Towards understanding how to design for social play in exertion games

Players invest significant physical effort when playing exertion games. In addition to improving physical health, exertion games are also believed to facilitate social play amongst players. Despite these advantages, our understanding of how to design these games to successfully support social play is limited. In this paper, we present a qualitative analysis of player data from “Table Tennis for Three”, a mediated exertion game for three players, that contributes to our understanding of how the design of an exertion game facilitates social play. We use the concept of “space” to frame our findings in order to create themes that can be used to analyze existing and to design future exertion games. We hope our work can support researchers gain an understanding of this exciting new field, while also help designers utilize the many benefits of exertion games.     

Gaming on the move: urban experience as a new paradigm for mobile pervasive game design

In this paper, we describe a pervasive treasure hunting game: “Team exploration” based on the Transhumance mobile ad-hoc network platform. The testers of this game came up with innovative suggestions that combined the technical features of the platform with their urban experience. They pointed to specific aspects of urban mobility that influence pervasive game design and contribute to the user’s pleasure. These tests show that the notion of space (geometrical organization) is not enough to characterize and organize pervasive games and that four main anthropological features have to be taken into consideration: the concrete city (physical organization), the imaginary city (narratives), the functional city (services) and the city events. The multilayered urban experience is also defined by our schedules (including repetitive or exceptional events) and by our assessment of other users (the distance or proximity as they are felt). These diverse aspects and qualifications of urban experience provide an interesting framework for the understanding of pervasive game experimentations, as well as point to new directions in pervasive game design. Our paper advocates that further anthropological observations are part of the pervasive game design methodology.     

Dynamic Bayesian approach for detecting cheats in multi-player online games

Massively multi-player games hold a huge market in the digital entertainment industry. Companies invest heavily in game developments since a successful online game can attract millions of users, and this translates to a huge investment payoff. However, multi-player online games are also subjected to various forms of “hacks” and “cheats”. Hackers can alter the graphic rendering to reveal information otherwise be hidden in a normal game, or cheaters can use software robots to play the game automatically and thus gain an unfair advantage. To overcome these problems, some popular online games release software patches constantly to block “known” hacks or incorporate anti-cheating software to detect “known” cheats. This not only creates deployment difficulty but new cheats will still be able to breach the normal game logic until software patches or updates of the anti-cheating software are available. Moreover, the anti-cheating software themselves are also vulnerable to hacks. In this paper, we propose a “scalable” and “efficient” method to detect whether a player is cheating or not. The methodology is based on the dynamic Bayesian network approach. The detection framework relies solely on the game states and runs in the game server only. Therefore, it is invulnerable to hacks and it is a much more deployable solution. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we have implemented a prototype multi-player game system to detect whether a player is using any “aiming robot” for cheating or not. Experiments show that the proposed method can effectively detect cheaters on a first-person shooter game with extremely low false positive rate. We believe the proposed methodology and the prototype system provide a first step toward a systematic study of cheating detection and security research in the area of online multi-player games.     

Designing manipulative technologies for children with different abilities

We present a design approach for manipulative technologies that consider “user diversity” as a main lever for design. Different dimensions of “diversity” are considered, e.g., the users' age, abilities, culture, cultural background, and alphabetization. These dimensions drive the development of a user-centered design process for manipulative technologies for learning and play environments. In particular, we explore the possibility of allowing young children to develop and interact with virtual/physical worlds by manipulating physical objects in different contexts, like the classroom, the hospital, or the playground. In our scenarios, we consider children with different abilities (fully able, physically impaired, or with cognitive delays), in different cultures (Denmark, Tanzania, and Italy), and with a different level of alphabetization. The needs and expectations of such heterogeneous user-groups are taken into account through a user-centered design process to define a concept of tangible media for collaborative and distributed edutainment environments. The concept is implemented as a set of building blocks called I-Blocks with individual processing and communication power. Using the I-Blocks system, children can do “programming by building,” and thereby construct interacting artefacts in an intuitive manner without the need to learn and use traditional programming languages. Here, we describe in detail the technology of I-Blocks and discuss lessons learned from “designing for diversity.”     

