Entertainment Computing

MERGING IS SEX OBVIOUSLY,  NORMAL MERGING IS KNOWING THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF BOTH BEINGS, NO YOU OR I = ONENESS,  THE TWO ANUs MERGE – IF ONE IS AN ATTACK, THEN THE ORIGINAL ANU BECOMES SMALLER, DUMBER AND WEAKER, WHICH IS WHAT IS GOING ON HERE. 

AND - OUR "REALITY" UNMASKED

This article summarizes past definitions of entertainment, serious games and virtual heritage in order to discuss whether virtual heritage has particular problems not directly addressed by conventional serious games. For virtual heritage, typical game-style entertainment poses particular ethical problems, especially around the simulation of historic violence and the possible trivialization of culturally sensitive and significant material. While virtual heritage can be considered to share some features of serious games, there are significantly different emphases on objectives. Despite these distinctions, virtual heritage projects could still meet serious games-style objectives while entertaining participants.

Courtroom environments, which have been one of the last bastions of the oral tradition, are slowly morphing into cinematic display environments [1]. The persuasive oral rhetoric of lawyers is increasingly being replaced by compelling visual media displays presenting a range of digital evidence in a convincing and credible manner [2,3].There are a number of fundamental implications inherent in the shift from oral to visual mediation and a number of facets of this modern evidence presentation technology need to be investigated and analysed. Recently, a number of courtrooms around the world have seen the presentation of forensic evidence within reconstructed virtual environments powered by real-time game engines.At first glance, these graphical reconstructions may be seen as potentially useful in many courtroom situations, and they are often treated like any other form of digital evidence regarding their admissibility [4]. However, perhaps this specific form of digital media warrants special care and attention due to its inherently persuasive nature, and the undue reliance that the viewer may place on the evidence presented through a visualisation medium [5,6].This paper describes a range of examples of where evidence has been presented in courtrooms using video games technology (particularly forensic animation and virtual crime scene reconstructions) (The author acted as an expert witness in all of the cases discussed, responsible for the preparation of the virtual reconstructions used as case studies in this paper. Most of the work was undertaken through the author’s own company in the UK, Aims Solutions Ltd., ). The paper then describes experiments undertaken to assess the impact of the technology on jurors and describes some of the issues raised by the results. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential benefits and problems of implementing this technology in courtroom settings.

Computer technology has become closely integrated with modern culture, which prompted us to introduce and explore the avenues of integrating aesthetics with technology. With the intention of promoting aesthetic sensibilities generated in poetry, we introduce a poetry generating system called “Poetry Mix-up", which encourages users to experience the creation of a ‘remixed’ variety of poetry by sending a simple short message (SMS). Based on the topics and the content of the input message, the system creates a new poem by mixing existing poem lines. The preliminary user study shows that Poetry Mix-up could be a new form of social and cultural communication in the digital era.

In recent years we have seen a rising interest in brain-computer interfacing for human-computer interaction and potential game applications. Until now, however, we have almost only seen proof-of-concepts where a single BCI paradigm is demonstrated to work as a simple control mechanism, as a measurement of user state, or for neurofeedback. There have hardly been any attempts to design BCI games where BCI is considered to be one of multiple possible input modalities (together with keyboard, speech, gestures, etc.) that can be used to control the game. One reason may be that research still follows the paradigms of the traditional, medically oriented, BCI approaches. In this paper we discuss current BCI research from the viewpoint of games and game design. It is hoped that this survey will make clear that we need to design different games than we used to, but that such games can nevertheless be interesting and exciting.

Abstract This paper argues that the enjoyment of interactive media, especially interactive narratives, can be explained via perceptions of control. Specifically, control over a character’s choices, lead to higher perceptions of control which increased user enjoyment. Three different experiments using varying narratives, grammatical perspectives and story outcomes support these arguments consistently. This series of studies demonstrates that perceptions of control over media characters facilitate positive attitudes toward media content, corroborating and expanding upon earlier entertainment research. This research demonstrates a low-tech application of content-based user control in new media environments.

This paper introduces a system that can recognize different type of paper-folding by users. The system allows users to register and use their desired paper in the interaction, and detect the folding by using Speed Up Robust Feature (SURF) algorithm. The paper also describes a paper-based tower defense game which has been developed as a proof of concept of our method. This method can be considered as the initial step for seamlessly migrating meaningful traditional art of origami into the digital world as a part of the interactive media.

This paper explores how a contextual game-based framework helps to solve complex problems in the field of electrical engineering. To support this study, UNTANGLED, scientific puzzle game is used. The game is developed to solve mapping problems in the field of electrical engineering by using human intuitions. Data Flow Graphs (DFGs) are disclosed to participants in the form of puzzles and players must arrange these puzzles based on rules and regulations provided to reach feasible solutions. In this study, telemetry data for feasible solutions are considered and analysis is performed on different levels of complexity, which are arranged as easy, medium, and hard in the game. Scores obtained and type of moves used by participants to solve these puzzles determine their performance. Findings revealed that participants showed a statistically significant difference in their performance based on level complexity. This paper suggests that developing context-based frameworks like games or interactive applications can help learners to assimilate difficult concepts or enhance problem-solving skills.

The perception of emotional facial expressions has been diligently studied in psychology for the last 40years. The stimuli mainly used in these studies were photos or short film clips. Today, video games and their development frameworks allow researchers to design, model, and animate embodied conversational agents (ECAs). This research paper introduces an experimental setting to observe and measure the perception

Entertainment is often undervalued but its links with show biz, advertising, politics and consummation cultures are by now very strong. In media, advertising, tourism, cruises, food and beverages, gambling, fitness, theme parks, malls we can find increasing shares of entertainment. This large area of production and delivery of cultural contents, worth more than 10% of total consumptions nowadays encounters the Internet  and social networks. Entertainment become a dominant format and language, due complement of every product, event, political party which want to meet people’s choices.
L’entertainment non gode di buona reputazione rispetto alla cultura « alta », ma l’intreccio fra intrattenimento, spettacolo, politica e consumo è ormai inestricabile. Lo troviamo ovunque, nei media e nella pubblicità, ma investe anche il turismo e le crociere, la ristorazione e la moda, il gioco d’azzardo e la fitness, i parchi a tema, i centri commerciali.
Una grande area di produzione e diffusione di contenuti culturali, che vale più del 10% dei consumi delle famiglie, e che incontra oggi Internet e i social network. Un linguaggio dominante, involucro necessario di ogni prodotto, evento, partito che voglia farsi scegliere.

pp. 144, ISBN 978-88-15-24475-8.

Courtroom environments, which have been one of the last bastions of the oral tradition, are slowly morphing into cinematic display environments [1]. The persuasive oral rhetoric of lawyers is increasingly being replaced by compelling visual media displays presenting a range of digital evidence in a convincing and credible manner [2,3].There are a number of fundamental implications inherent in the shift

ABSTRACT Increasingly digital games are being played multiplayer online, not just massively multiplayer games but normal PC and console games. An important constituent of the gaming experience is the social relationships between players as mediated by games. Social presence is the foundation of this experience, being the extent to which players feel present to each other within the virtual environment. This paper sets out to explore the nature of social presence in digital games. Though substantial work has already been done in this area, our first study makes it clear that current formulations of social presence in games are only capturing certain aspects of gaming experience. We therefore conducted three other small scale, largely qualitative studies that set out to manipulate social presence in games, in particular using the ambiguity of whether co-players are human to probe the relevance of social presence. We term this novel methodological approach experiential vignettes. The vignettes show that, despite what players say, they are highly task-oriented when it comes to whether the presence of other humans is meaningful in game. Moreover, current measures of social presence in games are not sufficiently rich to capture the full extent to which social presence can occur in games.

As social networking widely spreads among the community, especially among the younger generation, the negative influence created on children has become a serious social concern. "Petimo" is an interactive robotic toy designed to protect children from potential risks in social networks and the virtual world and it helps them to make a safely connected social networking environment. It adds a new physical dimension to social computing through enabling a second authentication mode, providing extra safety in making friends by physically touching each others robot. Petimo can be connected to any social network and it provides safety and security for children. As a proof of concept, we have developed a 3D virtual world, "Petimo-World" which demonstrates all of the realizable basic features with traditional online social networks. Petimo-World stands out from all other virtual worlds with its interesting and sophisticated interactions such as the visualization of a frie...

“Poetry Mix-up” revitalizes aesthetic sensibilities evoked from poetry in our contemporary culture. It provides users with an enjoyable experience of creating a `remixed' poetry by simply sending cell phone SMS or micro-blogging on Twitter. The system is capable of generating poems based on the topics and the contents of the messages sent by users.

This paper introduces a system that can recognize different type of paper-folding by users. The system allows users to register and use their desired paper in the interaction, and detect the folding by using Speed Up Robust Feature (SURF) algorithm. The paper also describes a paper-based tower defense game which has been developed as a proof of concept of our method. This method can be considered as the initial step for seamlessly migrating meaningful traditional art of origami into the digital world as a part of the interactive media.

For several years, there has been growing interest in the development and use of serious games to improve individuals’ quality of life and behavior. In particular, Crisis Management Serious Games (CMSG) have shown their potential for teaching people both technical and soft skills related to managing crises in a safe environment while reducing training costs. To improve their effectiveness, several evaluation approaches of CMSGs have been proposed. However, despite its interest, the learner’s emotional state is often neglected. As a result, learners may end up with a deep frustration or boredom. Therefore, we propose an Educational Data Mining (EDM) approach to evaluate learners’ affective states in collaborative CMSGs. This approach is applied to assess learners’ engagement during a game-based evacuation scenario aiming to train and to raise awareness among students of a university on evacuating the present persons during a fire emergency situation. The experimental results confirm ...

Role-play can be a powerful educational tool, especially when dealing with social or ethical issues. However, while other types of educational activity have been routinely technology-enhanced for some time, the specific problem of supporting educational role-play with technology has only begun to be tackled recently. Within the eCIRCUS project we have designed a framework for technology-enhanced role-play with the aim of educating adolescents about intercultural empathy. This work was influenced by related fields such ...