What drives stickiness in location-based AR games? An examination of flow and satisfaction

Although location-based augmented reality (AR) games are popular in recent years, the motivates of the game’s stickiness still need further investigation. The main goal of this research is to investigate the antecedents of the game’s stickiness. This research develops a conceptual model and hypotheses based on the theory of flow and satisfaction to investigate the antecedents. An online questionnaire was developed and distributed on popular websites to collect data, and 1028 usable responses are collected from the players of Pokémon Go in Taiwan. The eleven hypotheses and control variables were validated by using structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques. Among the antecedents of the game’s stickiness in the model, the flow and satisfaction were found to have strong direct effects. The effects of control variables (age, gender, platform, game experience, and in-app expense) on the stickiness were significant as well. Moreover, telepresence, challenge, perceived control, curiosity, and concentration all have direct influences on the flow. Only perceived currency and responsiveness were found to have a direct impact on players’ satisfaction. The model demonstrated good explanatory power for flow and stickiness in the context of location-based AR game. The proposed model can provide insights to location-based AR game developers to design their games and marketing strategies.     

Empirical study on Game Transfer Phenomena in a location-based augmented reality game

Research on Game Transfer Phenomena (GTP) has demonstrated that playing video games can lead to re-experiencing images, sounds, tactile sensations, spontaneous thoughts and actions, sometimes triggered by physical objects/events associated with the game. Location-based augmented reality games posit interesting questions regarding GTP, particularly because they use physical locations, they overlay digital images in physical contexts and the gameplay shifts between the virtual and the physical world. This study aims to investigate the prevalence of GTP and the role of immersion, augmented reality and sound in a sample of English- (EnS) and Spanish- (SpS) speaking gamers of the game Pokémon Go (PoGo). A total of 1313 gamers (M_age?=?31.47) were recruited online. GTP was less common than in previous studies; however, 82.4% had experienced GTP at least once. The SpS showed higher prevalence of GTP and played more intensively. Automatic mental processes predominated in the EnS, while behaviours and actions were more common in the SpS. The absence or presence of video game features seems important for the way GTP manifests. For instance, tactile hallucinations were more prevalent, while sensations of self-motion were less reported. Playing with augmented reality (AR) and sounds showed significant correlations with various GTP types, but not with re-experiencing images from the game. More gamers who reported the sensation that Pokémon were physically present or looked for Pokémon outside the screen while playing, as connotations of immersion, had experienced GTP. Experiencing GTP while playing may be more common in location-based augmented reality games, compared to other games.     

Extending the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to explain online game playing among Malaysian undergraduate students

As the world moves into the web 2.0 era, everyone can connect virtually, and online game playing has become a trend. Online games are played over computer networks, usually over the Internet. Online games entail a number of advantages, such as the ability to connect to multiplayer games, although single-player online games are also rather popular. This exploratory study focused on modeling the determinants of actual use of online game playing. Many researchers have shown perceived enjoyment and flow experience as important drivers of actual use of online game playing. The theory of planned behavior has been used in this study. Data were collected from 1584 Universiti Sains Malaysia students with different backgrounds using a structured questionnaire. The findings show that perceived enjoyment has the strongest influence on actual use. Other variables found to influence actual usage include the level of perceived behavioral control, subjective norms, attitude, perceived enjoyment, and flow experience. Implications of this research for future researchers will also be discussed. We hope this research will increase researchers’ interest in further development in this sector and that the model will assist the games industry to identify factors that increase actual use by players.     

Playing mobile games for stress recovery purposes: A survey of Chinese adolescents

Mobile gaming has become a popular leisure activity for adolescent students in China. However, little is known about the use of mobile games while adolescents are stressed and exhausted. Drawing on the framework of recovery experiences, this study examined: (a) which mobile game cluster can elicit the highest recovery experiences for adolescent players? And (b) what drives them to play mobile games for stress recovery purposes? To answer these questions, a probability sample of 638 adolescents was recruited from 14 high schools in Shenzhen, China. Results showed that social mobile games characterized by high sociability but low control complexity had the highest potential to elicit recovery experiences, as it was positively related to relaxation, mastery, and control experience. The recovery dimension of psychological detachment and relaxation were found positively related to the use of mobile games for stress recovery purposes, whereas mastery and control experiences were not. Among all five adolescent stressors, only peer pressure was found positively correlated with the use of mobile games while adolescents were stressed and exhausted. Theoretical implications for understanding the relationships among four recovery dimensions and practical implications for promoting the positive effects of mobile gaming for adolescent players were discussed.     

Did location-based games motivate players to socialize during COVID-19?

