Advanced story-based computer games

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the requirement to play through an advanced story-based computer game without taking a longer break to keep immersed in the narrative.

Depending on the player type, playing advanced story-based computer games are a great and exciting activity. Similar to novels, series and movies, these games often tell an atmospheric story featuring complex characters. In contrast to other media, players actively take part in the story and can even change the series of events as their choices matter.  For instance, Life is Strange allows players to revert time directly after a decision was made to change it and its consequences. However, when the player continues with the story, they also are commited to their decision. As a result, the experience of these stories often is more immersive as it is up to the players how the narrative progresses.

Life is Strange

In contrast to other less story-based games, one has to continue following the story without taking too long breaks to keep with it and avoid forgetting important events. If too much time elapsed between two playing sessions, players might feel disconnected from the story thus experiencing difficulties to immerse themselves again. Once such a point is reached, players often can only start over with a new playthrough to refresh their memories.

Personally, I experienced such a problem several times when trying to play Life is Strange. Currently, I am just a very casual computer game player. Aside from creating between two and three 30-minute long Let’s Play episodes per week, I rarely play other games. However, from time to time, I try to immerse myself in more complex games as they are just fun to play. Thus, I start playing a game on one weekend and then have to take a break for several weeks, again. This also happened to Life is Strange. Every time I started playing it, I had to abandone it for a longer period of time and start over as I lost connection to the story. In the end, I decided to wait with the next attempt to my next vacation.

While this might sound a bit frustrating (it actually is!), it also shows the great potential of computer games to tell stories with a dense atmosphere that can even touch us emotionally. However, to really appreciate these games, one has to take the time as otherwise important facts might get forgotten.

Scientific Let’s Plays

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about Let’s Plays as a potential platform to discuss and to present scientific results. At least, as long as they are related to virtual environments and game research.

Communicating scientific results to an audience that goes beyond the scientific community often is a challenging process. Commonly, scientific results address a very specific and complex aspect of a research field that in itself already is difficult to comprehend. To understand and appreciate outcomes of a study, one has to be an expert with an advanced preexisting knowledge of the discussed topic.

As a result, when communicating these results to a different audience, they have to be embedded in a larger context and to be provided in a way that uses common terms. Also, the presentation and discussion is facilitated when examples are provided that visualize the contexts. These visualizations then help to understand and to connect the underlying principles with the newly gained information.

Luckily, I am in a very good position of being a computer game researcher and a Let’s Play (LP) video creator at the same time. This combination allows me to easily discuss my scientific results with a broader audience and to immediately provide audiovisual examples of the context. By creating LPs, I am already using the environment I research. In this way, my scientific presentations are automatically embedded in an audiovisual simulation I can manipulate and control. For instance, when talking about the different types of game mechanics, I can directly showcase the underlying principles by executing some game mechanics and providing an oral explanation.

Recently, I tried this approach to not only communicate my recent scientific results to a broader audience, but also to create video-based presentations one can access on demand. For this purpose, I played the open-world computer game Minecraft which represents an ideal stage for those advanced discussions. It provides players with a more or less freedom within the boundaries of the gameplay thus acting as an empty canvas.

While presenting the scientific results was not so much of a problem, dealing with actual statistics is a bit more difficult as I cannot simply display them during the gameplay. Also, the gameplay itself causes here and there a bit of a distraction, but it is possible that these distractions result in a higher entertainment level when watching these scientific LPs. Instead of purely receiving information, viewers can enjoy some actual gameplay thus achieving some kind of edutainment.

I strongly believe that this format can be very interesting for a broader audience. It automatically includes audiovisual examples, provides an empty canvas to discuss difficult topics, and achieves a high motivation to continue watching.

A natural and plausible world

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about what characteristics are needed to render a virtual environment to a vivid and exciting place.

Computer games create exciting and unique virtual worlds. Depending of the game, the worlds are either linear levels, limited open world maps or infinite procedurally generated worlds. The naturalness and plausibility of these virtual worlds depends on the degree to which the virtual world autonomously reacts to a player or generates random events.

For the player to feel accepted and being a part of a virtual environment, it is important to design it in a way that reacts to a player’s actions. Also, a player has to be able to initiate and control events inside of these environments. For achieving a world that feels natural and not static, the environment has to provide events that are not a result of a player’s actions. However, to be effective, these events have to be plausible and logical based on a player’s previous experiences or real world knowledge. Then, the virtual environments start to become vivid as players can observe events everywhere around like in reality.

