research-article

Design patterns of focused attention

Authors:

Magy Seif El-NasrAuthors Info & Claims

DPG '12: Proceedings of the First Workshop on Design Patterns in Games

Article No.: 5, Pages 1 - 8

https://doi.org/10.1145/2427116.2427121

Published: 29 May 2012 Publication History

Abstract

This paper explores game design patterns specific to the visual presentation of game elements. Informed by the similarity theory of visual perception coupled with designers' tacit knowledge, we establish an empirical basis to investigate visual balance, specifically in terms of maintaining, disrupting, and swapping the focus of attention. Since visual balance is a concept that is intertwined with difficulty and depends on users' expertise, we also explore the differences in novice vs. expert designs by collecting design configurations from designers, thus uncovering designers' tacit knowledge in regards to expertise. This is accomplished through the creation of a toolset to explore game elements in a railed shooter game comprised of targets, non-targets, and visual feedback with variables of size, speed, and density. Eight expert game designers encoded settings where the theory is evaluated. As a result of this investigation, we identify patters of similarity, noise, and ramps.

References

[1]

Bartram, L. and Ware, C. 2002. Filtering and Brushing with Motion. Information Visualization. 1, 1 (2002), 66--79.

Digital Library

[2]

Bateman, S. et al. 2011. Target Assistance for Subtly Balancing Competitive Play. (Vancouver, Canada, 2011).

Digital Library

[3]

Bergström, K. et al. 2010. Exploring Aesthetical Gameplay Design Patterns --Camaraderie in Four Games. Proceedings of the 14th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments (Tampere, FINLAND, 2010).

Digital Library

[4]

Björk, S. and Holopainen, J. 2006. Games and Design Patterns. The Game Design Reader. E. Zimmerman and K. Salen, eds. MIT Press.

[5]

Block, B. 2001. The Visual Story: Seeing the Structure of Film, TV, and New Media. Focal Press.

[6]

Byrne, E. 2005. Game Level Design. Charles River Media.

[7]

Ching, F. 1996. Form, Space & Order. Van Nostrand Reinhold.

[8]

Desurvire, H. and Wiberg, C. 2010. User Experience Design for Inexperienced Gamers: GAP - Game Approachability Principles. Evaluating User Experiences in Games. Springer-Verlag.

[9]

Duncan, J. and Humphreys, G. W. 1989. Visual search and stimulus similarity. Psychological Review. 96, 3 (1989), 433--458.

[10]

El-Nasr, M. S. and Yan, S. 2006. Visual attention in 3D video games. Proceedings of the 2006 ACM SIGCHI international conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology (New York, NY, USA, 2006).

Digital Library

[11]

Fiel, J. and Scattergood, M. 2005. Beginning Game Level Design. Thomson Course Technology.

[12]

Hoeg, T. 2008. The Invisible Hand: Using Level Design Elements to Manipulate Player Choice. Guildhall at Southern Methodist University.

[13]

Hullett, K. and Whitehead, J. 2010. Design Patterns in FPS Levels. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games (Monterey, CA, 2010).

Digital Library

[14]

Huniche, R. and Chapman, V. 2005. AI for Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in Games. (Valencia, Spain, 2005).

[15]

Kingstone, A. and Bischof, W. F. 1999. Perceptual grouping and motion coherence in visual search. Psychological Science. 10, 2 (1999), 151--156.

[16]

Klimmt, C. and Hartmann, T. 2006. Effectance, self-efficacy, and the motivation to play video games. Playing video games: Motives, responses, and consequences. P. Vorderer and J. Bryant, eds. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 132--145.

[17]

LeBlanc, M. 2006. Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics. The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. E. Zimmerman and K. Salen, eds. MIT Press.

[18]

Lemarchand, R. 2012. Attention NOT Immersion: Making your games better with psychology and playtesting, the Uncharted Way. Game Developers Conference (San Francisco, CA, 2012).

[19]

Lockyer, M. et al. 2011. Simple Motion Textures for Ambient Affect. (Vancouver, Canada, 2011).

Digital Library

[20]

Milam, D. et al. 2011. Effect of Camera and Object Motion on Visual Load in 3D Games. (Vancouver, Canada, 2011).

Digital Library

[21]

Milam, D. et al. 2012. Toolset to explore visual motion designs in a video game. SIGCHI (Austin, TX, 2012).