Location-based games (LBGs) are typically played outdoors, as moving in the game is done by moving in the real world. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, people were advised and even forced by governments to stay home and avoid social contact to slow down the spreading of the virus. The major LBG developers reacted by making in-game adjustments that allow playing from home, while still maintaining some incentives for players to go outdoors and socialise. For investigating factors influencing intention to play LBGs socially during the on-going pandemic, we collected cross-sectional survey data (N = 855) from Finnish players of the most popular LBG, Pokémon GO. The results showed that perceived severity of the pandemic and a positive attitude towards both governmental measures and in-game changes for combatting COVID-19 predicted intention to reduce social playing. Fear of missing out and deficient self-regulation increased playing intensity, which in turn negatively correlated with the intention to reduce social playing. Our findings demonstrate the influence that LBGs can have on human behaviour even during global crises such as COVID-19. As such, LBGs can be considered a resource in designing interventions for influencing movement at a population level.     

LARPA: A learning automata‐based resource provisioning approach for massively multiplayer online games in cloud environments

Nowadays, with the development of communication systems, massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) have become very popular. In these games, the players all over the world dynamically interact with each other by sending play actions such as shootings, movements, or chatting in the form of MMOG sessions in real time through a large‐scale distributed environment. Leveraging affordable cloud computing to host such services is a widely investigated issue. It is because the arrival rate of players to the game environment has to make fluctuations, and the players expect services to be always available with an acceptable quality of service (QoS), especially in terms of the response time. Therefore, the dynamic provisioning of resources in order to deal with fluctuating demands due to variability in the arrival rate of players of the MMOG services is highly recommended. In this paper, we propose a learning‐based resource provisioning approach for MMOG services that is based on the combination of the autonomic computing paradigm and learning automata (LA). The remarkable performance of the proposed approach in terms of response time, cost, and allocated virtual machines (VMs) is assessed through simulation and comparison with the existing approaches.     

The corporeal turn: at the intersection of rhetoric,bodies, and video games

Through a critical literature review, this article examines the trend in game studies toward studying bodies, both of players and of characters, in communication scholarship. Specifically, first I discuss how the field of rhetoric has gradually become more familiar with studying games. Second, I map rhetorical studies’ involvement in materialism, specifically through the investigation of bodies. Third, I offer an extensive, though not exhaustive, review of how game studies has hitherto approached research regarding bodies. The article concludes by forecasting the future of game bodies and game studies with an eye toward Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) gaming, augmented reality, and virtual reality. This article argues that instead of creating a single, unifying theory of gaming bodies, games scholars should identify themes of bodies in games.     

基于J2ME智能手机的贪吃蛇游戏开发

随着智能手机的逐步普及,手机游戏也日益流行起来.本文采用流行的J2ME手机应用开发平台,利用J2ME的移动开发MIDP架构,设计和开发了一款贪吃蛇游戏,并详细描述其开发过程.     

融媒体时代——乙女游戏中的女性主义和沉浸式传播研究

市场中针对女性用户玩家的游戏都有其特殊性,在视觉和听觉等直接感官方面、游戏中NPC的设置方面、游戏的情节方面以及主题游戏里面所嵌套的小游戏方面,都与一般性的手机游戏有所不同。自2017年《恋与制作人》为代表的乙女游戏风靡中国成为现象级事件之后,女性向手游不断发展——数量大幅度提升,种类多样化,游戏产品的设计流程也逐渐完善,但总体来说在理论研究方面,无论是针对此现象级事件背后所蕴含的社会因素的研究还是针对女性玩家情感心理活动的研究都相对较少,多数研究还是从游戏产业发展的角度出发,因此旨在从女性主义发展的角度出发,去研究针对女性用户玩家的游戏中所蕴含的文化修辞。除此之外,以人为核心的“沉浸式传播”贯穿生活中的方方面面,在女性手游中也将其充分体现。传播实践中,“沉浸”与“场景”常常相辅相成,在乙女游戏中,通过不同游戏场景、游戏人物的设置,玩家在玩游戏的过程中也在有意识或者无意识地接受着游戏中传递出来的价值观念和文化内容。     

Automatic generation of adaptive, educational and multimedia computer games

Education accompanies us throughout our whole life. Many innovations in education have originated from modern technologies. However, the majority of learners—especially children or teenagers—find studying from electronic educational sources and web-based information systems less exciting than playing today’s popular computer games that, conversely, lack signs of education. In this paper, we describe an innovative concept of generating three- dimensional interactive multimedia educational games that combine the excitement and looks of popular computer games with the educational potential of e-learning, and the concept’s realization by a software system called S.M.I.L.E.: Smart Multipurpose Interactive Learning Environment. One of its key features is the automatic generation of games based on a model created by teachers without needing them to be familiar with programming or game design. Moreover, we consider various learners’ abilities and features that enable different users (including handicapped) to learn effectively by playing educational games easily created by teachers. We follow the idea that everyone needs access to quality education and are convinced that by enabling cooperative education not just among learners, but also between handicapped and able-bodied ones, we bring the humane dimension into education.     

Creating awareness on bullying and cyberbullying among young people: Validating the effectiveness and design of the serious game Conectado

Serious games have proven to be educational tools with numerous positive effects, capable of promoting learning, changing behavior, or improving training and skills development, among other effects. Serious games can also be applied to address and prevent social problems. This study describes the experiments and analyses we have carried out to test the effectiveness of Conectado, a serious game created to prevent bullying and cyberbullying in schools by increasing awareness of the problem in players. We have used the results from these experiments to answer different research questions regarding the game’s acceptance and effectiveness, validating several characteristics of the game design. We have also studied the influence of players’ characteristics on the effect of the game, as well as the relationship between the in-game behaviors of players and their degree of awareness. We have verified a positive effect of the game in terms of an increase of awareness regarding bullying and cyberbullying for all target users, and have provided further insight into how this increase is related to different players’ characteristics and behaviors.     

Augmentation and displacement effects of multiplayer social network games: Examining the roles of social interactions and co-players’ identities

The academic debate on whether gameplay has a positive or negative effect on players’ psychosocial well-being has yet to cease. To resolve this debate, this study focuses on multiplayer social network games (MSNGs), the affordances of which may lead to the coexistence of augmentation and displacement effects. To unpack the conditions under which gameplay has a positive or negative relationship with psychological well-being, this study distinguishes between co-player interaction modes (in-game social interactions vs. social media interactions) and between co-players’ identity types (offline friends/acquaintances vs. guild members). An online survey was conducted with 300 gamers in China. The results revealed that more in-game interaction with co-players was positively associated with players’ loneliness, whereas more social media interaction with co-players was negatively related to players’ loneliness, regardless of the co-players’ identities. However, players who played with offline friends/acquaintances did engage in more social interactions than those who played with guild members, especially social media interactions. Moreover, the effect of playing with friends/acquaintances or guild members on players’ loneliness was fully mediated by in-game social interactions and social media interactions. That is, the psychosocial influence of gameplay heavily depends on the exact social interactions that players are involved in rather than on general time spent in games, and the augmentation and displacement effects possibly coincide within one game.     

Do people play MMORPGs for extrinsic or intrinsic rewards?

Several frameworks have been proposed to explain the motivations for playing Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG). However, no unified view as to whether people play MMORPGs for extrinsic or intrinsic rewards has been proposed in the existing literature. Thus, this study drew upon flow theory, Veblen’s Leisure Class theory, and Yee’s online gaming motivations framework to investigate the effects of extrinsic and intrinsic motivations on the gamer loyalty and gaming behaviors of Turkish MMORPG players. A path model was proposed to articulate the aforementioned relationships. The model showed that gamer loyalty could be predicted by status seeking (extrinsic motivation) and two facets of flow (merging of actions and awareness, and autotelic experience; intrinsic motivation). Furthermore, the game levels reached while playing MMORPGs were affected both by status seeking (extrinsic motivation) and high control of the game (intrinsic motivation). The results also demonstrated that participants with higher social motivation spent more of their daily time on MMORPGs, and players who reported higher levels of autotelic experience spent more money on MMORPGs.     

An RFID-enabled middleware architecture for urban gaming

Due to the rapid acceptance of mobile devices and localisation technologies like global positioning system (GPS) in every day life, the fascination in utilising such technologies for entertainment is also increasing. The concept of urban gaming employs localisation technology to incorporate player's position into the game concept, generating a truly pervasive game experience. Urban gaming has immense potential and is often cited by denizens as the next gaming behemoth, however it is somewhat hampered by the existing technologies that it employs. GPS is the more commonly used technology in this genre; however it displays some serious limitations, especially in urban areas. This research investigates the feasibility of incorporating radio frequency identification (RFID) as an alternate technology in location-based urban gaming. RFID is an emerging and increasingly popular technology, whose versatile capabilities offer a wide range of possible uses. This article documents a middleware RFID-enabled location-based gaming prototype.     

Turkish validation of the Game Transfer Phenomena Scale (GTPS): Measuring altered perceptions,automatic mental processes and actions and behaviours associated with playing video games

Studies on Game Transfer Phenomena (GTP) have demonstrated that experiencing altered sensorial perceptions, automatic thoughts and behaviours after playing video games are relatively common phenomena. The aim of this paper is twofold: (i) to validate the Turkish version of the GTP scale (GTPS), and (ii) to examine the prevalence and the relation between the various dimensions of GTP (e.g., visual perceptions, thoughts, behaviours) and video game players’ individual characteristics (e.g., demographics, gaming habits). A total of 954 frequent players were recruited online. Independently of the different samples used in the original validation of the GTPS and the current study, the findings obtained via confirmatory factor analysis showed that the GTPS-Turkish is reliable and valid and proved to be adequate for measuring GTP. A total of 99% of the players in the sample had experienced some type of GTP. Moreover, the correlational, univariate and multivariate analyses showed associations between various video game player characteristics and GTP. The most remarkable finding was that the prevalence of GTP was higher among minors than adults.     

A traffic characterization of popular on-line games

This paper describes the results of the first comprehensive analysis of a range of popular on-line, multiplayer, game servers. The results show that the traffic behavior of these servers is highly predictable and can be attributed to the fact that current game designs target the saturation of the narrowest, last-mile link. Specifically, in order to maximize the interactivity of the game itself and to provide relatively uniform experiences between players playing over different network speeds, on-line games typically fix their usage requirements in such a way as to saturate the network link of their lowest speed players. While the traffic observed is highly predictable, the traces also indicate that these on-line games provide significant challenges to current network infrastructure. As a result of synchronous game logic requiring an extreme amount of interactivity, a close look at the trace reveals the presence of large, highly periodic, bursts of small packets. With such stringent demands on interactivity, routers must be designed with enough capacity to quickly route such bursts without delay.     

Causes of State Hostility and Enjoyment in Player Versus Player and Player Versus Environment Video Games

Video games have been under scholarly study since the 1980s, but few studies have blended the research areas of video games and aggression and video game enjoyment. This article seeks to determine how certain game play factors affect hostility, enjoyment, and the relationship between the 2 variables. A total of 289 students played games in player‐versus‐player (PvP) and player‐versus‐environment (PvE) situations. Findings indicate that outcome, competitive situation, and genre interact in their influence on state hostility and enjoyment. Results suggest that in some cases, game players are able to enjoy games despite negative experiences, such as losing, but players in PvP situations experience enjoyment‐reducing levels of hostility, contrary to P. Vorderer et al.'s (2004) complex entertainment model.     

A Cloudlet-Assisted Multiplayer Cloud Gaming System

The unstable network connectivity is the bottleneck of providing Gaming as a service (GaaS) for mobile devices. Therefore, the most critical technical challenge is to compress and transmit the real-time gaming video, so that during the gaming session, the expected server transmission rate over the bandwidth-limited mobile network can be minimized, while satisfying the quality of experience for the players. Inspired by the idea of peer-to-peer sharing between multiple players, we propose a cloudlet-assisted multiplayer cloud gaming system, in which the mobile devices are connected to the cloud server for real-time interactive game videos, while sharing the received video frames with their peers via an ad hoc cloudlet. Experimental results show that expected server transmission rate can be significantly reduced compared to the conventional video encoding schemes for cloud games.     

Playing into the wild: A gesture-based interface for gaming in public spaces

Gestural-based interfaces have become one of the fundamental technologies that can determine the success of new computer games. In fact, computer games today offer interaction paradigms that go well beyond the use of remote controls, letting players directly perform exchanges with the objects and characters that compose the virtual worlds that are displayed in front of them. To perform such exchanges, new algorithms and technologies have been devised which include advanced visual recognition schemes, new video cameras and accelerometer sensors. At the same time, other important trends are also quietly emerging in the same domain: game designers, in fact, are slowly shifting their attention out of the walls of gaming fanatics homes, broadening their interests to computer games that can be played in public spaces, as exhibitions and museums. However, to the best of our knowledge, only a very limited amount of research experiences have taken into account the problem of producing computer games, based on gesture-based interfaces that well suit such settings. Hence, in this paper we address the problem of differentiating the design of a gesture-based interface for a console from the problem of designing it for a public space setting. Moreover, we will show that within a public space, it is possible to narrow down the vision algorithms that can well support the recognition of complex actions, whereas solely relying on a simple webcam. In particular, we will describe the design and implementation of an interface that well suits public immersive scenarios, since it is based on a simple and efficient set of algorithms which, combined with the intelligence given by the knowledge of the context of where a game is played, leads to a fast and robust interpretation of hand gestures. To witness this last aspect, we will report on the results obtained from the deployment of a computer game we specifically developed for public spaces, termed Tortellino X-Perience, which has been enjoyed by hundreds of visitors at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.