scholarly journals Evaluating coursework in computer games degrees: Students and assessors as virtual characters

2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Ip ◽  
Martin Capey ◽  
Andrew Baker ◽  
John Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Student Performance ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Assessment Framework ◽  
Virtual Characters ◽  
Assessment Techniques ◽  
Critical Insight ◽  
Assessment Procedures ◽  
Depth Interviews

<span>This paper explores a relatively new area in the design and development of assessment procedures for the evaluation of coursework and student performance on computer and video games degrees. Emphasis is placed on an assessment which involves the development of and interaction in a virtual world, where lecturers and students are represented as virtual characters. The establishment of a new assessment framework for games degrees is outlined, followed by the findings from in depth interviews with students and lecturers concerning its implementation. The results provide a self reflective but critical insight on how existing assessment techniques may be adapted for the growing demands and popularity of games courses, as well as issues surrounding the appraisal of undergraduate work within virtual environments. Recommendations are provided on how similar assessments may be conducted in the future.</span>

scholarly journals Association of Game Events with Facial Animations of Computer-Controlled Virtual Characters Based on Probabilistic Human Reaction Modeling

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (16) ◽  
pp. 5636
Author(s):  
Wafaa Alsaggaf ◽  
Georgios Tsaramirsis ◽  
Norah Al-Malki ◽  
Fazal Qudus Khan ◽  
Miadah Almasry ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expression ◽  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
Virtual Agents ◽  
Board Game ◽  
Virtual Character ◽  
Virtual Characters ◽  
Computer Controlled ◽  
Human Player

Computer-controlled virtual characters are essential parts of most virtual environments and especially computer games. Interaction between these virtual agents and human players has a direct impact on the believability of and immersion in the application. The facial animations of these characters are a key part of these interactions. The player expects the elements of the virtual world to act in a similar manner to the real world. For example, in a board game, if the human player wins, he/she would expect the computer-controlled character to be sad. However, the reactions, more specifically, the facial expressions of virtual characters in most games are not linked with the game events. Instead, they have pre-programmed or random behaviors without any understanding of what is really happening in the game. In this paper, we propose a virtual character facial expression probabilistic decision model that will determine when various facial animations should be played. The model was developed by studying the facial expressions of human players while playing a computer videogame that was also developed as part of this research. The model is represented in the form of trees with 15 extracted game events as roots and 10 associated animations of facial expressions with their corresponding probability of occurrence. Results indicated that only 1 out of 15 game events had a probability of producing an unexpected facial expression. It was found that the “win, lose, tie” game events have more dominant associations with the facial expressions than the rest of game events, followed by “surprise” game events that occurred rarely, and finally, the “damage dealing” events.

scholarly journals 3D Face Synthesis Driven by Personality Impression

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 1707-1714
Author(s):  
Yining Lang ◽  
Wei Liang ◽  
Yujia Wang ◽  
Lap-Fai Yu
Keyword(s):  
Neural Networks ◽  
Convolutional Neural Networks ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Second Step ◽  
Deep Convolutional Neural Networks ◽  
Virtual Characters ◽  
3D Face ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Face Synthesis

Synthesizing 3D faces that give certain personality impressions is commonly needed in computer games, animations, and virtual world applications for producing realistic virtual characters. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to synthesize 3D faces based on personality impression for creating virtual characters. Our approach consists of two major steps. In the first step, we train classifiers using deep convolutional neural networks on a dataset of images with personality impression annotations, which are capable of predicting the personality impression of a face. In the second step, given a 3D face and a desired personality impression type as user inputs, our approach optimizes the facial details against the trained classifiers, so as to synthesize a face which gives the desired personality impression. We demonstrate our approach for synthesizing 3D faces giving desired personality impressions on a variety of 3D face models. Perceptual studies show that the perceived personality impressions of the synthesized faces agree with the target personality impressions specified for synthesizing the faces.

Learned Behavior

2016 ◽  
pp. 94-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacquelyne Forgette ◽  
Michael Katchabaw
Keyword(s):  
Reinforcement Learning ◽  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Environment ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Learning System ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Virtual Characters ◽  
Learned Behavior ◽  
The World ◽  
Over Time

A key challenge in programming virtual environments is to produce virtual characters that are autonomous and capable of action selections that appear believable. In this chapter, motivations are used as a basis for learning using reinforcements. With motives driving the decisions of characters, their actions will appear less structured and repetitious, and more human in nature. This will also allow developers to easily create virtual characters with specific motivations, based mostly on their narrative purposes or roles in the virtual world. With minimum and maximum desirable motive values, the characters use reinforcement learning to drive action selection to maximize their rewards across all motives. Experimental results show that a character can learn to satisfy as many as four motives, even with significantly delayed rewards, and motive changes that are caused by other characters in the world. While the actions tested are simple in nature, they show the potential of a more complicated motivation driven reinforcement learning system. The developer need only define a character's motivations, and the character will learn to act realistically over time in the virtual environment.