Digital Library

[22]

Milam, D. and Seif El-Nasr, M. 2010. Analysis of Level Design "Push & Pull" within 21 games. Foundations of Digital Games (Monterey, CA, 2010).

Digital Library

[23]

Milam, D. and Seif El-Nasr, M. 2010. Design Patterns to Guide Player Movement in 3D Games. (2010).

Digital Library

[24]

Milham, I. 2011. Creating Horror and Immersion with the Art of Dead Space.

[25]

Niedenthal, S. 2009. Complicated Shadows: The Aesthetic Significance of Simulated Illumination in Digital Games. Blekinge Institute of Technology.

[26]

Rogers, S. 2009. Everything I Learned About Level Design I Learned from Disneyland. Game Developers Conference (San Francisco, CA, 2009).

[27]

Samarinas, A. 2009. Illuminating Minotaur's Lair: Light Design and Navigation in Gameworlds. IT University of Copenhagen.

[28]

Seif El-Nasr, M. et al. 2009. Dynamic Intelligent Lighting for Directing Visual Attention in Interactive 3D Scenes. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games. 1, 2 (2009).

[29]

Smith, H. and Worch, M. 2010. What Happened Here? Environmental Storytelling. Game Developers Conference (San Francisco, CA, 2010).

[30]

Smith, R. 2009. Helping Your Players Feel Smart: Puzzles as User Interface.

[31]

Treisman, A. M. and Gelade, G. 1980. A feature-integration theory of attention. Cognitive Psychology. 12, 1 (1980), 97--136.

[32]

Upton, B. 2007. Narrative Landscapes: Shaping Player Experience through World Geometry.

[33]

Vlachos, A. 2010. Water Flow in Portal 2. SIGGRAPH (Los Angeles, 2010).

[34]

Wertheimer, M. 1923. Untersuchen zur lehre von der Gestalt {Laws of Organization in Perceptual Forms}. Psychologische Forschung {Psychological Research}. 4, 1 (1923), 301--350.

[35]

Wolf, J. 1994. Guided Search 2.0: A revised model of visual search. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 1, 2 (1994), 202--238.

Cited By

Allison FCarter MGibbs MSmith WMueller FJohnson DSchouten BToups Dugas PWyeth P(2018)Design Patterns for Voice Interaction in GamesProceedings of the 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3242671.3242712(5-17)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3242671.3242712

Index Terms

Design patterns of focused attention

Recommendations

Enemy NPC design patterns in shooter games
DPG '12: Proceedings of the First Workshop on Design Patterns in Games

Gameplay in single-player shooter games primarily consists of combat with Non-player Characters (NPCs). However, there has been little research done to study how enemy NPCs affect player behavior in shooter games. As a consequence, there is no formal ...
Exploring aesthetical gameplay design patterns: camaraderie in four games
MindTrek '10: Proceedings of the 14th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments

This paper explores how a vocabulary supporting design-related discussions of gameplay preferences can be developed. Using the preference of experiencing camaraderie as an example, we have analyzed four games: the board games Space Alert and Battlestar ...
Designing Visual Tools to Facilitate Human-Centered Design
AVI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces

Human-Centred Design (HCD) relies on the use of many methods (e.g. interviews, observations) originating from other disciplines such as social sciences (e.g. ethnography). Such methods often rely on the use of visual tools (e.g. photographs and ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

DPG '12: Proceedings of the First Workshop on Design Patterns in Games

May 2012

47 pages

ISBN:9781450318549

DOI:10.1145/2427116

Conference Chairs:
Kenneth Hullett
UC Santa Cruz
,
David Milam
Simon Fraser University

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SASDG: Society for the Advancement of the Science of Digital Games
SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 29 May 2012

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

DPG '12

Sponsor:

SASDG
SIGCHI

DPG '12: Workshop on Design Patterns in Games

May 29, 2012

North Carolina, Raleigh, USA

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

1
Total Citations
View Citations
575
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)18
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1

Reflects downloads up to 14 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Allison FCarter MGibbs MSmith WMueller FJohnson DSchouten BToups Dugas PWyeth P(2018)Design Patterns for Voice Interaction in GamesProceedings of the 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3242671.3242712(5-17)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3242671.3242712

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents