WP2: R&D Coordination

1. WP2: R&D Coordination Prof. Sara de Freitas Coventry University, UK

2. Agenda • Overview • Trends in SGs • Objectives of WP2 • General Approach • Technical Committees (TCs) • Roadmap • Objectives and Achievement of 1st Year • Presentation and discussion of D2.1 • Work in progress • Next steps and deadlines

3. Trends in SGs • Beginning of 2010 the games industry posted total sales of $1.17 billion for the month of January • Value of SG sector in 2010 was estimated to be $1.5 billion, and is set to increase by average 47% between 2010 and 2015 (iDate market report) • Pervasiveness of gaming: survey by International Software Federation of Europe (ISFE, 2010): 74% of those aged 16-19 considered themselves gamers (n=3000), 60% of those 20-24, 56% 25-29 and 38% 30-44. • Several key studies demonstrating the efficacy of serious games for training in particular through behavioural change (SG-ETS, Hope Lab’s re:mission, Pulse project) • Wide uptake of social software (e.g. Facebook, Wikipedia), collective intelligence • Learning in multimodal ways: mixed reality, augmented reality, mobile learning, haptics (more flexible approaches) • Converging technologies and distributed computing: mobile devices, AR devices, BCIs/EEGs, sensor networks, robotics, virtual world mashups, GPS, geocoding, web technologies and services (SOA)

4. SGs developed and tested with WP2 partners

5. Key Objectives of WP2 • To provide a focal point for joint research projects and activities across the network partners • To facilitate defragmentation of the research and development communities by integrating the joint network research activities, with the aim of aggregating, systemizing and synthesizing existing research activities, creating new research and providing links with WP3 application areas. • Tocoordinate research and development activities so that the various partners’ activities are integrated and leading edge advances are diffused across the network and beyond into market products and services. • To facilitate joint research activities, identify gaps in current research and key new development challenges arising during the course of the network, facilitated by closer interconnection between research, applications and the market through engagement of the clusters, user groups and other network stakeholders. • To develop Guidelines and Best Practices documentation (a Common Framework) for SG Development aimed at providing developers with information about how to approach the design and development of a SG. The document will address all the multiple disciplines involved in SG, thus providing and promoting a complete and interdisciplinary overall view of the field.

6. Technical Committees (TCs)

8. Overview of TC Relationship

9. Overview of TC Relationship

10. Roadmap Bremen, 19-21 Sept 2011

11. Objectives of Year 1: Foundation • Setting a strong foundation on the technical areas • The common and general research questions: • What is the state of the art of the technical areas with regards to their roles in the design, development and deployment of SG for learning? • What are the hot topics within the area based on existing research and prediction on future works? • What are the research gaps based on the hot topics? • What are the fragmentation issues?

12. Achievement: Synthesizing Outcomes • Establishing foundation • Extracted hot topics, research gaps and potential solutions • Extracted fragmentation issues within the technical areas and potential solutions • Documented in the TC Research Field Reports (D2.1) and summarized in the TC Activity Report (MS3) • This will lead to a common framework to be extracted in YEAR 2 • Best practices within the technical areas with regards to the design, development, evaluation and deployment of serious games for learning • Tools including game engines, software, deployment platforms that contribute towards a successful design, development, evaluation and deployment of serious games for learning • The ontology/taxonomy of the co-relationship between the technical areas and the application areas • Key research gaps and future research and development areas .

13. Presentation and Discussion of D2.1 • Presentations from the 9 TCs • Synthesizing findings • Hot topics and research gaps • Fragmentation issues

14. WP 2: T2.1 Serious Game Mechanics Dr Theo Lim Heriot-Watt University, UK

15. T2.1: Focus & Contributors Serious Game Mechanics • Dimensioning game mechanics (pedagogy workshop + survey) • Towards an ontological framework • Pedagogy-Game mapping • Unifying the dimensions

16. T2.1: Dimensioning the game mechanics conundrum • Deconstruct the Dialectic of pedagogy (learning mechanisms) for SGs. • Deconstructing SGs to better understand the boundaries of game rules and their relationships with learning mechanisms. • Player motives and its relationship towards learning outcomes and the gaming experience. Hypothesis SG design patterns must encompass these three dimensions.

17. T2.1: Deconstructing Game Mechanics Game Mechanics Components or features Gameplay Game Attributes Game rules Governed by Governed by Governed by Interaction Feedback Storyline Challenge Task Activities CONTEXT What you want players to experience, to learn, to gain knowledge on, to understand. CONTENT Data used, facts, presentation and representation methods, actions, features, etc.

18. T2.1: Ontology Framework: Bridging fragmentation

19. T2.1: Pedagogy-Game Mechanics Mapping Incorporating Modified Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy Thinking Skill Orders Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl(2001)

20. T2.1 Case Study: Re:Mission • Re:Mission is a 3rd person shooter developed for PC by HopeLab • Patients take on the role of a medical nanobot, named "Roxxi". • 375 adolescents and young adults (AYA) underwent treatment for various forms of cancer. • Study showed improved key behavioural and psychological factors associated with successful cancer treatment. http://www.re-mission.net/

21. T2.1 Case Study: Re:Mission

22. T2.1 Re:Mission: Game play Loop Start Game Game Mechanics Learning Mechanics Level Select/Briefing Instructional Cutscene/Story Cascading Information Tutorial Play level/ Tutorial Guidance Movement Elimination Action/Task Defeat Enemies Time Pressure Repetition Behavioural momentum Selecting/Collecting Collect items Motivation Activate Tabs Protégé Effects Responsibility Defeat Boss Feedback Mission Complete/Stats Feedback

23. T2.1: Hot topics - Unification the dimensions • Researchers: • How engaging are SGs for Engaged Learning Experiences to which the experience is active not passive? • What theoretical models can be used as references for SG mechanics? • What constitutes a pedagogical approach/construct/pattern and how are these related to game mechanics to enable a rich game-learning experience? • Developer / Educator: • What key features should the product/course • have for effective learning, and why? • Which are the essential mechanics • to ensure a good learning outcome? • Users: • What are the interaction and feedback mechanisms? • How is my learning outcome measured, evaluated and justified?

