The introduction of games for benchmarking intelligent systems has a long tradition in AI (Artificial Intelligence) research. Alan Turing was one of the first to mention that a computer can be considered as intelligent if it is able to play chess. Today AI benchmarks are designed to capture difficulties that humans deal with every day. They are carried out on robots with unreliable sensors and ...

Live role-playing (LRP) games stand as powerful metaphorical models for the various digital and ubiquitous forms of entertainment that gather under the term pervasive games. Offering what can be regarded as the holy grail of interactive entertainment – the fully immersive experience – LRP games provide a tangible and distributed interface to a gaming activity that is emergent, improvised, colla...

Recent studies report various positive effects on elderly persons playing digital games. Yet, games are rarely designed with an elderly user group in mind. In this paper, this issue is addressed by providing an overview of common age-related changes followed by a summary of game design considerations for senior audiences. The impact of age on game design is discussed based on an analysis of the...

From the earliest times, it’s been possible to discern clear genre divisions among games, genres based on a collection of game mechanics. The pattern can be seen even in games of the Neolithic, and continues with digital games today. Since the inception of games as a commercial industry (in the 18 century), it also appears that new genres have, over time, attracted new audiences; in recent year...

Michael Liebe argues that Salen and Zimmerman's interpretation of Huizinga's magic circle does not apply to computer games. Liebe's insight reveals not only a different relation for computer games to the magic circle, but also hints at a difference in the nature of rules in computer games. Jesper Juul's comparison of non-digital sports to simulations of those sports highlights a missing aspect ...

Violent digital game play has repeatedly been discussed to be strongly related to aggression and emotional instability. Thus, digital game players have to defend against these prejudices through emphasizing positive game-related concepts such as achievement, social interaction, and immersion. We experimentally investigated which positive- and negative-concept players and nonplayers activate whe...

The amount of content from digital origin permanently increases. The short lifespan of digital media makes it necessary to develop strategies to preserve its content for future use. Not only electronic documents, pictures and movies have to be preserved, also interactive content like digital art or video games have to be kept “alive” for future generations. In this paper we discuss strategies f...

In this paper we present an Interactive Digital Storytelling (IDS) formalisation that captures the IDS logic constraints. This was implemented in a game engine and an authoring tool was created to facilitate the development of IDS based games. We created several IDS based games using the proposed engine and authoring tool. They were used as case studies in this research. We also present some of...

In recent years, game studies scholars have brought an expanded conception of aesthetics to bear in the study of digital games. Far from being limited to speaking about the visual presentation of games and graphic styles (with the negative associations of “eye candy”), game aesthetics has become a perspective that allows us to examine the overarching principles and qualities of the gameplay exp...