Submissions

To participate authors please submit by May 20th, 2013 a position paper (no longer than 4 pages in the CHI extended abstract format) about their research containing the following aspects:

- The authors’ research perspective on entertainment and gaming in transportation and how to improve the situation of travelers through gaming and entertainment, including a description of a game and entertainment application (if applicable) or phenomenon they are working on or have studied.

- A reflection on the future challenges concerning entertainment in transportation that should be addressed by mobile HCI research.

- The way the authors aim at communicating their experience to the workshop participants (e.g., demo, interactive talk). Authors are invited to include an URL linking to digital documentation of a game, artifact, tool, service, project or study that offers a particular view on entertainment in transportation.

Submissions can, but do not have to be anonymized. Please submit your work via email to mobilehci2013@hciunit.org

Interactive presentations (such as demos) are highly encouraged and will be favored in the reviewing process.

We look forward to your contribution!

Workshop organizers:

David Wilfinger (University of Salzburg) Alexander Meschtscherjakov (University of Salzburg)

Manfred Tscheligi (University of Salzburg)

Petra Sundström (University of Salzburg)

Dalila Szostak (Intel

Roderick McCall (University of Luxembourg)

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New Paper: Using Gamification and Metaphor to Design a Mobility Platform for Commuters

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Our paper on Using Gamification and Metaphor to Design a Mobility Platform for Commuters (McCall, Koenig and Kracheel) has now been published in The International Journal of Mobile Human-Computer Interaction.

Abstract: In this paper the authors explain the use of gamification as a way to optimize mobility patterns within a heavily congested European City. They explore this from two perspectives, first by outlining a gaming concept and secondly by explaining how the use of a mobility game that took place in two locations can be used to explore incentives and design issues.

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Updated: Vehicular Applications and Gamification Papers

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Here is a list of the main papers from this website that explore using gamification to reduce traffic congestion. The work is drawn from research in how to apply vehicular networking technology to reduce traffic congestion. The first paper explores legal and ethical issues, the second explores the use of gamification to asses game design issues, while the third looks at early ideas to use gamification to reduce traffic congestion. The fourth paper explores a simulator that will be used in the I-GEAR project. Our intention is really to bring together gamification with in-car applications while also exploring novel user interface techniques.

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CHI 2013 Gamification Workshop Papers Online

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Although the workshop has yet to take place the papers which will be presented at it are now available from the gamification-research.org website.

There are a number of interesting papers and presentations from those exploring particular gamified approaches through to how to use gamification as a methodology in a field trial.

Twitt

Paper: Reducing Traffic Congestion Through Pervasive Gaming

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Last year we presented a short position paper at the “Workshop on the Car as An Arena for Gaming” which was held during MobileHCI 2012. It was chosen as the best paper from the workshop and we have subsequently published a full version outlining the results from the study featured here and from MobileHCI itself in the International Journal of Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (to appear).

Abstract: In this paper we provide an overview of the I-GEAR (incentives and gaming environments for automobile routing) project that is intended to reduce traffic congestion in Luxembourg through the use of persuasive gaming. In order to illustrate some of the issues involved we also present an outline concept of a live game in which we propose to encourage the workshop participants to take part. If a sufficient number of workshop participants take part, this real life game could even be used as a small scale study within the project.

File: Reducing Congestion Through Pervasive Gaming

The journal paper will be available online soon (we have just received the proof to check over).

Citation: McCall, R., Kracheel, M., and V. Koenig. Reducing Traffic Congestion Through Pervasive Gaming. Position Paper from the Workshop on The Car As an Arena for Gaming at MobileHCI 2012. San Francisco, USA.

 

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Paper: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again – Subjective and Behavioral Presence Measurement in the Augmented Reality Game TimeWarp

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Authors: Jennifer Klatt, Simon Ten Broeke, Astrid M. von der Pütten, Anna-Christin Schütz, Jens Vervoort, Roderick McCall, Nicole C. Krämer, Richard Wetzel, Lisa Blum, and Leif Oppermann.

Presence Conference. Edinburgh Napier University, 2011

Abstract: Presence measurements are traditionally using a variety of subjective and objective measures. However, constraints often result in subjective measurements using questionnaires as a key method of data collection. In this paper we present a study of 44 participants of an augmented reality game known as TimeWarp which used both subjective and objective behavioural measures where both video recordings and self- reports about feelings of presence were compared. Our findings indicate that pointing behaviour and verbal responses to virtual content within an augmented reality scene are correlated negatively to sense of presence. As a result the paper indicates that there are behavioural measures that correlate and can predict subjective feelings of presence in the augmented reality game.

Let’s Do the Time Warp Again – Subjective and Behavioral Presence Measurement in the Augmented Reality Game TimeWarp (PDF)

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Museum Visitors Wanted

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The LiveCity project is looking for people to take part in an evening focus group about novel interactive experiences. We are currently building a game which people in Luxembourg and Athens can play together using multi-touch technologies and live interactive video.

Date: 3rd December

Time: from 19:00 until 21:30

If you would like to take part please email roderick.mccall  (at uni (dot) lu)

 

 

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SnT and Glasgow Caledonian Organise EPT 2012

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Researchers from the Interdiscicplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) at the University of Luxembourg are co-organising a workshop on “Ethics, Privacy and Trust in Serious Gaming” at the International Conference on Entertainment Computing in Bremen at the end of September.  The workshop organising committee are:

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