24. Conclusions T2.1: SG Mechanics and DoW • Task-based game methodologies and applications (WP3) • Non-Player Characters (NPC) and synthetic character autonomous behaviours (T2.2) • Physiological and psycho-physiological assessment and evaluation (T2.7, T2.9) • Ontological framework (T2.5, T2.6, T2.8) • Methods and rationales for training and learning (WP3, WP5, T2.2 - T2.9) • Technologies to advance gaming and simulation (T2.3, T2.4)

25. T2.1 Toolkit - SG OntoBloX Ontology Black Box

26. TC 2.2: Personalization and Artificial Intelligence INESC-ID

27. Personalization and Artificial Intelligence

28. Agenda • Overview • Objectives • Members • First Year Activity • Main findings • Results • Hot topics • Research gaps • Conclusions

29. Overview • Objectives • Aggregate and synthesize research activities in Artificial Intelligence and Personalization in order to accommodate player’s differences regarding learning styles, difficulties, needs and learning rates • State of the art of AI for Serious Games • Identify opportunities for AI in Serious Game

30. Overview • Members • TC Leaders: Ana Paiva, Rui Prada, António Brisson Gonçalo Pereira (INESC-ID) • Main TC Collaborators: • CédricSanza (UPS) , • Francesco Bellotti (UNIGE), • Frank Dignum (UU), • Jean-Pierre Jessel (UPS), Manuel Fradinho (CYNTELIX), • Margarida Romero (ESADE), • Michael Kickmeier-Rust (TUGRAZ), • Milos Kravcik (RWTH), • MireiaUsart (ESADE), • Pablo Moreno-Ger (UCM), • Rafael Bidarra (TUDelft), • Ricardo Lopes (TUDelft), • WimWestera (OUNL)

31. First Year Activity Collaborators identification- the identification of all the GALA partners that are available to contribute to this task. Expertise Assessment – the identification of the collaborators expertise coverage of topics related with the TC aim. Assessment Cycle – the cyclic process of structuring the AI & Personalization topics of interest for our TC and report the best practices.

32. Assessment Cycle

33. Assessment Cycles • Techniques categorization influenced by • Common AI and games research fields distributions used in conferences and literature. • TC’s collaborators expertise distribution. • Techniques assessment and wiki update • Work distribution • 1 collaborator responsible for each category • Interested collaborators help and add content to each responsible • Wiki template for technique assessment • Category • Sub-Category • Relevant Publications • Assessed Techniques • Contributions to SG • Game Examples • Techniques to be assessed within a category

34. Categories Work Distribution

35. Main Findings: Results

36. Main Findings: Hot Topics

37. Main Findings: Hot Topics

38. Main Findings: Hot Topics

39. Main Findings: Research Gaps • In Academia • Publications of serious games projects rather focus on serious goals analysis than on implementation details • Commercial survey • Resistance to reveal technical elements • Focus on cheap and straightforward AI solutions rather than state of the art technology development

40. Conclusions • Collaboration within this task produced a large and detailed AI assessment disseminated in the wiki. • Focus shift for general digital game technology that present opportunities for SGs. • When in lack of a SG example for a specific technique open a discussion about its possible contribution to SGs • Next steps • Restart the assessment cycle in order to improve the categorization • Include more simple and common AI techniques • Crosslinks assessment

41. WP2: TC 2.3 –Architecture Thomas Geijtenbeek Utrecht University, Netherlands

42. Video - Architecture

43. Overview • From the D.o.W., the areas covered by TC 2.3 Architecture are: • Game engines and graphics engines • Support for social networking • Collaborative gaming: multiplayer and massive multiplayer • Tracking & Integration • Networking and distributed computing architectures

44. TC 2.3 Output • Four white papers • Game engines • Social networking • Multiplayer games • Tracking & Integration • Contents of the white papers • State-of-the-art outline • Case studies • Best practises • Lessons learned • Future directions

45. Main Findings: Outlining descriptors What descriptors are useful for selecting serious games engines? • Target group: game producers • Tool for game engine selection • Game engine typology • Petridis et al. 2010 • List of game engine feature typology

46. Main Findings: Fragmentation Issues • No standards for: • SG development • Integration with learning management systems • Assessment • There is a need for development of standards and interoperability

47. TC 2.3 Architecture – Conclusions • White papers targeted at game producers • Game engines • Social networks • Multiplayer games • Tracking & Integration • Next steps • Complete the Literature review • Review game engine typology • Co-operation with other TCs • TC 2.1 – Game Mechanics • TC 2.2 – Personalization (tracking) • TC 2.6 – Assessment (tracking and integration) • TC 2.7 – Psychology (tracking and pedagogy) • TC 2.8 – Pedagogy (game engine selection) • Europe-wide Questionnaire (European game producers) • Focus on fewer, exemplary game engines

48. TC2.4: Human Computer Interface JP Jessel UPS

49. Video - HCI

50. Agenda • Overview • Introduction • Objectives of TC • Main findings • Hot topics • Research gaps and Fragmentation • Fragmentation issues • Conclusions