The Universim

This is a thing I just observed as I started to play The Universim. This game puts the player in control of an entire little planet that is inhabitated by a small civilization. The goal of the player, who is a god to the little virtual people, is to control and to help them thrive by interacting with them. However, the little virtual creatures also live their lifes on their own and start building little houses and gathering resources. As a result of this, the virtual planet is perceived as a vivid environment that would also continue to exist and to grow without the player. It has a bit the fascination of watching an aquarium that also represents a bounded little world.

I’m already excited to continue observing my little planet and discovering even more little secrets … !

Orwell – Simulating Surveillance

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the effects of a simulated surveillance. It is very interesting to reveal dark secrets about fictive persons but it als raises a question about data security.

The internet is a great and important tool these days. Users can retrieve information about a certain fact, buy things from all around the world, enjoy fascinating movies as well as photographs, and connect with other people. However, every time we upload new information to the internet, we leave behind traces revealing our personal life. In addition, some privacy settings might get changed by service providers or a bug occurs in the platform. Suddenly, the entire world has access to previously hidden data.

One merely has to follow a person’s social media profiles and perform some targeted search requests using google to find these information. Then, by connecting the dots, it is possible to create a comprehensible profile when enough data was uploaded. While this rarely is done with harmful intentions, it can also reveal information that should not be publicily available.

Orwell

Another dangerous scenario is when a government uses the internet to implement a surveillance of the nation’s citizens. In such a case, some missleading statements on a social media platform might already lead to wrong assumptions and even to further investigations. Recently, I started playing Orwell which discusses this problem.

The player is put into the role of an investigator who is searching on the internet for clues and information about a fictive nation’s citizens after a potential terror attack. Clicking through the fictive websites, invading a user’s private chats and uploading information to the „Orwell“ database gave me a pretty bad feeling. After uploading them, they were used to generate a comprehensive profile and were interpreted in order to find connections to additional information sources.

Can I be traced in a similar way? Do intelligence agencies‘ databases already feature a profile about myself? Although I just played the first 30 minutes of Orwell, it made me realize how much we reveal about ourselves by utilizing the internet.

In the end, Orwell is a very interesting game that challenges a player with ethical problems thus training ethical decision making. Despite these ethical questions, the game still immerses a player and evokes a certain desire to continue the surveillance. One cannot deny a dark interest in finding out more about the fictive citizens.

More than 20 years later …

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the technological differences of a 22-year computer game. The graphics look old, but the gameplay itself can still be successful today.

Currently, I am watching a Tomb Raider (1996) Let’s Play. It brings back great memories of playing this game back in the days and being totally amazed by the game’s atmosphere. Everything seemed so realistic and novel to other games I played at this time. Thus, I always was highly immersed in the gameplay and kept it in a very good memory.

Now, more than 20 years later, the game looks quite old in comparison to current state-of-the-art games. Of course, this is not a surprise. One can easily spot design decision that most likely were made to achieve a higher performance or simply were not possible back in the days. Amongst other things, the view distance was limited, 3D objects were represented with 2D graphics that always face towards the player, and the entire virtual environment looks relatively simple.

Despite those graphical and performance related limitations, the gameplay itself would still work very well today. Most game mechanics are still used these days in similar action-adventure games challenging a player with puzzles and short fights. Exploring environments full of traps, solving puzzles by finding objects as well as activating devices, and discovering hidden secrets. As a result, by just watching the videos, I got immersed in the gameplay and forgot about the visual limitations, again.

Realizing this was a very interesting observation to me. It is another example for the change in the perceived realism of state-of-the-art technologies. We always experience current technologies as very exciting and realistic and rarely recognize the change. The technological advancements are a procedural process. However, when suddenly looking back into the past, we suddenly recognize how much things have changed.

I’m excited to see what will be possible in 22 years from now on!

Distracting Interfaces

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the importance of communicating all information directly inside of the virtual worlds in the case of a simulation game. Adding an additional visual information layer above the simulation reduces a player’s acceptance.

Simulation games target a realistic simulation of a specific activity, e.g., driving a race car or flying an aircraft. They encode real world principles in their game mechanics to achieve similar requirements to the real world activity and to provide an authentic visualization of the gameplay. Also, encoding the underlying principles is important to accurately simulate the effects of a player’s actions. In the end, simulation games target the provision of the illusion to actually perform the presented activity.

Aside from encoding the underlying principles, an effective simulation game requires well-designed interaction techniques and a believable user interface. Interaction techniques seem more natural and work best when they achieve a high degree of authenticity. This, of course, also depends on the available hardware. For instance, controlling vehicles only using a keyboard will not be as natural as using a steering wheel or a joystick. Thus, to yield a high believability, it is important to implement techniques that closely mirror the real world interaction techniques.

