SIAT

The topic of interactive narrative has been under research for many years. Many regard the term itself as an oxymoron [1] [2], while others see narrative as an integral part of every interactive production [3] . While there has been much research exploring the development of new algorithms that enable and enhance interactive narratives, there has been little research focusing on the question of how players understand and internalize their interactive narrative experiences. In this chapter, we discuss the interactive narrative experience as seen through the users" eyes. Specifically, we report on a study we conducted using a phenomenological approach to explore the participants" lived experience of playing an interactive narrative. We chose to use Façade, as an example interactive narrative for our study due to its accessibility and its focus on social relationships, conflict, and drama as its core mechanics. As we look into the experience of interactive narrative, we reflect on enhancements to the design of future interactive narratives and discuss open problems in the field of interactive narrative.

Video games today increasingly situate play in imaginative 3D worlds. As a result, the industry devotes much time and effort to level design. However, this subject has received very little research. Documentation on the process of level design or how designers push or pull players through a level within a video game is very sparse. In this paper, we propose a set of design patterns for level design. The patterns were developed based on a process involving interviews with game designers as well as gameplay analysis of different games. We established face validity of these patterns through expert review; we also established reliability using inter-rater agreement. In addition, we also developed a timeline video annotation method based on these patterns. This visualization method provides a very effective approach to view players' play style and preference as well as level design problems. The patterns as well as the visualization method will be discussed in the paper.

3D video games are a popular form of entertainment that features elaborate visual compositions and settings. Occasionally, players are thrown into situations with a high amount of visual complexity, which may cause players, especially novice players, to misinterpret important game goals or mechanics, which may, in turn, lead to a diminished experience. Previous research investigated visual design, but only in terms of brightness and color contrast, no research investigated attributes of motion, their complexity in regards to visual design, and their effect on the game experience. Informed by cinema and visual perception domains, we embark on a study of 4 motion attributes: flicker, shape, speed, and repetition, and investigate their design within 6 games. We rate these games based on their complexity. We use video coding with a kappa reliability measure to identify these attributes. We then investigate the relationship between the use of these motion attributes and the rated complexity of the visual scene. We present this analysis as a contribution, and design lessons extrapolated based on the analysis.

This paper investigates the differences between 3D level designs in 21 popular games. We have developed a framework to analyze 3D level designs based on patterns extracted from level designers and game play sessions. We then use these patterns to analyze several game play sessions. Results of this analysis reveal methods by which designers push and pull players through levels.

Video games today increasingly situate play in imaginative 3D worlds. As a result, the industry devotes much time and effort to level design. However, this subject has received very little research. Documentation on the process of level design or how designers push or pull players through a level within a video game is very sparse. In this paper, we propose a set of design patterns for level design. The patterns were developed based on a process involving interviews with game designers as well as gameplay analysis of different games. We established face validity of these patterns through expert review; we also established reliability using inter-rater agreement. In addition, we also developed a timeline video annotation method based on these patterns. This visualization method provides a very effective approach to view players' play style and preference as well as level design problems. The patterns as well as the visualization method will be discussed in the paper.

Cooperative design has been an integral part of many games. With the success of games like Left4Dead, many game designers and producers are currently exploring the addition of cooperative patterns within their games. Unfortunately, very little research investigated cooperative patterns or methods to evaluate them. In this paper, we present a set of cooperative patterns identified based on analysis of fourteen cooperative games. Additionally, we propose Cooperative Performance Metrics (CPM). To evaluate the use of these CPMs, we ran a study with a total of 60 participants, grouped in 2-3 participants per session. Participants were asked to play four cooperative games (Rock Band 2, Lego Star Wars, Kameo, and Little Big Planet). Videos of the play sessions were annotated using the CPMs, which were then mapped to cooperative patterns that caused them. Results, validated through inter-rater agreement, identify several effective cooperative patterns and lessons for future cooperative game designs.

The topic of interactive narrative has been under research for many years. While there has been much research exploring the development of new algorithms that enable and enhance interactive narratives, there has been little research focusing on the question of how players understand and internalize their interactive narrative experiences. This paper addresses this problem through conducting a phenomenological study on participants playing Façade; we specifically chose a phenomenological methodology due to its emphasis on the participants" lived experience from the participants" viewpoint. We chose Façade, because it is the only accessible example of an experience that revolves around social relationships, conflict, and drama as its core mechanics. In this paper, we discuss sixteen themes that resulted from the analysis of the data gathered through the study. In addition, we reflect on these themes discussing their relationship to participants" backgrounds, and project implications on the design of future interactive narratives.

Virtual reality simulators have a serious flaw: Users tend to get lost and disoriented as they navigate. The prevailing opinion is that this is due to the lack of physical motion cues, but a growing body of research challenges this notion. In two experiments, 48 participants estimated their position after passive motions in a virtual environment without landmarks (ranging from pure optic flow to a structured city), by pointing towards the origin of the simulated movement. In half of the trials the visually displayed turns were accompanied by a matching physical rotation. Results showed that while physical rotation cues did not improve spatial orientation performance, structured visuals did. Furthermore, we observed that visuals experienced first by a participant significantly affected spatial orientation performance in subsequent environments. Our findings lend support to the notion that spatial orientation ability in VR may not require physical motion cues, but can be facilitated by a naturalistic and structured environment. This knowledge improves our understanding of how different modalities affect human spatial cognition, and can guide the design of safer and more affordable VR simulators.

Virtual reality (VR) technology is increasingly used in spatial cognition research, as it offers high experimental control and interactivity in naturalistic multi-modal environments, something that is difficult to achieve in realworld settings. Even in the most sophisticated and costly VR systems, people do not necessarily perceive and behave as they would in the real world. This might be related to our inability to use embodied (and thus often highly automated and effective) spatial orientation processes in VR. While real-world locomotion affords automatic and obligatory spatial updating of our self-to-surrounding relationships, such that we easily remain oriented during simple perspective changes, the same is not necessarily true in VR. This can lead to striking systematic and qualitative errors such as failures to update rotations (''Nonturner'' behavior). Here, we investigated whether rich naturalistic visual stimuli in immersive VR might be sufficient to compensate for the lack of physical motion. To this end, 24 participants performed point-to-origin tasks after visually simulated excursions along streets of varying curvature in a naturalistic virtual city. Most (21/24) participants properly updated simulated self-motions and showed only moderate regression toward mean pointing responses. 3/24 participants, however, exhibited striking ''Nonturner'' behavior in that they pointed as if they did not update the visually simulated turns and their heading had not changed. This suggests that our immersive naturalistic VR stimuli were an improvement over prior optic flow stimuli, but still insufficient in eliciting obligatory spatial updating that supported correct point-to-origin responses in all participants.

Virtual reality simulators have a serious flaw: Users tend to get lost and disoriented as they navigate. The prevailing opinion is that this is due to the lack of physical motion cues, but a growing body of research challenges this notion. In two experiments, 48 participants estimated their position after passive motions in a virtual environment without landmarks (ranging from pure optic flow to a structured city), by pointing towards the origin of the simulated movement. In half of the trials the visually displayed turns were accompanied by a matching physical rotation. Results showed that while physical rotation cues did not improve spatial orientation performance, structured visuals did. Furthermore, we observed that visuals experienced first by a participant significantly affected spatial orientation performance in subsequent environments. Our findings lend support to the notion that spatial orientation ability in VR may not require physical motion cues, but can be facilitated by a naturalistic and structured environment. This knowledge improves our understanding of how different modalities affect human spatial cognition, and can guide the design of safer and more affordable VR simulators.