Habits make smartphone use more pervasive

Examining several sources of data on smartphone use, this paper presents evidence for the popular conjecture that mobile devices are “habit-forming.” The form of habits we identified is called a checking habit: brief, repetitive inspection of dynamic content quickly accessible on the device. We describe findings on kinds and frequencies of checking behaviors in three studies. We found that checking habits occasionally spur users to do other things with the device and may increase usage overall. Data from a controlled field experiment show that checking behaviors emerge and are reinforced by informational “rewards” that are very quickly accessible. Qualitative data suggest that although repetitive habitual use is frequent, it is experienced more as an annoyance than an addiction. We conclude that supporting habit-formation is an opportunity for making smartphones more “personal” and “pervasive.”     

Is presence a technology issue? Some insights from cognitive sciences

The International Society of Presence Research, defines “presence” (a shortened version of the term “telepresence”) as a “psychological state in which even though part or all of an individual’s current experience is generated by and/or filtered through human-made technology, part or all of the individual’s perception fails to accurately acknowledge the role of the technology in the experience” (ISPR 2000, The concept of presence: explication statement. Accessed 15 Jan 2009). In this article, we will draw on the recent outcomes of cognitive sciences to offer a broader definition of presence, not related to technology only. Specifically, presence is described here as a core neuropsychological phenomenon whose goal is to produce a sense of agency and control: subjects are “present” if they are able to enact in an external world their intentions. This framework suggests that any environment, virtual or real, does not provide undifferentiated information, ready-made objects equal for everyone. It offers different opportunities and produces presence according to its ability in supporting the users and their intentions. The possible consequences of this approach for the development of presence-inducing virtual environments are also discussed.     

An approach to solution uniqueness in game problems

A new concept of strong conflict equilibrium is proposed that supplements the well-known fundamental system of conflict equilibria and considerably increases the possibility of finding a unique strongest equilibrium (solution) in any game problem. The efficiency of this new equilibrium is illustrated by static and dynamic game problems. This work was carried out under the program “Basic foundations of information technologies and systems” of the Russian Academy of Science (Project No. 1–3). Translated from Kibernetika i Sistemnyi Analiz, No. 2, pp. 116–127, March–April 2009.     

Dynamics of Urban Centre and Concepts of Symmetry: Centroid and Weighted Mean

The city is a kind of complex system being capable of auto-organization of its programs and adapts a principle of economy in its form generating process. A new concept of dynamic centre in urban system, called “the programmatic moving centre”, can be used to represent the successive appearances of various programs based on collective facilities and their potential values. The absolute central point is substituted by a magnetic field composed of several interactions among the collective facilities and also by the changing value of programs through time. The center moves continually into this interactive field. Consequently, we introduce mathematical methods of analysis such as “the centroid” and “the weighted mean” to calculate and visualize the dynamics of the urban centre. These methods heavily depend upon symmetry. We will describe and establish the moving centre from a point of view of symmetric optimization that answers the question of the evolution and successive equilibrium of the city. In order to explain and represent dynamic transformations in urban area, we tested this programmatic moving center in unstable and new urban environments such as agglomeration areas around Lausanne in Switzerland.     

Some considerations of user interface switching to support the weaker user

We have already proposed a new concept of “universal multimedia access” intended to narrow the digital divide by providing appropriate multimedia expressions according to users’ (mental and physical) abilities, computer facilities, and network environments. In this article, we redefine the switching functions for our new concept of universal design-based multimedia access, and discuss its user interface for supporting users in accordance with their abilities, computer facilities, and network environments.     

How gamers manage aggression: Situating skills in collaborative computer games

In the discussion on what players learn from digital games, there are two major camps in clear opposition to each other. As one side picks up on negative elements found in games the other side focuses on positive aspects. While the agendas differ, the basic arguments still depart from a shared logic: that engagement in game-related activities fosters the development of behaviors that are transferred to situations beyond the game itself. With an approach informed by ethnomethodology, in this paper we probe the underlying logic connected to studies that argue for such general effects of games. By focusing on proficient gamers involved in the core game activity of boss encounters in a massively multiplayer online game, we examine the fundamentals that must be learnt and mastered for succeeding in an ordinary collaborative gaming practice where aggression is portrayed. On the basis of our empirical analysis we then address the contentious links between concrete instances of play and generic effects. As expected, the results point to “aggression” as well as “collaboration” as major components in the gaming experience, but our analysis also suggests that the practices associated with these notions are locally tied to the game. Based on these results, we propose that to reverse this relationship and claim that game environments foster collaboration or aggression in general first assumes strong theoretical claims about the nature of cognition and learning, and second, risks confusing the debate with hyperbole.     

Sports over a Distance

Sport is a domain full of movement-based interactions. These interactions typically have positive health effects as well as an impact on social bonding. We have investigated ways in which computer augmented devices can lead to new sport experiences and explored opportunities to combine physical activities with remote social bonding. Three prototypes have been implemented which showcase movement-based interaction in sports. “Breakout for Two” allows geographically distant users to play a physically exhausting ball game together. “FlyGuy” gives users a hang-glide experience controllable through body movement. “Push’N’Pull” uses isometric exercise equipment over a network to encourage users to complete a cooperative game whilst performing intense muscular actions. A comparison of these applications shows that such movement-based interaction in a networked environment allows players in different locations to achieve a work out and also to socialize. Based on these projects, we conclude with practical design implications for future Exertion Interfaces.     

Blowtooth: a provocative pervasive game for smuggling virtual drugs through real airport security

In this paper, we describe a pervasive game, Blowtooth, in which players use their mobile phones to hide virtual drugs on nearby airline passengers in real airport check-in queues. After passing through airport security, the player must find and recover their drugs from the innocent bystanders, without them ever realising they were involved in the game. The game explores the nature of pervasive game playing in environments that are not, generally, regarded as playful or “fun”. This paper describes the game’s design and implementation as well as an evaluation conducted with participants in real airports. It explores the players’ reactions to the game through questionnaire responses and in-game activity. The technologies used in Blowtooth are, intentionally, simple in order for the enjoyment of the game to be reliant more on the physical environment rather than the enabling technologies. We conclude that situating pervasive games in unexpected and challenging environments, such as international airports, may provide interesting and unique gaming experiences for players. In addition, we argue that pervasive games benefit most from using the specific features and nature of interesting real-world environments rather than focusing on the enabling technologies.     

Management: a scientific discipline for humanity

This paper proposed a new concept of management: Managing According to Reason (MR). Since “manage” means to lead, plan, organize and control, and “reason” means to understand the law of the development of objects being managed, this new concept is an integration of the two elements of “managing” and “reason”. MR studies the contradictory relationship between “managing” and “reason”, and considers how such a relationship changes and develops. MR is an integration of the disciplines of management, philosophy, natural science, engineering technology, and social science. We believe the MR is a comprehensive scientific discipline that will greatly benefit humanity. Since “management” cannot work without power, while “reason” relies on science, MR is an integration of power and science. Power is MR’s assurance, and science is MR’s basis. We believe that MR will play a major role in twenty-first century.     

