Introduction from “Game Research Methods: An Overview”

Introduction from Lankoski & Björk, 2015. Game Research Methods: An Overview. ETC Press.
The book is available as free PDF

Printed copies can be bought at least from:

Petri Lankoski & Staffan Björk

This volume is about methods in game research. In game research, wide variety of methods and research approaches are used. In many cases, researchers apply the method set from another discipline to study games or play because game research as discipline is not yet established as its own discipline and the researchers have been schooled in that other discipline. Although this may, in many cases, produce valuable research, we believe that game research qualifies as a research field in its own right. As such, it would benefit game researchers to have collections of relevant research methods described and developed specifically for this type of research. Two direct benefits of this would be to illustrate the variety of methods that are possible to apply in game research and to mitigate some of the problems; each new researchers has to reinvent how methods from other fields can or need to be adjusted to work for game research.

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Tutorial: 1st-person sneak in Unity 5, part 7

In addition to door, I want to have force field gates that are controlled by levers. I also want to have force field gate malfunctioning so that the force field goes on and off defined intervals (with random variation).

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Tutorial: 1st-person sneak in Unity 5, part 6

Previous parts of tutorial

Next I setup something for regaining energy and health. I want the PC to be gain health or power while it stands next to the power-up (and as long as the power-up have something to left to give). The power-up keep its state so that it does not pop us as full if the PC gets back to the level. I also want to visualise in some degree how much health/energy power-up has left or if it is fully drained.

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Tutorial: 1st-person sneak in Unity 5, part 5

This part adds logic for the PC and keep track of things such as health, dying. I also add functionality for invisibility (that have already partly added in Guard class).  I also add HUD using the new GUI system to show health and energy (that is used to maintain invisibility).

Previous parts:

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Tutorial: 1st-person sneak in Unity 5, part 3

Now we have a simple agent that follows patrol route and change colour when it sees the player object. To make this usable and interesting in the game, we need to extend to functionality and have something else than a cube.

Previous parts of tutorial

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Tutorial: 1st-person sneak in Unity 5, part 2

The first part of tutorial: /2015/05/07/tutorial-1st-person-sneak-in-unity-5-part-1/

The guards needs to be able to observe their surroundings so we need a perception system. I want to make agent not to see its back, but sensing if someone is really close and have some peripheral vision with limited range (cf figure below). Also, guard should not be able to see through obstacles.

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Tutorial: 1st-person sneak in Unity 5, part 1

This tutorial goes through how to build a 1st person sneaking game with simple enemies/guards that patrols predefined routes and if they spot the PC they start to follow and attack if they get near enough. A short video clip demonstrates the guard behaviour this tutorial builds.

This tutorial assumes that you are familiar with Unity and can create game objects, prefabs, and scripts.  The code snippets below are in C#.

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Game Research Methods: An Overview edited by Lankoski & Björk

Our edited collection just came out from ETC Press.

Print and free pdf available: http://press.etc.cmu.edu/content/game-research-methods-overview

An overview presentation at slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/lankoski/game-research-methods-book-introduction

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Ethics of Twitter use: comment flooding is bad

I have seen comments that some orchestrate their followers to harass some Twitter user. Intriguingly, I’ve also seen those same people participating comment flooding.

The main thing about flooding I have seen is that individual Twitter users are not causing the flood, but a collective effect of a crowd.

Some cases someone (with a good amount of followers) pick up a critical comment and RT or comment and mob starts to gather. After the comment food researches critical mass, flood feeds itself and maintains its momentum for hours.

If ones friend is comment spammed, it is orchestrated harassment. If someone unknown or some with opposing opinions is flooded, they got what they deserve.

This phenomenon is not nice at all.

It would be great if you see a comment RTed / commented and you disapprove, before joining in, consider if you have something constructive and novel to contribute to this issue?

If not have anything constructive and novel to contribute, please do not join the mob.

Comment flooding (spamming) is not a nice experience and it does not help to communicate your disagreement in any meaningful way.