WHY PEOPLE JOIN VIRTUAL WORLDS OF COMPUTER GAMES? QUALITATIVE RESEARCH AMONGST POLISH USERS

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Hofman-Kohlmeyer
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Second Life ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Target Market ◽  
The World ◽  
Game Environment ◽  
Game Developers ◽  
Depth Interviews

Introduction: When virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life or World of Warcraft) became immensely popular, with millions of active users around the world, real life companies started to utilize them for business purposes, such as testing new products or organizing various events. However, the activities of companies can only be successful if a sufficient number of players are engaged in virtual worlds. Objectives: The present paper is aimed to investigate individual players’ motives for joining virtual worlds of computer games. Methods: The author carried out 22 in-depth interviews amongst polish players (20 were finally accepted) of three virtual worlds: The Sims, Second Life and Euro Track Simulator 2. Interviews were carried out from August 21, 2018 to December 5, 2018. Results: Respondents most frequently mentioned consecutively: curiosity (caused by TV series, TV programme, newspaper or advertisement), interact with others, interest in the topic of a game, enjoyment from playing, opportunity to see or do things unattainable in real life, exploring the virtual world, spending free time. With reference to the gratification paradigm, individual motivations were divided into: experiential (16 motives), functional (6 motives), social (3 motives). From the perspective of marketing managers, understanding the motivations of players allows them to describe the target market of their promotional activities inside the game environment. For game developers, it can help attract new and maintain current users.

Designing A Successful HMD-Based Experience

1999 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey S. Pierce ◽  
Randy Pausch ◽  
Christopher B. Sturgill ◽  
Kevin D. Christiansen
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Environment ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Virtual Characters ◽  
Virtual Objects ◽  
Head Mounted Display ◽  
Virtual Experience

For entertainment applications, a successful virtual experience based on a head-mounted display (HMD) needs to overcome some or all of the following problems: entering a virtual world is a jarring experience, people do not naturally turn their heads or talk to each other while wearing an HMD, putting on the equipment is hard, and people do not realize when the experience is over. In the Electric Garden at SIGGRAPH 97, we presented the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, a shared virtual environment experienced by more than 1,500 SIGGRAPH attendees. We addressed these HMD-related problems with a combination of back story, see-through HMDs, virtual characters, continuity of real and virtual objects, and the layout of the physical and virtual environments.

Presence, Environment, and Sound and the Role of Imagination

2019 ◽  
pp. 667-681
Author(s):  
Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
Keyword(s):  
Computer Games ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Actual World ◽  
Sensory Input ◽  
The World ◽  
Visual Dimension ◽  
The Creation ◽  
First Person Shooter ◽  
Selection Of

Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard addresses the role of sound in the creation of presence in virtual and actual worlds. He argues that imagination is a central part of the generation and selection of perceptual hypotheses—models of the world in which we can act—that emerge from what Grimshaw-Aagaard calls the “exo-environment” (the sensory input) and the “endo-environment” (the cognitive input). Grimshaw-Aagaard further divides the exo-environment into a primarily auditory and a primarily visual dimension and he deals with the actual world of his own apartment and the virtual world of first-person-shooter computer games in order to exemplify how we perceptually construct an environment that allows for the creation of presence.

Social Media and Emotional Well-being: Pursuit of Happiness or Pleasure

2021 ◽  
pp. 1326365X2110037
Author(s):  
D. Guna Graciyal ◽  
Deepa Viswam
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Mixed Methods Research ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Pursuit Of Happiness ◽  
Social Dysfunction ◽  
Combining Data ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Depth Interviews

Virtual engagement of lives has been made possible with the advent of social media. Almost 80% of the day are spent virtually on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, etc. Usage of social media to connect to and communicate with the ones we care about is always healthy, termed as social networking. Social dysfunction occurs when the constant communication leads to the point where our real or offline life gets replaced by virtual or online life. There is a slight boundary between social networking and social dysfunction. When social networking is advantageous, social dysfunction affects emotional well-being. When emotional well-being is affected, many users experience a compulsion to dissociate from the real world as they find virtual world, full of fantasy and enjoyment. When the Internet was created, perhaps no one was aware of its potential. More than the convenience for sharing of information it has brought the world so close to crumbling the geographical boundaries. The more people-to-people communication is, the more is the strengthening of relationships, bonds grow stronger with ‘more’ social media platforms. Being on ‘more’ social media platforms has become a benchmark for living amidst the younger generation. Either as an activity of happiness or as an activity of pleasure, users tend to use social media at varying levels. This paper aims to conceptualize the the intricacies of social media in young lives and to discern whether their association is happiness or pleasure activity. The research method of this paper has a mixed-methods research design combining data from structured survey with information outputs from in-depth interviews.

scholarly journals Metazoa Ludens: Mixed Reality Environment for Playing Computer Games with Pets

2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 53-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger K. C. Tan ◽  
Adrian David Cheok ◽  
James K. S. Teh
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Mixed Reality ◽  
Leisure Activities ◽  
Computer Game ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
The Real ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
Pet Owner

For better or worse, technological advancement has changed the world to the extent that at a professional level demands from the working executive required more hours either in the office or on business trips, on a social level the population (especially the younger generation) are glued to the computer either playing video games or surfing the internet. Traditional leisure activities, especially interaction with pets have been neglected or forgotten. This paper introduces Metazoa Ludens, a new computer mediated gaming system which allows pets to play new mixed reality computer games with humans via custom built technologies and applications. During the game-play the real pet chases after a physical movable bait in the real world within a predefined area; infra-red camera tracks the pets' movements and translates them into the virtual world of the system, corresponding them to the movement of a virtual pet avatar running after a virtual human avatar. The human player plays the game by controlling the human avatar's movements in the virtual world, this in turn relates to the movements of the physical movable bait in the real world which moves as the human avatar does. This unique way of playing computer game would give rise to a whole new way of mixed reality interaction between the pet owner and her pet thereby bringing technology and its influence on leisure and social activities to the next level

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