Learning long-term chess strategies from databases

We propose an approach to the learning of long-term plans for playing chess endgames. We assume that a computer-generated database for an endgame is available, such as the king and rook vs. king, or king and queen vs. king and rook endgame. For each position in the endgame, the database gives the “value” of the position in terms of the minimum number of moves needed by the stronger side to win given that both sides play optimally. We propose a method for automatically dividing the endgame into stages characterised by different objectives of play. For each stage of such a game plan, a stage-specific evaluation function is induced, to be used by minimax search when playing the endgame. We aim at learning playing strategies that give good insight into the principles of playing specific endgames. Games played by these strategies should resemble human expert’s play in achieving goals and subgoals reliably, but not necessarily as quickly as possible. Editors: Michael Bowling · Johannes Fürnkranz · Thore Graepel · Ron Musick     

Mobile phone-based mixed reality: the Snap2Play game

The ubiquity of camera phones provides a convenient platform to develop immersive mixed-reality games. In this paper we introduce such a game which is loosely based on the popular card game “Memory”, where players are asked to match a pair of identical cards among a set of overturned cards by revealing only two cards at a time. In our game, the players are asked to match a “digital card”, which corresponds to a scene in a virtual world, to a “physical card”, which is an image of a scene in the real world. The objective is to convey a mixed-reality sensation. Cards are matched with a scene identification engine which consists of multiple classifiers trained on previously collected images. We present our comprehensive overall game design, as well as implementation details and results. We also describe how we constructed our scene identification engine and its performance. Finally, we present an analysis of player surveys to gauge the potential market acceptance.

Capability-based distributed layout and its simulation based analyses

The capability-based distributed layout approach was first proposed by Baykasoğlu (Int J Prod Res 41, 2597–2618, 2003) for job shops which are working under highly volatile manufacturing environments in order to avoid high reconfiguration costs. It was argued that the capability-based distributed layout can also be a valid (or better) option for “classical functional layouts” which are generally operating under “high variety” and “low-stable demand”. In this paper first the capability-based distributed layout approach and related issues are reviewed and discussed afterwards the performance of “Capability Based Distributed Layout: (CB-DL)” is tested via extensive simulation experiments. After the simulation experiments, it is observed that capability-based distributed layout has a big potential and can also be considered as an alternative to classical process types of layouts.     

Some considerations on user interface switching functions for those weaker at IT

We have already proposed a new concept of “universal multimedia access” intended to narrow the digital divide by providing appropriate multimedia expressions according to users’ (mental and physical) abilities, computer facilities, and network environments. Previous work has evaluated some types of multimedia user interfaces according to users’ (mental and physical) abilities, computer facilities, and network environments. In this article, we discuss the user interface switching functions.     

Knaster-Tarski Revisited

The concept “complete partial order” is generalized to the concept “functionally complete partial order.” The correctness of a corresponding generalization of the Knaster-Tarski fixpoint theorem is proved. The theory is applied to yield a fixpoint mapping theorem. Received September 1997 / Accepted in revised form July 1998     

The word problem for visibly pushdown languages described by grammars

Visibly pushdown languages are an interesting subclass of deterministic context-free languages that can model nonregular properties of interest in program analysis. Such class properly contains typical classes of parenthesized languages such as “parenthesis”, “bracketed”, “balanced” and “input-driven” languages. It is closed under boolean operations and has decidable decision problems such as emptiness, inclusion and universality. We study the membership problem for visibly pushdown languages, and show that it can be solved in time linear in both the size of the input grammar and the length of the input word. The algorithm relies on a reduction to the reachability problem for game graphs. We also discuss the time complexity of the membership problem for the class of balanced languages which is the largest among those cited above. Besides the intrinsic theoretical interest, we further motivate our main result showing an application to the validation of XML documents against Schema and Document Type Definitions (DTDs). Work partially supported by funds for the research from MIUR 2006, grant “Metodi Formali per la verifica di sistemi chiusi ed aperti”, Università di Salerno. A preliminary version of this paper was published in the Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis (ATVA 2006), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4218, pp. 96–109, 2006.     

Calculation of the number of complete mappings for permutations

The computation time for counting “good” permutations rapidly grows as the length of permutations increases. The paper presents algorithms for enumeration of “good” permutations. Algorithms reducing twice the number of “good” permutations that should be counted are considered along with the algorithm employing the concept of weight of a “good” permutation. Translated from Kibernetika i Sistemnyi Analiz, No. 2, pp. 106–110, March–April, 2000.