Providing a believable user interface mostly is straightforward as designers merely have to remodel the cockpits of the simulated vehicle. In this way, important information, such as speed, remaining fuel, and altitude, are communicated in the same way as in the real world. Such an integrated interface that provides information directly inside of the 3D virtual environment is called a diegetic interface. These interfaces seem more natural as they avoid providing an additional visual layer, i.e., a non-diegetic interface, on top of the actual information.

The GPS interface (lower right corner) is layered on top of the simulation. This breaks the immersion and reduces the believability.

This also is critical for information and menus providing access to further gameplay elements. While finding and implementing methods to integrate these elements in a diegetic way might be more complex, it reduces a player’s irritation and enhances the believability of the simulation.

For instance, Euro Truck Simulator 2 requires players to activate a non-diegetic GPS interface to find information about the remaining distance, the destination, and the status of the on-going contract. This causes a high degree of distraction as this GPS then is layered on top of a truck’s cockpit. As a result, the immersion of sitting inside the cockpit is reduced. A better solution would be to communicate these information by directly integrating the GPS into the cockpits. This would still provide access to all relevant elements while avoiding a negative effect on the believability.

In conclusion, providing diegetic interfaces enhances a user’s acceptance of the simulation. The provided information are then a part of the game and not communicated via an extra layer that does not exist in the real world.

Summer Gaming

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about how computer games show us how capable the human body is when the gameplay takes place under challenging conditions.

Playing computer games is a very demanding activity. Depending on the genre of the game, players are challenged to make fast decisions, to immediately react to events, to monitor several task-relevant information at once, and to generally stay focussed. These requirements are also found in highly demanding professions like airplane pilots and rescuers working in any kind of emergency response service.

While gaming takes place in a safe environment allowing for an experimental learning as even death is reversible, the real world professions provide no room for errors. As a result, a constant training and frequent assessment of one’s performance is critical to ensure a high degree of safety. This especially becomes crucial when the environmental conditions strongly divert from the norm. In such a case, it often is very impressive to realize what the human body is capable of.

Although not working in one of these professions, I can observe this phenomenon every year during the summer. With the ongoing climate change, each new summer is more demanding than the last one. This year, the summer only took a few breaks since May. Hence, I am challenged to create Let’s Play videos under very hot conditions (36 C and more) for quite some time. Still, I am all the time surprised that I manage to correctly analyze the gaming action and simultaneously provide a decent commentary.

This can be explained with gaming flow, a state of mind when the player is completely immersed in the gameplay. While being in flow, the awareness for the surrounding world and even the own body is directed towards the gaming action. As a result, the demanding heat is no longer recognized as a disturbing factor.

More importantly, this observation shows that the human body can even work under very challenging conditions when we are in the right mindset and fully focussed on a specific activity.

Gamified Workflow

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about how a traditional workflow can be optimized by following the game desing principles of well-defined goals and immediate feedback.

Computer games provide players with clear goals, constant feedback, and meaningful rewards thus achieving a flow-inducing gameplay. At the same time, these gameplay elements also provide players with information that rarely is available in the real world. As a result, playing computer games not only is an engaging activity, but often also more rewarding than most normal activities in the real life.

This is especially is a result of the clear game goals and immediate feedback that guides a player and helps to solve game tasks in a very efficient way. In the real world, we often are not sure what exactly we need to do to complete a task. In addition, while trying to complete a task, we rarely receive feedback indicating that we are on the right track. Instead, one is normally challenged to interpret a task and to subsequently try to solve it in a best possible way. Unfortunately, while progressing towards the task’s completion, an immediate feedback rarely is available. Also, sometimes tasks change without being propagated to everyone involved. As a result, one is constantly in some kind of limbo between doing the correct things or being on a wrong path.

In the end, our daily lifes feel boring in comparison to activities we can do inside of a computer game. However, by understanding these core principles, guidelines for an effective workflow can be generated.

1. Provide smaller and well defined sub-tasks for a complex main task. This results in a better understanding of the personal goals.
2. Provide immediate feedback after the completion of a sub-task. This allows for an early and constant assessment of the own performance and results in a higher self-confidence to be on the right way.
3. Communicate changes in a clear and immediate way. This results in a fast and easy adjustment of the own priorities.

By following these simple guidelines, a traditional workflow can be optimized. This optimized workflow potentially leads to a higher satisfaction as everyone is aware of the own progress and easily can fokus on the set out goals.